AN- Thanks to my 2 loyal reviewers. I'm glad you're liking this:) Yellowvalley: I will resolve the Angie matter, just not in this fic. PS-"Note that QuickEdit will not recognize some non-language relevant keyboard characters." Noted. NOW PLEASE CHANGE IT
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Tessa sat at the kitchen table fidgeting nervously. Duncan had only been gone ten minutes, which meant that Mrs. Burke had called twenty minutes ago, and she'd set the soup to heat fifteen minutes ago. It was simmering lightly now, just enough to keep it warm as she waited for Richie to come home.
She was pretty sure that the drive to Angie's house only took fifteen minutes.
After brief discussion, it was decided that the two of them being there when he returned might have seemed intimidating, and the talk they planned on having with him more like an intervention. Neither thought boded well for Richie's likelihood of opening up to them, so it was decided that one head just actually might have been better than two.
The decision of which one of them would stay was a much more difficult one to reach. In the end, Tessa put her foot down. Richie had originally confided to her his feelings regarding their family. By Duncan's own admission, the two of them hadn't even discussed it. Tessa banished her disgust at the male species' inability to share their emotions. Now was not the time for such thoughts. Now, she had to mentally steel herself for a serious talk with Richie. He had told her how he felt about their family before, when she confronted him about his behavior during their flight to Paris nine months ago. She hopped that their rapport on the matter would help him to confide in her now.
Now, all she knew was that Richie was sick, that he had been withdrawing from them ever since the business with Horton had been concluded, and now that his best friend had moved away without telling him. In truth, Tessa had never been so nervous to talk to Richie in her life.
And he was five minutes late and counting.
She heard Richie's heavy footfalls on the stairs five minutes later. Quickly schooling herself into casualness, Tessa stood and retrieved a bowl from the cabinet. She was just ladling the soup into the bowl when Richie appeared in the kitchen.
"Good afternoon," Tessa greeted brightly. Richie was too ill and too tired to see through it.
"Morning," he mumbled tiredly. He was so out of it that he didn't even remember what had transpired the last time he had talked to Tessa.
"I just heated up some soup for lunch," she said as she reached up and grabbed the cabinet doorknob. "Would you like some?" Richie could have sworn that he wasn't hungry, but his stomach spoke for him before he could answer. Tessa smirked. "I'll take that as a yes." She then opened the cabinet and grabbed another bowl.
"Thanks," Richie mumbled, half to Tessa for the gesture, half to his stomach for betraying him. He was too tired to actually sound sarcastic, if the thought to had occurred to him. Just then Tessa set a steaming bowl of tomato soup down in front of him. She sat down across from him with her own bowl. While she didn't particularly care for it, she knew that Richie preferred it and it was an easy meal to make in fifteen minutes.
Tessa watched him eat in silence for a few moments. It seemed to her that the spoon weighed fifteen pounds in Richie's hands, and he ate it achingly slowly. The teen managed to finish barely three quarters of it before giving up. He no longer moved the spoon to his mouth, though his hand stayed resting on it, and his fever-glazed eyes stared off into space.
"Something on your mind?" Tessa asked. She knew full well that he was ill, and she also knew that there was definitely something on his mind. However, she needed a place to start. Richie blinked back to awareness.
"Hmm?"
"You seem to be lost in your thoughts," said Tessa, secretly holding her breath as she waited for his answer.
"Sorry," Richie apologized with half-hearted sincerity. "Just got a lot on my mind." Tessa nodded.
"Anything you want to talk about?" Richie mentally combed over the conversation he had with Mrs. Burke. Could he tell Tessa those things? Could he tell the woman who took him to art shows, helped to teach him French, and instructed him on fine dining, dancing, and wine tasting, about how his friends died in drag races or got themselves arrested for violent crime? Just last month he was playing chess with Darius, watching French cinema without subtitles, wearing a tuxes at fancy art showings, and going museum-hopping. Now he was mouthing off to his family, and to police officers, and getting into fist fights and mourning his friends who never made it out of the neighborhood (and harboring resentment for those who did). Could he tell Tessa these things? Should he?
