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ladyeliot · 4 years ago

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Prologue [T.S. / J.H.]

Series: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”

Pairing: Tony Stark/Justin Hammer x Fem!Reader

Summary: Seaville, Maine, 1991. The sudden death of Tony Stark’s parents forces him to return to the town he left behind when he went to study at MIT (Boston). With his arrival, all the memories he thought he had erased come back to him. The events of his last year of high school and that summer of 1988 appear to him as if they were ghosts from the past, forcing him to confront them and causing him to rethink his life.

Warnings: Death of parents. Funeral. Drunkenness.

Word Count: 5574

A/N: Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

Christmas 1991 (4th year at MIT)

Who would have thought that after leaving that small coastal town in the state of Maine and having promised himself never to set foot in that place again, he would have to return. On that December 17, 1991, the press and every other media outlet reported a devastating news story that had happened the night before, "Howard and Maria Stark die in a car accident on Seaville". The impact of the news was far and wide, the country woke up the next morning to a headline that generated controversy about how it had happened and who would take over Howard Stark's position at his company's New York headquarters.

But none of that was relevant to Tony Stark's mind, who barely uttered a word when Edwin Jarvis crashed the MIT Christmas party with a phone call to inform him of the event. Maybe it was the amount of alcohol in his blood, or the fact that he could barely hear his own thoughts under the infernal noise of techno music, but it took him a few minutes to react. Just a few hours ago a long discussion with his father over the phone had managed to infuriate him, the fact that he again decided to spend the holidays away from his family and did not choose to return to Seaville he knew that his father cared little, but any excuse was good to lash out at him, or at least Tony thought so.

The first thing that came to his mind as he reacted were the last words addressed to each of them, a clearly sarcastic discussion with his father and a feigned indifference towards his mother because of his anger, who was trying to calm the situation between the two of them. That was the last thing the three of them experienced and it would mark Tony Stark's life forever.

The Stark family owned a multinational technology company that spread its power throughout the country, and Howard Stark had been in charge of it, as he was the one who ran it from its beginnings until his death. Few were the memories of Tony's childhood in which his father was present, he was always travelling and when they met again during the holidays they barely spoke to each other, because whenever they did, a fight between them would come to light. That was how Tony had written off their relationship. But things were different with his mother, who always tried to mediate between them and cared about him. It was she who interceded when Howard wanted to send Tony to boarding school abroad, or when she wanted him to change his residence to New York.

As he remembered all those things, a pang of guilt came over young Tony Stark, but Jarvis's words from the other end of the phone line brought him back to his senses.

"The funeral will be held first thing tomorrow morning, sir. You don't have to worry about anything, it's all set," Tony who stood leaning against a door frame in the fraternity house nodded impassively. "A car will pick you up in two hours so you can get there on time, sir?"

"Thank you Jarvis," he said deadpan just before he hung up the phone again and faced one of the hardest nights.

The apathy that can produce tragic situations in people can be somewhat frivolous, especially if you are one of those people who find it difficult to express your feelings. The drive from Boston to Seaville took about four hours, some roads were impassable due to the snowfall that had occurred during that winter period. The numerous phone calls he had received along the way, most of them about the future of the family business, added to his apathy. No one understood how he felt, let alone anyone else, and he was alone in the world with Jarvis.

He took in the closeness of the place as he gazed out to sea. Seaville was known for its beautiful sunsets overlooking Maine Bay, the town had a population of just eight thousand, but it maintained an unblemished reputation as a community of artists and sailors, a fact that added to the economic status of the region. Maria Stark, formerly Collins, was born there, and it was her affection for her roots that led her to settle there again when she became pregnant with Tony's child. For a time Tony also shared her love of Seaville, but there were too many negative memories buried in the streets for him to return of his own free will.

When Tony saw the sign indicating the start of the Seaville settlement for the first time in four years, the knot that had been sitting in his stomach for hours increased its pressure, preventing him from barely breathing. He opted to keep his gaze fixed on a set of documentation about the company that Obadiah Stane had sent him before his departure from Boston, and tried to concentrate his thoughts on external things.

"Sir, we're here," the gentleness in Jarvis' voice reassured Tony after pulling him out of his thoughts.

The words spoken by the young adult had been sparse, barely possessing more than one syllable. As he stepped out of the car he recognised the place, and it was just then that it crossed his mind that he wished anything could have stood in his way, just so he would not have come to this place.

The funeral had been arranged in the Seaville cemetery, a place on the top of a small hill surrounded by a wide grassy esplanade with birch trees. Jarvis stood by his side, waiting for him to take his first step to join him, but Tony's limbs seemed to be locked at that very moment.

"Your mother always spoke of the peace of this place," he commented, urging Tony to walk. "She would have wanted something intimate."

The funeral had been arranged as quickly as possible to avoid the crowds and to keep the wishes his mother would have wanted. The last thing he expected was for them to turn his parents' funeral into a public event and for any news channel or media outlet, national or international, to broadcast it like it was a bloody movie.

"That's right."

After Tony took the first step, the next two hours went quicker than he would have thought, Jarvis was right in his words, there was peace in the place and Tony found that out. It was fortunate for him that they arrived when most people were already there, it meant that for the moment he didn't have to hear any comments lamenting the event from anyone present. So he just hid his gaze under a pair of sunglasses, avoiding eye contact with any grieving faces. He recognised many of those present, from employees of local businesses to some Stark Industries officials who had managed to arrive in time after hearing the news. Still, while he wanted to avoid bumping into anyone, he was hopeful of the presence of several people, who were probably not going to be there for external reasons. Either because they did not yet know the news or were not in town at the time.

With the reverend's last words the coffins of his parents were lowered and buried several feet underground. Tony was unable to take on the role of offering a few words, he simply stood there quietly and received the condolences of several of those present. As they passed by one by one, Tony merely offered them a simple nod with his face, barely looking up. It was minutes later when Jarvis put his hand on his shoulder, awaiting their departure for the car, but Tony needed a moment.

"You can go to reception, Jarvis, I'll stay a bit longer," he informed her. "By the way, if you see that I haven't arrived before I'm done, don't worry, just go home."

"I don't know if..."

"Please, Jarvis," she said without looking at him.

"All right, sir."

The funeral reception at the home of his youth would only foster an increase in his feelings of guilt, he would not be able to walk through that door and lock himself within those four walls, find out if everything was as he left it or if there had been any changes in the four years since he left for MIT, so he decided to let time pass.

He reached a point where the sun was setting, his mind hadn't noticed the passage of time but he sat in that chair for three hours. He was so lost in thought that he barely noticed a presence behind him until the person approached the graves and dropped a small bunch of daisies on the freshly scattered sand, a fact that made Tony wipe away his tears quickly.

Tony stood up while being grateful for the change in his body's posture, his watery eyes didn't allow him to recognise the figure at first, but after blinking a couple of times he realised that his brain wasn't playing tricks on him. It was you. You didn't hesitate to approach him and put your arms around his shoulders, causing Tony's body to become paralysed. His wits had been switched off for hours, as had his mind, but that moment brought his senses back to life. Your scent, your warmth, your body contact, your eyes, and hearing your breath so close again turned his broken heart.

"I..." began Tony in a whisper.

"Don't say anything," you cut him off without breaking the embrace.

After a minute you opted to pull away, seeking eye contact with him, which was prevented by Tony's sunglasses, so without giving up you reached up to them and slowly took them off, noticing that under them those hazel eyes were still present, slightly reddened.

"There you are," you said with a wistful smile.

Tony hated himself for not being able to cope properly with the moment that was unfolding before him. But he accepted that you of all people knew his limitations when it came to expressing feelings, whether they were positive or negative. It was true, you knew, so having enjoyed seeing that under that suit and his new appearance he was still the same Tony Stark you knew, you put his glasses back in place.

"I guess you'll be wishing you were alone," you said, lowering your gaze. "You know where to find me if you need me."

You offered him one last smile, which almost took Tony's breath away and, just as you had reached him, you turned around to continue on your way.

Unlike the funeral, the news seemed to have already been published in most of the sensationalist media in the country, so the funeral reception at the Stark house welcomed more than two hundred people who wanted to give their condolences, but those condolences never reached Tony, as he hardly appeared there. It wasn't until after half past ten at night, with the moon showing its clear figure in the sky, that he came face to face with his past.

Jarvis had taken it upon himself to collect every bit of food and flowers that the guests had brought with them, a gesture that Tony was grateful for, for now he only had to face his past memories and not the present situation. As he entered the hall and walked into the living room he realised that it was a vivid image of his childhood, the mantelpiece displayed before him filled with Christmas decorations, a large tree full of ornaments, most of them homemade, made by his mother, garlands draped around the mantelpiece and Christmas boots. That was a shock. After clicking her tongue, she opted to walk away in the direction of the kitchen, the knot in her stomach having mingled with roars informing her that she'd better eat something if she didn't want to pass out. Jarvis had been considerate enough to save some leftovers from the reception, so he grabbed the plate of larded meat and headed off to face the floor above. The night was going to be a long one.

After climbing the wide marble stairs he discovered a closed door at the end of the corridor, with a sign reading "Genius at work", those three words provided perhaps the first smile in hours. He walked towards it with a series of doubts in his gut, but eager to know what he would find behind it. He placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it, the first thing his senses picked up was a deep musty smell, the gloom was still there, but soft rays from the moon coming through the window made him resemble each of the furniture and objects there.

Before him time had not passed, his large room filled with gadgets on every shelf and desk remained just as he had left it before he left for MIT in the summer of 1988. He placed the plate on the bedside table and slipped his hands into his pockets, walking around the room. His outward calmness was extreme, though inside he seemed to be distressed and nostalgic. A crunching sound under the soles of his shoes made him realise that several screws and pieces of metal were lying on the carpet. Everything was as messy as he left it, even that robot he had made for his last academic year in high school was in pieces on the desk.

"Idiot," she said, glaring at him.

It was at that very moment that it dawned on him how exhaustion, both mental and physical, was consuming them. Tony flopped face down on his bed with his eyes closed, letting the fragrance of his sheets envelop his senses. Every aspect of his surroundings seemed to take him back to his high school years, so he struggled to keep it from happening, opening his eyes again and recomposing himself on the mattress. He slowly surveyed every nook and cranny of his bedroom again, until he let his gaze linger on a wooden box next to a trophy from the state's Artificial Intelligence contest.

"Shit..." he muttered to himself.

He knew its contents, he knew that it was perhaps the most dangerous thing to be found in those four walls, he knew that it was possibly the thing that was going to destabilise him emotionally, but he had to get his hands on it again and open it. So he jumped towards that shelf and took the box in his hands, opening the lid and making all the contents scattered on his bed.

Dozens of photographs practically flew out of the box and landed on the bedspread, each one showing a unique moment in Tony's life, the curious thing is that in the vast majority of them you were present, and when you weren't, it was you who had taken them. On the white borders were written different words, in your handwriting, leaving a record of when and where they were taken. "Steve's seventeenth birthday", "First game of the 1987 season", "Christmas 1985", "First day of high school Steve, Murph, Nat and Tony" "Graduation day", "Murph trying to fish with Nat", "Murph's eighteenth birthday", "Beach party", "Murph driving to Portland", "Murph roasting clouds", "Murph..."

A clattering noise pulled Tony out of the halo of longing he had become, that damn automatic mobile phone that was impossible to break away from as it was the only thing that connected him to his future, Stark Industries, began to ring. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but fleetingly disappeared as he wiped them away with the sleeve of his jacket before picking up the phone.

"Hello?" he asked with his eyes closed and his head down.

One of the company's senior managers was behind the phone line from New York, the discussion became heated, they were demanding his presence at the company's New York headquarters as soon as possible. He had been receiving those calls ever since the tragic accident had reached the shareholders' ears, the curious thing is that none of them were to inquire about his state of mind or even his state of mind, so that was how it pushed him over the edge, showing the hidden feelings he had inside.

"My parents are fucking dead and that's all you care about?" he shouted into the phone. "Can't you stop thinking about your own interests for once in your life?"

The device landed against the headboard of his bed, the funny thing is that even so the voice of the major shareholder was still making its presence felt, to which Tony completely beside himself left the room and closed the door generating a deafening echo throughout the house. He knew he was not going to be quiet until he did what these people wanted, his freedom was gone, too many things were gone. From that moment on, he had become one of the most powerful men in the country overnight, and in the same way he had acquired numerous responsibilities that he was not yet ready to assume.

As he dropped in the middle of the stairs, hiding his face with his hands, a strong headache came over him, an accumulation of sensations and feelings prevented him from reacting to calm down, it was then that after a few minutes he went downstairs quickly, heading towards his father's cupboard in the office. During his youth he had approached that cupboard too many times, usually full of alcoholic beverages, but when he went to open it, he was shocked to find it completely empty. He hoped that the location of those bottles had changed to somewhere else, so Tony opted to quickly rummage through any place he could think of where there might be a bottle, but his search was in vain.

"Shit!" he slapped his hand on the kitchen counter. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Almost unconsciously he headed back to his father's office and opened the top desk drawer, where he found a box with a combination, oddly enough the one from his birthday, inside was a collection of keys, he pulled out the one to his red porsche.

He knew and acknowledged that the state of nerves he was in was not the best to get behind the wheel, but he was really desperate, and there was no one to slow him down at that moment. He drove to the first place that came to his mind, as there were not really too many choices in that coastal town that could be found open at that time of night. On the side of Maine Bay, near Seaville harbour, was the Captain Lou's, a perfect place to go for a fresh fish dinner or after-dinner drinks.

He was driving at such high speeds that it took him barely five minutes to pull into the car park, braking so aggressively that he left wheel marks on the road. He got out of the car still wearing his funeral clothes, with his hair completely dishevelled and hiding his eyes under his sunglasses. The place was a fisherman's house situated on an old pier, there was a small porch before entering where a small bell rang as Tony opened the door, he instantly recognised old Lou behind the bar, who was still holding his place as usual. He looked around, taking off his sunglasses for the first time, leaving his brown eyes completely swollen and reddened, which would make an impression on anyone who saw him, but Tony didn't really care at the moment. Still, he was grateful that the place wasn't too rowdy, just two small groups of adults and a couple at a far table. The bar was completely empty, so he took a seat at it, when Lou approached he was a bit perplexed by his presence, but he chose to take it as a matter of course.

"Sorry about your parents Tony," he said wiping the bar right in front of him.

"Give me two of the strongest you've got," he said ignoring her comment.

Just as Lou had poured him two glasses of whiskey, Tony digested them seconds later, informing him to refill them. Tony knew what he wanted, a night to forget, perhaps in the worst place to forget, as it was all memories. While he waited for a refill, as Lou was hesitating, Tony turned his gaze to the far table where the couple were having a drink, since he had entered there was something strange on that table, he thought he had seen someone familiar, he squinted his eyes hoping to sharpen his sense of sight, which was quite impaired at the moment, but it dawned on him. It was you, again, with an unknown boy whose face he couldn't see, as his back was to Tony. Without taking his eyes off you, he quickly gulped down the two glasses of whiskey Lou had poured for him.

"Put the bottle down," he said without paying attention to Lou.

The minutes passed, he was hesitant, irritated, distressed and completely broken inside by the accumulation of situations he had experienced in less than a day, and now he found you there, listening to your laughter, with an unknown guy. It was really the last thing he needed to end the day. The alcoholic solution was slowly affecting his senses, he had barely eaten all day, his only intake had just been four glasses of whiskey and that increased his feeling of drunkenness, along with all his negative emotions. As if something inside him was guiding him to you, Tony picked up the bottle of whiskey, which Lou had definitely been forced to leave on the bar, and staggered up from the stool. His jaw completely rigid, he walked as if an external force was pushing him from side to side, until he reached your table. You could hardly believe your eyes, the same thing happened to Tony, he could hardly believe you were there, next to him, and what hurt him the most was that you hadn't stopped laughing since he practically walked in. That generated the rage that joined with his sarcasm coming out.

"Tony..." you whispered, causing your companion to look up at him.

"Wow! But who do we have here?" a hysterical laugh came from within you. "The prodigious Justin Hammer. Wow... I didn't see you at my parents' funeral, how strange, with how fond you were of my father... I thought I'd see you around."

Yes, your escort that night was Justin Hammer, the cherry on top to make him remember Tony.

"Ah, no, that all that love was just because you wanted to get a good position at Stark Industries," Tony dropped his hand on Justin's shoulder and approached him. "Bingo! Now I'm the CEO, are you going to lick my ass like my father too?" the Stark sarcasm was again booming.

Your gaze flicked between Tony and Justin, who kept a straight face, keeping his composure in the situation. Tony took a small swig from the bottle he held firmly in his right hand, he could barely see your faces as his mind was affected in multiple ways.

"Oh, sorry for the interruption by the way," a burp came from inside him. "Was that a date? Are you two dating?" Tony arched an eyebrow pointing at you respectively. "Oh man, I see you didn't get a position at my company, but you hit the jackpot," he began to laugh. "Hey! I'm glad, you two make a cute couple. Yeah! I mean it, you're perfect for each other."

Tony's bitter words came out under your serious and sorrowful gaze. "Mind you, I have to warn you that in bed..." he began, but you instantly got up from your chair and grabbed his shoulders.

"Alright Tony, I think you've had enough to drink for tonight," you gripped the bottle tightly, in a failed attempt to take it from him.

Tony's impediment to having the bottle taken from him caused him to stumble into the table behind him, causing him to lose his balance, to which Justin Hammer quickly got up to try and hold him down.

"Don't even think about touching me," Tony said in a somewhat aggressive tone with a scowl.

"Tony..." you pleaded holding him by the arm.

The plea that came from between your lips made him react before the situation reached a point where there was no turning back. Hearing his name and seeing your gaze, he felt as if a dagger was stabbing into his heart, another one.

"Yep... I'd better go. Show's over here for today," Tony said, putting on his jacket properly and stumbling towards the bar, leaving two hundred dollar notes behind. "Keep the change, Lou, I'll take the bottle."

Just as he had walked in, well, with a drunken state in his body, he walked out. The door closed behind him, to which Tony then made a difficult attempt to descend the stairs without holding onto the railing at the same time as he pulled the keys to the Porsche out of his back pocket. The five metres to the car seemed like an eternity trying to maintain a dignified posture as he fought against the spinning of his head, but it was just as he was about to open the driver's door that a presence pulled him back.

"I'm not going to let you take the car in this state," Tony smiled broadly with arrogance as he sensed your presence behind him. "I don't want to go to another funeral tomorrow."

"I think your date would love to attend."

His mood was completely bipolar, a minute ago he might have been able to throw Hammer out the window, right now his arrogance was winning the day. Reluctantly you snatched the keys from his hands, heading for the passenger door while holding Tony by the arm.

"Just like that? Honey, I knew how much you loved my car and how much fun we had, but..." a half smile, his half smile that drove you so crazy, both in the positive and negative sense came across Tony's face.

"Shut the fuck up, get in the car and let me take you home so I can sleep soundly tonight," your voice sounded stiff and angry.

"Why don't you stay?" whispered Tony in a poor attempt to show seduction, as his voice sounded drunk and gave off a strong smell of alcohol. "Although I can't promise it's going to be a quiet night."

Your mood wasn't prepared to put up with Tony's nonsense, let alone in his state, so you pushed his head towards the inside of the car. From there, Tony could watch as you said goodbye to Justin, to whom you handed the bottle of Whiskey he had admirably taken from Tony without him even noticing, and then climbed in beside him.

"Tell me the truth, you and Justin Hammer?" the laughter of Tony flooded the place as you started the car. "How quickly you forget the hard knocks of the past."

"You have no idea..." you whispered wryly to yourself.

"Honey, I think you can do better than that," the arrogance was in his voice, which reminded you of times gone by.

You listened to his comments in silence, keeping your eyes on the road, avoiding getting into a stupid argument with someone who was drunk and barely able to cope with the many feelings he had.

"I recognise that look, you're angry," he continued, breaking the silence. "I know, I get it, I've ruined your date tonight. Although I must admit it didn't look very stimulating from the outside, but I'm not one to judge."

"Exactly," you mused.

"I was quite surprised though, I thought that by now you and Steve... well you know, that you would be together, after everything that happened..." those words from Tony caused your right foot to stop dead in its tracks at that instant.

"After what happened?!" the disbelief was in your eyes. "Alright... Look Tony, you're nobody to show up here after three and a half years of showing no signs of life and barge into other people's lives to judge them. So shut your mouth and let me take you home quietly."

Those words of Tony's had struck a chord within you, your eyes became watery.

"You know I didn't come back because I wanted to," Tony said seriously. "But don't worry, I'll disappear from here tomorrow."

