1,000 regrets (Highlander fic challenges)

Mar 23, 2011 22:14

Hmm. Did we ever have a challenge to write up Methos' 1000 regrets? I know Pirates of the Caribbean fandom was trying to write a story for each of the coins of immortality, and I seem to vaguely remember a challenge about Methos' spouses. (Devo? That is why you wrote Yetta, isn't it?) But I don't think we ever did the regrets.

Anyway. Here's one to start us off, and let me know if you write one?

Wheat Hair And Weddings

A log popped in the fire, pine shooting a yellow spark that burned red and then out, and Methos sighed and shifted more comfortably against Duncan's chest. "God, she was lovely."

Any other lover would have taken offense, he suspected. Duncan just passed him his beer -- not warm yet, nor empty -- and asked, "Who?"

"Honoria."

When the silence settled down around them again, broken only by the crackle of the fire, Duncan asked, "Who was she, one of your 68, 69 wives?"

Methos blinked, pulled out of memories of dances and wine, emerging from smoke-filled ballrooms into late foggy nights, one cool misty afternoon chaperoned at a garden party… "Honoria? Good Lord, no. I had nowhere near the rank or the money to marry her."

"That they knew of?" Duncan asked. He only sounded amused, however, and his free hand was rubbing lazily, soothingly across Methos' shoulder.

"Well, yes. I briefly considered letting my wealthy uncle pass away, then regained my senses. Lovely woman -- tiny, commanding when she wanted to be, scatter-brained to listen to her until you learned how to sort the chaff from the grain and found out she was sharp as your katana under it -- and hair the color of wheat when she was debutante, over big dark eyes and thick dark lashes. Her hair darkened with the children; it was a lovely nut brown when I saw her at Mary's baptism."

Duncan listened, fascinated. "When was this?"

"Oh, she came out in 1885." Methos shrugged and picked up his beer, then lifted it to the fireplace. "Amazing woman."

"Sorry you didn't marry her?" Duncan asked it quietly, warm and solid support in the fire-lit cabin.

"She wanted children," Methos said simply. "And she'd been bred and raised, quite successfully, to run an estate." More prosaically, he added, "Besides, I said she was sharp. She'd have never missed the swords, or me vanishing, or well, not vanishing in five, ten years." He shrugged. "I went to her wedding, offered Mortimer congratulations and her felicitations, and spent some time on the Continent after that. She was one of my regrets, Highlander. I wasn't one of hers, thank God."

Duncan nodded, and didn't press him further. Instead, he watched the fire with Methos, remembering gone and regretted loves of his own. They woke hours later in a blanket-tangled twist of limbs and stumbled to their bed: warm, alive, and loved.

~~~ finis ~~~

Yeah. If you think you saw a crossover? You did. Crossovers100 prompt #73, light.

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crossovers100, challenges, fic: postings, fandoms: highlander

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