AN – Thanks as ever for the reviews. Hope you all got my e-mails. Only a couple of chapters to go now!

Duncan looked helplessly over at Connor. What they needed was a distraction, something to draw Ares away from Dawson before they made their move. He looked around the store, noting books, manuscripts, but nothing of any possible use for his purpose.

"This never happens to MacGyver." He muttered. Even in the most barren of locations Tessa's favourite action hero always managed to find sufficient materials to make whatever the plot required. Duncan had long since stopped pointing out the inconsistencies. Bruises might heal. But they still hurt.

"Tell me!"

Duncan winced as Ares' harsh words were accompanied by the sound of a blow and a stifled moan of pain. After a pause, Joe's voice spoke, weaker and more defeated than before.

"Alright, alright, I'll tell you. The address is in that drawer there."

Duncan's heart sank. He had been rapidly revising his opinion of Dawson. The man had shown considerable courage standing up to Ares and admirable moral fibre if he was prepared to go out on a limb to protect a good kid like Richie from a threat like Ares. Especially since he didn't really know the lad and his oath as a Watcher gave him prefect licence to hand over the address. Somehow he didn't think protecting one Immortal from the threat of another came under the umbrella of non-interference. Still he couldn't judge him too harshly. Ares was a very formidable foe and everyone had his or her limits. He would just have to make sure he got to Richie before Ares.

"You get it." Ares commanded harshly, obviously fearing some sort of trap.

"Alright, fine," Joe swallowed, hard and made a grimace of pain. "Just give me a minute."

"Now!"

"Alright, already," Joe reached over with difficultly to open the drawer.

What Duncan hadn't expected was that Dawson would provide a distraction of his own. From the drawer he produced, with a speed that belied his earlier apparent infirmity, not a piece of paper but a small squat handgun, Ares only had time to curl his lips in a sneer before he was shot.

"Now that was bluffing," Joe spoke in evident satisfaction. Then he sighed. "Now what the hell am I gonna do with you?"

"I might be able to help with that." Duncan emerged from the shadows.

Dawson looked up in surprise at the familiar voice and found himself face to face with the man he had been watching all these years. A man he knew almost as well as he knew himself. His assignment.

"Duncan Macloed." He breathed.

They had all long since removed from the stuffy drawing room to the large stone floored kitchen, which had been more tastefully furnished in the simple scrubbed wood and brightly painted tiled that had been the lot of the hired help. Methos took charge of the stove as Rebecca organised drinks for them all. A soft merlot for her, beer for Methos, and for Richie, she turned and looked at him with a teasing smile.

"Chocolate milk?"

"I always loved that didn't I?" Richie grinned at the memory as he took one of the chairs and straddled it. "Cept you only let me have it on alternate days."

"You didn't need the extra sugar." She laughed softly as she passed him a cold beer.

"That's what Mac always used to say about sodas." Richie grinned.

Rebecca looked at him, her expression grave. She had missed so much of his life. It seemed so unfair on both of them. She reached out to touch her face as if to assure her self that he was really there. He pressed her hand to his face and smiled.

"Its OK, It'll be different next time. I promise."

At least he hoped so. No-one seemed to know what the prize actually was. But anything that cost his family this much pain had better be prepared to make good their sacrifices.

"I had Darius watch over you," Rebecca admitted sadly. "I insisted on that at least. Every year at Christmas and birthdays he would send me a photo and a line or two about how you were. He didn't tell me everything. I know," she sighed. "And some of the things he did tell me were hard enough to read."

Richie used the hand he still held to draw her down into a chair.

"When I was a kid, I always hoped some one would come for me. If not my Dad then some long lost Auntie or cousin or just some body would turn up and say "You can't do that to him. He's ours." He shook his head when Rebecca went to interrupt. "No, hear me out. Like I said back then I was just a kid But now I get it. Now I understand. This is a war and to win a war you gotta lose a few battles. Its not like anything happened to me that hasn't happened to any of us."

"That does not make it right." Rebecca insisted.

"No, it doesn't," Richie agreed. "But it doesn't make me the victim in this either. We've all suffered. You, me, Amanda, Mac, hell the last time Darius died. Its like every time we take one step forward we gotta take two steps back."

Methos and Rebecca shared a wordless look.

"What?" Richie demanded.

"I told you he was bright." Methos shrugged.

"What?"

"None of this is a co-incidence my love," Rebecca took his hand. "Ours has been by far the hardest path. Progress has long been an uphill struggle."

Richiie looked warily from one to the other a horrible realisation dawning. "How long?"

"Last time," Methos eyed him seriously. "The evil won."

Duncan looked down at Ares inert body with an almost overwhelming loathing, as he recalled the horrors he had inflected on Richie. His sword hand twitched, it would be so simple to just take his head, here and now, before he revived and the prophecy and any concept of honour be dammed so long as evil slept.

Except, he could not shame his son like that.

"Take him out of my sight, before I do something I'll regret." he forced out, not taking his eyes off Ares as his kinsman emerged silently out of the shadows to stand at his shoulder.