"Great. It's what you do best."

Instantly you regretted what you had said. The ride to the Stark residence continued in silence, neither of us taking it upon ourselves to break it. Tony kept his head leaning against the window, eyes closed, head lolling slightly against the glass, but strangely he had found comfort in the position. As you walked into the garden you got out of the car without so much as a glance at her, slamming the door which was what seemed to wake him up and let him know you had reached your destination.

"You know where the phone is," Tony reported, opening the car door and clumsily getting out.

It seemed like hours before he reached the front door, found the keys, managed to choose the right key, inserted it into the lock and opened it. In the kitchen the phone was waiting for you, you were lucky that there was a phone book and it didn't take you long to find the number of the taxi service. In the meantime Tony dropped his body on the sofa.

"The taxi won't be long, I'd better wait for it at the entrance," you approached him.

"Great," Tony said impassively.

The room was spinning around inside Tony's head, he kept his eyes open and staring at the ceiling, it was funny, he thought, he used to get drunk regularly at college parties, but this seemed to have affected him as if he had never tasted alcohol before.

"You know," Tony said without looking at you. "There was always the idea in the back of my mind that things could have been otherwise, if it hadn't been for..."

"Don't finish the sentence. Or you know you'll regret saying it tomorrow," you stopped your steps, as you were already heading to leave, and turned around to look at him. "Look, I don't know what you want Tony. I don't know what you want me to say, and I don't know what you're looking for by stirring up the past with your words. I understand it's been a hard day, maybe the hardest day, and I can't come to grips with what you might be going through," you knelt down beside him. "If you need my help, I've told you before, you know where I am, but please let's not make this night any more complicated," your words were soft, so soft that Tony turned his gaze to you.

There you were again, on that couch, Tony lying down, you kneeling next to him, looking at each other, neither of you would have ever thought that scene could ever happen. Your words were tender, you felt vulnerable in front of him at that moment, and all he really needed was someone to show him affection, even though he didn't know it.

"The last thing I want right now is to argue with you," you whispered, ducking your face. "I'm sorry for yelling at you in the car earlier, and I'm sorry for what I said. I don't want my last memory of you to be like that."

It had been years since the two of you had been within such close distance of each other. Tony found that despite the haircut, your appearance had hardly changed. That mole under his left eye was still there, and the rosy cheeks you'd gotten from the cold still gave him a glimpse of the field of freckles that covered them. The small scar on your chin, which you got when you fell off your bike because he had thrown the football in your direction, was also there. A shudder came over you, causing you to quickly get up from that position and regain your composure, as a hundred memories seemed to come flooding back. Tony made an attempt to sit up, but at that moment the horn of a car saved the situation.

"Oh!" you looked at Tony and pointed to the front door. "I'd better go, I.... Goodnight Tony."

"Goodnight..." mused Tony watching you leave.

Silence took over the house again after the front door closed following your departure. Tony stood there, staring at the emptiness you had left for the second time in him, thinking of a title for your whole story.

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sirius-black-killed-god · 4 years ago

Note

Can we get a small sneak-peak of what's to come in TBWKG? I know you mentioned you were busy, so no worries if you can't share anything at the moment! <3

Yeah, why not. Here’s part of the first scene. My goal is to have the whole chapter up in the next two weeks. :)

The Boy Who Killed God: A Certain Number of Regrets

JANUARY 3, 1972

Remus looked slightly less green when he helped Madam Pomfrey change Sirius’s bandages the next morning.

It was funny, really. Sirius had seen Remus nearly torn to ribbons himself, but Remus seemed incredibly squeamish around Sirius’s injuries; so much so, in fact, that Sirius would have teased him relentlessly for it, had he not been gritting his teeth and cursing his way through the various Aguamenti’s and levitation spells.

Merlin, he thought, when Remus finally let out a relieved sigh and Madam Pomfrey finally retreated to her office. Malfoy really did a number on me.

Really, it wasn’t the equal-and-opposite sort of retribution that was generally expected of these sort of pure-blood grudge matches. Sirius had aimed his curse at Malfoy’s face. It had been severe enough to scar, yes, but the scar was no longer than the palm of Sirius’s hand. And he’d struck Malfoy on the side of his face, eyebrow to chin, an area that could easily be covered by Malfoy’s stupid white-blonde hair.

Malfoy had…

Well, Malfoy had nearly carved Sirius in two, hadn’t he? There was an X etched into Sirius’s chest, from collarbone to hip.

No one could reasonably say that that had been a proportional response.

No one had decried this grave injustice and breach of pureblood traditions, either.

Sirius hadn’t been lying, when he’d told Remus he remembered almost nothing after Christmas day. He knew he must have woken up at some point, because when his father had barged into his room yesterday morning—furious at what he’d deigned to perceive as laziness on the part of his eldest son and heir—Sirius had reached for the inkwells Alphard had given him.

They’d been empty.

All of them.

Which either meant Sirius had, in his delirious fever-dream, somehow managed to choke them down in the days he’d lost, or…

Or, someone had dumped them out.

Utilising his impeccable deductive reasoning skills, Sirius figured it was the latter. His chest certainly didn’t look like anyone had applied dittany before Madam Pomfrey got her hands on him.

At half past eight, a house-elf popped in, bearing two steaming trays of food. Sirius’s mouth watered on sight, and, with a little strategic manoeuvring so as to avoid re-opening his scars, Sirius managed to sit up. Remus muttered a, “Thanks, Speckles,” as the house-elf set the trays on the pillow-wall between them, then disapparated.

They ate in relative silence. Sirius studiously sipped on his piping hot broth—this time containing small bits of beef—as Remus devoured his bacon and eggs. As he finished his soup, and sparing a glance to make sure Madam Pomfrey wasn’t watching, Sirius snatched the last piece of bacon from Remus’s fingers and more or less swallowed it whole.

Remus glared at him, but then sighed. He stood, slid out of bed, and placed the empty trays on the cabinet, before stretching his arms over his head. His neck and shoulders popped, and Sirius tried not to cringe at the sound.

“How are you feeling?” Remus asked, through a mostly-stifled yawn, and really, Remus looked terrible. His curly hair stuck out in every direction imaginable. His eyes were red-rimmed and opened way too wide in an apparent attempt to fight off exhaustion. His uniform was rumpled and untucked, but that wasn’t all surprising given he’d slept in it. The scar across the bridge of his nose was a darker shade of pink, starkly contrasted against Remus’s pale skin and freckles, almost as if—

As if…

Sirius counted the scars. Then, he counted them again.

No. No.

There was no way those were new.

Remus had stayed at Hogwarts over the holidays. He couldn’t possibly—

“Sirius?”

“Hm? Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.”

Remus frowned and raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

Sirius huffed. “Fine. I feel like shit, but considerably less shitty than yesterday. Not going to pass out any time soon, anyway. Hopefully. Most likely.”

Remus didn’t look particularly convinced.

Sirius pushed his luck anyway. “What are the chances of you helping me break out of here before Madam Pomfrey comes to check on me?”

“Not fucking likely.”

“But—“

“Sirius, you almost fucking died.”

“I did not!”

Piercing, half-golden eyes tracked down to Sirius’s chest, over the bandages, then back up to the tattoo, and—

“Fine! Fine!” Sirius crossed his arms over his chest, trying to block it from view. Slightly mortified, he felt himself flush red. He wasn’t used to anyone looking at his chest, his fucking tattoo, least of all Remus Lupin. It… It was unnerving. “Can you at least get me a shirt?”

He wasn’t exactly sure when he’d taken off his own shirt—the exact events of yesterday were more than a little hazy in his mind—but he was certainly tired of not wearing one. It brought unnecessary attention to things he’d rather keep secret.

Remus nodded, then gave him a small reassuring smile. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”

Remus made his way to the opposite end of the hospital wing, crouched by a small, bedside cupboard, rooted a round for a minute, then made a vaguely triumphant noise as he pulled out not just a shirt, but a pair of soft, Muggle trousers as well.

“Here,” Remus said, handing over the clothes. “These should do.”

Sirius eyed the clothes, subconsciously wiggling a little in his own, now-ruined designer trousers. The waistband and front part of his trousers were crusted with quite a bit of dried blood, Dittany, and other unmentionable, yet equally disgusting bodily fluids he’d rather not think too hard about. The trousers were about as far from salvageable as humanly possible.

“Thanks.” Sirius took the proffered clothes and ever-so-slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed. He took a long moment just to breathe.

“Do… Do you need help?”

“No.” Sirius tried not to snap, but he still managed to answer far too quickly and with far too much conviction.

Remus clearly didn’t share any of his false bravado, but he turned his back all the same to allow Sirius the dignity of changing on his own.

Sirius shucked his trousers in one go—they were so caked with filth that they kept their shape, much to his disgust—but kept his pants. His silk pants were equally ruined, but Sirius Black had just enough pureblood formality beaten into him that he wasn’t about to go pantsless in borrowed trousers.

Said borrowed trousers were rather large on him—so much so that Sirius muttered a quick spell to cinch them at his waist. The trousers hung well past his feet, the knees were rather worn, and never had such pedestrian fabric been used to clothe a member of the Noble and Most Pretentious House of Black, but they were incredibly comfortable. Absently, Sirius found himself wondering as to where one might acquire a pair and just what the consequences might be if his mother found out he’d gone to a Muggle tailor.

Sirius shook his head and reached for the shirt. It was an equally worn button-up, with a patch on one elbow and ridiculously long sleeves, but it was made of thick, pliable material that smelled of… starlight and piping hot tea. Right beneath the collar—

No. That couldn’t be right.

Right beneath the collar, stitched ever so carefully, were the initials R.J.L.

“Remus, are these yours?” Sirius asked, before he could think too much of it.

Because if Remus had a spare set of clothes in the hospital wing, that might lead one to believe that not only had Remus been a recent resident of said hospital wing, but the injuries he’d hypothetically sustained had also been grave enough to either warrant a change of clothes or an extended stay in the hospital wing that would consequently necessitate a change of clothes, eventually. Which, really, could not be possible because Remus hadn’t gone home for the holidays, so there was no logical reason for Remus to have been in the hospital wing at all.

Right?

Except the back of Remus’s neck flushed red and Sirius felt his heart stop.

Because Remus had a new scar on his face that Sirius was now fairly certain hadn’t been there when Sirius left.

Oh, how he’d wanted to believe that it was nothing.

Nothing, as it turned out, hardly ever worked in his favour.

“Where’d you get that scar on your face, Remus?”

“Siri—“

“No!” Sirius had half a mind to throw the shirt at the back of Remus’s head.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Remus turned to face him, and Merlin, how had Sirius missed it? The scar across the bridge of Remus’s nose was a pale pink, not faded silver. New. Raw. Fresh.

The fight drained out of Sirius, as though he’d been punched in the throat.

“You were supposed to be safe, Re,” Sirius croaked.

“So were you.” Remus’s jaw tightened, but this time, he didn’t turn away. “Our monsters will always find us, Sirius.”

For a moment, Remus looked as though he wanted to say more, wanted to explain, anything. He opened and closed his mouth, his fingers fidgeting all over the place. Sirius waited.

And waited.

Then, suddenly, Remus froze. Every muscle in his body went rigid. Sirius watched, confused and mildly alarmed, as Remus tilted his head up and turned towards the—

The giant door to the hospital wing was open, just a crack. When and how that had happened without them noticing, Sirius couldn’t be sure.

Remus frowned and… sniffed? Whatever he was doing, it was beyond strange. Sirius watched Remus’s eyes dart around the room, seemingly unable to settle on anything in particular, always on the move, always searching for… something.

“Remus, what—“

Sirius heard the faint shuffle, the soft whisper of fabric, the slightly too-loud breathing.

Except there was no one there.

Readying himself for a fight with whatever ghost or shadowy figure that may or may not have infiltrated Hogwarts, Sirius tugged on Remus’s shirt as quickly as he dared without risking reopening his wounds. He shoved the ridiculously long sleeves up past his elbows, called his magic to the tips of his fingers, and took a defensive stance next to Remus.

Someone—something?—hissed out a faint curse. Then:

“Ow!”

“That’s my foot!”

“Potter, if that’s your fucking hand on my arse, so help me God, I will—“

Sirius and Remus exchanged a startled glance.

“Evans?” Sirius called, to the otherwise empty hospital wing.

“Shit.” That certainly sounded like James.

“Weren’t they s’posed to see us eventually?” Peter, maybe?

“Yes, but not until after we scared the shit out of them.”

“That doesn’t seem very nice.”

“It’s supposed to cheer them up. All they need is a good bit of mischief and—“

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

With a sudden whoosh of fabric, James, Lily, and Peter materialised out of nowhere, not five feet from them.

“What the fuck,” Remus deadpanned, at the exact same moment Sirius gasped, “Is that a fucking invisibility cloak?!”

#tbwkg #sera answers questions #my writing #the boy who killed god #sirius black #remus lupin #wolfstar #Wolfstar fanfiction #hp fanfiction

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jennsmischievousmind · 5 years ago

Text

Fucks not Found

A Matter of Seconds

The second phase started a few days later, One went to recruit a new guy, a former Deltas force.

After meeting at The Haunted House, giving the new guy a tour, you all went to the closest Diner for a late lunch. One introduced the new guy as Seven.

“How come you’re not Seven by the way?” Five asked you, then look at One, who did not acknowledge her question.

“Because she's an eight.” Four shrugged

You scoffed. "Who gave you the right to rate me, skater boy?"

“See, the sarcasm removes 2 points.” He tilted his beer to you. Neither of you mentioned the night at the pool since then but there were lingering glances heavy with meanings.

‘Careful, she's a feminist.” One said feigning to be afraid, focusing on some device in his hands.

“Don't forget, the Feminist can access your bank accounts in a second.”

He points at you with a smirk, acknowledging your point. They resumed the welcoming talk for Seven.

“When you’re dead, you get to stop all the bullsh*t. No more DMV lines, no more shopping Christmas.” Three pulled a face reminiscing his past life.

“Or backstabbing girlfriends. No more getting arrested by the pigs just for being naked or just usual stuff. You know, being naked, getting drunk. Casual stuff.” Four added.

You shook your head, a smirk forming on your face. Four’s old life looked interesting.

Seating at his right on the booth next to his, you glanced at him when they all focused on One’s magnetic little show. He caught you starring so wriggle his eyebrows to you, focusing back on the table ahead you hide a growing smile by taking a sip on your coffee. The guilt had diminished, in the grieving process you had passed from the denial and isolation to a quick depression then acceptance but it was taking time.

One explained the mission, a Coup d’état, replacing the evil shithead Dictator of Turgistan Rovach Alamov, with the Democracy-loving brother, Murat Alamov. Four poked your arm.

“You’re a ten by the way” he whispered.

“Shut up!” you punched his shoulder laughing, his presence and to be honest being in this weird squad was helping, you didn’t trust yourself to go through this alone. They didn’t pity you, per contra, they were pushing you forward, they were caring, each one of them in their own way.

Back at the base, you were showing Four a suite of connectors he would have to do during the mission, but he was clearly not paying attention. The old TV was playing this fucking Beaver show, and there was no way to turn it off, One had rigged the thing!

Four was poking your sides, enjoying his time alone with you. Footsteps approached the trailer, you swat Four’s hand, he smiled letting his tongue lick his under lip. Seven entered the trailer, eyeing the two of you suspiciously. After giving a new passport to Seven, this latter became nosy.

“Hey, what do you know about One?” he looked at his new passport

“We usually don’t ask about One” you responded annoyed at his presence, it’s not that Seven was a bad guy, but he kept asking stuff he shouldn’t so it was annoying.

“He loves Wally the dog," you sighed as Four began to talk pointed at the English mastiff drooling on the floor, "He’s obsessed with this Beaver show. I think he’s an orphan actually. We got a little bet on if you want to put some money in.” You hit his arm, he widened his eyes wondering.

"sciocco" you rolled yours in disbelief. Four always did that, shared too many details and talk so fast you would have to muffle him to make him stop.

“It’s an interesting crew you got here. How many missions’ you guys run?

“Counting Florence?” Four put the passports back in the drawer, brushing your arm on the way

“Yeah.”

“One.” You answered in unison

“One what?”

“Well, actually, no, there was, um, this like mini-mission, so maybe one and a quarter. It was in Sicily. But Florence.., absolute shitshow. I mean, if I wasn’t there, probably more than one of us …dead." Four realized as he said it, he looked at you with an apologetic look. You just look at your laptop trying not to react.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Seven started to agitate.

“I don’t fuck around.” Four said offended. He glanced at you still feeling shitty and fearing your reaction.

“You realize I just buried myself in front of my family and friends, right?”

“Yeah, One told me about that," Four said genuinely interested while you started closing your tabs, "Big military funeral. Guns popping, flags. It’s pretty cool. I mean in my funeral, there were five people there, and two of them left before the end. It is tough watching your mum cry at your grave though.”

“At least you had proper funerals, Seven.” You said coldly, unplugging the battery cable a bit too angrily.

“Yeah.” Seven sighed, "How was it for you Eight?” Seven turned to you.

“It doesn’t matter!” Closing your laptop, you stride over Four’s legs, petting Wally on your way out.

“Wait, fuck, sorry .. Eight I got carried away ..” Four started to get up but Wally did first blocking his way. Good boy.

Waving him off “Yeah, as always.” Your throat dry as that fucking desert, acceptance was not easy.

“What’s her story?” Seven nodded your way

“The cold guy from Florence, .. her twin brother.“

Seven furrowed his brows, watching you mount your fat tire cruiser bike.

Later at night, you were at the dry pool as always.

“You didn’t answer.” His voice cracked through the perfect silence of the desert. The Moon spreading her pale light on him on the other side of the pool.

“About what?”

“Why Eight? You should have been Seven..”

... you took a deep breath, few seconds passed.

“I was born 8 seconds before my brother.”

You heard a whispered “fuck” coming his way.

“I argued with One to get this number. Thinking about it, childish move, but today …, it means more.” You played with the cross around your neck. “My mother gave it to him you know, the cross," you scoffed, "I was incredibly jealous until I learned that she gave him because he needed it the most. You knew him as a joyful teen playing around being sassy, but he’d always needed an anchor and mamma thought God could be his.” Lifting the necklace to the sky, the moonlight started reflecting on the silver cross.

“Mamma knew I wasn’t one to believe, yet I prayed for him. Perdonami mamma” You mumbled to yourself.

“About earlier, I’m sorry…” Four began...

“Enough talking about me!" You cleared your throat, "Naked and drunk huh? Wanna tell me more about that?” you reminisce the talk at the diner.

He laughed getting up from the edge “What, it never happened to you? Never got shit drunk and ran butt naked in the streets?” He straddled your lounge chair near your feet.

“Oddly, I wanted to stay off police radar.” you straightened a bit, he chuckled.

Lifting an eyebrow, he taunted “Drunk on a beach, skinny dipping, never?”

“As funny as it sounds now, I didn’t want to die, especially drowning. How’d you come so far in life?”

“Skills!” you pushed his leg with your foot scoffing at his answer. He rested one hand on your calves, you fall silent enjoying each other’s presence.

“I miss him.” He dipped his head as he said it. They had really become friends in an instant, you remember the first time you arrived at the Haunted House. It’s like they were lost brothers, Four said something about music and they bonded immediately.

Straightening you nudge his leg gently this time, scooting closer, your left leg bend over his lap, he looked over, and you just opened your arms, smiling softly. His hands were so warm around your waist, carefully resting your head on his shoulder, your own arms hugging his broad shoulders. He suddenly tightened his embrace, a sharp inhale escaping your mouth at the sudden action, one of his hand slowly going up your spine setting in your neck. You caught yourself closing your eyes letting your fingers brushed his buzzed haircut, he shivered.

“If I kiss you, you’re not gonna run, are you?” you didn't answer, but your eyes bounced between his lips and his green eyes.

“Please don’t run.” He whispered, his lips faintly brushed yours before you rushed into the kiss as if to catch up the moment you’d lost last time.

"Okay, definitely not running away," he chuckled kissing you again standing up, you still in his arms, he made his way to the bad replica of a Mexican Abode where he had made himself at home.

His kisses trailed down your collarbone, your hands ran down his bare chest, up his toned arms and firm clad buttocks, his mimicking yours on your soft body. Soon his hand was where you wanted it most, biting his neck in response he groaned tilting his head for more.

The pale light of the moon shining on your body through the broken shutters, the cold night of the desert contrasting with the heat emanating from you both.

His warmth in yours, you were writhing under him, he made you reach some highs, eyes never leaving each other’s features, your bare body clad with sweat holding onto each other for dear life until coming undone, all the rage and stress from the missions gone for a moment.

