That personal canon meme
Medie and 23 of you got me into this, but here's all of the personal canon sets.
Blood Ties (TV):
Henry Fitzroy:
1) Not only is he good at bowling -- it was a popular game when he was still mortal, and now there are all-night alleys -- but he likes it.
2) He loves clubbing for the willing partners, but he hates the second-hand drugs.
3) He'd never admit it, but he still takes a great deal of pride in just how well his half-sister Elizabeth finessed, finagled, and flattered. Some nights, he even admits to himself that he probably wouldn't have managed as well.
Dresden Files (TV):
Bob (aka Hrothbert of Bainbridge):
1) It's easier not to care as much now that he doesn't have glands and hormones. Which isn't to say he considers that an improvement.
2) He regrets using some of the black magic. He doesn't regret his ability to master it.
3) He likes working for Harry, but he desperately wishes Harry would learn to duck.
Firefly:
Shepherd Book:
1) He's always wondered if he renamed himself after the book or in a grim warning about judging by appearances. He also wonders if he was warning anyone besides himself.
2) There were times Book envied Mal his lost faith. Personally, Book thinks it's not lost so much as packed away for later, like a family bible waiting to record the next birth... or death. Either one could do it.
3) He's not too sure about the seven sins and seven virtues. Might be that they're as neutral as gravity... and as likely to trip you up if you try to deny them.
Forever Knight:
Javier Vachon:
1) Really? He'd be just as happy if unlife was sex, wine, and rock and roll. He keeps trying, too.
2) He's sure he gave over chivalry with the plate mail and his life's blood. He can stop caring any time now. Really. Tomorrow, honest.
3) Knight makes him more nervous than LaCroix. Heroes can be so damn unpredictable.
Lucien LaCroix/Lucius Divius:
1) In the end, he had no regrets for killing Divia. She was his sire, but she was also his daughter. Disposing of her was his responsibility, his right, and his privilege, and he's always favored private laws.
2) He supposes he should wish Nicholas understood him better, but why when this way, LaCroix has such an advantage in their centuries-old game? (Janette was wise enough not to play.)
3) He is, in the end, a Roman, and paterfamilias: head of family, responsible for the health, welfare, education, and actions of those who are his. Those who are not his... he has no responsibility for. He finds that being a vampire is not much different; the strategies simply run longer.
Full Metal Alchemist:
Roy Mustang:
1) There are a lot of reasons he plans to become president: No more wars like Ishbal. Alchemists treated as dogs of the military, maybe, but not as cannons. A clear line of succession -- and removal, if necessary. Because Maes believed he'd be an improvement on the current situation. The miniskirts thing is (mostly) a joke.
2) He protects the Elric brothers for any number of reasons. Because they're useful. Because they're powerful. Because someone should have helped them sooner. But also and always because they're a force of a nature, and you roll with those or they break over you and, sometimes, break you.
3) It's not that he doesn't like women; he doesn't like easy victories. He can't afford that kind of liability just now anyway.
Highlander:
Aidan Logan (OC):
1) She has a simple theory of teaching students: care about them first. After that, caring for them becomes much simpler.
2) She can live with the return of bell-bottom pants. There are far worse things to have rise back up the circle of history.
3) There are actually things she'd rather her students didn't tell her about. Graduated or not, immortal or not, some of the stories still give her grey hair. (She had to buy the dye, but it was worth it.)
Alex Daniels & Xan Morgan (OCs):
1) Alex is one year older than Xan, and has been known to remind Xan of it.
2) They were both in the Roman legions when they died, and they died in the same battle. They were not, however, on the same side.
3) They both tend to sing when they work, from years of making their own music. Partly it's for the human sounds, partly it's for the rhythm for the work, partly it's to tell people where they are. Sometimes, it's so people will think they're not paying attention to their surroundings. The drawback is that they sing on automatic, as it were, and what they're singing may reflect more of their thoughts than they meant to expose. If, that is, they're singing in a language anyone else around them knows....
Connor MacLeod:
1) He says Duncan gets all the good women, but it would be wise to ask what definition of 'good' Connor's using.
2) He's very, very sharp: sharp wits, sharp eyes, sharp bargains, sharp edges. His enemies have honed him to a fine edge and in an odd way, Connor's grateful for that. Not grateful enough to let them live, though.
