#this idea that Holmes is always on the side of the law has been running rampant in modern adaptations of holmes and i do not like it

[yuri-is-online]

So I get Code Realize is an otome so I shouldn't expect like, 100% in line characterization with the fictional characters the ROs are based off of (thank god for that actually) but it did hit me with a massive pet peeve of mine regarding a certain someone:

Sherlock Holmes, at least in ACD cannon would not fucking say that. There are multiple stories where he says the main reason why he doesn't work for the police is because he enjoys not having to abide by the letter of the law. He regularly lets people off the hook (even if he maybe should not, read Hound of the Baskervilles) and generally dislikes the idea of harsh punishment for any crime that's not murder.

Now granted this is Herlock Sholmes, not Sherlock Holmes, but they are both literally the same character. No really, the creator of Arsene Lupin wrote several stories featuring his thief one upping Holmes that Doyle sued him for so he just... came up with that name and continued clowning on him.

Anyway rant over. But if you are interested in the original Holmes stories I would highly recommend the YouTube channel Magpie Audio. They are all there in wonderfully narrated audio book form for free, novels and short stories included.

[iobsessoverfictionalmen]

The Sounds of Justice (4)

Warnings: canon typical violence, mentions and descriptions of jail, cursing, non-consensual drugging, descriptions of character death, car crashes, lying, manipulation, guns, yandere themes, mafia AU, mafia Rafael Barba (trust me, he needs the warning), mentions of rape (not to the reader), and unwanted advances (nothing happens to the reader).

Spanish translation

¡Darle respeto!  ¿Me entienden? - Give her respect! Do you understand me?

Chapter 4

With mounting frustration, Rafael replaced the empty coffee pot into the machine on the counter.

“That’s just perfect.” He thought venomously, “Something else that I need to fix.”

A knock at the door jolted him from his thoughts and his brow furrowed.  No one at SVU ever knocked if they needed something; it was one of his pet peeves when it came to the squad.  While Carmen always knocked, she was out at lunch and so it couldn’t be her.

Confused and curious as to who it could be, Rafael disregarded the matter of his empty coffee pot and opened the door to reveal one of the NCIS agents on the other side.  His mouth thinned at the fact that this agent’s boss disliked him on principle because of his job but then he noticed the object that the agent was holding and he felt a flicker of warmth spread through him.

“Does the coffee come with conditions?  Or any more of your boss’ rules?” Rafael bit out before he could stop himself.

You shook your head, “No.  Each one of us has been there with long days and impossible cases.  Because we worked together so much, we got into the habit of doing coffee runs for the team.  We rotate so the job doesn’t fall to just one person.”

You offered him the coffee and Rafael accepted it.  His gaze darted from the coffee cup to you.  Catching his gaze and the meaning behind it, a wry smile decorated your lips, “It’s not poisoned.  I asked Sonny how you usually take your coffee and he told me.”

Cautiously Rafael took a sip.  He wouldn’t put it past the detective to mess with his coffee in retaliation for Rafael ignoring him earlier but to Rafael’s relief, the coffee was exactly how he liked it.

“Perhaps it’s against Fordham Law’s moral code to mess with coffee considering he too needs it to function.”

“You have impeccable timing Special Agent (Surname).  Come in.  Have a seat.” His mother had done her best to instil certain, preferred values in him and he wasn’t about to disregard those lessons.  He had an image to maintain after all.

“What made you decide to become a Special Agent and work with NCIS?”  He asked cordially as he sat down behind his desk.

You smiled, “I didn’t set out exactly to become a Special Agent with NCIS.  When I was seven, I had a cold and had to stay home.  My dad stayed with me so my mum could go to work.  I was pretty miserable so he told me the joke where Watson and Sherlock are camping and someone steals their tent to cheer me up.”

Rafael felt envy spear through him as you recounted your story and your bond with your father.  He took another sip of his coffee to calm himself.  The surge of caffeine helped him to focus on your voice.

“I knew the joke was funny but I had no idea who those men were.  When I was feeling better, my dad gave me his copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.  I read it cover to cover for the next five weeks and every time that I read it, I noticed a different detail.  It bugged my parents when I analysed people on the street and family members.  Years later I made my way to the BAU and then I transferred to NCIS.”

Rafael tapped his finger on the side of the coffee cup, “It sounds like you were very good at your job.  Why did you transfer?”

“Flattery counselor?” You teased, “There’s no need; I’m already working alongside you with your team.”

Rafael resisted the temptation to point out that they weren’t his team, not really.  He didn’t want to give you any clues about his other life. 

