Duncan Macleod looked down at the pale, pinched face of his son and wondered how he would feel if he had just been told the fate of the world rested on his shoulders.

He had absolutely no idea what to say to him..

"Richie, lad ..."

"C'mon, Mac. You don't believe all this crap about the end of the world," Richie gave him a quick vulnerable look. "Do you?"

"I believe in the Gathering." Duncan kept his tone even. "This prophecy thing. I don't know, Rich." He ran a hand through his hair. He feared to tell Richie how many of the things he'd read in Methos' journal had already come to pass. Damn Methos and his manipulating ways. "How could he know about this and not tell us?"

He didn't realise he had said that last out loud until Richie gave him a rueful look. "Great idea, Mac," He rolled his eyes. "Let's give me a hundred years or so to look forward to it. Can you imagine how I would have reacted if he had told me when we first met?"

"I didn't meet the whole saving the world thing. I meant that you are my son."

"Yeah, well. That too."

That comment earned him a sharp glance. "You wouldn't have wanted to know?"

"I don't know," Richie shrugged as he struggled to explain his feelings. "I mean, I always figured Emily was dead, but I used to lie awake nights wondering why my Dad didn't want me. You were the first person in a long time that did want me. Not 'cos someone was paying you to look after me or 'cos some Social Worker had stuck me on you. But 'cos you cared. That meant a lot to me. But it scared me too. You think I was bad with the stuff I did to make you prove that you were for real? I would have been ten times worse if I had thought you were my Dad."

He had a point, Richie had never had to work for Duncan's attention. He'd admitted more than once that the Immortal had given him more attention than any other adult he'd ever known, except perhaps Emily. But they both knew his teenage antics had been a thinly veiled cry for constant reassurance that Duncan would care if he were in trouble, sick or hurt.

Still.

"You were quick enough to accept Jack Ryan or whatever his name really was." Duncan said, slightly huffily. Even after all these years, the very idea of that two-bit con artist trying to take advantage of his lad raised his bile.

Richie's soft bark of laughter surprised him.

"Mac, the guy was living in some flea bag hotel in the wrong part of town and hanging with some pretty shady people. You think I bought that line about him trapping his finger in a door or whatever? He was a looser. Which was pretty much all I figured I deserved in a Dad. You were different."

"Yeah, I loved you."

"Even back then?" Richie looked faintly surprised. "You hardly knew me."

Duncan gave an awkward shrug. He couldn't say himself when he'd first started to care so deeply about the teen. He remembered feeling something, almost akin to panic, at Connor's oblique offer to take the lad off his hands. An offer he had instantly declined. But it wasn't until the hustler posing as Jack Ryan had appeared on the scene that Duncan had realised that he had come to think of Richie as his son. His anger at the way the man was using a good kid like Richie, overlaid with jealously when he saw the way Richie looked at the man, or heard the note of eagerness in his voice when he talked about "his cousins and stuff."

"I knew enough to love you. Still do, as a matter of fact."

"Yeah well, me too," Richie smiled fondly at him. "Cept I didn't know how to tell you back then."

"I knew, Rich."

He had seen it in the in how Richie had needed his support in seeking his roots. The slightly desperate way he had sought his approval of Jack. The yearning in his eyes when Duncan has assured him that he got to choose who he wanted to be. As if, he had already found what he really wanted.

"What was she like?" Richie asked quietly.

Duncan knew he was asking about Rebecca.

"You don't remember her, huh?"

"Not much. How she laughed, the smell of her perfume. The way it felt when she held my hand as we crossed the street. That kinda stuff. I don't remember her face."

"I've got some photos," Duncan dug into his pocket and pulled out his comlink. Powering it up he selected 'images' and clicked through the albums, until he found the one he was looking for. "This was taken the summer before you were born."

Richie shot him a look of surprise. "You have all your old photos upgraded?"

"Not all of them," Duncan looked sadly at the picture. Rebecca stood on a viewpoint, overlooking the sea, her hair trailing out behind her. Richie leaned over.

"She was pretty."

"Yeah, she was."

Beside him, Richie stiffened and he bit his lip hard. Duncan sighed. He didn't need one hundred years of practice to figure out what was bothering him.

"Rich, she loved you, more than anything. I'm sure of that."

"So, why didn't she come?" Richie asked quietly.

Duncan didn't have an answer to that. Richie had been Immortal for almost a year before Rebecca died and living with him for more than a year before that. Amanda would certainly have told her mentor that Duncan had a new student. Rebecca would have had plenty of opportunity to engineer a "chance" meeting.

"I don't know, Rich. She must have had her reasons." Perhaps Amanda would know something. It was the middle of the night in America right now, but he made a mental note to call her in her morning. He had a feeling, Richie was going to need all the help and support he could provide to get through this.

"You loved her, right?" Richie's voice begged for reassurance that his parents had cared for one another. That it was something more than a one night stand.