3) He grew up working while there was light and he had energy, and making light since he still had energy to work. He prefers electric lights to candles, but he still hates being idle. It's made him very good at meditating, and noticing details and patterns, but those skills have slanted his sense of humor a few degrees off the norm. Okay, several degrees awry…
Cory Raines:
1) Not even a fool, nor foolish. He plays everything like a game -- life, the Game, bank robberies, relationships -- but that doesn't mean he plays to lose. Several months of bank robberies over five states with only two victims, ever, takes a great deal of competence.
2) Usually he moves along too much to get into a serious relationship. Every now and then, however, he finds someone who's worth staying for... or thinks he's worth traveling with, or waiting for. Cory appreciates this the more when it happens because it's so rare. But then a bank robber does understand relative worth.
3) He knows the joke about 'never take a knife to a gun fight,' he just doesn't stick around for either.
Darius:
1) He used sex as a weapon before the druid's spirit won their second battle outside Paris. Darius never told Duncan that part of Grayson's grudge was that of an abandoned lover. He never let Grayson learn that Darius hadn't loved him then, either.
2) No dream he ever had, including the ones of his death, ever chilled him half so much as the nightmare of what he might have been in his early, war-leader days if he'd had prophetic dreams then.
3) On the bad nights, when memories seemed almost worse than a day's work through exhaustion, Darius would go and sit in the herb garden. The shifting scents were some comfort, strong enough to override the charnel scents of memory and clean enough to leave him hoping he might be clean himself someday. The notion of 'useful weeds' made a good mental balm, too.
Duncan MacLeod:
1) He has high standards for others, huge ones for himself, and makes mistakes anyway. He tries to learn from them, too. After Byron, Ingrid, and O'Rourke, Duncan really hopes Annie Devlin stays away from him/out of the bomb business. He doesn't know that he'll be that lucky, though.
2) He used to wonder what it was like to have Darius' gift of dreams or Connor's knack of knowing what lay around corners (or weeks). Ahriman taught him to be careful what he wished for. Darius' memory taught him how to cope with the aftermath. Connor reminded him how to live, after that.
3) There's a thought that's occurred to Duncan now and then, usually in the middle of the night, or first thing after sunrise. Alec Hill lived on, however briefly, in Rich. Connor's been known to laugh out of nowhere and just mutter, "Ramirez," as if it explains everything. Maybe it does. But no one got Darius' quickening, except maybe the stones of the church. Decades and centuries of being holy ground... Duncan wonders, if he walked into St. Julien's and looked, would he see a familiar form? And would he be a ghost... or just a vision?
One day, he's going to go check.
Juan Sanchez Ramirez:
1) Ever since he got out of the Kurgan's mind and into Connor's, Ramirez has been making up for the time he didn't have with this student. Well, and studying a few things himself. He's not sure, however, if it was a good idea to have two of them with prophetic dreams in one skull.
2) It never occurred to Ramirez not to reach for lightning. He was used to Egyptian summers, after all.
3) As for breathing water... that was sheer, stubborn cussedness. Mostly because he died the first time in the yearly Nile flood.
Marcus Constantine:
1) He considered killing Lucius Divius a dozen times while he was alive, and nearly did kill him in a training bout, a true accident which might have destroyed Marcus' military career. He's glad now that he didn't. Undeath was exactly the forge Divius needed, and it's good to still have another Roman around to consult on strategies military and domestic.
2) He's argued with Ceirdwyn as much as taught her, critiqued Matthew and Alex Raven's idiocies 'til the silence bouncing back to him reduced him to suggesting improvements instead, and he still can't help considering Matthew's students as some immortal version of the parent's curse. However, he'd still rather have any of his line at his back in a fight than his most-mourned centurion. That includes Cory.
3) He's about done fighting for funds, and antiquities, and conservationists. The skirmishes are almost predictable now, the opponents too easily understood. He can't quite decide which way to go: into science, or into finance. He suspects they're both too close to what he's been doing.
It's still going to be a surprise when he finds himself involved in pharmaceutical research on old herbal remedies. He'll love fighting bureaucracies and narrow-minded fools for grants, however, and the use of old skills, and the pleasure of being proven right about old tricks whose provenance he'd never dream of revealing. He's also going to make a (not so small) fortune off it, well before all's said and done.
