an excerpt from Blue, a long Richiefic

As he crouched there on the rocks, sword still in hand, Richie realized it would be Thanksgiving in a few short hours. Tomorrow. A day to be thankful, a day for family and friends, a day of warmth in the cooling autumn weather.

He was not warm; he shivered in his thin long-sleeved shirt and the icy ocean breeze whipped his hair around every which-way. The handle of the sword was cooling despite his firm grasp on it: he could feel the chill in his fingers.

Friends: did he have any? Or family, for that matter? He stole a glance over at Mac. He had thought they were friends, maybe even family, but now he wasn’t so sure. With Tessa, they had been a family, but that had ended in a heartbeat. What was he doing over there, hugging the woman who had tried to cut his head off? Annie Devlin had wanted to kill him. Was that friendship? Was that family? Was this what it meant to be immortal?

And was this what he was supposed to be thankful for?

He remembered, briefly, something Mac had said about his own youth, that you weren’t really a man until you could hold your own in battle. At the time he had thought it funny. What if you were a thirty-year-old klutz? Were you a man yet, or were you still a boy because you sucked with a sword?

He was a man now, a warrior with sword in hand.

And men don’t cry.

Slowly, he was feeling better, though he was still numb. He had left the lighthouse only to realize that he wasn’t ready to go home – either to his own apartment or to Mac’s. He wasn’t ready to see anyone he knew yet. And it was starting to get dark He sped away on his bike, a little more reckless than usual – what did it matter? He was immortal now – and followed the curves and twists of Puget Sound. He headed south, knowing that Mac would go north, back to Seacouver, back to home. Would Mac even be expecting him to come back? Maybe it was tradition or something, that an immortal leave his teacher when he took his first head. Technically, he hadn’t taken Annie Devlin’s head. But he had won the fight. Barely.

He continued southward, slowly heading a little west as well. When night fell, he pulled to the side of the road and hid at a rest area, curling up in a corner of the men’s restroom. It was cold, but the walls cut the wind. He’d been in worse. At least now he knew he wouldn’t catch pneumonia or die of exposure. At least not permanently. He ran his finger along the edge of the blade and watched as the blood welled up and the cut healed with little blue bolts of lightning. What kind of an existence is this? he asked himself, relishing the brief pain. Am I even human anymore? Was I ever?

He did not sleep. He saw Annie Devlin, sneering at him, demanding that he take her head. He saw Mac shaking his head in disappointment. He saw Tessa, her eyes forever open in shock, a red stain growing on her chest.

It was the day before Thanksgiving. There was unusually little traffic. It was a quiet night. He was not disturbed.

Thanksgiving Day was spent in silence. The thought of turkey turned his stomach when he again realized exactly what day it was and he lost what little food was left in him in one of the graffiti-covered stalls. Immortals don’t get sick, he told himself. It’s all in your head.

At dawn on the second day, he left and went south again. In Grays Harbor, he stopped for an hour, hiding the sword in some thick bushes beside his bike, and got something to eat. It tasted like sawdust and he gave up after a few failed attempts to actually ingest it. He stopped in a department store and bought a new coat. The wind chill had gotten to him, finally, making him numb in every sense of the word, so he selected a heavy leather jacket. It was longer than what he was accustomed to – not as long as what Mac sometimes wore, or what other immortals – other immortals – wore, but it worked. He looked into the mirror and stared back at a stranger. "This is me, now," he said to the reflection. "That’s me." But he didn’t recognize the young man staring back at him. He shifted his focus and saw the people milling around behind and around him. For a moment he thought he saw Mac, glaring at him disapprovingly. But he didn’t feel a buzz. He didn’t feel anything.

Quickly, he pulled off the jacket and grabbed matching gloves, throwing it down on the counter and startling the saleswoman, who was already frazzled by the day-after-Thanksgiving sales and multitudes. He paid with plastic. It was the first time he had ever used a credit card one hundred percent legally in the United States.

This, he told himself, was shaping up to be a year of firsts.