“We could get kicked out …” you were still a bit out of breath, outrageously and gloriously nude.

“What One doesn’t know … can’t hurt us” he mumbled against your shoulder, you half laughed. His fingers trailed up and down your bare spine, “I thought the all deal with being dead was freedom?”

“Feel free then” you smiled smugly, no sooner had he smiled back he disappeared under the sheet, you laughed, pulling the sheet away to watch him...

Fourth Chapter - I need a backdoor

A/N: don’t forget to double tap if you liked it. 🙏

#billy x reader #four x reader #four imagine #6 underground imagine #6 underground four x reader #Ben Hardy #Fucks not Found

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loretranscripts · 6 years ago

Text

Lore Episode 23: Rope and Railing (Transcript) - 14th December 2015

tw: death, infant death, details of decomposition, gore Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

There is the world we all know, with its streets and houses and the bustle of everyday life, and then there is the other world, filled with places that are set away from the centre of our lives, places that most of us rarely interact with. Graveyards are a good example of this, and maybe even hospitals. We go there for specific reasons, but only rarely if we’re lucky, but standing at the farthest edge of society, in a place it has held for thousands of years, is a structure we rarely give a second thought to. Not because it’s unimportant or because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s literally on the edge of our world: the lighthouse. There are few buildings that harbour such powerful meaning and purpose in our world. Without fail though, they have stood watch for millennia, right on the border between safety and danger, between darkness and light, between hope and despair, and yet by their very nature, they are isolated and nearly forgotten. Since the earliest known accounts right up to modern times, the purpose of these buildings has changed very little: to cast a light into the darkness so that sailors might better understand where they are and what’s ahead. They rarely waver, they frequently save lives, and they’re universally understood, which is why we have such a hard time believing that even there, in the narrow walls and never-ending stairs, stories have taken root that chill the mind. There doesn’t seem to be a lighthouse in the world without some whisper of unusual activity, some tale of tragedy or rumour of lost love. Oftentimes, those stories speak of dangers from the world outside; others, though, hint at something worse – a darkness that’s right inside the walls, because every now and then, horror is born where the light is the brightest. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

For thousands of years, sailors around the world have used coastal lights to avoid risky waters and locate safe harbour. In an age before GPS, electrical lights or anything more complex than celestial navigation, the lighthouse was often the only thing standing between a ship’s crew and certain death. One of the oldest lighthouses in the world is the Tower of Hercules in Spain. It dates back nearly 2000 years and is the oldest known functional Roman lighthouse. It illustrates the simplicity of a design that has changed very little over the centuries – a bright light held as high as possible, with room in the building for a caretaker or staff. And it’s that last bit, the staff, that sits at the centre of nearly every whispered tale of lighthouse folklore. After all, without people there would be no tragedy. That’s our legacy as humans – we bring pain and fear with us wherever we go, even to the edge of the world, and the staff who lived inside each lighthouse eventually comes to call the place their home. It’s the centre of their life. Occasionally, though, it also becomes their final resting place. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories of unusual activity inside the walls of lighthouses all around the world. One such place, the Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon, has a reputation that goes back decades. There is a long-forgotten grave on the property that belonged to an infant. According to local legend, the baby was the daughter of the lighthouse keeper and his wife, and when she died, the mother fell into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. Since the 1950s, nearly every keeper on duty has reported unusual activity inside the lighthouse. Screams have been heard in the middle of the night, cupboards that were purposefully left open were often found closed, and objects have been seen to move in front of people. In the 70s, a groundskeeper was washing the windows of the house, inside and out, and while he was in the attic he turned to see a silver-haired woman floating inches above the floor. The man, clearly frightened, bolted from the attic and refused to return, and so he was given permission to clean the outside of the attic window by way of a ladder. In his effort to rush the job, though, the man broke the glass, but rather than go back into the attic to clean it up, he left it. Later that night, the lighthouse keeper was pulled from sleep by the sound of glass moving across the floor above him. When he checked the next morning, he found that the glass had been swept into a neat pile.

Another lighthouse, this one near Fairfield, Connecticut, holds an equally chilling history. Three days before Christmas in 1916, keeper Fred Jordan set off for the mainland in his rowboat, leaving his assistant, Rudy, in charge of the light. Rudy watched Fred row off into the distance, which turned out to be a good thing, because Fred’s boat capsized about a mile from the island. Hoping to rescue his friend and boss, Rudy climbed into a second boat and rowed after to help. Unfortunately, though, strong winds had pushed Fred far from the location of the accident, and Rudy was never able to find him. Two weeks later, Rudy claimed to have seen Fred’s ghost inside the lighthouse. According to his entry in the logbook, a light descended the stairs right in front of him, and then began to act strangely; it moved toward the keeper’s quarters, disappearing into the room. When Rudy caught up, the light was gone, but the logbook had been opened. Rudy checked the date on the page, and it was the date of Fred’s death. In 1942, two boys were fishing near the lighthouse when their boat capsized in an eerie echo of Fred Jordan’s accident. Thankfully, though, a strange man happened to be there, and he pulled both of them to shore on the island, telling them to walk to the lighthouse for help. Once there, the current keeper of the light welcomed them in, gave them both warm drinks and allowed them to dry off. They told the keeper of the man who had helped them, but he knew of no one else on the island who could have done such a thing, and that’s when the boys saw an old picture on the wall and recognised their rescuer in the photo. That, they were told by the keeper, was Fred Jordan. There are countless stories like these, scattered all around the world like the debris of a ship that broke upon the rocks. The ghosts of the past have a way of finding us, it seems. Sometimes, though, it is us who creates the most frightful experiences, not some otherworldly force. More often than not, it is people, not ghosts, who haunt lighthouses.

The Smalls are a collection of raw, lifeless, basalt rocks that stretch out into the Atlantic, roughly 20 miles from the coast of Wales. The first light built there was small and rough, not much more than a house lifted high above the water on half a dozen or so oak and iron pylons, which allowed the waves and wind to pass through. It had been financed in 1776 by a man from Liverpool named John Phillips and constructed by Henry Whiteside. To show just how much faith he placed in the structure, Whiteside himself lit the flame and tended the light for the first winter, but this wasn’t a room at the Hilton, believe me. It was a simple, one-room shack, affixed to the top of a platform with a light room above it. A rope ladder and trapdoor allowed access from below, and a narrow gallery and railing circled the perimeter of the building, which allowed the keepers to step outside and do repairs. It was required that the trapdoor remained closed at all times unless someone entering or exiting the house, because the door itself constituted the majority of the walking space of the room. It was, for all intents and purposes, a treehouse, strapped to a small rock in the cold Atlantic, but it served its purpose, and Whiteside survived the winter without incident. He even devised a system for passing messages to the mainland using the cliché “paper note in a glass bottle” method. After his short time in the lighthouse, Whiteside passed the torch – literally – to a pair of men who would be the professional keepers of the light, and that’s how the Smalls lighthouse operated for over two decades, with a pair of men living in isolation, 20 miles from the mainland. Weeks would go by without contact from others. During the winter, that silence could even be months-long. Now, I’m an introvert, so I have to admit that the idea of weeks and weeks of silence, with piles of books and lots of writing to keep me busy, sounds like heaven, but during the winter of 1801 things were far from Utopian.

Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith were the lighthouse keepers at the time. According to what we know of the two men, Griffith was a young, tall, powerfully-built labourer. Howell, on the other hand, was a small, middle-aged craftsmen who had worked for years as a cooper, making barrels. Both men were from Pembrokeshire, were married, and had families that lived on the mainland, but the thing people remember the most about them is that they didn’t get along. In fact, they hated each other, and everyone knew it. It was said that during their infrequent visits to the mainland, the men could be seen in local pubs arguing constantly. The fights covered a wide range of topics, and witnesses claimed that there was nothing the men could agree on. Sometimes their shouting would get so out of control that the pub would actually empty just to get away from them, but not once were they ever seen to come to physical blows. People expected it, though. During the winter of 1801, the weather contributed to their intense isolation. Relief keepers couldn’t dock at the island. Supply ships tried to reach the rock but failed, and because of that fresh water and food began to run low. They tried to use Whiteside’s method of sending a message in a bottle, but no one ever answered, most likely the work of those same storm-tossed waves that kept away the supply ships. One thing they didn’t run out of, though, was fuel for the light, and so Howell and Griffith stayed busy. After all, those same storms that kept supplies and human contact from reaching them was also threatening the ships that passed through the Smalls. Their duty took precedent. It was most likely in the service of that duty that Thomas Griffith took ill. Some reports say that it was a sickness that laid the big man low; others make mention of an accident, and of how Griffith slipped and hit his head one day while working in the house. Regardless of the cause, every record of the event agrees on the conclusion: after weeks of failing health, Griffith, so young and fit and full of life until then, tragically passed away. And just like that, Howell found himself completely alone, stranded on a rock in the Atlantic with only a corpse to keep himself company.

Howell had a problem on his hands - well, two problems, actually. The biggest of those was that he and Griffith were known to quarrel constantly, so he didn’t have the freedom to simply toss the man’s body into the sea and trust that others would consider him blameless. No, he needed to make sure everyone knew that Griffith’s death was not his fault, and so he kept the body – which led to his second problem. With no burial, the body would be left exposed to the elements, leading to decomposition. It probably didn’t take long for Howell to look around the small room he shared with the corpse to understand how bad an experience that would be, and so he began to plan. Taking apart some of the storage cabinets in the room, Howell constructed a makeshift coffin. He knew his way around a hammer and saw and managed to build something that worked, but Griffith was big and Howell was alone, and, well… he was in a hurry. When he finished, he took the large box, along with Griffith’s corpse, outside onto the gallery that surrounded the house like a porch. It was cold outside, and that would help delay the decomposition, but it was also harsh there. Waves crashed against the lighthouse constantly, and so as a precaution Howell tied the box to the rails. The winter storms had other ideas, though, and one night soon after moving the coffin outside, a great wave washed up and smashed the box to pieces. All the wood and nails and rope that Howell had cobbled together to contain the body of his dead partner disintegrated and fell onto the rocks below - all of it, except Griffith’s body. According to the reports from those who rescued Howell months later, Griffith’s corpse had managed to get tangled in the rope and railing at the edge of the gallery. Even though waves continued to wash over it, and the occasional seagull approached for an inspection, nothing knocked the body free, which meant rather than spend the coming weeks in peaceful retreat, Howell had a front row view of his partner’s decomposition. I have to imagine that there were many moments when he regretted his decision, when he had to fight the overwhelming urge to rush outside, cut the ropes and kick Griffith’s body down to the waves below. It certainly would have ended the nightmare that he found himself living in, but it also would have stirred up the suspicion and judgement that he was hoping to avoid. And so, week after week, month after month, Howell lived in the small room of the lighthouse, tending the flame and maintaining the building, all while the rotting corpse of Griffith stood watch outside. He later spoke of how one of the body’s arms hung loose and would swing and wave toward him. It sounds like the kind of tale Edgar Allan Poe would scratch onto the page at night, echoes of the tell-tale heart thumping monotonously in the background, but for Howell this was reality, and it drove him mad. When a rescue boat finally landed on the small rock almost four months after the death of Griffith, they discovered the rotted corpse on the gallery and an emaciated, shell-shocked Howell inside. He was alive, but the prolonged exposure to the sight of the corpse had wounded him deep in his mind and his soul. It was said that even when he was finally on the mainland and brought into the care of his family and friends, many of them failed to recognise him. Howell was alive, but there was very little of him left inside. Like an abandoned lighthouse, his flame had gone out.

Everyone loves a good ghost story. There is mystery, and horror, and moments that put you on the edge of your seat. They’re great around the campfire or the kitchen table, and they have a way of uniting people. Fear, after all, is a universal language. But not every scary story has a ghost at the centre of it, and while many of the frightening tales from the lighthouses of the world contain some element of the supernatural, perhaps it’s the stories without them that frighten us the most. Isolation, loss, guilt and hopelessness are emotions that can happen to any of us, no matter where we live or what we’ve been through. Maybe that’s what makes the story of Thomas Howell so chilling - it could literally have happened to us if we had been in his shoes, and everything he experienced would have been just as frightening and traumatic to you or I as it was to him. Alone and isolated in tight quarters with dwindling supplies, the rotting corpse of the man he hated, swinging in the wind and rain outside the window of his bedroom, and no sign of a rescue ship on the horizon, day by day, week by week, month by month. It’s a horror that would drive any of us mad. Ironically, though, help had tried to reach him. Ships sailed, people watched, but every time they came close, they turned back, satisfied that everything was alright. It wasn’t the light that convinced them, though. It was something else, something that multiple ships and witnesses confirmed together afterward. Every time they got close they could see, high up on the gallery surrounding the light, the shape of a man. But he wasn’t calling for help or beckoning them to come dock on the island. No, according to those who saw him, this man did nothing but lean against the rail and wave, over and over again.

[Closing statements]

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #podcast transcripts #lighthouse #the smalls #oregon #connecticut #wales #hauntings #dark history #transcripts #23

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mugsywrites · 6 years ago

Note

I’m so sorry to hear about your uncle and I’ll be keeping a good thought for your dad! I’m fascinated with the idea of Ghost Daryl. I was picking Norman from Dark Harbor! Poor soul. I hope Aaron is moving into that cabin!

Thank you for the good wishes! Funeral was today and we’re going home tomorrow, it’s almost over.

Aaron is eventually moving into the cabin, yes. Here’s another teaser:

The Unquiet Grave (con’d)

He’s glad he can’t switch off, because he might have missed when Aaron showed up for the first time.

********************

A murmur goes through the construction crew when a strange little foreign car unlike any Daryl’s ever seen before pulls into the site. Daryl recognizes the Toyota logo but nothing else about the make of the car and it drives home how much time has passed. The Toyota is shiny and looks brand new, sticking out among the rough pickups and beaters that make up the construction crew’s fleet. Then the driver steps out of the car and Daryl forgets all about how much time has passed and how weird cars have gotten.

The guy who gets out of the little Toyota is tall and lithe with legs that go on for miles. He’s also handsome as all fucking hell. A full lower lip, deep set blue eyes, and a straight nose. He has curly hair, a bit of scruff on his cheeks, and the shirt he is wearing is fitted enough that Daryl can get a good look at his body, lean and muscular.

Jesus. It ain’t fair, Daryl’s dead and he doesn’t have a dick anymore or an actual body with actual hormones to get turned on but it still fucking happens. He still involuntarily starts thinking about what it’d be like to slide his hands over the man’s chest, how his scruff would feel scraping against his own as they kissed. What it would be like to have the other man’s dick in his mouth.

Daryl has no idea what any of this would be like and never will; he’d never so much as touched another man that way. Something he bitterly regrets—if he was going to be killed for being a fag anyways he might as well’ve enjoyed himself a bit beforehand. Although a guy like this wouldn’t have ever looked twice at him in life; too handsome and well-educated.

“Mr. Raleigh,” Tobin says when he spots the guy from the Toyota, coming to shake the other man’s hand.

“Aaron, please,” the apparent Mr. Raleigh answers, “I just wanted to come take a look at the place. See how things were coming along.”

“Oh, well, I know things are delayed but the place should be ready to go—“

Mr. Raleigh—Aaron—waves him off, “No, no. We’re just in the area and wanted to visit.”

“Oh, where’s your better half?”

“He drove separate,” Aaron replies, “We’re here to pick up the Jeep.”

‘He?’ Daryl thought, a heart that didn’t exist anymore speeding up.

“Oh good,” Tobin says, “I didn’t want to tell you your business, but that little car of yours isn’t the thing for these mountains if you’re planning to winter up here. Come on, let me show you how we’re coming along.”

Tobin takes Aaron through the site, pointing different things out. Daryl follows closely, staring at Aaron’s face and cataloging every expression. There a lot of them, all different varieties of delight. Even when Tobin goes over the delays, “We’ve had the damnedest luck up here. Some of the guys think the place is haunted.”

“Haunted?” Aaron says, eyes sparkling, “It’s a new construction. Although I suppose this entire country is on an Indian burial ground, so that might have something to do with it.”

Daryl snorts while Tobin just stares blankly and says, “Well, anyhow. Place should be ready to go by Christmas, if you and your fella are wanting to spend the holidays up here.”

“Definitely,” Aaron says, grinning wide. Daryl notices he has a very nice smile, so nice it takes him a second to register that Tobin very clearly said “your fella”.

He drove separate. Your fella.

Daryl still can’t believe it, not until a massive Jeep that is as shiny and new as the Toyota pulls up and a young man gets out. He’s thin, with auburn hair, warm brown eyes, and a smile that rivals Aaron’s.

“Eric!” Aaron says, grinning and waving him over. When they meet Eric’s hand goes very clearly to Aaron’s waist, one hand around his hip. It’s brief and earns them a few dirty looks but neither man pays it any attention. “Tobin here was just telling me this place is haunted.”

“It’s just a story,” Tobin says, turning red up to his thinning hair. “Anyhow, if you two want to look around more just be careful, you hear?” Aaron solemnly tells him that they won’t be staying long.

“Do ghosts lower the resale value?” Eric asks once Tobin is gone.

“Well, we’re never selling this place so it doesn’t matter,” Aaron says firmly.

[STUFF, THEY WANDER DOWN THE RIDGE TOWARD THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL. STAND OVER DARYL’S GRAVE.]

They’re right on top of his bones and it feels too intimate suddenly. Even if the two men have no idea he’s there in either sense. Daryl can’t help it, he can’t stop watching them. The way they smile at each other as they talk, the sparkle in Aaron’s blue eyes. The way they’re being discreet in front of the construction crew but are so obviously a couple.

“I’m so excited, babe,” Eric says.

“Wait until January when we’re going stir crazy and about to kill each other,” Aaron says.

“Haven’t killed you yet. I’m kinda fond of you,” Eric answers. He gives Aaron a scrutinizing look, “You’re nervous.”

“About spending three months sequestered from civilization, or blowing half my advance building this place?”

Eric rolls his eyes, “About the book. It’s gonna be great.”

“Oh, the book,” Aaron says, dropping his eyes and scuffing his shoes against the dirt, “No, I’m not nervous at all.”

Eric doesn’t let him get away with the lie so obvious even a dead guy can spot it, “We went through this with the first one. Look how well things turned out.”

“Yeah, but with a second book you have expectations to live up to—“

“Babe,” Eric says, voice filled with exasperated fondness, “you’ll live up to any expectations. Even if you don’t you won’t suck so bad you can’t make it up with book three.”

“So I’ve got two chances to screw up instead of one,” Aaron replies, still looking at his shoes.

Eric takes Aaron’s hand in his own and squeezes, “Just think, babe. Most people only get one chance to screw up.”

“Well, if I screw up both books then I’ll still have you.”

“Oh no, I’m definitely gonna leave you if your second and third book is shit. I can’t be seen in public with a failed novelist. Even one as hot as you are.”

Aaron grins and raises his head, taking Eric’s other hand. The way they look at each other makes Daryl feel sick with a mixture of emotions. Envy. Want. Sorrow. Stuff he doesn’t have a name for.

Fear.

That one most of all. Aaron and Eric are off to the side but still visible, and a few of the construction workers scowl in their direction. Their looks are dark and have a lot in common with the ones the Savage Sons gave Daryl before beating him to death thirty years ago.

Daryl wants to scream at them, don’t they know what they’re doing, what will happen to them if they just…let it all out like this? There’s bashed in skulls and lonely graves in the woods waiting for guys who…guys who…

To Daryl’s extreme relief Aaron and Eric’s moment passes and they amble back to their vehicles, both of them shaking Tobin’s hand before driving off. The foreman promises that the cabin will be ready to go before the snows come if they have to call in exorcist to chase away any ghosts or demons haunting this site. All three have a good laugh.

When they’re gone Daryl sees a few workers make swishy gestures with their wrists, make comments about “big city fudge packers”. To Tobin’s credit he tells them to keep shit like that to themselves and get the fuck back to work. There’s been too many delays as it is, and at the end of the day money is money. “Even if it comes from ‘big city fudge packers,’” he says, rolling his eyes so far back into his head Daryl thinks they might go tumbling out of their sockets.

After Aaron and Eric’s visit Daryl stops fucking with the site and starts paying attention. He drifts around, ears straining for any mention of the two men who hired this crew to build this cabin. He zeros in on Tobin, the foreman even calls Aaron with progress reports from time to time.

“Things are moving along right on schedule,” Tobin says on one such occasion.

“No sign of the ghost?” Aaron’s voice says from the other end of the line. Daryl is pressed in close to the tiny little phone that looks more like a toy than anything else Tobin has clenched in one fist. He listens to Aaron’s warm voice and feels something he never allowed himself to while he was alive.

