Happy Holidays, mackiedockie (It's a twofer!)
Title: Guess who's coming to dinner
Author: Prancer aka chinae
Written for: mackiedockie
Characters: Joe, Amy and Methos
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 876 words
Author's Notes: Enjoy!
Summary: Sometimes a road comes to a full circle.
Guess who's coming to dinner
Truth be told, Joe never envisioned his life would end up like this. He always thought he'd end up dead, in a back alley somewhere between Paris and Seacouver. Ending up retired and happy had never been part of the equation. Never.
Yet here he was.
He chuckled to himself and brought his guitar closer to his body. He checked the chords, making sure they were tuned in properly. As he placed his fingers and tested each of the strings, he reflected back on the last few years and the decisions he'd made that had most impacted his life.
He no longer watched over MacLeod. Maybe if he'd been younger he still would have been able to have kept up with the Highlander, still would have travelled with him from one destination to the next, but he was tired and he was honest enough to admit to feeling the strain. Of his back hurting, of arthritis having caught up with him, of no longer needing the adrenaline high and craving instead the comforts of home.
The biggest irony, of course, was who had given him that sense of family.
He had walked away from it once, believing that it'd been better to ruin one life instead of four, to let his child grow up in a loving family and let him keep the memories of what might have been.
That his daughter, after many years and after their encounter with the Immortal Morgan Walker, had decided to continue to see Joe and establish some kind of relationship with him, shocked him.
Why would she? Why would she give him another chance, when he'd never given himself one? When he'd walked away from the possibility of family, of something different?
He'd been hesitant to start a relationship with her, knowing that his heart would never survive the pain of her walking away from him, of her deciding that, in the end, he just didn't measure up.
He had thought of walking away, of cutting the ties first, of breaking the bonds before they were truly formed; but if he still wanted to call himself a man, he couldn't walk away from his child twice.
It also helped that Amy had been curious about the Immortal who had saved her life and wanted to know how 'Benjamin' fit into Joe's life.
Joe had been cautious of what he could share, for as much as Amy was his child, his blood, Methos was a friend, an adopted son.
So Joe would talk to Amy about the Watchers and the Immortals he'd met along the way, while Amy would share those moments of her life that Joe had lost. The loss of her first tooth, her first dance, her first love, the man she'd almost married and what led her to become a Watcher.
But even as they shared their life, a part of Joe still believed that she would walk away, lose interest in him, for what could he offer her in his old age? It wasn't like he had any pull in the organization to help her in some way, or be the kind of father who ... was whole and would have tossed her in the air.
So he waited and watched as Amy dropped by to visit, the curious glance thrown Methos' way, the glance returned.
After the Horseman and the Dark Quickening , Joe had learned that as much as he might consider them his sons, Duncan and Methos would leave him behind and, while they might later apologize for their shitty behaviour, he'd be a fool to believe they wouldn't leave him again.
That Methos or 'Adam' had decided to stay in Paris, to hang out at Joe's bar, to continue to add onto his bar tab and along the way fall in love with Joe's daughter was unexpected.
It didn't happen overnight and it certainly wasn't something any of them had planned. A Watcher, no matter how smart, did not make a matchmaker or especially fool a 5,000-plus year-old man. And that fossil certainly would not have allowed himself to fall into a trap. Had a trap been set.
No. His children had talked over beer, in particular Amy's distaste for it and Methos true profound love of beer, and wine ... well alcohol in general.
Beer was about comradeship...community. It was an art. Or so Methos had said.
Amy had laughed and called him a fool. Maybe that had been the point when they had fallen in love, or maybe it had been one of the other hundreds of time they met and talked and argued about the ordinary things in their lives that seemed to Joe, a Watcher, extraordinary.
One day, he was invited to dinner, not to a fancy restaurant but a nice, out-of-the-way mom and pop shop that served as both bakery and restaurant.
A small velvet box was tossed his way, and his two children smiled at him.
Would he give Amy away?
So here he was, years later, tuning his guitar and waiting for Joey, his four-year-old grandson, to wake up from his nap, waiting for his children to bring another grandchild home, a little girl this time, another chance to have the life he'd given away.
END
Title: Four times Joe Dawson almost met Methos and the one time he did.
Author: Prancer
Written for: mackiedockie
Characters: Joe, Amy and Methos
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 870
Author's Notes: Enjoy!
