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{Maybe this wasn't such a good idea,} Joe thought, as he watched Richie
listening to one of the tapes. {I tried to pick something "easy" -- the
last thing I'd want to do is start with something like Tessa's death --
but I'm not sure how he's taking this.}
Things had begun comfortably enough, with Joe quietly explaining that
he'd record Richie's reactions on one tape recorder while playing tapes
on another. At the start of the project, Methos had wanted to make
videorecordings but Joe had vetoed that idea. It was hard enough to
ignore the presence of a tape recorder; shoving a camera in someone's
face would torpedo any chance of getting relaxed, spontaneous
conversation. "It's not supposed to be the damned Inquisition," Joe had
insisted, and Methos had quietly if unhappily relented.
This particular tape had begun with some banter between Duncan and
Methos on Immortality, and Richie had grinned widely while listening to
Methos recount one of his "funerals" he'd attended in disguise. That
discussion had segued into a debate on how much Immortals should
associate with pre-Immortals. Although the voices on the tape sounded
good-natured while they rehashed a familiar argument, Richie had tensed
slightly as he realized where the conversation was heading.
Joe looked over at Methos, who nodded minutely as if thinking, {Yes, I
saw. He's on edge.} Richie shifted uneasily on the couch and wondered
how soon he could leave Joe's office without getting teased about it
later.
On the tape, Methos's voice was saying, "Being acquainted with pre-
Immortals is one thing, MacLeod. What you did goes far beyond that.
Yes, the transition to Immortality is easier if someone they've known
from before can explain things. But you weren't just an acquaintance.
You gave the boy a home. You got attached. That isn't practical."
"Actually, it was very practical." Richie could hear a hint of anger in
Duncan's voice. "Richie was nearly eighteen when we took him in. Tessa
and I could have done nothing, walked away, forgotten all about Richie.
And within weeks, he would have been arrested again, but this time as an
adult, and he would have gone to prison. Not a juvenile detention
center; prison. I think you've lived long enough to guess what would
have happened there. Richie was damaged enough when we took him in; if
he'd gone to prison, I don't think there would have been anything left
of him. He would have become a monster, and the last thing any of us
needs is an Immortal monster."
"Mac's right," Joe's voice chimed in. "I've seen all the old paperwork
on Richie -- police, social workers, school files, hospital records --
and he was about half a step ahead of disaster."
Richie sat there motionless, silently rigid with tension, while his
brain absorbed the fizzing shock of realizing Joe knew as much about his
childhood as he did. {More, maybe; I don't remember some of the foster
homes too clearly. How much has he told Mac? Stop this...}
The tape ground on remorselessly. Methos was saying with amusement,
"Sounds like he hasn't changed much."
Everyone laughed, then Duncan said, "Oh, he's changed incredibly. I
don't think he trusted anyone when I first met him. He had quite a
smart mouth on him, Mister Tough Guy, but underneath was a good kid
who'd been hurt too often.
"We had to be so careful in the beginning, not to hurt his pride, not to
push too much, not to show too much affection. He'd shy away if you
paid him a compliment or reached out to pat him on the shoulder. He
simply didn't know how to handle it.
"Then all of a sudden he changed. He'd been making progress for some
time, become more sure of himself, but one day he just... blossomed. He
smiled more easily; he wasn't so wary of physical contact; he actually
started touching me, kissing Tessa. The funny thing is, it happened not
too long after a conversation where I'd come down on him pretty hard for
taking a foolish risk. I'd gone too far and really scared him; I
remember him standing there wide-eyed, like a frightened animal, afraid
to move. I tried to smooth things over as soon as I realized what I'd
done, but inside I was cursing myself for losing my temper and undoing
all the progress we'd made. I expected him to regress after that, but
he didn't. Maybe once he'd seen my anger and realized he could survive
it, he relaxed.
"Richie's changed so much, overcome so much. Sometimes I think, if I
had known... if I'd known about Richie, and that Tessa and I would have
so many years away from the Game... I could have given Tessa the child
she wanted; we could have taken Richie in not long after Emily Ryan's
death. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have gotten
him before other people hurt him, when he was still small enough to
cuddle in our laps."
