Happy Holidays, idontlikegravy! (2/2)
Title: Something Called Living (2/2)
Author: Where We’re Going We Don’t Need...Names!
Written For: idontlikegravy
Fandoms: Highlander: the Series / Highlander: the Raven / Forever
Characters: Richie Ryan, Henry Morgan, Lucas Wahl, Abe Morgan, Joe Dawson, Liam Riley
Rating: PG-13 (some swearing and a touch of graphic violence)
Word Count: 19,600
Author’s Notes: Many, many thanks to ID Pam for the cheerleading, beta reading, and, in the end, the flat out rewriting of the bits I couldn’t do on my own. Not many people are willing to learn a whole new canon just to encourage a crossover. Any remaining mistakes, yadda yadda. This story is a Denial AU. Richie lives. Connor lives. Forever wasn’t canceled. WHEE!
Summary: Of all the morgues in all the world, Richie just had to wake up in Henry Morgan’s.
Previous Part
Richie expected to be unable to sleep. After everything that had happened, he figured he'd be lying awake on the couch all night with his thoughts tumbling through his head like debris in a tornado. Any sleep would have to be fitful and riddled with nightmares, especially because the couch was leather and had buttons in the cushions that all sought to press into his back. He accepted the proffered pillow and blanket gratefully, curled up, and prepared himself for a night of staring at the wall.
Within seconds of the light going out, he followed. He was still sound asleep hours later when the trilling of a ringtone he didn't recognize sounded right next to his head. Why couldn't people turn off their ringers when someone was trying to sleep? He waited, growing crosser in the half-awareness where all he wanted was to roll back over, then finally grabbed the phone. “What?” he snapped.
There was a beat of silence, then a tentative, “Richie? It's Joe.”
Richie sat up, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Sorry, Joe. You woke me up. What time is it?” Idly, he reached under the couch, feeling relief when he found his sword. If he'd had any lingering doubts about Henry's intentions, they were gone now.
“A little after 9:30 for you. I called as soon as I got your message. What's going on?”
“Ugh,” Richie groaned. Telling the whole story over again suddenly felt like way too much effort. He, Henry, and Abe had been up later than any of them wanted to be the night before, talking. It had taken some effort to convince Abe that Richie was, in fact, Immortal. Claiming to being forty in a nineteen-year old body just didn't have the cachet that being over two hundred in a thirty-five year old body did. Eventually, with Henry vouching for what he'd seen in the morgue, Abe decided to accept Richie's assertion, and then discussion had turned to the explosion itself and the incredible nothing the police had to go on.
“Are you OK?” Joe pressed. “It sounded like an emergency, or I would have waited until later in the day to call back.” He sounded more tired than Richie still felt, and Richie realized that it was 6:30 in the morning for him, a man who kept bar hours. That meant that he'd probably been awake all night.
“It was an emergency.” Richie rubbed his face again, dragged his hand back through his hair. He bent over the phone, careful to keep his voice down so that he didn't disturb his hosts. “Now it's just a crisis. I died. Lost everything.”
Joe pushed out a breath through his teeth; he knew what that meant as well as any mortal could. “Did anyone see you?”
“Turns out I might be OK there,” Richie answered. “Look, I called because I need to know if there are any other Immortals in the city.”
“Richie, you know I can't-”
“Dammit, Joe. This isn't...business.” He stumbled over the word, using it because he hadn't told Henry and Abe everything. “I'm not looking for trouble. I just need a place to lay low for a few days while I figure out what to do next. Someone I can trust who won't try to come after me.”
Joe was silent for a moment, then Richie heard the clatter of keys as Joe began typing. “Before I tell you anything, you swear you aren't headhunting?”
“I'm not that guy anymore. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Joe answered, softly, indulgently like a parent talking about his son's recovery from drug addiction. “What happened, exactly?”
Richie frowned; Joe didn't usually need to ask those types of questions unless he thought there might be a discrepancy in the information. “Didn't you see the report?”
“I only look at the reports that have been flagged for special interest, these days,” Joe reminded him. “Terminal reports. Headhunters. Public Challenges that need to be hushed up. Nothing about you has shown up in the alerts.”
That was…odd. Richie knew his Watcher was still pretty green, but if she'd been allowed to go out in the field at all, it was because she'd proven her ability to do her job. He wondered what her reason was for withholding the information on the fire and his death. What did she know that he didn't?
More keys clattered, and Joe muttered his way through a few search screens, his own late night making him slower to find the relevant information. Not wanting to interrupt and derail him, Richie refrained from pointing out that he hadn't answered the question. At last Joe said, “OK, here's a guy. Friend of Amanda's. He relocated to New York about a year ago.”
“What kind of friend?” Richie's thoughts immediately jumped to any of Amanda's criminal buddies who popped up whenever they wanted help to steal something. “I don't need a safe cracker or...or a stick up man,” he added, thinking specifically of Cory, who had a way of taking any situation and turning it into a clusterfuck.
Joe let out a bark of laughter. “Not that kind. Turns out she keeps company with a lot of interesting people. You want the info, or not?”
Well, he'd asked. If Joe was willing to part with it, he must have reason to think that it wouldn't affect the Game. “Yeah, I do.”
Joe told him, and Richie immediately understood why Joe hadn't put up more of a fight. “Thanks.” He was moving his thumb toward the end call button when another thought hit him. “One more thing: Do you guys have a record of someone named Henry Morgan?”
“That's the owner of the phone you're using?” At Richie's stunned silence, Joe said, “You're losing your touch, kid. Caller ID?”
Richie knocked the heel of his hand against his forehead, unable to believe that he'd missed such an obvious detail. “OK, I deserve that one. Yeah, that's the guy.”
“Lemme check. He Immortal?”
Now that was a tough question to answer. On the one hand, the mission of the Watchers was to record the histories of all the long-lived people who'd witnessed and shaped so much of history. On the other, the reason they were doing that was because of the Game and the fact that some day there wouldn't be any more Immortals left to tell their own stories. Based on what he'd said last night, Henry wasn't going to have that problem. Remembering how Henry had protected his secret, Richie decided to return the courtesy; he could always change his mind later if he needed to. “He's not one of us,” Richie said, opting for a version of the truth.
“Then why would you think he'd be in the system?” Joe asked, sounding both confused and a little put out.
“I'm just covering my bases, Joe. A guy's gotta know whose phone he's borrowing, ya know?”
Joe didn't know. He didn't understand Richie's reasoning at all, which was fine because Richie wasn't trying to explain clearly. “Then you'll be happy to know that we've got nothing on him.”
“Appreciate it.” He hesitated, a part of him not wanting to hang up, to break the connection with a familiar voice and a person he'd been friends with for more than twenty years. There was something else nagging at him, too, something that he couldn't quite pin down. “Call me at this number if anything else comes up, OK?” He waited for the agreement, hung up. Sitting with his legs splayed, he cradled the phone for awhile as if the screen would tell him anything he didn't already know. In the end, he stood up without deleting the call from the call log and headed into the kitchen in search of breakfast.
*~*~*
To his surprise, Henry was sitting at the kitchen table. The newspaper was spread open in front of him and a half-drunk cup of coffee sat off to the side, which explained why Richie hadn't heard him moving around. He looked up when Richie came in and gestured toward the oven. “There's a plate of sausage and eggs in there, if you're hungry. Coffee's on the counter, and there's cream in the refrigerator. I've already eaten.”
“Aren't you supposed to be at work?”
“I took the day off. I thought someone should be here when you woke up.” It sounded thoughtful, but Henry could also mean that he didn't trust Richie not to rob him blind or to get out of Dodge without leaving a forwarding address. It was ironically comforting to see Henry take such a basic precaution given that he didn't know how dangerous Richie was.
Richie pulled out the plate and sat down opposite Henry. The newspaper filled the table between them, its sections carefully folded with the meticulousness of someone who read every word of the news. “If I didn't believe you were two hundred before, I do now,” Richie quipped, nodding at the display. He started in on the plate while waiting to see if Henry would take offense at his comment. He didn't, and Richie smiled to himself. He liked being able to be open with someone else about ages. He had taken that freedom for granted when he lived in Seacouver, and it hadn't been much of an option since he finally left, as his opportunities for talking to other Immortals largely consisted of trash talk about who was going to behead whom. “Listen, I hate to impose any more than I already have, but if you could spot me a few bucks for the subway, I'd appreciate it. I need to go see someone. I can pay you back later today.”
“I'll come with you,” Henry announced.
Ah, Richie thought, Henry was afraid of Richie vanishing before he could get his witness statement. Considering that Richie had as much said he was going to do that, it was hard to blame him. “Are you sure? I'm getting pretty good at not getting lost.”
A wicked spark flashed in Henry's eye. “Someone of your tender years could get hurt,” he quipped back. “I wouldn't want to be held responsible for that.”
“Funny, old man. Very funny.” He dropped into silence after that, turning his focus to the plate. His body still craved calories from the amount of regeneration it had done, and now that he wasn't running on adrenaline, it had decided to collect.
Only later, after he'd showered and changed into a borrowed pair of jeans that hung loosely on him and a button down shirt that stretched across shoulders that were muscled from years of weapons training, did he discover that the camaraderie with Henry was still going to take a lot of work. He collected his sword, realized that he still had no place to put it. “Could I, uh, also borrow your coat? Or another one like it, if you have one?”
Henry flipped a hat onto his head and looked askance at the sword. “Why don't you leave that here? An antique that valuable shouldn't be taken on public transport.”
Richie glanced down at the sword, wishing yet again that he had that option. “I can't. I need it with me.”
“Why?”
God, how he hated having to talk about this part. For a moment, he toyed with letting Henry think that the sword was some kind of very sharp security blanket. People carried guns for the illusion of safety; why not three and half feet of steel? With a slight shake of his head, he shut down that train of thought. He didn't want to start lying now. “Remember how I said that I knew other Immortals? There are a lot of us out there, and most of us...are not friends.”
Henry's expression went dark. “Why do you need the sword?” he asked again, his voice even darker. He suspected the answer, and didn't like it.
“In case I have to kill them,” Richie answered.
Henry went still, his understanding of who this stranger was and what he was capable of undergoing a visible shift. “How? You're immortal. I saw it myself. If a fire that covers eighty percent of one’s body in burns isn't enough damage to keep you down, what is?”
“The kind of damage that can be inflicted with one of these,” Richie replied, hefting the blade so that the morning sunlight streaming in the window glimmered off the fine beveling of the blade. “Please don't ask for me to be more specific.”
“You've done this? Killed other people?”
“Yes,” Richie admitted.
“But only in self-defense?”
Richie didn't look away. He wanted to, but if Henry was going to understand what Richie's kind of Immortality was, he had to know about the ugly side, too. “No.”
Henry blanched, looked like he was going to be sick. Regret for everything he'd done to help settled over him. He shrugged out of his coat and threw it at Richie, who put it on and made the sword disappear inside as only an Immortal could. The coat still wasn't tailored for the job, but Richie'd had a lot more practice than Henry did.
“You still want to come with me?” Richie asked.
From the way Henry stalked as he shepherded him out the door, Richie suspected that the next time he let him out of sight, it would only be because the police were dragging him away.
The sidewalks thrummed with people despite the lateness of the morning. Clear skies and a temperature warm enough that people could actively appreciate it before the descent into winter cast a general good mood over the pedestrians that only made Richie's altercation with Henry more pronounced.
They were passing a gyro restaurant when Henry bumped up next to Richie. “I met someone else like me. He tried to make me kill him, and I didn't,” he stated, as if Richie should have chosen the same way. “I'm not a killer.”
I am, Richie thought. “It's not the same thing,” he said, instead. Then, realizing what Henry had implied, he asked, “You can be killed permanently?”
“Not yet.” Henry clipped off the words; he had nothing more to say on that subject.
Richie didn't press. If he wasn't willing to share his vulnerability, he couldn't demand that Henry share his.
