========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 00:31:33 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: Choices After Evil 3/6 The next day, Dawson called to say that Richie wanted to meet him in the warehouse MacLeod owned on the east side. "Midnight tonight." Dawson said. In what sounded like an afterthought he added, "He said to bring your sword." They both understood Richie's unspoken challenge. MacLeod couldn't keep his mind focused all day. He wandered around the dojo, restless and lost in thought, until Holland told him he was disturbing people. He contemplated several sharp words about that, but kept them to himself. They'd talked about his resuming a karate or self-defense class, but nothing had been arranged and he was too irritable to discuss it. He went for a five mile run in the park, came back, watched television, tried to read. At eleven thirty he brought himself and his sword to the warehouse. Richie was already there, sitting on a pile of crates, turning his sword over and over again so that it caught glints from the sparse overhead lighting. He wore jeans and boots and a maroon sweatshirt that kept out the night chill. He must have sensed MacLeod's approach, but he didn't look up until MacLeod was a dozen feet away. "Richie," MacLeod said, searching the younger man's face for any trace of welcome or forgiveness. But there was no emotion at all, just the firm impassive set of Richie's eyes and jaw. "Fight me," Richie said. "Why?" "Because," Richie said, jumping down to the ground, his sword up. MacLeod parried the first blow easily. He wasn't sure how far the fight would go. Did Richie expect him to go for his head? Did Richie want MacLeod's? Maybe he was provoking, to see how if the evil had been truly exorcised. Maybe he had more in mind. Whatever Richie's intentions, he was serious about his efforts. He didn't pull his thrusts or blows. He was eerily calm about it, with no hint of underlying rage or bitterness. Just the methodical, accurate and powerful moves of a fighter who, it seemed, had been learning new tricks while MacLeod was gone. He dashed forward to cut across MacLeod's left thigh. MacLeod clenched his jaw against the sudden pain, and retaliated with a move that Richie barely deflected. Without word, without surrender, they danced forward and backward and in circles around the warehouse floor, swords clashing with deadly rings and arcs of power. "Why are we doing this?" MacLeod asked, as sweat pooled down the back of his sweater, as his hand grew slippery on his katana. "Why not?" Richie asked. He'd grown flushed with the effort of battle, but showed excellent stamina. He slipped under MacLeod's parry to land a sharp jab in his side, but didn't follow it through with a pierce that would have incapacitated MacLeod for at least a few seconds. "You're holding back," MacLeod chided him, hating to fall back in the role of teacher, but unable to stop himself. "So are you," Richie shot back. "Come on, Mac, you're better than this." "So are you," MacLeod answered, and in growing anger landed a slice across Richie's arm that welled up instantly. Riche caught him with a cut across his shoulder. Blood spilled, they stepped back for a moment, warily circling each other, as their injuries healed. "You're supposed to mock me," Richie said, his eyes now glinting with something hard and dangerous. "Maybe take a bow or two." Only then did MacLeod realize they were re-enacting the battle that had taken place so many months before. "That wasn't me, Richie," he protested. "Looked like you," Richie grunted out, and swung with a blow that MacLeod caught only inches from his face. Their swords and arms locked together, straining mightily. "Had your name and face." "I never want to take your head," MacLeod said. "Actions speak louder than words," Richie shot back. MacLeod broke Richie's hold with a kick at his feet. Richie legs went out from under him and he stumbled backwards. MacLeod jabbed his knee on his stomach and pinned him on the floor. The razor-fine edge of his blade went to the soft skin of Richie's throat. "What do you want, Richie?" he demanded. Richie's face was white, his eyes wide, his breathing ragged. "I want my friend back," he gasped. "I want Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod, not some impostor." MacLeod pulled himself to his feet. Richie stayed on the floor until MacLeod helped him up and held him to his chest for a brief but sincere moment. Then MacLeod tousled Richie's hair in a gesture they both knew, and tentative smiles turned into pleased grins and relieved sighs. "Welcome back," Richie said. "Good to see you." "I wondered about that," MacLeod joked. "I didn't," Joe Dawson's voice boasted from the doorway. "I knew you two would work it out." At the same time they turned to see Dawson, the buzz of another Immortal came into both