Tessa turned the hot water faucet off and reached for a dishtowel. She could have placed the dirty dishes in the automatic washer, but had needed the bubbles and scrubbing and hot water to distract her from the fact it was almost three o'clock in the morning, with no sign of Duncan. For a moment, as she peered into the darkness beyond the windows and listened to the deep silence all around, she imagined she was the only one in the city still awake, the only one in the entire world.

She felt very tired, but she would wait for Duncan. She had to, to find out if he'd dealt with his friend Greg.

Dealt with. Interesting euphemism. Dealt with, as in possibly killed.

A soft sound caught her attention and she turned to see Richie propped groggily in the doorway, his bathrobe wrapped loosely over a pair of boxer shorts. His left forearm was still bandaged from his bike accident, and livid bruises marked his face and neck in stark relief to his pale complexion.

"You're supposed to be in bed," Tessa scolded lightly.

"I'm not sleepy," Richie insisted, although he sounded tired. He dropped into one of the kitchen table chairs and rested his head on his folded arms with his eyes closed. "Mac's not back, huh?"

"Not yet. Do you want something to drink? Tea? Soup?"

"Hot chocolate?" he asked hopefully.

"We're all out. How about warm milk?"

Richie started to shake his head, but from his wince he obviously thought better of it. "Yuck. I hated that stuff even when I was little."

Tessa put the kettle on for herself and sat down to wait for it to boil. "How's your head?"

"The mariachi band has ceded half-time to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, although instead of the female cast of Baywatch they've hired big giant elephants this year."

Tessa frowned. Richie's colorful expressions sometimes got past her idiomatic command of English. She'd once prided herself on being able to understand anyone in her second language, but that was before meeting this particular American teenager.

Richie opened his eyes to gaze at her bleakly. "Do you think because Mac's not back, Greg might have gotten to him?"

"No," Tessa answered firmly. She refused to entertain the thought that someone like Greg could beat her Duncan. At first she'd found Greg just annoying, but after he'd goaded Richie into a stupid bike stunt that could have killed him, she'd decided he was as cowardly as he was obnoxious and dangerous.

"I don't think so, either," Richie confided. "He deserves to have his head chopped off, if you ask me."

That was anger talking, but having an Immortal put his hands around your throat and threaten to kill you tended to be an anger- inspiring occasion. She'd come back from picking up some groceries to find the door half-open, and Richie unconscious on the floor. Before she could call for an ambulance he stirred awake, and although he was obviously disoriented he remembered enough for Tessa to call Linda Plager's room at the hospital.

"Duncan," she said when he answered the phone. "Greg was here. He attacked Richie."

"What? When?"

"Just about ten minutes ago," Tessa said. "He might be on his way to see you."

"How's Richie?"

"Awake now, but he was out cold," Tessa reported. "He won't go the hospital."

"Then call Dr. Francisco and ask him to make a house call," MacLeod said. "It's not too late, and he owes me a favor or two. Put Richie on the phone."

Richie fumbled the receiver between his hands. "Mac," he complained. "Greg's nuts."

"What happened?"

"He said he couldn't feel anything," Richie said, massaging the back of his head. "He said . . . he destroyed everything. All the pictures and negatives and I don't know what."

"I'm going to wait for Greg here," MacLeod said. "Just do what Tessa tells you, all right?"

That had been nearly six hours ago. Tessa itched to call the hospital room again, but she was loath to disturb the dying woman. Linda presented an interesting paradox - the other woman, definitely, a woman Duncan still loved. A mortal, aged beyond him by over five decades, ravaged by time and disease. Her future self, if Tessa cared to consider it up close. She didn't care to at all. Visions of herself as a ninety year old crone with a young, vibrant Duncan helping her cross the street on her walker already flashed through her thoughts sometimes, worsening with every year.

She sat with Richie in silence, waiting for the kettle. She was just dropping a herbal teabag into a cup of boiling water when they heard Duncan's key in the lock. He came in with a grim expression that might or might not have come from a Quickening. The front of his blue shirt was slashed open, although there was no blood and, of course, no wound.