At an office supply store, he purchased a mailing tube, some packaging tape, some foam padding and some twine, paid again with the credit card, and then rescued the sword from the bushes. Twenty minutes later he had the sword packaged and jury-rigged to his bike. The leftover supplies were deposited in a dumpster.

He got gas for the bike and left.

He had never seen how rocky and rough the Washington coast could be.

He tried to eat again, this time at a little cafe along the highway, a little place that Tessa would have secretly liked for its honesty and its charm, but never would have admitted to because of its lack of elegance. The food tasted like dirt and dust, and even the ice water was like sour milk. He paid in cash, tipping heavily in contrast to the mountain of food still on his plate. South, he thought to himself, just keep going south.

Exhaustion caught up with him as he crossed the Columbia River into Oregon. Astoria was a quaint little town, catering almost entirely to tourists, but this was the off season. It felt empty. It was quiet. He was tired of running. He found a nice hotel, surprising himself when he didn’t wince at the extravagant price. His room had a view of the river. He ordered room service – another first – and managed eat most of the meal to his own surprise. He hadn’t been hungry. He had eaten out of reflex. But he had eaten.

Then he closed the curtains as tightly as he could and slept until the next afternoon, the sword constantly within reach.

He woke himself up by crying. He knew he had dreamt of something, and that’s what had brought the tears, but he couldn’t remember the dream at all. He clutched at it, grasped for it with his mind, but it was gone like a morning mist in the sun.

He suddenly realized that he was hungry. His stomach was twisted in knots and for a moment he wondered if he was going to be sick again, but then it passed, followed only by the gnawing ache he thought he had left behind when he had moved in with Mac and Tessa. He ordered room service again – soup, crackers, juice. The voice on the other end of the telephone gave him fifteen minutes.

He showered. His whole body ached. He was stiff. That was something Mac had warned him about. Immortality didn’t mean you didn’t get tired, or sore, or stiff. All that still happened, and he had spent the last few days curled up on a concrete floor or on the back of his bike. The heat of the water helped, but there were just some things that you had to wait for nature to take care of, mortal and immortal alike. He stretched a little, remembering the routines Mac had put him through and what the other guys at the gym usually did. When he wiped the mirror free of steam, he still didn’t recognize himself. Richie Ryan didn’t have bags under his eyes or a haunted gaze.

Richie Ryan didn’t try to kill people with swords.

He stopped his fist at the last moment, sparing the mirror and himself seven years’ bad luck. He dressed in the bedroom, avoiding all the mirrors.

The soup was too hot and the juice too cold, but he survived the onslaught. When he was finished, he turned on the evening news, which came in a little fuzzy from Portland. The news from Oregon and southwest Washington made no mention of the attempted murder of Annie Devlin. No matter; Seacouver was a bit too far north anyway. Later, Peter Jennings reported nothing about decapitations in any part of the world. The world had continued without him.

That was nothing new.

Jeopardy! was a rerun and he surprised himself by knowing some of the answers. He surprised himself by caring whether or not he knew. When it was over, he turned the TV off and returned to the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet to avoid his own reflection. He brushed his teeth and couldn’t get the taste of sickness out. He tried flossing, but found he couldn’t do it without having the mirror to look in and eventually gave up. There was a little bottle of mouthwash, so he used that too, and his mouth felt cleaner than it had been in a long time, but the taste was still there. Wiping his mouth with a towel, he returned to the bedroom and flipped on the TV again. He found a station showing a movie and left it there, turning out the lights and getting back into bed. He realized that it was It’s a Wonderful Life and didn’t care. Anything was better than silence.

That was how he spent the last Saturday of November.

Sunday dawned a cold, foggy day and with it he found himself strangely energetic. He stretched a little and decided to go walking. His new jacket was just long enough to have hidden the sword under it if he had had something less bulky than the mailing tube to put it in, but he still didn’t know how immortals usually hid their swords like that. He felt a brief twinge of disappointment – shouldn’t Mac have taught him something as crucial as that by now? – but ignored it. He cut the air a little with the sword and then sighed. What did it matter? He probably wasn’t going to last very long anyway. It’s not like he had grown up with a claymore in his hand; he was a modern kid. There was something, despite his years on the streets, innately distasteful about this kind of fighting.