“You’re lucky we’re not in the courtroom right now,” he shot back teasingly.  “I might think you had something to hide by the way that you’re evading the question.”

“I’m an open book.”  You retorted.

“I doubt that.  You wouldn’t have become an NCIS agent if you were too easy to read.”

“If that’s the case, you won’t have any problems answering my question.”

“One of my teammates,” there was that word again.  Rafael’s hand twitched slightly but he disguised it as bringing his coffee cup to his lips for another sip.  “Described our job as getting in the mind of our unknown subject.  There were times when I felt like I had absorbed part of our subject’s mind after a case.  I started to get that feeling more and more and then I wondered what I was losing at the same time.”

Rafael set his coffee cup down abruptly on his desk, “Take a walk with me.”  He ordered, standing up and pulling on his jacket.

Perplexed you remained seated, “Why?”

“I need fresh air and I hate walking alone.  It’s unlikely that we’ll experience any danger and if we do, I’m sure that you’re more than capable of handling it.”

“I appreciate your confidence in my skills, counselor.”

 “Call me Rafael and I’m certain my confidence isn’t misplaced.”

You gave Rafael permission to call you by your name. Then you and Rafael left the building and walked through the streets of Manhattan.

“Tell me about D.C.”

You shrugged “Not much to tell really.  The main things appear to be the same as the city, the transport, and the variety of food options.  The only difference is that D.C. is a little warmer this time of year.”

“Cold is cold no matter where you are.”  Rafael made no attempt to disguise the distaste in his voice.  He preferred the warmer weather and sunny days.

“That's true. Especially if the heating breaks and your teammates and boss end up crashing at your place.”

“You’re that close with your team?”  Rafael asked incredulously.  He couldn’t imagine ever being that open and vulnerable with the SVU team.

“You can’t work with people as much as we do and not grow close to them,” you replied.  “Our bonds are fo--”

The rest of your sentence was cut off by an obnoxiously loud wolf whistle and with narrowed eyes, you whipped around in the direction of the sound, placing yourself between Rafael and the direction the sound came from.  Since your back was to Rafael, you didn’t see him narrowing his eyes too as he pinpointed where the sound had come from.

Two young men were making their way towards you and it took Rafael precious seconds to identify them.  His fury rose as he recognised the two men because they looked familiar enough to their fathers who worked for Rafael.

The men stopped in front of you.  One of them positioned himself slightly behind the other and Rafael knew you would have picked up on that detail as it was signalling that the man closer to you was the leader of the two.

His suspicions were confirmed when the man closest to you spoke, “I would remember if I had seen you before.”

Rafael’s opinion of you grew as you gave no reply and chose to meet the leader’s gaze.

Sensing that he wasn’t getting anywhere with his current course of action, the leader tried a different tactic, “Why don’t you ditch grandpa and come with us to the club?”

Rafael raised his chin and was about remind the two men of who they were dealing with, damn the consequences, when you spoke, “Are you referring to the comedy club on sixth?  Clearly you’re desperate to fill those empty seats.”

Rafael switched his attention to the second man.  He was clearly the smarter of the two, though that would be of no benefit after Rafael was through with him, and Rafael noticed the instant recognition appeared in the second man’s gaze and he realised who they were dealing with.

The second man reached forwards and grabbed his companion’s wrist, “Let’s go.  She’s not interested.”

The leader of the two scoffed and wrenched his arm free.  He sneered at you, “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Nor class apparently.”  You replied coolly.

“¡Darle respeto!  ¿Me entienden?” Rafael growled lowly at the same time.

Insistently, the second man reached forwards again and pulled his leader to his side.   Since he was within earshot, Rafael was able to pick up the rapid Spanish that the second man whispered into his companion’s ear.  There were a few words that Rafael was unfamiliar with and he reasoned that these two men either grew up with different vocabulary than he did or their family came from another Spanish speaking country.  Either way, even though there were a few unfamiliar words, Rafael was able to get the gist of the one-sided conversation.

The leader drew back, horror crawling across his face as his gaze flickered between you and Rafael before focusing on Rafael with a plea for forgiveness in his eyes.  Rafael decided then and there that his plea for forgiveness would go unanswered.

For now, he would let the two men think they were off the hook, “You accosted a NCIS agent in the presence of one of Manhattan’s ADAs.”  He turned to you and casually asked if you wanted to press charges.  Whatever you said wouldn’t change his plans too much however, the men would probably feel like they were shielded from his wrath if they were locked up in a cell.  They would be wrong.