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Tobin replies darkly, and Daryl allows himself to smile a small, feral smile.

Daryl is behaving himself for the most part; he doesn’t want any construction delays. He wants Aaron and Eric to come back as soon as possible. During his eavesdropping on various conversations he’s pieced together what Aaron and Eric’s plans are and why they’re building this cabin. Aaron’s a writer, a real one. None of the men have read his book but Ed Peletier says his wife did and wouldn’t shut up about it, says Aaron was on Oprah (whatever that was) and everything. Peletier sneers that big city queers must need to make their own special cabins to write their fancy books. There’s a round of speculation on which room will be the dildo room, if the basement bedroom is where the two homos will put their dungeon. It’s not important; what’s important is that Aaron and Eric are going to be coming up to this cabin for the entire winter, that Aaron is writing a book and neither man has to work and will be around all day. No construction workers to play it cool around, Daryl can watch them smile and hold hands and do all the things he never allowed himself to do while alive.

Even if he’s behaving himself he can still make the lives of the workers who called Aaron and Eric “big city fudge packers” a complete and utter hell without affecting the construction delay. He goes after those with interest, and it’s incredibly satisfying. Peletier, being the worst, becomes Daryl’s special project.

[STUFF, HE CONCENTRATES AND DOES SHIT LIKE LOCK SIMON OUT OF HIS CAR]

Right before the end

**********************

The house is finished before the first snows come. Furniture is moved in. He sees Aaron and Eric again, moving in their shit. They spend one night at the cabin before heading back to Atlanta. Daryl watches them do everything except for when they go to the john.

[STUFF]

He watches them get ready for bed, both men stripping down to their boxers. Daryl’s eyes are drawn helplessly to the sight of Aaron’s bare torso, eyes crawling over his exposed skin down the path of dark hair that leads to the waistband of his boxers.

Aaron, Daryl notes, has what looks like a pretty big fucking dick if the bulge in his boxers is anything to go by.

Daryl’s physical body was eaten by the worms decades ago so he shouldn’t be able to feel sweat pricking against his brow. He doesn’t have to breathe anymore so he shouldn’t breathing heavily. His mouth shouldn’t be going dry. Most importantly his own dick definitely shouldn’t be starting to get hard.

This doesn’t change the fact that this is exactly what is happening. Or at least what it feels like is happening.

Eric comes up behind Aaron and wraps himself around the other man’s back. Slides a hand down the front of Aaron’s boxers. Aaron moans, arcs his hips forward and Daryl needs to get out of there right fucking now.

#Anonymous

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prixmiumcontent · 6 years ago

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Doctor Who - “The Unquiet Dead” - S01E03

A Meta Post/Review

Revised 01 December 2019.

Summary

In Cardiff, an undertaker and his servant deal with the fact that their deceased clients keep coming back to life and even kill the living. The Doctor tries to show Rose the TARDIS’s backwards-in-time feature by taking her somewhere more tourist-friendly, but the TARDIS knows best and brings them into the center of the drama. The Doctor, Rose, and reluctant ally Charles Dickens try to help Gwyneth, the undertaker’s servant, make sense of the “sight” which she has possessed all her life and what it might have to do with the ghostly, gaseous creatures who have haunted the funeral parlor and the surrounding areas.

Content Below

Analysis

Arbitrary Ratings

Content Warnings for Parents and Kids (Depending on Your Age)

Analysis

The Thesis Statement

Having shown Rose (and the audience) aliens and monsters and the possible future, the third episode of Doctor Who takes Rose to the past. The first three episodes of New Who are very clearly formulaic to a point that they might be viewed as something of a three-part pilot for a new audience. It is very clearly outlined in order to show the audience something of the breadth that the show can and will offer. There are aspects of the first two episodes that I personally find just a little bit difficult to watch now. They have obvious budget constraints, strange costume and effect choices at times, and several early installment hiccups that would be ironed out even by the end of Series 1.

If and when I am introducing New Who to a friend/new viewer, I always ask them to be ready to bear with me through Episode 5 and discount how silly and terrible aspects of Episodes 4 and 5′s villains are, too. However, I think that this episode is really one of the first that has aged pretty well in spite of any of its early installment difficulties. Now on to the episode itself.

Christmas in Cardiff

The cold open of this episode is more charming to me now than it was when I first watched it. Perhaps it is simply having more context for what a difficult place the United Kingdom was during the 19th Century. It is a place that seems riddled with ghost stories and scary tales in great part because of how difficult living was in the region when the Industrial Revolution had utterly changed the world, entrenching its own ills and advancements without any hope of going back.

One of my favorite things to do when I don’t feel like looking at a screen is to listen to podcasts, and I often favor true crime and mythology. I can’t tell you how often the two intersect in Victorian Britain, so I feel that this setting is a really good choice for Doctor Who to establish its time traveling element backward in time.

The opening scene with Mr. Sneed, a funeral parlor owner, comforting one of his clients upon the death of his grandmother is also something that is uniquely personal to me. Before becoming a teacher, I worked at a cemetery for a while. Anyway, one of the things that stands out to me as possibly unique is how obvious they make it that the reanimated Mrs. Redpath snapped her grandson’s neck. For some reason, this seems much more realistically deadly than some of the deaths that have followed in the show even though the series has a consistently high body count.

While I tend to balk at the idea that Doctor Who in its current incarnation has ever been a children’s program primarily, I appreciate the fact that upon Gwyneth’s introduction the different social norms - the class difference between her and her employer and the way in which he patronizes her in a sexist way in particular - are made clear in a way that seems like it would be easily accessible to younger audience members without a sophisticated understanding of the history of any of those things. It is unsettling without being cartoonish and absurd beyond what it should be.

The special effects in this episode with the Gelth and reanimated corpses themselves may not in any way compare to what Doctor Who has been able to accomplish and expect since, but I think what those visuals lack the set and set pieces and audio make up for. I find the old woman’s scream layered in with the childish cry of the Gelth voice inside her absolutely unnerving.

Again I would muse that Doctor Who isn’t something that I really expect many small children to be interested in on their own except for moments at a time. However as a family program I think that it often has pretty sophisticated storytelling that holds up to deeper analysis. Later in the episode, a person who is viewing the story in a wholly moment-by-moment way may easily sympathize with the Gelth and wonder if the Doctor’s curious, guilt-ridden compassion for them is correct. However, if one simply pays attention to the opening scene before the Doctor and Rose ever arrive (with the TARDIS tugging them in the direction they should go, after all), one can see that there is nothing benevolent, lost, or curious about the entity reanimating Mrs. Redpath’s corpse.

While she goes through the motions that Mrs. Redpath had intended to take before her death - attending the Dickens performance - it would seem that this is either simply a faulty connection between the Gelth and its human vehicle or something of a test run with the Gelth interfacing with the human brain it now controls like a user interface. What is most haunting about this whole thing is that there isn’t any sense that this woman is getting to fulfill a wish in any meaningful way from beyond the grave. Rather, something has coopted her unfulfilled plans after having mercilessly murdered her grandson. There isn’t any symbiosis between anything that remains of Mrs. Redpath in her body after her soul has gone. This is something that a keen viewer (or simply one who has seen it far too many times like myself) might pick up on, but it shows that there are layers to the narrative that are accessible to any age or caliber of viewer with reason.

The Greater Good

As an aside, since I imagine if you’re reading this post you are familiar with or curious about the episode, I want to give a little layman’s refresher on what “bodysnatching” is, given that Mr. Sneed tells Gwyneth that his is what they are about to do. Stripped down, this episode is literally about the ethics and morality of bodysnatching in a modernized and scifi-ized context. I recently heard a refresher in a podcast (Lore if you’re wondering), so I’ll pass it on to you: Bodysnatching was a practice that took place during the early days of medical research and large-scale medical schools. The term “operating theater” is sometimes used into the present day, but if there is an observation room it tends to be sealed behind a window in order to keep the operating room sterile. However, in an age before sterilization was fully understood or practical to do, one way in which medical students would learn about surgery and, more often, the inner workings of the human body would be to watch a more experienced physician perform surgeries or dissections of corpses in a room that literally looked like an amphitheater with a small stage.

One has to remember that prior to imaging technology that we have today, the only way to understand what was going on inside the body was to literally see the inside of a body. Therefore, corpses were in high demand in the training of young medical students. However, laws concerning the remains of law-abiding, typically Christian citizens after death prevented teaching doctors from getting access to the number of corpses they needed. This is where bodysnatching came in.

Bodysnatchers were not necessarily conventional grave robbers. In fact, some would even return clothes and the material riches buried with the deceased to the coffin in order to avoid prosecution as best they could. Their profit was made primarily or entirely through the shady deals that hospitals and medical schools made with them out of desperation, as the only legally available bodies were those who were the unclaimed who had died in workhouses and the bodies of executed murderers. Eventually, some alterations to the law which allowed for the donation of bodies made the need for this practice disappear, but there was a time when medical doctors had to make the choice between what they viewed as the most productive and helpful of two evils.

I think that the clear connection between that and the plot of this episode is as plain as day upon informed viewing.

Except for you.

Before the Doctor and Rose become aware of what is happening outside the TARDIS, we witness a bonding moment between the two of them. Rose is still wearing the same clothes from when she ran away with the Doctor, and one gets the impression that they have been having some issues with the TARDIS since they got back inside after getting chips at the end of the last episode. They haven't gone anywhere else. The Doctor is trying to wrangle the TARDIS into cooperating with backwards time-travel, but for some reason, she is not cooperating as well as she did with going into the future. One might assume that perhaps it is because she knows where they need to go even if they don’t yet.

The Doctor intends to take Rose to Naples, Christmas Eve, 1860. At first, he believes that he has succeeded. The Doctor is clearly in impress-Rose-and-convince-her-to-stay mode, full tilt. She has forestalled any decision about going home, and so he is allowing himself to hope that she will stay.

We have not yet had any complex analysis of why he wants this, but we do know that Nine tried traveling on his own and came back for Rose in particular. While I am not an Old Who expert by any means, we all know that he has had a history of traveling with companions. Generally, the Doctor in New Who is reluctant to take on new companions, but he has a moment which proves him wrong about a particular person. In the case of Nine, though, we don't so much have a moment as a process with his wanting Rose to stay with him, longer and longer each time.

For her part, Rose shows that she has the time travel bug badly when she responds to the idea of visiting a Christmas that has passed long ago. She holds reverence for the fact that something comes and goes and is over forever for everyone except the Doctor. She wants to be a part of this life, no matter what it might cost her, in this moment. After this and her commentary about learning about the expansion of the sun on television in the previous episode, it is once again clear that for whatever she lacks in certification and credentials, Rose is a brilliant person with a thirst for knowledge. She wants to see living history. She wants to experience the world around her.

In Doctor Who Confidential, I recall RTD mentioning that the Doctor and Rose were written to be soulmates of a sort from the beginning, and I think that this more than anything is what he probably meant. It isn’t just about personality quirks, but it is about that itch that Rose has to run away from her ordinary, expected lifestyle to touch the pulse of history unfolding and mattering around her that makes her “like the Doctor” and a match for him in that regard.

Healthy Skepticism

When the Doctor and Rose go for a walk in Cardiff and hear the screams coming from Charles Dickens’s performance as the reanimated Mrs. Redpath makes herself known, the Doctor and Rose go about investigating the problem in distinct ways. The Doctor does have a concern for the safety of others, but he goes directly to the highest vantage point and tries to identify the source and to ask the person who appears to have the most authority. Meanwhile, Rose notices the old woman and the undertaker and his servant and goes after them. She is concerned about the welfare of someone she has picked out of the crowd as needing help. Both of these are important roles, but the fact that Rose does this when she is traveling with the Doctor points out again how he needs someone like her to live up to his calling and reputation.

I had never really considered how both of Rose’s first outings involve her getting trapped in a room in some way. I can’t decide if this is an homage to the old show, a cautionary tale, or simply meant to show that there is a learning curve for traveling with the Doctor. It seems a bit odd that it happens in two episodes in a row, but when Rose awakens in the funeral parlor with Mr. Redpath coming back to life as well, she goes back to her customary cautious skepticism. She tries to go for the most ordinary, rational conclusion first, but she much more quickly accepts that she is dealing with zombies than she did with the shop window dummies in the first episode.

I cannot attest to how well Charles Dickens is portrayed in this episode as I don’t know as much about him as some other historical events and figures. However, I must say that the depiction is sympathetic and interesting. I really enjoy his presence in the episode, and the Doctor’s fawning over him is a cute bit of characterization that shows the Doctor’s ability to compartmentalize even when he does care about the present danger.

It is also nice to have a historical figure so known for pointing out social ills and being a skeptic of spiritualist frauds in a story that points out something that seems like it points to something of that nature going on. I appreciate that the story acknowledges the more rational sides of what could be even when it is presenting something that is more fantastical.

The debates that take place in this episode between the Doctor and Dickens and the Doctor and Rose, on a meta-level, primarily have to do with establishing a balance between skepticism and belief and between standard morality and the willingness to push those boundaries. Each person in either argument can be seen to have a point, and one of the things I admire the most about Doctor Who is the way in which it allows people of all different backgrounds to carry some of their own presuppositions and worldviews with them while challenging others. While the series itself tends to err on the side of science and rationality and in not allowing faith or religious belief to be an “opiate” that allows people to ignore present dangers and concerns, it does not take on such a cynical point of view that the most cynical and skeptical person in the room is always right.

In this case, the Doctor seems very resistant to the idea of an afterlife as Gwyneth perceives it, even though he has no problem with the fact that the Gelth need corporeal bodies in spite of existing outside them. While he knows that there are multiple universes and dimensions, he is dismissive of the idea that Gwyneth’s parents sent these “angels” to look after her. And this gives way to the Doctor cynically using what he believes to be Gwyneth's (primitive?) beliefs to further an agena. While he can be a tolerant and open-minded person, in this case Nine isn't having any of that.

The Doctor uses Gwyneth’s beliefs to manipulate her. He conveniently ignores those aspects of the narrative she presents about the Gelth and her understanding of them that he knows are objectively false but which further his purpose of giving these “pitiable” creatures the opportunity to live.

To be fair, one of the reasons he is so insistent about doing this is because they inform the Doctor that they lost their corporeal forms during the Time War. He feels personally responsible for what they have lost. He sees a resource in the empty human bodies of the dead, and he comes to a compromise in his mind. He plans to allow them to go through with their plan of using the reanimated dead and then to take them to a place where such an advanced race might be able to build new and proper bodies for themselves. Therefore, he allows Gwyneth to believe that she is helping “angels” that her parents sent from the afterlife to comfort her.

The Gelth themselves also use emotional manipulation in order to convince the Doctor and Gwyneth that they are pitiable creatures. They utilize children’s voices and a visage that looks very much like the shape of a human child when they manifest into a gaseous form. This comes in spite of the fact that we have already seen that they will kill before they will verbally communicate with humans. They have ingratiated themselves with Gwyneth and have comforted her. They have learned about her life and needs because they need her in order to establish a physical link within the rift that has opened up between their part of the universe and Cardiff. In spite of the fact that longterm exposure to the spacetime rift has allowed Gwyneth to develop an apparently-supernatural insight into the minds of others around her, among other things, she has had no ability to discern the true, more violent intentions of the Gelth.

Rose takes a different angle, but she is equally as skeptical about Gwyneth’s qualifications to make her own decisions about this circumstance. Rather than allowing Gwyneth to “believe what she needs to” in order to get the job done, Rose wants to protect her from her naivete that is based on the cultural differences between a woman of Rose’s time and one of Gwyneth’s. While this point of view may be more immediately sympathetic to me, it is also making the point that not meeting a person where they are and acknowledging the insight they do have, in spite of any blindspots or ignorance, is also dangerous.

Last but not least, we have Dickens who is skeptical about the very existence of something other-worldly influencing the physical and real world he knows. This is in spite of a few references to the fact that he perhaps holds to some religious and/or metaphysical beliefs. He resists the rampant abuses of the spiritualism fad of the time while also allowing himself to be convinced through empirical evidence. Charles is the character in the story who gains the moth “faith” in something that he cannot understand or make sense of completely, and he comes out of it with a renewed sense of vigor in his person and life in spite of the fact that he is nearing its end.

Gaslighting (not really I'm just making a joke)

Now, back to the way the Doctor manipulated Gwyneth and its consequences. Because the Doctor missed every possible sign that the Gelth were up to no good in a much more deliberate, calculating way than the Nestene Consciousness was, the Gelth manage to begin pouring themselves through the portal Gwyneth has become for them. The Doctor and Rose have to lock themselves in a sort of cage? I don't know what that is for in a funeral parlor. Maybe it is a closet, but it has a weird, barred door. They are left alone, and if not for external help, the Doctor and Rose would have both been overtaken by the Gelth. Rose is again faced with the possibility of her imminent death, and again she says that she is glad she met the Doctor rather than allowing herself to dissolve into regret. She doesn't want to die, but she seems to be continually convincing herself that even dying like this is better than not having done it at all.

I lived and breathed Doctor/Rose from the first few weeks I was into Doctor Who. Ever since I felt like I had a footing in the canon, though, I have always found that fellow-shippers always seemed to view the Doctor and Rose's relationship through rose-colored glasses (pun intended or no). I think that one of the most interesting parts of it is how it experiences very heartfelt, sweet growth through frankly insane, impulsive actions. It isn't an especially normal love story by a long shot, and I don't really understand the compulsion to act like it is, but I digress.

Luckily, Dickens decides to come back after having run away in terror. He figures out that the creatures are made of gas and that they can essentially pull them out using the gas system in the funeral parlor. Planet, Doctor, and Rose saved again. Then, the Doctor is faced with figuring out how to clean up the mess he has made through listening to his survivor's guilt instead of common sense and assuming that he knew better about intergalactic politics than everyone else in the room - regardless of the context and stakes. He tries to insist that Gwyneth send the Gelth back, and when she does not immediately comply, he again calls upon her beliefs in a way that he clearly does not himself espouse. He tells her that if her parents could look down and see her that they would help her and want her to do it. He knows that she has realized that the Gelth have manipulated and lied to her, but he still goes about trying to manipulate her. Poor Gwyneth simply could not catch a break from anyone.

The Gelth pulled this trick on all of them when they simply remained silent to demands for promises of safety, to the Doctor’s plan for helping the “few” of them, and so on. This lack of good faith conversation is shown on “both sides” - when it is intended to shelter and protect someone and when it is deliberately malicious. In both cases, it still causes some harm.

When Dickens returns and the Doctor once again tries to manipulate Gwyneth in order to save her and to, by extension, save everyone, it is still clear that the Doctor isn’t the one who is in control. Rose tries to insist that she stay behind because she has come to care about Gwyneth, but the Doctor successfully pleads that both the humans go without him. He even uses the phrase “I won’t leave her while she’s still in danger,” which one might argue is yet another emotionally manipulative phrase, but I tend to think that it is a very raw, true statement about how the Doctor must view life and death in some of the circumstances he finds himself in.

More things in Heaven and Earth

The Doctor is shocked when he works out that Gwyneth has been physically dead the entire time she had been interfacing with the Gelth. They killed her, and yet she maintained control of her mind. While she was literally their bridge, she manages to hold them and push them out. I wonder how much of that ws intentional or a matter of narrative convenience. In any case, it shows that the Doctor is also wrong about the existence of a person’s intentionality and personhood “after death,” at least in this one particular case. When he rejoins Dickens and Rose outside and recounts this to them, Dickens is the one who reminds him to have an open mind even when the truth seems regressive or irrational, showing that he has learned his lesson. The Doctor needs to learn his own lessons too, sometimes.

While this isn’t a Christmas special as such, it also introduces the fact that there is a certain special, forgiving nature to the Christmas season even in this universe and regardless of why. I think that this episode is affirming regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of easy-faith or easy-skepticism. It shows that the best way to approach something is through honest searching. That is why Gwyneth is a tragic hero in this episode. No matter what anyone else around her was doing, she was approaching her attempts to understand from an authentic place. She listened without a lot of presuppositions, and that was her strength. In the end, it cost her her life but let her keep her soul.

Arbitrary Ratings

Story - ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Characterization - ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Aesthetic - ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Overall - ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Considerations for Watching with Parents or Kids (Depending on Your or Their Ages)

This episode is actually pretty family-friendly except that it includes a lot of death. Lots and lots of death and dealing with corpses. If you feel your parent or child can handle that, then you’re probably safe.

Support

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#doctor who #doctor who meta #rose tyler #the doctor #ninth doctor #nine #gwyneth #mr. sneed #doctor who series 1 #prixmiumtext #prixmiumtextdw #review #long post

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mistleto-3 · 7 years ago

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Awakening: Part 10

When another crisis looms, Mikoto has to learn to navigate a world of Kings as a regular man.

