That he'd charged Richie with getting him a drink made with a combination of flavors that had to have come from a bored marketing executive and a dart board was, in fact, cause for alarm. The only thing Richie had figured out so far was that he was missing something important, and this was part of it.

"You should get him a large," the person in front of Richie suggested. She turned so she could see him while still holding her place and tossed him a wink that left no doubt that she was talking to him. She was several inches shorter than Richie with a pile of dark-blonde hair swept up in a messy knot on the back on her head and a pair of large-lensed sunglasses perched on the front. "Your boyfriend, I mean. You should get him a large. Show him that risks are worth doing big, if they're worth doing at all."

"My boy—oh, god, no," Richie sputtered, the words coming out before he had a chance to assess whether it was worth responding at all. "Roommate. He's just a roommate."

The girl's grin dimpled her cheeks. "In that case...how about I let you cut in front of me and you can buy me a drink?"

Richie blinked. It wasn't the fastest come-on he'd ever heard, but it had to be the least expected. "Uh." Stymied for words, he glanced down at the bill crumpled in his hand. "It's not my money." And that had to be the lamest shoot down ever. What the hell was he doing? The girl was hot. College-aged, wearing a blue t-shirt that proclaimed in bold upside-down letters that "THIS IS MY HANDSTAND SHIRT" and short shorts. Her arms and legs were tanned and muscled, and Richie couldn't help eying them appreciatively. He also couldn't help noticing that she was eying his own arms just as appreciatively.

Too young, the more rational part of his mind screamed. She's too young!.

"Sorry," he continued. "It's just...I can't ditch my friend, you know?"

She gave a dismissive shrug. "Somehow, I think he'll understand. But, I like a guy who's loyal to his friends. It gives me hope that he won't ditch me when he spots another pretty face." One dark eyebrow quirked, and Richie's inner white-knight wanted to rear up and declare that he'd never treat any girlfriend of his that way. "My name's Emily. How 'bout I give you my number and you can text me when you're free?"

Richie felt his throat seizing up. Not too long ago, he would have jumped at the chance to do anything this girl wanted to do. If it left him stranded in a strange town without transportation...well, it wouldn't be the first time. But this...the timing was all wrong.

Unless it was exactly right?

Richie's eyes narrowing, he swung toward Methos to see if there any hint of this being a set-up. Methos was standing in front of the bench, speaking earnestly to one of the old men, and not paying any attention at all to what was going on with Richie. Certainly if he had arranged this, he'd want to see how it played out.

"Here I am assuming you're single just because you said you weren't with your friend," Emily continued, already sounding less assured than she had just a moment before. "I shouldn't be making assumptions like that."

"It's OK," Richie said in a croak that reminded him all too painfully of the year his voice changed. "I am. I'm just not looking to change that right now. I mean, it's not that you're not pretty, because you really are..." He trailed off as his resolve crumbled; it had never been all that strong to begin with. "Richie," he said. She's too young, his inner voice reminded him.

She's no younger than she thinks you are, a different part of him chimed in. And there was the summary of his love life: he got to choose between women who were fellow competitors in the Game, or women who were barely old enough to vote. Some choice. Against his better judgment, he pulled out his phone and typed in the number she rattled off. When her phone buzzed, he tried not to feel like he'd accomplished something important.

Fortunately, her turn to order came up then. Then his. For the first time, he regretted that the coffee kiosk didn't sell anything stronger. He settled for a smoothie, the one listed first on the menu that hung behind the baristo's head, and resolutely refused to acknowledge the leer the baristo tried to share with him.

"Try not to look so panicked," Emily said, when Richie stepped down to join her at the other end of the counter. "I promise not to send more than two or three texts a minute." Her expression softened; she must have caught on that he was a little freaked out. "Besides, I've found it's usually best to start with one date. It's way too soon to be talking about forever."

Richie gulped, momentarily stunned past the point of any other kind of response. She had to say that, didn't she? Like he needed that reminder.

"Wow." She touched the E-shaped pendant that hung from the thin gold chain around her neck. "Are you OK? You've gone really pale. I don't know what I said…"

"'S'okay," Richie said, forcing his fists to unclench. She had no way to know what his issues were. "It's just been a long time since...well, it's been a busy year." Thoughts of the explosion and fire that had destroyed his home and business flashed through his mind.