Richie felt the heat rising in his face, and fought a pricking sensation
in his eyes. {Oh, Mac, I didn't know,} Richie thought, as he struggled
to maintain his composure. {How can you talk about this stuff so
calmly, so easily, like you're not ripping open your soul? Like it
doesn't matter if the whole world knows your feelings? How am I
supposed to do that?}
With effort, he refocused his attention on the tape, just in time to
hear Methos saying, "... deluding yourself into thinking he would have
been your little angel."
Both Joe and Duncan chuckled, then Duncan said, "I know better than
that."
Methos's voice persisted, "I just can't imagine you raising a small
child, Duncan. It can be quite a lot of trouble, you know."
Duncan said, "I would have taken him in diapers," with an affectionate
simplicity that left Richie breathless.
{I've got to get out of here before I lose it,} Richie thought. On the
tape, Joe was saying something and Duncan was replying but Richie didn't
listen, couldn't listen. {Why can you tell them things you can't tell
me?}
Joe pressed a button and Duncan's voice fell silent. "Richie? Are you
all right?" Methos asked.
{No. I'm not all right. I think I'm going to throw up. Shoot me
again, Joe; give me some excuse to be anywhere but in this room. Methos
warned me, but I thought he was just trying to scare me off.} Richie
glanced at Methos, expecting him to be annoyed by his weakness or smug
about being proved right, but his face held nothing but patient
understanding. {He's done this. He knows how hard it is. What has Joe
asked him?}
"I'm okay," Richie lied. "It's just... a little more personal than I
was expecting."
{Okay, so now's not a good time to discuss what sort of childhood you
might have had with Mac and Tessa,} Joe thought. {Let's go back to
something that's simply a matter of factual recall.} "Do you remember
the conversation Mac was talking about?" he asked.
If anything, Richie became even more uncomfortable. {What have I done?}
Joe wondered. {I thought you'd be a little embarrassed, but I wasn't
expecting this. I was watching you two that day in the alley and I've
always wondered what happened after he took you inside, but it can't
have been that bad; Mac would have told me. Wouldn't he have?}
Richie could feel Joe watching him closely, trying to decide if he was
pushing too hard, too soon. {Oh, yes, I remember that day. Vividly.}
He took a slow, careful breath, then another. {Okay, Joe, we made a
deal. This much, at least, I'll give you.}
"I remember," Richie said, "although I wouldn't call it a conversation.
He yelled at me." He paused, gathering the courage to say more.
"He scared you?" Methos prodded gently.
"Yeah. He scared me. I'd never seen him that mad before. I...
usually, when somebody yelled at me like that, I'd wind up at Social
Services or maybe the Emergency Room. But he didn't hit me, and he
didn't kick me out. He calmed down and sort of apologized and I got the
impression he'd been mad because he was worried about me. I was kind of
confused by it all. I mean, let's face it; I wasn't the sort of kid
people worried about."
"And that's when things changed between you?" Joe asked.
Richie Ryan, teenage thief, would have lied to him, but this Richie
couldn't. "No. That was when, more or less, but not why. Later on,
Mac set up a trap for this psycho guy, with Tessa as the bait. It
didn't come off the way he'd planned, and he told me to take Tessa and
get out of there. Only I didn't leave right away, like I was supposed
to. I stopped to disable this guy's bike and he came after me."
Richie's mouth had suddenly turned dry, now that he was coming to the
hard part.
"Tessa ran him down to save you," Joe said. "I remember the Watcher's
report."
"She saved me," he agreed. "She hit the guy and was pretty upset by the
whole thing. We went back to the store and Mac was talking to her about
it, trying to make her feel better, when he found out the whole thing
had happened because I hadn't left when he told me to. He didn't say
anything at the time, but he gave me this look... I knew I'd blown it,
big time. That I'd been wrong about him being worried about me.
"I'd seen his type before. They yell at you, maybe beat you, and then
act like they're sorry, 'cause they want to think of themselves as good
guys. Then they're all smiles, only the next thing you know, they've
found some very logical reason why you just aren't fitting in. Time to
hit the road, kid." {God, I sound so bitter, so pathetic. Is my self-
pity as obvious to them as it is to me?}
"So what happened next?" Methos asked.