He was only nineteen years old.

The streets were still quiet as he left the hotel and started walking. It was early. He passed a small church, empty yet, and walked another block only to turn around and go back. As he crossed the threshold he felt a little bit of peace come over him. He sat in the last pew and stared at the big cross straight in front of him. It didn’t mean anything to him – he had been one of those lucky few who never ended up in one of those born-again foster homes, though he wasn’t sure if "lucky" was the right word considering where he had ended up – but for a few moment he wondered if maybe Jesus had been an immortal. Violent death, followed by resurrection and immortality. He shrugged at the thought. If he was, at least Jesus had lived to be thirty-something, if he remembered correctly. He wasn’t stuck forever as just a kid. Richie sighed. Even then, Jesus wouldn’t have lasted long in the game. He was a biblical hippie, nonviolence and love-your-neighbor and all that. He probably would have had a heart attack if someone had made him take up a sword.

It wasn’t until he had left, the regular parishioners already arriving, that he realized why he had felt so comfortable in the church, even though churches – except for Darius’s in Paris – had always bugged him before. Holy ground. A church was holy ground.

Some immortal he was. He couldn’t even remember something as simple as holy ground. Maybe he should just take a page from Darius’s book and become a priest. Never have to worry about anything again. Except maybe more evil watchers.

No. He sighed, looking back at the steady stream of churchgoers, and walked back to the hotel. They were serving brunch in the restaurant and he was finally feeling hungry again. That, he decided, was an improvement. Maybe he would start feeling human again, too.

The front desk clerk who had checked him in two days ago turned out to be the brunch maitre d’ as well and remembered his name. It wasn’t often that he got to be called Mr. Ryan. He kind of liked it. There was a waiting list for tables, the clerk told him, apologizing. There were more locals than usual. He took a seat on the leather-covered couch in the lobby to wait. One of the grandma-types tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he wasn’t up for it and she gave up quickly.

When the buzz came, it hurt a little more than usual and he was caught off guard. He didn’t have a sword: he’d left it in his room. But it was a public place. Surely the other immortal wouldn’t challenge him in front of all these people? He decided not to wait to find out.

Super-speed was not an immortal power, but Richie was certain he had never run so fast before, and certainly not up stairs. His room was still undisturbed – the maids hadn’t come through yet – and he found the sword where he had left it, in the mailing tube, leaned in the nearest corner to the door. He unpacked the sword and tried to take comfort in the feeling of the hilt and the shine of the blade. He considered running back to the church, but decided against it. First, the church service had just started and they probably wouldn’t be too happy about a guy running in with a sword. Second, he could feel the other immortal approaching – and that meant that he knew he was here, too. Immortal-radar did not allow for a sneaky escape. He was not being allowed to be a coward.

He did not remember to lock the door until it was already opening and it was too late. He stood stock still, hearing the other immortal step inside. There was a sound like loose change in his pocket, and the slide of a drawn sword. Richie swallowed. What the hell was he going to do? He could see the guy now, and really doubted his chances of winning. This guy was a grown up, and kinda tall. He had gotten lucky fighting Annie: she was smaller than him, shorter, not the world’s greatest sword fighter, and he had known a little something about her style from Mac. This guy, on the other hand, was almost a head taller and probably had a few pounds on him. And even if he wasn’t very old, the guy had ten or twenty years on him. He was doomed.

He breathed. He was going to die here, where no one knew him, and before he had gotten a chance to say goodbye to Mac, and he was only nineteen years old –

The other immortal turned around and looked right at him.

The guy squinted and then frowned. "Don’t I know you?" he asked. He had an English accent.

Richie swallowed again. "I don’t know," he whispered.

The guy looked at him as if searching a mental database. "You’re Duncan MacLeod’s friend, aren’t you?" he finally said, lowering his sword. "Richard, right? We met in Paris back in May?"