AU in which Mikoto and Tatara survived the Colourless King incident.

Pairing: Mikoto/Tatara

3,255 words. CW for canon-typical violence, mentions of depression and other mental health issues. CW especially for anxiety attacks/PTSD in this chapter.

Apologies for the delay in updating - I was busy with Mikototsu week, and then busy over Christmas, and then January deadline season was kicking my ass.

Previous part | All parts | Next part

AO3 | Ko-Fi

It hadn’t been long since Anna’s birthday, but it felt like all of a sudden, the lull after the opposition to Homra reforming had shattered, and it seemed there was some new commotion every few hours. Rumours were that the Blue clan had it worse, but the change of pace had still been somewhat jarring. At the moment, though, there was a brief period of calm, and the Red clansmen had gathered to chill out in the bar as they had done so often before Homra had dissolved. Being busy was kind of nice, though - things almost felt like they were getting back to how they’d been before Homra dissolved.

“Hey, Yata-san… Looks like Anna and Tatara fell asleep,” Rikio pointed out. The two of were curled up together on one of the couches in the bar, with Anna’s head resting on Tatara’s arm.

“Guys, don’t just stand there, put a blanket on the little lady,” Yō interjected, picking one up to drape it over the sleeping pair.

“Yeah, it is getting pretty chilly these days,” Masaomi agreed.

“Chitose… I heard you and Dewa had a scuffle with the Blues last night,” Misaki asked.

Yō rested his arm on his friend’s shoulder, clasping a cigarette between his lips as Masaomi pulled out a lighter to ignite it for him.

“Oh, that was just a run-in with the pretty Lieutenant,” Yō explained.

“I guess they wanted to save face. But they were on our turf so we couldn’t back down. In the end, Kusanagi-san stepped in to bring things under control,” Masaomi added.

“I see.”

“Eric and I also came close to clashing with the Blues,” Kosuke interjected from the other side of the room. “At least it didn’t blow up into something bigger.”

“Those Blues had been on constant alert lately and keep poking around,” Eric said.

“You guys too?!” Misaki cried, exasperated.

Meanwhile, Shouhei turned to Saburouta, leaning over him and resting his hand on his shoulder to peer at the screen of the laptop he appeared to be concentrating intently on. “Hey, San-chan, what’re you up to?”

“Hmm? I’ve been noticing a lot of activity on the net…” Before he could elaborate on what exactly he meant, something appeared to catch Saburouta’s attention, and his brow furrowed. “Hey, what’s this?!”

Shouhei leaned forward, staring at the screen as he made a noise of apparent shock.

“What is it, Shouhei?” Misaki asked.

Whatever it was, it seemed to have him deeply perturbed. “Take a look…” he said, and the rest of the clan gathered around the screen of the laptop, muttering. They fell silent at the sight of the video on the screen, though.

Pixelated text reading “Homra is over” unravelled across the screen, then vanished, replaced by a Homra insignia, once again in a pixelated style, as though it was from some retro games console. It was accompanied by almost eerily cheerful-sounding chiptune music. Over the top, brightly coloured writing reading “the end of Homra” rose from the bottom of the screen, and then the screen turned briefly black once more. Immediately after, a short, video-game style animation played, showing the sprite of Tatara on the roof of a building, being shot by another sprite who was clearly supposed to be the Colourless King. Misaki glanced back over his shoulder at Tatara, who was blessedly still asleep.

“The weakest clansman really was the weakest…” the text appeared across the top of the video, and then the image changed once more to a sprite of Mikoto wearing a crown, approached once more by the Colourless King’s sprite. There was a flash and the Colourless King vanished, and Mikoto’s sprite flickered and got smaller like a character in a game who’d lost a life. The crown was gone from atop his head.

More text reading: “…But the foolish King became even weaker!”

The screen went black again, and large blue lettering reading: “KING HAS FALLEN, HOMRA IS DEAD” appeared, followed by the text: “GAME OVER.” The video finished on that screen.

There was a moment of quiet after the clip ended as the clan collectively seethed, almost too angry to speak.

Rikio was the first to break the silence, pulling out his phone and dialling Izumo. “Someone should go tell Mikoto-san,” he said as the phone rang.

When Izumo picked up, Rikio put him on speaker. “Kusanagi-san, we came across something…”

“Was it the video?” Izumo cut in.

“How did you know?”

“It was just broadcast across the city.”

“It was what?!” Misaki cried.

“Yata-san, you’ll wake…” Rikio started chiding, but as he turned to face the pair napping on the couch, he saw Tatara was already sitting up, and Anna’s eyes were open.

“Why does everyone have such serious expressions?” Tatara asked, still drowsy.

“Come see…” Rikio said gravely, and the two of them got to their feet and headed over to the screen of the laptop that Rikio was gesturing at. Saburouta hit play once more.

“I’m on my way back now, get Bandou on trying to track where the signal is being broadcast from,” Izumo said.

“On it,” Saburouta replied, waiting for Anna and Tatara to finish watching the video.

“Don’t do anything until I get back; we need to work out how to respond to this.”

The video’s end screen flashed up on the monitor as the clip finished its second playthrough, and Tatara sighed lightly, as though it was nothing more than a minor annoyance. “It seems like they’re just trying to get under our skin, like they want to provoke us. I agree, we should figure out how to deal with this in a measured way, otherwise we’re just playing into their hands. Does Mikoto know?”

As if on cue, the door that led upstairs to the apartment above the bar opened, and Mikoto stepped through. “Know what?” His hair was somewhat fluffy, like it’d just been blow dried, and it hadn’t yet been styled.

“Have you seen the video?” Tatara asked.

“It came on the TV.” There was a tension in his posture that betrayed his irritation with the situation.

Misaki, who appeared to have been stewing in his anger, finally reached bursting point and blurted: “We can’t just let them walk all over us! People have tried to make us mad before, and we’ve shown them that it’s a mistake, because when we get mad it ends badly for them, not for us!”

“It could be a trap,” Rikio pointed out.

“Our actions are up to Anna,” Tatara said gently.

She nodded, having remained in pensive silence since the video ended. “They want to provoke us, and we shouldn’t do what they want. We’ll pay them back for their disrespect, but we should wait for Izumo and decide what to do. We shouldn’t play into their hands.”

“I have the location,” Saburouta cut in. “It was really easy to find.”

“Isn’t that a bad sign? Do you think they’re trying to lure us into a trap?” Kosuke asked.

“It could be,” Akagi replied.

At that moment, Izumo opened the door, looking slightly harried, obviously having rushed to get there. “What’s the situation?”

“We’ve located the source of the feed, but it was suspiciously easy,” Tatara said.

“Depending on who it’s comin’ from, it’s either a trap or they’re just sloppy. My instinct’s the former,” Izumo said. “I doubt it’s from any o’ the smaller scale resistance we got when we first started reforming. They don’t have the resources for this kinda thing, and they’ve quietened down since we taught ‘em a lesson.”

“Who else could it be?” Eric asked.

“Jungle, maybe. Sceptre 4’s Lieutenant says they’ve been having issues with the Greens. If it’s them, it’s almost certainly a trap.”

“Well, it’s the only lead we have…” Tatara pointed out.

“Anna, what do you want to do?” Izumo asked.

“We can’t ignore the lead. We should send a scout ahead,” she said, looking at Misaki. “But the rest of us shouldn’t be far behind, so we have the manpower to fight if it is a trap. Show them we’re too strong to be messed with, and if they provoke us, it will only end up burning them.”

“I can do that,” Misaki replied enthusiastically.

Anna nodded her consent, and he rushed to grab his skateboard as Saburouta sent him the address, and then she glanced up at Mikoto, as though to ask if he approved of her actions. He gave her a small nod of endorsement, and the clan prepared to leave.

As they headed through the doors of the bar, Mikoto said quietly to Anna: “Ya don’t need my approval for everything. You’re your own King. Even if you do things differently, maybe that’s better.”

“Okay.”

“…You’re doin’ a good job,” he added.

Anna smiled faintly. “Thank you.” She paused, then added. “You aren’t weak.”

He lay his hand on her shoulder affectionately, and what could have been the ghost of a smile flickered over his lips.

When the clan arrived at the location, it seemed Saruhiko had also been sent ahead of Sceptre 4, and predictably, he and Misaki were already locked in a heated scuffle.

“Yata, that’s enough!” Izumo called as they entered the building, and at almost the same time, Seri’s voice rang from the opposite side of the foyer as Sceptre 4’s special forces squad arrived.

“Fushimi! Stand down!”

The two disengaged with discontented grumbles, and re-joined their respective clans. As they did so, Tatara noticed Mikoto looking around out of the corner of his eye.

“What?”

“We’ve been here before. While you were in hospital,” he explained.

“My my, you all seem quite upset, aren’t you, Homra?” Reisi said from the other side of the room, adjusting his glasses.

“Damn right!” Misaki shouted. “Mikoto-san and Totsuka-san were slandered. We’ll make ‘em pay!”

“Kusanagi Izumo, we want you to back down,” Seri said. “We will deal with the Green Clan.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Awashima, but Yata’s right. Those idiots have to find out the hard way that messing with any of us means getting burned. And I mean literally,” he replied, pulling his lighter out of his pocket and toying with it between his fingers. “That’s the only way Homra will be satisfied.”

“If you put it that way, we’ve been taken for fools too,” Reisi reasoned. “This choice of place is no coincidence, don’t you think?”

Mikoto chuckled humourlessly.

Suddenly, Anna tensed. “They’re here!”

Reisi rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Don’t watch from behind the lines; show yourself.”

As he spoke dozens of figures stepped forward, looming from the balconies higher in the building – the upper floors were teeming with men in black and green masks, who seemed to outnumber Homra and Sceptre 4 put together 4 to 1. Most of them held PDAs in their hands.

“The bait was so obvious, and you took it!” an electronic-sounding voice called down to them.

The ambush began muttering excitedly amongst themselves, something about points, and the names of Red and Blue clansmen drifted down to them. The two clans in the foyer prickled with mistrust, anticipating a fight.

Another distorted voice broke through the mumbling with a gleeful shout: "So anyway, we have nothing against you guys, but it's all for the points! So die for us, will ya?"

The masked men were laughing, almost jubilant, as they pulled what looked like green parrot plushies from their pockets. It was eerie how eager they seemed to try to kill dozens of complete strangers, all for the sake of points on some phone game? The realisation of just how twisted Jungle's philosophy was settled uneasily over the two clans in the foyer as the Greens threw the parrot toys down onto them. As they hit the ground, they swelled as though they were about to burst, but before any harm could be done, the Blue aura swept outwards to envelop the members of both clans, knocking the toys away and forming a protective cocoon around the clansmen. Dozens of ear-splitting bangs echoed through the room as the toys exploded, seeming to shake the very air in the building, and clouds of thick, grey smoke obscured everything outside of the protective bubble of the Blue aura.

The smoke cleared with a rush of air, and the Greens looked down in shock to see the two groups of clansmen standing unharmed.

"What's going on?"

"Why aren't they dead?!"

"Such a vile and disgusting sedition," Reisi said gravely. "Our lock-up is not what you would call comfortable. I hope you're prepared."

"I can vouch for that," Mikoto added.

"You said Homra is dead? Don't you know? We have a new King. A strong King who rivals Mikoto," Izumo announced as Anna stepped forward, holding her head high.

"You disrespected and laughed at my family." As she spoke, her aura blazed around her, filling the room with crimson light. Her Sword of Damocles rose into the sky above the glass roof of the building, just as Mikoto's had all that time ago. "I won't forgive you."

The sight of her gave Tatara chills.

"Shall we begin then? For our cause is pure!" Reisi announced, and behind him, Seri cried out:

"Men, draw your swords!"

As each of the Blue clansmen raised their blades with a flourish and their aura sparked upwards from their feet, Izumo said: "Time for us too."

"Don't let those Blues get all the credit!" Misaki cried.

The rest of Homra didn't need telling twice. As the Red aura swirling around them burned hotter still, they raised their fists and stomped their feet against the tiles.

"No blood! No bone! No ash! No blood! No bone! No ash!" The chorus of shouts echoed preternaturally through the building.

Mikoto normally didn't take part in the chant as King, but Tatara noticed this time, he was joining in - he didn't stamp and punch the air like the others, but he murmured the words along with them. Something about the gesture was heartening.

"Do not let the Red clan outshine us!" Seri cried, directing her men forwards. The sound shook Tatara from his thoughts.

"Leave this to me!" Misaki shouted, running forwards to initiate the counterattack.

Meanwhile, the Greens had recovered from their initial shock and were preparing their plan B, pulling sub-machine guns from their backpacks and taking aim at the clans below.

Tatara had just enough time to freeze up at the sight of the weapons before the deafening chatter of gunfire began. After a second, he felt Mikoto’s arms wrap around him, pulling him in tightly against his chest, but the sensation was hazy, like Tatara had been out in the cold and his skin was beginning to go numb. He felt cold; the terror that the sound, so loud and so close, instilled in him was like ice water dumped over him, seeping into his veins. His legs crumpled beneath him, until Mikoto’s strength was all that was keeping him from slumping onto the floor. He was vaguely aware of an aura surrounding the two of them, but not whose or even what colour, and its presence brought him no comfort. The scar on his ribcage ached, and the fear was suffocating him, and he was hyperventilating and felt like he couldn’t breathe all at the same time. He was more afraid than he’d been that night on the rooftop when he thought he was dying, because then he’d been resigned to it, but now…

I don’t want to die I don’t want to leave them there’s so much I still want to do I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die

The panicked, half-coherent thoughts were almost drowned out by the gunfire.

Tatara only barely registered the fact that he was suddenly outside, evidently having been ushered out of the building by Mikoto. He was only alerted to the change of scenery by the way the wind made the tears on his cheeks feel cold.

“You’re safe. You’re safe,” he vaguely heard Mikoto reassuring him, but it didn’t quite register beneath the clatter of the bullets that Tatara barely even noticed subsiding as, one by one, the Greens abandoned their mission as a lost cause, spooked by the way the auras of the other clans rendered their weapons ineffective. It wasn’t until the echo of the shots ringing in his ears finally subsided completely that Tatara really understood what was being said to him.

“Breathe,” Mikoto said.

It took a while, but Tatara slowly forced his aching lungs to inhale and exhale in time with Mikoto.

“I’m… s-sorry…” was the first thing he managed to say.

“It’s okay.”

“I e-embarrassed… Anna…” Tatara’s voice hitched on his tears every other syllable. “They th-think Homra’s weak… I proved them r-right…”

“They’re running scared in there. They don’t think Homra’s weak.”

Tatara sniffled, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. His hands trembled as he did so.

“Do you want me to stop carrying a gun?” Mikoto asked softly.

“I can’t ask you to…”

“Yes you can.”

Reluctantly, Tatara nodded.

“I f-feel… stupid…”

“It’s not your fault.” As Mikoto spoke, he rubbed Tatara’s arm comfortingly. Somehow, the tenderness of his voice and his touch was helping to soothe Tatara’s racing heartbeat now that the gunfire had ceased. There was something about the way someone normally so gruff and frightening as Mikoto handled him with such gentleness that was deeply comforting. Still, Tatara didn’t know if he quite believed what Mikoto said about him not embarrassing his clan. He was embarrassed with himself, at least – it was rare the rest of Homra ever saw him upset. He was so careful to keep up appearances as a cheerful and carefree person, but it seemed like he’d broken down in front of everyone more times in the last few weeks than he had in all the years since the clan formed put together. It was endlessly frustrating, and Tatara didn’t know why he was struggling so much to keep it all in.

After a moment, the door opened and Izumo emerged.

“Totsuka, you okay?” To Tatara’s relief, Izumo only sounded concerned – there was no disappointment or anger in his voice.

Tatara managed a shaky nod.

“How did it go?” Mikoto asked.

“They turned tail ‘n’ ran as soon as they realised their weapons didn’t work against auras, didn’t even get a chance to fight ‘em. They disappeared with their tails between their legs before we could even get up to the higher floors of the building. Couple o’ the clansmen are giving chase to see if we can catch any of ‘em and interrogate them, and I think the Blues managed to round up a handful.” As Izumo spoke, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Tatara. “No one blames you, ya know. I figure I’d’a reacted the same if I’d been through what you had.”

Tatara nodded slowly, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. Somehow, hearing the confirmation come from someone other than Mikoto was more reassuring – after all, Mikoto was biased.

“Mikoto, there’s somethin’ else you should know,” Izumo continued.

“What?”

Izumo gestured upwards at the two Swords of Damocles circling above the building, and the debris slowly crumbling away from Reisi’s. Mikoto’s brow furrowed.

“I figure you should talk to him about that,” Izumo said.

Mikoto grunted in agreement, a troubled look on his face as he watched the dust float down from the cracks in the blue Sword.

#mikototsu #suoh mikoto #totsuka tatara #k project #fic: breathing #fic: awakening #k fanfic

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charliejrogers · 4 years ago

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Poltergeist (1982) (Or, an epileptic’s worst nightmare)

Wow. “What a picture!” to quote Al Pacino’s character from Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. I went into this movie with very low expectations and said to my roommate seconds before we pressed play, “All I know is that this movie has something about ghosts, TV’s, and a little girl who says ‘They’re heeeeeere!’” And if that too is all you know about 1982’s Poltergeist, stop reading and go see this movie for yourself. This movie presents a visual spectacle from 38(!) years ago that can genuinely hold its own with the slickest CGI-fests of the 2010s (and certainly better than the average CGI flick of the mid-00’s.)

Yes, there is a plot to Poltergeist, and I’ll try my best to efficiently condense the complex plot in a succinct sentence: a family’s house is haunted. Yup. That about does it. Let this not be a critique of the film. The plot here merely needs to justify the existence of the film’s visual effects and serve as a link from one show-stopping scene to the next.

If I haven’t made it quite clear yet, this is a visually stunning film, but not necessarily from a cinematography point of view. That said, this movie could be used as a text book for how to make spooky establishing shots (the key? place a spooky object at a slightly askew angle very prominently in the foreground). No, it’s visually stunning from the standpoint of set design and practical effects.

This is really a movie that has three primary sequences and then some interstitial fluff. The first sequence of note is the ghosts’ initial assault of the family’s house including the (legitimately terrifying) abduction of the family’s youngest daughter, Carol Ann, into the paranormal recesses of her closet and the almost-abduction of their son Robbie by being swallowed by a tree. The second major sequence involves the family’s grand and “scientific” attempt to get Carol Anne back from the malevolent spirits, and the third great sequence is the film’s coffins-springing-out-of-graves grand finale as the spirits exact their final revenge on suburbia! Truly, during each of these sequences my heart was racing and my mouth was agape. It says something that even though I knew this movie was rated PG and therefore that it was unlikely that any character would die, the movie created enough suspense that I never safely assumed everyone would be OK.

But can I talk more about the set design for a second? Prior to this movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and its final mine-cart battle was, in my view, the gold standard for achievement in set design. This movie really gives Indy a run for his money, despite the film taking place almost entirely within a cookie-cutter home that’s part of a large, sprawling, and bland housing development that scars the otherwise beautiful California landscape around it. Despite some curious architectural choices within the house (that staircase!), we see that there is literally special about this home. The patriarch of our film, Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) is the best salesman the housing development company has, and we see him sell houses that look exactly identical to his own. Yet, for all its ordinariness, there are so many tricks hidden behind the set’s walls that are revealed slowly throughout the film (and then very quickly at the end!). Everything from the ominous tree outside the children’s bedroom window to the unfinished pool to a closet door and to, yes, even those stairs(!) gets completely transformed before our very eyes from ordinary, safe, and boring to being part of the other world’s attack on our own! All of this comes to a head in the fantastic, jaw-dropping conclusion where skeletons and coffins pop out of the ground as if they were buried with springs (and the fact that in developing the set they probably buried with springs really makes me smile that the cast and crew were walking all over this set with booby-trapped coffins below their feet at least some of the time).

While it was a decision that was probably made due to the technical limitations of the time, I love that the coffins and skeletons are lifeless entities and not zombies. There is something infinitely more creepy about invisible forces acting as a puppet master over lifeless bones than the cheesy/overplayed model of the living dead. Furthermore, zombies are boring, unexciting villains… they walk slowly and stupidly hunt for brains. Clearly the force behind this film’s haunting is smart. It likes toying with the family. As we are told in the film, it knows what the family is afraid and uses it.