"I hear you," she answered. "I have a competition next weekend and then finals coming up after that. So, shoot me a text when you're ready to take a break and we'll go hang out." Her drink came up then, and she accepted it with a scowl at the name scrawled on the cup that reversed back into a smile when she once again met Richie's eyes. "It'll be fun. Like I said, no pressure." With a small wave, she walked off.

No pressure. Right. He knew where this was going. They'd hit a club, have a great time, and then a few months down the road she'd either start asking questions he couldn't answer, or he'd have to construct a reason to break up with her before she did.

He sighed and was reaching for his own order when the sense of another Immortal slid across his awareness. His head jerked up, and he turned immediately to check back on Methos. Through a break in the traffic, Richie caught sight of the old man. He had managed to evict the other occupants from the bench and was now sprawled exactly in the middle with his arms spread across the back, leaning back with his eyes closed, either doing a very good job of not responding to the Presence, or not in range to feel it. If he hadn't left and reentered range, that meant there was a third Immortal in the mall, one who was...

Richie slowly scanned the area in front of the kiosk, searching for anyone who was likewise searching for him. Crowds of shoppers filled the mall, streaming through the concourses like ants toward a sugar bowl. Many had their eyes on their phones, while others pressed close to their friends to chat. A few scanned the stores they passed with the determination of treasure seekers. No one seemed to be looking for the source of a signal only they could feel.

Abruptly, Richie realized that the second voice was gone. The Immortal must have been on the far side of the kiosk where Richie couldn't see him, and had presumably backed off when he felt Richie. With any luck, that meant no one would be Challenging anyone else today. Could be a little awkward trying to have a fight to the death without swords, and more awkward trying to explain to the rental car agency just how exactly the car had gotten destroyed in a lighting storm while parked inside the parking garage.

"Did you feel that?" Richie asked, after beelining back to the bench. He handed over the coffee, and noted that Methos took it and immediately set it down on the bench next to him without opening his eyes.

"You'll have to be more specific," Methos responded with a stretch like he'd been on the edge of nodding off.

A quick glance around showed that no one was in immediate earshot. "There's another one of us here."

Finally, Methos cracked open his eyes. "So?"

The paper of Richie's cup crinkled as his grip tightened around it. "So?!" He drew close enough to loom over the seated Immortal. He rarely had opportunity to be taller than Methos, and getting to be the one looking down on him for once almost made up being put on the spot about his sex life. "Our swords are in the car, and last I checked that wasn't exactly accessible. Also, I've never developed a taste for being hunted."

Methos gave a tired sigh and shifted over. "Take a seat." Richie didn't move, so Methos ostentatiously picked up the coffee cup and set it back down again on his other side, clearing the entire bench. "Sit down before someone else does. It wasn't easy getting everyone who was here to leave and I don't want anyone to get the bright idea that they're welcome to come back."

With a shake of his head, Richie decided that he both didn't want to know or to argue. "Fine." He lowered himself to the bench. "You're really not worried?"

"He's probably just shopping. I hear that's why people come to the mall." That observation was clearly a dig at Richie. Methos gestured at the pile of bags he'd shoved under the bench and Richie threw him a snide look in return. "I'm more interested in that young lady you were talking to."

So Methos hadn't been oblivious; he'd been watching the whole time. It was bad enough that Richie had an actual Watcher, and now he had to put up with a teacher who used to be a Watcher. Knowing him, he'd write everything they said in his private chronicle later. "She hit on me," Richie corrected. "And I don't know why you're acting surprised. D'you put her up to it?"

"Why would I do that?" Methos draped an arm along the back of the bench, then retracted it when Richie didn't immediately agree that the idea of Methos bribing someone was outlandish. "No," he clarified. "There was no need to. In case it's escaped your notice, lots of women have been giving you second glances today. Eventually one of them was going to get a chance to talk to you."

After everything, Richie didn't feel very convinced. The Methos Richie knew had a different relationship with the truth than even most other Immortals did. He crossed his arms and settled in for an argument. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to text her."

"Why not?"

The smoothie was some kind of tropical mix and cold. Combined with the rolling murmur of the other shoppers' voices, Richie began to relax, almost despite himself. He stretched out his legs, noting that his white gym shoes didn't need replacing, and tried to affect a dismissiveness he didn't quite feel as he said, "She's not my type."

