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You break it,
you pay for it

Sandra McDonald

         Author's Notes:
         Hi everyone! I'm back for a little while at least. The title of this story comes from a very surprising source (surprising for me) and I'm not going to say exactly where until the end, in case you hate John Tesh and decide not to read any further. Donna and baby Jeremy were in the episode "Line of Fire." Comments, criticism, feedback, mistakes, all to me please. The same disclaimers you've read before still apply.

         Richie Ryan spent most of the three hour trip from Macau to Seacouver staring at his hands. Like Lady MacBeth, he was haunted by blood that would not wash off. He felt exhausted, his body hollow and weak, his mind and chest numb. Sleep came only a few seconds at a time, and even then it brought twisting, churning visions of the one sword fight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
         He rubbed his hands against his pants.
         Satoshi's blood would not come off.
         Beside him, an Asian executive laughed at the movie playing directly into her retina. Richie turned his attention to the window and tried to see the ocean below, but it was too far away. He usually preferred his own airpod for travel, but circumstances had dictated he leave the New Republic of China in a hurry.
         Leave Satoshi's head, severed from his body.
         Leave Andrea.
         Richie leaned his forehead against the window and banged it lightly. His eyes, full of grit, began to sting. When, he wondered miserably, had the world turned into such a complicated place? Well, that was easy to answer. The night he'd first died.
         He hadn't thought of Tessa in a long time, but the vision of her laying lifelessly in MacLeod's arms cut across his mind like a spasm of Quickening. Some things he never expected to forget. The first spastic heave of breath into his body after returning from death. The dawning realization he was Immortal. The sense of everything sharper and clearer in a world tinged red with Tessa's blood and awash with Mac's tears.
         Richie wiped at his own eyes now. He was fifty years old now, far too old to be weeping in public over a beautiful, precious woman long dead. The problem, he acknowledged silently, was that he hadn't had any valuable sleep in the last twenty four hours. He needed rest. He needed to blot out the awful memory of Satoshi's death. He needed Andrea, but he'd left her back in Macau.
         He squeezed his eyes shut. So tired, so tired. Satoshi, on his knees as Richie's blade sliced through the perfectly still twilight air. Andrea, the last time they'd laid together, her long copper curls entwining them both, her hands caressing his chest.
         Richie leaned back into the body-molding seat and activated the private sleep cone. In blessed darkness and quiet he took a deep breath in through his nose, let it out through his mouth. Deliberately he relaxed the tenseness in his shoulders and the clench in his jaw. MacLeod and Satoshi both had taught him meditative techniques, but he couldn't bear to use anything his masters had given him. He drifted, in the ocean of darkness, aware of his body growing lax and heavy.
         Satoshi's black eyes.
         Andrea's slim fingers, her palm against his heart, her lips kissing his eyelids as he lay in her arms, half-asleep, the room drenched with the warmth and light of the afternoon sun.

         A distant clanging sound came to him, and he felt his muscles tense again in recognition of the clash of swords. Satoshi, grinning at him easily, effortlessly parlaying thrusts and blocks across the courtyard. The sky above was tinged with the purple and rose of sunset, and the South China Sea behind them rolled with soft, dark waves. Tin Hau herself gazed down upon them from a stone face and the costume of a Chinese bride.
         Satoshi's expression - awed, resolute, proud - the second before Richie cut off his head.
         Hot, sticky wetness gushed over Richie's hands. He jerked awake and out of the sleep cone, convinced the flight attendant had spilled something on him. The cone automatically retreated, leaving him blinking in the harsh light, his heart hammering wildly, his palms and back damp with sweat. The attendant was down the aisle, serving drinks. For a disoriented moment he thought she was Andrea.
         Andrea, the woman he loved more than he had loved anyone in fifty years.
         His Watcher.
         Joe Dawson's daughter.
         Richie rubbed his hands against his pants, but the blood remained.

         David Kelley met him at the airport. Sixty five years old, with a slim, short build and neatly cropped gray hair, he was one of the most intelligent, organized and diplomatic people Richie knew. He and his hand-picked staff managed T.G. Enterprises' restaurants, bars, antique stores, car dealerships, and extensive investments. David knew all about Immortals - he had been a Watcher once, in his youth, and had been trained by Joe himself.
         He met Richie after customs, took his carry-on bag and carefully packed sword, and said, "You look tired."
         "Long flight," Richie returned. He could barely stand straight, and a strong breeze would probably flatten him. He was grateful that David had met him on such short notice from the airpod's phone, but that was never really in question. David's first priority was always Richie, no matter what time day or night, no matter where in the world the Immortal might be.
         "You said Miss Andrea's not joining us?" David asked.
         "Maybe later," Richie said. Or maybe not at all, he thought to himself, but didn't dare speak that thought aloud.
         David steered him towards the parking lot. "If you have her flight number, I'll arrange for her transportation."
         "She'll manage," Richie said. David pressed no further. In the electric car as they headed north to the estate, Richie sat in exhausted silence and stared at the scenery without seeing it. David let twenty miles of silence pass, then turned on the autopilot and swirled around in his seat.
         "The month-end figures are in your mailbox," he offered.
         Richie didn't even glance at the computer keyboard set in his armrest. The world outside was too bright, too full of spring's life and hope, but he didn't have the energy to darken the windows. He did rouse himself enough to ask, for David's sake, "How's it look?"
         "Better than last quarter. You're a very rich young man."
         "I'm not young," Richie offered.
         "Younger than me."
         Richie allowed himself a trace of bitterness. "And nineteen forever."
         David let a few more miles pass without comment. Then, in a quiet voice that spoke of twenty years of affection and teamwork, he asked, "Is it something I can help with?"
         Richie turned his gaze to the mortal, suddenly ashamed of his own conduct. He could wallow in guilt and pity all he wanted, but it wasn't fair to take it out on a man who'd been not just a good employee but a good friend, and a mentor in his own right as much as Mac and Satoshi had been.
         "Thank you," Richie said sincerely, "but no. It's not something you can help with."
         David's frown deepened. "Maybe MacLeod?"
         It had been a long time since Richie needed to run to MacLeod everything he got in over his head. He couldn't deny that he wanted to talk to Mac, maybe even needed it, but the Highlander was in Scotland with his wife Rachel and Richie had no right to bother him with this. So he shook his head at the suggestion, and turned his attention back to the scenery until David switched back to the steering controls.
         They passed through the estate's old stone gates a short time later, and as the car slid up the long, graceful slope of the driveway to the Tudor-style mansion Richie knew they were being monitored by security cameras and sensors. He hadn't been in Seacouver for nearly seven months, but the house and grounds appeared as meticulously maintained as the day he and Andrea left. Dismissing the household staff as soon as they appeared, he headed through the large marble foyer with its crystal chandeliers and double winding staircase, past the sumptuously decorated library of paneled oak, leather and gold bound books, and Persian rugs, and directly to the game room in the back of the house.
         The game room had been decorated in what Andrea called early- American-Richie-style, with large sofas and battered armchairs, mounted basketball hoops, a wall-sized television, wet bar and refrigerator, movie and sports posters, an indoor whirlpool, and a row of antique arcade machines. The French doors lay wide open to the descending terraces that led to the swimming pools and lake. The blue sky looked flawless, and the only sounds were birds twittering in the distant trees.
         He started for the bar, suddenly determined to sedate himself with large doses of alcohol, but the warning buzz of another Immortal made him spin towards the terrace, his hand automatically reaching for the nearest sword on the wall.
         A figure moved into the doorway, backlit by the sun, features momentarily indistinguishable.
         "Welcome back," a British voice said cheerfully. "Nice place you've got here."
         Richie let out a sigh. "Glad you like it, Methos," he said, more sharply than he intended, and raised an eyebrow at David, who had followed him from the car.
         "You wanted an open-door policy for your friends," David reminded him. "He's been here a few months now."
         "Working on a new thesis," Methos said agreeably, coming in the room. He looked exactly as he always did - mild and thoughtful, casually dressed, with a trace of sun in his features. Richie could easily imagine him sitting for hours by the pool, drinking beer and charming the maids. The older Immortal's face registered a genuine frown. "If I'm an intrusion, I'll leave."
         The words only further irritated Richie. "Of course you're not an intrusion," he snapped. Methos - whom he'd once only known as Adam Pierson - was one of the few Immortals Richie counted as a true friend. He poured himself a large glass of Scotch, downed it in two gulps, and realized Methos and David were both staring at him.
         "I'm thirsty," he said when he put the glass down.
         "I see that," David said mildly. "Are you hungry? It's almost lunchtime here."
         Richie shook his head. "No. I'll eat later."
         David glanced at Methos. Methos shrugged ever-so-slightly. David bowed out of the room, and Richie poured himself another Scotch.
         "How did things go in Macau?" Methos asked.
         "Who told you I was there?"
         "I didn't think it was a secret," Methos said.
         "No, it wasn't," Richie said. The Scotch went down even better than the first glass. He closed his eyes momentarily, waiting for relief, but he could still see Satoshi's eyes. The world wavered briefly beneath him. "Everything I do is a matter of public record and debate, didn't you know?"
         He felt strong, sturdy hands on his shoulders. "Sit down before you fall down," the other Immortal ordered. Richie obediently sank down onto a stool. He opened his eyes and squinted at Methos.
         "Long flight," he offered.
         "I'm sure," Methos said. "What happened?"
         "Just your normal slice-em-up, dice-em-up," Richie said. "You know, kill someone you've known for twenty years, take off his head, just chop it right off - "
         "Who?"
         The warm glow of the alcohol deserted Richie. He felt older and wearier than he ever had in his entire life. He hated the sunlight coming through the doors. "Satoshi," he murmured, and saw Methos' face tighten to grimness.
         "It had to be done," he said.
         "By me?" Richie protested. "It had to be done by me? The man was my teacher. My mentor."
         "I know." Methos' voice was surprisingly grave. "But you didn't challenge him on a whim, did you?"
         "I didn't challenge him at all. He kidnapped me," Richie said softly. It was the truth. It was cold, and hurtful, but it was the truth. Suddenly he forced a crooked smile. "You know how much I hate it when people do that. Makes me feel nothing more than Mac's expendable sidekick all over again."
         Methos didn't smile back. "Whatever happened, you killed him. You did what you had to. You can't let it consume you with guilt."
         "You don't know what happened," Richie said.
         "I can imagine."
         "Then imagine this," Richie said, reaching for the Scotch again. His hand didn't shake, but his voice did. "I killed him on Holy Ground."

