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Chapters: 3/12 Fandom: Slow Horses (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: River Cartwright & Jackson Lamb, River Cartwright & Louisa Guy, River Cartwright & Bertrand Harkness Characters: River Cartwright, Jackson Lamb (Slough House), Louisa Guy, Shirley Dander, Bertrand Harkness, David Cartwright, Emma Flyte, Yves Harkness | Robert Winters, Diana Taverner, Roddy Ho, Marcus Longridge Additional Tags: S4 AU, Insomnia, Paranoia, Stalking, Supportive Slow Horses, Hurt River Cartwright, Sleep Deprivation, Platonic Relationships, Les Arbres River, Harkness Brothers, River’s past explored by flashback, Underage Drinking, stun grenades, Interrogation, Canon Terrorist Attack, Canonical Character Death Series: Part 13 of Candle’s Whumptober 2024 Summary:

Everyone thinks that they know all there is to MI5’s biggest disappointment, River Cartwright. And that’s just how he wants it. But when River’s sanity starts to unspool and figures from his past randomly pop up in London, everything that he had painstakingly built begins to fall apart.

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I got too impatient waiting to post this! 

Whumptober Day 31 - Asking for Help

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I have decided that fate will determine what I work on next

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So turns out…..you guys are not gonna believe this…….but it turns out. Reading real books. Is good for you actually.

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i think a big part of expanding your intellectual curiosity and trying to learn new things about the world is to abandon the shame of not knowing things. don't blame "the US school system" (which US school system????), don't blame your teachers, don't blame society, but embrace the fact that you are going to be learning new things constantly, throughout your life. practice saying "i really need to read about that" or "does anyone know of any good sources to learn about xyz?" or "hold on i gotta go check wikipedia/a world map/the dictionary/the news." every single day, there will be something you don't know already. that something doesn't have to be embarrassing. instead it can be an opportunity to learn something new

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I cannot be trusted with "short" stories.

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shipping characters who are just friends in canon is more than okay but what’s annoying is when people take screenshots of them touching and say “friends don’t do that!”. i hate to break it to you but friends do hug and hold hands and cuddle. saying ‘friends don’t do that’ is reenforcing the idea that physical touch is reserved for lovers

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post s4.

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More Sentences Wednesday - tagged by @jamietarttsnorthernattitude who thought they could do a take back from their previous tag of me, but OH HO. NOT SO FAST (and to be fair to them they saw I'd been tagged already. ) I will take every opportunity to share fic bits.

This is from Alternate Season 4 where River is kidnapped by Frank and Patrice, and River and Patrice start to bond.

The fact stung more than River thought it would. He’d meant it when he said he didn’t regret his childhood, not being raised as a child soldier. But some small part of him, the boy whose mother didn’t even knock on the door of a stranger’s house when she dropped him off in the garden and was halfway down the road before someone found him, was wounded anew. It was a different kind of hurt from thinking his father had abandoned Isobel when she was pregnant, and died in a car accident. It was common enough to have classmates with only one parent, and by the time River was ten, he’d stopped telling people Isobel was alive, too. British literature was rife with tragic orphans raised by their grandparents in the English countryside, and River decided life would imitate art. It stopped questions before they could be asked. Tell someone your parents are dead, and there’s no follow up beyond the possible inquiry as to how and when, and River long decided he liked the dramatic irony of both parents dying in an accident, several years apart.

Hmmm. Who did I miss last time... @fayedartmouth @dragonnan and anyone else who wants to participate!

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Seven-ish Sentences on a WIP

tagged by @abubblingcandle, and I legitimately had to scroll back through like 3 weeks of Tumblr to figure out what I had to had not posted before and I think I found one.

This is from as-of-yet unpublished Young!River and Lamb, River is about 12 in this (or thereabouts)

River shrugged. “I have a pass.” He held up his red lanyard with a temporary ID on it, with clear black, blocked letters stating REQUIRES ESCORT across the top, the font even larger than his name. “…right.” Lamb glanced back down the corridor where the Dogs are continuing their sweep in the exact opposite direction of their quarry - because he has no doubts it’s Second Desk’s grandson they’re searching for, and he wonders which poor bastard drew the unlucky short stick for keeping an eye on the boy - before deciding he’s curious. “How long has this been going on?” River opened his mouth, no doubt with a perfectly crafted lie at the ready when Lamb cut him off. “You’re in luck. I’m feeling petty. Let’s see how long you can avoid Poole. For every…” Lamb glanced at his watch, which was scratched and barely legible and probably not at all accurate anymore, “fifteen minutes you evade capture, I’ll give you a quid.”

So the seven sentences is definitely on the ish side, but rules are meant to be broken.

Hmm. Tags. Probably should pick people who haven't been tagged yet...uhhhh. No pressure tags: @itsjustdg @vix-has-arrived @tenderhooked @louisaguy

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[Slow Horses edit]

[M-A-M-A-B-O-Y, mama's boy, mama's boy.]

I'm ready to talk about it for hours. The way Catherine loves River with absolutely unconditional love. I'm in love with this contrast, when River's mother says "when you see River, remind him I exist", and then, throughout the entire season, we see how Catherine tries to help River without expecting anything in response. She gives him her phone. She gives him all her money. She takes care about David, exposing herself to danger, though she is not obliged to do anything of it. She just wants River to be okay. She loves him so much. And he loves her so much. They are family.

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when you get an idea for a fic but you know you’re going to have to really take your time with it in order to properly capture all the little details and plot points and themes you want to convey, but also you’re an impatient bitch who wants to write out and read that fun story in your head right fuckin’ now

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i am the one thing in life i can control  ; (wait for it — hamilton)

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a bunch of gifs of river being bitchy

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BILL WATTERSON ‘A cartoonist’s advice’

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Fanfic Word Game

Thanks to @abubblingcandle for tagging me! I have never seen a fic game like this, so this will be fun.