men's minds. Richie relaxed the moment he saw the dark-clad woman at Dawson's side, but MacLeod readied himself for another fight. "Felicia," he said. "What are you doing here?" "Keeping Dawson company," she returned, with the New York accent he remembered giving inflection to her low voice. "Mac, relax," Richie said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "She's cool." "I think you're forgetting a lot," MacLeod told him, without taking his eyes off Felicia. She gazed at him calmly, with no move to the sword she must be carrying. "I think there's a lot you need to know," Richie said. "Felicia's here with me." This time MacLeod did take his eyes off her, to see if Richie were joking. "Now that you've finished getting this out of your systems," Dawson proposed, "what do you see we retire with a nightcap at Joe's?" Felicia caught Richie's gaze, and something unspoken passed between them. "How about you and me, Joe?" she asked, taking his elbow. "Be my date." Dawson managed a half-bow. "Your wish is my command." Only then did MacLeod realize Dawson had been heavily drinking. Felicia took him away. Richie sheathed his sword, and then motioned for MacLeod to take a walk along the waterfront. The piers and paths through marsh grass were not made for walking, nor were they entirely safe at this hour. But the two Immortals walked with their hidden swords and considerable advantages without fear, the water smelling salty and oily on a strong breeze. Buoys chimed in the distance, far from shore and sight. "I'm sorry," MacLeod said. "You don't know how sorry I am." Richie took a deep breath. "Did you mean to do it? Did you know what you were doing?" MacLeod gazed at the point where the sky and sea met in a barely distinguishable line. "I knew what was going on, but it seemed logical and reasonable to me. It seemed like something I wanted to do. Only a tiny part of me, way deep inside, kept screaming it was wrong, the whole thing was wrong." "Dawson saved my life," Richie said. "I know. I apologized to him, as well." "Don't. It wasn't you, remember?" "But I'll always remember it as me," MacLeod admitted, and then fought down a shiver that wasn't entirely brought on by the cold. Richie shot him a glance and asked, somewhat hesitantly, "Will you tell me what happened when you left here?" It was not an easy request. MacLeod had told most of it to Dawson, who had the Watcher reports anyway. Telling Richie was harder. But he gave him as full and painful a recounting as he could, except for the one part he couldn't bring himself to face. Dominique Davis, laying in bed with tears in her eyes as MacLeod dressed himself in the morning light. At the end of the tale they were sitting on a dock, feet dangling above the incoming tide. They sat in silence for awhile, and then MacLeod stirred to say, "About Felicia . . . " "Don't worry about her," Richie said confidently. "Is she the reason you moved, cut off your phone, hired Holland for the dojo? Is she isolating you?" "No. She's not doing anything to me. See, she was at the dojo that night we fought. When I left you and Joe, I was pretty shaken up. I managed to fall down the stairs and there she was, all of a sudden, holding my sword and telling me I ought to be careful. She could have taken my head then and there, and I wouldn't have been able to stop her. But she didn't. She gave me back my sword, got me to my bike, and sent me off into the night. "Two days later she comes around my apartment with a story about how she's reformed, how she's given up her bad ways, you name it. Like a Dear Ann Landers column. Okay, so I'm young, but I'm not entirely stupid. I tell her I'm not buying it. She says she wants to make reparations for what she did. I tell her to get out of my life. Meanwhile, Dawson says you're on a boat to who knows where, I've got the dojo falling apart on my hands, and I don't know what the hell is going on anymore. So I hire Holland - who, as you know, needs to learn a lot about cutting off heads - and split town. "I'm riding my bike north, I don't know where, just trying to run away from everything. I talk to Holland, she tells me the roof caved in, and where's the money to fix it? The next time I talk to her, she says Felicia paid for it. To make up for that forged Coronelli map of hers that you lost ten thousand bucks on." MacLeod said, "Holland told me she didn't know the name of the woman who paid for the roof." "She didn't. But she described Felicia pretty good. So why is Felicia paying for the roof, if she's not sincere? I don't know, I don't care, I just keep going. The next thing I know, I'm living in Valdez, Alaska, which could qualify as the end of the earth, trust me. I'm climbing mountains, hiking through forests, living with the Eskimos. Eating fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The whole Duncan MacLeod Communing with Nature