#but yea imagining this reframed as like.

[keepthemacramesecret]

in case anyone hasnt heard it. rly a song of all time

[alleyskywalker]

Endearment? Endearment?? Armand… No ok but this is kinda insane, and it has layers too because… So, obviously it’s wild to call this…kind of disturbing title, that just screams power, an endearment. But we know Armand longs to be loved. Whether he fully admits it to himself of not, but he probably wants to be called by an endearment now and again, an expression of love and devotion that’s tangible and easily accessible, clearly expressed. But who is there to call him by an endearment? He’s got no family (as most vampires), no companion for centuries now, not even any particularly close friend(s). Given the rank difference between him and the coven members, it’s also unlikely that he would be forming those kind of intimate bonds with any of them – like, yea sure, they’re all fucking each other, but that’s surface, and they were probably still calling him Maitre then. And at the same time, the coven is the closest he’s got to family/friends. So if he can just kind of refrain Maitre as an endearment – consciously or not – it fills that hole a little. It’s a title, yes, but also a name signaling not just power dynamics but closeness and devotion, from the only people who are in any way positioned to offer him that (even if in reality they don’t). He just needs this so much, he’ll pretend.

On another layer…the fact that Armand is even capable of reframing this as an endearment at all… Seems to speak to his history and the relationship with Marius. How the last (and only?) time that he felt loved, cared for and safe was with Marius (as fucked up as that relationship was – Armand’s coping mechanisms include romanticizing the abuse). And he would have referred to Marius as Master – Maitre. Also a title, but within the context there it became something of an endearment too, and that conflation would be perpetuated by the fact that that’s what Armand called the last person who offered him at least the illusion of love and care, the closest he ever had to those things at any rate. (Like especially with show!Armand whose own parents sold him into slavery, etc.)

But then also the last layer of the dynamic with Louis and how the whole “call me Armand” thing functions as a weird double-edged sword. Like…in a normal circumstance, someone saying, “you don’t need to use my title just call me by name” would be a sign of closeness, an invitation toward intimacy. And in some ways, it still is here. Louis functions outside of Armand’s norma structures, he’s different. He’s special. But given the context that he’s just called his an endearment and the coven being the closest substitute for a family/friendship group…imagine calling someone by a nickname their family/friends use and they ask you to call them by their full name. That creates distance – we don’t have that kind of relationship yet. And as they’ve only just met, that would make sense… It’s especially interesting in relation to the bench scene, the scene where they commit (recommit in Armand’s case?) to each other, and Armand calls Louis Maitre for the first time. Agh I love them, they’re just so much.

[mousegirlheart]

haii!!!! when i am in a creative schlump (TM) I like to make the Shittiest Thing Imaginable. like I literally tell myself “ok time to write a really bad story” and the reframing helps w the Creator Guilt of Not Making Good Things. idk if this might help you, bUt I wanted to share just in case <3

n yea I am having a Pain Time also ;-; stay stronk queen (mouse)

if i dont like my drawing ill explode

got a whole folder of stuff ive never finished cos i NEED them to LOOK GOOD and i dont have the skill for it yet so they just sit there... unfinished...

[egg-king]

it kinda irks me how grouchy people get when women (particularly on tiktok) use terms like blueberry milk nails or cinnamon girl hair. Like yea sure you could just call those things light blue or warm brown but isn't it more fun to reframe it and consider it in an alternative way? If calling them blueberry milk nails makes you imagine that flavour when you look at your hands, is that not more engaging and interesting than just seeing them as merely light blue? Is it really vapid to introduce an amount of symbolism into your everyday life?

[kandyrezi]

