Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 20:59:24 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: Tough Guy 3/4 Part 3 Richie didn't look back on his way down the street, but stopped a few blocks later for a soda at an all-night grocery. George, Karen, Janine and even Steven followed him to Bruce's. He didn't believe in a George Mitchell who didn't drink, no matter what Janine said. It wasn't as if George had been a particularly abrasive or obnoxious drunk - he'd just been George, the drunk, the guy who passed out every night on the couch with Jack Daniels for company, the man who preferred any excuse in the world to drown the cells of his body in alcohol rather than spend a night sober with his family. George Mitchell had reminded Richie too strongly of another foster father he'd once had. That foster father had also been a drunk, but an abusive one. A man who'd laid down the law with fists and belts, and who one night had beat the then-ten-year-old with his belt so severely his teacher had called the police the next day. MacLeod had asked about the scars Richie still bore from that night. It was funny, because Richie almost always forgot he had them. But he never forgot that family, and George Mitchell had always seemed to be too much of a latent threat to risk staying at the Mitchell's very long. Richie made it home around ten, and found the living room crowded with most of Bruce's band, some groupies, and Nikki and Scotty. The air was thick was cigarette smoke, the coffee table and floor crowded with pipes, needles, ashtrays, bottles and snacks. Music thumped from the speakers through the room, out the open windows, and halfway down the block. Richie hadn't seen a party like this one at Bruce's in a long time, and with a sudden premonition knew he wasn't going to get any sleep that night. Nikki's face was red and blotchy, as if she'd been crying. "The social workers took Melinda away," Scotty explained as he got up to change the music. He seemed, far and away, the most sober of the group, which wasn't saying much. "Bastards," Nikki sniffed from where she sat on the couch. "They said I'm an unfit mother." Well, she was. But Richie kept that opinion to himself. He wasn't about to get into a debate when all he really wanted to do was crash. It had been a long day, and he just needed to sleep. Joey, however, make an issue of Richie not staying for a few drinks. "Just a few," Joey said. "Ain't going to hurt you." "Can't," Richie said. "I have to work tomorrow." Liz snuggled up against Joey. "He's too good for us now." "That true?" Joey asked, an edge of malice in his voice. "No," Richie said. "I'm just tired." "Leave him alone," Bruce burped. The big man looked totally trashed, and Richie wondered what time the drinking had started. "Richie's the only one around here who's been paying any rent." Joey fixed Richie with a malicious grin. "I hear you're working at the place you got busted for breaking into." "Good night, everyone," Richie said, ignoring Joey, and earned a few good nights back. He had a room but no furniture, and instead made do with a bare mattress and a set of sheets liberated from the Mitchells without Karen's knowledge. Without bothering to turn on the lights - there was enough from the street, through the uncurtained window - Richie sat down heavily on the mattress and pulled off his boots. Music started up again from the living room. With a groan he lay back, his thoughts in a turmoil over George Mitchell, Tessa Noel, Immortals, mortals, the families he'd lived with, the teacher who'd called the police. The back of his legs ached with phantom pain. His bedroom door opened, and he squinted against the silhouette of someone in the hall. "Bathroom's the other way," he said, annoyed. "Not here for the bathroom," Joey said. Richie dragged himself wearily to his feet. "What's the matter, Joey?" Joey came in with his shoulders tight, his whole body tensed for a fight. His eyes were very red. "I've been hearing stories about you, Richie." "Yeah?" Richie asked. "So what?" Joey swung out with a vicious punch. The whole right side of Richie's face went numb as the room spun out from beneath him and he landed, with a thump, against the far wall. Joey was on him in an instant, twisting his right arm behind his back with a pressure that threatened to snap the bone at his shoulder. Joey had at least thirty pounds and five inches on him, and it took only a few seconds of pained struggle for Richie to realize it was useless. "Didn't anyone ever tell you to be nice to your elders?" Joey growled in his ear. "What do you want?" Richie demanded, and Joey twisted his arm up another