"I'm glad you're home!" Tessa said, giving him a hug. He returned it stiffly, his thoughts obviously preoccupied. Dark circles ringed his eyes.

"I can't stay for long," he said in a dulled voice. "The doctors say it's just a matter of hours, now. I'd like to be there when . . . when she passes."

Richie peered up from the table. "Where's Greg?"

"Gone. He won't be bothering you anymore."

Richie frowned. "Gone as in dead, with a big light show? Or gone as in hasta la vista?"

"Gone. I took care of it," MacLeod said firmly. He turned to Tessa. "You should go to bed. There's no need for everyone to lose sleep tonight."

"I was worried about you," she said softly. Although he probably didn't intend it to sound like a chastisement, she felt a mild sting just the same. He needed space, she knew. Space to deal with love and death, and the inexorable merger of the two in Linda Plager's failing body.

"I'm all right," MacLeod said.

"I'm going to bed," Richie announced. "See you guys later."

Duncan, rummaging in the refrigerator as if he might actually be hungry, didn't see Richie's face suddenly reflect more pain than just his headache. Tessa did. Greg could have killed him, but Duncan was obviously not impressed.

"Duncan . . . " she started.

"Yes?" he asked, from the depths of the shelves, clearly in no mood for conversation.

Tessa changed her mind about approaching the subject. "About Linda . . . " she substituted instead. "I'm sorry."

He surfaced with a bottle of mineral water. "I know," he said, and kissed her forehead. "So am I."

Linda died the next morning. Despite their parting words, the peace MacLeod had tried to forge for himself at her deathbed, he still found himself falling into a grayness of tired and depression afterwards. No one he'd ever met - not Connor, not Darius, not Amanda - had ever been able to explain the torment of Immortals marching outside the sweep and fall of time. No one could ever tell him why it was his fortune to watch loved ones die. But each death was like a ripping open the same old wound, rendering fresh blood each decade of his life.

Tessa seemed to understand his mood, and didn't push him to talk about it. MacLeod was grateful for that. Richie's bruises healed, and the stitches came out of his arm. If he was uncharacteristically quiet in the days after Greg's attack, MacLeod didn't notice from his own withdrawn state.

It therefore came to him as a surprise one morning when he retrieved the day's newspaper from Richie's bathroom and found it folded to the classifieds, with various apartment advertisements circled in ink.

"What's this?" he asked Tessa in her workshop, as she marked up a large sheet of metal for cutting.

Tessa glanced at the paper with feigned disinterest. She knew exactly what he was talking about. "What does it look like?" she asked.

"I mean, why? Is Richie thinking about moving out?"

"You'd have to ask Richie."

MacLeod felt a pang of annoyance. "Why am I the last one to know about anything around here?"

"You're not the last one to know, you're just the last one to notice," Tessa said cryptically. "Ask Richie."

She was being completely unhelpful. MacLeod went in search of Richie and found him in the alley working on his bike. "Hey," the older man said, suddenly unsure if he actually wanted to pursue this conversation.

"Hey," Richie answered. "Hand me that wrench, will you? Thanks."

MacLeod leaned against the hood of his Thunderbird. "You need help?"

"No. I got it. What's up?"

He hesitated slightly. "I hear you're thinking of . . . getting your own place."

Richie didn't look up from his work. "Tessa tell you that?"

"You circled the apartment ads in the newspaper."

Richie reached for a grease rag. His bright blue eyes turned to MacLeod and he said, very casually, "I tossed the idea around a little. I mean, I'm not a minor anymore, it's probably time I had my own address. I think that little place you rented for me while we were in Paris gave me a taste of the good life."

MacLeod smiled. "The good life, huh? Young Parisian women?"

Richie managed a rueful grin. "Not as many as I'd wished but, you know, it's the idea that counts."

"You have any place in mind?"

"Not yet," Richie said, pulling himself to his feet. "Just kind of reading the ads, seeing what people have out there. You think it's a bad idea?"