They dodged around a group of people who were hovering in front of an electronics store, admiring whatever new item was on sale that week, then turned at the next corner. The entrance to the subway stop sat in front of them. With each step toward it, Richie felt his options narrowing. He could still disappear into the crowd, slip away into a store or alley. Once they descended into the subway tunnels, that would become harder and harder as they were funneled into increasingly confined spaces.
They started down the stairs. A series of posters on the walls exhorting people to join the Armed Forces caught Richie's eye, and an idea came to him. “You ever been in a war?” he asked, knowing that there was no way Henry hadn't. Anyone who'd lived as long as he had wouldn't have their pick of wars to join. Based on the quality of his accent, Richie suspected that Henry had been raised to be soldier.
“Yes,” Henry said. His shoulders hunched in as he remembered the atrocities he'd witnessed, an all too familiar pose.
“Think of it like that, like we're at war with each other.”
Henry looked for a second like he was going to argue, then he turned away, mulling the thought over.
In silence, Richie studied the map and figured out what train they needed, then turned his attention to observing the other people waiting on the platform so that he didn't have to see what judgment Henry was going to pass. Business people on their way to lunch. College students on their way to or from their universities. Mothers with strollers. Fathers with their children's hands clenched tight in their own. Unconsciously, he began searching for the familiar face of his Watcher. She had to be lurking in the crowd somewhere.
The train came, and Richie and Henry boarded. Despite the crowd on the platform, the car was mostly empty, only a dozen other people spaced around the seats and the poles. The sword in his coat would make sitting awkward, so Richie found a place to stand as far from anyone else as he could. Henry started for a seat, but swerved when he saw that Richie hadn't and came to stand next to him.
“It must be very lonely,” Henry murmured, “to know that there are others you can relate to and yet have them out of reach.”
Richie kept his eyes on the doors. Through the windows, he saw the other platforms and the tunnel walls zooming by. Not once did he catch even the faintest sense of another Immortal. “It's not that simple. We can form truces, cease-fires. I do have friends like me. I had a teacher; he's somewhere in Europe right now. Either that or Scotland.” Saying it, he saw how much better his situation had been than Henry's. Richie'd had someone to explain what he was, someone to teach him how to survive. He still had people who could understand his experiences and help him solve the problems that arose. “I didn't have to go through this alone.”
Henry shifted, gearing up to ask another question when his phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he handed it straight to Richie. “It's for you.”
The caller could only be one person. “Two calls in one day, Joe?” Richie asked, by way of answering. “To what do I owe the honor?”
From across the country, over a phone signal that was roughened from its travels, came an answer Richie never thought he'd hear: “Your Watcher is missing.”
“What?”
“I got suspicious about the lack of alerts, so I went looking. She missed her check-ins last night and this morning, and isn't answering her phone or her email.”
Missing? And Joe was telling him? “Have you tried the hospitals? She might have been injured.” The other people in the car were studiously not paying any attention to him, except for an old woman near the door who was giving Richie the stink eye. He imagined that she didn't approve of him being on his phone at all. He flashed her an “it's out of my hands” look, then turned away so that she couldn't lip read him. For all he knew, she might be a Watcher, too. Or worse.
“Already checked them. There's no one with her name or matching her description. We're working on the morgues now. That one's trickier. You didn't tell me about the explosion.”
“I didn't think I had to,” Richie answered. “Isn't it your job to know these things? You're the one with eyes everywhere.”
“Touché, kid.”
“More importantly, what do you want me to do about it?” The Watchers had to have encountered situations like this before. Knowing them, they probably had lots of very thick books laying out the rules for dealing with Watchers who had gone missing.
“Absolutely nothing. No, take that back. Until we learn more, there is one thing you can do.”
Joe didn't have to say it. If he hadn't been standing on public transport, Richie'd have said it for him. He might even have been sarcastic about it. “You know I always do,” he answered, and heard Joe's grunt of acknowledgment. Richie hung up, and for all of half a second debated whether a well-meaning, but ultimately useless, phrase like “Watch your head” was worth listening to. The train screeched to a stop at the next station, the doors whooshed open, and Richie once again did what he'd done best his whole life. “Change of plans,” he informed Henry. “I have someone to find.”
*~*~*
In the bright midday light, Richie's old building looked even worse. The water that had doused the fire had left a soggy, sodden lump of half-collapsed brick and burned wood that it hadn't been enough to wash away. It was hard to look at it and not see the ghosts of the people who'd died and the dreams they'd lost.
Across the street were brownstones that now looked strong and welcoming, by comparison. Richie studied them all for several minutes, comparing what he saw now to where he'd seen lights the previous night, checking angles, visualizing where a person might stand to see without being seen. Finally, he selected the building slightly catty-corner from where his studio had been. “There,” he said, pointing to a window that was mostly taken up by a mounted air-conditioning unit and obscured the rest of the way with a drape.
“What gives you reason to think that this person saw anything?” Henry asked. On the way over, Richie explained that he had a lead on another witness, one with far fewer secrets than he had.
“Is that why you're so reluctant to aid the case,” Henry had asked, “because you want to avoid police scrutiny?”
“Wouldn't you be?” Richie sighed. “My identity here isn't very solid. I wasn't expecting to need more than the paperwork it takes to get a business license and a rental. So, yeah not wanting anyone to look too closely at me is definitely a consideration.”
Henry nodded. No matter what the differences were in how their immortalities worked, they still had the fact of long lives and un-aging faces in common, and the commensurate problems. “But it wasn't the only one, was it?”
“You,” Richie'd said, jabbing a finger at him, “are too astute.”
At the compliment, a flash of embarrassment passed over Henry's face. “Are you willing to tell me?”
“It might make more sense if I showed you,” Richie answered. He thought about it, then amended, “Or it won't. It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.”
At the door of the house, Richie rattled the locked door knob, verified that he was going to have to break the door down. “The other thing that doesn't make a lot of sense,” he said to Henry, “is why I care. You wouldn't happen to have a ball point pen on you?”
Henry did. He handed it over, then politely turned his back so that he didn't have to see Richie picking the lock.
Richie led the way inside, then up to the apartment he'd selected. He picked that lock, too.
The apartment they found was two rooms with stained white walls and worn beige carpet. A futon mattress was thrown on the floor and the garbage can was stuffed with fast food wrappers. This was a place that was being used for camping, not living. The reason for it became obvious when they saw the setup in front of the window: a chair, a rolling cart with a laptop, a set of binoculars, and two telescopes. One telescope was aimed in the direction of Richie's studio, the other toward where his apartment window would have been.
“You have a stalker?” Henry asked, reaching the obvious conclusion.
“That's what I keep saying! Except they call themselves Watchers-that's with a capital W-and they're scary organized. They have records on my kind going back thousands of years. Mostly, though, they're harmless. 'Observe and record, but never interfere,'” he stated, mocking the Oath. “As it happens, my Watcher is missing. That's what the phone call on the train was about.”
While Henry looked through the telescopes and determined what the viewer could have seen, Richie opened the laptop and began scrolling through the final notes.
“And look at this,” he announced. “It turns out she not only saw the explosion, but she went down to try to help people. Never interfere, my ass.” A note captured his eye and he scrolled back some more. She'd been a careful record keeper, noting dates, times, and details without letting her opinions color what she saw. One particular detail had raised a flag that she'd started keeping track of in a second log. “Huh. It looks like I did have a stalker. A real one. Some guy's been hanging around outside the studio since I moved in, keeping track of me.” Abruptly, he remembered the stranger he'd seen through the studio window before the explosion.
“Stalking is often prompted by a desire for a relationship with the target, usually romantic or sexual,” Henry volunteered. “The stalker may believe that he has a relationship with the target and is seeking reciprocation.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “It could also be motivated by a desire for revenge or justice, with the stalker believing that the target has deliberately wronged him.” A raised eyebrow at Richie indicated that Henry thought the latter was the more likely choice.
Richie threw his hands up defensively. “Hey, I didn't ask for this, either.”
“Conscription,” Henry muttered, as if that was all that needed to be said. Louder, in a question meant for Richie, he asked, “Do you think this second stalker knows that you're-” The rest of the question was bitten off as he straightened up suddenly.
Richie slammed the laptop shut and whirled around, following where Henry's attention had gone. Every alarm in his body was going off, except the most important one.
A man stood in the doorway with a gun pointed at them. He was stocky with thinning brown hair and cheeks that had been reddened from heat. In jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and a black windbreaker, he looked like he'd swung by the apartment to grab a hostage on his way home from a day at the park. Richie recognized him immediately as the peeper he'd seen the previous day.
“Knows you're what?” the man demanded. He stepped into the room, shifting the gun back and forth between Richie and Henry like he couldn't decide whom to shoot first. His hand was shaking, though his voice was hard. He thought he was in control, but he didn't know if he could do what was necessary to keep that power. “Don't stop talking on my account. See, I been trying to figger out what's so special about you. I asked her. I asked her and she wouldn't say nothing.”
Her. His Watcher. The man must have caught up with her in the chaos of the explosion. He'd better not have hurt her. Pushing his concern aside, Richie focused on getting out of this situation without killing the idiot who had created it. This man might be the only person who knew where the Watcher was.
“Man, you don't want to do this.” Richie raised his hands into surrender position while adjusting his weight so that he could throw himself out of the line of fire faster. Getting shot hurt.
“Put the gun down and let's discuss this like reasonable men,” Henry added.
“Don't think so,” the man stated. “See, I got some guesses, and right now I'm thinking Witness Protection. You in Witness Protection?” He aimed the question right at Richie. “I bet I could get some smart money for turning you in.”
Richie frowned, trying to make sense of the accusation. Witness Protection? Why would this man think that...a person with no apparent history who was under constant surveillance and who mostly kept to himself would be a person of interest who was supposed to be in hiding and who had attracted the wrong kind of attention. It suddenly seemed so obvious that Richie couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it himself. He started to laugh, choked it back before it got him killed. “What if I am?”
Henry threw him a questioning look: What are you doing?
The man grinned like he'd been vindicated. “I knew it! Knew you wasn't famous cause I never heard of you and this-” He gestured at the telescope setup- “Ain't the way paparazzi do things.”
“What do you want?” Henry asked.
Turning even redder, the man roared, “Shut up! I dunno who you are and I don't care, so shut up! All you gotta do is follow directions.” His eyes narrowed like he'd been struck with a great idea, and he again brought his focus to bear on Richie. “Do what I say, or I'll kill him.”
What the hell was he supposed to do with that? Richie stood, stunned, while out of the corner of his eye he could see Henry trying not to grin. “Yeah, I don't think that's going to work the way you think it will,” he finally managed. It was getting harder and harder to keep a straight face; he felt his eyes beginning to water from the effort. If they didn't do something to change the scene soon, he was going to break down. “So, are we just going to stand here, or what?”
The man had clearly not thought through what he was going to do after he caught Richie. He shuffled from one foot to the other, dropped the barrel of the gun and jerked it back up again.
“Perhaps you should take us to the police,” Henry suggested. “You do have a car, yes? We could all walk quietly outside and get in your car.”
“Outside, yes,” the man answered, happy to latch onto a plan, no matter how thinly constructed. “Not the police. They'll ask too many questions. I got a different idea.”
With the gun on Henry and Richie ostensibly a cooperative hostage, he led them down the stairs. “You still ain't told me what you done,” he man said. “You rat out someone important?”
“Nah,” Richie answered. “I just have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Henry’s mouth tighten with a bitten back laugh since he had now witnessed the truth of Richie’s statement no fewer than three times in less than a day.
*~*~*
Richie wasn't waiting until they were outside, though having enough room to swing a sword would be nice. He wasn't waiting until they were secluded, though the need to have fights away from onlookers was drilled into him. And he wasn't waiting until he and Henry worked out some kind of secret plan, because he didn't need the help. He was waiting for the right moment, though.