But more than just the set design, the practical effects in this film are wonderful in a way that’s no longer possible. I’m still scratching my head at how they filmed that scene where in seemingly one continuous shot, the film’s matriarch (Diane played by JoBeth Williams) pushes in all the chairs at the kitchen table, bends down to get something out of a cabin, and upon standing back up she (and we with her) see all of the chairs now stacked precariously on top of the table. The sequence takes five, six seconds, and is filmed to look like ONE SHOT! How did they do that?! Similarly, even just the scenes where chairs slide across the floor are magical in a way that is no longer possible in today’s era where I would know some computer was responsible for any on-screen trickery.

That the movie is such a successful spectacle no doubt is due to the influence of one Mr. Stephen Spielberg. He doesn’t direct this movie (Tobe Hooper does), but Spielberg wrote and produced it, so unfortunately for Mr. Hooper, Spielberg is primed to get most of the credit, as this film fits so perfectly in the Spielberg directorial canon. The movie came out a month before E.T. and certainly feels like a wonderful companion piece. It truly is a “kid’s horror movie” in the best sense of the phrase. The scenes where the family’s young boy, Robbie, is alone in his room dealing with his irrational fears are among the movie’s best. He sees faces in the tree outside his room, he throws a sweatshirt over his creepy clown figure, and investigates the darkness underneath his bed. All this is filmed with enough tension to perfectly capture and remind audiences how it felt to be afraid as a child.

The other hallmark of a classic Spielberg film? It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is refreshing compared to if this movie were made today (and judging from the artwork from the 2015 remake I seem to be correct in my assumptions). In today’s age of developing deep “lores” and cinematic universes, the film isn’t too interested in fleshing out its paranormal theory. There’s a nice little piece of the film where one expert in ghosts explains her theories about the afterlife and what happens to the soul, but it mostly stays at a superficial level. We don’t know why there’s a particularly angry spirit haunting this house, and frankly it doesn’t matter!

Additionally, despite the serious and deadly circumstances the family faces, there’s a good deal of whimsy to this film. Just take the film’s ending. After the Freelings make a daring and heroic escape from their haunted home just before it is completely swallowed up into a blackhole, the movie ends with them checking into their room at a Holiday Inn for the night. As the camera zooms out on the closed motel room door and the credits roll, the film’s theme song plays. It’s a song that has an unironic, easy lightness to it that fits more in a Christmas movie than a Halloween movie. To me, it symbolizes that despite the destruction of the house, the spirits that inhabited it finally have reached their peace. It makes you wonder who were are supposed to be rooting for in this film… the Freelings or the ghosts? More on that in a second.

But no better example of the film’s whimsy exists than when the family enlists the help of local parapsychological experts (i.e., ghostbusters.) It is clear to me that the film Ghostbusters wouldn’t exist but for this movie. Anyways, the ghostbusters at one point brag about their credentials and knowledge of the paranormal, explaining that they once saw a toy car move across a room over the course of hours all by itself. Mr. Freeling (at this point with perpetual bags under his eyes from constant stress about his daughter residing in the spiritual world) grunts politely but with lack of interest. For in the next second he opens the door to the paranormal hub of his home where all the furniture is floating and spinning around by itself. The ghostbusters just about shit themselves.

If there’s some political commentary in this movie it’s very surface level and doesn’t distract from the spectacle. I was dreading this being a plot revolving around building the housing development on “sacred Indian burial grounds” and therefore the Native spirits were exacting their revenge. The movie actually addresses this head-on saying explicitly that the housing development was not built upon such land. It’s not that white people don’t deserve cosmic revenge for the way we (I’m white) as a people destroyed multiple civilizations… but that’s just such a tired, lazy, and slightly offensive trope. Instead, we find out that the original land developers built on top of a regular cemetery, moved the headstones, but never the bodies. Thus, the disturbed spirits and the subsequent haunting.

Still, even with this paranormal explanation, the movie is not-so-subtly critical of suburbia and suburbanites even if it’s critiques aren’t clear or fully fleshed out. As I noted above, towards the beginning of the film, the camera pans slowly across what is a beautiful California hilly landscape only to reveal a seemingly endless expanse of identical homes as part of this housing development. There’s an implicit sense at the very start that these people and their cookie-cutter existence and petty problems (like getting into a war with neighbors over the faulty TV signal), don’t belong here in this beautiful land… something made rather explicit by the film’s end when the ghosts fight back and finally get their peace.

As for more unclear symbolism, there’s got to be some meaning to the ironic fact that Mr. and Mrs. Freeling are both open-minded pot-smokers and Ronald Reagan-voting YUPPIE’s, but I never quite figured it out. Ultimately though, the specifics of Diane’s and Steve’s characters are not that important. They’re just supposed to be stand-ins for everypeople and they serve those roles very well. They are very, very likable as a couple with a strong, supportive, and obviously sexual relationship. And it’s clear they love their children very much. When told that Steve had to yell at Carol Anne sternly in order to save her life from ghosts, Steve hesitates because it is not within him to be harsh with his child. And as for Diane Freeling, she is the model of the perfect mother. She is devoted, loving, tender, but above all unafraid to risk her life to save her babies. It is clear the writers of Strangers Things had her in mind when they created the character of Mrs. Byers.

In every review I write, I get surprised by how much I end up writing. This is objectively a silly, inconsequential movie about a family whose house is haunted. It has no grand themes or ideas, the performances are all perfectly adequate, and some of the dialogue is downright silly. So how is there so much to say? It’s the way the director Tobe Hooper so perfectly recreates feelings of childlike fear and the way Spielberg and co. worked so hard to create such a grand spectacle that is better than some of the biggest budget movies of more recent yearsmakes this a true joy to watch. This movie knows exactly what it wants to be, sets out to do it, and comes away having it a big time home-run. And in its embrace of whimsy comes out on top over so many other movies it inspired who took Poltergeist‘s cutes on big set pieces, but forgot about its heart.

****(Four out of four stars)

#poltergeist #craig t. nelson #jobeth williams

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shirtlesssammy · 7 years ago

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13x04: The Big Empty

Then:

What gets burned, stays dead. NOT! TOTALLY NOT! SPOILERS: CAS IS ALIVE! CAS IS BACK!!!

Now:

Did I mention CAS IS BACK!???!

Oh wait, first the intro:

Dude in Madison, WI comes home to a not quite empty house. It seems his late, great wife is waiting in the dark for him. He’s not acting nearly as weirded out as he should.

And he gets a nice, deep gut stab for his efforts.

At the bunker, Dean is NOT journaling.

Sam comes back from a supply run, and tries to make small talk. Dean briefs his brother on the case. Sam suggests they bring Jack along, but Dean is adamant that he stay behind. Then he takes a dig at Sam’s desire to find their mom. Sam points out, “So you’re saying you want to move on….from Mom.” Angry Brother Stares. Dean just wants to work a case. Whew, there’s so much NOT BEING SAID HERE. It’s like there’s a BIG EMPTY space in their conversation.

Sam goes to check on Jack, who’s holed up in his room watching Clone Wars.

Sam asks Jack if he wants to come along and work the case with them. “No.” (I laughed at the delivery of that line SO much.) Jack throws some nice shade at his “interdimensional can-opener” status --letting Sam know that he heard the brothers’ conversation. Sam makes it clear that, yes, he wants his mom back, but Sam still cares about Jack, even if they can’t get Mary back. Sweet Nougat Jack is still out there breaking our hearts with how innocent and wonderful he is. He worries about Dean wanting to kill him, but Sam reassures him that he will not let that happen.

Madison, WI

Team Free Nougat pulls up to the victim’s -Wes Bailey- house. Dean gives the rundown. Jack questions the moral exactitude of the whole FBI schtick. The brothers give Jack some exposition on ghosts and revenants. Jack wears a cute little tan coat very reminiscent of one TOTALLY NOT DEAD angel.

The brothers interview the neighbor lady, while Jack heads into the victim’s house to discover a dried pool of blood, with an evidence tag next to it. I think he deserves an upgrade to Detective Nougat!

Sam gives Jack a lesson on the EMF reader, which does not register a ghost. So: Revenant! They all head to the graveyard that night, and Dean makes Jack do the heavy lifting (literally), and dig the grave.

Sam accuses Dean of being just like their dad. Oof, that’s a loaded accusation. Dean lays it out clearly: He’s not going to be a mom to Jack. He’s not going to care for him like he did for Sam. Plus, the kid can dig. So, yay!

Once Jack is done digging the grave, they find a body. No revenant then. Weirdsies. They salt and burn to be on the safe side. Because, “What gets burned, stays dead.”

CAAAAAASSSSSSS!!!!!!

Rich, white lady blows a tire on HIGHWAY(We’re in Wisconsin, you heathens) route 19, and just as she’s talking to roadside assistance, her son from beyond the grave pays her a visit, and uses the very effective blood cannon on her. Bits of her all over the windshield!

Sam and Dean check out the new crime scene, but with no EMF, they’re baffled.

CAAAAAAASSSSSS!!!!

Our darling baby in a trenchcoat is wandering around a big, dark nothing, calling out to no one. Well, almost no one, something manifests itself from the nothingness.

Jack, meanwhile, continues to be the cutest devil baby/son/intern ever, I swear. Sam connects the vics to a grief counselor. Dean mocks traditional forms of grief management.

Dean: She’s one Kool-aid away from Jonestown. Me, an intellectual: Actually it was Flavor-aid. (Is that how that meme works? Gah, in any event, I’m a nerd and hate that common misnomer.)

Dean surmises that the shrink is a medium. They need to check it out --but not as FBI agents. What’s this fractured family to do?

Family therapy!

Jack gets the ball rolling by admitting to the therapist that he recently lost his mother. Sam steps in and admits they’re brothers (Sorry Adam!), and they need help processing their grief.

Mia, the therapist, leads them to a room, and asks them about their loss. “Well, Mom was great, now she’s dead. What’s the deal with catharsis?” Yeah, Dean decides to not keep up appearances. Mia is less than pleased, but Sam smoothes things over. Dean gets even punchier (Dean “deflection” Winchester so totally journals) (also, Sam says that Dean’s not processing his grief but Dean says he is, but Sam questions that, and Dean says that he knows that their mom is dead, but I’m thinking that Sam didn’t necessarily mean their mom, because Dean can clearly admit that their mom is dead, and yet there’s a totally BIG EMPTY space of someone that Dean can’t really admit to being dead, someone whose death he isn’t processing, I’m just saying), and admits that Sam is delusional, and thinks their mom is alive. Sam then unleashes some MUCH NEEDED anger and grief. He never had her as a mom. He’s jealous of the time Dean had with her. (I’ve seen gifsets and arguments for and against the feelings Sam is having. Why didn’t he make more of an effort to reach out to Mary? Are his feelings of abandonment justified?)

Sam leaves to drink some vegetable water and find the remnants of a shapeshifter in the bathroom. Shapeshifter! I knew it began with an ‘S’! (Tumblr, you failed me trying to find a gif of Harry Christmas saying “Samsonite!” I’m not old, you’re old.)

Dean tries to cover the awkward silence while they wait with a heavy swig of hunter’s helper. Spoiler: It’s not helping. Sam bursts in, gun drawn, announcing that Mia’s a shifter. She pleads with them --yes, she’s a shifter, but she’s never killed anyone. She’s helping people --she shifts into the person that her patients have lost (That’s just wrong, and also, I’d like to see my cat again please :’() Dean drops the hard truths that her patients are dead. Mia is shocked. She has an alibi, and she swears, she’s telling them the truth.

Back in darkness, Cas wanders through the night-black plain. He seems...perturbed. He turns to find a copy of himself coalescing into being. The copy of Cas smirks at him and introduces himself as a celestial entity who took his form because Cas would “freak out, rip out your own eyes, etcetera.” Cas asks him where they are and the entity tells him that before everything on Earth – before gods and all - there was nothing. Emptiness. That's where Cas is right now, along with every single angel and demon who's died. They're all sleeping snug in their beds for all eternity. Everyone except for Cas and this grouchy entity of the Empty.

This fun entity, so very snarky, reminds me (and several others on Tumblr apparently) of the character Q from Star Trek. Q was hugely powerful and completely a dick...rather like this entity. Thus, shall he be named...Qstiel.

Qstiel demands to know why Castiel is awake. Cas makes a wild guess that the Winchesters made a deal to save him but Qstiel swiftly corrects that assumption. Nobody has power over the Empty except for him. When Cas still fails to come up with a satisfactory explanation, Qstiel mind-whammies him, sending him to his knees.

Back at Mia's office, we learn about Buddy, suspect number one. Buddy is an ex-boyfriend of Mia's and the only other shapeshifter she ever knew (other than her mother). He's also a stone cold crazy killer who liked to completely ruin people's lives before he killed them. Mia does what she does now partially as recompense for the suffering she enabled when she was with him.

Armed with that super strong suspect, they try to figure out who Buddy is posing as in order to gain access to her client files. The suspicion falls on the assistant from earlier and Dean reluctantly agrees to take Jack along to check out the assistant. Guys… Jack knows Dean wants to kill him but he's still seeking out opportunities to spend time with Dean and he doesn't run from a job with just the two of them. Alone. While Dean is heavily armed. What a good bean.

Dean and Jack head out to the assistant's house where Dean orders Jack yet again to stay in the car. Jack wants to help, though – and he wants to help with more than just this case. He tells Dean that Sam told him about the plan to save Mary. Dean coldly replies, “You should know Sam's plans don't always work out.” (Listen. It's fine. I'm not remembering Dean's support of Sam's leadership at the end of season 12 and weeping steadily.)

Sam and Mia, meanwhile, scan security footage until they find eyeshine. It's one of her patients – the guy Jack merrily said “Hello” to when they first arrived.

Back in the Empty, Cas is still having a pretty shitty vacation from life. He pulls himself up after Qstiel ravages his mind. Qstiel ignores his pain, and goes on a mini rant about how utterly annoying it is to have somebody awake. He can't go back to sleep until Castiel does. Cas lifts his head, interested to learn that Qstiel is so perturbed by one awake angel.

Qstiel threatens to chuck Cas clear across the Empty so he can't hear Cas stomping around his bedroom. Cas calls him on his bluff and raises the stakes. If he's so annoying to Qstiel then he should just be sent back to Earth. Everybody wins.

At first Qstiel turns him down. He taunts Cas about his past failures. “I know what you hate. I know who you love. What you fear. There is nothing for you back there.” A look of despair falls upon Cas and Qstiel hammers the message home by showing him all his failures that resulted in death. Noooooooo!

Dean and Jack arrive back at Mia's house to find that Sam already left to try to find Buddy. Dean storms off grumpily, trying to call Sam. Meanwhile, Jack asks to speak with Mia. He tells her some of the truth about himself and asks her to take Kelly's form so he can have some catharsis as well. She shifts into Kelly and then, as Kelly, sits with him to have a heart to heart.

It's Kelly! And man, I miss her. She really got into my good graces in the second half of last season and that video she left for Jack is so great. Mia-as-Kelly and Jack have a talk about good, evil, and choices. He worries that he's feeling a general lack of emotion at all the mad turmoil he’s been exposed to. And. Hon. It's been like a week, right? Give it time. “It doesn't matter what you are,” she tells him. “It matters what you do. Even monsters can do good in this world.” It's SUCH a beautiful moment for Jack and Mia with so many layers of meaning between the two of them and their separate tragedies. This makes me...cry. Okay. I cried when I watched it. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? And then I pretended that my eye itched so I could wipe it away, unseen.

Sam finally calls Dean back. Sam tells him he lost the shifter (and my suspicions are immediately raised about Sam). However, I'm surprised when the camera pans away to show two Deans in the room – one on the floor unconscious and the other smirking at his cell phone. Oh, Dean Bean. Nice job surprising me, show! High five :)

Shifter Dean breaks into the room with Mia and Jack, picks up an iron poker, and rams it into poor Jack's skull. Dean then rips his face off...

...to reveal Buddy. He smirks at poor Mia. (Me: takes a moment to ponder the caloric intake needs of shifters if they have the ability to shed so much tissue and blood so quickly.)

In the Empty, Cas gets called epithets he's heard for years – maybe centuries. Qstiel tells him to sleep and save himself but Cas lifts himself up and says, “I'm already saved.” He won't stop harassing Qstiel...ever. So he'd better let Cas go NOW or he'll be in for one miserable ride. “Release me,” Castiel growls.

Cut to Dean waking up in handcuffs. (Nice, show. Nice.) Dean tries to wake up Jack while Buddy goes crazy bananas over Mia. Once Jack is awake, Dean asks Jack to use his powers to snap the cuffs and set him free. Meanwhile, Buddy gives Mia an ultimatum. She can kill Dean and Jack or she can die. She refuses to do it and Sam's return to the house distracts Buddy from immediately killing her. Buddy trains his gun on the door, ready to shoot Sam as he enters. Dean gets knocked out again trying to warn Sam (seriously it will be good to get Cas back and start healing all those concussions again, right?). So now it's down to Jack. At the last minute he power blasts Buddy, deflects the bullet from Sam, and knocks Buddy back long enough so Sam can get in a clean shot. Buddy dies, Jack slumps, and we cut to the aftermath. Mia slowly cleans up her office. “I just wanted to help people,” she mourns.

Back at the bunker Jack's enjoying a glass of water when Dean walks into the kitchen. He grabs two beers from the fridge then saunters close to Jack. He tells Jack that he “did good today,” and actually calls him by his name. Jack smiles.

Dean brings Sam a beer and apologizes for being a dick. “Maybe you're right about the kid,” Dean admits.

And then Sam bends too. “What if you're right about mom?” he asks.

Dean slowly shakes his head at this (and I'm struck with memories of season 11 and Faith and all those times Sam believed when Dean didn’t). “I need you to keep the faith for both of us,” Dean tells him. “cause right now I don't believe in a damn thing.” Dean looks away again with his dead-eyed stare...

And the scene cuts to a sunny field. Blackberry brambles. Delicate flute music. Castiel wakes in the field, stands and finds himself whole, and looks up towards the sky and the warmth and light of the sun.

Quote!Stiel:

What do you want to do? Leave him in a ring of holy oil, some Netflix, and a frozen pizza?

I do like Ahsoka. Kinda hate Anakin.

Let's go be the good guys.

I thought lying was wrong.

What gets burned stays dead.

Shrinks. Snake oil for the mind.

“You journal?””Ever since I was a little girl”

If you can't sleep, I can't sleep. And I like sleep. I need sleep.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn picspam #spn crack #spn 13x04 #the big empty #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #castiel #cas #qstiel #kelly kline #supernatural season 13

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helenofsimblr · 7 years ago

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Scrooge was a VICTIM!

So in today’s world, it is unacceptable to bully another surely the same was true in Dickens time. I want you to consider how poor Scrooge was manipulated and made a victim by the ghosts, this is a long post, but please stick with it. As always, tongue in cheek!

First, Scrooge doesn’t like Christmas. There is nothing wrong with that! Christmas has lost all religious significance now, and is just a way for shops to sell turkeys and tatty Christmas baubles! This was as true in Scrooge’s day as it is now. Scrooge knew it, and hated it. He was truly ahead of his time.

“Ah but he was mean and turned away two people looking for a donation” I hear you say. Ok. True, he did. And on the face of it, that was mean. But, how many times have you walked down the street, and been stopped by somebody with a clipboard asking you for X amount per month to support Charity X? Yeah... Thats what I thought! At Christmas, these charity muggers think that they can squeeze you for money because everybody is naturally putting their hands in their pockets. Scrooge, once again, was ahead of the curve!

Bob Cratchit had a bad deal? He was overworked and underpaid... Well done Dickens... you’ve just described about 79% of the working population then, and now! But, he got Christmas day off and paid. Also, if it was so shit... why didn’t he get another job? Clerks were a valuable commodity back then. Especially as reading and writing were like actual massive skills!

So later now, Marley’s ghost visits Scrooge. And basically frightens the CRAP out of him claiming that if Scrooge doesn’t change his way, he’ll be a ghost wrapped up in chains. Which admittedly doesn’t sound good. But Marley used fear tactics and intimidation to make his points, which Mr Marley is unacceptable! Scrooge was an old man, he could have had a heart condition or anything! Medical advances then aren’t what they are now.

So, we have the ghost of Christmas Past. This ghost basically:

Reminds Scrooge of how lonely he was as a child

How all he had was his sister

How his boss treated him like son... I don’t know many bosses who would treat me like a daughter, so I take this with a pinch of salt.

Makes him relive the pain of his fiance leaving him because he was a workaholic.

Then! To rub salt in the wound! The ghost shows Scrooge his former fiance happily married to some other geezer with a big happy family!

What the fuck!?!? What a low shitty blow!! So the night goes on. This time we got the ghost of Christmas present... *takes a deep breath*

This ghost first takes Scrooge to a market, where, brainwashed into buying the makings of Christmas dinner in a frenzy he can observe people.