         Richie told him the whole story. Methos listened. He listened intently, with every inch of his attention, to both the words said and unsaid, the thoughts left unvoiced.
         "Everything everyone's ever said about killing on Holy Ground," Richie said from where he was now sprawled on a sofa, "is wrong. Everything everyone ever feared - that the Quickening wouldn't work, or wouldn't take, or would kill the killer - is just a lie."
         "But you know that," Methos said, in a chair across from the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Duncan and I told you that decades ago. The injunction against killing on Holy Ground is a matter of honor, not an inviolate rule of Immortality."
         Richie stared at the ceiling and responded as if he hadn't even heard Methos' words. "A lot of Immortals I've met think it's a supreme law or something. They've heard horror stories passed from century to century about what happens to Immortals who dare to fight on Holy Ground."
         "It's a useful rumor that keeps many Immortals in line," Methos agreed. Again, he insisted, "But you know better."
         "I know." Richie lowered his gaze to Methos. The older Immortal almost drew back at the guilt and sorrow he saw in Richie's red- rimmed eyes. "I know," Richie agreed softly, "and that makes it worse, doesn't it?"
         "Why worse?"
         "Because it is a matter of honor," Richie said. "And I broke it."
         "Satoshi broke it by forcing you to fight on Holy Ground."
         "Just because he broke it first didn't mean I had to."
         Methos asked, "And what exactly would you have done differently?"
         Richie didn't answer. He had no answer. No matter how often he replayed the awful scene at the temple over and over in his head, he reached the same horrible conclusion. Unless he'd allowed himself to be killed instead, or sacrificed Andrea. No matter how tired and sick at heart he was, those were not options he would have taken.
         Methos came to the sofa. He took the empty glass of Scotch from Richie's hand and put it on the table. Then he fetched a pillow from an armchair and put it at the end of the sofa cushions.
         "What are you doing?" Richie asked.
         "It's what you're doing," Methos said. "Going to sleep. Now. You'll think much more clearly about it after about eighteen hours of rest."
         "I can't sleep," Richie protested, even as Methos pushed him face- down and pulled his ankles up. Fingers unlaced his sneakers, pulled them from his feet. Muffled in the pillow, he said, "Sleep's too hard."
         "It's not hard at all," came the measured British accent. "Just close your eyes."
         A weight straddled him. Richie felt Methos' hands on his back, firm and strong, and the hands began to massage away at the rigid tightness. Initial resistance gave way to sighs of relief. Whatever skills Methos had managed to acquire in five thousand years, this was one of his best. A warm, comforting glow spread across Richie's shoulders and down his spine as Methos loosened the locked muscles with practiced deftness and patience.
         He drifted off with a newfound peace, drifted off towards sleep in a room filled with sun and the spring breeze, with the twittering of birds, with the momentos of his youth spread across the walls and floor of the early-American-Richie game room, all designed to remind him of when the days when the world was more simple and clear than it was now.
         He went to the darkness with an odd, pleasant sense of security, allowing himself the luxury of thinking Methos would protect him, would shelter him from harm.
         But nightmares of Satoshi woke him only a few hours later, with the sounds of battle ringing in his ears and the memory of Andrea's face piercing through his chest like a sword.

         Joe Dawson, rapidly approaching his eightieth birthday, had found that while some things diminished with age, other things were well worth the effort.
         "Well," his wife Janet said breathlessly, laughing with genuine pleasure as he rolled off her and to the side of their brass bed, "that's something new. Where did you learn that?"
         Joe grinned, waiting for his breathing and heartbeat to steady again. He wove his fingers around hers and kissed her hand. "From Seinfield reruns on the Oldies Channel."
         "You should watch Seinfield more often," Janet said, rolling over and curling next to him.
         Joe kissed the top of her gray head. Old. They were both old. But there was no woman more beautiful in the world than his wife, Janet Witherall Dawson, and when he told her that now her eyes misted up.
         "You're just being sentimental," she said, but kissed him for it.
         And when Joe had recovered from their recent exertion, they tried Seinfield's suggestions again.
         Afterwards, in the room shaded by the late morning sun, Joe slept in a haze of pleasant contentment. He was seventy eight years, to be exact, and if he wasn't as energetic as he'd been at twenty eight, he made up for it with inventiveness and finesse. He was vaguely aware of Janet climbing out of bed and padding down the stairs of their house, but didn't follow her. Instead he opened his eyes and let his sleep gaze fall on the row of holograms lined up neatly on the dresser. Their daughters Andrea, Colleen and Molly grinned at him from a variety of poses and ages. His sons Joe Junior and Kevin flanked them, their faces remarkably like his own.
         He had a good family. He'd had a good life. He'd married late in life, just when he'd thought love would pass him by. He'd lost his prostate to cancer years ago, and remembered Duncan MacLeod sitting with wet eyes by his bed when he woke from surgery. So many unexpected things had happened to Joe, making his life full of surprises and joys and tragedies, but he couldn't think of a single moment he truly regretted.
         Andrea stood alone in one hologram, her college diploma gripped in one hand, her face beaming with a smile that would light up a night-time sky. She'd arrived last night from Macau, upset but tight-lipped, and was crashing in the downstairs bedroom. She hadn't mentioned a single word about Richie, but Joe already knew the basic outline of the situation.
         Well, what had Andrea expected? Her decisions to join the Watchers and then fall in love with Richie were ones that had always promised to demand payment. Although he couldn't be sure that falling in love with someone was a decision, really. The first day he'd set eyes on Janet, in a restaurant by the park, he'd felt as if he'd plunged off the jagged cliff of a lush tropical island into a warm, aquamarine bay of pounding surf and brilliant sunshine. And there had been no going back.
         Beyond holograms of his own family were others, of family and friends, including Duncan and Rachel MacLeod and their children. Mac never aged, of course. Richie never aged. And here Joe was, seventy four, looking every inch of it, and if he was a little envious that was only to be expected.
         Janet's voice came from the doorway. "Get up, sleepyhead. Your daughter's waiting to talk to you."
         "Which one?" Joe asked hopefully. He wasn't sure if he was up to Andrea at the moment. She was too much like her mother, and like Rachel MacLeod as well - stubborn, feisty, full of fire.
         "And breakfast is ready," Janet continued, ignoring his question, and heading back downstairs.
         Breakfast was an idea he was much more receptive to. Joe dragged himself out of bed, balancing easily on his bionic legs, and took a quick shower before joining his wife and daughter in the sunny kitchen nook. Andrea, sitting in a cashmere sweater and long navy blue skirt, had pulled her hair back with a thick black velvet band. She had her arms folded across her chest as she sat at the table, and her face was full of consternation.
         "Dad, I need to talk to you."
         "Good morning to you too," Joe said, reaching for the plate Janet had set out for him. "Can I have a bagel first? Your mother has me all depleted of energy."
         Janet pinched his arm. "You have more energy than an army of men."
         "An entire army?" Joe asked with a satisfied grin. "I like that."
         "Eat your breakfast," Andrea said morosely. "The end of the world can wait."
         "End of the world, huh?" Joe asked, unimpressed by her melancholy. "What happened with Richie?"
         Andrea's expression darkened. "I made a mistake. You were right. I should have resigned from the Watchers last year, when this all started."
         Janet put one hand on Andrea's shoulder and another on Joe's. "Lydia is due here any minute, for our morning yoga. You two better take this into the library."
         Andrea trailed Joe to the small room near the staircase. Joe settled behind his desk and watched her cross to the windows, where she stood and appeared to study the backyard. "He did something that I'm bound to report as his Watcher. But if I do, it goes into his record, and may set him up for further trouble."
         "The Quickening on Holy Ground," Joe said calmly, finishing off one half of his bagel.
         Andrea turned in surprise. "How do you know?"
         "He told me. He called me two days ago."
         Andrea visibly fought over her next words. "What did he... how did he sound?"
         "He sounded tired." Joe didn't add that Methos, in a separate call, had expressed concern over Richie's state of mind. The younger Immortal wasn't sleeping well since Satoshi's death, seemed deeply depressed, and wouldn't talk about Andrea. "Why don't you want it in his record?"
         Andrea sighed. "You know why. Once it goes in there, and becomes common knowledge to the rest of the Watchers, it's bound to eventually get back to the Immortals. You're the one who told me that ever since the Watchers' first beginnings there have been leaks in our information nets. Once Richie is set up as someone who doesn't respect the rules, who dared to take a head on Holy Ground, he loses his honor and reputation and integrity."
         Joe bit into the other half of his bagel. Onion, with a hint of garlic butter. Delicious. "That's Richie's problem. He took the head. He isn't the first Immortal to take a head on Holy Ground, and he won't be the last. But he made the decision, and he's willing to face the consequences."
         Andrea's mouth tightened. "I don't have to report it."
         Joe gazed at his daughter. For a moment she had truly surprised him. She took her Watcher oaths more seriously than most of the other Watchers he'd ever known. Then again, so had he, once, before friendship overruled them.
         "You're too late," Joe said. "Fletcher already put in into the network."
         Andrea cursed.
         "You didn't think he would?" Joe asked. "He was Satoshi's Watcher."
         Andrea shook her head. "I tried to reach him, left him several messages. I wanted him to hold the report. I was crazy, not thinking straight. All I wanted to do was protect Richie's reputation."
         "That's against your rules, Andrea. Your job, and your duty."
         "I know!" She flung up her hands in exasperation. "I'm too close to Richie to be objective anymore! And you knew it was going to happen. Are you happy?"
         "No," Joe said, putting down the bagel and crossing to take his daughter in his arms. "It gives me no pleasure to know that I was right. From the moment you fell in love with Richie, you said you could be objective. You overcame his and my every objection to staying on as his Watcher. You went with him despite my worry, your mother's concern, his fears. Now you know better. But it's not the end of the world. Ask for a reassignment, or resign from the Watchers."
         She leaned her head on his shoulder. He stroked her long copper- colored curls, felt her body shake slightly with beginning tears.
         "It's not about what Richie did," Joe said softly, "it's about what you did."
         "What I didn't do," Andrea said, her voice muffled.
         "Tell me," he said.
         "I was so afraid," she said haltingly. "Richie had disappeared the day before. When I finally caught up with him at the temple beneath Barra Hill, he and Satoshi were already fighting. Every part of my heart and head told me to stop them somehow, but my legs wouldn't move. All I could do was watch them try and kill each other."
         "It wasn't your job to interfere, sweetie. It never has been."
         Andrea broke away from angrily. "How can you say that? How many times did you help Duncan MacLeod? You gave him information about other Immortals, you rescued him from the underground cell, you even shot him - you broke every rule there was!"
         "And paid the price," he said softly.
         Andrea turned away to the window again. Her head shook vigorously. "I should have helped him. Not because I'm his Watcher. Because I love him.. And love is a duty that supersedes my Watcher oaths."
         "Do you think Richie wanted your help? I'm not talking about macho pride here, Andrea. Do you really think he wanted you to risk your mortal life in the middle of a swordfight with an eight- hundred year old Immortal who would have sliced you in half with the flick of his sword?"
         She didn't answer. Joe put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. "Richie took Satoshi's Quickening. Then what happened?"
         Her face twisted with guilt. "You know what happened."
         "Tell me," he said.
         "The Quickening was very bad, Dad. He screamed during it like I've never seen him... " Andrea pushed past that specific memory and took a deep breath. "For a moment I was tempted to believe all those old wives' tales about what taking a Quickening on Holy Ground could do to an Immortal. But then he recovered. He dragged himself to his knees and knelt shivering in Satoshi's blood, and then he saw me. All I could think was that he'd killed another Immortal on Holy Ground, violated the most sacred rule of Immortals, and I had to put it in my report. I had to rat him out."
         "Since when has your job been about ratting Richie or anyone else out?" Joe asked. Andrea didn't answer, so he tried another tactic. "So you were staring at him. And then what?"
         Her voice was barely a whisper. "Then I walked away."
         Richie had left out this part. Joe tried to imagine how the young Immortal had felt after slaughtering his mentor on Holy Ground, then seeing the woman he loved turn her back on him.
         "Because?" he prompted gently.
         "I don't know," Andrea said. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. "Because I couldn't deal with his anguish on top of my own. Because I couldn't figure out how I was going to report on him and protect him at the same time." In a small voice she added, "I know he hates me."
         "Andrea! He didn't hate you. He doesn't hate you now. You left him at the temple, he left you in Macau - you've both got to stop running. You can deal with this. He survived Satoshi kidnapping him, he survived the fight, he'll survive this - "
         Andrea stared at him. "What?"
         Joe's worst hunch was confirmed.
         "You didn't know, did you?" he asked. "Richie disappeared in Macau because Satoshi kidnapped him."
         "Satoshi wouldn't do that!" she protested automatically.
         "Well, he did. Shot Richie in the back, dragged him to the temple, forced him to fight. Fletcher saw most of it."
         She stared at him in disbelief. "Oh, my God," she whispered. "I didn't know. I thought... they were just fighting. I didn't know any of it. Dad, how is Richie going to ever forgive me?"
         "He can't," Joe said flatly.
         Her green eyes widened in shock and renewed pain.
         "He can't," Joe repeated. "Not until you forgive yourself first."
         Tears spilled down her face. Joe pulled her to his chest and held her tightly. The young, he thought to himself, felt the pain of broken hearts more vividly than anyone else. Andrea was twenty seven, Richie nearly fifty. But they were still young, the mortal and Immortal both, and he wondered to himself if they had it in themselves or their love to truly move past this breach.
         "Andrea," he asked softly, still holding her, "how did you know where to find Richie and Satoshi?"
         Her voice was small but steady. "I knew the temple was a place they both liked to visit. I just tried there, and got lucky."
         He was lying.
         And Joe, who'd once pulled a favor to have her name removed from an Immortal's record, knew it.

