The usual disclaimers hold. I don't own any of the characters from Highlander that appear in this story. The concept, premise, names, etc... all belong to Gaumont, Panzer/Davis, and Rysher and whoever else works with the show. I was just having a little fun with the guys!

This story first appeared in Stroke of the Sword 2

Destination: Unknown

Were the streets really as dark and empty as they felt or was that a trick of his mood?

The motorcycle's roar drowned out any other sounds that might have reached the rider's ears and distracted him from why he was riding so aimlessly. He wasn't really sure where he was going.

"You have to leave. n

"It's that time?"

Sure they'd talked about it, butÑleave for where? Destination had never been a part of the conversations. And thinking about the future wasn't a part of his natural makeup.

Without meaning to, he found he had steered himself towards old haunts. Places he hadn't visited, hadn't even thought of in months, lined the streets like ancient memories. He felt distanced from them all -- people he'd known nearly all his life, his old hangouts, his friends ...

His eyes caught hold of a small hope. The lights in Angie's apartment were still on. Maybe ...

They'd always told each other everything. His best friend since childhood and he hadn't seen her since before Mac had shipped him and Tessa off to Paris, hadn't even called her when they got back. So much had changed. Could he tell her this?

Too much had changed. He roared past her building sure he saw she curtain move aside as he did.

The bike hit a small bump and the neglected helmet bounced against his backside. Tessa probably would have given him a perturbed look and a warning about how dangerous motorcycles could be even with a helmet. He blinked furiously as the unbidden memory filled his eyes with tears. If he had known, he would have grabbed the gun from the son-of-a-bitch. If he had known he couldn't die, he might have saved Tess --

The tears were suddenly coming too hard for him to see. He pulled over before he accidentally hit someone who could die.

He clenched his eyes tightly shut and forced the self-damning thoughts away. A deep breath, a hand swiping at leftover tears, and he had control again.

Where was he? The familiarity of the area was no surprise. The whole city was familiar. But something about his current location struck a nose ...

Across the street he saw it -- the candy store. Formerly Mr. Stubbs' candy store. The old guy had finally cashed it in a few months ago. He'd found out almost by accident -- passing by the daily checkers game on foot soon after returning from Paris and asking where Mr. Stubbs was. Knowing the last real connection with his childhood was gone made him feel impossibly old.

He wondered if this feeling touched Mac's sense of loss through the years. And he wondered again if he would ever get used to it.

Once more he hit the throttle as another piece of his former life was left behind.

His mind blanked purposely as the blocks sped by. He turned corners without thinking, letting his body react to red lights, people on foot, anything in his path. Instinct moved him from street to street. The quiet in his brain made the emptiness in his heart easier.

Recognition jolted him into sudden awareness. The antique store was on the next block. He squealed to a halt, turning the bike to keep from dumping it, and stalled in the process.

Time stopped as he stared down the alley. He hadn't been back since the place had been sold. There'd been no reason to. If the new owner had made changes, he didn't want to see them -- not even the name on the window. He had carefully avoided ever finding out the name of the buyer. The shop remained forever in his mind "MacLeod and Noel Antiques." Nothing would change that.

This place had been a crossroads of a kind for him -- his future had been irrevocably changed the day he first walked past it. If he had chosen another store ... or would he inevitably have been drawn here sooner or later?

Before him a figure in silhouette skulked from out of nowhere towards the shop. The scene was mesmerizing and a haunted sense of deja vu washed through him.

The boy glanced furtively around, obviously not seeing the statue straddling the motorcycle less than fifty feet away. Richie let out a breath from his burning lungs, started the engine and sped away, afraid to watch anymore. Had it been imagination, reliving that moment, or a bizarre coincidence of timing?

Either way he'd seen enough. That part of his lifewas over too.

He let the streets guide him, not really wanting to think about - destination. Maybe there wasn't one ... only the journey on the way to his fate -- whatever that might be.

His thoughts jumped to the fortuneteller who'd warned Tessa about her fate He'd overheard her astonished question to Mac after seeing his lifeline and wondered if his own palm had changed after he'd died.

For the first time since leaving the dojo, he made a conscious decision about direction. He turned towards the bar where Greta worked. But immediately he questioned the wisdom of that decision. Would she be able to read him? Was her psychic experience just a fluke? And did he really want to know what she might see in his future?

He opened the throttle and roared on.

Knowing hadn't changed anything for Tessa, but no one had believed Greta then. Maybe that knowledge could make a difference.

He pulled up to the curb outside the bar and cut the engine. The keys nearly fell out of his slick hand as he pocketed them. He wiped sweaty palms on his jeans then turned them over to examine the lines. His gaze trailed down to the scar on his left forearm. He remembered he'd been surprised that the remnants of the gash hadn't vanished until Mac explained it to him.

His throat tightened as the full meaning of his banishment hit home. No more explanations, saving questions until the next lesson. No one to call on for help when he needed it or to give help to in return. Had it all ended because of the stroke of a sword? He swallowed the lump and the thoughts, distracting himself by tracing the line on his forearm down to the wrist. He noted, almost absently at first and then with growing interest, that the scar seemed to lead directly to the life line on his palm.

Had Greta noticed that before? Had the two lines only joined since he'd died?

He stopped hesitating and then went inside only to return less than two minutes later. He should have known, the way everything was going lately. Greta was gone. She must have freaked when she heard about Tessa.

The owner didn't know where she was, only that she'd gone back east to visit a relative. Her mother maybe? Richie mused, remembering Greta's insistence that only her mother had the g~ft

Richie straddled the bike again and stared down the dark street in front of him. Not a mile away was an interstate. In his wallet was a little more than five hundred dollars. His disassociation with whoever he had been was complete. No more reasons to hang around.

"You have to leave."

He had to leave.

A stray thought of Tessa prompted him to reach for the helmet and strap it on. *There s more than one way,* he thought sardonically, *to lose your head.*

He rose away from the bar keeping an arrow's course towards the highway. He passed the cross street that led to DeSalvo's Martial Arts and, eyes resolutely forward, kept moving.

The city was barely behind him when he realized with a start what was dead ahead - the bridge. The bridge where MacLeod had received his first Quickening in a hundred years, where a street punk had witnessed three of the soldiers in a thousands-year-old battle.

The former street punk slowed, then stopped at the edge of the bridge. He took off the helmet and took in the scene. The moment was imprinted indelibly in his mind his first and only sight of MacLeod taking another's head.

And suddenly the picture before him changed. Slan Quince was gone - in his place a boy with curly blond hair was fighting the Highlander on the bridge. He watched, transfixed, as the Don Quixote rapier clashed and sparked against the Dragon's Head katana again and again, then finally sailed through the air ownerless, over the guard rail to splash forlornly into the water below.

The familiar voice echoed around him: "There can be only one!" The katana sliced cleanly through the air.

Richie turned his head and clenched his eyes tightly shut.

When he looked again, the vision was gone. The bridge was dark and empty.

He fought the urge to look down, around ... or back.

A soft breeze gently touched his face and rufffled through his hair. The hour and the quiet enhanced his active imagination until he almost found some comfort in the soft caress. He thought again of Tessa and briefly of Laura -- the movement in his hair taking on a ghostly sensation of small fingers playing in the curls.

He shook the feeling off, donned his helmet again, and rode.

The interstate seemed as good a place to find a destination as any.

The End
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