"Do you remember Larry?" He asked finally. A success story was always the safest road. Tessa's brow furrowed a moment in thought.
"The one who sold you your bike?" Richie nodded.
"He's racing professionally now." Tessa smiled.
"That's wonderful, Richie!" She said enthusiastically. She remembered now how Richie would praise Larry up and down for his motorcycle abilities as he signed over the pink slip to his old bike. He was a very nice boy, Tessa thought.
"He turned pro a few months ago," Richie explained, heartened by Tessa's reaction. "I'm going to see if I can track down where he's racing. Maybe see if I can get tickets."
"Well you just let Duncan and I know, and we'll go see the race together," said Tessa. Richie smiled broadly, touched that she would take an interest in something he liked… something he liked from his old life.
The smile faded and it appeared to Tessa that Richie had resumed his stare off into space. In truth, he was remembering the fight they'd had the other night.
"What is it?" Tessa asked, concerned. She was glad that Richie had begun talking to her, but there had to be a lot more going on than that. Richie blinked again and dropped his gaze, but didn't answer. "Petit?" Richie squinted against tears when he heard her pet name fore him. "It's Angie, isn't it," Tessa said with knowing sympathy. Richie was momentarily elated: a way out! He nodded, knowing full well that he was lying but in that moment not really caring. Well, technically it wasn't a lie: Angie was on his mind as well, but it wasn't the thought that sparked the sudden change in mood that Tessa had picked up on.
"How'd you know?"
"Mrs. Burke called to let us know you were on your way home," Tessa informed him. Richie nodded. That was just like her. "Do you want to talk about it?" Tessa's voice interrupted Richie's thoughts and he looked up.
"Hmm?"
"Do you want to talk?" Tessa repeated, her tone soft and concerned. Richie paused for serious consideration.
"What's there to talk about?" He said at last. "She's going to nursing school in Seattle now." Tessa nodded.
"Yes, but she didn't tell you she was leaving." Richie shrugged.
"It's not like I told her when I moved in here," he said. "Or when we went to Paris."
"Do you think that's why she didn't tell you?" Tessa asked. Richie turned to her in surprise.
"I guess," he answered passively. While he too had considered that Angie's silence had been some form of retribution, he didn't expect Tessa to draw similar conclusions. "Or maybe she just forgot." Tessa was about to address this thought when suddenly she paused, a new understanding dawning on her.
"Why would she do that?" She asked carefully. Richie shrugged again.
"Who knows," he answered. "Stuff got in the way maybe?" Then quieter, so that it was almost a whisper: "I did." Tessa chose her next words carefully.
"Which would you prefer: that she deliberately did not tell you, or that she simply forgot to tell you?" Once again Richie looked up at Tessa in surprise. It was a simple question of which is better: to be purposely ignored by your friends, or to be innocently forgotten by them. Neither option was favorable, for one meant that to Angie, Richie wasn't worth informing, and the other meant that he wasn't even worth remembering. Richie hung his head dejectedly, feeling lost and very much alone—and fully aware that he felt so whilst in the loft, in the company of Tessa, and detesting himself for having such traitorous thoughts.
"The first one," he answered at last, and Tessa heard the little-boy-lost in his voice that had remained hidden since their flight to Paris. "At least then she's still thinking of me."
"Oh, petit," Tessa kneeled next to his chair and enveloped the teen in her arms and immediately felt the heat radiating from his seemingly too-wiry frame. He's lost weight, Tessa noted, her concern only increasing.
Richie hesitated but eventually leaned into the embrace. The last time Tessa had held him thus was right after Darius's death, when Duncan and Hugh Fitzcairn were off hunting those responsible. That was the last time Richie had openly cried in front of anyone. For some reason, it had felt alright to do so back then. Now…
Tessa held him close and he rested his head beneath her chin. They didn't speak, but Richie clung to her arms like a lifeline. Tessa smelled softly of lavender and rose, a mixture of her perfume and shampoo, as she always did whenever Richie was close enough to take in her scent. Since it is the most powerful memory trigger, Richie had no choice in the matter when he instinctively burrowed himself in Tessa's lithe but surprisingly strong arms, seeking half-remembered feelings of protection and maternal warmth. Regardless of his waking opinions of his home life, the deeper parts of him could not deny the bond he and Tessa shared.