fraction of an inch. Richie couldn't stop a cry of pain. Red and black and silver flashed before his eyes. "Someone said you saw something." "That's pretty vague, Joey, could you be more specific?" Joey slapped the back of his head sharply. Richie vowed to shut up. His smart ass attitude had gotten him in trouble before, but it seemed he could never stop himself. "Listen to me," Joey warned. "I find out you've been messing with my business, I'll just make sure the same thing happens to you. You get it? You understand me?" "Yeah," Richie managed, although he didn't know what the hell Joey was talking about. Joey let him go and stalked out of the room. Richie fell to his knees, half on and half on the mattress, his arm throbbing with pain and his face coming back to life with a fierce ache. He sat down heavily, feeling his jaw. Not broken. But it could have been. He was cold. He was sitting on a nearly bare mattress in a run- down room in a house full of drug addicts, with music pounding through the walls, smoke in the air, his body assaulted, his mind spinning. Woodenly, without thinking much about it, he pulled on his boots and jackets and climbed out his window into the mud of the yard and the renewed rain. It took three minutes of discreet tapping on Angie's window for her to wake. She came to the window groggily, dressed only in a short nightdress. "Richie, what's the matter?" "Angie, I need to crash on your floor," he said. She glanced back to the blue glowing numbers on her clock. "It's after midnight." "I know," he said. "Please." Angie helped him up through the window. She touched his face and the bruise he knew must be swelling there, but said nothing. Sometimes she knew without asking. Angie helped him out of his jacket and boots, and then slipped down the hall for a few minutes. She came back with a pair of her brother's shorts and a T-shirt, and turned around while he changed out of his wet clothes. She wouldn't let him sleep on the floor. Instead, they lay in her bed spoonwise, her arms wrapped around him, and he listened to the silence of her house, the soft sounds of her breathing, the softly falling rain. Richie remembered his conversation with Tessa, about a million years ago that morning. She'd asked if there'd been someone special. He hadn't told her it had been Nikki. He hadn't told her it had been a quick, hasty decision, or that they'd done it in just the space of a few minutes in her mother's house, or that it hadn't happened since. In the last few seconds before exhausted sleep finally took him, he wondered what it would like to have been Angie. Then a belt descended towards him, over and over again, in a nightmare that always came back, no matter how fast he ran, how well he hid, no matter whose bedroom he took as refuge from his own life. *** Richie was late to work the next morning. MacLeod watched the clock with increasing annoyance. When Richie finally sauntered in around eleven, with a new pair of sunglasses and his shoulders hunched beneath his jacket, MacLeod said, "You're late." "I know. Sorry." Richie sounded subdued, maybe a little nervous. MacLeod eyed him critically. Richie was wearing the same clothes he had the day before. He took the sunglasses off his face and studied the large bruise by the teenager's eye that indicated the night had not gone well for him. Richie didn't say anything, and fixed his eyes on the suit of armor in the corner. "Who did that to you?" MacLeod asked. "Nobody." MacLeod's voice turned soft and dangerous. "Was it your foster father?" Richie mentally snickered at the idea of George Mitchell punching him. "No." "Then who?" Richie took the sunglasses back. "Look, if I wanted you to know, I'd tell you. Just lay off, okay?" MacLeod scrutinized him carefully. "Okay," he said. "We've got work to do." "I was kind of wondering if I could. . . take the rest of the day off." "No," MacLeod said. "We have to pack two deliveries going out this afternoon." Richie sighed and sulked but he stayed and worked the rest of the day. They packed two shipments out by three o'clock with the necessary paperwork and insurance, and then MacLeod took Richie to the bike shop for a new tire. The teenager took off afterwards with a few short words of thanks. He arrived on time Friday morning, different clothes, but with circles under his eyes. When MacLeod suggested that they go running, Richie shook his head and declined. "I'm not up to it today, Mac." MacLeod finished his kata and reached for his towel. "When you going to start telling me what's going on, Richie?" "I don't know what you mean," Richie said defensively. "You look like hell, someone punches you in the face, you're not your usual self - " "You don't know who my usual self is," Richie said, voice rising indignantly, "so don't tell me I'm not him, okay? You're not my father, teacher, social worker, savior, anything." "I'm not trying to be," MacLeod said calmly. 