Methos rolled his head to look at Richie. "Cute and interested in you? How is that not your type?"

So much for relaxing. "Hey, I have an idea," he responded, sitting back up. "Why don't we talk about...I don't know...anything else? Like, the other Immortal, or why you suddenly decided that becoming my teacher was the thing to do?"

Methos picked up his cup and turned it around slowly at eye-level as if contemplating the enigma of the brown coffee sleeve against the white cardboard. At last, he found whatever answer he sought and brought the cup to his lips for a careful sip. His face twisted in a grimace. "That's not what I thought it would be," he commented.

"I could've warned you," Richie said. His own drink was surprisingly tasty, and while the mall's air conditioning was running full bore, the smoothie's coolness still felt like a relief from the heat he knew was waiting outside. From the world that was waiting outside. "And you're stalling."

"No," Methos said. "I'm shopping."

"Shopping? For what? You haven't bought a single thing."

"I paid for the car."

Richie raised an eyebrow; that wasn't what he meant.

Methos leaned back again and pointed his face in the direction of the skylight overhead. Its translucent glow added nothing to the electric luminescence that surrounded it, yet nearly everyone who passed near it faltered in their step at least once while glancing up. "There is a great deal more to do in a mall than just buy things."

Like pick up girls? Richie quashed the question before he asked it, unwilling to reopen a topic he'd barely managed to close. "Like what? I'm guessing you don't mean eating and drinking, because that still involves 'buying things.'"

Methos nodded. "Some acquisitions don't require money."

"You wanna get to the point, Old Man? Just because we're not getting old, that doesn't mean the joke hasn't."

Methos glared at him, and held it until Richie started fidgeting, started actively resisting the urge to turn around and check behind him. "Were you always this impatient with MacLeod?"

"All the time," Richie answered immediately, shifting again so that he was least not positioned to bolt. It was a simple fact of how he was made: he needed to learn by doing. The more people tried to get him to listen to theory or lecture, the more impatient he got to begin the practice. "The world doesn't move at seven miles an hour anymore," he pointed out. "And I've never been happy going the speed limit anyway." There was a reason he kept returning to bike racing. He'd always thought that when he got a little money saved up—if he ever got a little money saved up—he'd give car racing a shot. It wasn't enough to keep up; he wanted to be out in front.

Methos sighed again and took another sip of his coffee. His grimace was only marginally less pained this time. "The speed of progress," he commented. "Gets faster every year, and its children still aren't satisfied. Fine, I'm talking about people watching."

Reflexively, Richie peered at the stream of people crossing between him and the kiosk. He saw a lot more white faces than he'd become used to in the city, a variety of ages, couples and families. "What about it?"

"The last time I lived in this country, it was the 19th century. It's changed a lot."

"Yeah, there's a couple more states," Richie agreed. "I don't get the problem. You've visited plenty of times. Sometimes for weeks. And it's not like Europe is all that different. If you need a line on a place to get a new ID..."

Methos' eyes dropped closed and he rolled his lips together in a clear bid for patience. When he spoke again, his voice was tired; he dropped his gaze square on Richie, and for the first time ever Richie caught a glimpse of the immense age behind the hazel eyes. "Has it occurred to you that nothing you take for granted in your life is native to me? I've learned to adapt, yes. I've learned to blend in, yes." He stopped, cut his eyes down to the bench. "I haven't learned to assimilate. This isn't my world, and that's never more obvious than when I need to change identities."

This was the most open and honest Richie had ever seen Methos. He understood the '5000 years' part as a number, but he realized that he'd never given any thought to what it meant as an age.

Abruptly, he flashed back to the tumultuous first weeks after he moved in with Mac and Tessa. He'd lived in dozens of homes in his life, and had learned first hand that the rules he heard when informed of the new family's expectations were never going to be the ones he got in trouble for breaking. It was always the other ones, the ones no one knew were rules, that were simply assumptions about the correct and 'natural' way to act. Mac and Tessa had been no different.