"Did you keep in touch with your friends when you first moved here?" Richie asked, breaking the minutes-long silence they had been enjoying. Tessa was startled but not altogether surprised by the question.
"In the beginning I did," she answered wistfully. "My friends and I kept correspondence religiously for years." Then she sighed. "Over the years, we wrote less and less. Now it's mostly just Christmas cards we send back and forth." Tessa felt Richie nod against her chest.
"Did you look them up when you went back?" He asked, his tone holding that same childlike innocence as before.
"Some of them I did," Tessa answered.
"But not all?" Tessa shrugged.
"People change Richie," she said. "They grow apart. You find that you don't have the same interests anymore, and that you're leading your own separate lives."
"And you forget your old friends in favor of your new ones," said Richie knowingly. Tessa wasn't entirely sure that he was referring to Angie when he said this.
"It's the way it works sometimes," she said, trying to soften the blow of her explanation. "Rest assured that your old friends are moving on and finding new friends the same as you."
"Is that supposed to make it better?" Richie asked bitterly. Tessa sighed and held him closer. Richie tensed but didn't attempt to withdraw from the embrace.
"Richie, we each set our own priorities in life," Tessa explained. "If a friendship is important to you, you make it a priority." It was the cold logic in that statement that upset Richie the most. He knew where his priorities had lain, and they certainly hadn't been with anything associated with Seacouver and his friends here. His life was for Mac and Tessa alone. It wasn't his right to question or judge Angie when she did the exact same thing. Surmising that he now knew what she felt when he waltzed out of her life, twice, Richie exhaled a heavy sigh.
"Change isn't always a bad thing," Tessa pointed out while she smoothed Richie's hair back away from his face. "Your friend Larry has changed for the better, and now Angie is trying for the same. You should be happy for them."
"Dress a pig in linens and it's still a pig," said Richie. Tessa couldn't help but laugh.
"That sounds like one of Duncan's sayings," she said. Richie smiled slightly. It was something that Reinhardt had mentioned when Richie was his captive, but he wasn't going to tell Tessa that. The smile faded quickly, however.
"I mean, Larry races bikes now, but he's still Larry. And Angie goes to nursing school in Seattle, but she's still Angie. They didn't change. Just their situations."
"And how would you know that?" Tessa asked seriously. Richie didn't have an answer for her. "We are all shaped by our experiences Richie. We learn from them, and that new knowledge changes us."
"And you think that Larry playing with the big boys or Angie learning how to be a nurse will change who they truly are?" Richie asked in disbelief. "Look at Mac. He's four hundred but he's still the same person he was back then, or so said Fitz. Sure he's smarter, more well traveled, and better with a sword, but he's still Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod." Tessa paused to consider this.
"Yes," she said cautiously, "but who would he be if he hadn't met Connor, or Darius? Would he be the same person?" Now Richie paused for consideration. It was an interesting concept: who we are is dependent upon the people we meet. It's also one that Richie wasn't so sure that he believed in anymore. After all, he thought that meeting Mac, Tessa, and Darius had changed him. In truth, he was smarter, more well traveled, and spoke a bit of French, but he was still Richie Ryan from the bad part of Seacouver who mouths off to cops and gets into street fights.
These morbid thoughts were interrupted by a coughing fit. Richie leaned forward and clutched at his chest as he coughed, and Tessa rubbed his back soothingly until the fit passed. Finally he collapsed back against her, pale and out of breath.
"You aren't well, petit," she said, concerned, brushing the hair out of his face and feeling the fever and perspiration.
"Stupid chest cold," Richie mumbled, and Tessa laughed slightly.
"Why don't you go take a nap," she suggested. "I'll bring you some cough syrup." Richie nodded and shoved himself off the chair onto his feet, using the table to brace himself. Twenty minutes and a dose of Tylenol and cough syrup later, Richie was lost in a fitful sleep, wheezing slightly as he breathed.
