Archive of Our Own

Summer 2009

Gregor pulled his motorcycle helmet and gloves out of the top-box on the back of his bike and replaced them with his groceries, expertly Tetrising everything into the space. He locked the box, lifted his helmet to put it on, and found himself instead tipping back his chin to look up and up into the unbelievably blue California sky, the kind of wild blue yonder that looked like movies and TV to him these days, probably because so much got filmed in the state. But this — this was real. He took off his sunglasses to appreciate it better. Man, he would never get used to that sight!

Never? Yeah, well, not in the six months of the acute-care nursing program he was attending at Stanford Medical, anyway. Maybe Alec had gotten used to that soaring blue in the century and change he’d hung around here. A grin twitched up Gregor’s lips at the thought of his old friend and student, whom he hadn’t seen since, heck, when had Alec married, what was her name, Jennifer? Good thing Alec hadn’t asked him to photograph the wedding. Gregor had been functional enough to attend the festivities without pouring passive-aggressive poison into the ears of the happy couple or any — well, most — of the other guests, but he’d already been plummeting toward the nihilistic rock bottom of his suicide-by-MacLeod attempt not long after. Gregor shook his head at the memory and put on his helmet. He should drop by Alec’s place while he was here. Reconnect. Make amends for fading off the face of the planet, first when he’d choked his feelings into a coma, and then again while he’d slowly sutured his head and heart back together. Alec would understand.

And if he didn’t, he would accept. That mattered even more. Gregor had never understood Alec’s thing about his previous wife’s reincarnation, but he’d accepted it. Now Gregor understood why acceptance had been all Alec had asked.

Gregor swung his leg over his bike, reached for his keys in the pocket of his navy leather racer jacket, and suddenly remembered that he’d left his cashback twenty bucks hanging from the slot at the self-checkout. His grin vanished. He’d been distracted by spotting mold on his berries and asking to swap them after paying… it didn’t matter. There was no way the bill was still there. Only a fool would imagine otherwise. Like only a fool would have forgotten his twenty bucks. Gregor’s gut twisted as he inserted the ignition key.

Twenty bucks was just dinner out, not rent or tuition, he reminded himself. This wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t any deal at all. The person who took it probably needed it way more than he did. Sometimes people sucked; sometimes they didn’t. Let it go.

He didn’t turn the key. Would it be worse to know, or to not know?

Gregor rolled his eyes at himself. He got off his bike, tucked his helmet under one arm, and returned to the grocery store’s self-checkout area. To the cashier watching over those lines, he held up his receipt and asked, “Hey, uh, I’m just curious—”

The young lady beamed. From the ledge above her till, she handed him a folded twenty-dollar bill wrapped in receipt tape. “The couple after you brought it right over.”

“Oh! Wow.” Gregor stared at the paper in his hand and then at the smiling cashier. “Score one for people, you know? Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!”

Gregor stepped out of the way of the other shoppers and put the bill into his wallet. Returning to his bike, he felt a bit like he’d just done a handstand, as if his blood had rushed to his head with gravity suddenly out of its way.

Back at the studio apartment he rented, after he put away his groceries and before he hit the books for class, Gregor stared at himself in the mirror. Straight black hair, recently cut. Bushy eyebrows. Square chin that could use a shave. The face never changed.

Somehow, though, the eyes did.

Sunday morning, Gregor rode his bike up the peninsula and on through San Francisco. The City, locals still called it, as if more than a dozen other cities worth the name hadn’t sprouted around the Bay since Alec first built his house in the hills north of the Golden Gate. Traffic was as good as it got these days, which was never all that good. Gregor didn’t mind. The road was his place to mull stuff over. And he had stuff to mull.

Gregor felt like he was mastering the information and techniques in the nursing program. His instructors seemed to agree. And he mostly got along with his classmates, coworkers, and patients. Passing as an older millennial now, he played MMOs with a regular crew, chatted on Reddit, and had gone digital with photos and music. He’d been flirting with a certain grad student he’d met at the university’s Arts Center. He’d even joined a HEMA club, which helped explain his sword when needed. It was all coming together.