         "The guy is back," said Sam the bartender, as Joe scrolled through a screen full of figures on his computer screen. Richie had owned the bar through T.G. Enterprises for decades, freeing Joe for his music and family and light managerial duties. Sometimes, though, he liked to take a look at the electronic books.
         "Which guy?" Joe asked, glancing up.
         "The one who keeps asking about Richie Ryan," Sam said. She had never met Richie Ryan, who was fifty years old or so and lived overseas. She'd met his kid, Richie Junior, who dropped by occasionally and was dating Dawson's daughter. Sam snapped her gum. "He's come in maybe four or five times these past two weeks. You want me to tell him to leave?"
         "He'll just come back again," Joe predicted. "I'll be out in a minute."
         Part of his job as an employee of T.G. Enterprises was reporting and dealing with any general inquiries about the owner. His long time friendship with Richie would have demanded that anyway. Joe went out to the bar and slid behind the old, polished wood to pour himself a tall glass of water. The place was half-full, beginning to thicken with the lunch crowd of business types looking for a little atmosphere with their lunches.
         The man that Sam indicated with a nod of her head was sitting on a stool, his thick bare arms on the wood, his blue cotton shirt stretched tight over corded muscles. Blond, with curly hair not unlike Richie's, he was about thirty years old, with dark eyes and a dark expression. He had a half-drained glass of beer in front of him - the cheap stuff. His nails were dirty from mechanical work.
         "Are you the manager?" he asked, sounding edgy, no warmth at all in his expression.
         "That would be me," Joe acknowledged.
         "I'm looking for the owner, but no one will tell me where to find him."
         "The owner is a busy man," Joe said mildly. "I resolve problems for him. Joe Dawson's my name. What can I help you with?"
         "Jeremy Greven," the man answered. "And you can't help with this. It's personal. For Richie Ryan only."
         "What kind of personal?" Joe asked. A lifetime's worth of experience with Immortals told him this man wasn't one of them. The scrapes and cuts on his hands from long hours of manual labor said that much. On the other hand, he could be working for an Immortal. Or he could be someone from Richie's murky past, although Richie's street pals from his days in the welfare and juvenile justice system would all be older than Jeremy.
         "You going to give me his phone number?" Jeremy asked.
         "I might take yours," Joe allowed, "if you've got a good story."
         Jeremy leveled a stare at him. For a moment he seemed undecided, but then he said, "I've got a good story. He's my father."
         Joe took a sip of his water. "Richie Ryan is a wealthy man," he said. "People claim to be old friends or cousins or kids every day."
         Jeremy stood up with a flush in his face. The stool scraped on the wooden floor, threatening to topple. "You think I'm lying?"
         "Calm down," Joe ordered. He didn't have the strength to toss the man out, but he still had the tone of a man who'd worked in a bar for a long, long time. "This isn't the place to cause a scene, mister. There's no need for trouble."
         Jeremy's face grew even more red. "Maybe it is, pal. Maybe then I could get Richie Ryan's attention. The man is my father, damn it, whether he likes it or not."
         "He's not your father," a voice said firmly from off to the side, and Joe realized Richie and Methos had come in during the last minute or so and overheard the end of the conversation. Richie gazed flatly at the man as Jeremy swung to him. "Richie Ryan only has one kid, and that's me."
         Jeremy's face twisted into a scowl. "You're Richie Ryan, Junior?"
         "Yes," Richie said calmly. Methos, beside him, said nothing. Looking at them, Joe realized, it was impossible to tell that one Immortal was only fifty years old, the other fifty centuries.
         Some of Jeremy's anger drained as he took in what he must have assumed was his half-brother. "I want to talk to your dad."
         "He's out of the country," Richie said.
         "Then you call him," Jeremy said. "My mother - his ex-girlfriend - needs him."
         "Who's your mother?" Richie asked.
         "Donna Greven. Her last name was Cole when he knew her. He got her pregnant and then left her when they were eighteen years old."
         Joe watched the expression on Richie's face soften unexpectedly.
         "Oh," Richie said.
         "You know about her?" Jeremy demanded. "So you know it's true."
         "It's not true," Richie said. As he came closer, Joe could see that Methos' concern was not unwarranted. The young Immortal seemed tired, from the circles under his eyes to the way he was standing as if he'd been beaten. But his voice was strong and steady as he said, "My dad knew Donna Cole. She told him she wanted her little boy Jeremy to be his, but she wasn't sure who the father was."
         Jeremy lunged for Richie with a curse. It was Methos who stepped in between them and with a practiced twist and application of pressure dropped Jeremy to the floor, his arm pinned behind his back.
         "It's not nice to fight," Methos said into the larger man's ear. "Didn't anyone ever teach you that?"
         "Let him go," Richie said.
         Methos released his hold. Jeremy climbed to his feet rubbing his shoulder, expression murderous, but sufficiently warned. Joe had been surprised that it was Methos who stepped in - Richie was certainly capable of defending himself - but it was good to be reminded sometimes of how dangerous Methos himself could be, and how protective of his friends.
         "I'm sorry if you took that as an insult," Richie said. "It wasn't. My dad loved your mom, but not the way you think. And they might have slept together, but he wasn't your father. She knows that."
         "That's not what she's saying," Jeremy growled.
         "It's the truth," Richie said. "I'm sorry."
         Richie took a seat at the bar. Methos stared down Jeremy until the mortal left, slamming the door behind him.
         "What's the lunch special?" Richie asked as Sam handed him the menu.
         "Veggie burgers or veggie salad," she said.
         "The world was much more interesting when there was meat in it," Methos sighed.
         Joe shook his head at Richie. "You didn't have to do that. Tell him about yourself, I mean."
         Richie shrugged. "It's not a big deal."
         "Did your father really know his mother?" Methos asked curiously, keeping up the charade for Sam's sake and anyone else who might be eavesdropping. He slid onto a stool beside Richie. Joe automatically poured a draft for the oldest living Immortal. Some things never changed.
         Richie nodded. "Everything I said was true." To Sam he said, "Veggie burger. Zucchini fries, please."
         "You think he'll be back?" Methos asked Joe.
         "Looks like he might be the type," Joe said. "But we'll handle him. What are you two up to today?"
         "Shopping for the belated birthday gift I owe Richie," Methos announced. "A 1995 Star Trek pinball machine."
         Sam returned with a plate of zucchini fries. "Another year older, huh, kid?" she asked Richie. "What are you? Twenty? Twenty one?"
         "Older than you think," Richie said, with a flash of pain in his eyes that Joe didn't miss. It was ironic, the mortal thought, that while that very morning he'd been regretting his old looks, Richie Ryan was regretting his young ones.
         He sent Sam away to check on the kitchen, then settled on his own stool behind the bar to talk with Methos and Richie. The prospect of acquiring a Star Trek pinball machine did seem to brighten Richie's mood, but as the conversation moved through mutual friends, world news, sports and blues music, they were all careful to not mention Jeremy Greven or Donna Cole. And Richie didn't mention the most important thing until last.
         "How's Andrea?" he finally asked.
         "She's okay," Joe allowed truthfully. "She wants to talk to you."
         Richie looked down at his plate. He hadn't finished half of the burger, and more than a few fries were left. Methos watched the young Immortal but didn't prod him.
         "I don't know why," Richie said.
         "Of course you do," Joe answered. "You both have things you need to say to each other."
         Richie stood and pulled out his wallet, determined to pay even if he was the owner. "It's not that easy, Joe," he said as he pulled out a debit card. He wouldn't meet the older man's gaze. "Believe me."
         Joe cocked his head quizzically. "So who said it was ever going to be easy? Believe *me.* She's a lot like her mother."
         Richie almost smiled. He'd been one of Joe's ushers, loved Janet as if she were his mother, and had bounced Andrea and her siblings on his knees as babies. He'd stayed away from the children for a few decades to establish himself as Richie Ryan Junior, and falling in love with Andrea had been entirely unexpected. Joe had told him once that falling in love was like diving off a cliff.
         "That's a compliment to Janet," Richie said.
         "It's a compliment to them both," Joe returned. "Call her, will you?"
         Richie slid his debit card into the bar, then retrieved it. He didn't answer as he headed for the door. Methos shrugged and said, "Whatever happens, happens. I'll talk to you later, Joe."
         "Yeah," Joe said. Then, using Methos' preferred identity, he said, "Adam?"
         "Yes?"
         "Take care of him."
         "And you take care of her," Methos said, of Andrea.
         Joe smiled. "That's my job."