Richie awoke to another coughing fit a few hours later. The Tylenol had lessened the headache, but he couldn't deny the tight feeling in his chest that made it difficult to breathe. Knowing that it was too soon to take more medicine, Richie plodded out to the kitchen to put the kettle on, hoping that more peppermint tea would make him feel better.
Once the water was set to boil, Richie decided to head down to the store. Neither Tessa nor Mac were anywhere to be found in the loft, so that was the next logical conclusion. He found Duncan polishing antiques in the store and the 'closed' sign in the window.
"Afternoon, Richie," Duncan greeted warmly but distractedly as he rubbed another coat of some vile-smelling oil over the blade of an ornate dagger.
"Afternoon," Richie answered back, his voice sounding hoarse and strained. Duncan looked up in concern, giving the teen his full attention. "Where's Tessa?"
"She's meeting with a potential client," said Duncan. "Are you feeling alright?" Richie snorted a laugh and tried to restrain the coughs that followed.
"I have the cold from hell," he said with less than amused sarcasm. "I took some stuff a few hours ago, before my nap," he continued, cutting off the highlander's obvious question. Duncan nodded.
"Did it help?" Richie shrugged.
"The Tylenol did," he answered. "But the cough syrup didn't. I have the kettle on now."
"Peppermint tea?" Richie nodded.
"Hopefully that'll help more than the syrup. At any rate it'll taste better." Duncan nodded. Before Tessa left, she told him of everything said between her and Richie. While it was obvious that his thoughts were currently centered around his friends and their current situations, Richie had been having problems before he knew about that. Something else was definitely eating at the lad, and if Duncan was correct, he had a pretty good idea of what it was. After all, one cannot talk about change and learning and growth they way he did without harboring any self-reflective thoughts. Seacouver to Paris to Seacouver again, all because of Darius. The roots of this dilemma had to lie in that.
"So how's Mrs. Burke?" Duncan asked, needing a place to start this much-needed conversation. Richie shrugged again.
"She's fine," he answered passively. Then: "I guess Tessa told you what happened."
"She did," Duncan confessed. "Do you want to talk about it?" Richie grinned, but it was directed towards the highlander's predictability.
"Tessa and I already talked about it," he said dismissively.
"You talked about Angie, and Larry, and how old friends can sometimes grow apart," said Duncan. "That's barely the tip of the iceberg, and you know it."
"No," said Richie, shaking his head. "But apparently you do." That statement held a bitter resentment that Richie didn't even know he was carrying, and it startled him.
"I know that something's been bothering you since before you learned about your friends," said Duncan, effectively ignoring Richie's tone.
"I've been sick," Richie said defensively.
"You made yourself sick by going out in your shirtsleeves in the cold and by not eating right," Duncan corrected. "Both are signs that something's troubling you."
"Why does something have to be troubling me!?!" Richie snapped. "Everyone has mood swings, and Richie Ryan not being hungry isn't exactly the third sign of the apocalypse."
"No, but you sure seem to be treating whatever's bothering you like it's the end of the world," Duncan pointed out, trying to keep his tone light in the face of Richie's frustrations.
"Well maybe what's bothering me is the huge lack of privacy around here!" Richie retorted with spite. It took all of Duncan's strength to remain calm himself. This was getting them nowhere.
"Tessa and I are just worried about you," he said softly.
"Worried," Richie scoffed.
"Yes, worried," Duncan echoed immediately.
"Because you care," Richie concluded with biting sarcasm.
"We do," Duncan insisted. "We care about you and we want to know what's bothering you. We want to help." This time Richie laughed. The laughter was light, but full of sarcasm, anger, and an almost sick enjoyment of the thoughts that were about to escape on its heels.
"You've already helped me enough, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," Richie said with feigned sadness. Duncan stood up straighter. "You said you talked to Tessa about what I said earlier? Well, for some reason I think she missed the boat with that one."
"What do you mean?" Duncan asked before he could stop himself. Richie looked almost triumphant for the fact.
"Oh I bet she told you all about how I'm having trouble dealing with my friends changing and moving on, or about how I don't want to accept that our lives are different now and the friendship suffers because of it, and that it makes me sad." Richie sounded anything but sad. In fact, he was starting to make the highlander nervous.
