A/N: This story would not exist if not for idelthoughts. She is responsible for everything from drawing out the original concept, to encouraging the first tentative words, to cheerleading every step, to beta-reading the final-and this doesn't begin to accurately reflect the sheer number of hours and conversations she dedicated to it since wipbigbang started. THANK YOU!

All remaining mistakes are entirely my own and were probably added after she signed off on the chapters.

"Something Called Honor" is part of the "Something Called Forever" crossover series. While I don't think it's necessary to read the other stories first to understand this one, the characters and their relationships are evolving far enough from canon at this point that seeing their journey wouldn't hurt.

As always on my stories, questions, comments, squee, speculation, and concrit are all welcome and appreciated.

Something Called Honor

by LadySilver

The hardest lesson to learn was not how to keep one's word, but when it was permissible not to.

Twenty-seven minutes late, Richie and Liam finally burst through the diner doors into the crowd that packed the lobby. Clusters of people who were all doing their best to all occupy the small space without acknowledging each other all stopped their conversations long enough to check out the two arriving men, then promptly turned back to their private conversations. Jo raised her hand to acknowledge them. The buzzer for alerting her to her seat being ready blinked in her hand. She'd found a place to stand on the edge of the seating area, back pressed to the corner of the wall. In jeans and a button-down blue shirt, she was dressed on her off-day much like she'd dress for work, except she'd left her weapon at home. Richie almost felt guilty for not having made a similar concession.

"Sorry, god I'm sorry. I know I promised to be here at 10," Richie huffed, out of breath and flushed from the race from the alley he'd left his bike in, as he pushed close enough for his voice to carry over the hubbub. "I hope we didn't keep you waiting."

Beside him, Liam finger-combed his helmet-flattened hair out of his eyes and offered a wan smile of apology that quickly faded to one of concern. "Where's Henry? He didn't stand you up too, did he?"

"It's no problem," Jo answered, a wave of her fingers dismissing the need for apology. "And, no. He's over there." She pointed toward the register and the spinning glass dessert display that stood next to it. Henry was bent in half, examining the pies on offer as if trying to solve the mystery of how they'd ended up there. He glanced up just then and, on spotting them, began to make his way over. "Seems like everyone in the City wants to eat here this morning. The place was swamped when we got here and hasn't let up since. They said forty minutes…" She glanced at her watch and frowned. "…about an hour ago. So, you haven't missed anything except a lot of standing around." Her eyes narrowed as she got a good look at Richie for the first time and saw the beige hip-length coat he concealed his sword in; knowing it was there made her uncomfortable. She'd never said as much, but Richie hadn't missed how she always looked right at his left side when they met, and then tried very hard not to look at it again.

"Yeah, well I'd rather've been in here than out there," Richie responded. He shifted closer to Jo as a large group near them quit waiting and began to file out. He felt her tense up and was searching for something to say to mollify her when Henry arrived.

"Richie, Liam!" he greeted. He was also dressed like he was going to work, his tailored trousers and a fitted waistcoat appearing especially out of place among the jeans and t-shirts of most of the other customers. Tugging out his pocket watch, he also checked the time and frowned. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it. Traffic?"

In this city, that one word served as everything from a general topic of discussion to an excuse for all manner of ills to a commentary on the state of humanity. In this case, it also happened to be legitimate.

"Power outage," Liam answered. "The traffic lights are out all along the street. Be grateful you arrived before they went down."

Richie shook his head in remembered exasperation. "You'd think no one had ever heard of right of way. The number of times we almost got hit, well it's a good thing we're…" He stopped, raising his eyebrows in invitation for those in the know to fill in the word. Jo pressed her lips together, but gave a short nod to show she understood. They'd get her used to the idea eventually, help her see that she and they weren't so different in the ways that mattered.

"The challenges of safely navigating this perpetual morass is the primary reason I gave up driving," Henry supplied. "All the exhaust and smog, the constant blaring of horns, the road rage. Sometimes it makes me long for the days of horse and carriage. Drivers were so much more attentive and generous toward their fellows on the road."

"Oh ho," Liam chuckled in disagreement. "You've forgotten how it was. The horse manure everywhere, the clomping of hooves and the rattle of wooden or metal wheels on cobblestones—and then there were the horses that keeled over the job. I'll take a stalled car over a dead horse any day, especially on any hot day."

For a long moment, Henry looked shocked that someone had dared contradict his recollection. As often as he and Liam had traded stories about their pasts, they'd never done so in front of Jo.

"This oughta be good," Richie whispered to Jo, shifting to stand as much next to her as the shape of the wall allowed. She didn't even try to get out of the way.

"I assure you, I remember it quite clearly." Tugging at the lapels of his coat, Henry threw his shoulders back like he was getting ready to give a stump speech. "The moderate improvement in sanitation that a switch to the internal combustion engine provided does not offset the greater danger in which cars put both motorists and pedestrians. I would remind you that the traffic signal was invented in recognition of that danger; prior to the prevalence of cars, we had no need for such guides."