Summary: We met on many occasions but I still never knew you
Four times Joe Dawson almost met Methos and the one time he did
1) It had been a difficult birth, and they came close to losing mother and child, but somehow fate intervened. On a stormy night in Kansas, in a small community hospital, Joe Dawson was born; attending that night was a young family resident by the name of Benjamin Adams.
2) Fever.
They said Joe Dawson might just not survive the infection from having lost both his legs, and in such a brutal fashion, A young soldier carrying wounded in stayed with him over the difficult night, talking to a feverish Joe about what it was like in Roman times, saying that true gladiators, like him, could survive anything and were made stronger by their scars.
At times, the young soldier, in-between taking care of the other patients, would read the Iliad to Joe. His voice would carry softly across the vast room, every now and again he would stop and correct the story with comments like, "Achilles was a whiny bitch, Paris sucked his thumb..." His dry sense of humour at times elicited laughs from the other wounded soldiers listening nearby.
When the fever broke, Joe found a well-read book by his night table with a card inside.
Get well soon, Remus.
It was only years later, while working in the Little Book Shoppe, that Joe would discover the book had been a first edition.
3) All Watchers hoped their first assignment would lead them to the Holy Grail of Immortals, the elusive myth: Methos.
After their lectures, in the cafés around Paris, they would talk about the Immortals they studied and what had made them. Some thought they were aliens, others fallen angels cast from heaven to walk on earth to battle for the ultimate prize - a return to angelic status.
The young Watchers would laugh and, after some alcohol, more theories would be thrown in. Immortals were Vampyres but without the bloodlust, Lucy x2, and mutants.
Sometimes they would gather just to talk about Methos. They would share bits and pieces they learned about the immortals they were researching. Could Methos have known them?
An immortal that old, they had all agreed, would be wise. Think of all he had seen, the young Watchers would say, experienced and lived through. The stories he could tell, some would comment. Surely he was a pious man, like Darius. Honest and trustworthy.
They looked for a legend that would be bigger than life. A man strong enough to defeat a thousand warriors. A man of peace, like Ghandi. A Teddy Roosevelt of Immortals but, instead of carrying a big stick, he would carry a big sword.
To think the only thing the Watchers got right was the sword.
4) "What's he like, Joe?"
If Adam was anything, he was certainly persistent.
"Adam, don't you have better things to do than bother your superiors?"
"Um ...no, actually." This was followed by a quiet laugh and Joe could imagine the young Watcher, probably lounging in the small office chair, eating Thai food with beer.
"Aren't you supposed to be researching?" Surely the kid hadn't finished all those briefing notes they had forwarded him.
"Done," Adam admitted, not quite able to hide the glee in his voice.
The kid was a brat, and the best researcher they had ever had.
"Should I be telling Don to give you more work?" Not that Don would; he looked too fondly on the boy, seeing Adam as the son he had never had. In fact, according to Don, the problem with Adam was that he was too good at his job. He spent too much time with his nose stuck in a book; if it weren't for Don, Adam would have starved long ago.
Adam, after all, only went out for beer. He just lived and breathed research. He was a bit of a ... nerd.
"You really want to know?" Joe figured this was as close as Adam would ever get to a real Immortal.
"Yeah, Joe." He sounded like an eager kid, waiting for story-time.
At times like these, Joe felt old. "He's..." How to describe the Highlander? A man who was the kind of person Joe wouldn't mind meeting, befriending. A good man, for an Immortal. "He's like ... if there is a Methos, what Methos would be."
"Um ... that bad?"
"How many Immortals do you know, Adam?" asked Joe.
"Quite a few," was the quick reply.
"Real Immortals, not the one in books?"
"Oh. Is this a trick question?"
"Adam!"
So, yeah, the kid was a know-it-all nerdy punk.
5) It just didn't measure up.
Adam equals Methos.
Yeah, Joe just couldn't get that visual out of his head.
Don's Adam was Methos
Adam, who wore sneakers and who used to skateboard to and from Shakespeare and Company, and Watcher's headquarters.
Adam, who constantly listened to punk music, or pop, or whatever kids called it these days.
Adam.
Who was Methos.
Methos was Adam.
Did Don know?
Why didn't anyone tell him?
God, Adam is Methos.
And Methos is real.
Real.
An immortal so old, who when drunk could swear like a sailor and blush like a virgin bride.