As a group, they left the building and headed down the street to one of the wide alleys that bisected the block. The chain link gate that was supposed to prevent people from going into the alley had been ripped down some time before and bags of rotting garbage were now piled against the rusting metal like that's what it had been meant for. Farther down, an overflowing Dumpster sat amidst another pile of garbage bags, wooden pallets, and broken crates.
“That way,” the man said, giving Henry a push forward with the barrel of the gun.
Henry and Richie spared a glance at each other; going into alleys with armed nutcases was how people got killed.
“Uh-uh,” Richie said with a shake of his head. “Your car's not down there. We agreed to go to your car.”
“Car's on the other end,” the man promised. “This way's fastest.”
“And has fewer witnesses,” Henry pointed out.
On the next stoop, a trio of teenage girls dressed in tight jeans and spangled shirts sat clustered with their heads together. Two men in construction overalls and hard hats argued outside the pawnshop. Another man in jeans and a thread-bare brown blazer stood smoking a cigarette and idly watching the sparse traffic. Behind them, a homeless woman trundled past. Her clothes were thickly layered and shabby and she kept her head down, hands working in front of her like she was trying to finger-weave the air.
“You try to yell for help and I'll shoot your friend,” the man reminded Richie.
Richie saw what he had been waiting for, and stopped trying to stall. “Okay, fine. I'll go. Just...don't do anything.” It was so hard to sound frightened when all the threats were toothless. To aid the charade, he pulled on his memories of his first death, when he still believed he was a regular mortal and he knew that the mugger was seconds away from ending his life. The tremor that came into his voice must have been enough because they started moving again.
In a few steps they reached the Dumpster. A few more would take them out of sight of anyone on the street.
“She told me you wasn't nobody,” the man suddenly said. “She told me, she said she was studyin' for her PI license and practicing on you because where her window was. I knew she was lyin'.”
With a small shrug, Richie responded, “Wouldn't know. I've never met her before.”
“Now you're lyin'.”
“I'm not, but believe what you want to. It's a free country.” Richie whirled around then and hit the man's gun arm with his forearm, then twisted the man's hand until the gun fell loose. Hooking his leg behind the man's ankle, he destabilized him and sent him crashing to the alley floor. The man's head bounced hard off the asphalt. Richie dropped down and grabbed him in a wrist hold that either required its victim to stay still or to dislocate his elbow. “Even so, I think you should tell me where she is.”
“Richie, he's hurt.” Henry crouched and began probing the man's head, trying to assess the injury without moving him. All the man could do was blink at the sky.
“That's not my problem. He shouldn't have tried to capture us. Have I mentioned how much I hate being used as bait?”
Henry's fingers paused and he looked critically at Richie. “He needs medical attention. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“Not until he tells me where-” The fact that he didn't know his Watcher's name had just become a problem. He put an extra bit of pressure on the man's wrist and got back the expected grunt of pain. “Where is she?”
The man's lips moved, formed a soundless word. Safe.
Good enough. Richie backed up so that Henry could work. Like it or not, they were going to have to call an ambulance, unless one was already on the way. He figured one had been called the second they stepped into the alley. The police were probably right behind it. Some of the people outside would have understood exactly what they were seeing, and who the winner would be.
A small pool of blood was spreading out from under the man's head; he'd hit hard enough to break the skin, and doubtlessly to give himself a massive headache, but he was still conscious. Still tracking. His other hand flapped across his stomach as if testing for a different injury. He found what he was looking for at his side. With a speed that belied his head injury, he pulled out the knife that had been secreted at his waist, plunged it into Henry's stomach, and yanked.
In the commotion of Henry's yell, the man lumbered to his feet and staggered down the alley. The back of his head was damp with blood and he ran like a man who couldn't quite see where he was going. Catching him would be easy, but Richie decided to let him go.
Instead, he caught Henry as he swayed and helped him move for support against the wall.
“Stop him,” Henry gasped. “Don't worry about me.” Henry's shirt had already turned red and the handle of the knife stuck out from the center of the stain like a pin on a butterfly display. Despite knowing better, Richie waited for a sign that the wound was already starting to heal, like his would have. With each second that passed without getting it, he had a tick of doubt that Henry was really immortal. Wouldn't that be a hell of a way to find out that he'd been scammed?
“He's not going to get very far,” Richie said. Henry gave a deep groan of pain that also conveyed a dubious note. “Remember how I said that the Watchers were scary organized? I saw at least two on the way here. It's better to let them handle him.”
Distantly, they heard an ambulance siren. It might not have been coming their way, but Richie knew that his luck didn't work like that.
“Damn,” Henry uttered. “Stomach wounds. One of the most painful ways to die, you know, when stomach acid gets into the body cavity...assuming he hit any vital organs...if he didn't...” He trailed off. Without a formal assessment, it was still obvious that a normal recovery could take weeks, barring any complications. Weeks, and a lot of questions.
Richie closed his eyes, trying to decide if the offer he wanted to make was tacky or generous. The siren was getting closer and Henry wasn't dying very fast. Screw it, he thought, then: “Do you want me to kill you?”
“God, yes. Would you?” Henry grasped the knife and yanked it out with a second yell that would have attracted rubberneckers in wealthier neighborhoods. It was a small blade, about three inches long, with a serrated edge. One like it could be purchased at any camping store. Fresh blood welled up in the now-empty wound and Henry's knees buckled. “Stab me in the heart.”
Richie took the knife, ignoring the wetness on it, and flipped it around, trying to get his hand familiar with this blade. It was too small, too light. All the years he'd spent training with a sword and he was stymied by a blade smaller than the width of his hand. “I don't know how to kill with this.” Gut a fish; sure, he could do that. Strip a tree branch. Core an apple. Not do a clean kill on the first try. A sudden image sprang to mind of him kneeling over Henry's body, stabbing and stabbing while the paramedics rolled into the alley. Don't worry, he imagined himself saying to the EMTs, as soon as I finish killing him, he'll be fine.
Henry tried to press his fingers to the place on his chest where the knife needed to puncture, but his hands were shaking too much; there was too much blood.
“What about a gunshot?” Richie asked, his gaze alighting on the weapon that had brought them here. He had spent some time at the target range; it had only taken one late night argument with Methos to convince him of the merits of shooting Immortals to shut them up.
“Yes, good. Much easier.”
Richie risked letting go of Henry long enough to sweep up the gun. The safety was already off. They were both lucky that the man hadn't shot them by accident. “You're sure?”
Henry gave a fluttering nod, his face tight.
Positioning the gun against Henry's heart, Richie took a deep breath, steeling himself, then pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. He tried again, got another click. It was empty. “It's empty! The asshole didn't even have it loaded!”
They heard a whoop from the ambulance warning someone to get out of the way.
With hard fought for words, Henry instructed, “Use...what...you know.” He dragged his gaze up to meet Richie's, and in the effort, Richie saw that Henry had figured out his vulnerability.
Richie swallowed hard. Henry was asking to be beheaded-the one method of killing that left no margin for error, as even a partial decapitation was still fatal. In Richie's world, it was absolutely fatal, even for people who called themselves Immortal. And it was what Richie knew. God, did he know it. Last chance, no going back. If Henry hadn't been above-board about his immortality, or if he was wrong about how it worked, Richie would kill him permanently.
“Do it. No time.”
He was right; Henry was right. They only had a couple minutes, maybe less, and then it would be too late to do anything at all. “Kneel down,” he said, helping Henry follow the instruction.
“Wait,” Henry gasped.
For a second, Richie thought that this was it; this was the moment when Henry would reveal that it had all been a send-up. The pictures had been faked, the history invented. It was some kind of charade to get him to drop his guard, and now the Hunters were going to swoop in. But Henry hadn't hesitated at being stabbed or shot; if that wasn't conviction, Richie didn't know what was.
With the kind of careful movements of someone who had to concentrate to make his body obey, Henry emptied his pockets. He handed over his wallet and his pocket watch and directed Richie to pull off his shoes. Then he told Richie where to meet him afterward, and gave his final nod of assent.
Richie freed his sword and stepped back. He set his stance. Raised the blade. Swung.
Henry's body tumbled over and his head hit the ground with a sick crunch.
Over the next few seconds, Richie braced himself for the Quickening that his instincts told him would be coming, listened to the ambulance draw ever closer, and watched Henry's body finish its death throes while remaining stubbornly there with only one thought in his head: How the fuck was he going to explain this to Abe?
Just as the ambulance screeched to a halt at the mouth of the alley, Henry's body vanished, and with it most of the physical evidence for what had transpired. Handy, that. Only the blood from the stalker remained, and without him, the ambulance and the police had nothing. A flood of relief washing over him greater than any he'd ever felt, Richie scooped up the shoes and ran for it.
Several blocks away, he hailed a cab. A block after that, he pulled out Henry's phone. Abe's number wasn't in the contacts-Henry presumably had it memorized and never felt the need to enter it-and Richie didn't know who else was safe to call. That only left one option, and as the cab inched its way through a traffic jam, he buckled and called it.
*~*~*
He arrived at the river to see Henry sitting, dressed, on one of the benches that decorated the river walk. A dark-haired, leather-jacket clad stranger sat next to him, leaning in to hear something that Henry was saying. The man straightened up as Richie approached, then stiffened when their Presences came into contact.
Henry watched as the two Immortals drew together, wary, cautious, each moving with the control of people who have honed their bodies into weapons.
“Richie Ryan,” he introduced, holding out his hand.
“Liam Riley,” the other man responded in a strong Irish accent. He grasped the proffered hand then broke into a broad grin. “Amanda's mentioned you a time or two. She seems to think you're 'darling.'”
Richie shook his head in fond exasperation. Amanda's ability to assess people's characters could be erratic and was often hinged on how much excitement they brought to her life. Since he hadn't been on a crime spree with her recently-or ever-he decided that she was being generous, in her own way. “She says that about everyone.”
“Only the people she likes. That's a good enough endorsement for me.”
“Thank you for coming. Hell, thank you for believing me.” Richie'd called Liam and had done his best to explain the situation without the cab driver overhearing anything he shouldn't. In the end, he'd had to ask Liam to trust him, and had to hope that Henry wouldn't be angry that Richie had told his secret without permission.
“I'm not one to deny miracles, in whatever form they take,” Liam responded. He touched the white square of his clergy collar that peeked through the gap at the top of his jacket.
“No, I guess not,” Richie agreed. A man who had been Immortal himself for almost three hundred years and a priest for nearly all of that couldn't say what was or was not impossible in the world. Now that the threat assessment was over, Richie turned his attention to Henry. His hair was still wet from his dunking in the river and he was hunched with cold despite the blanket around his shoulders, but his head was mercifully attached and his brown eyes were bright with life.
Henry pushed to his feet and joined them. Richie handed over the shoes and other accessories, holding back only the coat for himself until Liam could help him get a new one. “Your friend and I have been having quite a chat about the War of the American Rebellion,” Henry said. He sounded giddy, as only someone who'd found a peer among a crowd of children could. “It's fascinating to get an eye-witness perspective on the stories my father told me.”
“They call it the Revolutionary War here in this country we've both adopted,” Liam corrected, though without vitriol. “And I think we should continue this discussion over a drink. My church isn't far. What do you say?” Off their agreement, he stepped into the lead.
Henry waited until the priest was a few paces in front before he observed, “He's not carrying a sword.” A couple hours before, it might have been an accusation aimed at Richie. Now, it was merely a curiosity.
The city that had seemed so quiet the night before now thrummed with activity. Lunchtime crowds filled the sidewalks and vehicles packed the streets. In the din of honking horns and pulsing bass, the waterfall of voices that pressed to be heard, Richie couldn't explain what Joe had told him: How Liam had put down his sword nearly two centuries before Richie’s birth, and how he refused to pick it back up, even if it cost of him his head. He wondered if that’s what had spurred Liam to bring up with the Revolutionary War with Henry.
“No, he's managed to find a different way.” Richie observed Liam's easy gait, how he strolled through the crowd without seeming to worry who might be out there. His collar would offer him some protection, spending most of his time on Holy Ground, more. “It works well enough for him.”
