========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 04:50:46 -0400 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: You Break It . . . 7/7 Part 7 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. THE END 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 congratulatoins 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...:-)