         Richie dove into the bright blue water, wincing slightly as its coldness drove the breath from his chest, and swam half the length of the pool before he surfaced for air. He did ten laps, swimming strongly and methodically, and when he finally stopped he found David watching him from a deck chair.
         "What did you find out?" the Immortal asked as he hauled himself out of the water.
         David handed him a towel. "Donna Greven is listed as an indigent patient at South General Hospital. No insurance. She's fifty years old, suffering from late stage AIRIS, and the prognosis is for only a few more months at best."
         Richie eased down into a deck chair. David was wearing a hat, as most mortals did these days. The ozone depletion problem had led to soaring rates of skin cancer. As an Immortal Richie could sit outside unprotected as much as he wanted to. He stretched his legs out now, glad for the sunshine on his cold skin. "What about her husband?"
         "Skipped out awhile ago. Greven was actually husband number two. Husband one died in a gun accident, probably a suicide. Number three is the current one, but hasn't been seen in years."
         Donna never had made good decisions when it came to men, Richie thought ruefully. "And Jeremy?"
         "Jeremy Greven is a wanted felon."

         Richie gave him an incredulous look. David nodded. "Skipped out on parole on Utah after serving five years for armed robbery."
         "I remember him as a little boy," Richie said, after taking a moment to digest the information. "Just this little kid, in diapers, in my arms."
         "That "kid" also has a rap sheet for assault and resisting arrest."
         Richie looked past the pool to the green lawns and the trees beyond. He was really looking inside, to a memory of laying in bed with Donna and having Jeremy between them, sleeping the deep sleep of the innocent. He'd been an eighteen month old kid the last time Richie had seen him, as Donna pushed the stroller away in angry tears.
         "You know what that means?" Richie asked.
         "It means he's trouble."
         "It means he skipped out on parole to help his dying mother. It means he tried to find me, even though he must have known that I - or my alleged father - would check out his background "
         It was David's turn to look incredulous. "You don't know that. He might not have talked to Donna in a dozen years. He might be trying to scam money off you for his own benefit. He's a convicted felon who almost took a swing at you yesterday."
         Richie said, in a faraway voice, "I could have been him. If Mac and Tessa hadn't found me, if I hadn't turned out to be Immortal, if I hadn't had good teachers... " Abruptly he stopped. His swung his gaze to the cellular phone sitting on the poolside table.
         David followed his gaze. "You could call her."
         "Donna wouldn't recognize my voice, after all these years."
         "I wasn't talking about Donna."
         Richie made a face. "Why doesn't she call here?"
         "You're going to let that stand in your way?" David asked. "You're going to give up everything you have together because Andrea hasn't called first?"
         "She was the one who walked away."
         "And you're the one who let her."
         "I don't recall asking for your opinion," Richie shot back. "So maybe you could just keep it to yourself."
         The harsh words hung in the spring air between them.
         "I'm sorry," David said, a little stiffly. "I thought that if I were ever hurt, wounded, in pain, you would try to help me. I shouldn't try to return an assumed favor."
         Richie rubbed his hands over his face. "I'm sorry," he said. "Forgive me. I'm out of line. Of course you're trying to help. You, and Joe, and Methos. But you guys can't. I'm paying for what I did."
         "By punishing yourself? By punishing her?"
         Richie stood up. "Have Truman and the boys find out where Jeremy Greven is. I don't want them to spook him, not even go near him. But I want to know where he is."
         "What about Donna Greven?" David asked. He expected Richie to anonymously pay for her treatment. The health care woes of the late twentieth century had compounded in the succeeding decades, and medical care for indigents was not always a pretty sight. Especially for AIRIS patients, who had to deal with the mutated virus that had once caused AIDS. But the Richie who'd come back from Macau was not the same one who'd left seven months ago, and had proven to be unpredictable.
         "There's nothing you can do," Richie said, and padded back to the pool. He dove in, surfaced, and leveled his blue eyes on David as water streamed down his hair and muscled shoulders. "Just find Jeremy."
         Richie did ten more laps until weariness pulled him back to the poolside. Exercising to the point of exhaustion was one way he'd found of sleeping through the night. Alcoholic stupors had worked for a few nights, but they didn't really suppress the nightmares. Better to swim, run, practice, lift, anything. He'd played basketball for four hours with Methos last night. The oldest Immortal was handy with a sword, but sucked in shooting hoops.
         Richie went to the game room. He picked up the phone. His heart in his throat, he dialed the Dawson house on audio link only.
         "Oh, Richie," Janet said the minute she heard his voice. "Andrea's not here."
         Of course she wasn't. It was part of the price, Richie thought glumly. He'd worked up the courage to call her, and she wasn't there.
         "How are you?" Janet asked. "Joe said you looked tired."
         "I"m okay," Richie lied. "Just tell Andrea I called, will you?"
         "I promise. Anything else?"
         Richie thought of a dozen messages he could leave - that he loved her, that he was sorry, that he understood the utter disgust she'd shown at the temple in Macau - but a sudden flash of his old temper ignited. He'd made the call. It was her turn to be brave. But he didn't take out his anger on Janet.
         "No," he said. "Just that I called. Thanks."
         He plopped on the sofa and threw a rubber ball against the wood. He caught it twelve time in a row before it bounced off a crazy angle and rolled under the ping-pong table. He was too tired to retrieve it. He activated the television by voice, and had it scan five hundred channels at four second intervals. Nothing interested him. He called up his favorite of the eighteen Star Wars movies, and spent several minutes picking his toenails.
         The phone didn't ring.
         Donna Cole. He'd broken her heart, on Mac's advice. Well, that wasn't fair. Mac had advised him that it would be too dangerous for Donna and Jeremy to be in life, and Kern had shown up to add danger to the situation. Richie had made his decision, and didn't truly regret it. He could see through three decades to his younger self, and knew that he and Donna would have never lasted. Interestingly enough, MacLeod had later reversed his belief after a long talk with Ceirdwyn and a few years later married Rachel. They and the Dawsons were proof that happy marriages could happen, and be made to endure.
         Richie grimaced at the thought. He and Andrea had discussed marriage as recently as a month ago, curled up before a blazing fire in a rented cottage on the edge of the Black Forest.
         Before Satoshi, the temple, the goddess of the sea watching down with disapproving eyes as Immortals battled on Holy Ground.
         Methos was locked away in the study, doing work on his latest thesis, but Richie knew that all he had to do was ask, and the older Immortal would drop his studies. The trouble was that Richie couldn't think of anything interesting to do. He considered bothering David, but the look of concern the older man had permanently adopted was beginning to grate on his nerves.
         The phone still didn't ring.
         He called MacLeod.
         "Well, the world traveler's back," the Highlander said on the wallscreen, with a broad smile. He was sitting on his living room floor, tousling with six-year-old Connor and eight-year-old Debra. The kids shrieked beneath incessant tickling. "How are you?"
         "Bad time to call?" Richie grinned.
         "Never a bad time," MacLeod said. After making the kids say hello to their Uncle Richie he dispatched them to go find their mother and bother her some. The Highlander leaned back against his sofa and asked, "What's up?"
         "Not much. You want to practice?"
         "I'd love to, but Connor broke the virtual link last week. I told him I'm taking it out of his allowance. It should be back up in a couple of days."
         Richie said, carefully, "I was thinking of dropping in."
         "Even better! How long will it take you?"
         "My airpod should take about three hours, depending on the traffic over New England."
         "Then we'll see you for supper around nine. How do you feel about vegetarian haggis?"
         "I didn't think there was such a thing," he said.
         "You'd be amazed what you can do with tofu."
         Richie made a face. "Don't bother."
         MacLeod laughed. "See you soon."
         Feeling better than he had since leaving Macau, Richie told David to call up the airpod and had one of the maids throw some clothes in a suitcase. He wasn't sure where his closet was, and she knew his tastes. As a matter of courtesy he stopped by to ask Methos along, but was happily relieved when the ancient Immortal declined.
         "But kiss Rachel for me," Methos said cheerfully. "And ask her when she's leaving Duncan to come travel the world with me."
         "Fat chance," Richie retorted.
         Surprisingly enough, he slept all the way to Scotland. When the airpod dropped him off at a private transit station down the road from Glenfinnan, MacLeod was waiting with a powerful embrace. Rachel kissed him, her dark hair blowing in the evening wind.
         "You look like hell," MacLeod said, and Richie remembered another meeting on the banks of the Seine, ages and ages ago, when he'd shown up at Mac's barge unsure of the reception he'd receive. This time the words were affectionate, but Rachel shook her head in exasperation.
         "Nice thing to be saying to a guest," she said.
         "Richie's not a guest," MacLeod answered. "He's family."
         "You look fine," Rachel said, kissing the younger Immortal again, and MacLeod took Richie's suitcase to their small electric car. She spied the bag in Richie's hand. "You didn't bring them presents again, did you? You give them too many gifts."
         "Rule of the orphanage," Richie said cheerfully. "You can never have too many gifts."
         The minute he walked through the front door of the cottage the kids jumped him, and Richie went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Debra and Connor were just two of the latest of the MacLeods - the others, long grown and flown from the nest, were represented in holograms across the fireplace mantle. He tickled them and wrestled under the disapproving gaze of the neighbor and then set them down in a corner to open their presents. After a very good dinner Rachel took the kids to their rooms, to finish homework and get ready for the school in the morning. MacLeod and Richie went upstairs to the spare bedroom beneath the exposed wooden beams of the roof.
         Richie had brought a bottle of Glenmorangie that barely passed MacLeod's inspection.
         For three hours they talked about mutual friends, Joe Dawson and his family, what Methos was up to, and battles they'd waged since they'd last seen each other. The malt whisky emptied out of the bottle and into their bodies at a satisfying rate.
         "What aren't you telling me?" MacLeod finally asked.
         Richie squinted at him in the golden light of the lamp. "What are you talking about?"
         "You've got that look in your eyes, Richie. You want to ask a question, but you don't know how to. Or you don't want to, because you don't know how I'll take it. You were always easy to read, you know."
         "And you were always hard," Richie murmured. He squared his shoulders. "Okay, then. Here it is. Did you ever take a head on Holy Ground?"
         MacLeod swallowed the last of his whisky. "That kind of question, huh?"
         Richie didn't answer. He didn't intend to give Mac a way to evade the question.
         "Well, then," MacLeod said, climbing to his feet, "that question calls for a walk on the cliffs."
         Richie groaned. "Oh, Mac, not that."
         "Come on, tough guy," MacLeod said, pulling him up. "You know the routine."
         "I look awful in a skirt."
         "Call it a skirt again and I'll teach you some respect for your elders," MacLeod growled. They played the same game every time it came up. Richie would automatically protest, MacLeod would insist, and sooner or later Richie would end up with MacLeod tartan wrapped around his waist. The only proper walk on the cliffs of Glenfinnan, MacLeod had long ago decreed, was to be done by men in kilts.
         An hour later, standing beneath the silver light of a perfect full moon, Richie gazed from the top of a cliff to the line where sea met sky. He took a deep breath of air that smelled of salt and heather, of mountains and seas, of an ancient land and ancient people. They were the only men for miles around, bathed in the moonlight and starlight both, princes of the universe. The surf pounded into rock far beneath them.
         "Yes," MacLeod announced.
         "Yes, what?" Richie asked.
         "Yes, I took a head on Holy Ground."
         A shiver went up Richie's back that had nothing to do with the cool night air, the kilt, and his lack of underwear.
         "When?"
         "A long, long time ago. Before I even met Connor."
         Richie's voice fell in disappointment. "So you didn't even know the rules of the Game."
         MacLeod turned to him. "The other Immortal tried to tell me. He said that we couldn't fight. But he'd just killed a mortal companion of mine, and I wasn't in the mood to listen."
         "Still... " Richie struggled to make further excuses. "You hadn't been taught. I was taught."
         "Who did you kill on Holy Ground?"
         "Satoshi."
         MacLeod's expression narrowed. "He forced you into it."
         "How do you know?"
         "Because you loved him, Richie. You wouldn't have killed him if there'd been any other way."
         Richie struggled to keep his voice even. "He wasn't the same man who taught me for so many years, Mac. He'd changed. Grown tired and old and inconsolable."
         "He was always a complex and difficult man, Richie."
         "And one of the best teachers I ever had. But I killed him anyway. At a holy temple."
         "And know you feel like something bad is going to happen to you? Some kind of doom hanging over your head? Guilt that keeps you up all night and brings you nightmares?"
         Richie couldn't hide his surprise. "Yeah. But how do you know that? Did Methos call?"
         MacLeod shook his head. "That's just your old Catholic upbringing, Richie. I get it myself, from time to time."
         Richie felt a knot of tension unloosing in the base of his skull. He looked down at the churning silver waves. So easy to fall, so easy to dash himself to pieces on the rocks below. Wistfully he said, "So maybe I should go to confession."
         "It's a thought," MacLeod said, deadpan. "I hear Gregor's up in Switzerland somewhere. Became a monk."
         "That would be a sight to see," Richie laughed. Then he fell silent for a moment. "I thought... I don't know. That what I did makes me less than who I thought I was. Does that make sense?"
         "More than you know," MacLeod said. "But no supernatural Immortal force is going to descend down and pass judgment on you, Richie. You know all those stories about what happens to Immortals who kill on Holy Ground are rumors."
         "Yeah, I know. But who started the rumors?"
         MacLeod grinned. "Methos. Who else?"
         "Methos!" Richie exclaimed. "That old conniving... why?"
         "To keep everyone in line," MacLeod said. "Remember, his world was a lot more superstitious and uncivilized than this modern one of ours. He thought it might make it easier if we had some place to go to for safety."
         "And the two against one rule?" Richie asked.
         "Same source."
         Richie frowned. "What about, "There can be only one?"
         "Now that's a rule Methos says was passed to him," MacLeod acknowledged. "It's probably the only one we can believe in."
         They stood in silence for few minutes, lost in thoughts of all the Immortals who'd died over the centuries, until MacLeod stirred and said, "Come on. Let's go inside."
         "Getting tired?" Richie asked.
         "Getting cold," MacLeod answered. "Aren't you?"
         "Freezing my ass off," Richie said. "Literally."