"Life can't exist without change," Duncan offered as Richie descended the rest of the stairs into the store.
"I guess you would know more than most," said Richie dismissively. "And you're right. Things change all the time. People, however…" Richie was now standing not three feet away, and from this distance Duncan could see the fever shining brightly in his eyes.
"What do you mean?" Duncan asked carefully. NOW we're getting somewhere!
"Don't you know?" Richie asked, suddenly confused. He shook his head and then continued. "For all we learn, for all we see, for everyone we know and all we do, we never change. We're still the same old people."
"Of course people change," Duncan corrected. "We learn, we grow, we accept and we don't accept, but no one lives in a vacuum. Life affects everybody." Richie laughed snidely again.
"Oh really?" He asked with condescending amusement. "How much have you changed in four hundred years? Aside from the fact that now you can read and write and swing a sword better than most?" It was Richie's tone that made Duncan silence his answer. Nothing he would say would get through to the teen right now, for Richie was babbling from a fever-wracked mind, barely in control of his faculties. Duncan could hear the wheezing breaths the lad was taking.
"But why use you for an example?" Richie continued with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Whatever you tell me I have no way of proving anyway."
"Should we use you then?" Duncan asked, but he already knew the answer. It was a sick truth that Richie's sudden desire to unload his mind was induced by the undoubtedly dangerously high fever because that's what it took to lower the teen's defenses enough to enable the truth to come out at last. Duncan feared for Richie's health, but he also desperately needed the 'conversation' to continue.
"I always knew you wanted to use me," Richie joked, but the venom in his voice cut at Duncan like a knife. "But why not?" He laughed again, but coughed his way out of it. Duncan took a step closer in concern, but Richie got the fit under control relatively quickly. "Let's talk about how I haven't changed," Richie continued.
"Of course you've changed!" Duncan interjected.
"Have I?" Richie scoffed. "Let's take a good look, shall we? When you found me, I was a smartass little thief who could pick locks as easily as picking fights and had a healthy disrespect for authority. Who am I now? Well, I can speak French pretty good, know the value of herbal tea, play chess fairly well and can tell a Monet from a Matisse, but that's all crap, MacLeod. I'm still Richie Ryan, punk kid who mouths off to cops, gets into fights on the street, and still reaches for the knife I stopped carrying months ago."
"Richie—"
"Oh I'm not finished, MacLeod," Richie insisted, using the tone that he'd heard from many a lecturer before. "You say that we are all shaped by our learning experiences? Well what have I learned since you've known me? I've learned that there are people running around who think they'll live forever but are really just as vulnerable as us ordinary people. I've learned that sometimes homicide is justified, and that revenge really can be the right choice. I've learned that there are people who live above and outside the law, and that lying and keeping secrets is a necessary part of life, and that the police only get in the way. I've learned that I'm a pawn used by the big boys to get what they want and that there always was a bigger picture that I'm not a part of."
"Richie…" Duncan tried again. Richie sounded defeated, almost hopelessly resigned.
"But those were all things I knew before I met you."
"What are you afraid of?" Duncan asked sincerely. The question took Richie by surprise.
"What makes you think I'm afraid of anything?" He asked, once again confusion dominating his voice. "I don't have anything to be afraid of."
"I know you don't mean that," said Duncan with quiet authority.
"Of course I do," said Richie, sounding very childlike. "My friends are gone, or dead, or in jail. This wretched city is nothing but a pit of bad memories, and I've already lost Paris. I've nothing left."
"What about your family?"
"What family?" Richie answered almost inaudibly. Duncan winced. Oh, that hurt.
"This family," Duncan insisted. Richie laughed, and that laugh tore at Duncan's very soul. How he desperately wanted to believe that this was only the fever talking!
"I had a family that took me in, taught me to be respectable, actually made me feel welcomed, and that I belonged," Richie explained, almost elegizing. "They took me to Paris, showed me how really great the world can be, and that there are truly great people in it. They opened my eyes to what family could be." Duncan's breath hitched. This definitely sounded like a funeral address. "And then they took it away from me again," Richie continued, his voice sounding of the tears that his fevered eyes would not produce.