The bravado he'd learned while in the system became his only shield while he struggled to deal with the fact that everything he thought he knew about how people acted around each other no longer applied: from the correct way to deal with his wet towel, to the order in which dishes were washed, to the way to spend his free time. And that didn't even get into the landmines of table manners, conversational etiquette, and what to do when his friends came over. He had never felt so out-of-sync with everything. To think, that was Methos' normal. "Geez, I'm sorry, man." Though he'd never admit it, he felt a little bad for not being more forgiving. Only a little.

"Don't be. You live long enough, you'll get to experience it, too."

"Oh, good. Something else to look forward to."

Methos' lips twitched into something that might become a grin with a little more encouragement. "Since I plan to stick around awhile, I need more than a new driver's license. I need to know who the picture is going to be of." He scowled at the coffee cup. "All I've figured out for certain is that my new self still isn't going to be a whipped cream-and-sprinkles kind of guy."

"So, some things really don't change with time," Richie commented. With new perspective, he again turned his attention to the other shoppers. He saw hair that was long, short, curly, straight, and all of the above; piercings, tattoos, henna, and unadorned skin; clothes that hugged the body and clothes that hid it. He saw people who were comfortable in their skin, and people who obviously weren't.

Not since high school was he so aware of how people categorized themselves, advertised their interests, and announced their ethnic and social memberships by their adornment. Mentally, he started testing some of the styles against his own look. Who could he become, if he could be anybody? He'd left the name Richie Ryan briefly to become Bill Powell, Richard Redstone, and now Richie Jensen. But, no matter his name, he'd always stayed Richie Ryan inside. The mere idea that he could—should—change everything was daunting. "You know, Mac never mentioned any of this."

Methos huffed out a laugh. "Duncan I-Am-Who-I-Am MacLeod? The man who refuses to change his name, no matter who's hunting for his head? This is why you need a teacher, Rich. MacLeod taught you how to play the Game. He didn't teach you how to live."

Emily walked past, then. For a second, Richie feared that she was going to break from the traffic and come over to talk to him again. He really didn't need Methos to meet her, because he knew that would only lead to trouble. Instead, she raised her hand in a wave, then turned to speak to the woman walking next to her. The woman was stunning: brown hair cropped short and styled to highlight the angles of her face; tailored jeans and a button-down shirt on a body that was rounder yet still fit; and more mature versions of the long nose and wide mouth that Emily shared. This had to be her mother.

"Oh, so that's the issue, is it?" Methos commented.

"What?" Richie snapped. With effort, he tore his gaze away from the women.

Continuing as if Richie hadn't spoken, Methos said, "Well, it certainly explains Kristin."

Richie's eyes narrowed, and he felt the moment of camaraderie between them disintegrating. "Not this again. Kristin was twenty years ago. I made a mistake. It's over. She's dead. Time to move—" Richie stiffened then as the feeling of another Immortal impinged on him. A scan of the space in front of him again revealed no likely candidate, so he swept his eyes upward. There, on the second floor. He caught only a glimpse of the man as he stepped back from the guardrail, yet instinctively knew he'd found the source.

"Who?" Methos asked, his gaze following Richie's. "Where?"

Richie nodded toward the retreating figure, now just another brown-haired man among many.

"You're sure?"

"You're not?" Richie countered. Only as he caught the curious curl of the man's brow did he realize that Methos hadn't responded to the Presence at all. How was the possible? He was sitting two feet away.

"Well, doesn't that make things interesting. Come on." He stood up, carried his still mostly-full coffee cup to the nearest garbage can, and dropped it in.

Richie scrambled to gather his bags in one hand without spilling his smoothie all over his new purchases. "Hey! You wanna actually finish a sentence?"

To his surprise, Methos not only waited for him to catch up, but relieved him of half the bags when he did. "I underestimated you, Richie. When I came to New York, I thought you'd be nothing more than a way to occupy myself for a few years while things cooled off in Europe."

Richie rolled his eyes; he'd figured that out the second Methos showed up on his doorstep. They'd never been friends, exactly—at best their relationship could be described as 'neutral'—but, as far as Immortals went, they trusted each other. Richie knew who Methos was and wasn't interested in his head. Methos wasn't interested in heads at all. "Yeah?" he asked, signing a rolling barrel when it looked like Methos was going to leave another thought half finished.

"First, we need to deal with the fact that your 'type' is, apparently, what this generation has appallingly decided to label, 'cougars.'"