“But it's not for you?”
The light changed before they reached the corner. Liam had already crossed. Folding his hands, he stepped off to the side to wait. The distance was just far enough to put him on the edge of sensing range. His gait had been easy, but the way his eyes flicked through the throngs, searching for the Presence that dipped in and out of his awareness as the crowds jostled him and Richie toward and away from each other showed that fear still remained.
Richie rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the prickling that warned him of danger and to give his hand something to do so it wouldn't reach for his sword. “In case you haven't noticed, I'm not good at staying out of the way. I gave it a try once.” He thought about how quickly, how desperately, he'd taken to the false Methos and his message of peace. And how that had ended. “The price was too high for me. Someday, it'll be too high for him, too. We don't get to live lives of peace.”
“That's a shame.” Henry looked thoughtful for a second, then added, “Decapitation isn't the most pleasant way to die.”
“Thanks,” Richie replied, letting the sarcasm drip freely. “Now I know what to look forward to.” As close as he'd come to losing his head on far-too-many occasions, he'd already given the subject a lot of thought. He wondered, if he asked, if Henry would tell him what those last seconds were actually like. He wondered if he wanted to know.
Henry shrugged, apologetically. “It is still preferable to many others, such as being burned to death. Or dying from a perforated intestine. On that topic: I'll need to check in with the police tomorrow and update them on what we know about the explosion.”
“I'll come with you,” Richie said, surprising himself with the announcement. The signal changed and he and Henry joined the surge of people in the crosswalk. Liam picked up his lead, careful now to stay inside sensing range as he led them down the next block.
“I thought you wanted to avoid police scrutiny? What changed? Does it have something to do with your Watcher?”
“Sort of. Not exactly. I mean, she'd definitely make a better witness. As long as she doesn't mention what I am, or who she works for, there's nothing in her Oath to keep her from talking about what she saw.”
“And your other reason?”
The corner of Richie's mouth quirked up in a grin. “Trouble has a way of finding me, no matter how good a job I think I'm doing staying away from her. I figure, the faster we get this round resolved, the faster I can go back to trying to live my life before she finds me again.”
“If it makes it easier, one of the detectives on the case is a woman I've trusted with my own secret. She would understand...almost none of yours, come to think of it. Perhaps if you stuck to the bare minimum, she would be willing to minimize your role in the investigation.”
Liam chose that moment to drop back and insinuate himself between the two men. “Come along, gentlemen. Let's try to get there before we all die of old age.”
Since stating the obvious would probably play right into Liam's point, Richie decided that the only thing he could do was walk faster.
*~*~*
They only left the rectory after Abe called in a panic to find out where Henry was. “You weren't at home. Your work said you'd called in sick. You didn't leave a note.”
“I'm fine, Abe,” Henry assured him. “Richie and I have merely had a bit of an adventure. I'll tell you about it later.”
At least, that's what Richie thought Henry meant to say. What came out had less syntax and more vowels. From his seat at the rectory's kitchen table, Richie had no problem hearing Abe yell, “Are you drunk!?”
Henry let out a loud guffaw, as if being drunk was a proud accomplishment. “Quite.” He reached for the bottle of whisky in the middle of the table to refill his glass, and missed. His hand flapped into the empty air for a moment and then hit the table hard.
Pulling the bottle out of reach, Liam suggested, “I think it's time to stop now.” He was also drunk, though much more restrained about it than Henry was. “There'll be plenty of time for another round later. Plenty of time.”
“Where are you? I'll come pick you up,” Abe asked. He sounded like the father preparing to reprimand his teenage son.
“Yes, thank you, Abe. That would be a good idea,” Henry might have said.
Since Henry could barely speak, Liam took the phone and explained how to find his church. It took him longer to assure Abe that Henry was, indeed, fine, that he'd only had a few more surprises in his day than a man of his age was used to.
The last left Abe speechless for a long second before he roared out, “Henry!”
Richie, finding the whole conversation hilarious in its backwardness, called out, “We'll be here. I promise not to kill him. Again,” then broke down into the laughter he'd been holding in all day as Abe started to sputter.
*~*~*
The next evening, Richie brought all the borrowed clothes, now cleaned and folded, back. The sign on the antique store's door still read 'open,' when he arrived, despite the late evening darkness that had closed in over the city. Henry switched it to 'closed' before the bell finished tinkling and ushered Richie inside.
Abe was standing behind the counter. He looked up when Richie entered and, on seeing who it was, scowled and deliberately turned his attention to counting out the register. Richie wondered how much Henry had told him about what had happened. More importantly, how much Henry'd told him about why it had happened that way.
Deciding not to worry about it until he had to, Richie greeted them both, but quickly found his attention diverted. He hadn't been in an antique store since he'd sold Tessa's after she died, and seeing this space with its loving displays of old housewares, statuary, and furniture brought a wave of nostalgia and longing that choked him up. He'd never developed the taste for antiques in his own life-save for those people who qualified in their own way-so he was surprised by the strength of his desire to touch everything and to see how much he could still remember about its style and history. He drifted first to a shelf of glassware and then to a table that held silver tea and coffee services.
“They're beautiful, aren't they?” Henry commented. “With as much coffee as everyone consumes these days, I find it ironic that few people have any appreciation for the presentation of the beverage. Paper cups and plastic lids lack panache. When was the last time someone brought you coffee on a silver salver and served it in a hand-painted china cup?”
“It's been awhile,” Richie agreed. The kinds of high class restaurants Mac had taken him to when they lived in Paris meant that he'd at least had the experience. “I may not be the most representative member of my generation on that topic, though.” The wistfulness in Henry's tone kept him from adding that he preferred the paper cups because he could throw them out when he was done.
“Having met one of your friends, I'm inclined to agree.” Henry hesitated, then lowering his voice so only Richie could hear him, he asked, “He is your friend? You're not going to...fight...him?”
Richie picked up a silver coffee creamer and turned it over, idly seeking out the maker's mark. He set it down again without any recollection of what he'd seen. “Not today. Someday...I might have to.” If we both live long enough. Clearing his throat, he sought for a better topic before he got sucked into trying to justify something as illogical as the Game to someone as logical as Henry. “By the way, Joe called earlier. His group captured our guy and got him to fess up. They found my Watcher. She's safe.”
Henry nodded as if he'd expected to hear nothing else. “And you?”
“Liam's going to let me stay at the church until the insurance settlement comes through. After that, I think I'll probably set up shop again. I've spent a lot of time tending bar and fixing bikes. I'd like to see if I can do some good with my other skills.” He gave a self-deprecating half-shrug. “Without getting blown up for trying.” A crystal table lamp caught his attention and he went over to get a closer look at it, only vaguely aware that he was drifting toward the register. “Liam also wanted me to tell you that you're welcome to come around the rectory whenever you want. He said it would be fun to reminisce with someone who could remember the old peddlers' cries.”
“Ah, yes. Poor Jack and Colly Molly Puffle. I never thought I'd miss hearing those. Tell him I would be delighted. I believe I owe the Father a bottle of whisky.”
“The Father?” Abe asked, looking up from his counting in surprise. “You're talking about the priest you were with last night? Have you decided to take up religion?”
“Yes, and hardly,” Henry answered.
“He's only found someone to play with who's his age,” Richie explained. It was fun to tease Henry. Possibly, it was more fun that he could tease Henry. “And they're both from the same part of the world, though one of them being Irish and the other English could get interesting.”
Abe's brows shot up; the wad of bills that he'd been counting out sagged, forgotten, in his hand. “Another immortal?”
“There are actually quite a lot of us.” Richie offered Abe a conciliatory smile. He wanted to be friends with both the Morgan men, if he could. “I'm sorry that I got him involved in all this.” He waved down the length of his body, meaning by extension the craziness that was his life. “But I can't tell you how lucky I was to have someone who could help me through the latest round.”
The apology melted Abe's disapproval. “Henry's a good person to have on your side,” he said. “And I don't think you could have kept him uninvolved. He can be a little stubborn about helping people.” He threw a small smile at his father in acknowledgment that flaws and strengths were often the same thing. Turning his attention back to Richie, he said, “You know anything about antiques?”
Richie had let his eye get pulled to a jewelry display inside the glass cabinet that the register rested on. One of the bracelets looked like a piece Ceirdwyn would favor. A couple others were ones that Tessa would have liked. “I worked in an antique store for a while,” he admitted, his fondness for that time coloring his voice. “A few things managed to sink in.”
“Swing around some time and we can trade stories. Henry tells me you know something about swords. I have a few pieces in the back you might be interested in.” Abe slipped the money into the bank envelope, then stuck his hand out to shake.
Richie took it. “It'll be fun to see what I still remember.” The air cleared with Abe, he turned back to Henry. “Anyway, what's going on with the case? I thought you were going to call me to come in.”
Henry rubbed his eyebrow in embarrassment. “It seems the police won't need your involvement at all.”
“They won't?”
“Nor will they need the young lady. They solved the case on their own. They even got a confession.”
“From who?” Richie asked. He tried to imagine which of his neighbors might have broken their silence. More importantly, which neighbor might have had anything useful to say. Since he doubted that anyone else came back from the dead, that meant it had to be one of the people who had made it out before the explosion. And suddenly he knew. His own warning of trouble had been the man running down the stairs, ordering everyone to get out of the building. Warning. He slapped his head. “I saw him! I should have figured out the connection.” Dying really did make him stupid.
“It's now a moot point because he turned himself in. It turns out that he was stockpiling explosives in his apartment for some future experiment in domestic terrorism and he had an unrelated cooking accident that started a fire. Instead of trying to douse the fire, he panicked.”
Richie blinked, trying to make sense of what had happened. “Seventeen people are dead because some idiot didn't know how to cook?”
“I'd say that seventeen people are dead because some idiot was planning to do a great deal more harm than that. The loss of life is still a tragedy. The only good from this is that he will be spending the rest of his own life in prison, which means he cannot attempt anything like this again.”
“I suppose that's something.” Richie shook his head and blew out a long breath. It was a small something, all the potential lives saved against the seventeen who had really died. Eighteen, technically, though being inconvenienced for a few days was no consolation for those who wouldn't be coming back. Remembering why he was there, Richie set the plastic bag of clothes on the counter. “Thank you again for these. I mean it.” He was about to say that Henry had no idea how difficult it was to sneak across town naked, until he realized that Henry was the one person who did.
The clothes weren't all. Feeling slightly embarrassed, Richie dug the ten out of his pocket and handed it over. He'd gone back to his building that morning to search once more for the lockbox, and had found it exactly where it was supposed to be. In the darkness and distress, his fingers must have missed it by millimeters. “Please give this to the woman who has locker six. I'd thank her myself, but...” Richie shrugged. Even if he could explain how he'd come into possession of the woman's money, she'd never know what a difference that ten dollars had made to him.
With a nod of understanding, Henry took the money. “I'll tell her I found it on the floor. Also, my associate, Lucas, was asking about you.”
Richie cringed. “Dead-me or alive-me?”
“Both, as it happens, though I don't believe he's made the connection between the two.”
“What did you tell him?”
“In regards to your corpse: I explained that your family denied autopsy on religious grounds and that you'd been sent straight over to the mortuary for cremation. The police weren't happy about that, but there's not much they can do.”
“Good thinking,” Richie complimented, while making a mental note to start carrying some kind of card in his wallet that expressly denied any kind of autopsy or organ donation. A denial of cremation would also be a good idea. “What was he asking about alive me?”
“Something about a badly dressed intern who was using our coffee machine? I had no idea that you two had run into each other. He didn't know your name, but I told him I had heard that one of the interns washed out.”
Yes, he was definitely lucky to have had Henry helping him out. Who knew what might have happened had Lucas been the one standing at the table when Richie woke up. “Do you think he believed you?”
Eyes narrowed, Henry contemplated the question for a long moment before concluding: “With Lucas, it's always difficult to know what he's going to believe. I would suggest, however, that you try not to make any return visits to my morgue.”
