Disclaimer: : None of the characters named are mine; no moneys are made, no infringement intended.  I'm just playing with 'what if' and 'might have been.'
Rated: PG

Five Things That Might Have Happened...

A variety of ways things didn't happen, unknown facts, small sillinesses, and/or equally small truths, written for the '5 things' meme.  Essentially, people asked me for five of something, and I did my best.  A very few are still pending, because I have no idea, but mostly, I've finished the requests.  Enjoy!

Links to:

Connor MacLeod (HL)
Cory Raines, 1 & 2 (HL)
Duncan MacLeod, 1 & 2 (HL)
Hugh FitzCairn (HL)
Joe Dawson (HL)
Alex Krycek (XF)
Lucien LaCroix (FK)
Matthew McCormick (HL)
Methos, 1 & 2 (HL)
Fox Mulder (XF)

Five reasons Cory Raines uses knives:

1. They're easier to hide...

2. ...and explain.

3. Opponents underestimate a man with two knives against a fighter with a sword.

4. Knives let you work inside your opponent's blade, leaving him effectively unarmed.

5. Cory's faster with knives than a sword.  He can always take a head with their own sword once they're bleeding out on the ground.

Just because he doesn't like to fight doesn't mean he can't.  Or won't win.

-- Written for Ann Blessing.

Five things Cory Raines never stole:

1.  At no time and in no place was Cory ever stupid enough to try to steal a book of hours from Rebecca Lords.  That's a vicious rumor.

2.  And the young 'lady' in Comstock didn't lose her maidenhead to him.  Cory's pretty damn sure it wasn't 'stolen' by anyone.  (Her brother, however....)

3.  He may have temporarily owned a steamboat in the 1860s, but he never gave anyone a free ride.  Even if they were too dark, too bloody, and too desperate.

4.  He never stole the Hope Diamond.  It's gaudy, and he doesn't care for diamonds.  Mostly, he's not fool enough to mess with anything associated with hope.  People fight like cornered rats to keep it.

5.  He never stole a plain gold ring, worn at the edges.  He didn't know what it was when he saw it pawned.  He didn't hit the thief who pawned it, they weren't in a dark alley, and the guy woke up with all his money.  That money didn't go to the family whose heirloom ring had been stolen.  He certainly didn't break into Matthew's house four centuries later to return it to him.  And he had no idea his teacher gave it to his first wife.  Really.

-- Written for Shemchadash.

Five things that made Hugh FitzCairn go, 'Uh-oh!'

1.  The sight of a fair maiden whom he'd known... when accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a hammer being cocked back on a gun behind him.

2.  Amanda showing up, all smiles and sweet words, and not telling him immediately what she wanted.

3.  The time he lost the coin for room and board at a dart game.  Losing was fine, but half of it was MacLeod's.

4.  Hopping half-naked and one-booted through the halls of the inn, with an irate husband somewhere behind and another immortal somewhere ahead.  He and Ramirez traded rounds the rest of the night at a taven, each waxing more extravagent about their abandoned paramours....

5.  He'd just gotten the hang of these new mechanical carriages, he thought.  Then he found out about hydroplaning.

-- Written for Pollyanna.

Five things Joe Dawson will never put in Duncan MacLeod's chronicle (and the reasons he won't):

1.  For a man who's roped cattle, sailed ships, run a printing press, and built log cabins... Mac's just about dangerous with plumbing.  (But it was my beer spigot that sprayed him, and I'd rather not get shot for fraternization again.)

2.  I'm not writing up the challenge Mac lost, and should never have taken.  This'd be the one Connor warned him about, in advance, and Mac just had to try anyway.  (The only reason I'm not writing it up, however, is the recipe for boom-boom that I'm not admitting I have.  Connor even threw in the diagram for the still.)

3.  Cory Raines backed Mac into a wall, wrapped around him better than an octopus, and planted a kiss on him that took a couple minutes to warm up and then another ten to separate.  But I've never been sure Amanda and Cory didn't set it up to mess with the minds of future Watchers.  And I have no idea how I explain Watching the whole thing anyway.