Matthew of Salisbury/Matthew McCormick:
1) Every third identity, Matthew goes and does something completely unrelated to the law -- on a completely different continent, if possible. He's farmed in Louisiana, made wine in Italy, sold brasswares in Turkey, hauled in fish off the African coast. Partly he wants a change, partly he wants a break, and these days, he likes the idea of confounding the Watchers. God help them when he retires from the FBI; he's planning to pick up hacking.
2) He's been using Scottish surnames for about 700 years now, after a great many long talks with Sean. Cory never had to ask why Matthew started; Ceirdwyn knew a sore spot when she saw one.
3) He doesn't talk about his first criminal investigation as an immortal. His first investigation as a mortal was for his father's court. His first investigation as an immortal was of his own death. Even now, he half-wishes he hadn't traced the bribes back to his widow.
Methos:
1) He's married women, and men, and a sow once (that one was an accident, and the priest was drunk too), and two immortals. The first divorce was amicable. The second divorce included a demand for one of his heads for the settlement, and the bastard wasn't picky which. Methos thought he'd learnt his lesson there, but he's starting to wonder.
2) Methos doesn't enlist, doesn't stick around if shanghaied (better drowning than that), wrote a dozen journal with white feathers turned to quills. It's not that he's got anything against killing mortals who're trying to kill him; he just can't keep his fucking mouth shut and ends up promoted. He doesn't want to give orders to armies, anymore. Kronos burnt that desire out of him a thousand years and an ocean of blood ago.
3) Death was a thousand years ago, and a thousand seconds ago, and it's not that the bastard's gone so much as he's lazing around on retainer. Becoming Death again is easy. Going back to Adam Pierson... that's hard.
Rebecca Horne:
1) She always meant to have a mad fling with Connor MacLeod, but the timing never worked out.
2) She discovered early on that the best way not to despair of mankind was to laugh with them. She figured that out not long after she picked up the habit of laughing at herself.
3) She died grateful that Luthor was such a fool. He only wanted the crystal. He didn't ask where she'd found it.
Sunda Kastagir:
1) The man doesn't just make boom-boom. He's also a weapon smith, goldsmith, woodworker, shipwright, vintner, brewer, carpenter, plumber... He has hands for a reason, he says, and his fingers tell him as much about the world as his eyes. He wouldn't have it any other way.
2) He insists to this day that, damn it, Port Royal is not his fault! He didn't challenge anyone on holy ground, and the boom-boom batch blew up because of the fire, not the other way around. (No one believes him.)
3) He thinks Connor is hilarious when drunk, and will never tell Connor that. It might ruin the fun, and the drinking parties.
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Captain Jack Sparrow:
1) He started out using the kohl to see more clearly in early morning and late afternoon. He keeps it up because everyone underestimates him more now.
2) And the dreds? It's amazing what you can hide in them, really it is. Knives, gems, keys....
3) It's a funny world. No one ever asks where he got the compass. Or if there might be other useful things there. Or what he paid for it.
Stargate Atlantis:
Lt. Col. John Sheppard:
1) It's only on Earth that he has nightmares. Off-world, he can't afford them, and awake or asleep, Atlantis hums to him. (He'd put his .mp3s on the mainframe for her, but Rodney would just delete them and critique Sheppard's taste in music while he was at it.)
2) Sheppard understands, rationally, that not every civilization has fighter planes, or jumpers, and thus may not actually understand 3-D warfare. But he has to remind himself of it every time it happens.
3) Defending Atlantis, and the Atlanteans (Terran, Athosian, Satedan doesn't matter; if they live there and support the city, they're Atlanteans) is shockingly easy for Sheppard. It's like flying the jumper, with the HUD of friends and enemies, or solving equations -- what's his, what isn't, where are they, what's the most efficient solution for maximum people saved on his side and minimum problems remaining on theirs? Terrifyingly simple, some days. He'd regret it more if Atlantis weren't so often the party that tried to keep the peace.