“Just go on with your day.”

Rafael slowly let a smirk cross his face, “You heard her.  Go.  Enjoy the rest of your day.”

The men gulped and Rafael knew that they had heard the hidden meaning in his words: “Your time is limited.”  They were out of his sight within milliseconds.

“That’s never happened in D.C.” You remarked as you stared after the men.

“I wish I could say that it was a once off,” Rafael replied, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.  “I once had a man threaten me on the steps of a courthouse.”

Disbelief was etched across your face as you turned to him.

“Don’t you believe me?” He asked, adding a hurt tone for the right effect.

“I do,” you replied hastily.  “I just…” You trailed off and shook your head exasperated, “can’t believe that people don’t seem to have any decency or standards anymore.”

“On that note,” Rafael motioned that it was time to head back to the office.  “I heard you received an anonymous call yesterday at the precinct.”

“You know I can’t talk about an ongoing case.”  You refused as you walked back into the building.

“Sonny told me.” Rafael lied as the two of you reached his office.  He smiled warmly at Carmen and introduced the two of you.  Carmen then informed him that there weren’t any messages and he noticed that her coffee cup was empty so he encouraged her to go grab a refill.

The two of you entered his office, and he added the final touch, “Keep me updated.”  He declared softly, “We want the same thing.  We want to bring whoever killed Ensign Michael Burns to justice because that will mean justice for his victim as well.”

Later that night, long after Carmen had finished and bid him goodnight, Rafael left his office.  He strolled into the derelict apartment where the two men from this afternoon sat tied to chairs and with gags in their mouths.  Evidently, their captors had grown tired of their pleas for mercy and judging by the redness in their eyes and the tear tracks on their faces, they had been begging for mercy for quite some time.

“How long have you had them here?” Rafael questioned uncaringly as the two men renewed their pleas for mercy.

“Two hours,” his second in charge replied.

“And the drugs?”

“Not in their systems yet.  Their fathers have been taken care of.”

“Hmm,” Rafael mused thoughtfully, his gaze on the laced food.  “Such a shame that they had to pay for their sons’ mistakes.”

His second in command smiled eerily, “Indeed.  I thought you might like to do the honours.”

“With pleasure,” Rafael replied as he picked up the first piece of food.  Understanding his boss’ plan, the second in command moved silently over to one of the men.  He seemed to realise what was going to happen because he thrashed around uselessly as the second in command removed the gag from his mouth and Rafael stepped over to him.

[tabloidtoc]

Star, May 3

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Shiloh Jolie-Pitt

Page 1: Christina Aguilera at 40 -- she talks about child stardom, learning to love her body, and what she wants her daughter Summer to know

Page 2: Contents, Renee Zellweger, Phoebe Dynevor and James McAvoy at the BAFTAs in London

Page 3: Mariska Hargitay and Law & Order: SVU co-star Ice-T take a selfie during a break from shooting the cop drama in NYC, Heather Graham at the beach in Mexico, stepping into the America's Got Talent studio Sofia Vergara elevated her casual cropped jeans with strappy platform sandals in L.A., Jason Momoa cutting a rug with an unidentified partner ahead of filming a scene for his upcoming fantasy film Slumberland in Toronto

Page 4: Colton Underwood comes out -- saying he's the happiest and healthiest he's ever been, the former Bachelor clarifies his orientation

Page 5: Lena Dunham is no stranger to controversy, so it comes as no surprise that her foray into fashion design has also come under fire as she partnered with a plus-size label to create the capsule collection 11 Honore x Lena Dunham, but the kicky line quickly came under fire as critics are calling it tone-deaf, mediocre and not inclusive at all since its largest size is a 26 and some are even going so far to call Lena a grifter who gained weight in order to make money off the plus-size community but Lena, who underwent a hysterectomy at 31, has pointed to early menopause as the cause of her straight-up gut -- while Lena refuses to be intimidated by bullies, she is listening to the complaints about sizes and is planning to address it

* Once a cautionary tale of the perils of child stardom, at age 40 Macaulay Culkin is a father himself as he and girlfriend Brenda Song welcomed a son, Dakota -- he's finally overcome his demons and Brenda has been a huge influence on his life and helped him get back on the straight and narrow and he's even pursuing acting again, shooting season 10 of American Horror Story; his life has taken such a positive turn