"They took me back here, where I'm just the punk thief who disrespects authority, gets into fights, befriends druggies and unwed mothers, or drag racers, or violent criminals. Paris was snatched away from me, and I'm back here again, where every street corner reminds me of a crime and every off-white duplex reminds me of… worse things. I was having serious conversations about the architecture in the Louvre! Now whenever I see an antique," Richie picked up the long-forgotten dagger and examined it closely, "I think of how much it would fence for." Dagger still in hand, Richie redirected his attentions to Duncan. "My family taught me that people don't change, not really," he said, sounding as if he were referring to different people. "They made me think that I could and then showed me that I couldn't…" Richie's arms fell limp at his sides as the tears finally formed. He sobbed once and then Duncan had his arms around him. The highlander did not like the heat of the fever he felt.
Richie wrapped his arms around Duncan's shoulders and cried, not caring about saving face or anything resembling appropriateness in this fever-induced state. He had just bared his soul about the enormous depth of his perceived loss, the fever serving to articulate his thoughts in a way previously impossible, and so he was able to rant to Duncan like a prophet, speaking of thoughts he'd never been able to crystallize before, and doubtfully would even remember later. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Richie cried for himself. He'd cried for others, and he'd cried for pain, but this was entirely selfish; he was grieving for his own life this time, and for the hurts that ran too deep to express any other way, and for the feelings of loss, loneliness, and isolation that he wasn't able to pin down until just now, and boy did he drive the point home.
"Richie," Duncan, tears threatening in his own eyes, was grateful that he finally knew what was going on. Finally, the answers they were seeking! It all made sense now: Richie's subdued behavior, his withdrawing from them, his attitude problem—all of it. Returning to Seacouver had an unpredicted side effect for the teen, one that none of them saw coming. They were an understood family in Paris. Somehow, Richie perceived that the arrangement ended when their stay in Paris ended. If Duncan thought about it harder, he would see that Richie had thought it over when Darius was murdered. "Richie," he began again, his voice clearer this time. "Your family loves you."
Richie laughed a sad and bitter laugh.
"My family," he said, both wistful and sarcastic. He and Duncan were still locked in the embrace, but suddenly all feelings of comfort were chased away. Richie suddenly felt trapped, and he hated that feeling. He felt like that in every foster home, and in every other false embrace… and in every darkened cellar and closet… and in every foreign bedroom. Suddenly hugging Mac was a vile, hateful thing. Suddenly it was tainted by transferred memories of other times and places. Suddenly it made Richie very afraid, but then the teen realized that he was the one with the upper hand.
"The murderer and his lover," said Richie almost lovingly into MacLeod's ear. "But at least they taught me how to get bloodstains out of carpet." Duncan realized the implications a fraction too late. He gasped slightly as the again-forgotten knife was thrust into his side, breaking the skin and slicing through the kidney. Richie felt the sudden warm rush of blood as it spilled over the guard and onto his hand. Duncan's eyes were wide in surprise as Richie withdrew the knife and backed away, letting the highlander fall against him before sinking to the floor. The shock turned to confusion, and then into a silent question of 'why?' before they glazed over in death.
Richie watched this happen almost in slow motion. Suddenly it wasn't every foster father and school bully in his arms… or vice versa. It was MacLeod again. MacLeod who looked at him with such surprised eyes, MacLeod who know lie crumpled on the floor of the shop, MacLeod who he'd just murdered and whose blood was staining his hands.
No, not murdered. You knew he was immortal! Escape. A surprise move, and then an escape. But why did he suddenly feel the need to escape from MacLeod? He couldn't quite remember as the knife dropped from his fingers, forgotten again.
But escape was on his mind, even if the train of thought derailed itself at the sight of so much blood. He needed to get out of there! Mac would wake up soon, and Richie's fevered brain feared the consequences of his action... of his betrayal.
Richie turned on his heels and fled, through the workshop and out the back door to his bike. Duncan was still dead when Richie kicked the motorcycle into gear and sped off, and though he didn't realize it, he was now covered in the highlander's blood.