So to provide some insight into some of this stuff, just based off of what I recall - the Satanick and Lil marriage doesn't seem to be purely political, because there are comics of Lil actually coming to comfort Satanick (hoping we get more of her in the future...), and DSP does seem to consider some of the depth with Satanick and such? Ivlis is just currently real fucking beaten down in general, which kinda sucks, and sucks a lot of the life out of him though. APSID is post neutral end of TGG tho, so we might get to see some more pre-nick Ivlis!! Regarding Etihw, a HUGE part of the issue was VGPerson's translation - whilst they did do an amazing job with translating it, they also took a lot of creative liberties with it, resulting in a flanderised version of Eti being presented to the western audience. This is both how we got Eti using they/them pronouns, bc of a misunderstanding of how the pronouns for Eti were used (for reference Eti uses Boku style pronouns, so the closest equivialent we've got is she/they??) And how we ended up with an Etihw who says stuff like "doo-doo head" and such, which is... wildly inaccurate to their character. They're a fair bit more mature in the original japanese with their teasing, from what I recall, which also explains some of the inconsistencies, but still innocent w/ regards to nsfw stuff, from what I remember? Also, speaking of VGPerson's mistranslations, did you hear about the Crow thing? Who we know to be Crow isn't actually Crow, Crow is a secret... child(?) of Kcalb's, we don't know the exact generation gap, but the person who he talks to isn't Crow!! Which is HUGE news, and a crazy mistranslation, that reframes a whole lot of things. With that said, this is all coming from someone who dislikes SatanIvlis with a PASSION, and had to live through the hell year of 2016. Whilst stuff does seem to have slowed down somewhat, and there is a fair bit more of the... memey stuff, for lack of a better word, there does seem to be some character development there? The stream thing may have been out of context, since the Wiki only reports the information that was provided, not the questions that were asked along with it, so the safest way of checking would be to hit up the stream itself. I'd imagine the context would have been someone asking if Satanick loved Ivlis/Licorice or such-- Sorry for the huge ramble in your inbox!! Turns out Tumblr removed the ask length limit, which was a choice, but yea! Hopefully we'll get more content that does dig into the depths of the characters in the future, take the english version of TGG with a grain of salt, I may or may not have been the anon who encouraged the original post that sparked all of this, Carnival Rhythm is in production, and Ear Theory is the new hotness! (also regarding the actual character depth thing, I imagine all it takes is some kind of bigger piece, since it's a lot easier to make content that memes around with characters than to dig into the depth of them, and with all the stresses going on for her, memeing around is almost certainly easier...)

I already had a hunch it was you, Piralos. lol hello~

I don't think there's anything inherently bad about taking creative liberties, since word-for-word japanese translations will otherwise result in being stiff and awkward. it's more about translating concepts and ideas, so taking creative liberties is an inevitable par for the course. I don't take issue with vgperson's translation either because things like different speech patterns and personal pronouns can be difficult to communicate into english.

admittedly the beach scene with Eti calling Kcalb an ultra doo-doo moron head is funny as fuck and I love it, but I understand if it isn't completely "accurate" to their character in the first place. my main issue with Etihw was the fact that they've been described as a "sheltered damsel" (in that trio pic with Fumus & Siralos), there was also something about them never having gone through anything traumatizing (I can't remember the exact phrasing but it was something alluding to that). they're a literal GOD who went through a war and had their subordinates die in it?? even if they never directly participated in it, it still doesn't make sense as to why they would be described as 'sheltered' of all things.

it's partially confusing because sometimes you can't really tell if DSP decided they wanted to change a character's core personality as a whole, or if a trait that wasn't there before/wasn't outright obvious is suddenly applied to said character - and any plotholes / gaps revolved around that are going to be filled in not until... years later at this point, so it becomes very frustrating when the line between the two becomes blurred: "is this a complete personality change because DSP didn't like the character's initial idea, or was it always planned and it's going to be explained later on in an upcoming story?" (like that point about Etihw I made just now about them being naive)

also, ain't nothing wrong with the meme'ing of their characters - even I like to see it, just tired of seeing the two same characters used in said act of meme'ing, yanno? STNK & Ivlis do seem to be getting more development outside of that (and small little quirks as I saw) to their characters, which is great, but it would be better if said development didn't constantly revolve around ONLY eachother.

I pretty much stopped going to the streams long ago, so I'm not sure what's been going on or really keeping up with any recent information. if that is the case though, then the "does he love" question seems kinda pointless to ask considering he's already professed his love to Ivlis in some of the mini-comics. would have been more of a plot twist if the answer to that were "no" lol.

I'm not quite sure what the "ear theory" is about (unless you meant war theory lmao). I do have quite a bit to say about ears though: did you know I thought Sal & Samekichi had elf-like triangle shaped ears at first, but then the manga revealed they instead just had normal, round-ish human-shaped ears??? kinda weird seeing them like that tbh.

[rachelthompsonauthor]

We all take things personally because we are all, well, people, aka, persons. We live our lives through our own eyes and experiences, right? This is how people argue with one another, whether that’s in real life or online. “In my experience,” or “In my humble opinion,” is how most of these debates begin.

What if you view things from another’s’ perspective? As the saying goes, “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” In this age of controversy, that’s mighty difficult, particularly from a political or religious perspective. I’m constantly amazed at the responses some men give me about being a childhood sexual abuse and rape survivor – what they would have done in my situation, 🙄when they cannot comprehend what it was like for me (at age eleven) or in college.

It can be quite frustrating to explain my perspective and experiences to people who have absolutely no comprehension of what it’s like to live through these experiences, and to be treated as if I’m to blame for what happened.

