Fandom: HIGHLANDER
Pairing: None
Author Website: Sandra McDonald's Highlander Fiction
Why this must be read:

Yes, Methos was Death, Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. And by the standards of the Bronze age, that meant unimaginable horror. But the twentieth century brought horrors even a 5000-year-old man could never have imagined, breaking him in a way he probably thought he was no longer capable of. This is how he recovered from that blow. While it's the third story in a trilogy, I didn't know that when I first read it. It stands perfectly on its own.

They came to him like visitors from another planet - boisterous women like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Maxine Sullivan, Peggy Lee. Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, blasting through the air with enough energy to make the tea cup rattle. Duke Ellington, his music both witty and melodic. The bebop sounds of Dizzy Gillespie. Count Basie's elegant piano playing. The music registered in his ears and intellect but failed entirely to move his cold, dead heart.

The Victories We Claim

Fandom: HIGHLANDER
Pairing: Methos/Kronos
Author on LJ: helens78
Why this must be read:

I hate Methos/Kronos. I avoid it like the plague. But I'm so glad I took a chance on this, because it was such a fascinating AU that played out perfectly. Here, Kronos killed Duncan, but in doing so he took a Light Quickening, one that's shaken him to the core.

"Brother," he says. "How have you been?"

"What a strange question," I tell him, leaning forward, resting my forearms across my knees. I want to look at him, but can't. The memories I have of him don't match the ones coming most to mind. It's unsettling.

"Does it have a strange answer?" Methos responds. He sighs and takes a seat beside me, adjusting his coat around his sword. My sword rests behind the bench, though I won't need it here. Holy ground is not something I've always been known for respecting. I should wonder why he trusts me now, but I don't. We both know what's been so strange about my life lately.

Fracture

Fandom: X-MEN COMICVERSE
Pairing: Kitty/Magneto
Author on LJ: alara_r
Author Website: Alara.net
Why this must be read:

I love, love, love Kitty/Magneto any way I can get them. I also love Alara's fic, and am still eagerly waiting for her to finish her Body Snatcher story so I can rec it here. A Kitty/Magneto story by Alara is like chocolate and peanut butter.

It's 4 AM and I have to be up at 7, to begin the work I came here for, the work of saving a country. Almost no point in going to sleep at all. I stare out the window, just barely beginning to lighten with false dawn.

4:00 AM

Fandom: NCIS
Pairing: Leroy Jethro Gibbs/Donald 'Ducky' Mallard (note, that this story can actually be read as either slash or gen)
Author on LJ: strainconductor
Author Website: N/A

Why this must be read:

Ready is a missing scene from 'The Meat Puzzle'. It is Ducky's thoughts whilst he is waiting to be rescued; but his thoughts are not of himself, but of those he loves. And he knows that if he dies, if Gibbs fails to rescue him, that Gibbs will blame himself and go on blaming himself for the rest of his life. As he waits for either death or rescue, he remembers his friendship, his relationship with Jethro, and how close and intense it is, and how nothing has ever shattered it. Then we get the intensity of the count down to Ducky's imminent death, and the build up of tension and fear and hope and hopelessness. It is a very powerful and moving story.

( Extract )

---

Ready

Fandom: X-MEN COMICVERSE
Pairing: Kitty Pryde/Piotr Rasputin
Author Website: Fonts of Wisdom
Why this must be read:

There was a time, early in the comics, when Colossus was Kitty's whole world, the first boy who ever called her pretty, the first boy she fell in love with. Despite the times he broke her heart, the way she let him take her for granted, it really seemed like he was going to be "the one." Here, building a life together gets complicated when both people are flawed in ways that never really got mended.

Emma's never bought any of Peter's pictures -- although she has come to showings, once or twice, when I asked her to as a personal favor... She says she'll buy a picture as soon as he paints one she wants, but she won't tell him what that might be. She told me, once, the only picture she'd ever considered buying was that old painting of Illyana. She knew he wouldn't sell it, but she said that she'd buy another as soon as he did one as good -- no matter what the subject, or technique, or price. But she didn't think any of his current work came anywhere close...