X-Files:
Alex Krycek, the first time:
1) Even on the rare occasions when I write fic where he didn't, I've always known Krycek survived the Consortium, and the Oil, and the backstabbing, and the alphabet gumbo of groups that wanted to use his hide for wallpaper. The hard part is never keeping him alive. The hard part is letting him find peace. He's mastered everything else, however. He'll master this, too, one
2) He's not sure he can settle down. He thinks the best he can do is find someone to orbit, to swing back to again, and again, spiraling closer and closer, but always swinging back out. They've got to be smart, dangerous, and fast or they won't survive him. But it hasn't occurred to him yet that if he plays his cards right... they might swing out from the sun, and safety, with him.
3) Effectively, he's the last one left. Both parents, all three brothers, both sisters, a grandfather, a great-aunt, five cousins -- all dead in a war they tried to keep the Consortium from realizing even existed. Technically, he has a couple aunts left, an uncle, a few cousins. None of them know which side Krycek was ultimately on, and it's been years since they could afford to claim him anyway.
There's a reason he jettisoned the name when it was all over.
Alex Krycek, again:
1) This isn't the life he wanted, never was -- but he's damn sure he's alive. He's just as sure not everyone else is, breathing or not.
2) He learns from mistakes, and tries damn hard not to make too many. Experience has taught him to have ready cash and ready passports, and he keeps lockpicks in his left coat cuff, the back of his coat, the seam of his belt, and the false heel of one boot. The passport and a stiletto are in the other heel. But he still reminds himself every time that an extra clip is good; so much equipment he can't run is not.
3) He knows he and Mulder aren't really that different. Mulder works in the light, Krycek works in the shadows, but either one will dive into the other's territory with very little warning, and they'll both play damned dirty when they have to. Sure Krycek lets Mulder beat him up every so often; someone has to remind Mulder that he can, and will. And it reminds Mulder, every time, of just how alike they really are. Sometimes, you're the hammer… and sometimes you're the anvil shaping the hammer.
Fox Mulder:
1) He used to think the truth would be Archimedes' place to stand. He's starting to think it's the tool you use to build that place to stand.
2) He took Greek and Latin in college, officially to help with the medical terms in the psych classes, but he really took them to read the classic myths and epics in the original languages. He still thinks that's one of the best things he did with those years.
3) He adds cream to his coffee since he Tunguska, and some nights, he bolts upright from dreams about the coffee in police stations across the US, and cops and SWAT teams with black across their eyes.
Blood Ties (TV):
Henry Fitzroy:
1) Not only is he good at bowling -- it was a popular game when he was still mortal, and now there are all-night alleys -- but he likes it.
2) He loves clubbing for the willing partners, but he hates the second-hand drugs.
3) He'd never admit it, but he still takes a great deal of pride in just how well his half-sister Elizabeth finessed, finagled, and flattered. Some nights, he even admits to himself that he probably wouldn't have managed as well.
Dresden Files (TV):
Bob (aka Hrothbert of Bainbridge):
1) It's easier not to care as much now that he doesn't have glands and hormones. Which isn't to say he considers that an improvement.
2) He regrets using some of the black magic. He doesn't regret his ability to master it.
3) He likes working for Harry, but he desperately wishes Harry would learn to duck.
Firefly:
Shepherd Book:
1) He's always wondered if he renamed himself after the book or in a grim warning about judging by appearances. He also wonders if he was warning anyone besides himself.
2) There were times Book envied Mal his lost faith. Personally, Book thinks it's not lost so much as packed away for later, like a family bible waiting to record the next birth... or death. Either one could do it.
3) He's not too sure about the seven sins and seven virtues. Might be that they're as neutral as gravity... and as likely to trip you up if you try to deny them.
Forever Knight:
Javier Vachon:
1) Really? He'd be just as happy if unlife was sex, wine, and rock and roll. He keeps trying, too.
2) He's sure he gave over chivalry with the plate mail and his life's blood. He can stop caring any time now. Really. Tomorrow, honest.
3) Knight makes him more nervous than LaCroix. Heroes can be so damn unpredictable.
Lucien LaCroix/Lucius Divius:
1) In the end, he had no regrets for killing Divia. She was his sire, but she was also his daughter. Disposing of her was his responsibility, his right, and his privilege, and he's always favored private laws.
2) He supposes he should wish Nicholas understood him better, but why when this way, LaCroix has such an advantage in their centuries-old game? (Janette was wise enough not to play.)