One of the most effective ways I’ve learned to not take anything personally is by learning and using The Four Agreements, a small yet effective code of conduct by Don Miguel Ruiz. Don’t Take Anything Personally is the Second Agreement. I’ll break it down for you here with examples and how to apply it to your own life as a survivor.

Let’s deconstruct.

Taking Things Personally Causes Frustration

Take my example above: if a man says to me, “Why didn’t you fight back?” which is a typical, ignorant answer from a non-survivor who understands nothing about how the brain reacts to trauma, I become frustrated because I want to educate him with facts and science. Facts and science do not work on someone whose intent is to denigrate and victim-blame me.

The onus is on me to take a breath and examine the intent of the person who is interacting with me:

What’s in it for him?

Does he want to learn more about sexual abuse survivors and trauma?

How the brain reacts to trauma?

How he can help others who have been raped or abused? 

Since the Third Agreement is Don’t Make Assumptions, I have the choice to continue interacting with the person and attempt to have a meaningful, educational discussion to move the narrative forward, or I can shut it down and move on, saving myself the possible frustration of what could potentially upset me further.

In an argument, each side wants to defend their position because we feel we must be right in order to win. Decide what ‘winning’ is going to cost you.

I have the choice, here. I have the agency to own how I take comments from this man (if at all – the Block and Mute buttons are our friends on social media). If I’m having this discussion with someone in real life, I can decide to end the discussion or walk away if it’s not serving me or causing me frustration.

I can draw a boundary because this person’s comments are not about me at all – they come from his lived experiences or viewpoint.

And this is the key to not experiencing frustration when healing from sexual assault – what others say they believe in reaction to our truth is on them, not us.

Taking Things Personally Lowers Self-Esteem

Based on one survivor story:

Let’s say your mother tells you she doesn’t believe another family member sexually abused you as a child, and it crushes you. You find yourself alone and desperate to make her believe you at all costs. You spend years in therapy, yet it doesn’t help. You’re at odds with her over every small thing because this big thing looms large over your entire relationship. Understandable.

You starve yourself. You sleep around. You drink and dabble in drugs. You can’t keep a job. You self-harm. All because your mother, the person who is supposed to be in your corner, of all people, doesn’t believe you. When you look in the mirror, you hate your reflection. You speak so negatively to yourself, even your closest friends would be appalled (all common for survivors, by the way).

Trace that back to the fact that you have taken her disbelief personally. You’ve pinned all your hopes toward healing from this trauma onto one person: her. When in fact, healing depends on someone else entirely: YOU.

If someone isn’t treating you with love and respect, you are allowed to walk away from them.

This is also a boundary, and yes, part of not taking anything personally. What this mother did is terrible, absolutely. What this survivor needs is to stop looking for support from someone who refuses to give it, and realize she’s worthy of self-love and support from a community of survivors and therapists who will help her embrace her in healing.

This isn’t woo-woo shit. This is reality. If the people in your life aren’t bolstering your self-esteem, it’s on you to take action to change those circumstances, not them. If they don’t believe you, you can still seek help and support. Healing isn’t dependent on other people believing you – it’s dependent on you getting the support you need and deserve. Toxic people won’t give you that, so don’t give them anything.

I’ve been in this situation in the past with men. I left them. Cutting ties is the best thing.

Taking Things Personally Creates Conflict

We get defensive when someone calls us out on something they don’t agree with. Our lived experience is different from someone else’s. Intuitively, this makes sense. We fight for what, in our eyes, is right. Remember this:

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point of view comes from all the programming they received growing up. ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

I see this so much on social media, don’t you? I get caught up in it myself, especially with regard to victim-blaming survivors for being assaulted and abused or raped. I cannot, and will not, ever accept that it’s ever a survivor’s fault for a perpetrator committing a crime. We never blame a woman for being car-jacked or robbed at the ATM, do we? So why do people blame her for being raped? It’s mind-boggling to me. So yea, it feels personal.

And yet…I know in my heart, it’s not. People who victim-blame are conditioned by their own families, peers, news, media, and social media to take a stance that makes sense to them and their point of view, and that has nothing to do with me. Arguing with them, providing facts, sharing my experiences, etc., does nothing to help change their minds.

Example: When an (in)famous YouTuber tweeted: “Anxiety is created by you” (and then subsequently deleted it because wow, so uninformed), many of his bro-dudes supported him by explaining that it’s true – all mental illnesses could simply go away if we just tried harder, worked out more, and stopped being victims.

I’ll admit, I got involved in attempting to educate some of these bro-dudes by sharing that mental illness isn’t something that goes away like a bad cold, or is a figment of our imaginations. Sure, it’s all in our heads – our brains, that is. And so on.