'Then just take two steps back. If I needed your help, I'd ask for it." "Would you?" Richie folded his arms. "Why do you care? I'm nothing to you but the punk kid who broke in here and saw the Knights of the Round Table re-enacting Camelot. You tell me this bunch of crap about people who live forever and expect me to buy that. You give me a job and then start acting like you own me twenty four hours a day. You don't, get it? I'm not the TV movie-of-the-week orphan to reform and turn loose on the world." MacLeod didn't let on how closely Richie's words hit home. The teenager's voice and face were full of the frustration and desperation that were eating him up inside. MacLeod could see it, but he didn't know how to ease it. He didn't know how Richie could live with it, bottled up so tightly inside. "I'm sorry you think that way," MacLeod finally said. "I didn't realize you disliked it here so much." The words stopped Richie like a slap in the face. "I don't," he said, the words sounding strangled in his throat. "You and Tessa have been great." Then, more strongly, his hands thrown out, he stalked around the store. "I mean, look at this place. It's amazing! Stuff that's been here hundreds or thousands of years! Stuff that's priceless. I don't belong with this stuff. Forty, fifty years from now, you can throw me into a grave forever. I'm not going to be worth anything." For a moment, MacLeod was tempted to tell him of his Immortality. But it wouldn't ease what Richie was really feeling - threatened at having to lower his defenses, frightened at the thought of needing help. "What's going on in here?" Tessa asked sleepily from the doorway. "You could wake the dead around here." Richie whirled, and in doing so, knocked the Dresden vase and stand over. The vase fell swiftly and smoothly, succumbing perfectly to gravity, and MacLeod watched as an object that had survived war and firebombings ended its existence in a splattering that sent china shards exploding outward along the hardwood floor. The three of them stared in silence at the ruins. "Oh, shit," Richie said. "It's all right," MacLeod said automatically, although the loss hadn't truly sunk in. "We've got insurance." Deep, wrenching guilt crossed Richie's face. "You can't fix it." "Some things don't need to be fixed," MacLeod said. Richie swiveled back to the shards. "It's my fault," he murmured. "I'll pay for it." "That's an awful lot of forty-dollar days," MacLeod said, not especially trying to be funny. Richie only shook his head and bolted from the store. MacLeod didn't follow. Tessa said, "What in the world was that all about?" "Not about the vase," MacLeod said. Richie didn't return that day. Around dinnertime, MacLeod traced the Mitchell's phone number through the directory and reached Karen Mitchell. He explained to her that he was worried about Richie, and asked if she knew where he was. "Mr. MacLeod," she said after a pause, "Richie doesn't stay here anymore. He hadn't really for a few months now. The other night, when you drove him home, was the first time I'd seen him in weeks." "But I thought he was in your foster custody," MacLeod said, perplexed. "Technically, he is. But he stays with one of his friends. He doesn't come here." "Do you know the name of the friend? Where he lives?" "Janine does. What is it, Mr. MacLeod? Is he in trouble?" "I'm sure he's fine," he said, but the words sounded as hollow as they felt. After a few minutes of discussion with her hand over the phone, Karen Mitchell returned with the name of a Scotty Webster and an address on Gilmore Street. MacLeod found the house a half hour later. The neighborhood was a tough one, with housing values that had plummeted in the wake of crack houses and abandoned property. The yard was overgrown with trash and weeds, and the rotten floorboards of the porch creaked ominously beneath his feet. The living room was lit against the dark night, and through the open window came the smell of cigarettes and pot and the blast of a stereo. He knocked loudly and someone shouted for him to come in. MacLeod waded into a living room of half-sprawled bodies. It didn't take long for him to realize Richie wasn't one of them. A party of some unimaginable proportion had evidently ripped through the place recently, and he was looking at the human debris. One of the larger men stirred from watching a television and a porn movie with its volume