Or was it? He’d been a good nurse these past few years at Seacouver General; that’s how he’d gotten here. And nursing gave him a lower profile and more flexibility than doctoring, which mattered for those like him in this information age. But was acute care a step too far, too soon? If twenty bucks returned was a rush, how could he be ready to specialize in severe illness and injury? High highs came with low lows. No one could save everyone. And it would hurt, again, every time he didn’t.

When he finally pulled off the freeway in Tiburon, Gregor headed straight up toward the cliffs. Bigger, newer, stupid-rich houses lined the road to Alec’s home all the way up the hill, but Alec’s still held the height and the view that went with it. After he parked, Gregor took a second to see as far as he could, across all the land’s rioting colors, to the horizon’s serene meeting of sea and sky.

“Hello?” A tall, middle-aged, Asian man in jeans and an Iron Man t-shirt answered Gregor’s ring. The man quickly stooped to pick up a gray cat that tried to dart out the open door. “Can I help you?”

“Is Alec home?” Gregor asked. This could be Alec’s housesitter, tenant, roommate, guest, music student, housekeeper, guru, tax advisor, pet whisperer... He wasn’t immortal, so cross that off the list, at least. Gregor hoped Alec’s new wife hadn’t died already; Alec deserved more happiness than that. “Alec Hill. I’m an old friend of his.”

“Ah.” The man bit his lip. His eyes flickered down and up Gregor, then over to the bike in the driveway. He opened the door wider, revealing Alec’s vintage grand piano sharing space with on-trend contemporary living-room furniture. “I think you’d better speak with my wife. Would you like to come in? She’s out back; I’ll let her know you’re here, mister…?”

“Call me Greg,” Gregor made his usual hedge. Greg Powers had been a noted raw-realist photographer who had disappeared into drug rehab. Gregory Knowles was a promising nurse with hopes for his future. Gregor… was himself again, on the inside, and he was grateful. Mostly. Nobody like MacLeod for reminders that cut both ways.

“I’m Jason.” The man closed the door behind Gregor and set down the cat. “This is Noodle. Make yourself at home.”

Gregor trailed his hand along the familiar piano and took in the creamy, white, low-profile sofa and chairs. No TV, huh? The framed artworks on the walls were all botanicals; no people, no stories, no memories. The cat hopped up on an ottoman and watched him.

A woman entered the front room. Brown hair to her earlobes. Tan cardigan and black yoga pants. Late thirties, early forties, maybe. He couldn’t place her, but…

“Gregor?” she asked. “I’m Jennifer. We met only that once, at Alec’s and my wedding, but he spoke of you often. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

Gregor’s hands clenched. The back of his brain screamed into the silence of the immortal presence that was not there. No! No. No… He made himself ask, “Divorced?”

Her gaze dropped and her lips pressed together. Barely, she shook her head.

Gregor blinked and blinked again. He licked his lips and found them as dry as sun-bleached bone. His ears rang with the stillness.

“Do you mind?” He gestured at the chair nearest him.

“No, of course not.” Jennifer uncrossed her arms and took the chair nearest her. “Please.”

He sat. He took a breath and blew it out. Jennifer knew it all, of course. Alec had had to tell her about immortality in order to share his belief that she was his beloved, murdered Genevive reincarnated and returned to him at last. Alec’s determination to avenge his long-lost Genevive against her killer, Kragen, was as much a part of Alec as his steadfast waiting.

Had been a part of Alec.

Immortals die. Like everyone else. Thank you, no thank you, MacLeod.

“Kragen?” Gregor asked.

Again, Jennifer barely shook her head. The negative was clear, but it was tight and small. Leashed, Gregor, thought. She’d obviously had time to get used to Alec’s death. Learn how to cope. Move on. Remarry. Still, there was something… She said, “They’re both gone. I’m here. All that is over.”

How long had it been? Gregor wondered. But that wasn’t the question that rose to his lips. “Who, then?”