4.  Ain't no way the story about Mac, Fitz, the bull, and the pissed-off farmer is going to make it into the official records.  Hell, I'm not sure I should put it in my private journal.  Something about a bull out to stud, some ice, some scattered coins, a thoroughly smelly farrmer, the bull taking a liking to Mac's crotch and Fitz's hair (and I'm not sure which of them was more offended)...  I can't put this in the Chronicles.  Too many 'laugh 'til you choke' stories about immortals and livestock anyway (and doesn't that lend new meanings to 'animal magnetism?'), and I don't actually know the whole story even now.  We were all drunk and laughing our asses off.  Wonder if Mac'd tell me again if I broke out the 16 year Lagavulin?

5.  The one I'm never, ever putting in the Chronicles is Mac's duel with Connor.  Not the lead up, not the duel, not the death and recrminations and weeping and wailing and rending of clothes in the gutter.  Word is, if Connor, Mac, and plastic Jedi/Sith light sabers make it into the Chronicles, my alcohol supplier will quit supplying.  Wonder what Connor's got on the guy?*

*With thanks to one of MacNair's stories, which I can't find online, drat it.

-- Written for Mischief.

Five things Alex Krycek knows that Fox Mulder doesn't, and no one else ever will:

1.  Krycek killed the man ordered to assassinate the Lone Gunmen.  Then he relocated them to a better site, left them reasons (and procedures) to tighten up their security perimeter, and arranged for their 'bodies' to be found.  They don't know who helped them, or why, but it was never in Krycek's best interests to leave Mulder without a back door.

2.  Samantha Mulder died because one of her fellow prisoners snapped her neck, then strangled herself.  It was a mercy killing, but somehow, Alex doesn't think Mulder would see it that way:  The second prisoner was his sister.  (If he knew where they were buried... he still wouldn't tell Mulder.  But he would take flowers when it's safe.)

3.  Mulder doesn't know he went through Quantico with an X-File.  The guy's name was Matthew McCormick: FBI agent, New York Customs official, Pinkerton detective, Texas Ranger, Lt. Colonel for a Louisiana militia in the Civil War, and, theoretically, now a corpse.  Personally, Alex doesen't believe that last one.  He hasn't dug up the coffin to check.

4.  The only X-Files that burned were the ones left behind for versimilitude.  The important ones were removed before the fire.  And shredded.

5.  Oil coming back up tastes like distilled licorice flavored with tar and burnt coffee.  That's bad enough, but Mulder knows that part.  What he doesn't know is that when you see Oil a second time, after it's ridden you, your mouth waters, and your throat loosens, and your body tries to relax to accept it back.  No matter how much you hate it.

-- Written for Kat Denton.

Five things Lucien LaCroix misses from Rome, or loves about modern times:

1.  Doing business in the bath house.  Frequently by discussing one deal there, and signing another one in private, but he misses the baths.

2.  Roman women.  He misses knowing that he could go off to war and his wife would take care of the house and the business, and keep her love affairs to suitable candidates they'd discussed in advance.  (He doesn't miss Divia, though.)

3.  He tells Nicholas otherwise, but LaCroix loves coffee.  It tastes like sunlight off the deserts he fought in when he was mortal.

4.  He does love modern media:  phonographs, cassettes, CDs, DVDs.  Music is available everywhere... and with his radio show, he can acquire new prey at a distance, using only his voice and wits.  It's a better hunt this way.

5.  Most of all, he loves watching men convince themselves they are better than their forefathers:  stronger, nobler, richer, more this, or that, or the other.  It is a rare pleasure, watching them and knowing that they do precisely as their ancestors did.  They have secrets that their servants know, and sell.  They have their weaknesses, and their prices, and their pride.  And, as always, they complain of their children, and of the times, and think they invented sex.  Oh, yes.  Men have grown no better, and his skills have grown more useful.  He does so love the old ways.

(The second one for LaCroix is totally to Vaznetti's credit.)

-- Written for Shemchadash.

Five Ways Connor MacLeod and Matthew McCormick never met (and One that they did):

How they didn't meet:

1.  1592 -- Matthew Stewart missed half the lines in Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" because he was trying to spot the other immortal in the crowd.  It might have helped if he'd known that he was looking for the cheerful, not-really-inebriated Scot selling roasted nuts and listening to the merchants' gossip between acts.

2.  1628 -- Connor MacLeod turned down an offer of three times what his cargo of flour, salted cod, linen, and gunpowder was worth: the terms specified delivery to La Rochelle, and Richelieu's men held it too securely to make the job worth the risk.  (If they'd doubled their offer, though, Connor would have done it, and left the harbor terrified of ghost ships in the bargain.  They'd have burnt him at the stake for the offer, though, so he left them to their lost battle.)