Richie snorted. “Believe me, once every couple of decades is my limit.”
END
Author: Where We’re Going We Don’t Need...Names!
Written For: idontlikegravy
Fandoms: Highlander: the Series / Highlander: the Raven / Forever
Characters: Richie Ryan, Henry Morgan, Lucas Wahl, Abe Morgan, Joe Dawson, Liam Riley
Rating: PG-13 (some swearing and a touch of graphic violence)
Word Count: 19,600
Author’s Notes: Many, many thanks to ID Pam for the cheerleading, beta reading, and, in the end, the flat out rewriting of the bits I couldn’t do on my own. Not many people are willing to learn a whole new canon just to encourage a crossover. Any remaining mistakes, yadda yadda. This story is a Denial AU. Richie lives. Connor lives. Forever wasn’t canceled. WHEE!
Summary: Of all the morgues in all the world, Richie just had to wake up in Henry Morgan’s.
Previous Part
Richie expected to be unable to sleep. After everything that had happened, he figured he'd be lying awake on the couch all night with his thoughts tumbling through his head like debris in a tornado. Any sleep would have to be fitful and riddled with nightmares, especially because the couch was leather and had buttons in the cushions that all sought to press into his back. He accepted the proffered pillow and blanket gratefully, curled up, and prepared himself for a night of staring at the wall.
Within seconds of the light going out, he followed. He was still sound asleep hours later when the trilling of a ringtone he didn't recognize sounded right next to his head. Why couldn't people turn off their ringers when someone was trying to sleep? He waited, growing crosser in the half-awareness where all he wanted was to roll back over, then finally grabbed the phone. “What?” he snapped.
There was a beat of silence, then a tentative, “Richie? It's Joe.”
Richie sat up, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Sorry, Joe. You woke me up. What time is it?” Idly, he reached under the couch, feeling relief when he found his sword. If he'd had any lingering doubts about Henry's intentions, they were gone now.
“A little after 9:30 for you. I called as soon as I got your message. What's going on?”
“Ugh,” Richie groaned. Telling the whole story over again suddenly felt like way too much effort. He, Henry, and Abe had been up later than any of them wanted to be the night before, talking. It had taken some effort to convince Abe that Richie was, in fact, Immortal. Claiming to being forty in a nineteen-year old body just didn't have the cachet that being over two hundred in a thirty-five year old body did. Eventually, with Henry vouching for what he'd seen in the morgue, Abe decided to accept Richie's assertion, and then discussion had turned to the explosion itself and the incredible nothing the police had to go on.
“Are you OK?” Joe pressed. “It sounded like an emergency, or I would have waited until later in the day to call back.” He sounded more tired than Richie still felt, and Richie realized that it was 6:30 in the morning for him, a man who kept bar hours. That meant that he'd probably been awake all night.
“It was an emergency.” Richie rubbed his face again, dragged his hand back through his hair. He bent over the phone, careful to keep his voice down so that he didn't disturb his hosts. “Now it's just a crisis. I died. Lost everything.”
Joe pushed out a breath through his teeth; he knew what that meant as well as any mortal could. “Did anyone see you?”
“Turns out I might be OK there,” Richie answered. “Look, I called because I need to know if there are any other Immortals in the city.”
“Richie, you know I can't-”
“Dammit, Joe. This isn't...business.” He stumbled over the word, using it because he hadn't told Henry and Abe everything. “I'm not looking for trouble. I just need a place to lay low for a few days while I figure out what to do next. Someone I can trust who won't try to come after me.”
Joe was silent for a moment, then Richie heard the clatter of keys as Joe began typing. “Before I tell you anything, you swear you aren't headhunting?”
“I'm not that guy anymore. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Joe answered, softly, indulgently like a parent talking about his son's recovery from drug addiction. “What happened, exactly?”
Richie frowned; Joe didn't usually need to ask those types of questions unless he thought there might be a discrepancy in the information. “Didn't you see the report?”
“I only look at the reports that have been flagged for special interest, these days,” Joe reminded him. “Terminal reports. Headhunters. Public Challenges that need to be hushed up. Nothing about you has shown up in the alerts.”
That was…odd. Richie knew his Watcher was still pretty green, but if she'd been allowed to go out in the field at all, it was because she'd proven her ability to do her job. He wondered what her reason was for withholding the information on the fire and his death. What did she know that he didn't?
More keys clattered, and Joe muttered his way through a few search screens, his own late night making him slower to find the relevant information. Not wanting to interrupt and derail him, Richie refrained from pointing out that he hadn't answered the question. At last Joe said, “OK, here's a guy. Friend of Amanda's. He relocated to New York about a year ago.”
“What kind of friend?” Richie's thoughts immediately jumped to any of Amanda's criminal buddies who popped up whenever they wanted help to steal something. “I don't need a safe cracker or...or a stick up man,” he added, thinking specifically of Cory, who had a way of taking any situation and turning it into a clusterfuck.
Joe let out a bark of laughter. “Not that kind. Turns out she keeps company with a lot of interesting people. You want the info, or not?”
Well, he'd asked. If Joe was willing to part with it, he must have reason to think that it wouldn't affect the Game. “Yeah, I do.”
Joe told him, and Richie immediately understood why Joe hadn't put up more of a fight. “Thanks.” He was moving his thumb toward the end call button when another thought hit him. “One more thing: Do you guys have a record of someone named Henry Morgan?”
“That's the owner of the phone you're using?” At Richie's stunned silence, Joe said, “You're losing your touch, kid. Caller ID?”
Richie knocked the heel of his hand against his forehead, unable to believe that he'd missed such an obvious detail. “OK, I deserve that one. Yeah, that's the guy.”
“Lemme check. He Immortal?”
Now that was a tough question to answer. On the one hand, the mission of the Watchers was to record the histories of all the long-lived people who'd witnessed and shaped so much of history. On the other, the reason they were doing that was because of the Game and the fact that some day there wouldn't be any more Immortals left to tell their own stories. Based on what he'd said last night, Henry wasn't going to have that problem. Remembering how Henry had protected his secret, Richie decided to return the courtesy; he could always change his mind later if he needed to. “He's not one of us,” Richie said, opting for a version of the truth.
“Then why would you think he'd be in the system?” Joe asked, sounding both confused and a little put out.
“I'm just covering my bases, Joe. A guy's gotta know whose phone he's borrowing, ya know?”
Joe didn't know. He didn't understand Richie's reasoning at all, which was fine because Richie wasn't trying to explain clearly. “Then you'll be happy to know that we've got nothing on him.”
“Appreciate it.” He hesitated, a part of him not wanting to hang up, to break the connection with a familiar voice and a person he'd been friends with for more than twenty years. There was something else nagging at him, too, something that he couldn't quite pin down. “Call me at this number if anything else comes up, OK?” He waited for the agreement, hung up. Sitting with his legs splayed, he cradled the phone for awhile as if the screen would tell him anything he didn't already know. In the end, he stood up without deleting the call from the call log and headed into the kitchen in search of breakfast.
*~*~*
To his surprise, Henry was sitting at the kitchen table. The newspaper was spread open in front of him and a half-drunk cup of coffee sat off to the side, which explained why Richie hadn't heard him moving around. He looked up when Richie came in and gestured toward the oven. “There's a plate of sausage and eggs in there, if you're hungry. Coffee's on the counter, and there's cream in the refrigerator. I've already eaten.”
“Aren't you supposed to be at work?”
“I took the day off. I thought someone should be here when you woke up.” It sounded thoughtful, but Henry could also mean that he didn't trust Richie not to rob him blind or to get out of Dodge without leaving a forwarding address. It was ironically comforting to see Henry take such a basic precaution given that he didn't know how dangerous Richie was.
Richie pulled out the plate and sat down opposite Henry. The newspaper filled the table between them, its sections carefully folded with the meticulousness of someone who read every word of the news. “If I didn't believe you were two hundred before, I do now,” Richie quipped, nodding at the display. He started in on the plate while waiting to see if Henry would take offense at his comment. He didn't, and Richie smiled to himself. He liked being able to be open with someone else about ages. He had taken that freedom for granted when he lived in Seacouver, and it hadn't been much of an option since he finally left, as his opportunities for talking to other Immortals largely consisted of trash talk about who was going to behead whom. “Listen, I hate to impose any more than I already have, but if you could spot me a few bucks for the subway, I'd appreciate it. I need to go see someone. I can pay you back later today.”
“I'll come with you,” Henry announced.
Ah, Richie thought, Henry was afraid of Richie vanishing before he could get his witness statement. Considering that Richie had as much said he was going to do that, it was hard to blame him. “Are you sure? I'm getting pretty good at not getting lost.”
A wicked spark flashed in Henry's eye. “Someone of your tender years could get hurt,” he quipped back. “I wouldn't want to be held responsible for that.”
“Funny, old man. Very funny.” He dropped into silence after that, turning his focus to the plate. His body still craved calories from the amount of regeneration it had done, and now that he wasn't running on adrenaline, it had decided to collect.
Only later, after he'd showered and changed into a borrowed pair of jeans that hung loosely on him and a button down shirt that stretched across shoulders that were muscled from years of weapons training, did he discover that the camaraderie with Henry was still going to take a lot of work. He collected his sword, realized that he still had no place to put it. “Could I, uh, also borrow your coat? Or another one like it, if you have one?”
Henry flipped a hat onto his head and looked askance at the sword. “Why don't you leave that here? An antique that valuable shouldn't be taken on public transport.”
Richie glanced down at the sword, wishing yet again that he had that option. “I can't. I need it with me.”
“Why?”
God, how he hated having to talk about this part. For a moment, he toyed with letting Henry think that the sword was some kind of very sharp security blanket. People carried guns for the illusion of safety; why not three and half feet of steel? With a slight shake of his head, he shut down that train of thought. He didn't want to start lying now. “Remember how I said that I knew other Immortals? There are a lot of us out there, and most of us...are not friends.”
Henry's expression went dark. “Why do you need the sword?” he asked again, his voice even darker. He suspected the answer, and didn't like it.
“In case I have to kill them,” Richie answered.
Henry went still, his understanding of who this stranger was and what he was capable of undergoing a visible shift. “How? You're immortal. I saw it myself. If a fire that covers eighty percent of one’s body in burns isn't enough damage to keep you down, what is?”
“The kind of damage that can be inflicted with one of these,” Richie replied, hefting the blade so that the morning sunlight streaming in the window glimmered off the fine beveling of the blade. “Please don't ask for me to be more specific.”
“You've done this? Killed other people?”
“Yes,” Richie admitted.
“But only in self-defense?”
Richie didn't look away. He wanted to, but if Henry was going to understand what Richie's kind of Immortality was, he had to know about the ugly side, too. “No.”
Henry blanched, looked like he was going to be sick. Regret for everything he'd done to help settled over him. He shrugged out of his coat and threw it at Richie, who put it on and made the sword disappear inside as only an Immortal could. The coat still wasn't tailored for the job, but Richie'd had a lot more practice than Henry did.
“You still want to come with me?” Richie asked.
From the way Henry stalked as he shepherded him out the door, Richie suspected that the next time he let him out of sight, it would only be because the police were dragging him away.
The sidewalks thrummed with people despite the lateness of the morning. Clear skies and a temperature warm enough that people could actively appreciate it before the descent into winter cast a general good mood over the pedestrians that only made Richie's altercation with Henry more pronounced.
They were passing a gyro restaurant when Henry bumped up next to Richie. “I met someone else like me. He tried to make me kill him, and I didn't,” he stated, as if Richie should have chosen the same way. “I'm not a killer.”
I am, Richie thought. “It's not the same thing,” he said, instead. Then, realizing what Henry had implied, he asked, “You can be killed permanently?”
“Not yet.” Henry clipped off the words; he had nothing more to say on that subject.
Richie didn't press. If he wasn't willing to share his vulnerability, he couldn't demand that Henry share his.