Oy, the mansplaining. What could I – a woman of 55 years, who has studied mental illness for over twenty years (longer than most of those kids have been alive LOL), who has anxiety, depression, and cPTSD, who has written two books about it (so far) that have been vetted and reviewed by several psychologists, who hosts a weekly Twitter #SexAbuseChat that deals with mental illness specifically for survivors of sexual abuse – know about mental illness? 

Yet, you see, it didn’t matter. I took it personally. They took it personally. It was no longer about mental illness – it became more about who was right. My facts, stats, and science had nothing on their put-downs and misogynistic chuckles.

There could be no conflict resolution because our values would never align. 

Once I reeled myself back in, I began writing this post. I reminded myself not to take it personally because what they were saying wasn’t about me. I reminded myself about my own healing boundaries, self-care, and how to put my energies into something more positive – writing.

Taking Things Personally Takes Energy

As I just mentioned, that interaction took enormous energy; energy I could use elsewhere. And that’s really the crux of this post. Where are we spending our energy when we take something personally? Usually, we end up in a negative loop of toxicity. That’s part of the cycle our brains play with us, a pattern we may not be aware of. Becoming aware of this pattern allows us to change it. That’s what these agreements help us do.

It hurts when people say something negative about us, and we take it personally. The wound festers; we poke at it, and peel at that scab. We’re so focused on the one comment, we shut out everything else, even the positive stuff, to the point that we’re missing out on life.

Example: In my BadRedhead Media business, I work with authors. Authors receive book reviews, oftentimes from non-professional reviewers. Sometimes, these reviews are verging on the ridiculous. That’s just the way it is. Amazon and other online retailers allow for these reviews. It is what it is. As an author myself, I, too, receive these reviews.

We tend to focus on these rare and silly one-star reviews, rather than the majority of five-star, terrific reviews. This is knowns as the negativity bias, which means our brains are hard-wired to focus on the negative, most likely due to evolution:

The evolutionary perspective suggests that this tendency to dwell on the negative more than the positive is simply one way the brain tries to keep us safe.

We’re not doomed, however. By not taking things personally, we are reframing these situations, and using our energy differently. Comments that strike us as negative could potentially be a learning experience, even if we feel offended. Always be on the lookout for a learning opportunity, or ways to utilize that energy toward something more useful.

Ask yourself these questions to refocus your energy:

What can I learn from this?

What difference will this make in my life?

How can I change what I’m doing with this reaction (or do I need to)?

What activity can do I do now to take myself out of this situation?

How can I change my thinking pattern to grow from this?

Listen, none of us is perfect. I first read The Four Agreements back in the 90s, and found it useful because it helped me make sense of a difficult situation in a corporate setting. I now find it helpful as both an author and entrepreneur, as well as a mom. Being on social media and online is a crucial part of my business, so I deal with many different types of people constantly. If I took everything they say personally, I’d never get out of bed.

If you aren’t getting what you need from someone or something, remember – it’s okay to withdraw. You aren’t a loser. Maintaining peace in your life and focusing on your healing will always “win.”

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Do you need help right now? Please contact RAINN at rainn.org or 24/7 at 1.800.656.HOPE

***

Read more about Rachel’s experiences in the award-winning book, Broken Pieces.

She goes into more detail about living with PTSD and realizing the effects of how being a survivor affected her life in

Broken Places, available in print everywhere!

  The post 4 Reasons Taking Things Personally Prevents Healing appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

via Rachel Thompson

[village-skeptic]

for book asks, 17, 20, and (for selfish reasons) 24!

17. Historical fiction: yea or nay? LMFAO. Yea, but with the caveat that I’m always reading them both as fiction and as a sort of contemporary primary source to think about how authors and audiences are engaging with and imagining the time period, and what they want to see, read, and think about that time period as BEING -- and, on the flip side of that, what they want to ignore, dismiss, exclude, and aggressively reframe.

True confessions time: I actually procrasti-skimmed a historical romance a few weeks back, when I was in the middle of a very long, very dry historical book that had very few PEOPLE in it. Sometimes my yen for balance takes an odd form. 20.  Do you read e-books? Under protest, yes -- or on impulse, or for discretion and convenience. (The romance above was an e-book, for instance.) But I definitely tend to save e-books for works that I’m purely consuming, instead of engaging with critically -- I do best with a physical object in that sense. I find myself taking screenshots of e-book pages, but then there’s nowhere convenient for me to PUT those thoughts. (Yes, I’m sure there’s software or a tablet app that I could annotate the images with. You know what takes less time? A PENCIL.)TL;DR - I like my book-objects, thank you. :D24. How willing are you to lend your books to other people?