"No, not at all," MacLeod said quickly. Maybe too quickly. He hastened to add, "I'll miss your dirty laundry everywhere, and your losing the television remote practically every day, but if it's something you want to do, I'll help you as much as I can."

Richie gazed at him with a strange expression. "Okay, thanks."

That night, after dinner, MacLeod interrupted what was obviously a private conversation between Tessa and Richie. He backed away as politely as he could. When they went to bed, Tessa staked out her side of the mattress and turned her back to him.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No," Tessa said. "I'm just tired."

He wasn't going to play games with her. If Tessa resented his grief over Linda so much that she was willing to let it come between them, that was her choice. Fine. Two could play that game. He stayed on his own side of the mattress as well.

When a soft thump woke him from his sleep he sat immediately upright and reached for his sword. Tessa's hand on his arm stopped him.

"It's just Richie," she whispered.

"Just Richie?" MacLeod turned to her in the darkness. The bedside alarm clock read three twenty two a.m. "What's he doing? Moving furniture?"

Tessa didn't answer right away. MacLeod dropped to the pillows beside her.

"What is it, Tessa?" he asked.

"I can't say," she answered softly. For weeks Duncan hadn't been able to see past himself to the pain Richie was in, and she'd watched helplessly as the gulf slowly widened between them. Her resolve to not interfere wavered with each passing day, but so far she'd stuck to the promise Richie had made her make. She did say now, in the bed they'd shared for so many years, "It's not the first time."

Perplexed, unable to get more from her than that, MacLeod went to Richie's room. He knocked softly, heard nothing, and eased his way in. The bed was rumpled but empty, the sheets and comforter pulled over to one side.

"Richie?" he asked.

"Hmm," Richie answered, muffled. "Over here."

MacLeod circled the bed to find him lying in a heap on the floor, twisted in the striped sheets. He didn't look injured, but he looked in no hurry to get up, either. MacLeod turned on the small lamp on the bedside table and asked, ""What are you doing down there?"

Richie squinted painfully in the light. "Looking for dust bunnies," he snapped. "Turn that off, will you?"

MacLeod obligingly turned it off and helped Richie sit up against the sturdy wooden frame of the bed. Richie had gone to sleep nude, and in a show of modesty made sure the sheets showed nothing too revealing MacLeod sat down beside him and asked, curiously, "Did you find any?"

"Any what?" Richie asked blankly.

"Dust bunnies." "No."

They sat looking at Richie's dresser, immediately in front of them, with its portable boom box and stacks of c.d.'s on top. Socks and underwear stuck out from the jammed drawers. MacLeod didn't find that very tidy, but remembered that when he'd been Richie's age in the Scottish Highlands of the seventeenth century, keeping his underwear folded neatly had never been one of his top priorities, either. Of course, in the seventeenth century they hadn't had much in the way of underwear anyway.

Tessa's earlier words suddenly clicked, and he realized that he'd failed to notice something else going on right under his nose.

"Bad dreams?" he hazarded.

Richie's voice was flat, allowing no weakness. "Once in awhile, maybe."

"Greg?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe," MacLeod echoed. "You've been having nightmares about what Greg did, is that it? The bike accident? Or here?"

"Both. But it's not important." Richie made a show of rubbing his right elbow, which he'd banged against the floor in his fall from the bed.

"Why isn't it important, Richie?"

"Because you said you took care of him. So I don't have to worry about him. I don't have to worry that he's going to stop by and try and snap my neck or something, because *you* took care of him."

A new understanding broke open in MacLeod's mind. Quietly he asked, "Did you want me to take his Quickening?"

"Does it matter?"

"It might."

Richie stared at the dresser. "That night, I did. I mean, he tried to kill me. He made me . . . "

The words trailed off. MacLeod sensed something he hadn't heard from Tessa, and felt suddenly cold. "He made you do what?" he asked, his voice now low and dangerous.

"Nothing," Richie said quickly, meeting his gaze. "I mean it. Nothing sick or perverted. Except - "

MacLeod waited.