turned all the way down. "Who are you?" the man asked. "I'm looking for Richie Ryan." "He's not here," the big man said. "This is my house, you just can't come in." "I was invited in," MacLeod said, and reached down with both hands to haul the man off the floor and up against the wall. "Who's Scotty Webster?" "That's me," a teenager said, coming alive on the couch. He looked Richie's age, but scrawnier. He scrambled over the coffee table. "That's my brother, leave him alone." Bruce was trying to free himself, but MacLeod kept him easily pinned. "Tell me where Richie is," he said to Scotty. Scotty ran his hand through his hair and chewed his bottom lip nervously. "Haven't seen him in a couple of nights. I swear! He hasn't come by." "Didn't you wonder where he is?" MacLeod asked. "Richie's okay, he can take care of himself." Bruce scowled at him. "What do you care? You the police? Probation officer?" "A friend," MacLeod said. "We're Richie's friends," a man said ominously behind MacLeod. He had long blonde hair, a hardened expression, and an attitude that said he wouldn't mind taking MacLeod down then and there. "Joey, man, it's cool," Scotty said. MacLeod turned Bruce loose and turned to the second man. "You're Richie's friends, huh?" "Yeah," Joey answered levelly. "If you're looking to mess with him, you go through us." MacLeod didn't miss the surprised look Scotty Webster threw Joey. "Is that so?" he asked. "You wouldn't happen to be the guy who punched him, would you?" "Richie's my pal," Joey said. "You're not. So why don't you leave?" MacLeod nodded judiciously. "And you just be careful nothing happens to Richie." Back in the Thunderbird, he shook his head at the circumstances of life Richie accepted as inevitable. He stared out into the darkened night, wondering where to go next. Half of him was convinced he should leave Richie alone to work out his own problems. The other half of him remembered his promise to Connor on the banks of the river. He went to ask Karen and Janine Mitchell if they knew where he could find Richie's friend Angie. *** Richie sat at the counter of a Saratoga Street diner, his hands wrapped around a cup of lukewarm coffee, his attention fixed on the folded newspaper beside his cup. He'd stopping reading the classifieds hour before, but the pretext of doing something felt better than the emptiness of doing nothing at all. He had not idea how long he'd been sitting at the counter, and didn't really care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Except that he'd broken a $15,000 vase. Except that Joey had threatened him for no apparent reason, and scared him into staying away from Bruce's house. Except that Angie's father had flatly told Richie that morning that he had to find somewhere else to sleep at night besides his daughter's bedroom. Despite Angie's tears and Richie's best efforts at convincing him otherwise, Mr. Argello considered it inappropriate for Richie to say anywhere but with his foster family and would not be swayed. He was jobless, homeless, in major debt, and in danger of Joey. He'd had worse days, but not lately. Of the nearly six hundred dollars he'd earned at MacLeod's, he had less than two hundred left. Most had gone to Bruce's house, groceries, gasoline, money he owed Scotty, money he owed Angie, and some new clothes. The rest, in his pocket, wouldn't get him real far. It wouldn't buy him more than a week at a fleabag hotel, and certainly wouldn't go anywhere towards getting an apartment. It looked like he was back on the road of crime again, he sighed. Richie glanced at the clock. Nearly eleven o'clock. He dug out enough money to pay his bill as a solid, stocky guy in jeans and a Steelers t-shirt slid onto the stool next to him. "What's the special here?" the man asked. Forty, bland, he looked out of place on Saratoga Street. "Wouldn't know," Richie said. "Don't go," the guy said. "I'm Rob." "I'm leaving," Richie said. Rob caught his arm, a needy hunger in his eyes. "I was hoping to find someone who could show me the sights around here." Richie leveled him with a steady gaze. "Yeah, well, this isn't exactly a tourist hot spot, and I'm not a tour guide. You want action, try the Bull down the street. Or Red's. But not me, got it?" Rob had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah. Right. You just looked . . . lonely." "Not that lonely," Richie shot back. Outside, in glare of headlights and neon signs, Richie took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. He wished things had gone differently with MacLeod and Tessa. He would make the money up to them, somehow. He owed them that much. Belatedly he realized someone was