* A year after announcing her split from Jay Cutler, Kristin Cavallari is seeing the upside of divorce, saying it's made her a better mom in some ways because she has her kids half the time now so when she has them for her week, she is so incredibly present with her kids Camden, Jaxon and Saylor and she is not distracted by her phone or anything else; she is with them -- Jay and Kristin each have the kids 182.5 days a year and court papers also revealed that her ex is allowed two phone calls and two FaceTime or Skype calls a week and vice versa so now every moment is precious and if someone is having a temper tantrum or something, she remains calm because she knows that she is losing them in a few days

Page 6: Gwen Stefani is widely thought to have had some help in the nips and tucks department, and as her wedding to Blake Shelton approaches, he is starting to object to her constant tweaking of her face -- she's always messing with it by getting more fillers and Botox and Blake is afraid of what he'll see at the altar and he's freaking out at Gwen's increasingly extreme beauty routine which is becoming increasingly over-the-top; Gwen can barely move her face to smile at him anymore and it looks weird -- while he frets, he's trying to reassure his wife-to-be because Blake thinks she's beautiful just the way she is

* As an executive producer on the long-running Law & Order: SVU, Mariska Hargitay has tasked the writers to come up with more storylines featuring one of her favorite characters: defense attorney Trevor Langan, played by none other than her husband Peter Hermann -- Mariska and Peter originally met and fell in love when Peter guest-starred on the show and she loves to keep that magic alive by bringing him back to play Trevor but the trouble is he is busy with his own gigs as a series regular on Younger and his recurring role on Blue Bloods and Peter loves working with his wife, but he has his own acting career apart from Mariska -- still, he may soon have his day in court because Peter understands how Mariska feels and is trying to work his schedule to allow him some guest spots in the near future

Page 8: Star Shots -- Lenny Kravitz with a guitar flaunted his well-sculpted midsection during a stroll on the beach, Suki Waterhouse with her on-the-go grub on the set in Liverpool

Page 9: Louisa Jacobson and Taissa Farmiga and Denee Benton on the set of The Gilded Age in NYC, Conan O'Brien sipped on a soda at lunch in L.A., Katy Perry in the American Idol bathroom

Page 10: Kate Hudson with mom Goldie Hawn and kids Ryder and Rani, Kate Hudson twirled solo modeling in a pal's swimwear collection, Jude Law's daughter Iris Law who will make her acting debut in Danny Boyle's upcoming Sex Pistols biopic makes a call in London

Page 12: Kelly Osbourne handed out items at a food distribution event as the Islamic Center for Southern California, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the gym, despite a no-social warning a cheeky Nicole Kidman shared a pic from the set of Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos in which she portrays Lucille Ball

Page 13: Anabella Sciorra and Donnie Wahlberg gloved up for a Blue Bloods scene in NYC, Heidi Klum and husband Tom Kaulitz started their morning during a walk on the beach in L.A.

Page 14: Travis Barker showed off his body art stepping off a Hollywood tour bus shirtless after filming a music video, a cheerful Britney Spears gave a fun look into her wardrobe in a pink floral frock, Scott Disick and Amelia Hamlin color-coordinated for a walk near the beach in Miami

Page 16: Lamar Odom and Aaron Carter put up their dukes to promote their Celebrity Boxing Match in Philadelphia, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and husband Nick Jonas at the BAFTAs in London, Ellen DeGeneres on the phone during a stroll in her main hood of Montecito

Page 18: Normal or Not? A denim-on-denim clad Jay Leno scratched an itch while filming a project in Los Angeles -- not normal, dressed in a Siggi sweatshirt Katie Holmes picked up some seasonal blooms on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- normal, Kate Beckinsale multitasked during a car ride by applying undereye patches -- not normal

Page 19: Gavin Rossdale appeared to be pleased with his Kitson purchase by doing a little dance after leaving the popular L.A. store -- not normal

Page 20: Fashion -- stars wow in statement-making capes -- Gisele Bundchen, Charlize Theron, Zoey Deutch

Page 21: Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning

Page 24: Justin Bieber: How Love Saved Me -- the formerly troubled pop singer gives praise for wife Hailey Bieber

Page 25: Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles' romance has already cooled and the pair are giving each other space -- turns out Olivia and Harry don't actually have much in common -- the two jetted to London after wrapping Don't Worry Darling, but they were soon waylaid by their respective responsibilities as Olivia has been spending time with her kids Otis and Daisy while her ex Jason Sudeikis shoots Ted Lasso while Harry, who was spooked by how quickly intense things got, is gearing up for his role in My Policeman -- for now, the two have decided to reassess things when they're back in L.A., which leaves the window open for Jason, whose strategy was to let her and Harry fizzle out, then see where she is at, and it's going according to plan