Scrooge sees a miner in a cottage looking very happy. Probably thrilled to bits he isn’t down a mine in pitch black for one day. I’d love Christmas too if that was my lot in life, to be down a mind hunched over like Quasi-fucking-modo.

He also sees Fred his nephew. Now earlier Scrooge rejected Fred’s offer to come over probably because Scrooge didn’t want to play charades or twister, or, God help us... monopoly. I’d refuse too!

But the biggest part of this ghostly abuse, is taken up with Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Here the ghost cleverly uses emotional blackmail and a massive guilt trip on Scrooge. Tiny Tim is seriously ill, and unless Scrooge changes events he’s gonna die.

Well fuck me! There we go! Scrooge, Tiny Tim’s survival is down to you. “Dr Scrooge report to surgery, stat!” Honestly... HOW THE FUCK does Tiny Tim’s survival depend on Scrooge loving Christmas??!! What if Scrooge is a vegetarian and doesn’t want to eat Turkey!? What a manipulative son of a bitch!

So, the ghost of Christmas yet to come is meant to be the worst? Well I don’t know, the first two have done a wonderful job of setting the bar for being a cruel bastard so I have my doubts...

So it starts with Scrooge seeing a funeral of a disliked man. Ok... Plenty of them in the world, just switch on the news you can take your fucking pick!

Local businesses will attend if there is food. Typical of a local business out for a free lunch... even at a funeral, no class!

So the “Disliked man’s” housekeeper and the undertaker steal some of this things and sell them. Well that’s pretty shitty of them!

So Scrooge is thinking, this must be me. And asks for the ghost to show him people who are emotional over the death, and the ghost shows him two people happy as they were in debt to the man and have more time to put their finances in order.

So it seems even in Dickensian times, people were shit with money and in debt. I wish my credit card debt could be solved so fucking easily! Yay! MasterCard has just died! I now have time to pay it off! Woo! I bet you, those smug motherfuckers at the funeral, will not get their finances in order, because they’ll see that new horse and cart they’ve been after and probably get into more debt buying it!

All of that is just a bit meh, but, my friends, the ghosts had it all worked out! Like a trio of vicious bullies, the first two tripped Scrooge the third shoved him down!

The final ghost shows scrooge that Tiny Tim has in fact died. Clearly, this is ALL Scrooge’s fault.

Finally we see Scrooge’s grave neglected and uncared for.

Well, here’s the thing, Scrooge had no fucking family!! Because his bitch fiance left him and clearly he never got over her!! So who the fuck is going to tend his grave?! But of course!! A neglected grave can be solved by loving Christmas!!

So Scrooge, having had a full night of mind fuck, wakes up a changed man. He sends a turkey to Bob Cratchit as he presumes that a hearty meal will help make Tiny Tim less ill, logical but whether Tim makes it or not, we don’t know. I’m always amazed how he managed to get a Turkey on Christmas Morning, not even a supermarket is open on Christmas morning surely!?

Then he gives Cratchit a raise, and becomes like a second father to Tiny Tim. That may not have been a bad thing, perhaps Bob wasn’t the best father and maybe Tiny Tim died because those smug motherfuckers I mention earlier ran him down with their new horse and cart? Either way, Scrooge clearly doesn’t want Tiny Tim’s death on his conscience because the ghosts implied directly that Scrooge could somehow save him. I worry for what becomes of Scrooge if Tiny Tim did die. Scrooge would likely need counselling after that, Scrooge’s mental health takes a fucking beating in this story.

So to sum up, the ghosts:

Brought up several bad memories,

Made him relive heartbreak and those bad memories

Used contemporary propaganda to begin moulding his hurt psyche to their preferred trains of thought.

They manipulate via a horrific guilt trip Scrooge into thinking that only he and he alone can save Tiny Tim from death.

They show him how he’s going to die. What a shock... in other news, water: wet.

Then they blackmail him into becoming part of a child’s life who he doesn’t even fucking know! Following their earlier successful manipulation into thinking only he can save Tiny Tim.

They show him his own grave untended and messy to deliver the knockout punch on this all nighter of brainwashing and mind fuckery.

Scrooge was a victim guys. So next time you watch a christmas Carol. Take a good look and see the truth! Poor Scrooge.

#non sims #tonge in cheek #scrooge #swearing #scrooge was a victim #I have way too much time on my hands tonight #I am too buzzed on nicotine and coffee to sleep right now #the real truth of a christmas carol

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willsherjohnkhan · 8 years ago

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Sherlock's Christmas Carol

Chapter 1: Preface from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

***

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. December 1843

***

Chapter 2: The Cabbie's Ghost

***

The Cabbie was dead. Of that there could be little doubt. Doctor John Watson, late of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers had seen to that.

He had shot the serial killer just as he had convinced his friend, Sherlock Holmes to participate in his sick little game of chance.

Sherlock could confirm absolutely that the cabbie was most definitely deceased, having observed him take his last painful breath.

For further details I would advise that you read the good doctor’s blog on the case titled ‘A Study in Pink’ for further details.

The fact remained the Cabbie was dead. Dead as a doornail.

***

Christmas Eve

Sherlock Holmes, the world’s only Consulting Detective had just turned into Baker Street. Usually he preferred to travel by taxi to get around London. But it was Christmas Eve, taxis were few and far between, while the trains and buses he knew would be packed to capacity. So that left him with only one option, walk.

He had just finished up with Detective Inspector Lestrade from New Scotland Yard on a case concerning the theft of a valuable and rare blue jewel, called The Carbuncle no less. A jewel that somehow ended up in the gullet of a goose set to become someone’s Christmas dinner.

Usually he wouldn’t go out for anything less then a seven. This case had barely been a four, and even that was stretching the definition. But it was Christmas Eve and it seemed that even the criminal classes had decided to take a well-earned break from their illegal activities.

Damn them!

But that wasn’t the only thing that had driven him to leave the comfort of 221B on such a bitterly cold day. He had had about all that he could take of everyone and their festive cheer.

Usually he could cope with it. But with the birth of the Watson’s offspring, everyone seemed determined to ratchet up their normal irritating behaviours to a whole new level.

He felt suffocated by all the cloying affections that had begun since the birth of the baby. And these cloying affections seemed to be spreading and infecting everyone with whom she came into contact.

Except him.

All he saw when he looked at their daughter was someone who spent her days eating, sleeping and excreting at both ends. Not to mention having a very healthy pair of lungs that she made sure got a regular workout.

He was certain that he was not the only one to be taken by surprise when John and Mary had asked him to be her Godfather. He was after all a high-functioning sociopath. And he had been reliably informed, on more than one occasion, that he didn’t possess a heart.

It was ridiculous, foolhardy. What they were asking of him definitely fell into the ‘not my area’ category.

But they had insisted. No one else would do.

Generally people viewed him as arrogant, rude, insensitive, and a freak.

And he was fine with that. Labels never bothered him.

He was about to enter 221B when he received a text. It was Lestrade. He read it, and rolled his eyes.

‘The Red Headed League. Really! Was he serious?’

Clearly John’s penchant for ridiculous titles was spreading.

He fired back a quick response.

Not worth my time. SH

Upon entering 221B Sherlock knew instantly that something was amiss. He made his way up the stairs to his flat. By the time he reached his door he already knew what awaited him.

“What do you want Mycroft?” he demanded even before he’d passed the threshold.

“Christmas, Sherlock,” the elder Holmes replied. “A time of good cheer.”

Sherlock snorted.

“Who sent you? Was it Mary?” Sherlock paused, looking his brother up and down very carefully.

Mycroft detested Christmas even more than Sherlock, for reasons only he knew. So it must be something very particular to bring him to Baker St at this time.

Ah!

A small smile escaped Sherlock’s lips. “Mummy.”

Mycroft immediately tensed, his eyes, almost but not quite meeting his younger brothers.

Mycroft sighed dramatically. “For reasons that I will never understand,” he said. “She feels that it is very important that you attend the Watson’s little sware tonight.”

Sherlock gave another snort. “If she really thought it important enough, she would have come and told me herself.”

“She would have. But she and Daddy are seeing a play in the West End, something ghastly about three ghosts.”

Both brothers shuddered at the thought.

“Then I’m sorry that you have had to waste so much of your valuable time,” Sherlock responded. “Because I have no intentions of attending. Please send my apologies to John and Mary, I have another pressing case that needs my immediate attention.”

“What case?”

“The rather intriguing case of the Red Headed League. It looks to be rather… informative.”

Mycroft raised a sceptical eyebrow, but opted to keep his opinion to himself, knowing full well that Sherlock would be able to deduce them anyway.

Instead he tried another strategy.

“They’ll all be disappointed,” he pointed out. “Not to mention Mummy wont be pleased.”

“I don’t see why not,” Sherlock objected. “I spent Christmas with everyone last year. Or don’t you remember?”

Mycroft winced visibly. It was not a topic he wished to be reminded of. Which was precisely why Sherlock had mentioned it.

Seeing that Sherlock was resolute in his decision, he saw little point in pursuing the matter any further.

He made his way out the door. But before he left, he couldn’t help adding. “You’ll regret it brother mine.”

“Is that a threat, blood?”

“Not a threat Sherlock. Just an observation.”

With that Mycroft headed down the stairs and out the front door.

Sherlock followed him. He stood on the footpath watching Mycroft’s chauffer driven car make its way down Baker St.

Sherlock turned, intent on retreating back to the sanctuary of his flat when he was accosted by a couple of well meaning charity workers.

Under normal circumstances he would have been more than happy to offer a generous donation.

But of late, whether real or imagined, Sherlock felt that his select number of friends and colleagues were all conspiring against him to drag him kicking and screaming into the all too irritating tradition that was Christmas.

And now apparently his own family had been recruited to imbue him with some Christmas Spirit.

Traitors!

But all their efforts were in vain. All they had done was to give him further incentive to reinforce his resolve to remain at a distance from such annoying trivialities.

When the said charity workers made to follow him as he walked through 221B’s front door, he did not feel the least inclined to be giving like Old Saint Nick.

He felt more akin to the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. And as such, he reacted accordingly. “Bah Humbug!” he roared before slamming the door in their shocked faces.

***

The flat was blissfully silent. Mrs Hudson had gone out to do some last minute Christmas shopping.

This was a relief to Sherlock, who now wished for the tranquillity of peace and quiet, with no irritating or unnecessary distractions.

He walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and debated between starting an experiment on the toes he’d pilfered from St Bart’s morgue earlier in the day. Molly would likely slap him for that, once she made the discovery, so something to look forward to. Or have the leftover Chinese from last night.

His stomach quickly made the decision for him.

Making his way back to his chair, he sat down and began eating his meal cold. Heating it up in the microwave would require him to get up again, and he frankly wasn’t in the mood.

He’d only managed a couple of mouthfuls when he had the oddest sensation. If anyone had asked him to describe it, he would have said it was like someone had walked over his grave.

Which was ridiculous, because the dead do not feel. And he wasn’t six feet under, yet.

But he couldn’t suppress a shiver as the temperature in the room suddenly dropped by several degrees.

Putting the food down, Sherlock looked around the room. Nothing seemed out of place.

Then he glanced over to the skull on the mantelpiece, only to be confronted with the face of the Cabbie.

“Why can’t people think?” it asked.

Sherlock blinked, and the skull was back.

Sherlock was a rational man, and so he put down what he had just seen as one of several possibilities: hallucination, exhaustion or being high. He instantly discounted the latter. He hadn’t taken drugs since the day Molly slapped him at Bart’s eighteen months before.

Sighing he got up, and went into his bedroom to change into something more comfortable.

He returned to his seat in an old pair of sweatpants and t-shirt, and his blue dressing gown. He leaned back; steepled his fingers under his chin and attempted to enter his mind palace.

Except that there was a problem. Every room he entered contained the same thing.

The Cabbie.

“Doesn’t it drive you mad?” it said.

Sherlock lowered his hands, he was clearly not going to get anywhere that way.

Without warning the TV, laptop and microwave turned themselves on.

Thirty seconds later they stopped.

All was silent.

Sherlock cocked his head to one side. What was that?

He was certain he’d heard something.

Yes, there it was again.

Heavy footsteps making their way up the stairs to his flat. The steps were uneven, as though one leg weighed more than the other.

“Something wicked this way comes,” he murmured.

Sherlock’s suspicions were confirmed when the Cabbie’s ghost materialised through the door to his flat. It was dragging a ball and chain.

Sherlock shook his head, trying to clear it. But it didn’t help. Standing right there before him was the Cabbie.

Impossible though it was. There he stood, dressed as he had been in life, though with the added addition of the blood that had flowed due to John’s well-aimed bullet.

Sherlock admitted, even if only to himself that he was a little unnerved. In his head he kept repeating to himself ‘When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth,’

Deciding to take his own sound advice, he took a deep breath as he glared at the spectre before him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Ask me who I was?” came the unfazed response.

Sherlock sighed impatiently, already getting bored. Always the silly little games with this one. “Very well. Who were you?”

“You know who I was Mister Holmes. I’m the Cabbie from ‘A Study in Pink’”

Sherlock shook his head in disbelief, the whole thing was preposterous. The dead coming to life. And to top it off, the dead enjoy reading John Watson’s Blog. What next? There was only one way to find out.

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

“I’m here tonight to warn you,” the Cabbie began.

“Warn me of what?”

The Cabbie looked down at the ball and chain that bound him. “You have a chance to escape my fate.”

Sherlock snorted with disgust. “I am nothing like you.”

“We’re not as different as you’d like to believe,” the Cabbie replied. “We’ve both killed for the sake of those we love.”

Sherlock refused to dignify the statement with an answer.

The Cabbie continued. “You will be visited by three spirits.”

“Tell them not to bother, I wont be in.”

“Oh you’ll want them to come Mister Holmes. In fact you’ll need them to. Because without their visits,” the Cabbie warned. “You will be doomed to suffer a fate worse than death.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sherlock muttered.

“Do not take this warning lightly,” the apparition said as it began to fade. “They are coming.”

Sherlock remained seated, staring at where the ghost had stood for a moment or two. He then looked around him. All seemed normal.

Except for the clock, its second hand appeared stuck, unable to move forward. Like it was stuck in time.

Sherlock couldn’t keep his eyes off it. “Interesting.”

***

Chapter 3: The First of the Three Spirits

***

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open.

He’d not been aware of falling asleep. He put it down to being mesmerised by the faulty clock.

A quick glance confirmed that it was still stuck in time.

He got up and inspected the clock. He tried winding it up, shaking it. But the second hand resolutely remained stuck. By the time he’d checked his watch and mobile, finding that they too were likewise afflicted, he knew it was time for a rethink.

Frustrated he threw himself back in his chair.

And then a light breeze ruffled Sherlock’s hair. The detective frowned. All the windows were closed. So where could the breeze have originated?

He was about to get up from his seat when he spotted a figure standing before him.

The figure was that of a young man, early to mid teens, slight but athletic. Clearly loved swimming, apparent by the water dripping off him and onto the carpet. Mrs Hudson wouldn’t be pleased.

But there was something else.

Sherlock looked deep into the boy’s eyes.

Correction. He had loved swimming, up until the day he’d been so callously murdered.

Carl Powers.

The boy that had started it all now stood before him. His wore an expression of sadness, fear and confusion.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispered.

The ghost turned his head slightly on an angle. A frown marred his brow.

‘What do you have to be sorry for?’ his expression clearly read. ‘You didn’t kill me.’

He then reached out a ghostly hand to Sherlock, who without conscious thought took hold of it.

He was surprised to find it solid in his grip. The flesh a little cooler to the touch than was normal, but no more.

Carl pulled him to his feet.

Being a rational man, a man of science and logic, Sherlock decided there was only one way to deal with this whole bazaar situation. He was resolved to treat what was happening to him as an experiment.

And what was needed was data. Sherlock was determined to collate as much as possible.

“Where are we going?” Sherlock asked.

The ghost indicated the windows that faced out onto Baker St.

Sherlock looked at the ghost, then the windows and then down at what he wore.

“I’m not exactly dressed for going out.”

The ghost ignored him. He pulled Sherlock with surprising strength across the room and towards the windows.

Expecting the worst, Sherlock closed his eyes and braced for impact.

***

Christmas Eve - Past

After a couple of minutes Sherlock opened his eyes to discover that, not only was he no longer in Baker St. He was no longer in London.

He was in the country, standing outside his family home.

More remarkable then that, though it was snowing and he was standing there with bare feet. He didn’t feel cold.

He turned to the ghost. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked. “My parents are in London.”

The ghost inclined its head toward the street.

Sherlock turned.

Every car he could see moving along that quiet country road, he clearly remembered from his childhood.

Inexplicable as it was, they had somehow travelled back in time.

Carl pulled him towards the front door. As they passed through it Sherlock made sure to keep his eyes open.

***

The scene they walked into showed that it was clearly Christmas Eve. Mrs Holmes is in the kitchen busily making mince pies.

Sitting at the kitchen table is the young Sherlock. He is dressed as a pirate, but he isn’t charging about like he usually would. He is waiting.

And Sherlock knows who he is waiting for, his faithful companion, Redbeard.

He also knows what events are about to follow. Try as he might, he has never been able to completely delete these particular memories.

To have to relive them again…

He turned to the ghost to demand, “Why? Why have you brought me here?”

The ghost of Carl Powers looked at him with an expression full of sympathy. But it refused to answer him.

Because Sherlock already knows why he’s been brought here, to this particular time. He had already deduced it.

He was here to learn a lesson.

From outside can be heard the panicked voice of Sherlock’s father.

“Marion! Open the door. Hurry!”

Sherlock’s mother rushes from the kitchen to the front door and lets her husband in.

He staggers through the door carrying Redbeard in his arms.

“What happened?” his wife asked.

“We were walking through the woods when Redbeard spotted a rabbit up ahead. He tore off after it, but got in the way of a hunter intent on shooting the rabbit,” Mr Holmes explained.

Redbeard whimpered softly.

“I don’t think it’s too bad,” Mr Holmes continued. “But we need to get him to the Veterinary Clinic.”

“What’s wrong with Redbeard?” the young Sherlock asked as he walked over to his parents.

Mrs Holmes took a deep breath. “I’m afraid he’s been shot,” she said.

“No!” the boy cried, rushing forward.

Sherlock reached out to try and stop his younger self, but the ghost intervened. Its expression is crystal clear. He is not to interfere.

He is here to observe, to learn and to collect data.

That is all.

Sherlock reluctantly steps back.

Young Sherlock carefully wraps his arms around his beloved dog. Tears pouring down his face.

“What is all the racket about?” came the bored, languid tones of the teenaged Mycroft.

He stood leaning against the doorframe. Though young in years, his serious demeanour and exceptional intelligence aged him considerably. This was enhanced by his choice of clothes, a waistcoat and suit rather than t-shirt and jeans.

“Look after Sherlock, Mycroft,” his mother instructed.

Mycroft simply rolled his eyes.

“I want to go with Redbeard,” the young Sherlock cried.

“No Sherlock,” his mother said as she pulled him to one side. “You have to stay here.”

“But Redbeard needs me. What if something happens to him?”

“Nothing will happen to him Sherlock. But we have to go now. The quicker we get him to the Veterinary Clinic, the quicker he’ll be home.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Sherlock watched his younger self, standing there, trying to be brave. At that time he believed absolutely what his parents told him. And he had no reason to doubt his mother now.

But that would quickly change.

Sherlock became aware that the ghost was watching him closely. He returned the ghosts look calmly.

A moment later the ghost took Sherlock’s hand and led him back through the front door.

***

They emerged into the consulting room of the local Veterinary Surgeon.

Redbeard was laid out on the examination table.

“It was for the best,” the Vet tried to reassure them.”

“But I don’t understand,” Mr Holmes said, his voice breaking. “The bullet… wasn’t deep… how?”

“The bullet nicked an artery,” the Vet explained. “It caused internal bleeding. His heart, big as it was, just couldn’t cope.”

Mrs Holmes stroked the loyal Redbeard’s head lovingly. “What do we tell Sherlock?” she cried. “I promised him Redbeard would pull through. That we would bring him home.”

“We tell him the truth,” her husband replied as he wrapped a comforting arm around her shaking shoulders.

“He wont understand,” she said

“I know.”

And he hadn’t, Sherlock acknowledged.

He reached out towards the ghost who took his offered hand.

There was no avoiding what was to come now.

***

“No! No! No1” screamed the devastated younger Sherlock. “You promised!”

“Sherlock, dear,” his mother tried to explain as she reached for him.

But he would have none of it.

He had never felt so betrayed.