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from you wips that starts with each letter of your word. My word is JARS

FYI - these are longer pieces because I don't know how else to break them up, and because I write in scrivener, it' s a much wider page and I don't know how long it is until it's pasted here.

J - from untitled Young River and Lamb Adventures (in which I explain how Bad Sam winds up head of the Dogs thanks to River)

Jonas Poole, head of the Dogs, was apparently having a Bad Day.

A small group of them charged by, hardly sparing Lamb a look other than one who looked him up and down with an expression of mild disgust before not-quite-jogging onwards.

They were looking for someone, then. But whoever it was, they were more an embarrassment than a security threat because otherwise, the building would be on lock down. Alarms would be blaring, and everyone would be herded towards designated areas for ID checks and strip searches. This was more like someone’s cat was unleashed upon the Park and the Dogs were on the hook for their whereabouts, but didn’t want anyone else knowing they’d lost said hypothetical cat.

Lamb chuckled to himself, and wondered if he was getting a new agent in Slough in the near future.

A- 5 and 1 in 9-1-1 which is also untitled but it's Buck being mistaken for Bobby's actual son

“And he acts like your dad,” another girl insisted. “He calls you ‘kid’.”

“That’s like a nickname,” Buck said. “Like your name, you’re Lilliana, right? But your friend here, she calls you Lily, right?”

“Buck is a nickname,” the first girl said. “Everyone else calls you Buck -" she pointed to Bobby, just so there was no doubts who she was referring to, “but he calls you ‘kid’.”

“My dad calls me kid -” one boy piped up from the top of the truck. He peered down over the side, grinning from ear to ear. “Well, he calls me kiddo. But that’s basically the same thing.”

Buck’s smile faltered, and he looked at Bobby, who shrugged, smirking at Buck’s floundering. “You got this, kid.”

“Thanks a lot, Cap.” Buck emphasized the use of Bobby’s rank rather than his name, but the kids didn’t buy it for a second and remained undeterred.

“Do you mean he’s not like your biological dad?” another boy asked. “I have a stepdad, but I still call him Dad.”

“No, he’s not -” Buck protested, but another kid cut him off.

“Is he your second Dad? Lacey has three dads…” Lilliana glared at her friend, as if the Dad Distribution System had unfairly tilted in her friend’s favor, and it was Lacey’s fault.

R- from Some Dreams You Never Wake Up From which is an AU of season 4 where Patrice doesn't go to Slough House, and Frank decides it's a better investment to bring his remaining son 'home' with him and Patrice rather than start from scratch again.

River knew he didn’t exactly have a poker face - not unless he was actively making an effort - but he was pretty good at reading others. He could get a general read on Lamb most days, and the others were about as easy as large print books. But Patrice was inscrutable. His face didn’t change at all. It was body language that gave the only hints at what he could possibly be thinking.

At least, until this very moment.

The only problem was River, for once, had no idea what he’d said to earn that look, and it feels important that he should. “What?”

S - Also from Some Dreams, but towards the end when Lamb is trying to tell Catherine the condition in which they find River

She didn’t care how they got River back, so long as they got him back. She could forgive him, she would understand, if he became what Frank wanted to survive. River must know that, surely - even if the words weren’t said, even if it was only through the actions of the mild, everyday things. There weren’t grand gestures, perhaps, at least not by most peoples’ standards, but by theirs - this was a family. River was her family.

But even as she tried to find the words to say, to force her mouth to move and try to maintain a level of professionalism and tell Lamb that she was prepared to face River anyways, that she could handle River coming back as an unemotional, unflinching assassin like Patrice so long as he came back, Lamb stopped her.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not that.”

Hmm. Tags and a word....

@cartwrong @tenderhooked @altschmerzes @fayedartmouth @thewildballyntynesgrow @itsjustdg @vix-has-arrived @dragonnan

and again, whoever is writing something they want to share - word is RUNS

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Seven Sentence Sunday ON SUNDAY

tagged by @thewildballyntynesgrow and LOOK AT ME, DOING IT ON THE DAY IT WAS MEANT TO BE DONE.

Anyway. Ahem.

Seven-ish sentences on a Sunday - this is also from Slow Horses because I am nothing if not predictable, and this is a piece I don't actually remember when I wrote it. But the general idea is sometime before the beginning of season 3, but well after season 2 concluded, so Spider is alive, but I hate him with a passion, so not for any reason the fandom would want him alive.

“Did you know Webb was assigned to Slough House?” Roddy asked. “He wasn’t given an option of retirement or Slough like he said.”

River frowned. “What? No. He said he took the early retirement so he could go corporate.”

Roddy turned in his chair, positively gleeful. Or, as close to happy as River had ever seen him. “No, he had to leave the service. Wanna know why?”

“Because his plan to roll a Russian oligarch went tits up?” Louisa offered.

Roddy steepled his hands underneath his chin, using his heels to pivot back and forth in his chair. “Lamb refused to take him.”

“There’s standards to getting sent here?” River asked, brow furrowed as he tried to work out if Roddy was just lying, or if his world view was about to be upended to the point of no return.

Ho shrugged, turning back to his monitors. “Well, not really. Webb was the only one Lamb refused to take. So I guess that means he fucked up even worse than you did.”

Umm...Hmm, I don't actually know who's writing now, so this is going to be an open tag for anyone who has something they would like to share with the group.

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Actually your society is the freaks for shooting everything that moves and burning half your "nature reserves" every year so that upperclass dandies can eat leaded pheasant. North Americans are the well adjusted ones here, your country has become a desolate suburban lawn in island form