* Jennifer Lopez calls off her relationship with Alex Rodriguez

* Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher are better than ever after overcoming a rough patch, one that had their inner circle convinced they were headed for divorce -- Mike had a serious roving eye that made Carrie anxious and she would treat him like he was Mr. Underwood and tensions between the two were at an all-time high when the pandemic hit, forcing the two into extra one-on-one time, but as it turns out, their new routine is just what they needed because they set boundaries, divided up tasks and put time aside for fun things and they prioritized romance, which has made all the difference -- Carrie and Mike are re-committed to their marriage and they've been through so much so much and neither wants to throw it away

Page 26: Cover Story -- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's model kid -- Shiloh Jolie-Pitt the gorgeous teen is ready for her close up, but Brad and Angie are at odds about Shiloh's new passion -- Shiloh's been experimenting with girlier styles lately, including growing out her hair and she's at the age where she's starting to change things up -- Brad isn't thrilled about Shiloh's modeling dreams and idea of her walking into the lion's den gives him cause for concern -- Angelina began modeling at 16, just one year older than Shiloh and Shiloh knows that's what set her mom on her path to fame and Shiloh is constantly asking Angie about the pros and cons of the modeling world

Page 29: Model Kids -- these celeb offspring also know how to strike a pose -- Hailey Bieber, Sofia Richie, Amelia Hamlin, Lily-Rose Depp, Brooklyn Beckham, Paris Jackson, Kendall Jenner, Corinne Foxx, Ireland Baldwin, Margaret Qualley, Kaia Gerber, Leni Klum, Patrick Schwarzenegger

Page 30: Prince William and Prince Harry: Behind Closed Doors -- the estranged princes are forced to reckon with their rift as the royal family gathers for Prince Philip's funeral

Page 32: High Anxiety -- it's not so simple for celebs who struggle with panic attacks -- Emma Stone, Stephen Colbert, Amanda Seyfried

Page 33: Hugh Grant, Ryan Reynolds, Ariana Grande

Page 36: Beauty -- nail it -- self-care essentials to score the perfect at-home manicure and pedicure -- Kaley Cuoco

Page 38: Style -- cute cases -- step up your tech, and fashion, game this season with a trendy cellphone cover -- Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Page 40: Entertainment

Page 48: Parting Shot -- Corey Feldman embraced wife Courtney Anne Mitchell as the two ventured out for a romantic outing in L.A.

[mystrade-reading-club]

Ramdon AU

The lovely people on the server suggested these random AUs, but we are happy to add to it.

Uncanny by @justusmice, E, 87k

He'd read fairy tales when he was a kid, had read myths, heard snippets of folklore. Now and then he'd hear weird rumours on the streets of uncanny things that he'd dismissed as the drugged out ravings of hallucinating junkies, but now he was wondering what he'd missed, and if they really had seen things. Greg Lestrade had always considered himself an ordinary bloke, not prone to flights of fantasy. When he is kidnapped from the streets of London and wakes in a dungeon, he must reevaluate everything he thought he knew about the world, and about himself.

The Lydia Chronicles by @out-there-tmblr, 3 fics: E 33k + E 31k + M 11k

Instinct told him that Captain Gregory Lestrade was a man he could trust. But how could this pirate, who had just stormed his ship, be a true man of honour? Captive on the high seas, with nowhere to run, curiously Mycroft Holmes had never felt more free. If he returned to rigid society he'd become an old man's unwilling spouse. If he stayed with Lestrade, the captain had made it abundantly clear he would become his more than willing lover…

Men of the Howve by @odamaki, T, 8k

“Do you wine and dine all of your victims?” Mycroft asks archly.His host clucks his tongue, “Only the comely ones,” he teases and Mycroft horrifies himself by blushing all the way around the back of his neck. One doesn’t go about expecting flirtation from robbers in the woods.

Dark Things Happen at the Turn of the Year by @odamaki, T, 7k but this is just one chapter, so about 1,3k

Mystrade Genielock

The Bad Bridesmaid by @out-there-tmblr, G, 11k

"My wedding is ruined and my marriage is going to fail. And it’s all your fault!"As a Geneva-based political consultant, Mycroft Holmes has it all: influence, money, success, a sleek and toned body and a string of sexy lovers. He's almost forgotten his previous self: Mikey Holmes, a plain and pudgy boy, later an awkward and clumsy teenager. Until a wedding invitation arrives requesting (demanding!) his presence as chief bridesmaid at his younger brother Sherlock's upcoming nuptials.Mycroft's barely been back in England before he's accidentally injured the groom and been caught in a compromising position with his future brother-in-law's best man!With the wedding of the year about to be doomed, Mycroft has no time to waste – especially with sexy detective and best man Greg Lestrade on hand to help...