Joe's laugh turned to sobs and he fooled them all.
END
Author: Prancer aka chinae
Written for: mackiedockie
Characters: Joe, Amy and Methos
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 876 words
Author's Notes: Enjoy!
Summary: Sometimes a road comes to a full circle.
Guess who's coming to dinner
Truth be told, Joe never envisioned his life would end up like this. He always thought he'd end up dead, in a back alley somewhere between Paris and Seacouver. Ending up retired and happy had never been part of the equation. Never.
Yet here he was.
He chuckled to himself and brought his guitar closer to his body. He checked the chords, making sure they were tuned in properly. As he placed his fingers and tested each of the strings, he reflected back on the last few years and the decisions he'd made that had most impacted his life.
He no longer watched over MacLeod. Maybe if he'd been younger he still would have been able to have kept up with the Highlander, still would have travelled with him from one destination to the next, but he was tired and he was honest enough to admit to feeling the strain. Of his back hurting, of arthritis having caught up with him, of no longer needing the adrenaline high and craving instead the comforts of home.
The biggest irony, of course, was who had given him that sense of family.
He had walked away from it once, believing that it'd been better to ruin one life instead of four, to let his child grow up in a loving family and let him keep the memories of what might have been.
That his daughter, after many years and after their encounter with the Immortal Morgan Walker, had decided to continue to see Joe and establish some kind of relationship with him, shocked him.
Why would she? Why would she give him another chance, when he'd never given himself one? When he'd walked away from the possibility of family, of something different?
He'd been hesitant to start a relationship with her, knowing that his heart would never survive the pain of her walking away from him, of her deciding that, in the end, he just didn't measure up.
He had thought of walking away, of cutting the ties first, of breaking the bonds before they were truly formed; but if he still wanted to call himself a man, he couldn't walk away from his child twice.
It also helped that Amy had been curious about the Immortal who had saved her life and wanted to know how 'Benjamin' fit into Joe's life.
Joe had been cautious of what he could share, for as much as Amy was his child, his blood, Methos was a friend, an adopted son.
So Joe would talk to Amy about the Watchers and the Immortals he'd met along the way, while Amy would share those moments of her life that Joe had lost. The loss of her first tooth, her first dance, her first love, the man she'd almost married and what led her to become a Watcher.
But even as they shared their life, a part of Joe still believed that she would walk away, lose interest in him, for what could he offer her in his old age? It wasn't like he had any pull in the organization to help her in some way, or be the kind of father who ... was whole and would have tossed her in the air.
So he waited and watched as Amy dropped by to visit, the curious glance thrown Methos' way, the glance returned.
After the Horseman and the Dark Quickening , Joe had learned that as much as he might consider them his sons, Duncan and Methos would leave him behind and, while they might later apologize for their shitty behaviour, he'd be a fool to believe they wouldn't leave him again.
That Methos or 'Adam' had decided to stay in Paris, to hang out at Joe's bar, to continue to add onto his bar tab and along the way fall in love with Joe's daughter was unexpected.
It didn't happen overnight and it certainly wasn't something any of them had planned. A Watcher, no matter how smart, did not make a matchmaker or especially fool a 5,000-plus year-old man. And that fossil certainly would not have allowed himself to fall into a trap. Had a trap been set.
No. His children had talked over beer, in particular Amy's distaste for it and Methos true profound love of beer, and wine ... well alcohol in general.
Beer was about comradeship...community. It was an art. Or so Methos had said.
Amy had laughed and called him a fool. Maybe that had been the point when they had fallen in love, or maybe it had been one of the other hundreds of time they met and talked and argued about the ordinary things in their lives that seemed to Joe, a Watcher, extraordinary.
One day, he was invited to dinner, not to a fancy restaurant but a nice, out-of-the-way mom and pop shop that served as both bakery and restaurant.
A small velvet box was tossed his way, and his two children smiled at him.
Would he give Amy away?
So here he was, years later, tuning his guitar and waiting for Joey, his four-year-old grandson, to wake up from his nap, waiting for his children to bring another grandchild home, a little girl this time, another chance to have the life he'd given away.
END
Title: Four times Joe Dawson almost met Methos and the one time he did.
Author: Prancer
Written for: mackiedockie
Characters: Joe, Amy and Methos
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 870
Author's Notes: Enjoy!