"I begged for my life, Mac," Richie admitted, his face coloring, and hung his head in remembered anguish. "I actually begged. I never had to do that before. You never had to beg for your life, did you?"

"Not for mine," MacLeod admitted. "Usually it doesn't apply. Sometimes for others. For mortals, for people I loved. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Richie's face set in a scowl.

"Did you have another choice?" MacLeod asked.

"Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe I over-reacted. Maybe if I hadn't tried to get away, he would have let me go anyway - "

"Richie," MacLeod said firmly, "you were afraid of him, and with good reason. We'll never know what he might have done to you. What he might have done to Tessa, if she'd come home a few minutes earlier. You didn't do anything to deserve having to beg, or being knocked unconscious."

Richie didn't look convinced. "So how come you didn't take him?"

MacLeod asked, "Are you sure I didn't?"

"No," Richie answered, sounding peevish. "You wouldn't talk about it."

"We fought on the hospital roof. He had a sword, and I didn't. He would have killed me at the first opening, but I got his sword. I nearly did take his head, then. I was angry about what he'd done to you, what he tried to do to Linda, and afraid of what he'd become. I told him that he had to change or die."

"What did he choose?"

"He chose to ask for help," MacLeod said softly. "My help. He's ill, Richie, but he's not evil. He's ill, and confused, and in great pain."

Richie folded his arms, clearly unwilling to let go of his anger just yet. "So you did what? Took him to the psycho ward?"

MacLeod refused to be baited. "No. I got him calmed down, and then I put him on a flight to France. There's an Immortal there named Sean Burns who's also a doctor. He said he would see that he got the help he needed."

"As long as he doesn't drop by here again, he can get all the help he wants, okay?"

"Is that why you wanted to move out?"

Richie sighed as his anger transformed into shadowed vulnerability. MacLeod wondered if Richie even knew how easy he was to read most of the time. A part of him wished wistfully to be that young again, so open to everything new in life, even the hard parts, even the parts that brought nightmares.

"I really did like having my own place in Paris," he said, his voice catching a little, "but this is like home, you know? You and Tessa having me come live here was the first place I felt wanted, not just assigned by some idiot social worker."

"This is your home," MacLeod agreed. "As long as you want it."

"You really mean that?"

"Yes."

"Thanks."

"So you're staying?"

"Sure, now that I know you care," Richie answered, with only a little flippancy. He yawned. "Besides, do you know how much apartments rent for these days?"

"Richie," MacLeod said, before the moment passed, "I'm sorry what Greg did to you. And when he's healed, I know he'll be sorry too. He was once a very compassionate doctor who saw a great deal of death, and being Immortal has taken its toll on him. What he did was inexcusable, but don't let it haunt you. You're strong enough to move past it."

Richie made a face. "I guess."

"If you can't sleep, or have nightmares, come to me. We'll talk it out."

"Actually, Tessa and I have been having a great deal of late night discussions," Richie said lightly, as he pulled himself upright with the sheet carefully wrapped around his legs. "And gone through a lot of hot chocolate, except she keeps putting big globs of honey in hers. Must be a French thing. Isn't that right, Tessa?"

"You shouldn't knock it until you try it," Tessa said from the doorway. MacLeod turned, surprised that he hadn't heard her. She gazed at them both fondly. "And it's not a French thing. I learned it from a Scot."

Richie raised his eyes doubtfully at MacLeod.

"Not from me you didn't," MacLeod said.

She arched her eyebrows. "You think you're the only Scottish man I've ever known? I'm allowed to have a little mystery in my past, aren't I?" Tessa tightened her lace robe. "Come on, guys. I already have the water on to boil."

"What mysterious past?" MacLeod asked suspiciously, moving towards her, but she'd already turned down the hall. He glanced back at Richie. "You coming?"

Richie tightened his sheet. "It's a little drafty in the kitchen," he said. "Let me find some clothes first."

MacLeod went after Tessa. "And what Scot?" he persisted.

Richie just grinned.

THE END