Richie looked back at him. He had long, curly hair and an odd nose. His clothes were a little mismatched, with a pipe tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket. He thought back to Paris and suddenly remembered Mac’s friend, the one who had been kidnapped. He nodded slowly. "I don’t remember your name."

"That’s all right," the Englishman said, flipping his sword so it was tucked under his arm, the point of the blade directed away from them both. Richie had seen Mac do that a million times. It meant, he suddenly realized, that the English guy didn’t want to fight him. He set his own sword down. He hadn’t learned that trick yet, either. "Sounds like you’ve been through a lot recently. Hugh Fitzcairn," the guy added, introducing himself. "But you can call me Fitz."

Fitz had managed to coax him back downstairs, but they didn’t go to the hotel brunch. "Too many people too close together," he said, "and you look like you need to talk, my boy." He drove them to a cafe that was still serving breakfast and ordered them both a cup of coffee, shoving the menu at Richie. "You could use a decent meal, too, by the looks of you. I might not be the richest guy on the planet, but I can certainly buy breakfast for a friend of Mac’s once in a while."

Richie gave in and ordered the first thing he saw, a combination platter that would probably do. The waitress looked at them – Fitz in his funny clothes and the odd look in his face, and Richie in his wrinkled, worn-too-many-days shirt and jeans and brand new leather jacket – and sighed, taking the order and promising quick service.

"Does MacLeod know where you are?" Fitz asked immediately. Richie shook his head. "I heard about Tessa," Fitz continued after a moment. "I’m sorry. She was a lovely lady." The coffee arrived then and he began to meddle with it. Richie simply stared at his. "Is that when it happened?" the older man asked. The meaning of "it" was clear to both of them.

Richie finally took a sip of his coffee. It was bitter. He didn’t care. Everything tasted bitter. "Yeah," he said softly. "Three bullets. One in her. Two in me." He took another sip. "Mugging gone wrong, the police called it."

"Huh," said Fitz, pouring another packet of sugar into his cup. "Just a month as one of us, and already you’re on your own." Richie didn’t say anything. "I suppose that’s why you were hiding behind your door, shaking like a leaf."

"Couldn’t go back afterwards," Richie mumbled.

"After what?"

"Annie Devlin challenged me."

Fitz looked suitably surprised. "Why on earth would she do that? She and MacLeod are friends, last I heard." He looked away for a moment. "Of course, that was eighty or ninety years ago. I suppose things could have changed. She seemed like a nice enough girl. A little fanatical, and a real temper, but friendly. What did you do to her? I don’t think she would challenge anyone without a really good reason, especially if they were a friend of MacLeod’s."

Richie took another swallow of coffee and for a moment tried to pretend that everything was normal again. It didn’t work. He took a deep breath. "I accidentally got her husband killed," he finally said, avoiding Fitz’s eyes.

Fitz nodded. "Yeah, I’d say that would be a good reason. Since you’re right here in front of me, looking good and morose, and I haven’t run into a ghost in about three hundred years, I take it that she’s no longer on this earth?"

Richie shook his head. "No, she’s still alive." He swallowed. "I let her live. I couldn’t take her head."

"Well," said Fitz, sounding impressed, "that is a fine mess. But maybe you should tell me the whole story, right from the beginning."

Richie told him what had happened: Tessa’s death and his own. The funeral in Seacouver and his adamant refusal to go with Mac to Paris for the burial. How Mac had snapped out of his grief just long enough to get them mixed up with Annie Devlin, and her husband’s death. The challenge. The incident in the empty warehouse, and how Mac had finally shown him how to hold a sword. His suspicion that Mac had slept with Annie, even though Tessa was barely cold in the ground, and how he had run off to fight her at the lighthouse. How he had won the fight and realized that he could not kill her. How he had run away and ended up here, in another town, in another state. He only left out the fact of the watchers being in Seacouver. He remembered now what had happened to Fitz.

The waitress brought the platter and fresh orange juice. Richie stared down at the fried eggs and toast and wondered if he’d manage to keep this down.

"Is that everything?" Fitz asked.