deal, beacause I'm trying to figure out exactly how I feel about you nearly taking my head. Then I pick up this Immortal on my tail, name's Danny Dieppa, this psycho whacked-out nutcase whose idea of "There can be only one" involves hand grenades, Uzi's, dynamite, tanks, you name it. I'm thinking this guy's teacher must have been Rambo, Arnold, somebody with a serious hardware fetish. No honor whatsoever. His m.o. is to kill an Immortal any way possible and then take the head." Richie fell silent. MacLeod glanced over at him, noting the younger man's troubled expression in the darkness. "What happened?" "He got me," Richie said. His voice became flatter, harder. "Suckered me right into a fish plant, of all places. Blew the floor out with explosives. I'm in the wreckage, just about every bone in my body broken, impaled to the floor by about a dozen metal rods. The worst agony of my life. The place is burning down, I'm dying, Dieppa's coming down on me with a hatchet, and then Felicia's there. She'd gone through Holland's phone records to track me down. Saved my goddamned life." Fortuitous timing, MacLeod thought. Very fortuitous. Richie shook himself, as if waking from a bad dream. "She takes his Quickening, and gets me free. I'm out of it for awhile, and the next thing I know we're in her truck, coming back here, my bike strapped to the back. We talked for four hundred miles straight. She's telling me that running isn't going to help me, and I'm thinking that I shouldn't be listening to this woman who would have killed you and Tessa and me if we'd let her. "But you know what, Mac? She's changed. She said that you changed her, when you left her on the beach and didn't take her head. Pissed her off, first of all, but then shook her up real bad. She spent two years trying to figure out what the hell she's been doing for her three hundred years. Got some help. Got her head screwed on right. And now she's different." MacLeod carefully chose his next words. He didn't want to risk alienating Richie after what they'd just been through. "Are you sure she's not tricking you?" Richie actually laughed. "I've thought about that about a million times. I didn't want to like her again and I didn't want to believe her, but here I am. When push comes to shove, she saved my life. Trust me, Mac, I don't want to get hurt again." MacLeod stared at the water. "I don't want you to get hurt, either." "If Felicia's tricking me now," Richie said, "then she's the best actress in the world, and the worst Immortal. She's passed up the opportunity to take my head fifty times already. Give her a chance, and let me worry about the rest." It sounded like a good plan, yet deep in his heart, MacLeod wasn't convinced that Felicia wasn't somehow setting Richie up in an elaborate trap of some sort. But the first light of dawn was tinting the eastern sky, and they were both tired from what had proven to be a long, tiring, extraordinary night of reconciliation. MacLeod would think about what Richie had said and work on the problem later. "Come on," MacLeod said, "let's go get breakfast. You're buying." "I'm buying?" Richie asked, getting up stiffly against the protest of his muscles. "How come I'm buying?" MacLeod threw his arm around Richie's neck. "To welcome me home, of course." *** Holland Greer called in sick for two days straight. On the third day she came in with a split lip. MacLeod, sitting at the manager's desk, rose from his chair with a scowl. "Did your husband do that?" "Nothing happened," Holland said, shedding her umbrella in the corner. It wasn't like her to track water across the dojo. Outside, gentle rain fell from the overcast sky. "Leave me alone." "You don't have to put up with it," MacLeod said. "I'll put up with what I want to!" she shot back, and her voice brought a few glances their way from the Saturday morning crowd working on weights and the treadmills. MacLeod closed the door. He tried to think of a tact to work with Holland, stubborn as she was. It wasn't as if he hadn't known other women in his four hundred years who were victims of domestic abuse. Holland - bright, cheerful, educated, strong - didn't look like anyone who would fall into that self-destructive pattern, but looks deceived. There was no such thing as a stereotypical abused wife. "I don't want to see you hurt," he said softly. Holland's words came out brittle and sharp. "Then don't look." "I'll talk to your husband." Her eyes blazed with new anger. "And you think that will help? You think you can go to Jay, do some male bonding, trade some buddy-buddy words, and fix him right up? Or maybe you can threaten him, tell him you're going to beat him up, pull some macho male strut that'll make him think twice about hitting the little lady? What makes you think you can fix someone, MacLeod?" "I don't think I can," he said, taken aback. "But I want to try. I