Written in Skin by @vulpesmellifera, M, 26k   

It’s a lot like leafing through pages in a large picture book, or watching life being lived on the other side of a window. The glass is clear, but still a barrier. Objects are out of reach, though the acts that unfold can tug at your heart or spark a forest fire of rage. Or encourage a person to engender a certain numbness of feeling. Mycroft Holmes lives a quiet, steady life. He works. He paints. He takes walks. It’s what he does to ignore the flurry of partnering around him. Whether it’s the biological drive to mash two bodies together, or the religious dictum of the salvation in finding one’s Devotee, it’s not for him. It won't ever be for him.Until the day he meets a blind man in the park.The world will never be the same.

Let Sleeping Dragons Lie by @MerHums

“Do I make you nervous?”“You're a bloody dragon, and you're talking to me and I came here to kill you, of course you make me nervous!” --- In which Greg is a knight who can't do his job, and Mycroft is a shape shifting dragon who made the wrong witch angry. Humor, romance, and chess playing ensues.

Mara's Mercy by @mottlemoth, E, 62k

[Medieval Fantasy Mystrade] Gregori is on the run from his old life in Cyrodiil—and he could have picked a better place than Skyrim. Captured as a suspected rebel, he faces the headman's axe. A series of staggering events then dramatically alter his fortunes. The quiet town of Falkreath isn't all that it seems, and neither is the Breton bookseller Greg meets on the road. The clever and interesting Mycroft is hiding a secret—but then, so is Greg. As they journey towards Whiterun together, and their friendship grows closer, their secrets must all come to light.

Everyone has a ghost story by @Eva, T 16k

Greg said he would help before he knew what that entailed: a haunted house, a summer long forgotten, and a friend who'd needed his help before they'd even met.

Shave and a Haircut - Two Bits by @bitemebat, G, 3k

A bedraggled stranger wanders into Mycroft's shop after hours.

One Night by @bitemebat, E, 8k

Written for a prompt from "Sherlock Rare Pair Bingo".The prompt was "alternate professions", and I've chosen Greg & Mycroft as my pairing.  

Twice Shy by @ewebie, E, 37k  

It was a marriage of convenience. In a time when Greg Lestrade, as the second born son, was more than likely to be parcelled off in an arranged marriage with a perfect stranger, the offer of security and independence wasn’t one he could turn down. Maybe slightly lacking in romance, Mycroft’s proposal was simple and pragmatic. Engagement: short. Marriage: mutually beneficial.

The Difference Between Misfortune and Calamity by @ewebie ,  T, 6k

 “The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli There were a great many things to wonder about Greg Lestrade. Sure he was a workhorse, rather unsinkable, charming, and a bit of a flirt. But more than anything, it made no logical sense that he often found himself where he was... 

November Mystrade 2018 by @topicabo, E, 19k but this is just one chapter, so about 0.8k

The book he’d brought last time, he’d at least been familiar with. But he’s never read this one. Too farfetched for his taste, and barely any academic value to be found. He’s no idea if it’s any good. But it feels appropriate, somehow. He’s in a fantastical situation – it only seems right to choose a fantastical story to match.

What random AU you’d suggest?

[consultingsister-aa]

five times kissed (seb and cee but alt politics for spice)

THIS MEME for: @epiitaphs verse: alt poltical 

I.

It had started on their very first lecture with Professor Campbell. Celia has answered his question with ease, she knew all the dates, all the facts, all the names. She was just getting ready to bask in the glory of already identifying herself as best in the class when a voice, a male voice, two rows back started.

“Actually, wasn’t it Nicholson, not Nicholas?”

It was a ridiculous, unimportant fact. There was no need for him to even point it out; it didn’t change any fo the facts of the case. As Celia turned to shoot daggers at the boy, he smiled at her. Not a friendly, apologetic smile but a gloating, lazy grin. She hated Sebastian Moran.

Over the term, they continued in this fashion. Every time Celia or Seb raised a hand to answer a question, the other would sit up, lean closer, wait for someone to slip up. If there was nothing to be corrected, they offered a rebuttal. “While I see where Miss Holmes is coming from…” matched “I can understand where Moran would get that idea, however…”. It was a careful and considered game of intellectual tennis and no one was enjoying it quite as much as each other.