Richie sighed. "I went to my room; slipped away when they weren't
paying attention. I knew the big farewell speech was coming, but I was
tired and my leg hurt and I just couldn't face it right then. I went to
bed but I didn't sleep. I guess I was too busy calling myself an idiot
for thinking Mac and Tessa might have been different.
"It got late. I heard them switch off the TV after the news. Tessa was
saying something about me, but the only part I caught was my name. Then
someone tapped on my door. I didn't want to talk to them, so I didn't
do anything. I was hoping they'd think I was asleep and leave me alone.
The door opened, and Mac called my name softly. I didn't answer him; I
just lay there thinking, `Go away'.
"But he didn't leave. I heard him come over to the bed, and then there
was nothing for a minute. I could feel him looking down at me, and I
fought to keep my breathing slow and steady even thought my heart was
pounding." Richie hesitated, caught up once again in the panic of that
moment.
"You were afraid," Methos said. "You thought he was going to beat you?"
"Not that he would beat me," Richie answered slowly. "I could have
taken that."
"That he'd reject you," Joe suggested.
Richie nodded, because he didn't trust his voice anymore. {Just a bit
further,} he thought, while looking at the floor, his hands, anything
but their faces. {These guys are your friends. They won't make fun of
you.}
"So what actually happened? Anything?" Methos asked.
{They're your friends.} "He bent down and kissed me on the forehead.
For a second, I thought maybe I'd gotten it wrong, that it was Tessa
kissing me goodnight -- she'd kissed me on the cheek a couple of times -
- but then I caught the smell of Mac's aftershave."
Richie glanced up, half-expecting them to laugh, knowing they sometimes
still thought of him as a kid. Joe had a faraway look in his eye, as if
remembering a sentimental moment from his own past. Methos's smile had
a dangerous quirk to it, and Richie hoped he wouldn't tease Mac about
what he'd said. {Maybe I should stop here? I've given them excuse
enough. No; I promised them I'd tell it all.}
"After he kissed me, I heard Tessa chuckle, but she sounded further
away, as if she'd come to the doorway and seen the whole thing only by
chance.
"Mac whispered, `Don't tease me. He nearly got himself killed today.'
"Tessa said, `I know.' I could hear Mac walking away from me when she
said, `When did it happen, Duncan? When did he become `our' Richie?'
"Mac said `I'm not sure. All I know is that I couldn't bear to lose
him.' Then his voice got less serious and he said, `And how do you like
having a little boy, Miss Noel?'
"She chuckled again, but her voice was muffled, like maybe Mac was
holding her and nuzzling her neck. She said, `He's a big boy, and I
love it,' then they left my room and shut the door."
"And you wept," Joe said. It was a statement, not a question.
{Damn you. For a nice guy, you can be a real bastard.} "Yes," Richie
admitted.
"Why?" Methos asked. Richie wondered where he'd acquired a talent for
making the most innocent-sounding words seem deadly.
"I don't know," Richie forced out. "I was all mixed up; it was just too
much. I felt so dumb... I should have seen it coming..."
"Oh, you saw it, all right," Joe countered. "You just didn't believe
it. You wouldn't let yourself believe it, because of the way you'd been
treated in the past."
Richie nodded stiffly. "Other places I'd been, sometimes, the people
acted nice but it was only on the surface. I thought maybe Mac and
Tessa weren't like that, but I wasn't really sure, and then I screwed up
and I thought it was over, but then..." He struggled for control as the
tears he'd been fighting spilled over. He swallowed convulsively and
went on. "The things they said when they thought I was asleep, when
there wasn't any reason to act nice... I was so ashamed of myself for
not trusting them... and I was so happy... I fell asleep thinking,
`Somebody wants me.' "
Richie looked up and saw Joe regarding him with compassion, with the
sort of all-embracing acceptance that demands confidences. Sometimes
Joe seemed older than any of them, even Methos. And Methos -- this time
he wasn't wearing his I'm-planning-something-and-you-aren't-going-to-
like-it grin. His face was impassive, carefully controlled, but his
eyes hinted at some inner pain. Perhaps he knew what it was like to be
nothing, to feel alone and unwanted, then suddenly find yourself loved?
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