========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 22:32:53 -0400 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: You Break It. . . 4/7 Part Four 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."