Peter suggested once she commission him to paint her -- that way, even if she didn't appreciate fine art, she could at least make up for all of my time she was taking. Emma just raised one eyebrow in that icily haughty way only she can manage, and told him that he should sell his pictures based on his own talents and skills, not on mine. He was absolutely *furious*, Logan -- I don't know when I've seen him so angry. He told Emma it was easy for me, I was a certified genius -- whatever I did, it might have been hard for other people, but not for me. Emma just looked down her nose at him and told him she'd heard he considered himself a genius too, an artistic genius, so the same should be true for him. And I told you already how hard he works at his painting, how he agonizes over every canvas, struggles with every brushstroke...

Sheol

Fandom: THE SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim and Blair
Author on LJ: calista_echo
Author website:  at Susan's Stories

Why this must be read:
Calista Echo is a wonderful AU writer. Aside from some fabulous (but sadly, unfinished) series, this is probably my favourite story by her.

Jim is in a mental institution, a prisoner of his senses; unable to speak, or express himself in any coherent way, until a new aide arrives to care for him.

Wounded, angsty Jim, vulnerable Blair and a happy ending.

Small World

Fandom: Narnia
Author on LJ: glitzfrau
Pairing: Caspian/Edmund

Why this must be read:

Again and again it seems like the Pevensies' are confronted with the knowledge, and self-knowledge, they lost on their return to England. But such things tend to come back on Narnian soil, and things once forgotten are remembered in a new context. That idea is explored in this story, which treads the thin line between Edmund-the-schoolboy and Edmund-the-Just and finds that things are not so easily dilineated.

Edmund thanked his stars that Caspian was there to laugh at Eustace too. Oh, he knew it was beastly to make jokes about his own cousin, but it was such fun when they both pulled a Eustace "you-odious-stuck-up-pig" face at exactly the same time, just before Eustace himself started complaining, or mimicked the way he would pick at a pavander. Only little jokes, because it was a bit rotten to make fun of the chap when he was so obviously down. Anyway, Edmund's spiteful little jokes had caused a great tragedy once, and he had that side of himself firmly under control now. Caspian was a great help whenever Edmund started brooding about the past, always reminding him of his great deeds as a King. Strange to think that it was legends about his own glorious adventures that had kept Caspian's hopes for Old Narnia alive, when Caspian was only a kid and being bullied by that rotten uncle of his.

Fear of Dragons

Fandom: Narnia
Author on LJ: bantha_fodder
Pairing: Caspian/Lucy, suggestive Edmund/Lucy (not explicit)

Why this must be read:

This story adheres much closer to the style and tone of the books than you usually find in Narnia fanfiction; I think Lewis's style does not lend itself to the closeness fandom tends to seek with its characters. But sometimes employing a particular stylistic measure can bring something unexpected out of characters and situation, and this is so in "A Short Interlude."

While children's novels tend to rely on the concepts of purity and innocence, such virtue tends not to hold up to adult perceptions and desires. It's all well and good to think of the Kings and Queens of Narnia during the Golden Age being good and right and virginal rulers, but given the many years they lived and grew in Narnia, it is seemingly impossible to believe that adults retained the simple innocence of their childhood selves. And the children themselves were each other's main support.

I am not going to make a case for incest, because I'm not interested in trying to defend a topic as divisive it is. But I will note that in this story, it is plausible enough without being explicit, and asks some important questions about the characters that I think are worth asking.

The Golden Age of Narnia was undoubtedly when the four Pevensie's were the Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel. Edmund was realistic, and knew that he would never be so successful, satisfied or happy in his life again. Every Narnian loved King Edmund the Just (the girls alone would have made it worthwhile; beautiful, flexible girls dying to make love to King Edmund. But he loved Narnia more than he could ever love any of them), almost as much as they loved his sister, Queen Lucy the Valiant. Tales of Lucy's beauty and valour had drifted down the ages of Narnia, until stories were told of a pixie-like Queen of soft-spun hair bound carelessly (but perfectly, because they always are in such stories) behind her head, flying to the rescue of all injured Narnians. One need only call, and Queen Lucy would come.