Hurt and anger welled up inside him, and without warning he flew at his mother. His arms battering at her as he repeated over and over again.

“You promised he would be okay. You promised, you promised, you promised.”

Everyone stood in stunned silence. Even the usually disinterested Mycroft is shocked, if only temporarily by Sherlock’s ferocity.

After a few minutes an exhausted Sherlock wrenches himself away and flees to the sanctuary of his bedroom.

***

Christmas morning finds the rest of the family sitting around the kitchen table eating breakfast.

There is no conversation; no chitchat, no arguments. Instead there is an awkward silence. They do not meet each other’s eyes.

Their attention is focussed on the kitchen door.

They wait.

Eventually the young Sherlock enters.

It is immediately apparent to everyone that this is a completely different Sherlock from the one who fled to his room the night before.

That little boy would never be seen again.

It had been replaced by one who no longer wants to be a pirate.

This Sherlock views the world through cold and emotionless logic. He has vowed to have nothing to do with any form of sentiment. He does not require friends. And prefers to go forth into the world alone.

This Sherlock walks over to the table to grab a piece of toast before turning and leaving the room without a word.

The only one who appears genuinely pleased by this new development is Mycroft.

He rises from the table, smirks at his stricken parents, before sauntering out of the kitchen and going in search of this new and marginally improved younger brother.

Sherlock’s eyes have not left his parents distraught faces.

“I never knew,” he murmured.

But before he can make a move towards them, the ghost of Carl Powers blocks his path.

There is a question in its expressive eyes.

He waits patiently for a response.

Sherlock nods.

The ghost smiles softly. It reaches out a hand and places it against the high-functioning sociopaths heart.

Sherlock feels a tingling sensation.

Then oblivion.

***

Chapter 4: The Second of the Three Spirits

***

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open again. This was becoming a habit, he noted.

He was back sitting in his chair in his flat at Baker St.

Checking the clock, he noted that it was still unable to move forward.

Getting up, Sherlock made his way cautiously towards the windows. Pulling back one of the curtains he looked down on Baker St.

He noted people rushing madly about. Either making a last minute dash for the shops, or trying to get to the relative peace and quiet of home.

As he observed the ordinary scene below him, he reflected briefly upon the unsettling events that he had been obliged to witness once again. Though this time it had been through the eyes of a rational man, and not that of an emotional young boy.

He sighed, frustrated. What was the point? Hindsight? Perspective?

What had happened had happened, and what was done was done. There was no going back.

Was there?

He is pulled abruptly away from his thoughts by a strong gust of wind that tears through the room. The gust is so strong that it is able to pull the door to his flat wide open, with a bang and a crash.

Realising what is about to happen, Sherlock turns to receive his new visitor.

“Did you miss me?”

James Moriarty.

Though impeccably dressed as usual, the ghost nonetheless was not looking its best. But a bullet that enters your mouth and exits the back of your head will have that affect.

In a vain attempt to disguise the messy aftermath, adorned on its head like a crown was a wreath of holly.

Sherlock stood his ground and glared at the ghost.

The ghost glared back.

Growing impatient Sherlock demanded. “What do you want?”

One moment Moriarty is in the doorway, the next he stands before the detective.

Without warning that ghost has grabbed hold of Sherlock’s right hand and has pulled him in close, a manic grin spread across its face.

“Your on the side of the angels,” it says as it glances up towards the ceiling.

Sherlock looks up as they ascend at speed towards, and then through…

***

Christmas Eve - Present

To the living room of John and Mary Watson.

Sherlock immediately disengages himself from Moriarty’s grasp and puts as much distance between them as he can in such a confined area.

He walks around the room. It doesn’t take him long to figure out the main topic of conversation.

But the self-satisfied smirk that settles on his lips is more than efficiently wiped when he spots the ghost mouthing ‘Sir Boast-A-Lot.’

He mentally kicks himself for allowing such a weakness to be on display in front of one such as this spirit represented. Sherlock refocusses his mind back to the task that has been set before him.

There is a reason he has been brought here. He needs to find out exactly what it is. For that he was going to need more data.

So he began to circulate the room.

His parents appeared to be having a very earnest, heart-felt conversation.

“He should be here,” his mother said. “Why isn’t he here?”

“You know what he’s like,” his father noted calmly, as he tried to ease his wife’s growing agitation.

But it was to no avail.

“But why?” she cried. “Why does he choose to divorce himself from all forms of sentiment?” She turned pleading eyes on her eldest son. “Why?”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Redbeard perhaps.”

He then went to get himself another drink. Anything to ensure that he didn’t have to bare witness to the aftermath of his pointed remark.

Sherlock glared at his brother, even though he was fully aware that Mycroft couldn’t see him. The urge to trip Mycroft up is almost overwhelming, but he manages to contain himself.

John and Mary are having a lively discussion.

“Ever since Amanda was born he’s been avoiding us,” John stated.

Mary, as always, did her best to defend his behaviour. “I think avoiding is a little… harsh. He did come to her christening.”

“Only because you promised to put another bullet in him.”

Mary shrugged, grinning sheepishly.

”Okay then. What would you call it?”

“It’s like the lead up to our wedding. You remember what he was like?”

“I know,” John replied trying to remain calm. “But he’s my best friend and our daughter’s Godfather. And he should know by now that he has nothing to fear. God knows all of us here in this room have proved his ridiculous theory about being alone protecting him and us wrong.”

Mary smiled sympathetically at her husband. “A genius he may be. But you know as well as I do he’s a bit slow when it comes to feelings. Feeling them and accepting them as a strength rather than a weakness.”

It was at that moment that Moriarty, who had been loitering on the other side of the room, decided to make his way casually over to the baby’s bassinet.

He leaned over to observe Amanda, who appeared to be aware of his presence. She began to fuss and fret as he started to sing to her.

“It’s raining. It’s pouring. Sherlock is boring.”

An intense need to protect engulfs Sherlock’s whole being as he observes the ghost interacting with his Goddaughter. He storms over to Moriarty.

“Get away from her,” he snarls.

The ghost straightens. It looks the detective up and down before petulantly stalking off to take up a position by the windows.

Sherlock checks to make sure Amanda is all right. As with Moriarty, it appears she can see him. She offers him a smile as she reaches out her arms towards him.

Sherlock lightly brushes his fingertips across her cheeks and over her eyes.

Instantly she yawns and goes back to sleep.

Reassured that she is safe, he continues with his investigation.

Lestrade, Donovan and Anderson are arguing as usual. Lestrade is defending him, Donovan insulting him and Anderson trying to give any number of implausible excuses for his non-attendance at the party.

Their argument is interrupted when Lestrade’s mobile rings.

“Lestrade. Yes. Where? I’ll be right there.”

He indicates to Donovan and Anderson that they are needed.

“Everything all right Greg?” John queried.

“Sorry John,” Lestrade replied. “We have to go. There’s been another attempted break-in of the vaults at the Bank of England. This time low tech, they’ve attempted to tunnel their way through. Sounds as though an innocent bystander accidentally came across them and was shot for his trouble. Poor bastard.”

As they headed out the door Lestrade turned back. “Merry Christmas.”

The conversation briefly turned to the bank robbery that had ended with such tragic consequences.

“Pity Sherlock wasn’t there to sort it out,” Mary remarked.

“Can’t see him bothering,” John responded. “It would have to be something really special to get Sherlock to worry about a bank robbery. And we know for a fact Moriarty isn’t behind this one.”

The conversation quickly turned back to happier topics.

Sherlock spotted that Molly was deep in conversation with Mrs Hudson.

He noted that this Christmas she had opted for a simple yet elegant short, figure hugging, and short sleeved black dress. Her hair was down, with no other adornments needed.

Molly sighed. “I’ll just have to drop his present off to Baker St in the New Year.”

“That would probably be best,” Mrs Hudson agreed.

Molly’s mobile rang.

She apologised to Mrs Hudson as she pulled her phone from her bag and checked the Caller ID.

“I need to take this,” she said as she moved to a corner of the room for some privacy.

Sherlock followed her.

“But Mike,” she protested. “Surely someone else could…” She stops as Mike Stamford interrupts her, what he tells her leaves Molly visibly shaken. Her face goes deathly pale and she has difficulty swallowing. “Yes. Yes of course,” she finally replies unsteadily. Her voice holds a slight tremor. “I’ll come right away.”

Sherlock frowns.

Molly never gets upset about performing an autopsy. She was too professional for that. She knew and understood that there was a time and a place.

But as he watched her, he realised he was clearly missing something.

But that professionalism was back when she informed the Watson’s that she too has to leave.

John can see she is clearly distressed. “Molly, are you all right? What’s going on?”

“I’m fine John, really,” she replies. But she cannot look him, or anyone else in the eye. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

When John attempts to question her further, she responds, “I have a promise to keep.” She then gathers up her bag and bids everyone a hasty goodbye.

He looks to Mary for confirmation. She nods, Molly isn’t telling the whole truth.

The ghost saunters over to stand next to Sherlock. He begins to sing again.

“I’m laughing. I’m crying. Sherlock is dying.”

Molly rushes past them looking for her coat before heading for the door. Sherlock reaches out to her. But his hand goes right through her.

Determined to find out what has her so distressed, he goes to follow her. But Moriarty pulls him back, shaking his head sternly.

Sherlock stands in the open doorway lost in thought.

He isn’t aware that John has moved until he goes to shut the door. John inadvertently placed his hand over the consulting detectives heart.

Sherlock gasps at the uncomfortable sensation. His eyes roll to the back of his head as darkness envelops him as he falls backward.

***

Chapter 5: The Last of the Spirits

***

Sherlock’s eyes snap open.

He barely has time to register that he is once again back at Baker St, before the tornado twists its way through it.

Sherlock drops to the floor and covers his head with his arms.

Around him the flat and almost all of the contents are systematically and ruthlessly destroyed.

As quickly as it starts, it’s over.

Sherlock raised his head, and cautiously got to his feet.

Without even seeing it, he knows that the final spirit has put in an appearance.

The unpleasant smell of rotting flesh is enough to convince him of that.

Looking around the ruins of what used to be his flat, he at first doesn’t spot it. Though the foul stench in the air tells him that it is near.

Making another scan of the room, his eyes fall upon his chair. It is in its usual spot in front of the fireplace. It is undamaged, and occupied.

Sitting in his chair is a cloaked and hooded figure all in black.

Sherlock slowly approaches. The closer he gets, the harder it is to suppress his sense of revulsion at the figure sitting there.

The spirit lifts its covered head. Its dead eyes are fiercely penetrating as they look right through him. Constantly assessing him.

Here is the only man in the whole of his career to date who has had the power to turn the stomach of Sherlock Holmes.

Charles Augustus Magnussen.

An unpleasant man in life, in death Magnussen is a hideous sight to behold.

Its rotting flesh desperately grasps at the bones of its skeleton. Stagnant liquid oozes freely through its overly moist pours. A putrid smelling mucus slithers from the bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. It snakes its way down to collect in any crevice it can find. The need for the hood and cloak apparent as they soak up the constantly spewing entrails.

To describe this ghost as grotesque would be a compliment.

Ghoulish suited it better.

Everything in Sherlock’s entire being was screaming at him to get as far away as he could from the repulsive spectre before him.

Not surprisingly it already knows what is going through his mind.

Its spindly long arms strike out, wrapping themselves around the detective.

As the ghost pulls the struggling Sherlock down through the floor, he can hear Magnussen’s all-knowing slimy, smug voice in his head.

‘Knowing is owning.’

***

Christmas Eve - Future

They emerge up through the ground. Sherlock immediately untangles himself from the loathsome Magnussen.

Looking around he realises that they are in a graveyard.

Snow has just started to fall and Sherlock becomes aware that he is shivering. Given that he is still dressed in old sweatpants, t-shirt and dressing gown, with nothing on his feet. That shouldn’t be a surprise.

Except that on the two previous occasions he had been spirited away, the weather had no affect on him.

He wondered whether his ability to feel it now was good, or bad.

He turned to the ghost but it gave no indication.

Fed up, Sherlock turned to make a quick survey of his surroundings to see if it could offer up some clue.

But it told him nothing. It was just a graveyard.

In frustration he turned back to Magnussen.

“This place has no significance for me. Why did you bring me here?”

The ghost points up ahead of the consulting detective.

Sherlock turned, to see a familiar figure making her way towards him.

Molly Hooper.

Sherlock quickly deduces from the streaks of grey through her hair and the lines on her face that he has been brought to the future.

Ten years in the future was his best guess.

Just as she comes level with him, Molly stops before one of the graves and begins to speak.

“If you could see me now, you’d probably laugh at me, talking to your grave,” she started off self-consciously. “Though it wouldn’t be the first time. John…” her words fade away.

The significance hits Sherlock hard, and his legs almost give way under him.

She is standing in front of his grave. And this time he really is dead.

Sherlock watched as Molly wiped away tears that had started to fall.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to visit you. I’ve wanted to, more than you can ever know. But it was just too hard, and the longer I left it the harder it became. So I took the cowards way out and I stayed away.”

She stops to compose herself.

When she speaks again there is a bite to her words. She is clearly annoyed with him.

Sherlock can’t help grinning, certain that if she could see him, this would be one of those times she would feel compelled to slap him.

“You’re a bloody fool Sherlock, do you know that,” she began. “What were you thinking? Were you high? And yes I know the toxicology report came back negative.” Tears started to flow again, but this time they were of anger. “Why did you have to go to that bank robbery on your own. Mycroft got the impression you were only saying you were interested in the case so that you could get out of going to John and Mary’s party. Greg confirmed that you’d sent him a text telling him it wasn’t worth your time.” She paused to blow her nose.

“Of course,” Sherlock murmured. “The Red Headed League.”

And then he remembered what he had witnessed at the party. Lestrade getting a call about an innocent bystander being shot.

The bystander had been him.

Which meant…

“I kept my promise to you Sherlock,” she said. “Remember? You made me promise that if you were to die, that I would be the one to perform your autopsy.”

Sherlock closed his eyes briefly. It had been a cruel request to make of her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done more than she should for him.”

Yet he kept on asking, knowing she would agree to any request he made of her.

“Do you know what I discovered Sherlock?” she asked. “You had a heart Sherlock. I know this for a fact because I held it in my hands. It may have stopped beating, but I can assure you, you did have one.” Sighing she continued. “If only you’d learned to trust it. To not see sentiment, feelings and love as weaknesses but as strengths, you might still be with us today.”

Sherlock found it increasingly difficult to listen to what Molly had to say.

He found it curious that this ghost in particular was apparently so disinterested, which was at complete odds to how it had been in life.

He glanced over at the hooded figure, but it remained where it stood.

It then occurred to Sherlock that this time round he was on his own. This time it was up to him. How he chose to handle this situation could well decide his fate when he was returned to his own timeline.

His attention was diverted when Molly spoke again.

“I shouldn’t get at you for making a stupid decision. I’m just as guilty.”

Sherlock frowned.

“I was so devastated by your death,” she explained to his grave. “I reconnected with Tom. And this time I married him.” She looked down sadly at the wedding band on her finger. “You should never marry someone you know you’ll never love. Especially when you know he knows.”

Molly took a deep breath. “This is my first and last visit Sherlock. But know that you are always in my heart.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips, and then placed her fingers to his headstone. She then turned to leave.

Sherlock purposefully stood in her way. He needed to share the pain she was feeling. He wanted to understand it. He owed her that.

As Molly passed right through him, the pain he felt was excruciating. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. Not even when he lost Redbeard. It was like all his internal organs had stopped one at a time.

He lost consciousness as he fell forward towards his grave.

***

Chapter 6: The End of It

***

Christmas Eve

Sherlock’s eyes opened slowly. He raised his head to peer blearily about him. His eyes initially refuse to focus. So he rubs them with a weary hand, he then blinks once, twice. Finally he shakes his head in an effort to clear it.

He finds that he is lying on the floor in the living room of his flat. And the flat is in complete darkness.

Time has moved on.

Sherlock gets to his feet. His flat is back to how it was before the arrival of the ghosts. He checks the time, then hurriedly puts on his shoes and pulls his Belstaff over his dressing gown before rushing down the stairs and out the front door.

***

The Watson’s Christmas Eve party was in full swing when Sherlock burst through the door.

Everyone looked at the Consulting Detective in amazement.

There he stood in a full Santa suit, minus beard and padding. A sack full of presents over one shoulder.

Suddenly feeling a little self-conscious, Sherlock cleared his throat. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” he apologised.

John walked up to his friend and hugged him warmly. “Better late than never mate,” he assured him.

Sherlock gave a small but genuine smile as he returned the hug, much to his and everyone else’s surprise.

“Can I take those?” John asked, indicating the presents. “I’ll put them with the others.”

Sherlock nodded, but quickly grabbed the big pink teddy bear before making his way over to the baby’s bassinette.

He leaned over, gently placing the bear next to Amanda, who squealed with delight.

As she had done when Sherlock had come with the Ghost of Christmas Present, Amanda stretched her arms out towards him.

This time Sherlock reached down and gathered her up in his arms. He gave her a brief, if awkward hug before placing her carefully back down.

As he passed Mary, he stopped to kiss her on the cheek.

He next walked over to his mother and had a quiet word with her.

Mrs Holmes eyes filled with tears, tears of joy as she and Sherlock embraced. He then shook hands with his father and brother.

Next he approached Lestrade, accepting his bear hug with good grace. He then shakes hands with a shocked Donovan and a pleased Anderson.

Mrs Hudson received a brief kiss on the cheek, and a kind word.

Sherlock swallowed nervously as he approached Molly, who had stood silently observing him as he made his way around the room.

He put his hand in the jacket pocket of the Santa suit and pulled out the little box he had placed there.

He stopped when they were standing almost toe-to-toe.

Molly looked up at him, waiting patiently.

“Molly,” he began.

‘You’ve always been the one to see right through me. No matter how badly I’ve treated you, you’ve always been there for me. I have no words to describe what I feel for you. I’ve always tried to dismiss them. It goes without saying that I’ll be rubbish at a relationship with you. I’ll disappoint, hurt and anger you more often than not. I don’t do romance. Don’t see the point of dating…’

Molly reached up and kissed him softly on the lips.

“Yes Sherlock,” she said with a smile.

“Yes?” he asked, momentarily confused.

Molly grinned. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Sherlock let out a sigh of relief. He quickly removed the diamond ring from its box and placed it on her finger.

It was a perfect fit. Of course.

For those who witnessed this exchange, they would feel rightly confused by what they had observed.

All they heard of Sherlock’s declaration was ‘Molly’. The rest he had not spoken aloud.

It was fortunate for him then that the only person who mattered the most to him had heard his silent words loud and clear.

As it was, at that very moment the consulting detective and his pathologist were currently oblivious to everyone else in the room.

Sherlock pulled Molly into his arms. Resting his forehead against hers, he looked deep into her eyes as he whispered a heartfelt “Thank you.”

Molly wrapped her arms securely around him. “You’re welcome,” she replied.

***

So did Sherlock Holmes learn the lessons set him by the ghosts from the past, present and future?

I have it on good authority the Consulting Detective was never again visited by supernatural spirits. From what I hear the high-functioning sociopath was far too busy to fall back into his former destructive ways.

But he still behaves as is expected of him. All for appearances of course.

***

Chapter 7: Epilogue

***

Christmas Eve… Seven Years Later

“But Daddy!” Six-year old Elizabeth, looking beseechingly with her big, brown eyes while four-year old William’s aqua coloured eyes brimmed with fat tears that threatened to overflow at any moment as his little chin quivered tremulously. Both children aimed their well-honed arsenal towards their target, looking pleadingly at their father. “It’s a family Christmas tradition.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and turned to his wife as she entered their children’s bedroom looking for support.

“Don’t look at me,” Molly said with a grin. “You’re the one who started it.”

Sherlock pouted.

“And anyway,” she continued encouragingly as she stretched up on her toes, placing one hand around the back of his neck before placing a soft kiss upon his lips. “I’m rather fond of this particular tradition.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically putting on a show of reluctance, which was marred when he scooped up his daughter in his arms. Lizzie squealed with delight as he flopped them both on the nearest bed. He dragged Molly who was carrying Will in her arms down next to him, before pulling her in close.

It takes a bit of manoeuvring, but eventually the two adults, with two excited children on their laps are settled on the single bed.

As Molly rests her head on his shoulder, Sherlock leaned down to press a gentle kiss on her forehead before reaching out for the book he had already placed on the bedside table.

“Are we sitting comfortably?’ he asked.

Everyone nodded.

“Then I shall begin.”

He opened the book and began to read aloud. ‘Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he choose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail…’

***

#sherlolly #fluffy #cute #a christmas carol

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