         Warning: Implications of graphic sex ahead! But not much.


         That night, on the shores of an ancient land, in the house of a family he loved and who loved him, Richie dreamt of Andrea.
         Not Andrea as he'd last seen her, at the temple, her eyes staring at him in horror and disbelief. Instead it was the Andrea who'd laid with him in a penthouse suite on the thirtieth floor of a luxury hotel overlooking Sydney Harbor in Australia. They'd snuck out of a very good New Year's party in the ballroom below and were undressing before they even came through the door, limbs entwined, glitter and streamers in their hair, mouths pressed together.
         His black tie and jacket and tie, tossed on the ankle-deep carpet. Her green dress, hung from a doorknob. His shoes and socks, hastily discarded. She hadn't worn nylons, and kept her velvet heels on for him. They melded together on the silk sheets, hot skin to hot skin, passion like electricity tingling between them, kisses like tiny miracles up and down each other's bodies. The curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows were wide open to brilliant explosions of colors and stars and sound.
         "I don't think the world ever really exploded for me before," Andrea murmured as she lowered herself down on him, her skin gleaming in the blast of fireworks.
         Richie couldn't answer at the moment, so caught up was he in a mounting explosion of another kind -
         And then he woke up.
         To find Debra and Connor peering at him, six inches away from his nose.
         "You're up!" Debra announced happily. "Come on and play, Uncle Richie!"
         For a moment all he could do was stare at them in utter confusion. Then, realizing his erotic dream had left him with a vivid reminder, he snatched a pillow down to the sheets above his groin and said, in exasperation and fondness both, "Get out, you two! Scram!"
         You better not be bothering Uncle Richie!" Rachel's voice threatened from somewhere downstairs. "Come down and eat your lunch before you go back to school and leave him alone!"
         "Too late," Richie groaned, watching the kids scurry out the door. With them went the faint auras of pre-Immortals that marked every MacLeod kid. Mac and Rachel scoured orphanages all over Europe every decade, looking for those special children who would carry on a unique legacy.
         Rachel's face appeared at the doorway. She was sixty years old, but only the lines around her eyes betrayed her age. "Hungry?" she asked.
         "What time is it?"
         "Nearly noon."
         "Noon?" Richie didn't believe her. He groped for his watch. Noon. He'd slept for a long, long time, even given the time change. "Where's Mac?"
         "Waiting in the backyard dojo. He said whenever you're ready to get your you-know-what whipped, he'll be waiting."
         A challenge like that could not go unmet.
         They sparred for most of the afternoon, working up from stretches and kata to full fledged assault with bo's, wooden swords, and finally cold, razor-sharp steel. After thirty years of fighting Richie could hold his own in a fight against Mac, and sometimes win. The long ago foregone conclusion so vividly demonstrated by the time Mac had taken a Dark Quickening and gone for Richie's head was no longer quite so foregone. Richie had picked up a few new tricks in Australia, and used one to lure MacLeod into a feint that cost him a nasty slice across the shoulder.
         "Sorry," Richie apologized with a grin.
         "Ungrateful wretch," MacLeod returned, eyes glimmering, and in a few seconds scored a thrust that put a hole in Richie's stomach.
         "Ouch," Richie complained. He put his left hand against the blood and felt the world start to swim away.
         "That will teach you to get cocky," MacLeod said, sounding stern, but he put their swords down and helped Richie sit on a bench until the wound healed. Both men were breathing hard, soaked with sweat, and had stripped down to their black cotton gee's in the stuffy confines of the small, well-constructed building.
         The door creaked open and Rachel stuck her head in. "Are you through slicing and dicing one another?" she asked.
         "Not just yet," Richie said. "I'm not finished being cocky."
         "Andrea Dawson's on the phone. Should I tell her to call back?"
         The sharp jab in his chest wasn't from the stomach wound, which had stopped tingling finally as the skin seamed back together. "No," Richie said. "I'll be right there."
         MacLeod slapped him on the back. "Just tell her that you love her. Everything starts and ends from there."
         Richie didn't answer. He wondered, nervously, what exactly he could say to her. The brisk breeze across the backyard cooled him off on his way to MacLeod's small den. He struggled into a shirt before he went in. Andrea was on the wall, her face anxious, dressed in his favorite black and gold dress.
         "Hi," he said.
         "Hi," she said. "Did I... disturb you?"
         "No," he said. "Just practicing with Mac."
         "How is he? And Rachel, and the kids?"
         "Fine," Richie answered.
         They looked at each other across thousands of miles and the space of nine days.
         "How are you doing?" Andrea asked.
         He allowed himself a small shrug. "Not too bad."
         "I miss you," she said, her eyes darting away as if she couldn't bear his answer.
         Richie told the truth. "I miss you too, Andrea." He took a deep breath. "Mac says I should tell you that I love you. That everything starts and ends there."
         Andrea focused on him. "I love you too."
         "Even after Macau?"
         She frowned. "What do you mean?"
         "After what I did," he said, a little confused. "Breaking the rule."
         Her expression went through shades of equal confusion before settling into disbelief. "What you did?" she asked. "You? I'm the one who left you there, Richie. I'm the one who walked away. You have every right to hate me."
         "Why would I hate you?" Richie asked.
         Someone else in the room spoke to Andrea. She frowned and said, "All right." Then she turned back to the screen. "Richie, I have to go."
         "Now?"
         "I'm late for an appointment," she said cryptically. "When are you coming home?"
         Richie almost said he could be home in three hours, but then he caught himself. He wanted to see her, make things right, hold her in his arms. But he was afraid, and the way she was leaving things now made him a little angry.
         "I'll be home tomorrow morning," he said.
         "Can we meet for breakfast? At the pier, around nine?"
         "Yes," he said.
         The voice spoke again, too low for Richie to hear. "I have to go," Andrea said. She gazed squarely at him. "Richie, I really do love you."
         Then she severed the link.