They dodged around a group of people who were hovering in front of an electronics store, admiring whatever new item was on sale that week, then turned at the next corner. The entrance to the subway stop sat in front of them. With each step toward it, Richie felt his options narrowing. He could still disappear into the crowd, slip away into a store or alley. Once they descended into the subway tunnels, that would become harder and harder as they were funneled into increasingly confined spaces.
They started down the stairs. A series of posters on the walls exhorting people to join the Armed Forces caught Richie's eye, and an idea came to him. “You ever been in a war?” he asked, knowing that there was no way Henry hadn't. Anyone who'd lived as long as he had wouldn't have their pick of wars to join. Based on the quality of his accent, Richie suspected that Henry had been raised to be soldier.
“Yes,” Henry said. His shoulders hunched in as he remembered the atrocities he'd witnessed, an all too familiar pose.
“Think of it like that, like we're at war with each other.”
Henry looked for a second like he was going to argue, then he turned away, mulling the thought over.
In silence, Richie studied the map and figured out what train they needed, then turned his attention to observing the other people waiting on the platform so that he didn't have to see what judgment Henry was going to pass. Business people on their way to lunch. College students on their way to or from their universities. Mothers with strollers. Fathers with their children's hands clenched tight in their own. Unconsciously, he began searching for the familiar face of his Watcher. She had to be lurking in the crowd somewhere.
The train came, and Richie and Henry boarded. Despite the crowd on the platform, the car was mostly empty, only a dozen other people spaced around the seats and the poles. The sword in his coat would make sitting awkward, so Richie found a place to stand as far from anyone else as he could. Henry started for a seat, but swerved when he saw that Richie hadn't and came to stand next to him.
“It must be very lonely,” Henry murmured, “to know that there are others you can relate to and yet have them out of reach.”
Richie kept his eyes on the doors. Through the windows, he saw the other platforms and the tunnel walls zooming by. Not once did he catch even the faintest sense of another Immortal. “It's not that simple. We can form truces, cease-fires. I do have friends like me. I had a teacher; he's somewhere in Europe right now. Either that or Scotland.” Saying it, he saw how much better his situation had been than Henry's. Richie'd had someone to explain what he was, someone to teach him how to survive. He still had people who could understand his experiences and help him solve the problems that arose. “I didn't have to go through this alone.”
Henry shifted, gearing up to ask another question when his phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he handed it straight to Richie. “It's for you.”
The caller could only be one person. “Two calls in one day, Joe?” Richie asked, by way of answering. “To what do I owe the honor?”
From across the country, over a phone signal that was roughened from its travels, came an answer Richie never thought he'd hear: “Your Watcher is missing.”
“What?”
“I got suspicious about the lack of alerts, so I went looking. She missed her check-ins last night and this morning, and isn't answering her phone or her email.”
Missing? And Joe was telling him? “Have you tried the hospitals? She might have been injured.” The other people in the car were studiously not paying any attention to him, except for an old woman near the door who was giving Richie the stink eye. He imagined that she didn't approve of him being on his phone at all. He flashed her an “it's out of my hands” look, then turned away so that she couldn't lip read him. For all he knew, she might be a Watcher, too. Or worse.
“Already checked them. There's no one with her name or matching her description. We're working on the morgues now. That one's trickier. You didn't tell me about the explosion.”
“I didn't think I had to,” Richie answered. “Isn't it your job to know these things? You're the one with eyes everywhere.”
“Touché, kid.”
“More importantly, what do you want me to do about it?” The Watchers had to have encountered situations like this before. Knowing them, they probably had lots of very thick books laying out the rules for dealing with Watchers who had gone missing.
“Absolutely nothing. No, take that back. Until we learn more, there is one thing you can do.”
Joe didn't have to say it. If he hadn't been standing on public transport, Richie'd have said it for him. He might even have been sarcastic about it. “You know I always do,” he answered, and heard Joe's grunt of acknowledgment. Richie hung up, and for all of half a second debated whether a well-meaning, but ultimately useless, phrase like “Watch your head” was worth listening to. The train screeched to a stop at the next station, the doors whooshed open, and Richie once again did what he'd done best his whole life. “Change of plans,” he informed Henry. “I have someone to find.”
*~*~*
In the bright midday light, Richie's old building looked even worse. The water that had doused the fire had left a soggy, sodden lump of half-collapsed brick and burned wood that it hadn't been enough to wash away. It was hard to look at it and not see the ghosts of the people who'd died and the dreams they'd lost.
Across the street were brownstones that now looked strong and welcoming, by comparison. Richie studied them all for several minutes, comparing what he saw now to where he'd seen lights the previous night, checking angles, visualizing where a person might stand to see without being seen. Finally, he selected the building slightly catty-corner from where his studio had been. “There,” he said, pointing to a window that was mostly taken up by a mounted air-conditioning unit and obscured the rest of the way with a drape.
“What gives you reason to think that this person saw anything?” Henry asked. On the way over, Richie explained that he had a lead on another witness, one with far fewer secrets than he had.
“Is that why you're so reluctant to aid the case,” Henry had asked, “because you want to avoid police scrutiny?”
“Wouldn't you be?” Richie sighed. “My identity here isn't very solid. I wasn't expecting to need more than the paperwork it takes to get a business license and a rental. So, yeah not wanting anyone to look too closely at me is definitely a consideration.”
Henry nodded. No matter what the differences were in how their immortalities worked, they still had the fact of long lives and un-aging faces in common, and the commensurate problems. “But it wasn't the only one, was it?”
“You,” Richie'd said, jabbing a finger at him, “are too astute.”
At the compliment, a flash of embarrassment passed over Henry's face. “Are you willing to tell me?”
“It might make more sense if I showed you,” Richie answered. He thought about it, then amended, “Or it won't. It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.”
At the door of the house, Richie rattled the locked door knob, verified that he was going to have to break the door down. “The other thing that doesn't make a lot of sense,” he said to Henry, “is why I care. You wouldn't happen to have a ball point pen on you?”
Henry did. He handed it over, then politely turned his back so that he didn't have to see Richie picking the lock.
Richie led the way inside, then up to the apartment he'd selected. He picked that lock, too.
The apartment they found was two rooms with stained white walls and worn beige carpet. A futon mattress was thrown on the floor and the garbage can was stuffed with fast food wrappers. This was a place that was being used for camping, not living. The reason for it became obvious when they saw the setup in front of the window: a chair, a rolling cart with a laptop, a set of binoculars, and two telescopes. One telescope was aimed in the direction of Richie's studio, the other toward where his apartment window would have been.
“You have a stalker?” Henry asked, reaching the obvious conclusion.
“That's what I keep saying! Except they call themselves Watchers-that's with a capital W-and they're scary organized. They have records on my kind going back thousands of years. Mostly, though, they're harmless. 'Observe and record, but never interfere,'” he stated, mocking the Oath. “As it happens, my Watcher is missing. That's what the phone call on the train was about.”
While Henry looked through the telescopes and determined what the viewer could have seen, Richie opened the laptop and began scrolling through the final notes.
“And look at this,” he announced. “It turns out she not only saw the explosion, but she went down to try to help people. Never interfere, my ass.” A note captured his eye and he scrolled back some more. She'd been a careful record keeper, noting dates, times, and details without letting her opinions color what she saw. One particular detail had raised a flag that she'd started keeping track of in a second log. “Huh. It looks like I did have a stalker. A real one. Some guy's been hanging around outside the studio since I moved in, keeping track of me.” Abruptly, he remembered the stranger he'd seen through the studio window before the explosion.
“Stalking is often prompted by a desire for a relationship with the target, usually romantic or sexual,” Henry volunteered. “The stalker may believe that he has a relationship with the target and is seeking reciprocation.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “It could also be motivated by a desire for revenge or justice, with the stalker believing that the target has deliberately wronged him.” A raised eyebrow at Richie indicated that Henry thought the latter was the more likely choice.
Richie threw his hands up defensively. “Hey, I didn't ask for this, either.”
“Conscription,” Henry muttered, as if that was all that needed to be said. Louder, in a question meant for Richie, he asked, “Do you think this second stalker knows that you're-” The rest of the question was bitten off as he straightened up suddenly.
Richie slammed the laptop shut and whirled around, following where Henry's attention had gone. Every alarm in his body was going off, except the most important one.
A man stood in the doorway with a gun pointed at them. He was stocky with thinning brown hair and cheeks that had been reddened from heat. In jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and a black windbreaker, he looked like he'd swung by the apartment to grab a hostage on his way home from a day at the park. Richie recognized him immediately as the peeper he'd seen the previous day.
“Knows you're what?” the man demanded. He stepped into the room, shifting the gun back and forth between Richie and Henry like he couldn't decide whom to shoot first. His hand was shaking, though his voice was hard. He thought he was in control, but he didn't know if he could do what was necessary to keep that power. “Don't stop talking on my account. See, I been trying to figger out what's so special about you. I asked her. I asked her and she wouldn't say nothing.”
Her. His Watcher. The man must have caught up with her in the chaos of the explosion. He'd better not have hurt her. Pushing his concern aside, Richie focused on getting out of this situation without killing the idiot who had created it. This man might be the only person who knew where the Watcher was.
“Man, you don't want to do this.” Richie raised his hands into surrender position while adjusting his weight so that he could throw himself out of the line of fire faster. Getting shot hurt.
“Put the gun down and let's discuss this like reasonable men,” Henry added.
“Don't think so,” the man stated. “See, I got some guesses, and right now I'm thinking Witness Protection. You in Witness Protection?” He aimed the question right at Richie. “I bet I could get some smart money for turning you in.”
Richie frowned, trying to make sense of the accusation. Witness Protection? Why would this man think that...a person with no apparent history who was under constant surveillance and who mostly kept to himself would be a person of interest who was supposed to be in hiding and who had attracted the wrong kind of attention. It suddenly seemed so obvious that Richie couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it himself. He started to laugh, choked it back before it got him killed. “What if I am?”
Henry threw him a questioning look: What are you doing?
The man grinned like he'd been vindicated. “I knew it! Knew you wasn't famous cause I never heard of you and this-” He gestured at the telescope setup- “Ain't the way paparazzi do things.”
“What do you want?” Henry asked.
Turning even redder, the man roared, “Shut up! I dunno who you are and I don't care, so shut up! All you gotta do is follow directions.” His eyes narrowed like he'd been struck with a great idea, and he again brought his focus to bear on Richie. “Do what I say, or I'll kill him.”
What the hell was he supposed to do with that? Richie stood, stunned, while out of the corner of his eye he could see Henry trying not to grin. “Yeah, I don't think that's going to work the way you think it will,” he finally managed. It was getting harder and harder to keep a straight face; he felt his eyes beginning to water from the effort. If they didn't do something to change the scene soon, he was going to break down. “So, are we just going to stand here, or what?”
The man had clearly not thought through what he was going to do after he caught Richie. He shuffled from one foot to the other, dropped the barrel of the gun and jerked it back up again.
“Perhaps you should take us to the police,” Henry suggested. “You do have a car, yes? We could all walk quietly outside and get in your car.”
“Outside, yes,” the man answered, happy to latch onto a plan, no matter how thinly constructed. “Not the police. They'll ask too many questions. I got a different idea.”
With the gun on Henry and Richie ostensibly a cooperative hostage, he led them down the stairs. “You still ain't told me what you done,” he man said. “You rat out someone important?”
“Nah,” Richie answered. “I just have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Henry’s mouth tighten with a bitten back laugh since he had now witnessed the truth of Richie’s statement no fewer than three times in less than a day.
*~*~*
Richie wasn't waiting until they were outside, though having enough room to swing a sword would be nice. He wasn't waiting until they were secluded, though the need to have fights away from onlookers was drilled into him. And he wasn't waiting until he and Henry worked out some kind of secret plan, because he didn't need the help. He was waiting for the right moment, though.
As a group, they left the building and headed down the street to one of the wide alleys that bisected the block. The chain link gate that was supposed to prevent people from going into the alley had been ripped down some time before and bags of rotting garbage were now piled against the rusting metal like that's what it had been meant for. Farther down, an overflowing Dumpster sat amidst another pile of garbage bags, wooden pallets, and broken crates.