"I'll grant you that cars require an external layer of regulation—it's not like a drunk driver can trust his car to get him home the way his horse could have—but I won't concede that they're significantly more dangerous." Liam stopped, his gaze falling to the floor. The wooden floor showed the traces of scuff marks from thousands of shoes, none of which Liam was seeing right now.

The buzzer lit up, making Jo jump. For a few minutes, the conversation was shelved while they traded the disk in for menus and were lead to their seats.

"Not more dangerous?" Henry prompted, after the waitress swung by and took their drink order. "I have performed more autopsies on victims of car accidents in the past two years than I ever did on the victims of carriage accidents."

"How much of that is because there are more people in general?" Liam countered. "Seems to me that the number of people I've buried from each is comparable." With his thumbnail, he scraped at a crusted spot of food that the hasty wipe-down had missed. "I've never been killed in a car accident."

"Okaaaay," Jo responded, "That's a sentence I didn't expect."

Liam gave her a conciliatory smile. "I'm sure you could assemble quite a list, if you wanted to. That's a consequence everyone skips over when they warn you about consorting with immortals."

The topic was on the verge of changing, but Richie wasn't ready for it to. What Liam had already volunteered left Richie with the impression that he had more he wanted to say. And there was more Richie wanted to hear; he knew so little the early years of his friend, aside from what Joe had told him back on the fateful day when Richie had revived from the dead in Henry's morgue. The opportunity to fill in the blanks was too good to pass up. "Hey, man, I don't mean to pry." The corner of his mouth curled up in acknowledgment of his own disingenuity, and then he had to stop and consider his wording; this was a topic that Immortals considered somewhat taboo. Only, Liam was a friend. Henry was a friend. Jo was…hopefully on her way to becoming a friend. Taboos didn't hold as much power in the company of friends, so Richie decided to go for it. "You're saying you have been killed in a carriage accident. It was your first death, wasn't it?"

Liam cut Richie a sideways look that might have made a more casual conversationalist back off. Richie didn't; pulling his curiosity back in once he'd let it out had always been beyond his ability. With a nod, Liam accepted what this question and its answer would mean for their friendship. He already trusted Richie not to turn on him once off Holy Ground. Now he was going to trust him with details of his mortal life. "It was." He licked his lips, his blue eyes flattening as he remembered. "I was on my way to the pub—nothing consequential—and a storm rolled in. Lightning, thunder, rain pounding so hard it could leave bruises. The horses spooked, the cab tipped, and I was thrown out and trampled. I died face down in the muck." Liam rubbed the scar over his right eyebrow, which wouldn't have been from that accident, but had probably become a stand-in for the fatal wound. "There's another sentence for you, lassy," he said, with a nod to Jo that broke the sombre mood of the revelation. Back to Henry, he added, "No, I can safely say that I don't miss horse-based transportation at all."

Ignoring the last part, Henry leaned forward excitedly. "How would you rank trampling as a method of death? If you could compare it against, say—"

"Oh no," Jo interrupted. "We're here to eat. You guys wanna talk about how un-romantic carriage rides were when they were the only way to travel, that's great. That's fine. But I'm putting the kibosh on disease and death as topics. If I want to know about the 1850s cholera epidemic, I'll read a book. When I'm not eating."

"A wise decision," Liam agreed. He'd pressed up against the wall while he was talking. Freed of the need to share any more about his past, he squared his body with the table and drew a long drink of his coffee.

"How did—?" Henry started, a raised eyebrow punctuating his surprise at Jo's knowledge.

"I'm not completely ignorant about history," she responded. As if realizing that she'd spoken too harshly, she gave Henry's shoulder a small bump with hers, then twined his arm and pulled him just enough closer that no one could question that they were sitting together. "Oh, look. The waitress is here."

Realizing that none of them had so much as cracked the menu, the waitress politely tapped her pen on her order book and offered to come back. The restaurant was still thrumming with busy-ness, every table packed, and the waitress had a harried look behind her practiced smile. They quickly decided on their orders, and only after the waitress had left did the awkward silence of a topic that had been stretched too far to hold its shape descend on them.

A long minute passed with each of them looking from one to the other for possible topics.

"So," Richie ventured, clearing his throat. He wrapped his hands around the small glass of water that was sitting in front of his; the wet chill of its condensation mimicked a nervous sweat. What did people usually talk about when they were trying to get to know each other? Richie mentally kicked himself; he used to be good at this. Well, he used to be good at flirting and running his mouth off, neither of which seemed fitting now. Previous meetings had always come with a built in topic, all of which now felt as exhausted as further discussion of old time traffic problems.

"You know, there are a lot of things I don't miss either," Jo stated, saving the day. "When I think about how much things have changed in just my lifetime, the list is mostly additions: iPhones, wi-fi, electric cars—"

Henry made a choked noise and held up a finger like he was going to interrupt her, but Jo rolled her eyes and kept going.