“I used to think that mattered.” Jennifer clasped her hands together. “I don’t anymore. Alec died by the rules of your terrible Game. No ambush. No accomplices. No tricks. Whatever part of his soul is bound to his killer’s, that’s natural to your people, isn’t it? It’s what you get until the end of this world, while the rest of us cycle through reincarnations. If it’s a kind of purgatory for them both, well—” She trailed off. “Alec had no reservations about running off to kill Kragen for me. For Genevive. Eye for an eye. At first, I thought Alec wanted his soul freed from his killer’s. Then I realized that he just wanted me to want vengeance the way that he had. You asked whether we’d gotten divorced. No, but I did leave him after he died.”

Gregor let her echoes of Alec’s beliefs wash past him unchallenged. He honed in on the one thing that made sense to him. “You know who did it.”

“Revenge won’t bring Alec back. It won’t even liberate his soul to try again. It will just pile more weight on yours.”

“Cut and dried, huh?” Gregor felt a dull ache spreading around the hole her news had punched in his world. Stupid quickening energy, healing only bodies, not minds or hearts. He met and held Jennifer’s gaze. “Come on, tell me.”

“I’d rather take you down to visit the old graveyard where Alec’s and Genevive’s bodies rest.” When he didn’t drop his eyes, Jennifer dropped hers. She crossed her arms. “His name is Richie Ryan.”

Gregor grabbed a late lunch at a touristy waterfront cafe and filled his bike’s fuel tank outside a convenience store. Then he got on the freeway and headed south. Life went on. Until it didn’t.

Damn, Richie! MacLeod’s shadow had evidently come into his immortality sooner than MacLeod would have wanted for him. Gregor would bet that that had been hard on Tessa. The boy had been, what, eighteen, nineteen, when Gregor had last seen him? Hardly thirty-five now, then. Gregor couldn’t picture MacLeod’s best buddy as a hunter, but, despite what Jennifer had said, you just never knew. While she wasn’t wrong about vengeance, she didn’t carry a sword.

It had never occurred to Gregor that Alec could have lost his head. Maybe it was the way Alec had stayed in one place, loving one woman, hating one man, for over a hundred years. It had cast an illusion of standing outside time, even outside the Game. Gregor remembered first meeting Alec, confused and haunted, in the aftermath of the bloody Battle of Carillon — well, Ticonderoga, now. Gregor had carefully broken the news to the newly immortal Black Watch soldier, of why he was still alive while so many of his fellows weren’t. French histories claimed that they had recovered some eight-hundred British bodies from the field; as a medic following that debacle, Gregor didn’t doubt it at all. And Alec’s regiment had taken the brunt.

Alec’s search for a spiritual handle on their immortality had started then and there, even before Gregor had found him. Gregor’s own medically-inclined approach hadn’t had answers for the kinds of questions Alec had asked. And, long after, when MacLeod had introduced Alec to that immortal priest MacLeod set such great store by, the priest’s answers hadn’t been ones Alec had wanted.

As the miles slipped by under his bike’s wheels, Gregor’s reminiscences of Alec brightened. Music — always music! Music for dancing. Laughing. Celebrating. Songs, strings, and winds. Solos, bands, and orchestras. When Gregor had been the shy and earnest teacher, Alec had been the rowdy student who spilled over with joy in life. He’d dragged Gregor along whenever he could. Their friendship had been good for them both.

Until Kragen had murdered Genevive. That’s when things had begun to slide. Maybe if Gregor had visited more often, written more thoughtfully, listened more deeply… maybe if Gregor had demanded Alec’s help when Gregor was drowning in his own feelings, not only offered help when Alec was adrift on his…

Maybe then it wouldn’t have been too late now.

A loud bang broke Gregor’s train of thought. His motorcycle wobbled and shuddered. He gripped the handlebars more firmly and tried to slow down without locking the wheels or triggering a traffic pile-up. A tire blow-out, in this day and age? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had that happen (though he sure remembered the first time; he’d rarely ridden without a helmet after). He took a deep breath and tried to avoid overcorrecting. Modern tires shouldn’t deflate all at once. This should leak slowly enough to let him limp off the freeway and into a gas station, if not an actual repair shop. Should. Come on!

