When Mac gave Richie his first sword, he told him to keep it with him and make it part of him because it might sometimes be his only friend. Though he didn't really understand the advice, Richie had done his best to take it to heart. He'd quickly found that carrying a sword around with him all the time was a lot more difficult than Mac had made it look. Successfully concealing three feet of steel inside a coat took constant attention to how you stood, how you swung your arms, and how you walked. He'd had to relearn how to run, and learn entirely how not to slice himself or his clothing open on his own blade. Years later, he'd tried to put his sword down for good and discovered that he'd grown so used to its weight in his coat or the touch of its scabbard against his leg when he was riding that not having the blade in reach was like missing a friend.

After he rolled out of bed Thursday morning, he swapped out his pajamas for a pair of shorts and a shirt to run in, then caught himself reaching for his sword. He always kept it next to his bed while he slept. On the days he went running, he strapped the sword to his bike so he could get to it if necessary. Not being armed if a Challenge was issued was the same thing as forfeiting.

Richie's hand closed on empty space and a flash of panic flared in him before his still-awakening brain remembered that he'd stuck the sword into a storage box under the bed with his winter coat for the duration of Emily's stay. He wasn't ready for her to see it, wasn't ready for the questions she'd invariably ask about it. That meant he had to learn to live without it again. To have a girlfriend, he was going to have to give up his best friend. Grabbing only his shoes, he went out to the main room.

To his surprise, Methos was already up, seated in his usual place on the sofa, headphones on and laptop open. He had on a shirt. A real shirt, faded red with a pocket on its chest, and what looked like khaki shorts. So, Richie wasn't the only one adjusting some habits in preparation for their house guest.

Richie glanced at the clock over the microwave then raised an eyebrow at his roommate. "What are you doing awake? I thought you had some kind of ethical objection to dawn?" Crossing to the fridge, he retrieved an apple, then went back to the sofa to eat it while he put his shoes on.

Methos tugged the headphones off and let them drop around his neck, but didn't take his eyes off the laptop screen. "I'm on Paris time." Every few seconds he pressed a key, frowning each time at the results. "I've been checking in with some old contacts."

"About what?"

"What do you think?"

Richie thought he was supposed to know this, except part of the reason he went running in the early mornings was because it didn't require any brain power, as evidenced by the fact that he had an apple in one hand and a pair of running shoes in the other and he'd nearly taken a bite out of the running shoes. "Just tell me. I have a lot to do to get ready and I'm not in the mood for your riddles."

"Asking questions instead of providing easy answers is an established teaching technique," Methos countered. He hit the key harder this time, as if the machine would respond to his impatience. "When students have to work through a problem on their own—"

"The Watchers!" Richie exclaimed, to Methos' evident surprise.

The symbol on the screen had given it away. Craning his head, Richie got a glimpse at the rest of the screen. From his angle, he couldn't read the words, but he could see the picture of Franklin Drake. He felt his fingernails bite through the skin of the apple. "You're reading the Watcher files." That was a step he hadn't thought about. He'd only had contact with his own Watcher once, and he didn't like to push his luck with Joe. Better to save that resource for when he really needed it, like when he got killed in a building explosion and needed a safe place to sleep while he got his feet back under him.

"They don't know it's me, of course. Adam Pierson has been dead to them for awhile so I'm using a newer ghost to poke around. I've found that it pays to keep some spare identities active."

The idea of the Watchers, with all their closely guarded secrets and layers of security, being tricked again into giving up information to an Immortal was enough to make Richie want to call Joe just to gloat. He wouldn't, but he wanted to.

Methos unfolded from the couch and carried the laptop over to the counter where the coffee pot sat, still periodically hitting the key. Richie now saw that he was refreshing the screen, though nothing on it appeared to be changing. "I wanted to find out more about Drake, see if there was anything enlightening in his file."

He'd said as much when they first talked about Drake's death, which had been almost two days ago. "It took you this long to get into the Watcher records?" Richie asked. He was missing something. "I'd've thought that'd be the first stop. I mean, the Watchers keep records on us; you used to be a Watcher; aren't you, like, used to heading straight for the reports or whatever it is they have on file for us?" He frowned as another question occurred to him. "That info is secure, right? It's not just out there on the Internet for everyone to access?" He knew it couldn't be, but with all the data breaches he'd heard about recently, maybe he shouldn't assume the Watchers had their files locked down as tight as he believed.

Methos shot him an unamused glare. "Certain procedures still have to be observed," he stated, as if Richie should know what those procedures were and how complicated their observance was. "And, yes, it's secure. We've already seen the consequences of the database getting into the wrong hands once. It will not happen again."

That was a good a guarantee as Richie had ever heard. Methos had left the organization, but he was never going to leave it unmonitored, as he'd already made clear. When it came to the question of who watches the Watchers, the answer appeared to be Methos all the way down. It clicked then: the outfit, the need for Methos to be on Paris time.