Summary: We met on many occasions but I still never knew you
Four times Joe Dawson almost met Methos and the one time he did
1) It had been a difficult birth, and they came close to losing mother and child, but somehow fate intervened. On a stormy night in Kansas, in a small community hospital, Joe Dawson was born; attending that night was a young family resident by the name of Benjamin Adams.
2) Fever.
They said Joe Dawson might just not survive the infection from having lost both his legs, and in such a brutal fashion, A young soldier carrying wounded in stayed with him over the difficult night, talking to a feverish Joe about what it was like in Roman times, saying that true gladiators, like him, could survive anything and were made stronger by their scars.
At times, the young soldier, in-between taking care of the other patients, would read the Iliad to Joe. His voice would carry softly across the vast room, every now and again he would stop and correct the story with comments like, "Achilles was a whiny bitch, Paris sucked his thumb..." His dry sense of humour at times elicited laughs from the other wounded soldiers listening nearby.
When the fever broke, Joe found a well-read book by his night table with a card inside.
Get well soon, Remus.
It was only years later, while working in the Little Book Shoppe, that Joe would discover the book had been a first edition.
3) All Watchers hoped their first assignment would lead them to the Holy Grail of Immortals, the elusive myth: Methos.
After their lectures, in the cafés around Paris, they would talk about the Immortals they studied and what had made them. Some thought they were aliens, others fallen angels cast from heaven to walk on earth to battle for the ultimate prize - a return to angelic status.
The young Watchers would laugh and, after some alcohol, more theories would be thrown in. Immortals were Vampyres but without the bloodlust, Lucy x2, and mutants.
Sometimes they would gather just to talk about Methos. They would share bits and pieces they learned about the immortals they were researching. Could Methos have known them?
An immortal that old, they had all agreed, would be wise. Think of all he had seen, the young Watchers would say, experienced and lived through. The stories he could tell, some would comment. Surely he was a pious man, like Darius. Honest and trustworthy.
They looked for a legend that would be bigger than life. A man strong enough to defeat a thousand warriors. A man of peace, like Ghandi. A Teddy Roosevelt of Immortals but, instead of carrying a big stick, he would carry a big sword.
To think the only thing the Watchers got right was the sword.
4) "What's he like, Joe?"
If Adam was anything, he was certainly persistent.
"Adam, don't you have better things to do than bother your superiors?"
"Um ...no, actually." This was followed by a quiet laugh and Joe could imagine the young Watcher, probably lounging in the small office chair, eating Thai food with beer.
"Aren't you supposed to be researching?" Surely the kid hadn't finished all those briefing notes they had forwarded him.
"Done," Adam admitted, not quite able to hide the glee in his voice.
The kid was a brat, and the best researcher they had ever had.
"Should I be telling Don to give you more work?" Not that Don would; he looked too fondly on the boy, seeing Adam as the son he had never had. In fact, according to Don, the problem with Adam was that he was too good at his job. He spent too much time with his nose stuck in a book; if it weren't for Don, Adam would have starved long ago.
Adam, after all, only went out for beer. He just lived and breathed research. He was a bit of a ... nerd.
"You really want to know?" Joe figured this was as close as Adam would ever get to a real Immortal.
"Yeah, Joe." He sounded like an eager kid, waiting for story-time.
At times like these, Joe felt old. "He's..." How to describe the Highlander? A man who was the kind of person Joe wouldn't mind meeting, befriending. A good man, for an Immortal. "He's like ... if there is a Methos, what Methos would be."
"Um ... that bad?"
"How many Immortals do you know, Adam?" asked Joe.
"Quite a few," was the quick reply.
"Real Immortals, not the one in books?"
"Oh. Is this a trick question?"
"Adam!"
So, yeah, the kid was a know-it-all nerdy punk.
5) It just didn't measure up.
Adam equals Methos.
Yeah, Joe just couldn't get that visual out of his head.
Don's Adam was Methos
Adam, who wore sneakers and who used to skateboard to and from Shakespeare and Company, and Watcher's headquarters.
Adam, who constantly listened to punk music, or pop, or whatever kids called it these days.
Adam.
Who was Methos.
Methos was Adam.
Did Don know?
Why didn't anyone tell him?
God, Adam is Methos.
And Methos is real.
Real.
An immortal so old, who when drunk could swear like a sailor and blush like a virgin bride.
Joe's laugh turned to sobs and he fooled them all.
END