He made it only as far as the freeway shoulder. With cars and trucks whizzing past, Gregor dismounted and glared at the remains of a catastrophic structural failure in the front tire’s wall. This had better not make him late for his acute-care program work in the morning. He felt almost angry that the tow-truck driver and mechanic would probably presume that, for this to have happened, he didn’t know how to take care of his bike.

Why was he so irritated by something that hadn’t even happened yet, and might not happen at all? Didn’t he have enough real stuff on his mind? Feelings, man!

With a sigh, Gregor pulled his phone from an inside pocket of his jacket.

The tow-truck driver had been nothing but sympathetic about the tire defect. By the time he dropped Gregor and his motorcycle at a repair shop in East Palo Alto, he’d rattled off half a dozen subreddits devoted to tire recalls and class actions, and enthusiastically encouraged Gregor to fight the good fight.

Gregor had a small smile on his face as he walked up to the shop’s office door and checked the posted hours. He needed just a tire swap, but it was getting toward evening, and an early Sunday closing time could be a pain. Happily for him, they’d be open for a bit yet. He felt lucky.

Stepping inside, he felt a wave of immortal presence. So much for luck. The good kind, anyway. His eyes skipped past the six beige chairs, two magazine-strewn tables, and one rickety but well-stocked coffee-and-tea station for folks waiting for their rides. His gaze rose directly to the employee behind the counter, and then on past her to a man further back, sitting at a computer, probably a supervisor, judging from his polo shirt compared to her shop-logo t-shirt. The man made one last mouse-click — save, Gregor presumed — before he rose and turned around.

“Greg!” Richie exclaimed.

The relief on his face was as obvious as the hole in Gregor’s tire. And that face hardly differed from the last time Gregor had seen it, years ago, when Richie had still been as young as he looked. Reddish-blond hair. Wide blue eyes. A nose made for poking into other people’s business. Seemingly earnest, open, and everything else Gregor himself had once been and was trying so hard to learn anew.

Well, looks could be deceiving.

Richie came up to the front. “Hey, Lisa, I’ll take this one. Do you want to make another pass through the warranties?” He extended an open hand across the counter. “How are you, man? It’s been… you know.”

“I… do know.” Gregor said. He knew, if not everything, more than he had this morning. Bumping into Alec’s killer like this: did the universe have a sick sense of humor or a swift bend toward justice? Rhetorical question. Gregor put his hands in his pockets. Vaguely wanting an excuse, he tilted his head toward Lisa. “Look, it’s been a really tough day—”

“I get it! ‘Nuff said.” Richie raised his hands and moved to the computer on the counter. “What can we do for you?”

“Towed in. Blown-out tire, if you can believe it. Front wheel. Suzuki SV650.”

Richie whistled sympathetically and tapped across the keyboard. “Gladius?”

“Are you kidding me?” Gregor rolled his eyes. “Just a used ‘04 standard. I’m not made of money.”

“Well, I dunno. You might have come into an inheritance or something.” Richie flashed a winning grin and then clicked, scrolled, and typed through more menus and screens. Lightly, he hummed along with the classic rock radio station coming over the office’s speakers.

Gregor grasped that Richie didn’t know. That is, not just that Alec’s wife’s news had gouged a crater into Gregor’s own world today, which obviously wasn’t an all-points bulletin, but even that Richie had anything to be ashamed of or apologize for, much less to him, Gregor, particularly. Jennifer had said Richie didn’t. But Jennifer had left Alec after his death, whatever that meant. Gregor had neglected his friend during his life. Gregor felt something sharp and bitter simmer along his nerves.

“You’re in luck!” Richie sang out. “We have two sets of those tires on hand. I’ll take a look first, for sure, but I’ll likely recommend you replace both, in case the rear has the same flaw. And since you’re not rolling in dough, my guess is you want the Continental and not the Michelin. Unless you’ve got insurance on these puppies?”

Gregor pulled out his wallet and poked around for the right pieces of paper and plastic. “So, hey, uh, what brought you to this region?”