Six weeks in, Campbell would pause after every comment made by either and look to the other. On their final day in class before the Christmas break, after Celia had offered an almost perfect argument for the case, Campbell looked to Seb. As did Cee. Seb simple raised his hand and offered a shrug. “I think she’s right.”

Celia was furious.

They had never spoken outside of class before, other than to offer snide remarks as they waited outside the lecture hall. She found out where his room was from a friend and, upon finding it, knocked gently. And then harder. And then, harder still, banging her fist against the door. She could hear him shouting I’m coming, I’m coming from inside but continued to hammer, until he yanked the door open. As he took her in, that stupid arrogant smile returned.

“What did you mean when you said, I think she’s right? What did you mean by that?”

Seb gave a disbelieving laugh. “That you were… correct? Do you want to have a fight over that?”

“No, but you fight me on everything else. So why not today?”

“I thought you were right today.”

Celia gave a furious little huff and stormed away from his door, only to storm right back to him. “You know what I think? I think-- I think you’re an arsehole, with no manners.”

“Yeah? Well, I think you’re a spoiled brat who’d never heard the word no, in her life.”

Cee steps closer to him, teeth bared in a snarl. In fact, she’s so close she needs to tilt her head to talk to him. There are only a couple inches in their heights, but with their chests nearly touching, it matters. “I am cleverer than you. I will do better than you. I will bury you.”

His smile doesn’t drop as she hoped, in fact, he arches an eyebrow. “Is that a promise, Holmes?”

An actual growl escapes her before she throws her arms around his neck and smashes her lips against his. He reciprocates, despite himself maybe and before long, he’s letting her pushing him back into his room, slamming the door behind her. A whole semester of foreplay had been leading to that moment and they did not disappoint.

II.

Celia loved being married. Although she had not taken her husband’s name, there was something in the way her lecturers said Ms. instead of Miss that set her apart from her fellow students; especially the girls. It was that drawn-out zzz sound that did it. She was a head above the rest of them; one step closer towards the finish line. When her friends said boyfriend, she might have laughed at them, how immature. How childish. They wouldn’t know until they knew.

And this wasn’t all in her head either. Despite themselves, despite their education and personal ambition, the girls around Cee felt it too. Celia knew things they wouldn’t know for years; the secrets of a wife. Even though some of the girl’s condemned marriage as a modern form of slavery they too fell into the trappings of 1950. Everything had changed and nothing had. When Celia lay out her hand on the table, catching her ring in the light, they sighed enviously as Celia had hoped. What did it matter about her masters in law, when she had a man. Personally, she’d rather have the degree but she knew, as she moved forward in life, it would be her ability to find, capture and keep a man that everyone would be really impressed by.

It was for this reason that they gathered with her outside the lecture hall, where she had agreed to meet Seb on that Friday night. They wanted to be witnesses to it, as if being in close proximity to a married couple brought them closer towards marital bliss themselves. Cee didn’t say very much. She played it off as unbothered coolness but in reality, she was distracted by the conversion by her own excitement. It wasn’t exactly Seb she was excited for, but just to be seen with him again. To become the weekly gossip; what did Cecelia do with her husband this weekend? They all wanted to know what these strange married creatures do.

“Oh, is that him now?” A friend piped up, trying to cough over her excited squeal. Cee might have laughed at her; as if you don’t know. She looks up and lazily closes her book.

“Yeah. Alright, see you on Monday.”

“Are you not coming to Sunday study night then?”

“Oh, I forgot. I’ll see what Seb is doing. I actually might need to go into the city with him for a dinner with his boss, or something.” She rolls her eyes to make it look like she can’t be bothered with it. It’s not even true, there was a dinner the week and no partners were invited but it gave Celia a prick of pleasure to imagine them all discussing it at the Sunday study night.

She doesn’t run into his arms, instead closing the gap between them with a slow, casual walk and an easy smile. They were close enough that Seb could call out to the other girls and wave. It was nice of him to throw them a bone, Cee thought.

When she did greet him, it was with a hand on the back of his neck so she could pull him down for a long, deep kiss. In fact, knowing the girl’s eyes were on them, she stayed longer than normal.

“What was that for?” Seb asked, pulling back from her.

“Nothing. Just happy to see you. How was your train?”

III.