Oooh, this is a good question! I’m not unwilling, but if it’s one that’s important to me, I’d almost rather buy a copy for a friend, because I am kind of always aware of the possibility of the book not coming back. Plus, depending on the book, it might be covered in my own embarrassing marginalia? Then again - that might be the point of the lending...

[book asks here!]

[mama-orion]

Sacre Coeur  chapter 8

Fever be damned. The show story must go on.

Chapter one + chapter two + chapter three + chapter four + chapter five + chapter six  + chapter seven (Or subscribe for updates on A03)

Baker Street, 1 month ago: John Remembers

John storms out of the flat. He lets his feet take him, paying little attention to the turns and crossings as he talks himself through an anger-reframing exercise that’s failing miserably. Just going to have to weather this one out. He lets the hurt gather in his limbs and pounds it into the sidewalk through the soles of his feet, squeezes his fists as they swing by his sides, fingernails biting palms. Sherlock’s sharp, dismissive words cycle around and around his mind.

“Why have you come, John?”

“What do you mean, why? Why wouldn’t I?”

Sherlock hadn’t even looked up from his microscope.

“You haven’t been by in a month. You’re not at work. Your gun is in your waistband. So. Bored of your new life so soon, popping by for a quick fix? I’m busy, John. Do leave me alone.”

He is well into Regents Park when he finally stops, sinking onto a bench, breathing hard. It’s gray and chill. There’s hardly anyone about on the walking paths and wide, trim lawns. He bends almost double, holding his head. The anger has mostly drained, leaving a cold, empty space behind.

The day is a royal wash. First the row with Mary. God, pregnancy hormones are a bloody nightmare. He’d stormed out of that one, too. Should have gone back right away, apologized, made her that thing with the mushrooms that settles her stomach, given her a damn foot rub in front of the telly. But the very thought had repelled him like the push of reversed magnets. This had troubled him so deeply that he’d just kept walking.

He’d found his way to the Underground. No place in mind, he just needed to go. Anywhere. He’d done that a lot as a student at Bart’s when he was new to London with little money. The rocking of the cars and anonymity of the crowd had eased the strain of uni. He found he studied better on the trains, though the graphic medical texts did raise eyebrows. It had also been a safe way to look at other young men he wasn’t likely to stumble into again at Bart’s – he’d met more than a few that way.

He’d ridden for hours, turning things over in his mind. Watching people. The jostle and rhythm of the car had soothed him into a blankness he’d sorely craved. He might have ridden through the night, or just gone home with takeout and a lame apology, if not for the older couple working a Sudoku diagonal from him.

They were silver-haired, both handsome in their 60s. He felt a little like Sherlock as he’d watched them surreptitiously, reading into the tilt of their bodies (close), proximity of their limbs (very close, thighs touching), their clear history (matching rings, overheard conversation about a nephew’s recent wedding and a much-chuckled-over anecdote about his bed-wetting years). He felt a fierce pang of jealousy for these husbands, for their easy bickering over the Sudoku book, for their gentle and obvious affection for one another.

They had gotten off at Charing Cross. John had missed them immediately. The pieces rattling in his mind had settled.

Obvious, really.

He’d wound up at 221B, intoxicated by his convictions. Yes, it meant he’d made a horrible mistake with Mary. No, he had no idea what the next steps were. Except this one. If Sherlock would have him, at least that piece of it would make sense.

And if he couldn’t get the words out, at least he’d bring him along on a case. John had been  rather self-consciously aware of the gun tucked out of sight. He’d taken to carrying it out with him, just in case… in case Sherlock texted, needed him to come urgently. Might be dangerous.

Course, Sherlock had noticed. Hadn’t gone well.

Christ, what had he expected? Sherlock to look up from his microscope with surprise, pleasure? More of that smoldering intensity he’d glimpsed the last few months? Or at the very least cranky Sherlock, certainly distracted Sherlock, caught up in his train of thought, pulling John in as if he belonged there, as if he had only been gone an hour, never mind a month.

Staring out across the broad lawn, a drizzle begins to pelt him. He knows he should go home, stop this nonsense, accept the nest he’s built and bury all of this. Deep. He should apologize to Mary. Read up on what size berry the embryo can be compared to this week. Maybe it’s up to ‘kumquat’.

But as he walks back to the main road, the rain soaking into his Haversack, he doesn’t go down to the tube. That magnetic repulsion keeps his feet moving. He walks back to Baker Street. And then, using his key, slips into the entryway of 221B. He pauses, noticing his wet footprints on the hall floor. With a quick look up the stairwell and toward Mrs. Hudson’s door, he quickly crouches and rubs them out with his coat sleeve, then ducks into 221C to wait.