“Well, I visited a bit back, and then I guess I just couldn’t get it out of my head. It felt like… home?” Richie shrugged while he filled out a form. “The Bay Area is a lot like western Washington, when you think about it.”

“Give or take some weather!” Lisa called from the back.

“And earthquakes!” Richie countered. “Anyway, let me get this printed out for you, Greg, and then we’ll take a look and get you on your way. It’s good to see you, man! We should get together sometime.”

“Should we?” Gregor asked. His nerves suddenly had too many endings in too many places. “Does the name Alec Hill mean anything to you?”

Richie’s face fell. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Gregor could see that they weren’t quite the same as they’d been back in the day, after all. Richie swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, actually. It means a lot.”

With his bike up on a hydraulic lift between two cluttered workstations, Gregor slouched against a tall rack of loose parts. He watched Richie turn up the volume on the service bay’s sound system and switch from classic rock to big band. Who knew Silicon Valley had a big-band radio station? Richie, evidently. While most of the shop staff had gone home, one was still finishing some repairs on the far side of the service bay, while another swept up outside. Richie pulled on work gloves.

“You think doing this yourself counts for something?” Gregor crossed his arms.

“I think doing this myself means we can talk, if we keep our voices down.” Richie picked up an impact wrench and started loosening lug nuts. “You wanna challenge me, that’s your right. That’s the Game. I’ll fight for my life if you don’t give me another choice. But, Greg, I told you, I regret everything that happened with Alec and Jennifer. If I could go back in time and change one thing I’ve done or failed to do in my whole life, Alec’s death is my second choice. And, trust me, my list is long and getting longer.”

“Second?”

Richie carefully set down the wrench and nuts before answering. “First is saving Tess from the gunman who killed us both.”

“Tessa’s dead?” Gregor remembered the woman who’d so clearly had MacLeod’s heart. And, in a different way, Richie’s. Beautiful. Dignified. Intense. Gregor remembered getting a passing look at an in-progress sculpture in her studio the day he’d said thanks and goodbye to the three of them; she’d been the real thing. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, you had a lot going on at the time.” Richie lifted the wheel free and set it on the flat lift surface in front of him. “So did I, as it happens.”

Gregor grimaced and moved his hands to his pockets. Preoccupied, he watched Richie work. The buzz of Richie’s presence had faded but not disappeared. Gregor tried to find some trace of Alec in it. Or of Richie, for that matter. If anyone could parse that sensation down to a sure identity, it wasn’t Gregor. What would Alec think of being part of Richie’s baggage of souls, if Alec’s beliefs were true? He could do worse. Could he do better? At least the company was less crowded in Richie’s quickening, Gregor supposed. Maybe that meant more of Alec could slip into Richie’s choices. For better and for worse.

Gregor admitted to himself that he wasn’t going to challenge Richie. The Hippocratic Oath was a decent excuse, if he wanted one. Gregor’s relationship with death was complicated. But he didn’t like to kill. And he didn’t want to die. Not today. What he did want was to go home, crawl into bed, and pull a blanket over his face. Tomorrow, maybe, he could raise a beer to Alec’s memory and say his farewells. Tonight, he was done.

When Richie progressed to the bike’s back wheel, Gregor said, “I’ve changed my mind. The front is enough for now.”

“You sure?” Richie’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, just check the pressure and I’ll be on my way.”

“Got it.” Richie nodded solemnly. He let out a deep breath. The tension in the air condensed and started to swirl away. Richie picked up a pressure gauge. “Customer’s always right, etcetera, etcetera. Oh, yeah! The rear is down a bit, isn’t it? Just a sec.” Richie lowered the bike to floor level and wheeled it over to an air compressor at the end of the workstations.

Gregor uncrossed his arms and followed.

After connecting and starting the compressor, Richie stayed kneeling on the floor, squinting at what Gregor guessed must be the drive chain. Gregor stepped closer to see. Richie turned his face toward Gregor and asked, “Have you—”

The back tire exploded.