3) He is, in the end, a Roman, and paterfamilias: head of family, responsible for the health, welfare, education, and actions of those who are his. Those who are not his... he has no responsibility for. He finds that being a vampire is not much different; the strategies simply run longer.
Full Metal Alchemist:
Roy Mustang:
1) There are a lot of reasons he plans to become president: No more wars like Ishbal. Alchemists treated as dogs of the military, maybe, but not as cannons. A clear line of succession -- and removal, if necessary. Because Maes believed he'd be an improvement on the current situation. The miniskirts thing is (mostly) a joke.
2) He protects the Elric brothers for any number of reasons. Because they're useful. Because they're powerful. Because someone should have helped them sooner. But also and always because they're a force of a nature, and you roll with those or they break over you and, sometimes, break you.
3) It's not that he doesn't like women; he doesn't like easy victories. He can't afford that kind of liability just now anyway.
Highlander:
Aidan Logan (OC):
1) She has a simple theory of teaching students: care about them first. After that, caring for them becomes much simpler.
2) She can live with the return of bell-bottom pants. There are far worse things to have rise back up the circle of history.
3) There are actually things she'd rather her students didn't tell her about. Graduated or not, immortal or not, some of the stories still give her grey hair. (She had to buy the dye, but it was worth it.)
Alex Daniels & Xan Morgan (OCs):
1) Alex is one year older than Xan, and has been known to remind Xan of it.
2) They were both in the Roman legions when they died, and they died in the same battle. They were not, however, on the same side.
3) They both tend to sing when they work, from years of making their own music. Partly it's for the human sounds, partly it's for the rhythm for the work, partly it's to tell people where they are. Sometimes, it's so people will think they're not paying attention to their surroundings. The drawback is that they sing on automatic, as it were, and what they're singing may reflect more of their thoughts than they meant to expose. If, that is, they're singing in a language anyone else around them knows....
Connor MacLeod:
1) He says Duncan gets all the good women, but it would be wise to ask what definition of 'good' Connor's using.
2) He's very, very sharp: sharp wits, sharp eyes, sharp bargains, sharp edges. His enemies have honed him to a fine edge and in an odd way, Connor's grateful for that. Not grateful enough to let them live, though.
3) He grew up working while there was light and he had energy, and making light since he still had energy to work. He prefers electric lights to candles, but he still hates being idle. It's made him very good at meditating, and noticing details and patterns, but those skills have slanted his sense of humor a few degrees off the norm. Okay, several degrees awry…
Cory Raines:
1) Not even a fool, nor foolish. He plays everything like a game -- life, the Game, bank robberies, relationships -- but that doesn't mean he plays to lose. Several months of bank robberies over five states with only two victims, ever, takes a great deal of competence.
2) Usually he moves along too much to get into a serious relationship. Every now and then, however, he finds someone who's worth staying for... or thinks he's worth traveling with, or waiting for. Cory appreciates this the more when it happens because it's so rare. But then a bank robber does understand relative worth.
3) He knows the joke about 'never take a knife to a gun fight,' he just doesn't stick around for either.
Darius:
1) He used sex as a weapon before the druid's spirit won their second battle outside Paris. Darius never told Duncan that part of Grayson's grudge was that of an abandoned lover. He never let Grayson learn that Darius hadn't loved him then, either.
2) No dream he ever had, including the ones of his death, ever chilled him half so much as the nightmare of what he might have been in his early, war-leader days if he'd had prophetic dreams then.
3) On the bad nights, when memories seemed almost worse than a day's work through exhaustion, Darius would go and sit in the herb garden. The shifting scents were some comfort, strong enough to override the charnel scents of memory and clean enough to leave him hoping he might be clean himself someday. The notion of 'useful weeds' made a good mental balm, too.
Duncan MacLeod:
1) He has high standards for others, huge ones for himself, and makes mistakes anyway. He tries to learn from them, too. After Byron, Ingrid, and O'Rourke, Duncan really hopes Annie Devlin stays away from him/out of the bomb business. He doesn't know that he'll be that lucky, though.
2) He used to wonder what it was like to have Darius' gift of dreams or Connor's knack of knowing what lay around corners (or weeks). Ahriman taught him to be careful what he wished for. Darius' memory taught him how to cope with the aftermath. Connor reminded him how to live, after that.