He pursed his lips. "I can’t eat. Just about everything tastes like cardboard or dirt or like it’s gone sour. I didn’t sleep for two days. I woke up this morning from a nightmare that I can’t remember. I think I’m going crazy."

Fitz smiled. "Nah, just mean’s you’re human," he said.

"Fitz, I almost killed her. I almost did it."

Fitz shook his head. "I’ve been around a lot longer than you, Richie. I’ve been here longer than MacLeod has, even. Did you know that? I’ve seen guys who wouldn’t even bother to say hello before attacking. I’ve seen unspeakable things done to mortals simply because they wouldn’t heal from it and that made it all the more appealing to the criminal. The fact that you’re taking this so hard just means that you’re not like those monsters. It means you’re still human, at least in here, where it counts," he said, tapping his chest over his heart. "Like me and MacLeod and the rest of our circle of acquaintances. You’re a good kid, Richie. That didn’t change when those bullets hit you. It just meant that you have the chance to be good for a lot longer than most folks can."

"Yeah, a kid," Richie replied sarcastically, risking a mouthful of his coffee, which was going cold. "No one’s ever going to take me seriously. I still get carded."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

Fitz nodded. "I won’t lie to you. You’re young. Most of us are at least twenty-five when it happens, and some much older than that. But you’re not the only one who’s a bit young. I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard a time or two over the last few centuries of a boy who was ten or eleven years old when he died, and he’s still about, say the stories. You’ve got a considerable advantage over him. And there’s quite a few others here and there who were teenagers when their time came. It’s not the end of the world. You would have been better off if this had waited five or ten years, anyone would tell you that, but it wasn’t your fate. And what do you do with fate? You just live with it. You can try to claw against it all you want, or ignore it, but it’s there and, as your generation likes to say, you just have to deal."

"That’s all you can say to me? Just deal?" Richie asked in surprise. "That’s your ancient wisdom?"

Fitz laughed and looked him in the eyes. "Ancient wisdom?" he said, chuckling. "Oh, my boy, if I had some truly ancient wisdom to give out, I’d type it up into a book and make a fortune. Granted, I have a bit more luck with the ladies than the average chap, but I’m just a normal fellow. Just one of the guys, you might say. Experience," he continued, "is an excellent teacher, and I’ve learned more than my fair share of lessons over the years. But deep down, I’m just another fellow living here, just like you. Just like everyone else. Mortal and immortal alike, we have our ups and downs, bits of good and bad in us. Some have more good than others, some more bad. We’re just human, Richie, we’re just human."

He ate his breakfast in silence. The food still had a cardboard-like quality, but in this case he began to think that maybe it was the food itself, and not his head. He drank the coffee, refilled by the waitress, and found it not quite as bitter as before. Maybe, he told himself, things are getting better.

Fitz began telling him about his adventures over the last few months, ending the silence as the waitress took away the empty plate. After Paris, he had wandered a bit through Italy, taking in the sights – "Italian women never change, my friend, they always have lovely eyes..." – until he had accidentally died in front of witnesses and left the country. "Bloody boys on motorbikes," he said, "not watching out for poor pedestrians like me. Three of them hit me, one right after the other, squishing me but good. Woke up in the morgue, I did, and thank God no one was watching. I don’t know what I would have done if they were getting ready to cut me open. Let that be a lesson to you, too, Richie. Avoid dying in public, and avoid hitting people with your motorbike. It’s quite lethal when you want it to be." From Italy, he moved on to Mexico and then had come to the United States and was thinking of settling down for a while near San Francisco. "I’ve been thinking of taking up cooking," he said. "I’m a bit tired of being a professional ne’er-do-well. Besides, women like a chap who can cook, don’t they?"

Richie nodded. At least, that was something that Tessa had admired, he told himself. He sighed. Everything seemed to come back to Tessa. It didn’t make sense. She was dead. But in the back of his head, she was still alive.

The drive back to the hotel was quiet. "I’m sorry to leave you like this, young Richie, but I’m afraid I have an appointment later today," said Fitz, parking the car. Richie had been surprised at how safe a driver Fitz was – Fitz had struck him as a little bit roguish.