"You didn't sneak into the files; you asked to be let in. What the hell, man? What kind of contacts do you have?" It wasn't Joe, not in the least because Joe was on the West Coast and definitely wouldn't be awake right now. That meant it had to be someone Methos knew from when he was in the Watchers, except that had been twenty years before. If he'd Skyped someone, they'd certainly have noticed that he hadn't aged in that time. "Does someone there know who you are?"

In answer, Richie got only a thin lipped smile that neither confirmed nor denied anything, and that managed to leave Richie with the impression that he was both a colossal idiot and the wisest man in the world. Screw sword fighting; that's what he needed Methos to teach him to do. Recognizing that he wasn't going to get a clearer answer, Richie bit into the apple and chewed. "Yeah, OK. So, what did you find about Drake?"

Methos refreshed the screen again and whispered an impatient "Come on," before dumping the laptop on the counter and turning to more immediate tasks. He filled the bean grinder and switched it on. Its noise consumed the small apartment for a few seconds and left a void when it ended. Into the fresh silence, he said, "His file is pretty thin. He was young, not much more than a century, and not all that interested in the Game. He only took five heads in his life, and none in the last thirty years."

"A century? That's not all that young," Richie protested, though given whom he was talking to, anyone born anno dominie would count as young. By Methos' standards, Richie was hardly out of diapers.

As if Richie hadn't spoken, Methos continued, "He'd been a businessman his whole life. Bit of a golden boy, too. Had a real knack for picking the right interests to invest in, until suddenly he didn't. Black Tuesday wiped out his accounts, so he stuck a gun in his mouth."

"First death?" Richie confirmed, shuddering in sympathy. First deaths were always a surprise, but that one had to have been especially shocking—and not in a good way. Finding out that you couldn't die when you thought you had nothing left to live for was a hell of way to get started.

"His teacher was a woman named Zyanya." Methos' brow creased in consideration. "Appropriate. I wonder if her people knew." A shake of his head, and he brought himself back on track while he moved through the motions of emptying the carafe and refilling the water tank. "She lost her head in the 50s, so she wasn't the one who killed him. All his own fights appeared to be routine. He preferred to disengage when he had the choice. I couldn't find any indication of an enemy. No one with a grudge."

The apple had lost its taste, but Richie forced himself to keep eating it. Drake had been a lot like him: a guy who just wanted to get through life without killing anyone. So Richie had taken a few more heads. A guy had to do what he had to do to survive, and sometimes that meant taking the wrong road before figuring out the right one. He was starting to wonder if coming to New York City hadn't been entirely the wrong road. If being in the City for a few days had gotten Drake killed, what chance did Richie have when he did have enemies? The way everyone seemed to flock to the place, it was no wonder Connor had been so adamant about not letting them play.

"Just tell me he was killed by one of us," Richie said. It was a lot more comforting to think that Drake had chosen to give up his head rather than have it taken by someone who couldn't take his Quickening. Death was one thing; annihilation another thing entirely.

"There's no way to know until the terminal report comes through." Methos hit refresh again. "That's what I'm waiting for. It usually takes a day or two for a file to update; I was told the update should be coming through any minute." He lapsed into silence while he alternated checking the laptop and the level of the freshly brewing coffee. It was anybody's guess which one he wanted to have finish first.

Sighing to himself, Richie bent over to get his shoes on. He was sitting close enough to the living room window to feel the early warmth of the day trying to push through the wall. If he didn't get moving soon, he was going to die from heatstroke.

Funny how that wasn't a metaphor. He was going to have to be careful what he said around Emily, even as a joke.

Her rapidly approaching arrival was making him more sensitive to the ways in which his life wasn't like a mortal's; he knew that. It happened every time he started to get serious with someone, and was almost always the reason he ended the relationship. The constant need to be on guard for slips of the tongue about his past, injuries whose absence couldn't be explained, and people coming out of the woodwork who wanted to kill him was…well, like learning to carry a sword. It was difficult and exhausting, and it became very easy to grow resentful of the reason he had to behave so unnaturally. Emily would be the only person he was in close contact with who didn't know what he was or how different his life was.

If he and Methos didn't figure out what happened to Drake soon, they wouldn't be able to discuss it again until after Emily left. That was enough to make him consider, once again, calling her to cancel. Face it, Ryan, he told himself, unless you want to start dating Immortals again, you're always going to have this part. Might as well learn to deal with it.

He was just standing up, somewhat chastened, when Methos barked out an "ah-ha" that made Richie snap the core of his apple in half.

Methos stabbed a finger on the touchscreen and scanned the information that popped up. His expression gave away nothing, though the hiss and drip of the coffee maker seemed to grow both louder and more insistent.

"What?" Richie demanded.

"Look who's up to his old tricks." Methos turn the laptop around, balancing it on his arm, and adjusted the screen so Richie could see it.