3) There's a thought that's occurred to Duncan now and then, usually in the middle of the night, or first thing after sunrise. Alec Hill lived on, however briefly, in Rich. Connor's been known to laugh out of nowhere and just mutter, "Ramirez," as if it explains everything. Maybe it does. But no one got Darius' quickening, except maybe the stones of the church. Decades and centuries of being holy ground... Duncan wonders, if he walked into St. Julien's and looked, would he see a familiar form? And would he be a ghost... or just a vision?
One day, he's going to go check.
Juan Sanchez Ramirez:
1) Ever since he got out of the Kurgan's mind and into Connor's, Ramirez has been making up for the time he didn't have with this student. Well, and studying a few things himself. He's not sure, however, if it was a good idea to have two of them with prophetic dreams in one skull.
2) It never occurred to Ramirez not to reach for lightning. He was used to Egyptian summers, after all.
3) As for breathing water... that was sheer, stubborn cussedness. Mostly because he died the first time in the yearly Nile flood.
Marcus Constantine:
1) He considered killing Lucius Divius a dozen times while he was alive, and nearly did kill him in a training bout, a true accident which might have destroyed Marcus' military career. He's glad now that he didn't. Undeath was exactly the forge Divius needed, and it's good to still have another Roman around to consult on strategies military and domestic.
2) He's argued with Ceirdwyn as much as taught her, critiqued Matthew and Alex Raven's idiocies 'til the silence bouncing back to him reduced him to suggesting improvements instead, and he still can't help considering Matthew's students as some immortal version of the parent's curse. However, he'd still rather have any of his line at his back in a fight than his most-mourned centurion. That includes Cory.
3) He's about done fighting for funds, and antiquities, and conservationists. The skirmishes are almost predictable now, the opponents too easily understood. He can't quite decide which way to go: into science, or into finance. He suspects they're both too close to what he's been doing.
It's still going to be a surprise when he finds himself involved in pharmaceutical research on old herbal remedies. He'll love fighting bureaucracies and narrow-minded fools for grants, however, and the use of old skills, and the pleasure of being proven right about old tricks whose provenance he'd never dream of revealing. He's also going to make a (not so small) fortune off it, well before all's said and done.
Matthew of Salisbury/Matthew McCormick:
1) Every third identity, Matthew goes and does something completely unrelated to the law -- on a completely different continent, if possible. He's farmed in Louisiana, made wine in Italy, sold brasswares in Turkey, hauled in fish off the African coast. Partly he wants a change, partly he wants a break, and these days, he likes the idea of confounding the Watchers. God help them when he retires from the FBI; he's planning to pick up hacking.
2) He's been using Scottish surnames for about 700 years now, after a great many long talks with Sean. Cory never had to ask why Matthew started; Ceirdwyn knew a sore spot when she saw one.
3) He doesn't talk about his first criminal investigation as an immortal. His first investigation as a mortal was for his father's court. His first investigation as an immortal was of his own death. Even now, he half-wishes he hadn't traced the bribes back to his widow.
Methos:
1) He's married women, and men, and a sow once (that one was an accident, and the priest was drunk too), and two immortals. The first divorce was amicable. The second divorce included a demand for one of his heads for the settlement, and the bastard wasn't picky which. Methos thought he'd learnt his lesson there, but he's starting to wonder.
2) Methos doesn't enlist, doesn't stick around if shanghaied (better drowning than that), wrote a dozen journal with white feathers turned to quills. It's not that he's got anything against killing mortals who're trying to kill him; he just can't keep his fucking mouth shut and ends up promoted. He doesn't want to give orders to armies, anymore. Kronos burnt that desire out of him a thousand years and an ocean of blood ago.
3) Death was a thousand years ago, and a thousand seconds ago, and it's not that the bastard's gone so much as he's lazing around on retainer. Becoming Death again is easy. Going back to Adam Pierson... that's hard.
Rebecca Horne:
1) She always meant to have a mad fling with Connor MacLeod, but the timing never worked out.
2) She discovered early on that the best way not to despair of mankind was to laugh with them. She figured that out not long after she picked up the habit of laughing at herself.
3) She died grateful that Luthor was such a fool. He only wanted the crystal. He didn't ask where she'd found it.