3.  1815 -- In the smoke and confusion of New Orleans, the madness of a city held by a soldier and guarded by a pirate and a voodoo queen, Matthew McCormick melted away down a French Quarter alley that only the longtime residents knew:  it was that or stay to see what immortal was moving with the British.  Actually, Adrian Montague was moving ahead of the British, and had no wish to meet another of his kind when he'd just taken a ball of lead through the bones of his right wrist and hand.

4.  1886 -- Matthew McCormick almost ignored the immortal presence to keep admiring the new statue at Staten Island.  Almost.  Instead, he escorted his new wife home again.

5.  1922 -- Between the Great War, the Influenza epidemic that had followed on its heels, and the shock of the changes in the estate taxes, an Anglo-Irish family in Wicklow died out.  No one noticed except their creditors, the auctioneers hired to get the best prices for the family memorabilia, and the two immortals interested in the auction.  Connor MacLeod bought out the Georgian silver and the portrait of Father Darius; a withered, dried-up stick of a mortal solicitor outbid a thin, nervy British nobleman for a bound collection of family letters.  The solicitor declined, quite properly, to name his client.

How they really met:

1748, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- In the aftermath (and remains of chairs and tables) of a 'discussion' in a bar, Matthew Buchanan hauled Sunda Kastagir out, arresting him for inciting to riot, and hauled Connor MacLeod out as well, for aiding, abetting, and encouraging.  Both of the 'criminals' were drunk enough to nearly walk Buchanan into walls, hitching posts, and less-than-respectable women still abroad at that hour.  They were also arguing with him in English, Latin fit for graffiti in abandoned Roman outposts, still worse Gaelic, gutter Arabic (all of which Matthew understood), and an African languages Matthew hadn't heard in fifty years and hadn't understood then.

They were drunk enough that it took half an hour for them to realize that the rooms they were in weren't a jail, and that being handed fresh-baked muffins and mismatched cups of just-brewed tea probably meant it wasn't a very formal arrest.

This includes, by the way, one of the odder details I ever researched: how far back muffins are period.  The answer seems to be at least the 10th century CE, and possibly the 9th...

-- Written for Killa.

Five pieces of advice Methos gives himself but never takes:

The lighter set --

1.  Never barhop with a man who willingly drinks boom-boom.  (But if you do, take a tape recorder...)

2.  Do not agree to something just because Amanda/Duncan looked distraught and batted her/his eyes.

3.  Shoot Kronos Cassandra on sight, before he she can open his her mouth.

4.  If Darius wants to play a game of chess, do not accept any side wagers.

5.  Remember that Joe Dawson can be a calculating son of a bitch.

The more serious set:

1.  Bora-Bora's (always) nice this time of year.

2.  Don't take an interest in young immortals.  They're too likely to break your heart.

3.  There's no point in arguing with zealots.  You should be packing.

4.  Things are replaceable.  Don't love them too much individually.

5.  A - (the part he keeps) Always know what you're willing to pay for something.
     B - (the part he doesn't) Never pay too much.

-- Written for Feonixrift.

Five things Methos wants to tell Duncan MacLeod about.  Someday.

1.  Methos changed flats in Munich one winter, and bought out the broken contract without a murmur, because of the bakery next door.  He kept waking up expecting Gretchen to be in the kitchen waiting to tease him about oversleeping.  She'd died two hundred years before.

2.  He doesn't mind the mornings where he can't find his book from the night before becuase he's thinking of a night twenty years back.  But Methos does mind the days when he turns down the wrong street because it looks like the right one... from another city, and another time.  He spent half an hour trying to find a bookstore that probably didn't even exist anymore.

3.  Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night and his arm's curving over a lover long gone...

4.  ...or one he's remembered, rather than gone to sleep beside.

5.  Yes.  There are things worth dying for.  Methos would still rather live for them.  And he'd really like to argue their respective lists one night morning, when it's dark enough, and cold enough, that there's nothing but arms, and legs, and blankets around you both, and a voice next to your ear almost as familiar as your own.

-- Not quite what Pat T asked for, but I came up with three of them while driving and only found out when I got home that I'd misremembered the request somewhat.  Hope this is close enough to what you wanted, Pat!

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