The damp, dim little basement flat is gloomy, but he hardly notices as he fills up with the thrill of a chase, all those hours they’d spent lurking behind bins in an alley or bantering in disguise in plain sight, Sherlock playing up his role just to see if he could make John break character, their eyes catching and flashing. This stakeout is foolish, he knows that. Sherlock will likely be livid. But right now, he doesn’t care. He’s feeling reckless and damn but it feels brilliant.

Sherlock thunders down the stairs. The front door opens and slams. John breathlessly counts to 15, then silently emerges, a little thrill burning bright in his chest as he follows his quarry down the street, keeping a fair distance between them. Sherlock strides along, looking out for cabs. He never once looks back. If he did, well, John is feeling more capable of confronting that right now than the angry, pregnant wife he isn’t sure how to love anymore.

Sherlock finally gets a cab’s attention. John does the same. He leans toward the cabbie, pointing ahead. “Follow that cab.” Just like in the movies. The cabbie revs away and keeps a professional distance between them, apparently eager for a little adventure in her night. It is ridiculously easy.

They almost lose them at a light, but the cabbie outdoes herself, using the company’s GPS to locate them. Doubt that’s legal. The track them all the way into the City. Sherlock strides from his cab into an ostentatious high-rise, more glass than steel. John tips the cabbie well for her skullduggery, then follows the swirling, black Belstaff through the wide lobby and up several escalators. The tricky bit is staying out of sight as Sherlock speaks into a security kiosk in a quiet hall. John hasn’t anticipated this bit, had hoped there would just be some room he could lurk outside of, maybe a window he could climb through. Obviously, the country’s most powerful media mogul would have a security check. With a small crestfallen sigh, he decides his chase is up.

“Yes, hello Janine. He is expecting me.”

John catches his breath. Janine? Bridesmaid Janine? Mary’s Janine? Strange coincidence, that. He cracks a smile as Sherlock disappears into the polished silver elevator. Too easy.

John bounces on the balls of his feet before the kiosk, the thrill crackling through his veins. He loves this part, when the variables could go either way on a hairpin moment. He pushes the call button. Janine’s familiar face appears in black and white on a small screen. He smiles at her in a way he hopes says, ‘Of course I’m supposed to be here.’ She scrunches her eyes as she works out who he is, then grins warmly.

“Oh John! Just a sec, love, Sherlock’s just gone up. Didn’t know you’d both be coming tonight.”

“Course we would, I was just a bit behind, had to wrap up something with Mary.” The elevator doors hiss open. John feels giddy. But there is a worm of worry that adds another unique thrill. Almost too easy.

John steps out of the elevator into a spacious multi-level suite that is both spartan and pompous, all ebony angles and stainless steel. Janine bounds over and squeezes him into a hug he half-heartedly returns. “Oh, good to see you, John! How’s Mary and the baby? Oo, you must just be delighted. Or terrified, am I right?” She elbows him playfully in the ribs, all waggling eyebrows.

“It’s, yea, um, it’s magical. Mary, she’s fine, fine. Throwing up. Constantly.”

Janine wrinkles her nose. “Oh, poor love.”

“Yea, beastly. So. Um, where’s Sherlock?”

“Oh, course – just through there and up the stairs. They’re in his office.”

“Ta, um, I’ll just…”

Janine waggles her fingers at him and turns to her desk, scooping up her mobile which shows dozens of vivid bubbles paused in play. She settles into her chair, taps the screen and immediately forgets him.

John counts it as a stroke of considerable luck that he can continue his approach unseen. After his dismissal at Baker Street, he can imagine Sherlock’s anger if he were to waltz in. But he can also imagine the flash of pride in his eyes as his blogger stubbornly asserts his place by his side. Best to listen a bit first and get the hang of the situation. John walks cautiously through a cold sitting room with a wall of dark glass overlooking the pinpoint lights of the city. The only colorful element in the room is a horrid red leather rug that looked as if someone has bled out on it.

Stomach thrilling with the risk of it, John pads cautiously up the curving steel stairwell to the mezzanine outside Magnusson’s enclosed office. As he edges closer to the doorway, he can hear muffled voices through the thick, opaque glass. Magnusson, Sherlock and… surely not. Mary?

He stops just outside the doorway and listens tensely, all spark and daring extinguished.

“–had not expected you to grace us with your presence, Rosamund.”

Rosamund? What in the hell? Does she have a twin?

Sherlock’s voice immediately mentally scolds him. John, it’s never twins.

“Yes, well,” the Mary-not-Mary voice responds. “I thought it best to receive the final delivery in person. It was most peculiar that John did not come home tonight.”

A wave of cold washes through him. Christ, if he’s mucked this up somehow…

“Rosamund, if you are implying that I am trying to double-cross you by involving John, you would be most mistaken. Why would I threaten his safety so close to your assurance of his freedom? It would be counter to my goals. He stopped by the flat earlier. We quarreled. As did you, I believe. I don’t know where he is now.”