So much for the compliment that it had sounded like Methos was headed for. "It is not! How many times do I have to say it? Kristin was a special case. You can't tell me that you've never fallen for the wrong person."

"More than a few," Methos commented, sounding not at all disturbed by that fact. "We all have our weaknesses."

"Besides," Richie continued, "I've dated plenty of women my age."

"Say it again."

"That I've dated plenty of women?" Richie asked. Why was that in need of repeating? His propensity for short-term flings has gotten him into a lot of trouble when he was younger, including that time when Donna showed up with the toddler she said was his. That had led to a lot of hard lessons.

Methos shook his head. "The other part."

Richie thought back through what he'd said and frowned. He was definitely missing something that Methos had decided was important. He shifted his grip on the bags so that the handles would find a different part of his hand to cut into. He'd had to buy way more than the average guy, as most of his t-shirts and sweats would get destroyed in training. Swords were sharp, and Immortals trained the same way they'd fight for real: in street clothes, and to kill.

And the more he had to carry, the more he appreciated the effort Methos had gone through to secure a car. But. This was the most time the two of them had ever spent together, was easily more words exchanged in one setting than in all their previous interactions combined, and the cryptic guru shit was really starting to piss Richie off.

His annoyance must have come through, because Methos groaned his own frustration. "Your age, Richie. You've dated plenty of women your age." Using the weight of the bag he carried, Methos herded Richie back down the secondary branch they'd come up.

"Ow," Richie yelped, as a sharp corner in the bag hit him in the back of the thigh. "You mind?"

"You'll heal," Methos answered. "Stop." They'd reached the window of a store that had gone out of business. Against the darkened interior, the plate glass window functioned like a mirror. Methos positioned Richie in front of it "This is the toughest lesson for young Immortals: That's your age. Not the number of years you've been alive, the age that people see when they look at you."

Richie bristled. He'd never liked being called a kid, and at a fundamental level it hurt that he rarely got a chance to be seen as anything else.

"Wanting to be with people who are the same as you are inside is understandable, but you've only about sixty years before that clock runs out. The sooner you start living with this face instead of despite it, the easier your life will be."

The image in the window was translucent. Through it, Richie saw the empty shelves in the store, and a flattened box and some wire hangers that had been left behind. With effort, he forced himself to actually look at his reflection. Wide blue eyes. A straight nose. Reddish-blond curls that were now long enough to require a comb in the morning. There was always a moment of shock when he saw just how young he was. He knew mortals his age had the opposite experience, where graying hair and crow's feet greeted a person who felt younger inside. He'd never have that. And, fortunately, he hadn't been cursed with acne-prone skin or eternal baby fat in his cheeks. It could be worse. He could be Kenny, stuck forever in a ten year old's body.

"Nineteen, huh?" he said. It never got easier to say. He wondered if it ever would.

"For what it's worth, what nineteen means will change, given enough time. It's viewed as young right now. That may not be true in a few hundred years."

"That's not as comforting as you might think it is," Richie responded. The way things were going, nineteen could become indistinguishable from ten.

"Then, how about this: You still have that young lady's information?"

"Yeah."

"Good. You're going out tonight. Remember that club those other girls mentioned?"

"I already told you—"

"Doctor's orders," Methos interrupted. "Teacher's orders, too."

Richie wasn't about to give in that easily. "What about you? What are you going to do?" He stuck the straw in his mouth and took a sip, only to be met with a mouthful of air and a loud slurping as the straw pulled in vain at the few drops of liquid in the bottom of the cup. So much for enjoying the drink; he barely remembered drinking it. He headed toward the garbage and Methos fell into step next to him, the fingers of his free hand shoved into his front pocket.

"I'll go with you, find a table in some out-of-the-way corner, have a few drinks, and see if I can figure out what the kids these days call 'dancing'."

Except for the 'kids these days' part, the rest sounded so typically Methos that Richie felt a moment of embarrassment that he'd wasted the breath asking. His next question took that moment and dragged it out. Keeping his gaze locked straight ahead, he asked, "What if she wants to go back to her place?"