“That way,” the man said, giving Henry a push forward with the barrel of the gun.
Henry and Richie spared a glance at each other; going into alleys with armed nutcases was how people got killed.
“Uh-uh,” Richie said with a shake of his head. “Your car's not down there. We agreed to go to your car.”
“Car's on the other end,” the man promised. “This way's fastest.”
“And has fewer witnesses,” Henry pointed out.
On the next stoop, a trio of teenage girls dressed in tight jeans and spangled shirts sat clustered with their heads together. Two men in construction overalls and hard hats argued outside the pawnshop. Another man in jeans and a thread-bare brown blazer stood smoking a cigarette and idly watching the sparse traffic. Behind them, a homeless woman trundled past. Her clothes were thickly layered and shabby and she kept her head down, hands working in front of her like she was trying to finger-weave the air.
“You try to yell for help and I'll shoot your friend,” the man reminded Richie.
Richie saw what he had been waiting for, and stopped trying to stall. “Okay, fine. I'll go. Just...don't do anything.” It was so hard to sound frightened when all the threats were toothless. To aid the charade, he pulled on his memories of his first death, when he still believed he was a regular mortal and he knew that the mugger was seconds away from ending his life. The tremor that came into his voice must have been enough because they started moving again.
In a few steps they reached the Dumpster. A few more would take them out of sight of anyone on the street.
“She told me you wasn't nobody,” the man suddenly said. “She told me, she said she was studyin' for her PI license and practicing on you because where her window was. I knew she was lyin'.”
With a small shrug, Richie responded, “Wouldn't know. I've never met her before.”
“Now you're lyin'.”
“I'm not, but believe what you want to. It's a free country.” Richie whirled around then and hit the man's gun arm with his forearm, then twisted the man's hand until the gun fell loose. Hooking his leg behind the man's ankle, he destabilized him and sent him crashing to the alley floor. The man's head bounced hard off the asphalt. Richie dropped down and grabbed him in a wrist hold that either required its victim to stay still or to dislocate his elbow. “Even so, I think you should tell me where she is.”
“Richie, he's hurt.” Henry crouched and began probing the man's head, trying to assess the injury without moving him. All the man could do was blink at the sky.
“That's not my problem. He shouldn't have tried to capture us. Have I mentioned how much I hate being used as bait?”
Henry's fingers paused and he looked critically at Richie. “He needs medical attention. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“Not until he tells me where-” The fact that he didn't know his Watcher's name had just become a problem. He put an extra bit of pressure on the man's wrist and got back the expected grunt of pain. “Where is she?”
The man's lips moved, formed a soundless word. Safe.
Good enough. Richie backed up so that Henry could work. Like it or not, they were going to have to call an ambulance, unless one was already on the way. He figured one had been called the second they stepped into the alley. The police were probably right behind it. Some of the people outside would have understood exactly what they were seeing, and who the winner would be.
A small pool of blood was spreading out from under the man's head; he'd hit hard enough to break the skin, and doubtlessly to give himself a massive headache, but he was still conscious. Still tracking. His other hand flapped across his stomach as if testing for a different injury. He found what he was looking for at his side. With a speed that belied his head injury, he pulled out the knife that had been secreted at his waist, plunged it into Henry's stomach, and yanked.
In the commotion of Henry's yell, the man lumbered to his feet and staggered down the alley. The back of his head was damp with blood and he ran like a man who couldn't quite see where he was going. Catching him would be easy, but Richie decided to let him go.
Instead, he caught Henry as he swayed and helped him move for support against the wall.
“Stop him,” Henry gasped. “Don't worry about me.” Henry's shirt had already turned red and the handle of the knife stuck out from the center of the stain like a pin on a butterfly display. Despite knowing better, Richie waited for a sign that the wound was already starting to heal, like his would have. With each second that passed without getting it, he had a tick of doubt that Henry was really immortal. Wouldn't that be a hell of a way to find out that he'd been scammed?
“He's not going to get very far,” Richie said. Henry gave a deep groan of pain that also conveyed a dubious note. “Remember how I said that the Watchers were scary organized? I saw at least two on the way here. It's better to let them handle him.”
Distantly, they heard an ambulance siren. It might not have been coming their way, but Richie knew that his luck didn't work like that.
“Damn,” Henry uttered. “Stomach wounds. One of the most painful ways to die, you know, when stomach acid gets into the body cavity...assuming he hit any vital organs...if he didn't...” He trailed off. Without a formal assessment, it was still obvious that a normal recovery could take weeks, barring any complications. Weeks, and a lot of questions.
Richie closed his eyes, trying to decide if the offer he wanted to make was tacky or generous. The siren was getting closer and Henry wasn't dying very fast. Screw it, he thought, then: “Do you want me to kill you?”
“God, yes. Would you?” Henry grasped the knife and yanked it out with a second yell that would have attracted rubberneckers in wealthier neighborhoods. It was a small blade, about three inches long, with a serrated edge. One like it could be purchased at any camping store. Fresh blood welled up in the now-empty wound and Henry's knees buckled. “Stab me in the heart.”
Richie took the knife, ignoring the wetness on it, and flipped it around, trying to get his hand familiar with this blade. It was too small, too light. All the years he'd spent training with a sword and he was stymied by a blade smaller than the width of his hand. “I don't know how to kill with this.” Gut a fish; sure, he could do that. Strip a tree branch. Core an apple. Not do a clean kill on the first try. A sudden image sprang to mind of him kneeling over Henry's body, stabbing and stabbing while the paramedics rolled into the alley. Don't worry, he imagined himself saying to the EMTs, as soon as I finish killing him, he'll be fine.
Henry tried to press his fingers to the place on his chest where the knife needed to puncture, but his hands were shaking too much; there was too much blood.
“What about a gunshot?” Richie asked, his gaze alighting on the weapon that had brought them here. He had spent some time at the target range; it had only taken one late night argument with Methos to convince him of the merits of shooting Immortals to shut them up.
“Yes, good. Much easier.”
Richie risked letting go of Henry long enough to sweep up the gun. The safety was already off. They were both lucky that the man hadn't shot them by accident. “You're sure?”
Henry gave a fluttering nod, his face tight.
Positioning the gun against Henry's heart, Richie took a deep breath, steeling himself, then pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. He tried again, got another click. It was empty. “It's empty! The asshole didn't even have it loaded!”
They heard a whoop from the ambulance warning someone to get out of the way.
With hard fought for words, Henry instructed, “Use...what...you know.” He dragged his gaze up to meet Richie's, and in the effort, Richie saw that Henry had figured out his vulnerability.
Richie swallowed hard. Henry was asking to be beheaded-the one method of killing that left no margin for error, as even a partial decapitation was still fatal. In Richie's world, it was absolutely fatal, even for people who called themselves Immortal. And it was what Richie knew. God, did he know it. Last chance, no going back. If Henry hadn't been above-board about his immortality, or if he was wrong about how it worked, Richie would kill him permanently.
“Do it. No time.”
He was right; Henry was right. They only had a couple minutes, maybe less, and then it would be too late to do anything at all. “Kneel down,” he said, helping Henry follow the instruction.
“Wait,” Henry gasped.
For a second, Richie thought that this was it; this was the moment when Henry would reveal that it had all been a send-up. The pictures had been faked, the history invented. It was some kind of charade to get him to drop his guard, and now the Hunters were going to swoop in. But Henry hadn't hesitated at being stabbed or shot; if that wasn't conviction, Richie didn't know what was.
With the kind of careful movements of someone who had to concentrate to make his body obey, Henry emptied his pockets. He handed over his wallet and his pocket watch and directed Richie to pull off his shoes. Then he told Richie where to meet him afterward, and gave his final nod of assent.
Richie freed his sword and stepped back. He set his stance. Raised the blade. Swung.
Henry's body tumbled over and his head hit the ground with a sick crunch.
Over the next few seconds, Richie braced himself for the Quickening that his instincts told him would be coming, listened to the ambulance draw ever closer, and watched Henry's body finish its death throes while remaining stubbornly there with only one thought in his head: How the fuck was he going to explain this to Abe?
Just as the ambulance screeched to a halt at the mouth of the alley, Henry's body vanished, and with it most of the physical evidence for what had transpired. Handy, that. Only the blood from the stalker remained, and without him, the ambulance and the police had nothing. A flood of relief washing over him greater than any he'd ever felt, Richie scooped up the shoes and ran for it.
Several blocks away, he hailed a cab. A block after that, he pulled out Henry's phone. Abe's number wasn't in the contacts-Henry presumably had it memorized and never felt the need to enter it-and Richie didn't know who else was safe to call. That only left one option, and as the cab inched its way through a traffic jam, he buckled and called it.
*~*~*
He arrived at the river to see Henry sitting, dressed, on one of the benches that decorated the river walk. A dark-haired, leather-jacket clad stranger sat next to him, leaning in to hear something that Henry was saying. The man straightened up as Richie approached, then stiffened when their Presences came into contact.
Henry watched as the two Immortals drew together, wary, cautious, each moving with the control of people who have honed their bodies into weapons.
“Richie Ryan,” he introduced, holding out his hand.
“Liam Riley,” the other man responded in a strong Irish accent. He grasped the proffered hand then broke into a broad grin. “Amanda's mentioned you a time or two. She seems to think you're 'darling.'”
Richie shook his head in fond exasperation. Amanda's ability to assess people's characters could be erratic and was often hinged on how much excitement they brought to her life. Since he hadn't been on a crime spree with her recently-or ever-he decided that she was being generous, in her own way. “She says that about everyone.”
“Only the people she likes. That's a good enough endorsement for me.”
“Thank you for coming. Hell, thank you for believing me.” Richie'd called Liam and had done his best to explain the situation without the cab driver overhearing anything he shouldn't. In the end, he'd had to ask Liam to trust him, and had to hope that Henry wouldn't be angry that Richie had told his secret without permission.
“I'm not one to deny miracles, in whatever form they take,” Liam responded. He touched the white square of his clergy collar that peeked through the gap at the top of his jacket.
“No, I guess not,” Richie agreed. A man who had been Immortal himself for almost three hundred years and a priest for nearly all of that couldn't say what was or was not impossible in the world. Now that the threat assessment was over, Richie turned his attention to Henry. His hair was still wet from his dunking in the river and he was hunched with cold despite the blanket around his shoulders, but his head was mercifully attached and his brown eyes were bright with life.
Henry pushed to his feet and joined them. Richie handed over the shoes and other accessories, holding back only the coat for himself until Liam could help him get a new one. “Your friend and I have been having quite a chat about the War of the American Rebellion,” Henry said. He sounded giddy, as only someone who'd found a peer among a crowd of children could. “It's fascinating to get an eye-witness perspective on the stories my father told me.”
“They call it the Revolutionary War here in this country we've both adopted,” Liam corrected, though without vitriol. “And I think we should continue this discussion over a drink. My church isn't far. What do you say?” Off their agreement, he stepped into the lead.
Henry waited until the priest was a few paces in front before he observed, “He's not carrying a sword.” A couple hours before, it might have been an accusation aimed at Richie. Now, it was merely a curiosity.
The city that had seemed so quiet the night before now thrummed with activity. Lunchtime crowds filled the sidewalks and vehicles packed the streets. In the din of honking horns and pulsing bass, the waterfall of voices that pressed to be heard, Richie couldn't explain what Joe had told him: How Liam had put down his sword nearly two centuries before Richie’s birth, and how he refused to pick it back up, even if it cost of him his head. He wondered if that’s what had spurred Liam to bring up with the Revolutionary War with Henry.
“No, he's managed to find a different way.” Richie observed Liam's easy gait, how he strolled through the crowd without seeming to worry who might be out there. His collar would offer him some protection, spending most of his time on Holy Ground, more. “It works well enough for him.”
“But it's not for you?”