following him. Rob, from the diner, his face apologetic, his eyes desperate for love. "Are you sure I can't convince you otherwise?" he asked, catching Richie's arm again. Richie shrugged free. "No," he said firmly. "Now scram, before I call the cops." "Don't do that," Rob said, and out of the corner of his eye Richie saw a quick movement. Then a hand clamped down over his mouth and an arm wrapped around his neck, dragging him backwards into nearby alley. Richie fought furiously, but a savage punch in the back dropped his legs out from under him and he found himself falling to the cold, wet ground, face to face with muck and garbage, as Rob and his partner fondled his legs and buttocks. "Wish we could take this one home," Rob's partner said. "No," Rob said. "Take him now. We'll leave him here." Richie bit at the hand over his mouth, and managed a hoarse shout for help before one of his attackers hit him on the back of the head and sent him spiraling down a cold, dizzy corridor where the ground heaved beneath him, his own heartbeat felt like a staccato pulse, and his body wouldn't respond to his brain's frantic commands. He felt his jeans being loosened. He knew, with a sickening clarity, what was coming next, even as he was powerless to fight it. Someone grunted. Flesh smacked against flesh. Another sound, like a nose or jaw breaking. Richie struggled to focus on the tall figure in a black coat who knocked Rob aside, kicked Rob's partner, tore both men from their intentions. They ran for the street. The man in the black coat reached for Richie, and he tried to flinch away. "Richie," the man said urgently. "You all right?" He struggled to focus. "MacLeod?" "Yeah," MacLeod said. He hauled him up and held him against the horrid sway in his head. "Come on, let's go. I'll take you home." Richie wondered fuzzily which home MacLeod could possibly mean, then let himself be helped down the alley towards where the Thunderbird sat half-parked on the curb. The image of Rob rose up again in Richie's eyes - Rob with a gun, aimed at them. "I'll teach you not to mess with us," Rob growled. MacLeod shoved Richie to the ground and took two bullets in the chest. The blasting gunfire cleared Richie's head as nothing else could. He stared in disbelief as MacLeod sagged to his knees, his chest wet with blood, blood coming from his mouth and nose in bright bubbles. "Mac!" Richie scrambled to his side. He lowered him to the ground with hands shaking so violently they could have been someone else's. "Mac, oh god. Stay here. I'll get an ambulance - " MacLeod shook his head, but couldn't speak to him. His eyes remained open but glazed over, and he sagged in death in Richie's arms. A sheet of numbness dropped out of the sky and wrapped itself around Richie's entire body. "Oh, Mac," he murmured, holding the lifeless body. Shouts and footsteps dragged him back to reality as the alley's mouth began to crowd with spectators who traded words about police, gunfire, dead, men running, an ambulance. "It's too late," Richie said, looking up into the eyes of one of the diner's waitresses. He somehow got to his feet. The waitress tried to stop him. "You hurt, kid?" "I'm fine," Richie mumbled. He pushed his way past the crowd. He looked at the Thunderbird, but the thought of stealing Mac's car while he lay dead in the alley was too appalling to consider for more than a second. "Get an ambulance!" someone yelled. "He's alive!" Impossible. Richie ignored the shout. He walked away. Towards the nothingness. MacLeod revived in the arms of a blonde waitress, who soothed him with, "You're okay, honey, just hang on. The ambulance will be here in a few minutes." "I'm all right," he said, and pulled himself up. He made a show of peering at his chest and then wrapping his trenchcoat across the bloody shirt. "Just some grazes." "Grazes?" the waitress asked. "Are you nuts? You were shot in the chest!" MacLeod looked for Richie, but didn't see him in the faces of the dozen or so mortals who'd come to see a killing. He made a show, for their benefit, of being unsteady as he climbed to his feet. "Did you see a teenager? Blond hair, green and black jacket?" "He left," someone said. "Mister, you should lay down." MacLeod ignored the advice and the crowd. No sign of Richie in the street. He hoped that the kid had run off in fear and confusion, not fallen prey to the two men who'd been trying to rape him in the alley. Reached at her home, Angie Argello had told him he might find Richie somewhere on Saratoga. It had taken two hours of dedicated searching and a stroke of good timing to be able to save Richie, and now it looked like he had lost him again. The