The image that stared out at him was one he thought he'd never seen again, speaking of having enemies out there. "Fuuuuck." Richie stepped closer, half-hoping that he hadn't really recognized the killer. Though his angle cast a slight glare on the screen, his eyes had not deceived him. With one detail, Drake's death made perfect sense. It wasn't a Watcher or a Hunter or any mortal interfering in a Game he shouldn't be playing; it was only a case of one Immortal who made the mistake of trusting another one he shouldn't have. "He's in town? He's still alive?"

Richie dragged his hand down the back of his head, letting out a snort of frustration. This was his luck. This was always his luck. Just when he thought things were going pretty well, an upset always came along: someone framing him for a crime he didn't commit, dying in front of thousands of witnesses, his dearest friend getting possessed and trying to take his head, and on and on it went.

"I'm gonna have to cancel," he said. "It's not safe for Emily to be here."

Methos gave a slight shrug and set the computer back on the counter so they both could see it. "For what it's worth, there's no guarantee he's still in town." He stopped, considered, then added, "Or that he's still alive. He got his kill, so he's probably moved on, searching for his next victim. Unless someone else got to him first. Drake's Watcher left town himself right after the Quickening. I suspect he's now sitting on a beach in Florida enjoying some mandatory vacation time while he waits to get reassigned." He gazed for a moment at the ceiling, as if picturing himself on a beach in Florida with a beer in hand and waves lapping at his feet. If Methos was buying the plane tickets, Richie would happily join him. Getting out of town seemed like a great idea right now.

"Why not check with his Watcher?" Richie asked. It seemed like a question he shouldn't have to ask, which immediately made him suspicious. Joe had ingrained in Richie that the Watcher database wasn't to be used to hunting purposes, and Methos treated that as an inviolate rule, but knowing if someone was in a city the size of New York City was hardly the same as knowing his address.

Turning away, Methos poured himself a cup of coffee and indulged in a long draw before answering, "He doesn't have one. The Watchers have learned that it's better to leave some of us alone."

That just figured. "You know what," Richie said, "I'm not gonna ask. I get spied on and followed around for…whatever reason the Watchers are interested in me. Because I'm one of the youngest players in the Game or MacLeod's latest student, who knows? Liam has a Watcher, and he doesn't do anything except run youth groups and bless people's newborns. That must be a fun Chronicle to read. Meanwhile, you're a walking legend in I-don't-even-know how many ways and rather than record your life, they let you have access to everyone else's. And that little bastard—" He pitched the now-browned pieces of apple violently into the sink. They hit the metal with satisfying splats. "I'm going for my run now. When I get back, I'm taking a load down to the laundromat. If you have anything you want to throw in, have it ready."

"Wait." Methos reached into the cabinet over the fridge and pulled out a Bowie knife that reminded Richie of Crocodile Dundee's, "This is a knife." "Do me a favor and take this."

Richie blinked at it in disbelief. What the hell had it been doing up there? Methos had promised that all the weapons were secured where Emily couldn't find them. Then again, if she wasn't coming, then it didn't matter where the weapons were.

Still. "I'm not going jogging with that," Richie stated, a bit more loudly than he meant to.

"Would you rather have a gun? Because I'm not letting you out of here unless you're armed."

It was tempting. Having some kind of weapon on him would be safer. Or he could go back and get his sword. His eyes slid toward his room, but his feet didn't follow. As much as he knew the potential danger, the idea of going weaponless held a different kind of thrill. A headhunter in town wasn't the same as a headhunter specifically targeting him. He'd encountered both often enough to know the difference.

"Ya know, Mac used to go off sometimes without his sword to remind himself that we were more than killers." Say it a few more times and you might start to believe it's possible, he thought. "I think I could stand a refresher or two on that." Drawing a deep breath of the now coffee-scented air, he added pragmatically, "Besides, I'll already be running. If I have to, I'll hoof it to the nearest Holy Ground."

"Sounds like you have this all figured out." Methos cast his gaze downward while he took another draw of his coffee. "So, we will be having a houseguest this weekend?"

Richie shot him a questioning look. "I swear I said I was going to cancel. The tickets will scalp and I can pay Emily back for the bus. She probably won't speak to me again, but..." His face contorted as recollections of past fights with other girls he'd tried to date flooded through his mind. No matter how into him a girl was, she was only willing to accept "I can't tell you" as the explanation for his actions once or twice before it became a deal-breaker. "I'll live."

"What are you going to live for?" Methos asked, yet again. He'd been bringing up that question a lot since his arrival, and it still never failed to take Richie by surprise. "Seems to me that if you're not worried about your safety, then there's no threat. If there's no threat, then there's no need to change your plans."

What had seemed like a perfectly ordinary conversation that Richie was on top of turned out to be the opposite. Richie wished he had something else to throw because the man was right. "Dammit, Methos. I hate it when you do that."

"Then I suggest you stop making it so easy. Also, it's Matt. Wouldn't want you to slip up with my name in front of your girlfriend. Or your Watcher."

Grumbling, Richie headed off for his run. He had a lot to do to get ready for the weekend, and now that he knew there was no mystery to Drake's death, it all seemed much more important.