After that things made a definitive turn for the better. It was as if Duncan's words, Duncan's belief in Richie, bolstered Richie's belief in himself.

And Duncan would have been lying if he's said that that didn't make the immortal feel good. Actually if he told the truth, Duncan would have had to admit that there were some definite positive things that had come out of this ordeal. Not that he would ever admit that, even to Tessa.

Richie had been spending much more time with Duncan and Tessa and the immortal was definitely enjoying it. Both adults had decided to put Richie's welfare first. Duncan had laid low, turning away even friends to stay out of the Game. Tessa had rejected a job at the Sorbonne, not wanting to move Richie away from his therapist and home.

Duncan spent a lot of his time playing basketball with the teen and telling Richie stories of his past. He even began teaching Richie self-defense, thinking that it might help re-affirm the boy's self-confidence.

They watched tv and went to movies and the cabin and Duncan felt like they really were a 'family'. It was like the immortal could barely remember what it had been like before.

And Richie was making the first tentative steps toward the opposite sex. Frankly it made Duncan glad to see that the young man was taking things slowly. There would be no one-night stands or falling over anything with breasts now, and the immortal was certain it was really for the best.

All young men are sex-crazed he supposed, but he had often thought that Richie's actions were more than that. Duncan often thought that the boy was searching for the comfort that he had been denied as a child.

Of course, Duncan hoped that it was more than just fear that was preventing the boy from searching for that comfort now. He wanted to believe that Richie was now getting that comfort from him and Tessa, that the boy no longer had to seek out sexual partners when what he really was looking for was love.

Everything was going so well that Duncan found himself wanting to make it official. He wanted this to officially be his family. He began thinking about asking Tessa to marry him, about legally adopting Richie, having the two most important people in his life share the MacLeod name.

That was what was going on in his mind as he and Tessa sat in the bar that night and even the warnings of the psychic girl that Richie brought by their table couldn't dim his spirits. So he asked Tessa to marry him.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Duncan stared down at the broken body of his lover, his fiancé. She was dead, shot in the street, while he was inside trying to play hero, wanting more information about the people that had kidnapped her.

Unsteadily, Duncan laid her down on the cement and then literally crawling over to the other body. When Richie breathed his first breath as an immortal, Duncan needed to be there. He no longer cared that they were both immortals and the Gathering was going on. Richie was his family, the only one left and Duncan was going to hold onto him with everything he had.

They were going to have to leave, take Tessa's body…he choked just thinking about burying his beloved but he knew that she would want to be interred in France. Then he and Richie would disappear for a while. Duncan would teach the boy everything he knew, make sure that the young man was ready for life as an immortal, that Richie would be able to survive because Duncan needed him to survive.

Duncan promised himself one more thing as he was kneeling in the darkness, in the street waiting for the now-eternal teenage to breathe once again. Duncan promised himself that Richie would be a MacLeod.

So that was the final chapter. Sorry that it took so long to write a chapter that not much happened in, but Yea, it's done. I hope everyone enjoyed it and if you did please review. I loved the idea of this story and I am very proud to finally finish it.