"Who is it?" he demanded.
"Me, and Joe," a female voice answered. "Are you going to let us in or not, MacLeod?"
Letting go of the breath he had been holding, Duncan opened the door. As promised, it was Amanda and Joe on the other side.
"How is he?" Amanda asked gently, looking past him into the apartment.
"No change; he may be getting worse," Duncan admitted, letting his friends in.
Amanda went directly to the bed, taking off a glove as she approached. She gently pushed a stray hair out of Richie's face and probed his chest gently.
"He's swelling," she reported. Duncan nodded; he'd been trying to ignore it. "We'd better do something now before it takes too much of everyone's energy."
"That's why I called."
"You called?" Joe asked, setting up his laptop on the desk.
"Just now,what are you doing?"
"Documentation," the mortal admitted carefully. "This could come in handy. A first hand experience; it needs to be recorded."
"Duncan," Amanda stepped beside him. "We should get started before he gets any worse." She held up a long, narrow dagger. "Do you want to go first, or shall I?"
"I'll do it." He took hold of the dagger and went to the bed. Amanda drew back the blanket as he rolled up the sleeve of his sweater.
"Don't do too much at once," she told him. "I've done this before, we have to be careful."
Duncan nodded, kneeling next to the bed. He held out his left arm and cut a long, deep gash from his elbow to his wrist. Gently, he laid his arm wound to wound with Richie's abdomen and let his quickening go.
The soft blue light danced back and forth occasionally sparking out from between the two fleshes. Richie's open wound began to glow as the quickening ventured inside his body and searched out any damaged organs. Duncan had to look away and Joe peeked up curiously as Richie's innards moved around in search of their proper placements.
"That's disgusting," Amanda moaned, taking a step back.
Richie's body settled, and then reached its quickening capacity. There was a large flash when the unused quickening was rejected from the body cavity at once. The force of the raw energy pushed Duncan away and he fell to the floor as if he'd been shot.
"You alright, MacLeod?" Joe asked, pausing his note taking.
"Fine." He got up slowly, his hand to his head. "Just fine."
"You're dizzy," Amanda observed, reaching out to help steady him. "Why don't you sit down?"
"No. I'm fine. Let's go again."
"I don't think so," she steered him to the couch. "Richie needs his rest and so do you. It's not good for either one of you to over do it."
Joe pecked away at the keyboard until he was satisfied with his account of the first round.
"How long until he's up again?" Joe asked.
"A while," Amanda answered. "Another dose or two should heal up that, the incision. Then another two should get him breathing and healing on his own."
"You really have done this before."�
"A couple times. It's only really effective in extreme cases."
"You seen anything like this before?" Duncan asked.
Amanda glanced over her shoulder at Richie in the bed. "I've seen worse, but not by much."
After about half an hour, Duncan was feeling better and Amanda decided to take her turn in getting Richie alive. The smell was starting to get to everyone. She knelt on the floor next to the bed and pushed up her sleeve. As Duncan had done, she cut her arm and laid it across the wound. To keep her Quickening working longer, she put a finger in the cut on her arm to prevent it from healing.
The light slowly ventured out from her body and was drawn to Richie's body. At first it looked as if nothing was happening, but after a few minutes, soft, pink flesh began to appear around the edges of the wound as Richie's body began to regenerate what it needed. Amanda held her composure long enough to partially close the wound before she had to take a break and regain her strength.
An hour later, Duncan took his turn and left Richie with a raised scar, but at least his organs were no longer exposed. With all the body fluids safely sealed back where they belonged, they decided to change the sheets and bathe Richie to hopefully get rid of the smell. It took all three of them and some creative maneuvering, but they eventually had Richie carefully dressed and lying on fresh sheets.
"This last one should do it," Amanda announced hopefully. She got onto the bed next to Richie's nearly flesh colored form and sat cross legged looking down at him. She put her left hand on his chest and raised her right over her head, clutching the dagger. Taking a deep breath and shutting her eyes, she plunged the blade through the back of her hand and into Richie's body. Her hand began to glow as if there were a flashlight shining behind it.
With an agitated cough and a spasm, Richie gasped for air as Duncan helped Amanda pull the dagger out. His eyes flashed open for a moment, the surge of Quickening bringing him back to life moments before he died of his newest injury.
"That's it," Amanda whispered as she fell limp onto the pillows.
Joe stared wide-eyed then began typing furiously at his keyboard trying to describe everything in the best detail he could and wishing that he had been insensitive enough to bring a camera to record all that had just happened. Proving the theory true with more than just hearsay was going to open a whole new area of research and understanding about immortals. Duncan looked at him, agitated. Joe understood that the immortal didn't like the idea of being a file in someone's drawer, much less a test subject revealing more to the Watchers than the immortals cared for them to know. He finished up his report as quickly as he could, leaving overly detailed, nonsensical sentences that he'd fix later in the privacy of his own home.