Highlander swore under his breath and started looking again. *** Richie spent the night in the park. He didn't sleep much, because every time his eyes closed he thought of MacLeod laying dead in the alley. Every soft sound made him think Rob and his partner had come back for him. Richie curled up as best he could on a bench along the path where he and MacLeod had run, his arms folded up against the cool night air. Sometime around dawn he might have slept, because Rob the Rapist became Joey, MacLeod rose from the dead, Slan Quince came at Richie with a sword. He woke with a headache and a stiff body under a gray, cloudy dawn, grieving for MacLeod and his unfounded fantasies of living forever. He knew he couldn't stay on the streets. People like Rob would come after him for his youth and looks, or he'd end up hustling at the Bull or Red's to pay for a place to live. He could go to a runaway shelter. As long as they let him crash for a few hours, he would play the game of listening to the counselors, give them some sob story about his family in Idaho or Iowa, and then split. He could go up and down the West Coast, one shelter to the other. Not a great plan. He rejected it, finally, and went to go find breakfast. He found a morning newspaper, but it had no accounts of MacLeod's murder. It must have happened too late in the night for them to include it in the first edition. Richie ate four donuts and two cups of coffee, then took his money to a hotel not far from Saratoga and paid fifty dollars for a room with a mattress that smelled like mildew and a color scheme done mainly in burnt orange. He blocked the door with the dresser in case anyone tried to break in, and barely got his head on the flat pillow before falling asleep. He woke around four, still tired, still emotionally raw, but forced himself to use the payphone in the hall. Tessa answered on the second ring. "Tessa, it's me," he said. "Richie." "Richie! Where in the world are you?" "It's not important. I just wanted to tell you . . . I'm sorry about Mac. God, I'm sorry. If it means anything, he died protecting me." A moment of silence. Then, "Richie, Duncan's not dead. How could you think he was dead?" "I saw him . . . " Richie said, feeling as if the hallway had turned upside down over his head. "He got shot in the chest." "Richie," Tessa said, sounding calm and reasonable, "Mac is alive. He told you, the only way he can die is to have his head chopped off." She was just as insane as MacLeod was. Richie couldn't think of a suitable answer to break through her denial. Shock and grief must have done it; she probably expected her lover of twelve years to walk through the door at any time, despite what the police must have told her. "He's been looking for you ever since," Tessa said, "and I think I hear him now. Hold on." He listened to her drop the phone. Footsteps. Murmured voices. Then MacLeod's voice, angry and worried and relieved at the same time. "Richie?" Richie hung up. He stared at the phone for several shaky seconds. He wondered if he was going to faint. Too much seemed to have happened lately for him to deal with anything else. Gingerly he re-dialed the dead. MacLeod answered on the first ring. "Richie, don't hang up." "I'm not going to," Richie said in a small voice. "I saw you die." "Immortals don't die of bullet wounds." "All that stuff you said . . . was true?" "Yes, it was all true. Where are you?" He couldn't even remember. "Um, downtown. I think. What . . . I don't get it. I mean, I get it, but I don't get it." MacLeod said, "It's not important now. Tessa and I are worried about you. Come home and we'll work it all out." That was the second time MacLeod had used the word home in a way that felt strange and hurtful but simultaneously comforting, as if there was hope. Before he could censor himself he blurted out, "Where's home, MacLeod? Where do I belong?" "You belong with Tessa and I. We want you to move in. We want you to come and stay with us, as long as you like." Richie couldn't answer for a moment. Then he managed, "What about the vase?" "The vase can be replaced. Human beings can't." He didn't know what to say, so he said the first thing that came to mind. "Okay." MacLeod sounded surprised. "Okay?" "Okay," Richie repeated. "Good. Now tell me where you are, and I'll come and get you." "No," Richie said. "It's okay. I can do it. I just got to take care of some things, and then I'll come over. Are you . . . are you sure? You're cool on this?" "I wouldn't have asked otherwise." Richie smiled for the first time in days. "Okay. I'll be over soon." end of part 3 =========================================================================