         MacLeod came back to Seacouver with him the next afternoon. "I've been meaning to check in on Joe," the Highlander said by way of excuse as the airpod lifted into the gloom over Scotland. "He's not getting any younger."
         "He's doing fine," Richie said absently, rubbing his hands against his pants. He caught himself and stopped.
         Three hours later they descended into Seacouver's sunny skies and warm temperatures. Methos was waiting on the roof of the mansion, his white jacket flapping in the wind, and with a grin of delight he took immediate custody of MacLeod. Richie headed for his suite for a quick shower, with David close on his heels.
         "What's going on?" Richie asked from over the pulse of hot water in the shower.
         David, in the doorway, waved a datachip. "Jeremy Greven's criminal history, Donna Greven's medical records, and where you can find Jeremy. He's laying low with some friends in Bishop's Hollow, working at what I think they used to call a "chop shop."
         Richie had almost forgotten about Jeremy. He rinsed the shampoo out of his hair, turned off the water, and groped for a towel. Bishop's Hollow was an old industrial town in the countryside, out past Amos Lake, with more bars and chop shops and junkyards than actual buildings. A rough place, but not a place an Immortal would be afraid of. Richie threw on a robe and, still dripping water, inspected the crisp new blue jeans and white shirt his maid had just laid out on the bed.
         "They look okay?" Richie asked David.
         "They look fine," David said, a trace of amusement on his face.
         "They look great," Richie said. Impulsively he kissed the maid on the cheek. "Thanks, Emaline. Take the rest of the week off, with pay."
         David shook his head as Emaline left. He liked it when Richie was this excited, but hated to deal with the aftermath sometimes. "Meeting Andrea?" he hazarded.
         "I have no secrets, do I?" Richie asked, but he didn't expect an answer. He'd tossed and turned most of the night, wondering what they would say to each other. But the most important part, that they loved each other, was not in doubt. Now he checked the clock. The time difference between Seacouver and Scotland meant it was only eight o'clock here. Okay, so he'd be early. "I'm taking the car."
         "You don't want a driver?"
         "No. And I don't mean the electric car. Have them gas up the T- Bird."
         David warned, "You know every time we put that on the road, we have to pay a triple surcharge for using a combustible engine."
         Richie grinned. "I'm a very rich young man, remember?"
         David couldn't help but smile back. "And getting younger all the time?"
         Richie grinned wider.
         He was thirty minutes early at the pier. The sun, seagulls and ocean made for a postcard-perfect setting. The outdoor restaurant they both loved was half-full of diners. Richie waited patiently to be seated, intending to bribe his way to the best seat in the house, but Andrea had arrived even earlier and stood up now, her blue and white dress catching his attention.
         He smiled tentatively.
         She smiled back.
         He went to her table, wondering if he dared to kiss her, but she made the decision first and pressed her mouth hard to his, one of her hands cupping his face, the other stroking his hair.
         "Oh, Andrea," he said, everything in those two words, when they broke apart and looked at each other. They sat, their chairs close together, their hands linked beneath the table. She smelled of lavender, and was gorgeous.
         "How are you?" she asked softly.
         "Better." His free hand went to touch her face. On closer inspection he could see that her carefully applied makeup covered dark circles beneath her eyes, and that she must have cried recently. "What happened? Why were you crying?"
         She shook her head ever so slightly, but her eyes stayed dry. "I went before the board of Watchers yesterday. That's why I couldn't talk to you long."
         Richie turned that information over in his mind. He remembered when Joe had gone before the board for interfering with the affairs of Immortals. Gross dereliction of duties. It had been in response to the night Joe shot MacLeod to save Richie's life, right after the Dark Quickening. Richie's Watcher had done his duty by reporting Joe's actions. It took months for Joe to regain his equilibrium after losing his job, his way of life.
         "I'm sorry," he said. "Was it because of me?"
         "No. It was because of me. Because I failed to file a report in Macau about what happened at the temple."
         "Why didn't you?"
         They had moved into difficult territory, and both knew it. Richie remembered very clearly the look on her face when he'd finally recovered enough after the Quickening to take note of his surroundings. But he didn't realize just how difficult Andrea's next words would be.
         "I wanted to protect you," she said softly. "I didn't want people to know you'd killed on Holy Ground. I was a little in shock about it, myself, because I didn't know then that he'd kidnapped you and forced you to fight. But also . .. " her eyes slid to the flower centerpiece on the table, then moved back to his face. "But also because I couldn't believe you'd killed Satoshi. I thought... you'd killed him over me."
         "Over you?" Richie repeated. The words sounded dull in his own ears. His subconscious understood far faster than his thinking mind, but a few seconds later both sides connected with a spasm that warned of even greater pain to come.
         "A long time ago," Andrea said, "Satoshi and I were lovers."
         "Oh." It was the only thing he could say. He tried to pull back in his seat, but she gripped his hand harder.
         "It was six years ago, long before I was even a Watcher. I was studying abroad in Hong Kong. Dad had sent me your address, and I took the boat over one day just for fun. You'd left about a month earlier, but I met Satoshi and... . he and I had a brief romance."
         Richie's imagination was conjuring up images of the two of them twisted in wild, thrusting sex. Satoshi's hands on her breasts. Her legs, wrapped around him. He could see them as clearly as he could see the tables, the customers, the waiter in a short white jacket. He didn't think he was breathing normally. His right hand, in Andrea's, was numb.
         "It lasted maybe a few months," Andrea said, talking more quickly now, as if her words were actually making a positive impact. "I went back to school. I never told Dad. After I became a Watcher, I checked Satoshi's records. Whoever his Watcher had been had left my name out of the list of women he'd gone through - and he'd gone through a lot."
         "Women liked him a lot," Richie agreed. He sounded crazy. He couldn't believe he was having this discussion. From nowhere, his mind brought forth the memory of them laying in the rented cottage outside the Black Forest. He'd wanted to make Macau and Satoshi the last stops on their trip before returning to Seacouver. She'd been strangely reticent, but had finally agreed.
         "Richie, it was a long time ago, and I was a young college student. I had no idea of what the future would bring. I've never asked you about your previous lovers, and you've never asked me."
         He nodded. That was true. He had no idea what expression his face was showing.
         "When we got to Macau, you started acting strangely," Andrea said. "You were distant, preoccupied. I thought you'd found out, and were mad."
         "I was distant and preoccupied because I found out that Satoshi had changed," Richie said. "He wanted to fight me. I refused. I was making plans for us to leave early when he kidnapped me."
         "I know that now," Andrea said, "but I didn't then. You disappeared. Satoshi called me at the hotel, said you were stalking him, said he feared for his life and was going to take refuge at the temple."
         Richie laughed. It was a harsh, bitter sound. "And you believed him?"
         "I didn't know what to believe!" Andrea protested. "By the time I got there, you two were already fighting. And then you took his head on Holy Ground..."
         Richie let her trail off. He realized they hadn't even had time to order breakfast. He took out a debit card and left it by his plate without even realizing what he was doing. It was unfair to have taken up this table for so long without buying food.
         "So how did your meeting with the board go?" he asked.
         Andrea's eyes widened in surprise. For a moment she was at a loss for words. "I resigned."
         "Do you need a job?" he asked. "I mean, I'm sure David could help you find something."
         "Richie, what about everything I've just told you?"
         He stood up. She stood with him. He shrugged. "I understand," he said. "You didn't tell me about Satoshi. I never asked. Our former lovers weren't part of the picture. You thought I'd actually kill my teacher on Holy Ground. You got fired for trying to protect me. It makes sense."
         A flush crept up from her neck. "It's not that way at all!"
         "Of course it is," Richie said. "You explained it. I got to go now, some things I have to do, but I'll talk to you later."
         He kissed her on the cheek.
         He left the restaurant with blurred vision.
         He had nowhere to go, but nothing really mattered anymore anyway.