"I love her still." Duncan answered truthfully.

"So, why didn't you guys stay together?"

"I guess," Duncan's face twisted, stuck suddenly by what he had taken for free will now seemed in hindsight to be pre-ordained. "Some things are just not meant to be."

"Don't you start," Richie scowled at him. "You guys are starting to make me feel like the lead in the school nativity play."

Duncan grinned devilishly. "Sorry, to disappoint Rich, but there was nothing immaculate about your conception, in fact, it was really quite ..,"

"Ugh. Don't tell me!" Richie elbowed him sharply to shut him up. "Haven't you learnt anything in the last five hundred years? No kid wants to hear about their parents' sex life!"

Duncan grinned. It did his heart good to hear Richie laugh. The last thing he wanted was the lad brooding on the fact that he was some kind of pre-ordained saviour of the world. That kind of pressure could lead the best of men to madness.

"Just remember Rich," He butted him gently. "Whatever else happens, you're still you."

"Actually," Richie's eyes sparkled with mischief. "Maybe, someone should warn Methos, that I'm not very good at keeping to the script."

"Yeah?" Duncan grinned down at him. For as long as he had known him, Richie had lived by his wits. How many seventeen year olds, when faced with an enraged Immortal would have thought about setting him on fire? Connor had summed it up nicely, with Richie the only thing to expect was the unexpected.

"OK. I swore I was never ever gonna tell you this story," Richie shifted slightly on the rock, as if even now he was having second thoughts about sharing this. "My first nativity play, I was the innkeeper. So, when Mary and Joseph came along looking for a room at the inn, I told them we had plenty of vacancies and to come on inside. I remember, Mrs Jennings was real mad, but Emily just laughed. She said," He paused. He couldn't believe that he had forgotten this part. "She said, it was all my Dad's fault. That he was a bad influence on me."

"She didn't mean me, Rich," Duncan told him gently. "I left for Paris, right after."

"No, she meant Jack," Richie gave him a compassionate look. "Is that why you guys broke up? Because she met some other guy?"

"I don't know, Rich," Duncan shrugged. "She never mentioned anyone to me. I think, she was she was just so much older than me. There was always a part of her that I could never quite touch. As if she had once known perfect happiness and let it slip through her fingers. Compared to her, I was still young and I'd always felt I was searching for something else. I couldn't have told you what it was, but I knew I'd recognise it when I found it."

"Tessa." Richie nodded.

"Aye."

"I'm glad Mac. You two were great together. Tessa was great." Richie said wistfully.

"The three of us were great together," Duncan slipped a comforting arm around his shoulders. "You made us a family, Rich."

"Yeah," Richie smiled. "I hadn't had that in such a long time. I mean, Teresa was great and all, but I really missed having a Dad."

It took every ounce of Duncan's self control not to stiffen so that Richie would notice. He had always assumed that Jack Ryan was some kind of lightweight long gone before Richie was old enough to remember him much. It was not an unreasonable scenario, if Emily was a young woman who had married in haste to a man who found himself unsuited to family life. But if Emily was indeed Rebecca Horne, then such a scenario was unthinkable.

"Rich, how much do you remember about Jack Ryan?" he asked quietly.

"Not much," Richie was unconcerned. "He wasn't around all the time. Emily said he had to work hard to keep us safe. That's why I figured he must be a spy or something."

He paused and Duncan's heart sank as he almost felt him put the pieces of the puzzle together for himself. "Oh shit. You think he was one of us, don't you?"

"Maybe," Duncan made a face. Rebecca had formed deep emotional ties with mortals before. But he couldn't imagine her entrusting the safety of her child to anyone other than another of their kind. "Do you remember anything about him?"

"Like did he have a big sharp sword?" Richie scoffed. "I think I would have noticed that."

"Rich," Duncan squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. The lad still had a tendency to be obnoxious when he was truly upset. "Just try, OK?"

"Snowy, alright?" Richie said defensively. "That's all I remember about him."

"Snowy?"

"He was a stuffed horse," Richie looked faintly embarrassed. "I was just a kid, remember? I don't know, I guess it was my birthday or something. Anyway, it was real late by the time he got home, I'd tried to stay up as long as I could, but I must have fallen asleep on the couch, because when I woke up I was in my room and he was sitting on my bed with a plate of chocolate chip cookies, a beer and this stuffed horse."

"He bought you a white horse?" It seemed a reasonable assumption that any horse called snowy would likely be white. Duncan felt his mouth dry up. In the tales of his childhood, a white horse always lived longer than a dark horse so they were believed to be a charm against dying young.

"He said he wanted to get me a real one but Mom wouldn't let it in the house," Richie recalled. "Man, I loved that horse. I took it everywhere with me. Emily used to have to bribe me with chocolate brownies to put him in the wash. After she died, it was the only thing I got to keep, for a while anyways."