"Is she pretty?" Richie asked. Fitz gave him a lopsided grin in return. "Pretty and expecting me in Yachats by nightfall. Some little romantic place on the beach, she said. But it being this time of year, I certainly hope she meant someplace inside with a fireplace, overlooking the beach. I don’t fancy the idea of sitting out in the rain and wind and the cold," he explained. "Now, before I move on, is there anything I can help you with? Anything at all?"

"Are you going to tell Mac about us meeting here?" Richie asked.

"Do you want me to?"

Richie thought about it. Mac was probably going to be upset that he had run away like this, but he might feel better knowing that he had run into Fitz. Then again, he might be mad at Fitz for not ordering him to go back home the moment they saw each other. "I don’t know."

"Well, you’re old enough to make up your own mind, with or without any ancient wisdom," said Fitz. "I won’t bring it up, if that calms you, but if he ever asks me, I won’t lie about it. That’s just silly." Richie nodded. "All right, then. Anything else?"

Monday morning found Richie back on the road again, this time headed home. Thanks to Fitz, he now knew the secret to sword concealment and had abandoned the mailing tube and rope. At the moment, the sword was attached to the bike itself, rather than under his coat; that would have been too awkward, he had realized, for the long journey to Seacouver.

Despite the traffic, the journey home was an easier one than leaving. He retraced his steps, so to speak, and had lunch at the little cafe he had been to only days before. This time, he didn’t leave anything on his plate and the ice water was refreshing. He paused in Grays Harbor, buying coffee at a fast food restaurant and remembering the poor saleswoman he had spooked so badly. Before he knew it, he was passing through Olympia and Tacoma and braving the Seattle traffic jams. Shortly before dark, he was in Seacouver.

He went home to his apartment. The garbage in the kitchen had just started to become a little rank. He dealt with it and straightened things up a little. Feeling accomplished, he showered, welcoming the relaxing warmth and steam. He felt human again, he realized as he got dressed in fresh clothing. He was feeling human again.

As night felt, he drove over to the gym. It was quiet. Everyone was recovering from Thanksgiving, he told himself. It’ll be business as usual tomorrow. Making sure that no one seemed to be watching him, he slipped the sword out from under his jacket and put it back on the wall in the office. He would need a sword of his own, he knew, but at least it wouldn’t be one he had stolen from a friend. He left the jacket there and took the elevator up to Mac’s apartment. He had felt his presence from the moment he entered the building. He knew Mac was home.

The elder immortal gave no indication of being surprised at his return. For a moment, Richie wondered if Fitz had reneged on their agreement and had told Mac that he was headed home. No, Fitz had given his word.

"How’re you doing?" Mac asked, as if it was nothing for a young immortal to disappear for several days. Richie decided to just follow his lead. "Fine. Perfect. I’m alive, aren’t I?" he said.

"You don’t look to happy about it."

Richie thought back to the day before Thanksgiving. That’s what this conversation was going to be about. "I could have killed her, Mac," he admitted. "I mean, that’s what I’m supposed to do, right?"

Mac nodded. "Sometimes."

"I couldn’t do it. I thought I could. But I couldn’t. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this."

"You’re still who you are, Richie," Mac said. "You don’t change when you become immortal. You just live longer. Hopefully," he added.

Richie laughed. Oh, yeah. Mac and Fitz were friends. They sounded just alike. Would he be like that one day? he wondered. "Oh, boy," he said, "I’d say I’ve got a lot to learn."

"You still have time," Mac told him, opening a wooden case resting on the chair beside him. He withdrew a sword from it and Richie started backing away. Mac wasn’t that mad at him, was he? But before he could think further on the idea, Mac turned the sword and presented it to him. Richie took the sword and marveled at the way the light danced on it. It gleamed. This was a gift, he realized. "Take good care of it," Mac continued. "Live with it, make it part of you. It might be the only friend you have."

Richie doubted it. As long as Mac was around, he’d have a friend, wouldn’t he? He didn’t say anything, though, and simply accepted Mac’s arm in his old-fashioned kind of handshake, and smiled.

[finis]