They'd re-entered the main concourse, finally heading back toward the parking garage, and Methos had once again taken over the lead. Distantly, Richie was aware of a change in the ambient noise, a shift in the pitch of the conversations that seemed to end in a question mark. It didn't ping any of his 'danger' signals, so he ignored it.

"Then go," Methos answered, and laughed when Richie shot him a disbelieving look. "I know how hotels work. I won't have to worry about being able to drive home, then."

"But—"

"We're in a mall, Rich. If you're that concerned about having clean underwear or a toothbrush in the morning, we can stop and buy some. You have enough new clothes to last at least a month, more if you take time between tumbles to do laundry." He hefted the bag he has holding in demonstration of his point. "Don't worry about me."

Richie's jaw tightened at having all his objections dismissed so casually. "You really don't have a problem with that?"

"As I am neither your father, spouse, or in any manner your moral guardian, what difference would it make if I did?"

Mac would have had a problem. Mac wouldn't have stopped Richie from making the decision, but he'd have let him know before, during, and after how disappointed he was in Richie for making it. Except, Methos wasn't Mac, and Richie needed to remember that. It was almost disturbing how he had simply assumed that Methos would play all the roles Mac had.

"Sorry," Richie said, "I guess I wasn't thinking."

"You were being considerate," Methos replied, as if that's all it had been.

The idea that Methos wasn't going to hold Richie's slip against him was so strange that Richie found it difficult to wrap his mind around it. It didn't help that so much of Methos' behavior was hard to wrap his mind around, if he thought about it for more than two seconds. And he'd had more than two seconds.

"Why does it matter to you what I do?" Richie asked suddenly, though not for the first time that day. "I mean, at all. Why care about teaching me? I know it's not because we're such great friends that my success or failure in the Game is personally important."

Methos didn't dispute Richie's assessment.

"So, I'm thinking Mac asked you to check in on me. Except—" He held up a finger, cutting off a protest he saw forming on Methos' lips— "I don't think you'd do it if he just asked. Which leads me to think that you're either here because he's mad at you and you're trying to get back on his good side, or you owe him a favor and he cashed it in." Why Mac would suddenly decide that Richie needed more training was a different problem, as was why he'd go about giving it this way. Not a phone call, not a letter, not even an email letting him know what was going on. The best Richie would come up with there is that Mac was losing his mind. Again.

Methos' eyes narrowed and he swept Richie with a searching look. "Duncan has nothing to do with my being here," he countered, his tone low. He sounded offended at the accusation.

If he hadn't spent the day trying to decipher Methos' behavior, Richie might have taken that statement at face value. But it was too easy, information given without argument. That meant it couldn't be trusted. Richie turned the exchange over in his head, searching for the catch. And he found it. He'd been talking about Mac, and Methos denied Duncan's involvement, but they both knew more than one MacLeod. "Connor?!" Methos flinched, and Richie knew he'd guessed correctly. "Connor sent you to teach me?" That was almost more disturbing than Duncan doing so. "You owed Connor MacLeod a favor?!"

"Keep your voice down," Methos reprimanded.

Richie drew a breath and furiously tried to work through what the new detail meant. He'd met Connor on a mere handful of occasions, none of them good: that first night in Tessa's shop when Richie learned about the world of Immortals, a year later at Tessa's funeral, a couple years after that when he'd been on the run after Duncan's Dark Quickening, and a few years after that at Connor's daughter's funeral. The man had definitely known about him and had many opportunities to intervene in Richie's training, if he'd wanted to. Except he'd never wanted to. He'd inquired about Richie when he called, and was cordial enough when they met, yet had done little to stay in contact after Richie finally left Duncan's orbit. "Why does Connor suddenly care about me?"

"Why wouldn't he?" Methos countered. "You're basically his grandson."

"His gr—" Richie bit the word off, because the intent was right, even if the language wasn't. Since Immortals couldn't have kids, their most important lineages were that of student-teacher. Richie's teacher's teacher would be, well, like a grandfather. He'd never thought of it that way, and now he understood why Connor had shown any interest at all. Really, it was about as functional as an Immortal relationship ever was. Was him sending Methos to train him the equivalent of a regular grandfather springing for a year's college tuition? He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling vertebrae pop under the pressure. "All right, so you needed a place to go, and rather than taking off for anywhere else in the big, wide world that you could hide, Connor told you to come train me. Musta been one hell of a favor."

