Renewal
Takes place after Archangel (I don't know if it's exactly right but Mac spent a year in the eastern monasteries before returning to Paris to defeat Ahriman)
Methos and Joe sat in the older mortal's Paris bar staring into bottomless glasses of whiskey. Joe looked like he literally might fall apart at any moment, his face was pinched and tired, his body tense and brittle. The ancient immortal sympathized with the man. He kept seeing Richie's headless body lying at the racetrack, the boy's own blood covering his clothes and the cement under him. And his face, eyes frozen open in mute horror. He had the most beautiful blue eyes and the blue had stood out even more against the bloodless white of his unattached head but they were no longer beautiful because Richie himself was no longer shining out of them.
Methos couldn't understand why he couldn't get the picture out of his head. He'd certainly seen enough headless bodies in his time and he'd been on both sides of betraying friend, but this was …unnatural. He shook his head to clear it, only then realizing that Joe was talking to him. He was telling some story of Richie and one of his many girlfriends and laughing at the telling. It was good to hear that laugh, good to laugh now after Richie's funeral, Richie had never been somber. Not that he had really known the kid that well.
"Richie had a certain charm with the ladies alright," Joe's voice was scratchy and low.
"Yeah well his looks didn't hurt either," Methos added with his own grin. Joe turned a surprised face to him.
"You looked at Richie?!"
"Joe I have eyes," Methos waggled his eyebrows teasingly. "The kid was good-looking."
Joe chuckled into his drink. "MacLeod would have had your head for touching him."
"Well that's certainly one reason I never did." The ancient immortal stared into his glass, tilting it in the light, the mood suddenly turning somber again. "The young ones don't seem to last very long anymore." Joe wiped his hand over his face as if the pain would be as easy to wipe away.
Methos left town after that. He couldn't stay, even to comfort Joe. If MacLeod asked to die again, Methos might just give him his wish. The Highlander was Methos's friend, from their first meeting when the younger immortal had stood in his apartment and called him by his name as if the word had the power to conjure the ancient into life again. And Mac had offered his protection before he even knew the old man. Mac deserved the prize if anyone did and Methos was just arrogant enough to think of ensuring that he got it.
But now, what would MacLeod be worth now? It wasn't just Richie Ryan who died that day. And if Mac did come back, he didn't need a cynical old man there taunting him with life's mysteries but being unable to offer anything more wise than 'life is hard'. No it was time to go.
Methos ended up in Iran. He lied to himself that he was only there because he hadn't been to the Middle East recently; course recent was a relative term. Joe sent him an email saying that MacLeod had returned to Paris and defeated the demon. Methos ignored it. That day though he ended up wandering around a Zoroastrian temple and he felt it. The buzz of another immortal sputtering into life jarred his senses and he quickly set out to find the source, thankful they were on holy ground.
His search came to an abrupt end when he found a naked man lying in a remote corner. The immortal was apparently unconscious and…Methos moved closer to get a better look and stopped, shock freezing the blood in his veins. It was Richie! He looked around frantically but saw no one. He kneeled next to the man, staring at him intently.
Richie looked exactly as he had that day. He still had short hair and a faint tan and was well muscled as Methos could clearly see now. Obviously the boy hadn't been kept in a cell somewhere for all this time but then where had he been? He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped the still unconscious form in it. If he was breaking his own often spouted rule to 'do nothing' well all he could say was this was definitely a special, nay extraordinary case.