FIC: Tale of the Scorpion (HL/HCH) in 9 parts (PG+to R)

[mackiedockie]

Title: Tale of the Scorpion (9/9)

Summary: Joe tells everyone that he's gone to Mexico for a vacation. Methos doesn't believe him. Neither does El Alacrán, The Scorpion, an Immortal with links to Duncan MacLeod's past.

Authors: For LJ adabsolutely.livejournal.com (for LJ mirror posts, with different photos!)
Authors: For DW adabsolutely and mackiedockie
Characters/Pairings: Duncan MacLeod, Methos, Joe Dawson, El Alacrán, various OCs. D/M and other pairings.
Rating: Mostly M, with occasional spikes into R+ territory.



adabsolutely and I have finally finished the Highlander story we've been working on--it is 57K+ words. It has crossover elements with a relatively rare fandom, High Chaparral, a western telecast during the early seventies. After it's skeletal start as comment fic nearly two years ago, the story apparently took Night of the Lepus to heart and grew. A lot.




The embryonic version is posted over on adabsolutely.insanejournal.com @ (it was that long before our fledged DW accounts!) The original vacation!fic began with raw posts, just the two of us batting dialog back and forth, with about a half dozen friends snickering at us. But the fun kept growing and there was a plot explosion. After 30 thousand words we sought help. Beta readers to the rescue!

unovis and lferion assisted us the best they could with the original raw tangle of too many POV switches ‒ which is the norm for comment fic, but just doesn't do for a proper tale. So we wrote and re-wrote. Then it was time to do our holiday gift stories for hlh_shortcuts, and we set it aside to age. Like a fine gorgonzola. After the New Year we picked it up again with a set of long tongs, thinking it wouldn't take too long to finish up ‒ it had been almost a year after all. Nope. It started to grow again. It's well over 57 thou now. We eventually had to divide it into four google docs so as not to explode our little piece of the cloud. Night of the Lepus, see?

At this point anya2112.livejournal.com and [Bad username or unknown identity: methos_fan.livejournal.com] were reading here and there, trying to keep us on the slash and narrow. When we finally determined (HaH!) we'd reached the end, dragonfly gave it a thorough go over. birggitt also gave us many useful suggestions and most importantly very kindly and enthusiastically corrected our limited turista Spanglish. Any and all mistakes and fubars in the final version we own as our own.

And then of course we started to add more....lepuses. Lepi? Finally, we've decided to call it the end of book one, since we have answered the original questions. If a couple of low lying plot currents can be detected toward the end...don't tell the rabbits.

Finally, many thanks to [Bad username or unknown identity: dear_0phelia.livejournal.com] contributing many excellent observations during a last minute cold read.

Muchas gracias to everyone who has helped us beat this tall tale into submission!

Gray Over Warnings: Violence would be the main warning. Some blood is spilled. But if you're a regular Highlander reader, there's nothing beyond the pale.

Bugs! There are arthropods in this story. See title. (One of our long-suffering betas mentioned that they are not appealing to everyone, a thought neither adabsolutely.livejournal.com or I had any idea of.)

Oh, sex. Yes, there's some sex. Eventually. There's het! And slash! How did that happen? Absolutely no curtains were purchased in this story. I'm sure if they had been, someone would have gotten blood on them.





All characters are fictional. Well, maybe not the big brown horse, but he's under alias.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9