"—DVDs, drones. It's harder to think about the things we don't have anymore, probably because whatever replaced it is better. There's one thing, though: Puddin' Pops. Nasty, messy things that tasted like chalk. Sacrificing the space they took up in the freezer section was worth it for all the Cherry Garcia we got instead."

"Hey, I loved Puddin' Pops," Richie protested. His mouth watered at the memory of the flavored milk, which was a special and rare treat compared to the overpowering fake-fruit of Popsicles, his summer time staple otherwise. Puddin' Pops had been too expensive for most of the families he lived with to keep in stock, which only made him appreciate them more. "A couple of seconds under running water to melt that crust of ice off, and you were set. Are you sure they're not still around?" How had he not noticed that?

"Yeah, they've been gone for…come to think of it, I don't know how long. Shows you how much I don't miss them." Her face scrunched in thought, and Richie noticed Henry's expression soften in happiness at the sight. They were not a couple Richie would have imagined would work together, but what he'd seen seemed to be a good fit. Jo gave Henry a connection to the 21st century that he desperately needed, and Henry kept her from drawing indelible lines between right and wrong. What was more, Henry showed no difficulty with forming a romantic relationship with someone so much younger. Centuries younger. It gave Richie hope for his own new relationship.

And Jo'd asked him a question. Shelving his musings on immortal-mortal relationships, he made himself deal with the current topic—again.

"How do you know about them?" she'd asked. "They were definitely gone before you were old enough to—" Jo cut herself off, bringing a sudden end to the lighter mood she'd handed them. "I keep forgetting."

Richie shrugged a helpless "what can we do?" at her. Some things really were out of his power, such as the ability to look his age. She'd either get used to that too—or she wouldn't. "You and me both," he said.

Jo gave him a steady once-over, as if trying to see past his surface youth to the man inside. "OK," she said at last, her eyes hardening. "But how did you feel about New Coke?"

That was one easy. Richie stuck his finger in his mouth and mock-gagged.

Satisfied, Jo winked. "That was a gimme. Let's see what you've got. Name something you don't miss."

Put on the spot, he couldn't think of anything she hadn't already named. And he really wanted a Puddin' Pop. Were they really not made anymore? Or was it just a regional thing? In his travels, he'd encountered so many foods that he'd've sworn weren't available anymore happily being sold in out-of-the-way markets. Thinking about his travels gave him an idea. "Toll baskets," he said. When everyone looked a question at him, he clarified, "Ya know, those baskets on toll roads where you had to throw your change. I swear those things were designed to spit the coins out. Never mind trying to find the right change." He braced himself for Jo to question how he'd know about those since he'd obviously only had his license for a couple years.

Instead, her lip curled and she gave a small shudder. "That couldn't've been easy on a bike," she said, "especially with as much as you travel." No doubt she was thinking of Richie's sudden disappearance from the city when he ran away from the headhunter.

"Mostly I try to stick to roads that don't make me pay for their use," he said. "The best ones are the long, flat stretches where no one cares how fast you go."

Jo sighed the conflicted sigh of wanting to share in that experience and wanting to warn him that speed limits were laws too. At last she settled on: "Just be careful." Whether for his safety or to not get caught, she didn't elaborate.

Since his safety wasn't really a concern, Richie took her to mean the latter. "Always am," he promised.

The food arrived then. With the smell of maple syrup and fried pork wafting around them, they listened to Henry go on a tirade about the difficulties of candlelight, especially in regards to reading. Getting enough light not to strain the eyes was one problem. But his real issue, apparently, was with the dangers of open flame around paper, especially in confined places where the need for secrecy outweighed the need to have an accessible egress. Richie got the impression that Henry really wanted to tell them about a time when he'd burned to death, but he managed—with obvious effort—to switch to talking about what a wonder gas lighting had been when it was first introduced.

Liam nodded along, his eyes shining in reminiscence, though his mouth stayed too full for any but the most mumbled interjection of agreement. After hearing him get into it with Henry over transport, his easy agreement on the topic of lighting came as a surprise. Over the next few minutes, they learned about Liam's loathing of powdered wigs—which Henry both agreed with and had no deaths to associate with—and Jo's chagrin at the taste of her youthful self who thought that the plastic charm bracelets with the two-inch long charms that snagged on everything were worth collecting bottles from around the neighborhood to recycle for spending money.

And then it was Richie's turn again.

"Let's see," he said. He dragged a strip of bacon through the syrup on his plate while he racked his mind for something else to contribute. With the recent popular surge of interest in vintage items, a lot of what had fallen out of use was being dragged back in. Record players, for instance. He'd seen them for sale at Target, of all places, being packaged and marketed for people who'd never heard of spinning as a music term. And he'd seen records on sale at Barnes & Noble this last holiday season. But, that gave him an idea. "Boom boxes! We had Walkmans, so instead of sticking with portable music, someone got the bright idea to cart the whole stereo around." He mimed holding one of the huge devices on his shoulder, his head bobbing along to the beat of some eardrum destroying song that only he could hear.

He froze as the Presence of another Immortal swept over him.