Sherlock’s bored rumble betrays, to John’s ears, a tense edge. Something has happened Sherlock didn’t anticipate. John prickles with nerves.

“Oh, poor love, struck down two for two. Out getting pissed, I’m sure. Do forgive my assumptions, Sherlock. I know how you feel about my little plan. Wouldn’t put it past you for one last daring act of gallantry. ‘Course, how silly of me, thinking you’d put the safety of thousands of innocents before our sweet John.”

“Really, Rosamund,” John hears Magnusson’s unctuous voice. “If you bait him like this, you’ll only risk drawing attention to yourself. You shouldn’t be seen here. If my PA finds out, it could be bad for you. She was your bridesmaid, was she not?”

“Never fear, Charles,” she responds peevishly, “I’ll be leaving very shortly, quiet as a mouse. Now, Sherlock, the serum if you please.”

A pause, a rustle of coat, clicks of plastic.

“Ah, excellent. How satisfying to have the matching set! You see, Sherlock, no matter what they all say, I find you enormously easy to work with. The others simply don’t understand that you just need to be properly motivated.”

John finds himself pressing his back hard against the frosted glass wall, hands clenching, biting his lips to remain silent while his heartbeat pounds in his skull. It’s Mary’s voice. But there is steel and venom in it, a voice he has never heard from her. It sends claws of confusion down his spine.

“Tell me about the method of delivery.”

“Airborne skin application, penetration up to twenty feet. Any part will do, though it works more quickly the closer it is applied to the skull. No discernable marks at entry. It can also be diffused as a single concentrated burst in a crowd as an inhaled vapor. The effects are reduced at the edge of its range. A single dosage will render the recipient quite forgetful of the occurrences taking place.”

“For what span, and how long?”

“From my limited testing, it obscures a span approximately 10 minutes before the exposure and continues blocking all memory of the next 5 hours. This is essential for obscuring any memory of having received the serum. It comes into full effect 5 hours after exposure. The exact longevity of the block is not known.”

“How stable is it? We don’t want another Redbeard, Sherlock.”

“Tested in laboratory scenarios. And on a range of willing subjects.” John thinks he can detect more tension in Sherlock’s voice. What the bloody hell is Redbeard? “The homeless will do a great deal for compensation. Besides, Rosamund, the risks to my interests would be far too great were I to attempt any kind of subterfuge.”

“Excellent. Then it’s quite safe to perform my own little test.”

There is a soft click, then a man’s gasp.

“Rosamund! For God’s sake,” Magnusson cries angrily, “what did you go and do that for?”

“Charles, you are tiresome tonight.” John hears a meaty thud, a groan, and the telltale sound of a body collapsing onto the floor.

“Rosamund, this is unexpected,” Sherlock says lightly. “I’d rather thought you and Charles to be a matched set.”

“Hardly. Worm. He serves his purposes.”

“Well, at the very least we won’t have a witness to our exchange,” Sherlock says almost cheerily. When he continues, there is steel in his tone. “Rosamund. Our agreement. I have your word that John is safe now.”

…Safe?

“Yes, Sherlock,” she replies impatiently. “I will uphold my portion of our deal. I will make the necessary adjustments to my situation with John. This morning’s little domestic can be easily escalated. Anger issues in a father-to-be, well… it is a mother’s prerogative to put the needs of her child first. I imagine that, legal proceedings aside, he would be returned to you and relatively unscathed by the experience within a month. That would give me ample time to initiate the next phase with John under my watch as collateral, should the serum not perform as expected.”

“And the child?”

“Will be my concern. It was never part of our agreement.”

“The child is as much John’s as it is yours.”

“How can you even be sure it is John’s? Oh, this is tiresome. As always, Sherlock, one word, one breath of this to John, and it will be worse than death for him. You as ever have my word on that.”

“Not a word, Rosmund. Not a breath.”

The acidic horror of the situation sinks into John, burning away all he’d held to be true: safe Mary, sweet Mary. Cold, sociopathic Sherlock. Nothing was as it seemed. For her to have lied to him is one poison, but her abuse of Sherlock is another entirely and it sends lances of rage up his limbs. What has she been forcing him to do? Make some kind of a drug? To use on the public? Has she just killed Magnusson? John’s head whirls and he pushes against the cloudy glass wall to steady himself.

“Mmm. Although,” Rosamund continues in a slight sing-song, “you have certainly caused me enough grief in this lifetime to take great pleasure in my revenge. I almost wish you’d push me to it. But then, I never liked playing by the rules. Neither do you.”