         Jeremy Greven stared down at his beer. Alcohol didn't help. Alcohol didn't solve any of his multiple problems. But as long as he kept drinking it, he didn't have to face the fact his life was a mess, his mother was dying, and several different police officers would be happy to throw him back in jail the first time they saw him.
         He was sitting at the bar in a dive that was filthy, smoky and dangerous even by the Hollow's standards. He didn't know what time it was, or even when he'd last showered. He felt as if he'd been sitting at this bar all his life, with brief nightmare interludes of prison rapes.
         He looked at the full glass. One more, and he'd hit the road. He'd been promising himself that for a long time. It never happened.
         The door swung open, letting in sharp rays of daylight. A young man came in, dressed like a city boy, blond curly hair framing a face that didn't belong in a place like this.
         "Hello, Jeremy," the stranger said.
         Jeremy squinted at him. Recognition tugged at the corner of his mind, and finally came out.
         "Richie Junior," he snorted. "Lost, are you?"
         "Not so much," Richie said, and took the next stool. He signaled for a beer. The bartender didn't blink, or ask Richie for legal identification. The Hollow, as a rule, didn't worry about things like that.
         "What are you doing here?" Jeremy asked.
         "I need a tune-up," Richie said. "I heard you're working at a shop."
         Jeremy studied the younger man. He looked tough and hard but empty inside, much like the way Jeremy felt. Funny to think they could be half-brothers. This college kid, with his rich dad and soft life, couldn't possibly imagine what it was like to walk in Jeremy's shoes.
         "Get lost," he growled.
         Richie didn't even glance at him. "You don't need the money, that's okay with me."
         Jeremy tried to work up a rage, but he was too tired for anything more than bitterness. "You trying to buy me off?"
         "I told you before, my dad isn't your dad. You can believe me or not. Did you ask your mother again?"
         "Leave her out of it."
         Richie shrugged.
         Jeremy slid a glance sideways again. The way Richie was staring at the bottles behind the bar brought up a few of his own memories. "A girl?" he guessed.
         Richie's gaze flicked his way. "What?"
         "Trouble with a girl?"
         "Leave her out of it," Richie mimicked.
         Jeremy nodded.
         Two hours later, with more beers in them and a cautious familiarity growing, they went outside to where the noonday sky had clouded with thunderheads. Jeremy stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what the Ryan kid had brought out to the Hollow.
         "This thing is worth a fortune," he said, looking at the clean lines of the T-Bird with worship in his eyes. "What are you, nuts? The guys will take this apart in seconds."
         "Not with me guarding it," a teenager said from the corner. A tough kid, with self-inflicted scars and tattoos up and down his arms, a ring through his nose, dead eyes. He and two others had presumably been paid to watch the car. Richie pulled out more cash - a rare thing these days, that - and gave them more.
         "Now beat it," he said.
         The teens sauntered off.
         Richie motioned to the car. "You want a ride?"
         Jeremy smiled.
         They took it took where Jeremy was crashing, a shop that specialized in over the border acquisitions, and let the mechanics there worship it as well. Then Richie and Jeremy gave it a tune-up, working until the first rain spattered on the tin roof over the shop. They talked of sports and cars and even women. For someone who couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, Richie Ryan knew a lot about all three topics. He was especially bitter about some recent girlfriend, who had apparently fooled around with some other guy, but Jeremy didn't catch all of the story and didn't think he was supposed to.
         When they were done, they watched the rain turn the dirt streets to puddles and Richie asked, out of nowhere, "So when are you going to go back to Utah?"
         They were drinking soda now, sitting on the T-Bird's hood. "How do you know about Utah?" Jeremy asked.
         Richie shrugged.
         "No," Jeremy said. "Not until she... not until she dies. Then I'll go back."
         "I can get you a good lawyer," Richie offered.
         "You mean, your dad can."
         "Whatever."
         "Why? Why, if you're so sure he's not my dad, too? Why did you come out here to find me? We're worlds apart, kid."
         Richie gulped down the rest of his soda and kicked lightly at the fender. "Because you remind me of a little kid I once knew. Named Jeremy. I only knew him for a little while, but I thought he was my kid, and I fell in love with the idea of being a dad." He crushed the can. "His mother left, and I never saw that little kid again."
         "You're young," Jeremy said. "There's still time."
         "True," Richie agreed.
         Then trouble walked down the road in the shape of two men and two of the teenagers that had guarded the car earlier, including the one with the self-inflicted tattoos.
         "I want that car," said the tall, lanky, gaunt-looking leader to Jeremy. A bulge under his jacket revealed the presence of a hidden gun.
         "Billy," Jeremy started, "this is a friend."
         Billy didn't appear to care. "I want your friend's car."
         "Can't have it," Richie said, not seeming to move an inch, but Jeremy sensed a minute change in the way the younger man was sitting.
         "Not the right answer," the leader said. "Where are the keys?"
         "In the ignition," Richie said calmly. "Try to take them, I'll break your wrist."
         "T.J., you do it," the leader grinned.
         The teen with the tattoos moved towards the driver's seat. Faster than Jeremy could blink, Richie had him down in the dirt with his arm twisted up behind his back and his wrist dangling at an odd angle. Billy reached inside his jacket, but Richie somehow got to him first and was knocking him down with a series of carefully controlled blows. The other two moved to jump Richie, but Jeremy dropped one into the mud and sent the other scurrying away.
         "Thanks," Jeremy cursed. "Now I got to find a new place to stay."
         "We'll find you one," Richie promised. He didn't even look winded. He looked as if he'd actually enjoyed the fight, although he show a flicker of remorse as he quickly examined T.J.. He slid more cash into the teenager's pocket. "Get a doctor to set that. And give up the life of crime, okay?"
         If T.J. had an answer, it was lost in the blast of a gunshot as Billy fired at Richie. The kid took a bullet in the back, and was thrown against the hood with a sickening thud. Jeremy kicked out, connecting his boot to Billy's jaw, breaking it, watching the outlaw slump to the ground.
         Blood was pouring down Richie's back from a dreadful hole punched through his shirt. The blood stained Jeremy's hands as he manhandled the kid to the passenger side before he collapsed totally. "I've got to get you to a hospital," he said, gunning the T- Bird's ignition and hurling the car down the Hollow's muddy main road.
         Beside him, Richie gasped for breath. His complexion was a horrible blue-gray, and he was shivering.
         "It's okay... " he managed. "Not as bad as it looks... "
         "It looks like shit," Jeremy said, swinging out to the highway. On one side of the road, hillside and rock led further up. To the other, a sheer drop led down from a ledge to the long, narrow, poisoned lake below. "Just hang on. I'm not taking the rap for your murder, so you better stick around and testify on my behalf, okay?"
         Richie actually laughed. "Deal," he said, then choked on a mouthful of blood.
         Jeremy floored the accelerator just as ancient pick-up truck that belonged to a member of Billy's gang barreled down from the hillside, slammed into the back of the T-Bird, and sent it sailing over the ledge like a giant, broken, mechanical bird.
         By the time Jeremy thought to scream they had crashed eighty feet below, flipped, rolled forward, dropped another thirty feet, and were hanging on the T-Bird's side off a lower shelf of torn rock and trees. The lake hung dizzily in front of the smashed windshield. The ribs of the convertible top had ripped open, letting rocks and dirt and ripped leaves fill the car. Jeremy hung from his seatbelt in the wreck of metal and glass and plastic, his ears ringing with aftershock, his own mouth full of coppery blood.
         Silence descended. Silence, except for the steady drop of rain.
         "Richie," Jeremy whispered.
         "I'm here," came the shaky reply. Amazingly enough, Richie sounded better than he had before the crash. Jeremy twisted to see the kid beneath him, pinned to the passenger door and the ground beneath it.
         "But I might be in trouble," Richie acknowledged.
         Jeremy stared in horrified fascination at the broken chunk of windshield wedged against the kid's throat.
         The car slid a few inches closer to the lake. Jeremy found in the screech of metal that he could scream, and wasn't half bad at it.
         "You've got to get out of here," Richie said. "Before this whole thing drops again."
         "I can't leave you here," Jeremy said. Half-brother or not, the kid's life was already in danger from the gunshot, and Jeremy couldn't see abandoning him.
         "Listen to me," Richie said firmly. He didn't sound hurt at all. Jeremy twisted to look at him again. The kid said, "First you loosen your seatbelt. Then climb up through your window. Slowly, carefully. This thing is going to go, and there's no way I'm not going with it."
         "You'll die," Jeremy insisted.
         Richie managed a wan smile. "I'm tougher than you think. Now do it, slowly. When you get out, find a phone. Call Dawson's bar. Tell him or his wife or his daughter Andrea what happened. No one else. Don't call the cops, you understand me? Dawson will know what to do."
         The car tipped precariously. Jeremy clenched the steering wheel with stark white knuckles. "I don't know if I can."
         "You have to!" The kid's voice came like a whip. "Do it. Go!"
         Jeremy followed his instructions. Richie watched from below, throwing every ounce of silent inspiration and prayer he could into the man's movements. The glass against his throat made breathing and concentrating very hard. His body had healed from the shot, he could feel that, but both legs were numb from the waist down and his right arm, pinned beneath him, was badly broken. He'd worked very hard at keeping the pain from his voice. Both MacLeod and Satoshi had taught him how to control it.
         Satoshi.
         Satoshi and Andrea.
         "Richie, I'm going for help!" Jeremy called from outside the car.
         "No!" Richie yelled back. "Just get Dawson!"
         No more sounds from Jeremy. Only the falling rain. If Richie closed his eyes the water sounded like the ocean below the cliffs of Glenfinnan, when he'd last walked them with Mac. Was that only two nights ago? The water also sounded like the rolling waves off the South China Sea, beyond the temple of the goddess Tin Hau. Abruptly it occurred to him that he was paying the price for taking a head on Holy Ground. Mac and Methos had both been wrong. There were prices to pay, meted out by destiny or fate or luck.
         Helplessly he began to laugh.
         He was still laughing when the ground dropped out beneath the T- Bird and he, the car and a guillotine of glass went crashing down into the lake below.

         Early the next afternoon, standing in a freezing rain that might never stop, Joe Dawson turned to David Kelly and asked, "What did you do with Jeremy?"
         "He and his mother are on their way to a private AIRIS treatment facility in New Mexico," David said.
         "And the parole board in Utah?"
         "Assuaged."
         Joe nodded and turned his attention back to the oily lake in front of them.
         "What about Andrea?" David asked after a few more minutes of watching Methos and MacLeod dive repeatedly down into the lake's murky depths.
         "I haven't told her," Joe said. He was too old to be standing out in this weather. He was cold and wet and tired. And his eyes felt gritty, with grief yet to come. In three decades he'd come to look upon Richie as one of his own children, and if he was truly dead in the black murkiness of the water there would be a price to pay for never having spoken of his affection.
         "Good idea," David said. "She doesn't need to worry."
         "I wasn't thinking of her, I was thinking of me. I wasn't brave enough to tell her."
         Methos and MacLeod started wading to shore. The cold of the water showed in their shivers, MacLeod's blue lips, the stark whiteness of Methos' face. The two Immortals had been diving for hours, trying to find the wreck and free Richie's body. Their mortal friends moved to the shoreline to offer blankets and coffee from a Thermos.
         "We found it," MacLeod said as he pulled off his mask and let it drop to the rocks at his feet. He gulped some coffee down, but gave no indication of getting warmer. "About fifteen feet down over there. It's buried upside down in at least eighteen inches of silt and muck."
         "And Richie?" David demanded.
         Methos couldn't stop shivering. "You can barely see down there, even with the flashlights - "
         "But I found his hand," MacLeod said flatly. His features darkened. "His right hand. Still attached to his arm, but I couldn't reach in any further."
         Joe didn't want to think what it must feel like, to hold a floating dead hand in your own, to know it belonged to a beloved friend.
         "And we don't know if his head is attached to his neck," Methos said.
         "But we've got the tow truck," Joe said, with a glance down the small access road. T.G. Enterprises owned a tow company among its other assets. "We can get the car up and free him then."
         David's eyes went to the lake. They'd made Jeremy Greven describe precisely the scene inside the car, and Jeremy had mentioned broken windshield.
         As gently as possible, Methos said, "We don't know if pulling the wreck out will make it better. If he's wedged in there wrong, it could - "
         " - rip his head off," David said, in a voice as cold as death itself.
         The four men looked at the lake in grim silence.
         "It's your decision," Methos said abruptly to MacLeod.
         David almost voiced an opinion, but quieted himself. After a moment Joe understood Methos' reasoning. Duncan MacLeod had know Richie the longest. Had been his teacher, his mentor, his surrogate father.
         MacLeod didn't meet their gaze. He was staring at the water, but remembering standing on the cliffs of Glenfinnan with Richie just a short time ago. The day they reconciled after MacLeod's Dark Quickening. The night Richie died in a quiet suburban street, Tessa's corpse at his side.
         "We can't leave him there," MacLeod finally said. "We have to at least try."
         After a moment of unspoken prayer, David signaled the tow truck.