"That's none of your business."

"Of course not," Richie grumbled. "My personal life is all your business, and yours is only yours."

"You're catching on." Methos paused, his attention momentarily drawn to the custodians who were pulling metal folding chairs off a rolling rack and setting them up around the stage with practiced efficiency. Potential audience members were starting to drift into position, taking up seats as soon as there was one to claim. Meanwhile, a woman with dark hair swept into an updo and a fitted brown suit that suggested that she was part of the show moved around, coordinating the last few steps. "You moved to New York City."

Richie drew to a stop at the observation, sensing that they were finally getting to the heart of the matter. "What about it?"

"That was Connor's territory for thirty years, and you know how he is about letting go of things that are meaningful to him."

Connor MacLeod: the man who still lit a candle every year in honor of his first wife, and who always would.

Richie swallowed hard. He hadn't thought about that when he'd picked the city to live in. Mostly, he'd been searching for a place as far from Seacouver as he could get while staying in the States. Connor's reputation meant that Immortals steered clear of the city—all five boroughs of it, plus any adjacent suburbs—unless they committed to avoiding the Game. "You're saying he sent you to kill me."

Methos cringed. "He wouldn't need me for that. If he wanted you dead, he'd do it himself." Forcing a breath out of his nose, he added, "I'm pretty sure he's intends for you to hold the fort, so to speak, until it's safe for him to come back. Grandson."

Shit. An inheritance. Even if he'd still lived there, Connor wouldn't have stopped Richie from moving in because Richie was family. Other Immortals would have still stayed away, and Richie probably wouldn't have noticed the difference. Any excuse for a lull in the Game was a good one.

Now that Connor was gone, others would see open season in the city, and Richie had just been tasked with defending it. He could almost hear Connor's signature staccato laugh at what he probably thought was a clever solution to an age-old problem: how to keep pockets of peace in their violent lives. And, while Richie was a strong fighter, he was no substitute for the elder Highlander. Connor had to have known that.

Methos was waiting for Richie to put the pieces together, his shoulders thrown back and his lips pressed into white lines. All at once, Richie got it, and a flare of anger ignited deep inside. Like a capricious god, Connor had assigned Richie an impossible task for his own amusement. Dropping his bags, he brought his arm around in a punch that hit Methos square in the jaw. Bone cracked. "You bastard," Richie swore. He stepped back, breath coming harder. The one punch hadn't been enough; he reached for his sword, and found only the cotton blend of his button-down shirt.

Methos grabbed his jaw, turning away from further assault while it healed. "I'm not the one you're angry with," he ground out in a voice that was muffled through teeth he couldn't move and the hand that covered his face.

The pain of the first hit receded quickly, and Richie pulled back for another. "You agreed to this," he said, landing an upper-cut to Methos' stomach that forced the man to double over. "You set me up." At least three people had known what Richie was getting into when he moved to the City, and none of them had bothered to warn him. No, instead they sent him a "teacher" who was more interested in getting Richie to score a date than in providing him with life-or-death information.

A crowd was starting to gather around them, the area resounding with the thumps and scraps of quickly abandoned chairs as the fight captured people's attention.

Methos wasn't fighting back nor trying to stop Richie. At some level, Richie understood that this was the man's way of making up for Connor's overstep. "That's the problem with favors, kid," he gasped.

"Hey!" someone shouted.

Richie spun, fists coming up as his attention widened to take in this new threat, and caught himself staring open-mouthed at the interrupter: the brunette who'd been organizing the show. She was gorgeous, made-up and coiffed, confident, in her element. And a person he'd have recognized anywhere, even if he hadn't seen her grow up on billboards and in TV ads. "Maria?" he said, only in the next breath remembering that he couldn't know her anymore. He hadn't seen her since he was twenty-four, right before he left Seacouver for the last time.

He assumed he'd never see her again. Just like he assumed he'd never see Angie or Joey or Donna, or any of the dozens of other people he'd grown up with, again. Most of them were never going to get out of the city, nor had they ever expected to. Maria had been one of the lucky ones, as had he—though for entirely different reasons.

"Richie?" she responded. She took a step closer, the security guard behind her shuffling nervously. "Richie Ryan?"

"Oops," Methos commented.