Changed Utterly by Parda (PG-15)

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Fandom: HIGHLANDER
Pairings: none, really - gen
Author on LJ: not that I know of
Author Website: http://users.erols.com/darkpanther/

Why this must be read:
This is, at its heart, the painfully true story of Duncan and Richie, of Duncan and Connor, of Duncan and Methos -- a story of fathers and sons, of brothers, of a man facing the darkest places within him. Cassandra is the catalyst, but this is Duncan's story, as full an examination of the Ahriman arc as one could hope for. If the episodes offer us the intriguing idea of a battle fought within one man's soul, this story gives us the full realization of that idea, breathing life and depth and myth into the experiences of the man who has to live with the aftermath. It's a story about redemption, about the day to day reality of grief, and of learning how to move through it. It's about growing up at four hundred and five, and the courage that takes. Most of all, it's about the human capacity for screwing up, and how hard it is to get up again, to keep on trying to get it right.

Richie would have been twenty-five tomorrow.

I go out into the fields, to the cut stubble of hay, to the earth stripped of her bounty. She gives to us, and we must give to her, in an ancient rite of sacrifice, our blood on her ground, our life for her life, our death for her death. It hasn't always been a straw man tossed onto the fire. Sometimes the man to be sacrificed is the champion of the local lord, or the lord himself.

And sometimes, the sacrifice is the lord's son.

Changed Utterly

Please let the author know if you enjoy this story.