“If you are alluding to the tiger, Rosamund, I was as appalled as you. Your father did not deserve such a horrific end, but big game hunters take a risk. Are you implying I had something to do with the attack?”

“You are the Moriarty. Of course you had something to do with it,” she seethes, her sweetness lancing daggers. “A fraud, in my rightful place. It’s mine. I believe abdication by death is still recognized by The Elders.”

“They would never let you.”

“Wouldn’t they? Your delightful new board is so benevolent. I am sure they would look very kindly on my information. Clever Rosamund, stopping you from committing one of the greatest acts of terror our century has known. Magnusson and I have gobs and gobs of proof. They will embrace me with open arms.”

John here’s the familiar click of a gun cocking. Sherlock’s voice is tight, too fast.

“Rosamund, think this through. I can still be very useful to you.”

There is a roar in John’s ears as he steps around the corner and aims his gun at Mary. He doesn’t remember pulling it out of his waistband, but there it is in his hand, pointed at her heart, no sign of a tremor. The sight of her makes him gasp – head to foot in black: bullet-proof vest, gloves, knit cap pulled over her hair, gun trained steadily at Sherlock.

Magnusson lies in a crumpled heap on the floor, a bloody cut on his forehead. Sherlock, his hands raised, glances at John. He does not look the least bit surprised to see him, only sad. Terribly sad. In two steps John has placed himself in front of Sherlock, blocking him from Mary-no-Rosamund. She raises her eyebrows with an expression that is more resigned than surprised.

“Ah, there you are, husband. Back like a beaten dog.”

John sputters, his face turbulent with anguish and fury. “You’re a monster.”

“Tut, John, while I’m sure you are quite peeved at the moment, we know how your anger clouds your judgement. Do consider our child.”

“Ah, our child is it now, funny how that changes moment to moment. You… you horrible– I loved you.”

Mary eyes him, bored. “You didn’t.”

“John…” he feels Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder, gentle. His voice is very quiet. “Lower your gun. This has all gone wrong. Let me talk to her.” He squeezes John’s shoulder. “Rosamund,” Sherlock’s voice shakes. “Whatever you’re doing, we can help you–”

Mary furrows her brow with irritation, then, her gun still aimed at them, she pulls a strange weapon from her belt. It looks less like a gun and more like something children would use to squirt water at each other over long distances. In the brief moment of John’s confusion, there is a flash, something sharp against his skin. He turns ever so slightly to clasp his neck where the skin stings. It’s all she needs. 

The sound of the gunshot takes heartbeats to reach his brain, the whole room slowing down as he turns and finds Sherlock stumbling backward, the bloom of red at his shirtfront so small, barely larger than the red buttonhole of his coat, and though some part of him demands he keep his weapon trained on Mary, most of his mind is screaming god she shot him, she bloody murdered him­–

The scene speeds back up: Mary is suddenly very close, pinching a spot on his neck, and with a flash of pain, John stumbles to the floor, his limbs prickling and numb. Kicking his gun aside, she stands over them. John tries to lash out to knock her off balance, but none of his limbs respond. He spits his rage.

“John, this is most unfortunate, I have become somewhat fond of you. You’re very useful for hiding in plain sight, sweet normal doctor’s wife and all that. That’s why I’m only erasing tonight. Back to marital bliss come morning. Tsk tsk, it will be devastating for you to wake to the knowledge that Magnusson has murdered your dear Sherlock, but I shall comfort you in your grief. It’s quite my specialty. See you at home, husband.”

And then Mary...no...Rosamund… presses her gun into Magnusson’s hand and simply walks out through a door behind the desk without another glance at him.

The numbness is receding and he’s twisting around frantically, crawling over to where Sherlock has sprawled on the slick white marble floor. He’s calling to Janine, frantic, yelling at her to call an ambulance, finds himself in his shirtsleeves with his jumper bundled against Sherlock’s chest, soaking up red, holding pressure to the wound.

“Sherlock, can you hear me? Stay with me. For the love of fucking god you are going to stay with me, you owe me one hell of an explanation.” He realizes Sherlock is muttering, leans in close.

“So so so sorry…only way I knew… Didn’t think she’d shoot me...so sorry...”

“Sherlock, Christ, just keep calm, you’re going to be okay. Janine!”

“John…. Don’t tell,”

“Don’t tell what?”

“Say it was Magnusson. Please. Write it all down. You’ll forget.”

“What? Sherlock, I don’t understand. Just, it’s okay, bloody hell…. You’re going to be okay.”

“John…glad you came.”

“Sherlock!”

________ Thanks as always! @pinkrose423 @brilliantorinsane @ineedhugz @sherlockisnolongeravailable