"What happened to it?" Duncan asked gently, aware he was stepping on sensitive ground.

"One of my foster parents decided I was way too old to have a stuffed animal and threw it in the trash." Richie said bitterly, his expression tightening with anger as he remembered how the last vestige of his family had been ripped from his arms.

"How old were you?" Duncan asked gently.

"I was seven. She got mad cos I refused to called my foster father, Daddy. I kept insisting that my real Dad would be back to get us. Snowy and me. Like he'd promised."

"He did?" Duncan sat up a little straighter.

"It was just a dream," Richie shrugged. "Or something. I don't remember anything about that time all that well."

Something in Richie's tone made Duncan take notice.

"Tell me anyway." He suggested.

The past.

Five year old Richie Ryan curled up on his side in the large room and hugged his beloved horse to his chest, listening to the sounds of seven sleeping little boys coming from the beds around him. At home, he'd had his own room, with his own bed, painted red, just cos he liked it, toys on the floor, pictures on the wall and a Mommy who always shut the wardrobe door so the monsters couldn't get out.

He didn't like this room. It was big and draughty, with high ceilings that went up almost further than he could see and the big window at the end had bars on it. Like a jail. The lady had who brought him her had laughed a little too brightly at that and told him not to be silly, the bars were just there to keep little boys safe from falling out.

It still felt like a jail.

And there was no Mommy. They had tried to tell him that she had gone to a better place. But Richie knew that if she had gone someplace nicer than this she would have been sure to take him with her. Besides, he knew she was dead. The older kids had read about it in the paper and told him.

He wanted to go home.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" The slightly amused tone asked.

"Daddy!" Richie sat bolt upright and threw himself into his father's arms, burying his face in the thick, familiar, warmth of his sweater.

"Shh," Daddy hugged him tight. "Remember our game? We have to be real quiet, so we don't get caught."

Richie nodded, uh-huh, eagerly. He liked their game. Daddy would sneak up after he was supposed to be asleep to feed him cookies and tell him stories.

"Good," Daddy scooped him up out of bed, blankets and all and started to carry him out of the room and down the corridor. Richie just nestled against his chest, happy to be with his Daddy again.

"Oh bugger," Daddy stopped.

Richie wondered if he should remind him that Mommy didn't like him saying that. But then Daddy was walking again, carrying him back to his bed.

"Daddy?" Richie squirmed slightly against his chest. Didn't his Daddy know he didn't want to go back there?

"Richie, listen to me," Daddy sat him back on his bed. "I have to go away for a bit. I wanted to take you with me, but that's not going to be possible now."

"Are you going to do something dangerous?" Richie's face crumpled. He knew that spies sometimes had to do dangerous stuff. But he didn't want his Daddy to get hurt.

"Don't worry about me I've had lots of practice of taking care of myself," His Daddy's face wrinkled in concern. "You on the other hand, haven't been eating your veggies, have you?"

Richie squirmed slightly. How did his Daddy know that he hadn't been eating his vegetables? Or much of anything else for that matter? He didn't realise how thin he had become.

"Mommy would want you to eat." Daddy chided gently.

"Even cabbage?" Richie made a face.

"Well, obviously not cabbage," Daddy shook his head. "Only Donkeys and Peasants eat that."

"You're silly, Daddy." Richie giggled.

Suddenly, Daddy stiffened and looked over his shoulder. The he turned back and put his hands on Richie's shoulders.

"I have to go now, but I will be back for you, just as soon as I can," Richie blinked. He could feel his chin quivering. He didn't want his Daddy to go. But he could see a tear sliding down his Daddy's cheek. He had never seen Daddy cry before. He must be sad about Mommy too. So, Richie bit his lip and tried to be brave. He didn't want to make his Daddy feel any worse.

Daddy kissed him. "Love you, kid."

"I love you too, Daddy." Richie chirruped.

But his Daddy was already gone.

The present.

"See? Just a stupid dream," Richie picked at his sleeve. "Dumb, huh?"

"Are you sure it wasn't real?" Duncan wondered. Any Immortal worth their salt would have been able to get in and out of the Orphanage without being noticed, if they really wanted to.

"Back then, I thought it was real. I told Sister Mary my Daddy had been to see me but she said no one could get into the Orphanage after it was all locked up for the night and I shouldn't tell such wicked lies. Now, I don't know, Mac. It's been almost a hundred years. If it was real, why hasn't he come looking for me before now?"

Duncan bit his lip and debated whether he should voice the obvious truth. That whoever it was might be already dead.

"It wasn't a dream," Methos clear voice carried easily across the clearing, from where he was standing just out of range. "And I came just as soon as it was safe to do so."

Duncan looked over and met his eyes in something akin to disbelief. But Methos looked deadly serious. "It was you? You were Jack Ryan?"

"Guilty as charged." Methos gave an uncomfortable shrug.

Richie was absolutely still.