want to help." "You can help," Holland said clearly and precisely, "by staying out of it. You understand?" MacLeod left her without answering. What a stubborn, pigheaded, exasperating woman she was. He decided if she wanted to let her husband beat her, then fine. But the decision didn't sit well in his chest. A few evenings later, while the club was still only half-full, he brought up the general subject to Dawson, who was drinking only mineral water. "Too much alcohol lately," he admitted. "I'm gaining weight." MacLeod nearly smiled at the image of Joe Dawson, preening before a mirror to decide if his paunch was growing bigger. Instead, he shook the ice cubes in his glass. "I don't know why people in bad situations don't take steps to fix them. I mean, I do know why, but it's exasperating." Dawson shrugged. "People generally find it more satisfying to wallow in their current problems then fix them and risk new ones." "That's an optimistic viewpoint," MacLeod said. "I thought you were supposed to be a people person." "From now on, I'm just the bartender," Dawson said. "Call me Isaac." "Isaac who?" "Don't you ever watch "Love Boat?" reruns" "Love Boat?" "You miss a lot of popular culture, MacLeod, you know that?" "I don't mind," MacLeod said. "Popular culture keeps changing anyway. Trust me." Two Immortals came in. MacLeod relaxed when he saw it was Richie and Felicia, although he couldn't suppress a pang of dislike at seeing Felicia. She had dressed down for the evening, in conservative jeans and a cropped sweater. The wild eyecolor was gone. She looked almost normal, the way she'd looked when she'd tricked her way into the antique store. "Hey," Richie said, as they pulled up stools. He was careful to sit between MacLeod and Felicia. "MacLeod," Felicia acknowledged him. "Felicia," he said. "What'll it be, guys?" Two beers came up swiftly for the younger Immortals. Dawson said, "We're talking about how come people don't deal with their problems." "Because they don't know they have them," Richie proposed. "Because it's easier for them not to," MacLeod said. Dawson shook his head. "Because they like self-pity too much." "What's this 'they' business?" Felicia asked. "Since when do 'they' have problems and we don't?" MacLeod warmed up to the argument, even if he didn't warm up to her. "Okay, then why don't 'we' deal with our problems?" "We do," Richie said, downing some of his beer. "With very sharp weapons and a big light show, if you haven't noticed." Felicia leaned forward on the bar. "Everyone deals with problems, MacLeod, even if the way of dealing with it is not to do anything at all. Passive acceptance of the crap life throws at you is a choice in and of itself." They debated the issue through two more rounds of drinks, but censored any talk of Immortals out of the conversation as the bar began to fill with more patrons. MacLeod didn't agree with everything Felicia said, but she made a few interesting points. Richie apparently deemed the situation safe enough to excuse himself to go to the bathroom. When he came back the blues band Joe had hired for the evening was starting up, and Felicia rose. "See you guys later," she said, cautiously amiable, and kissed Richie goodbye. "She doesn't like the blues," Dawson said to MacLeod. Richie walked her out and then came back a little flushed. "She ditch you for the evening?" MacLeod couldn't help saying. "She's got a meeting to go to." "What kind of meeting at ten o'clock at night?" Dawson asked. "Ask her," Richie said, sitting down. "I'm not asking her," Dawson said. "I don't even look at her cross- eyed." Richie shook his head. "You guys are unforgiving." "Not unforgiving," MacLeod said, finishing his drink. "Just cautious." "Like I should be cautious about you?" Richie asked, a trifle sharply. MacLeod didn't answer. "Sorry," Richie offered, and he sounded sincere. "I didn't mean it." "Yes you did," MacLeod said. After a moment he offered a concession of his own. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm not being fair." The next day Richie came over for a two hour practice session. The easy companionability that they'd shared before the Dark Quickening had returned for the most part, although MacLeod thought Richie was a little too cautious with his thrusts. Richie surprised him with a maneuver he must have picked up from someone else. "Felicia," Richie supplied, at MacLeod's upturned eyebrows. "We practice a lot." They traded easy blows, back and forth, in a familiar rhythm. MacLeod hazarded, "Are you two going to make a future out of this?" Richie shook his head. "Probably not. We talk about it. There are disadvantages." "Why don't you bring her to dinner tonight?" MacLeod asked. "We'll get a movie or something." Richie stopped. He studied MacLeod to see if he were serious, and then smiled. "Thanks, Mac. I think she'd like that." end of part three