Edmund was not trying to be cynical, because Lucy was perfectly loveable without being a queen and a legend, but he hoped Caspian saw more than the Legacy of Queen Lucy the Valiant when he kissed her.

A Short Interlude on the Dawn Treader

Fandom: Narnia
Author website: ff.net

Why this must be read:

While this story doesn't quite mean the usual calibre of writing I prefer to reccommend, it does a better job than most at working with Lewis' particular tonal constraints while filling in Narnian backstory before The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. From various contexts, we know that Narnia fell into Winter under the White Witch some century before the Pevensies arrived in Narnia. But there is no clear explanation for how Jadis came to acquire the land she had coveted for so long. "Prophecy of Hope" goes into this, and makes some interesting suggestions about the role Aslan plays in Narnia and the role of evil in the world--Narnian or otherwise.

Far away, to the North, in a castle hidden by ice and snow, lives the Witch. This Witch, while being incredibly beautiful, has so much evil in her as to turn her beauty into the most repulsive ugliness. Her skin is so white as to be almost papery transparent, and her visage is one of hatred and scorn. On this day, she sits in great expectation for the return of her spy dwarves, sent a week ago down to Narnia and the castle of Cair Paravel by the sea to see if that infernally long-living King Derian is any closer to death. She thinks to herself that he is really lingering on much longer than is necessary and proper. Grinding her teeth together, she slams down her fist on the table in anger thinking of the Tree of Protection and the very aura of protection that seems to linger around the King’s person, and that prevents her from journeying into Narnia herself and killing the King and finally taking the whole country for herself, covering it in glorious ice and snow. However, she allows herself a small smile when she thinks of herself living in the great castle of Cair Paravel, ruling all Narnia under her ice and snow. She feels that her time to grind all of Narnia under her heel will be soon.

Prophecy of Hope

Fandom: X-MEN COMICVERSE
Pairing: None
Author on LJ: marag
Author Website: Story found at Fonts of Wisdom
Why this must be read:

Scrubbing the house for Passover has given me a hankering for some good Jewish!fic, and Mara Greengrass delivers. Incorporated into the Passover liturgy is the instruction that every generation must view themselves as captives going out of Egypt, a line that sparks no end of passionate discussion around the table every year. On the eve of the first seder, a distress call from the mutant underground hits close to home for Shadowcat, Sabra, Iceman and the Thing.

"Yeah," Ben said, "I coulda sworn your invitation said 'Passover seder' and not 'fly to Virginia and free mutants from some megalomaniacal corporation.'"

"It's the life of a superhero," Bobby said. "I *knew* I should have gone to Los Angeles with Warren instead. But you lured me with talk of your mother's recipe for brisket, you evil woman."

B'chol Dor Vador (In Every Generation)

Fandom: HOUSE
Pairing: Cuddy/House
Author on LJ: ladysarahii
Author Website: None, apparently.
Why this must be read:

As sort of a bookend to my last rec, which was about House donating and Cuddy being exasperated and was full of "and then banter ensues", here's a story that tells the other side of that plot device. This isn't a romantic story or an omgtroowuv story; it's a story about realities, and comfort, and how House is good at the former and rather sucks at the latter. I like the fact that nobody wins and nothing's fixed at the end, but it's going to be all right anyway.

Goodbye, My Love

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO
Pairing: Ancelyn/Bambera
Author on LJ: livii
Author Website: Author profile at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind
Why this must be read: You know how, often, you watch a TV show and wonder what happened to some of the supporting characters after the episode ended? Only you never get to see them onscreen again? Such is the case with the characters Ancelyn and Bambera from the Seventh Doctor serial Battlefield. "The History of the Kings of Britain" tells what might have happened. And if you're an Ancelyn/Bambera fan, you'll probably think it's what should have happened. The crowning touch is an appearance by the Tenth Doctor, who, fittingly, does not arrive quite when he intended to.

The History of the Kings of Britain