Too late, Gregor threw up his arms to protect himself from the flying debris. He felt impacts all over his body, against his leather jacket and jeans. Some rubber slices whipped lacerations across his exposed head. His ears rang until he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing. At least he could see.

And what he saw was that Richie couldn’t. The tire’s wreckage had taken out his eyes. Blood coated the kid’s face and spilled down his neck. His arms, unprotected by even his now-shredded polo shirt, weren’t in much better shape. Gregor had seen worse, but, mercifully, not for a while.

“Call 911!” Gregor yelled with every bit of his centuries of medical authority. He couldn’t hear himself, but he presumed the shop’s other employees could hear him. He had to give them things to do besides look too closely at Richie in this state. Anything but noticing Richie. “Get a first-aid kit! Water! Towels! Turn on all the lights! Wait by the street to flag them down!”

“It’s going to be okay.” Gregor took Richie by the shoulders and helped him lie down on the concrete floor. “No, don’t try to talk. I can’t hear right now, anyway. Maybe you can’t either, come to think of it.” Gregor clasped Richie’s nearer hand to reassure him, in case he was both deaf and blind for the moment. Richie clasped back. Quickly assessing Richie’s injuries, Gregor determined that this wouldn’t be fatal. On the one hand, great: no need to convince anyone Richie hadn’t come back from the dead. On the other hand, not great: no escape for Richie from the pain of the injury or the healing. “Hang in there, man. Nothing to worry about.”

Gregor patted Richie’s arm with his free hand while he glanced up and around the repair bay. Good; the others were off doing what he’d told them. He took a second to evaluate his own injuries, which would have seemed a lot worse if he wasn’t presently looking at Richie’s. Gregor could feel the itchy, achy, strain of accelerated healing at this scale alongside the pain of the wounds — he hated this stage of immortal patching-up, the worst of both worlds — and he thought he could almost hear again already. Yeah, that was Richie choking back a moan. Gregor himself might have only scars and bruises under the blood by the time the EMTs arrived. In that case, there would be questions he couldn’t answer unless he reopened a laceration or avulsion. Speaking of things he hated. “It’s going to be okay.”

Richie was going to be harder to explain or to hide. The kid was in for a rough night no matter where he spent it — after the brain, eyes were the slowest rebuild in immortal physiology — but too much hospital scrutiny could easily blow up the life Richie had built here. While Gregor’s mind scrambled for how to hide Richie’s immortality, his gaze flickered over the remains of the rear tire. It had to be the same manufacturing defect as the front. If Gregor hadn’t rattled Richie by raising his regrets over Alec, Jennifer, and Tessa, and forcing him to worry about whether Gregor was about to start a fight to the death, Richie surely would have checked for that. Heck, Gregor should have checked for it, himself; he knew better.

Speaking of his Hippocratic Oath.

“Can you hear me now?” Gregor sounded like a commercial in his own ears.

Richie’s hand squeezed Gregor’s.

“Great. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” Gregor leaned close to Richie’s ear. “I’ll make sure we both have open head wounds when the EMTs get here, and again at the hospital, if needed.” Richie’s hand squeezed again, less enthusiastically. “Sorry, but all this blood had to have come from somewhere. Don’t worry. I’m a nurse; I know what I’m doing.” He licked his lips. “I’ll get you out before there’s too much of a paper trail.” Normally, Gregor would hope that Richie had insurance, because this was going to cost. But the fewer records, the better.

“How long?” Richie croaked.

“To get you back to normal? Probably tomorrow.” Gregor didn’t hear either shop employee approaching yet, but he knew he had to be out of time. His mind raced. He went with his gut. “I’ll stay with you through it all on one condition: You don’t let anyone take your head, ever. You and Alec are stuck with each other until the end of the Game. Got it?”

Richie swallowed. “Got it.”

For the first time in a long time, all Gregor’s feelings gelled together. The oil and water of immortal and mortal. Certainty and mystery. It was a salve. A balm. Mending what quickening energy couldn’t touch.

Gregor heard the ambulance’s siren. Calmly, he repeated, “It’s going to be okay.”