He shut the computer and moved to the living area, taking a seat and fiddling with the chess set on the coffee table. Duncan leaned on the kitchen counter, looking out the window and they silently waited for Amanda to wake up. It didn't take her long. The power of the two quickenings colliding was more than any immortal could handle. Once she regained consciousness, the three silently coordinated shifts for being in charge.
Duncan took the first shift, making dinner while dosed on the bed next to Richie and Joe looked through Duncan's library. No one really wanted to eat, but it gave them something to do. The dishes were something to do as well, and they somehow managed to make it into a grueling three man task.
Amanda took the next shift in charge. She put on the kettle and made everybody a cup of tea. Duncan barely made it halfway through the cup before passing out on the couch. Joe stared from his seat out the window until his body shut down from lack of interest. Amanda found the cleaning supplies and set to scrubbing the death out of the apartment. She was on her hands and knees scrubbing a hand made woven rug when Joe woke up and decided it was his turn to take over, helping her up and pressing a hot cup of tea into her hands.
Nothing much happened for two days. On the third day, while everyone was in a trance thanks to the on going investigation of the two headless bodies found in the woods being broadcast around the clock, the former corpse in the bed began to move.
"Mac?" a horse voice whispered. The three in the living room looked at each other, confused as to who had just spoken.
"Mac?" the voice asked, a little stronger. They looked over at the bed, where Richie had awkwardly tried to roll over, but his body refused to cooperate.
"Mac?"
Duncan all but leapt over the couch to get to Richie as the young immortal's voice began to hint at panic.
"I'm here," Duncan said, sliding a bit on his knees in his haste to get into position beside the bed. "I'm here."
"Good." And Richie was back asleep.
"You're kidding," Joe groaned from his chair. "After all the waiting we've done, he finally wakes up; just to make sure someone was around?" His voice was a mix of humor and annoyance. "That's all we get?"
"I thought Richie was supposed to be dramatic?" Amanda added.
Duncan just looked at them. "Are you two serious?"
"Mac?" Richie interrupted before an argument could start.
"Yeah, Rich?"
"I can't feel anything," he complained in a slurred whisper.
"Everything's there, I promise," Duncan told him. "Are you hungry?"
"Little,"
Amanda jumped up to make herself useful and put on the soup they had made the day before to heat.
"How you feeling?"
Richie's eyes cracked open and he looked around the room. His eyes passed over Duncan and came to rest on Joe and Amanda.
"Everybody here." It wasn't a question, or a statement, it was a realization.
"Everybody's here," Duncan told him.
"Thought so,"
"Stay awake and we'll get you something to eat."
"'M hungry,"
"I know. We're working on it."
Amanda dished out some soup, mostly broth, into a coffee cup and brought it over to the bed. She held onto the cup while Duncan titled Richie's head up. Richie took a few sips before grunting he was finished and closing his eyes.
Every few hours, Richie woke up and took a few more sips of broth before drifting back to sleep. By that evening, he was awake enough to carry on short conversations. Joe sat down at the desk and typed up some more notes while Amanda and Duncan went into nesting mode. They hurried about making sure everything was perfect and checked on Richie every few minutes.
"Would you two pause and take a breath?" Joe looked up from his laptop. "The kid doesn't care if the drapes have been dusted. He's fine. He'll wake up. The worst was over ages ago."
Duncan and Amanda stopped mid-task and looked at Joe.
"Calm down," he translated. "You're just driving yourselves crazy."
They agreed, though not in so many words and stopped working. Duncan took a seat on a chair where he had a clear view of Richie, but Amanda opted for the more direct approach and sat on the bed next to him. She smoothed back his hair, unkempt from the awkward washing and lack of brushing. Duncan and Joe watched as she took one of his hands in hers and held it gently, while still stroking his hair with the other. They hadn't thought Amanda cared that deeply for Richie. Sure, she liked to flirt with and tease him, but they had figured it was more of something she did because she could, because of the way he melted if she just acknowledged he was in the room, to mess with him.
"For a kid who couldn't figure out why no one wanted him, he sure ended up with a big family," Joe murmured to himself.
"What?" Duncan asked, as if startled out of a trance.
"Nothing."
Duncan went back to watching Amanda. He'd never seen her act so, well, maternal before. She never seemed to type to really lament not being able to have children, she'd never expressed and interest before. But as he watched her, he wondered if he and she would have made good parents had they the chance.
Amanda settled down on the bed in anticipation for a long wait. Richie had woken a little more than an hour ago and probably wouldn't be up for quite a while, yet.
"I could get used to this,"
Or maybe he was ready now.