Story Title: Other Halves
Fandom: Forever/Highlander: the Series
Link(s): Other Halves
Summary: Detective Mike Hanson is a pretty observant guy, and when he goes undercover in a dating club to solve a string of poisonings, he sees a lot more than he's equipped to understand. Set concurrent with "Something Called Justice."
Warnings Canon Typical Violence
Characters: Mike Hanson, Henry Morgan, Richie Ryan, Jo Martinez, Methos, Original Characters
Pairings: background Mike Hanson/Karen Hanson, background Henry Morgan/Jo Martinez, background other pairings
When I Started: In 2015, I signed up for the annual Highlander exchange, Highlander Shortcuts, and was matched to someone who had included in their requests one for a crossover with Forever. The spark caught, and in less than a month I wrote the first two stories in, what would become, a series, and the first half of this one—which spent the next five years being called Untitled Story #3.
How I Lost My Shit: This is a casefic in which the victims are poisoned. In the first draft of the story, the poisonings were occurring in the bar where everyone meets. The more I wrote, the more I ran headlong into a simple logistical issue: why the hell were people still going to this bar? Sadly, I couldn’t come up with an answer, and the words petered out.
How I Finished My Shit: Somewhere along the way, I had the brilliant idea to have the poisonings occur outside the story. Only now I had to figure out who was committing the murders. Frankly, I had no idea. I also had no idea why they were poisoning people. A murder mystery without a motive and a culprit isn’t much of a story, especially when the main character is a homicide detective whose job it is to figure these details out. I did know whom I didn’t want as the culprit. With a lot of brainstorming and handholding from idelthoughts, I started to answer some of the persistent questions without having to sacrifice what vision I did have. Then, as more words appeared, more answers did.