         This is how it happened:
         An incredible pain ripped into his back. Richie felt himself knocked down, felt his body slide instantly into shock. He didn't mind being knifed so much. Drowning and suffocation, far less preferable. He'd been electrocuted once, and it hadn't been too bad. But he hated being shot. Hated it more than anything else. Because every gunshot reminded him of bullets in his chest, of Mark Roscka firing first at Tessa and then at himself. Every gunshot set him spiraling back down the schism that marked the divide of his mortal life from Immortal one, his youth to adulthood. He'd never felt truly young again after that night.
         The sidewalk under his face was cold and dirty. Richie tried to keep his eyes open, tried to focus on the shoes approaching him, but whoever had just killed him grabbed his arms and yanked his body up, sending him hurtling into nothingness.
         When he opened his eyes again, his chest and back burning with remembered pain, he found himself tied hand and foot in a hall of benches presided over by a sitting statue of a Chinese bride. He knew the place. He'd come here years before, with Satoshi as his guide. He tried to protest, but something had been shoved deep in his mouth as a gag.
         Furiously he tried to free himself, to struggle out of the ropes, but they held fast around his arms and knees and ankles.
         Satoshi appeared over him. "I'm sorry I had to resort to this," the samurai said calmly. "But since you've been refusing to fight me since you came to Macau, it was the only way to get your attention."
         Richie tried to force out a curse around the gag, but all that came out was a muffled protest.
         "I'll free you when you agree to fight me."
         Richie let out a diatribe.
         Satoshi walked away.
         Richie slumped back to the hard floor, anger keeping him tensed. He ripped his arms and legs against the ropes, failed entirely to free himself. A shorter rope from his arms to the leg of the nearest pew kept him from rolling more than a few feet in either direction. He wondered why the temple was empty, and figured it couldn't stay that way long. He tried to shout, tried to knock over the pew, made all the noise he could.
         No one came.
         Except Satoshi, several hours later.
         "Ready to agree?" he asked, kneeling close to Richie's head.
         Richie grunted.
         Satoshi freed the gag.
         "Why?" Richie spat out past a dry mouth. "Why me, why here, why now?"
         The gag slipped back into place and Satoshi went away.
         Richie lay abandoned for several more hours, the ache in his body increasing steadily, frustration mounting to a boiling point. But he would not agree to fight on this, on Holy Ground, and certainly not with the man who'd taught him so many valuable things.
         When Satoshi came back, he said, "You'll die in three days of dehydration. It's not a pleasant way to go."
         Richie shook his head.
         The light outside changed from day to night to day again. Prolonged restraint caused muscle cramps up and down his back, his arms, his leg. He couldn't feel his fingers or toes. Redness danced at the edge of his vision, shading one nightmare thought into another.
         He was only blearily aware of Satoshi's next return. "You've always been stubborn," he said. "You will probably die before you agree, and might keep dying for awhile. I'll speed up your decision for you. Agree to fight me, here and now, or I'll kill the girl Andrea."
         Richie only stared at his mentor. Satoshi was insane. He had to be. He'd always been a stern taskmaker, an unforgiving teacher, a man whose principles had guided him during the eight hundred years after he'd first pledged allegiance to his shogun. Richie had left him six years earlier, when it became apparent he had nothing more to learn. He'd heard of Satoshi taking heads after that, a great many heads, but never had he imagined his teacher's sword would be turned his way.
         It had happened with MacLeod once. In a darkened dojo on a cold night, while a Dark Quickening coursed through the Highlander's blood.
         "Swear it to me now, or she dies," Satoshi said, and removed the gag.
         Richie took a moment for the world to crumble beneath his oath. "Yes," he said faintly.
         Satoshi cut him free and helped him sit up. He produced water and food. Richie drank the water greedily, but couldn't even look at the food. He realized it was close to sunset outside. Free of the ropes, his muscles pulled themselves back into shape.
         Satoshi watched him from a few feet away.
         "Tell me why," Richie said. "You can at least tell me that."
         Satoshi said, "Because it's time for me to die. And I don't want anyone to do it but you, Richie. You were my best student. You deserve my Quickening."
         "You don't have to die."
         "I'm tired of this world," came the answer. "The Prize does not interest me. The swords wielded by children haunt my dreams. I fight them, and take their heads, and the world remains a dismal place spinning through an empty galaxy."
         Satoshi had been pessimistic before, but never had Richie heard this particular tone of desolation. He drank more water, but resisted the urge to shift as his body healed more. "I'll fight you," Richie tired to bargain. "But not here. Pick any place else in the city. Pick any place else in the world."
         Satoshi shook his head. "My last lesson, little one. You must survive. In the end, there can be only one, and he must not be constrained by rules that mean nothing. Learn to kill on Holy Ground, learn to give up everything you are for the kill, and you'll take the Prize."
         "I don't know if I can beat you," Richie murmured. It was the truth.
         "We'll find out," Satoshi promised, and a glittering arc swung down towards him.
         They fought their way out of the prayer hall, past the Moon Gate, around the shrine of the goddess of mercy. But there would no mercy in this twilight world. Satoshi nearly severed his left arm. Richie held it close and managed a thrust that took out a chunk of Satoshi's right thigh. They fought until every breath was a rasp of fire, until sweat coated their skin with a salty shine, until invisible drops of blood hung in the air between them like a curtain, and tangible blood ran down their bodies.
         In the end, Satoshi made a mistake. Looking back later, Richie was never able to decide if it was intentional or not.
         He took his teacher's head.
         Then his Quickening.
         And when he was done, he looked up and saw Andrea watching with horror in her eyes. But before he could explain, she was gone.

         Everything had a price. Everything was paid for. He stopped laughing the minute the car hit the water, as the glass lanced through skin and fat, muscle and bone.
         Floating nothingness.
         A bright light.
         He struggled with the weight of his own eyelids, only peripherally aware of soft and warmth and the comforting rhythm of his heart in his chest.
         "Come on, tough guy," a voice said nearby. "You're awake."
         "Mac?" The word came out slurred. He succeeded with his eyes, but the room was too bright and he shut them again with a wince.
         Someone closed the curtains. "Try it again," MacLeod urged.
         Richie did try, and found it easier. He focused on MacLeod at the bedside, Methos by the window. Both looked extremely pleased with themselves. David stood at the edge of the bed, awe underlying his expression. In all their years together, Richie had never come back to life before his very eyes.
         "What happened?" Richie asked. His mouth ached with dryness. His memory was spotty. This didn't look like the temple of Tin Hau in Macau. He flexed under the white blanket, only to find with no great surprise that his body was whole.
         "You went for a swim," MacLeod said, with a perfectly straight face. He passed him a glass of water. Ashamed of laying there like an invalid, Richie struggled upright against the headboard and managed not to spill too much of the water over himself.
         "You were very lucky," Methos added. "Two inches just the other way, and that windshield would have gone through your neck instead of up into your jaw and skull."
         Richie automatically dragged a hand to his head. Now that Methos mentioned it, he did have a residual headache, and his jaw hurt abominably. "What are you talking about?"
         "What's the last thing you remember?" MacLeod asked.
         "I don't know."
         "Well, think hard," MacLeod said. "Remember what you did to my car."
         "My car. I bought it from you," Richie retorted. Now that he thought about it, it seemed as if he could remember the T-Bird sliding down a cliff. He looked towards David, and suggested hopefully, "I'd remember better over breakfast."
         David smiled and went to have the cook make up a tray.
         Richie rubbed his head. "How long was I dead?"
         "About two days, give or take," Methos said. Together the two Immortals filled him in on all the gory details of his corpse's appearance when they'd pulled it from the wreck. Richie listened in morbid fascination, then asked what had happened to Jeremy.
         "I remember him, you know," MacLeod mused. "You were so determined to become a father."
         "So look who did instead," Richie said fondly. Then he frowned.
         "What?" MacLeod asked instantly.
         "Andrea."
         "What about her?"
         Richie thought hard. "Love, talk of marriage, Satoshi, a revelation, a fight. I think that sums it up." But he didn't tell them about Andrea and Satoshi. It wasn't fair to Andrea.
         "What are you going to do?" Methos asked.
         "I don't know," Richie said truthfully. Time would tell. Andrea was out there somewhere, and he still loved her. Whether they could make it work remained to be seen. The world was wide, and he was young, and there were many things he had to do.
         He knew one thing he *wasn't* going to do.
         Wash his hands.
         Because for the first time in weeks they felt clean of blood.

         Author's Notes:

         So I'm mulling around Sam Goody's here in Key West, and hear a remake of Sting's song "They Dance Alone" playing on the store's stereo sung all in Spanish. And then "Fragile," done on a harp. And "Eleanor Rigby" on guitar. The disc is the John Tesh Discovery Project, all new artists doing remakes and some original Tesh work, and it's great to mellow out by. One of the jazziest cuts is called "You Break It," written by Tesh and sung by Natasha Pearce. The lyrics include:
         You break it, you pay for it
         Everything you do comes back on you

         Hence the inspiration. Do Richie and Andrea get back together? They haven't told me yet.
         Thanks to Janette92 for proofreading - and congratulations on her birthday and engagement!
         As for the future stuff - in thirty years we've gone from transistors and wires to a personal computer sitting on my desk here that reaches out across the world. So I hope it's not unreasonable to think that Joe could have his bionic legs, or that you could fly from China to the U.S. in three hours, or that meat would be phased out of the food chain (that's my personal hope, as a vegetarian.) Miracles can happen...:-)