Sunda Kastagir:
1) The man doesn't just make boom-boom. He's also a weapon smith, goldsmith, woodworker, shipwright, vintner, brewer, carpenter, plumber... He has hands for a reason, he says, and his fingers tell him as much about the world as his eyes. He wouldn't have it any other way.
2) He insists to this day that, damn it, Port Royal is not his fault! He didn't challenge anyone on holy ground, and the boom-boom batch blew up because of the fire, not the other way around. (No one believes him.)
3) He thinks Connor is hilarious when drunk, and will never tell Connor that. It might ruin the fun, and the drinking parties.
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Captain Jack Sparrow:
1) He started out using the kohl to see more clearly in early morning and late afternoon. He keeps it up because everyone underestimates him more now.
2) And the dreds? It's amazing what you can hide in them, really it is. Knives, gems, keys....
3) It's a funny world. No one ever asks where he got the compass. Or if there might be other useful things there. Or what he paid for it.
Stargate Atlantis:
Lt. Col. John Sheppard:
1) It's only on Earth that he has nightmares. Off-world, he can't afford them, and awake or asleep, Atlantis hums to him. (He'd put his .mp3s on the mainframe for her, but Rodney would just delete them and critique Sheppard's taste in music while he was at it.)
2) Sheppard understands, rationally, that not every civilization has fighter planes, or jumpers, and thus may not actually understand 3-D warfare. But he has to remind himself of it every time it happens.
3) Defending Atlantis, and the Atlanteans (Terran, Athosian, Satedan doesn't matter; if they live there and support the city, they're Atlanteans) is shockingly easy for Sheppard. It's like flying the jumper, with the HUD of friends and enemies, or solving equations -- what's his, what isn't, where are they, what's the most efficient solution for maximum people saved on his side and minimum problems remaining on theirs? Terrifyingly simple, some days. He'd regret it more if Atlantis weren't so often the party that tried to keep the peace.
X-Files:
Alex Krycek, the first time:
1) Even on the rare occasions when I write fic where he didn't, I've always known Krycek survived the Consortium, and the Oil, and the backstabbing, and the alphabet gumbo of groups that wanted to use his hide for wallpaper. The hard part is never keeping him alive. The hard part is letting him find peace. He's mastered everything else, however. He'll master this, too, one
2) He's not sure he can settle down. He thinks the best he can do is find someone to orbit, to swing back to again, and again, spiraling closer and closer, but always swinging back out. They've got to be smart, dangerous, and fast or they won't survive him. But it hasn't occurred to him yet that if he plays his cards right... they might swing out from the sun, and safety, with him.
3) Effectively, he's the last one left. Both parents, all three brothers, both sisters, a grandfather, a great-aunt, five cousins -- all dead in a war they tried to keep the Consortium from realizing even existed. Technically, he has a couple aunts left, an uncle, a few cousins. None of them know which side Krycek was ultimately on, and it's been years since they could afford to claim him anyway.
There's a reason he jettisoned the name when it was all over.
Alex Krycek, again:
1) This isn't the life he wanted, never was -- but he's damn sure he's alive. He's just as sure not everyone else is, breathing or not.
2) He learns from mistakes, and tries damn hard not to make too many. Experience has taught him to have ready cash and ready passports, and he keeps lockpicks in his left coat cuff, the back of his coat, the seam of his belt, and the false heel of one boot. The passport and a stiletto are in the other heel. But he still reminds himself every time that an extra clip is good; so much equipment he can't run is not.
3) He knows he and Mulder aren't really that different. Mulder works in the light, Krycek works in the shadows, but either one will dive into the other's territory with very little warning, and they'll both play damned dirty when they have to. Sure Krycek lets Mulder beat him up every so often; someone has to remind Mulder that he can, and will. And it reminds Mulder, every time, of just how alike they really are. Sometimes, you're the hammer… and sometimes you're the anvil shaping the hammer.
Fox Mulder:
1) He used to think the truth would be Archimedes' place to stand. He's starting to think it's the tool you use to build that place to stand.
2) He took Greek and Latin in college, officially to help with the medical terms in the psych classes, but he really took them to read the classic myths and epics in the original languages. He still thinks that's one of the best things he did with those years.
3) He adds cream to his coffee since he Tunguska, and some nights, he bolts upright from dreams about the coffee in police stations across the US, and cops and SWAT teams with black across their eyes.