"It'll be my pleasure," Connor promised grimly. He might not be able to kill Ares but he could make him suffer. And perhaps he could delay the inevitable, at least until Risteard was more ready to face the threat. He hefted Ares over his shoulder and glanced at Dawson. "What about him?"

"He's gonna watch and not interfere." Duncan smiled thinly.

"Did we take out an add in Le Monde or something?" Joe wondered as Connor bore Ares away. "Since when did every Immortal in Paris know about the Watchers?"

Duncan picked up a chair and straddled it, eying Dawson keenly. There was no doubt that the man had courage. And honour. Maybe he had judged him too harshly. Still, that didn't mean the mortal had any business meddling in Immortal affairs. It would get him killed.

"Protecting Richie is my job."

"So sue me," Dawson wasn't fazed. "The kid seems to think we are friends and besides I like him."

"Yeah," Duncan agreed fondly. "He does tend to have that affect on people."

"He's going to get himself killed." Dawson pulled no punches. "You gotta do something Macleod."

"Its not my help he needs."

Duncan left the comment hanging to see if Dawson would bite. It had occurred to him that Dawson would know everything Methos hadn't told him about the sightings of this elusive other Macleod. And unlike Methos he might be convinced to share. But Dawson would be bound to suspect something if he just flat out asked him what he had been doing in New York.

"Why should I help you?" Joe challenged.

"Because you want to," Duncan gave him a boyish smile. "And because you're practically dying of curiousity."

Dawson regarded him steadily. Then he stood and reached up to a shelf behind his desk, placing first two glasses then a bottle of whiskey on the table. Settling himself back in the chair he poured two generous measures and pushed one of the glasses across the table to the Highlander.

"I'm listening."

"Please tell me he's not serious." Richie raised pleading eyes to Rebecca, if Ares had won last time, then God help him.

"I wish I could love." Rebecca squeezed his hand.

"Ares vanquished all before him," Methos continued, staring into his beer as he recalled those dark days. "Those of us that were left were over whelmed by its power. We embraced it and it consumed us so that we enjoyed the harm that we did. Me, Darius, countless others, we were all turned by it. Only those few who had escaped to the Sanctuary of Holy Ground were spared."

"You? Right?" Richie looked at Rebecca.

"Among others," she nodded. "At first we were too afraid to act. We were too few in number and too weak to fight. We feared we would be slaughtered the moment we set forth into the world. But gradually, we grew stronger in number and in spirit and began righting the wrongs that Ares and his kind had wrought, one person at a time."

"Must have been hard."

"It took centuries," Rebecca agreed. "Evil begets evil. Power corrupts. Greed calls to all that is selfish in the human sprit. It hadn't been like that before. Now the weak were easy prey to those who would corrupt them, with such evil in the world even those who strove to be good couldn't avoid its temptations, jealously, revenge, self-righteousness, the horror done by those who claimed it was in the name of justice, was almost worse then those who sought personal gain, at least they were honest in their depravity."

"Yeah, but you can't just let the bad guys win. Right?"

"All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing?" Methos quoted. "What do you think the wives and children of the innocent men Macleod slaughtered after Culloden thought of his justice?"

"Mac knows that was a mistake," Richie defended his father. "But among Immortals. I mean that is what we're supposed to do, right?"

"Sometimes." Rebecca agreed.

Mac had said exactly the same thing to him the day he had failed to take Annie Devlin's head. It made as little sense to him now, all these years later, than it had at the time.

"And the other times?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.

"Duck." Methos advised him succinctly.

"You know," Richie said as he picked his helmet off the handlebars of his motorcycle. "Amanda's going to kill me when she finds out I know where you are."

"Then don't tell her." Rebecca counselled.

"This is Amanda?" Richie reminded her. "She has ways of getting stuff outta people."

"Then perhaps we should just make everything easier all round and come to dinner tomorrow." Rebecca laughed.

"You mean it?" Richie's face lit up. "You wanna come and meet Mac and Tessa and everyone? Oh that would be so cool."

Shyly, impulsively he leant over and kissed her cheek. "Thanks .. Mom"

"It is the least I can do after so long."

"But, um, I mean, it won't be like dangerous for you or anything? Will it? Cos, I'd hate for anything to happen to you. Specially, cos of me."

"I have been looking after myself for a long time," Rebecca assured him. "And I think perhaps we were wrong to try and keep things as they were before. Ares has changed things by coming here. Now at least we can face whatever the future brings together. As a family."

"Talking of which, I gotta go. Mac worries."

Rebecca laughed as she pulled him into a quick hug. As she released him he looked over at Methos. "You coming old timer?"

"Right behind you."

"Alright." Richie swung his leg over the bike and gunned it into life, but his his eyes lingered on Rebecca, as if reluctant to let her out of his sight.

"I'll see you tomorrow, remember?" She promised gently..

Reassured, Richie gave them both a jaunty wave and accelerated off down the drive.

"Perhaps we should have told him?" Rebecca wondered aloud

Methos didn't look at her. His eyes were on the small figure receding in a trail of dust.

"Absolutely not.