The light changed before they reached the corner. Liam had already crossed. Folding his hands, he stepped off to the side to wait. The distance was just far enough to put him on the edge of sensing range. His gait had been easy, but the way his eyes flicked through the throngs, searching for the Presence that dipped in and out of his awareness as the crowds jostled him and Richie toward and away from each other showed that fear still remained.
Richie rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the prickling that warned him of danger and to give his hand something to do so it wouldn't reach for his sword. “In case you haven't noticed, I'm not good at staying out of the way. I gave it a try once.” He thought about how quickly, how desperately, he'd taken to the false Methos and his message of peace. And how that had ended. “The price was too high for me. Someday, it'll be too high for him, too. We don't get to live lives of peace.”
“That's a shame.” Henry looked thoughtful for a second, then added, “Decapitation isn't the most pleasant way to die.”
“Thanks,” Richie replied, letting the sarcasm drip freely. “Now I know what to look forward to.” As close as he'd come to losing his head on far-too-many occasions, he'd already given the subject a lot of thought. He wondered, if he asked, if Henry would tell him what those last seconds were actually like. He wondered if he wanted to know.
Henry shrugged, apologetically. “It is still preferable to many others, such as being burned to death. Or dying from a perforated intestine. On that topic: I'll need to check in with the police tomorrow and update them on what we know about the explosion.”
“I'll come with you,” Richie said, surprising himself with the announcement. The signal changed and he and Henry joined the surge of people in the crosswalk. Liam picked up his lead, careful now to stay inside sensing range as he led them down the next block.
“I thought you wanted to avoid police scrutiny? What changed? Does it have something to do with your Watcher?”
“Sort of. Not exactly. I mean, she'd definitely make a better witness. As long as she doesn't mention what I am, or who she works for, there's nothing in her Oath to keep her from talking about what she saw.”
“And your other reason?”
The corner of Richie's mouth quirked up in a grin. “Trouble has a way of finding me, no matter how good a job I think I'm doing staying away from her. I figure, the faster we get this round resolved, the faster I can go back to trying to live my life before she finds me again.”
“If it makes it easier, one of the detectives on the case is a woman I've trusted with my own secret. She would understand...almost none of yours, come to think of it. Perhaps if you stuck to the bare minimum, she would be willing to minimize your role in the investigation.”
Liam chose that moment to drop back and insinuate himself between the two men. “Come along, gentlemen. Let's try to get there before we all die of old age.”
Since stating the obvious would probably play right into Liam's point, Richie decided that the only thing he could do was walk faster.
*~*~*
They only left the rectory after Abe called in a panic to find out where Henry was. “You weren't at home. Your work said you'd called in sick. You didn't leave a note.”
“I'm fine, Abe,” Henry assured him. “Richie and I have merely had a bit of an adventure. I'll tell you about it later.”
At least, that's what Richie thought Henry meant to say. What came out had less syntax and more vowels. From his seat at the rectory's kitchen table, Richie had no problem hearing Abe yell, “Are you drunk!?”
Henry let out a loud guffaw, as if being drunk was a proud accomplishment. “Quite.” He reached for the bottle of whisky in the middle of the table to refill his glass, and missed. His hand flapped into the empty air for a moment and then hit the table hard.
Pulling the bottle out of reach, Liam suggested, “I think it's time to stop now.” He was also drunk, though much more restrained about it than Henry was. “There'll be plenty of time for another round later. Plenty of time.”
“Where are you? I'll come pick you up,” Abe asked. He sounded like the father preparing to reprimand his teenage son.
“Yes, thank you, Abe. That would be a good idea,” Henry might have said.
Since Henry could barely speak, Liam took the phone and explained how to find his church. It took him longer to assure Abe that Henry was, indeed, fine, that he'd only had a few more surprises in his day than a man of his age was used to.
The last left Abe speechless for a long second before he roared out, “Henry!”
Richie, finding the whole conversation hilarious in its backwardness, called out, “We'll be here. I promise not to kill him. Again,” then broke down into the laughter he'd been holding in all day as Abe started to sputter.
*~*~*
The next evening, Richie brought all the borrowed clothes, now cleaned and folded, back. The sign on the antique store's door still read 'open,' when he arrived, despite the late evening darkness that had closed in over the city. Henry switched it to 'closed' before the bell finished tinkling and ushered Richie inside.
Abe was standing behind the counter. He looked up when Richie entered and, on seeing who it was, scowled and deliberately turned his attention to counting out the register. Richie wondered how much Henry had told him about what had happened. More importantly, how much Henry'd told him about why it had happened that way.
Deciding not to worry about it until he had to, Richie greeted them both, but quickly found his attention diverted. He hadn't been in an antique store since he'd sold Tessa's after she died, and seeing this space with its loving displays of old housewares, statuary, and furniture brought a wave of nostalgia and longing that choked him up. He'd never developed the taste for antiques in his own life-save for those people who qualified in their own way-so he was surprised by the strength of his desire to touch everything and to see how much he could still remember about its style and history. He drifted first to a shelf of glassware and then to a table that held silver tea and coffee services.
“They're beautiful, aren't they?” Henry commented. “With as much coffee as everyone consumes these days, I find it ironic that few people have any appreciation for the presentation of the beverage. Paper cups and plastic lids lack panache. When was the last time someone brought you coffee on a silver salver and served it in a hand-painted china cup?”
“It's been awhile,” Richie agreed. The kinds of high class restaurants Mac had taken him to when they lived in Paris meant that he'd at least had the experience. “I may not be the most representative member of my generation on that topic, though.” The wistfulness in Henry's tone kept him from adding that he preferred the paper cups because he could throw them out when he was done.
“Having met one of your friends, I'm inclined to agree.” Henry hesitated, then lowering his voice so only Richie could hear him, he asked, “He is your friend? You're not going to...fight...him?”
Richie picked up a silver coffee creamer and turned it over, idly seeking out the maker's mark. He set it down again without any recollection of what he'd seen. “Not today. Someday...I might have to.” If we both live long enough. Clearing his throat, he sought for a better topic before he got sucked into trying to justify something as illogical as the Game to someone as logical as Henry. “By the way, Joe called earlier. His group captured our guy and got him to fess up. They found my Watcher. She's safe.”
Henry nodded as if he'd expected to hear nothing else. “And you?”
“Liam's going to let me stay at the church until the insurance settlement comes through. After that, I think I'll probably set up shop again. I've spent a lot of time tending bar and fixing bikes. I'd like to see if I can do some good with my other skills.” He gave a self-deprecating half-shrug. “Without getting blown up for trying.” A crystal table lamp caught his attention and he went over to get a closer look at it, only vaguely aware that he was drifting toward the register. “Liam also wanted me to tell you that you're welcome to come around the rectory whenever you want. He said it would be fun to reminisce with someone who could remember the old peddlers' cries.”
“Ah, yes. Poor Jack and Colly Molly Puffle. I never thought I'd miss hearing those. Tell him I would be delighted. I believe I owe the Father a bottle of whisky.”
“The Father?” Abe asked, looking up from his counting in surprise. “You're talking about the priest you were with last night? Have you decided to take up religion?”
“Yes, and hardly,” Henry answered.
“He's only found someone to play with who's his age,” Richie explained. It was fun to tease Henry. Possibly, it was more fun that he could tease Henry. “And they're both from the same part of the world, though one of them being Irish and the other English could get interesting.”
Abe's brows shot up; the wad of bills that he'd been counting out sagged, forgotten, in his hand. “Another immortal?”
“There are actually quite a lot of us.” Richie offered Abe a conciliatory smile. He wanted to be friends with both the Morgan men, if he could. “I'm sorry that I got him involved in all this.” He waved down the length of his body, meaning by extension the craziness that was his life. “But I can't tell you how lucky I was to have someone who could help me through the latest round.”
The apology melted Abe's disapproval. “Henry's a good person to have on your side,” he said. “And I don't think you could have kept him uninvolved. He can be a little stubborn about helping people.” He threw a small smile at his father in acknowledgment that flaws and strengths were often the same thing. Turning his attention back to Richie, he said, “You know anything about antiques?”
Richie had let his eye get pulled to a jewelry display inside the glass cabinet that the register rested on. One of the bracelets looked like a piece Ceirdwyn would favor. A couple others were ones that Tessa would have liked. “I worked in an antique store for a while,” he admitted, his fondness for that time coloring his voice. “A few things managed to sink in.”
“Swing around some time and we can trade stories. Henry tells me you know something about swords. I have a few pieces in the back you might be interested in.” Abe slipped the money into the bank envelope, then stuck his hand out to shake.
Richie took it. “It'll be fun to see what I still remember.” The air cleared with Abe, he turned back to Henry. “Anyway, what's going on with the case? I thought you were going to call me to come in.”
Henry rubbed his eyebrow in embarrassment. “It seems the police won't need your involvement at all.”
“They won't?”
“Nor will they need the young lady. They solved the case on their own. They even got a confession.”
“From who?” Richie asked. He tried to imagine which of his neighbors might have broken their silence. More importantly, which neighbor might have had anything useful to say. Since he doubted that anyone else came back from the dead, that meant it had to be one of the people who had made it out before the explosion. And suddenly he knew. His own warning of trouble had been the man running down the stairs, ordering everyone to get out of the building. Warning. He slapped his head. “I saw him! I should have figured out the connection.” Dying really did make him stupid.
“It's now a moot point because he turned himself in. It turns out that he was stockpiling explosives in his apartment for some future experiment in domestic terrorism and he had an unrelated cooking accident that started a fire. Instead of trying to douse the fire, he panicked.”
Richie blinked, trying to make sense of what had happened. “Seventeen people are dead because some idiot didn't know how to cook?”
“I'd say that seventeen people are dead because some idiot was planning to do a great deal more harm than that. The loss of life is still a tragedy. The only good from this is that he will be spending the rest of his own life in prison, which means he cannot attempt anything like this again.”
“I suppose that's something.” Richie shook his head and blew out a long breath. It was a small something, all the potential lives saved against the seventeen who had really died. Eighteen, technically, though being inconvenienced for a few days was no consolation for those who wouldn't be coming back. Remembering why he was there, Richie set the plastic bag of clothes on the counter. “Thank you again for these. I mean it.” He was about to say that Henry had no idea how difficult it was to sneak across town naked, until he realized that Henry was the one person who did.
The clothes weren't all. Feeling slightly embarrassed, Richie dug the ten out of his pocket and handed it over. He'd gone back to his building that morning to search once more for the lockbox, and had found it exactly where it was supposed to be. In the darkness and distress, his fingers must have missed it by millimeters. “Please give this to the woman who has locker six. I'd thank her myself, but...” Richie shrugged. Even if he could explain how he'd come into possession of the woman's money, she'd never know what a difference that ten dollars had made to him.
With a nod of understanding, Henry took the money. “I'll tell her I found it on the floor. Also, my associate, Lucas, was asking about you.”
Richie cringed. “Dead-me or alive-me?”
“Both, as it happens, though I don't believe he's made the connection between the two.”
“What did you tell him?”
“In regards to your corpse: I explained that your family denied autopsy on religious grounds and that you'd been sent straight over to the mortuary for cremation. The police weren't happy about that, but there's not much they can do.”
“Good thinking,” Richie complimented, while making a mental note to start carrying some kind of card in his wallet that expressly denied any kind of autopsy or organ donation. A denial of cremation would also be a good idea. “What was he asking about alive me?”
“Something about a badly dressed intern who was using our coffee machine? I had no idea that you two had run into each other. He didn't know your name, but I told him I had heard that one of the interns washed out.”
Yes, he was definitely lucky to have had Henry helping him out. Who knew what might have happened had Lucas been the one standing at the table when Richie woke up. “Do you think he believed you?”
Eyes narrowed, Henry contemplated the question for a long moment before concluding: “With Lucas, it's always difficult to know what he's going to believe. I would suggest, however, that you try not to make any return visits to my morgue.”
Richie snorted. “Believe me, once every couple of decades is my limit.”
END