It wasn’t fair to say that Cee and Seb weren’t affectionate. Sure, they didn’t hold hands unless they needed to and loving embraces tends to either come before or after sex but they had their moments. People noticed the way, if Seb was setting, Celia would stand behind him and squeeze his shoulders. Or, if something thrilling, shocking or wonderfil happened, they would immediatly look towards one another, if to check in, or delight in it. And while they slept on the same side of the bed due to the fact Seb refused to get buy a double bed for the four years they slept together in university, they still did it. They had to count for something. There was cards or flowers or weekly dates but that didn’t mean there wasn’t love. Cee loved Seb more than anyone in the world and she was quiet confident he felt the same way.

Which is what made Katherine’s death all the harder. A casm had opened up between them and she saw no real way to get over it. The evening they had returned home to an empty nursery, Celia had feverishly Googles how she was supposed to feel; how to deal with the loss of a child; the staged of grief. Her own feelings didn’t align with any of them.

What she really felt was annoyance. The plan that they had agreed to had fallen apart. All that work for nothing. And there was now a black stain on her history. A bump on the road. They would have to tell people, for the next couple weeks, everyone would skirt around her like she was a wounded animal they didn’t know what to do with. How did you comfort Cecelia Holmes when she had no interest in being comforted? How to comfort Sebastian Moran, then?

She stood in the baby pink bedroom, gripping onto the cot rail, willing herself to feel the loss. The sweet little baby; that looked like every other bbay she had ever seen. So a future lost; one likely filled with trauma and resentment, with her as a mother. She banged her palm against the wood and swore. It was only then she realised Seb was behind her. Her movement was guilty, spinning around and holding her hands begind her back as if she had something to hide.

“I was just thinking of packing some things away.” She cleared her throat, motioned around the room. “I’ll ask someone if there is somehwere we could send it. Thinking of others in our time of grief, it’s a good look.” She could hear herself plotting and regretted it but it was all she wad capable of. Celia let go of the cot and moved to hold him, her arms around his shoulders, her mouth at his ear. “We’ll get through this. I think it was meant to be this way; just the two of us.” She almost said she preferred it this way but that felt too harsh; too soon. “If you need to talk to someone, perhaps you should? Better to deal with it now then have it drag out.”

When she pulled back, she held onto his face, more tired than she had seen it in a long time and she knew she was getting it all wrong. Cee, who always knew what to say, had nothing. So she kissed him instead and tried, probably failing, to put more into it than she could manage. The key phrase however was, I’m sorry. Sorry she’s not a good wife, sorry their child died and she’s talking about press opportunities, sorry he got his hopes up, sorry nothing will come of this.

IV.

“--THE PRESS ASSOCIATION IS REPORTING MULTIPLE CASUALTIES AND UNCONFIRMED FATALITIES JUST OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS--”

“Sydney, turn that up, turn that up!”

The TV’s picture, perched on top of a filing cabinet only offered shaky phone camera footage of the street Celia knew well. In fact, with one of the sudden movements upward, she was sure she could see Seb’s office window. The clipped tones of the BBC new anchor filled the room.

“--IS UNDERSTOOD THAT THE LONE MAN DROVE INTO A CROWD OF PEOPLE OUTSIDE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER AND THEN CONTINUED ON FOOT, WHERE HE BEGAN STABBING--”

“Call my husband, call him now, his mobile.”

Celia is already pulling on her jacket, eyes glued to the TV but listening out for the rings. By the third ring, she’s heading to the door. Usually, no rings meant he was in a meeting; the phone was on don’t disturb and she’d have to call back another two times for it to even go through; something she hadn’t ever had to do yet. If he was talking with someone, briefly, he would hang up after one ring. Past three rings, with no pick up? She didn’t remember the last time.

“Cee, you shouldn’t go into--” Syd stood up behind her desk but Cee held up a hand.

“Text me if there are any updates worth knowing. Call him again, keep calling him.”

There was no point trying to get a taxi, if there really was a terrorist attack happening in the middle of the city, it would be gridlock and the police wouldn’t be letting anyone in any way. So she would walk the twenty minutes to Seb’s office; she could cut it down to fourteen minutes if she kept up her brisk walk, ocassiaonlly, if panic set in, a restrained run.

Police tape, camera crews, ambulances and armed police officers surrounded most parliamentary buildings. The end of street was cordoned off but from her vantage point, she could see at least three sheets covering bodies. It was ridiculous to imagine Seb under one of them but it’s exactly where her mind went. She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself but she’d had a nagging feeling all day that something terrible was gong to happen, not just this, in London, but to her personally. She stares, unseeing at one of the sheets before a voice drifts across to her, one of the offers. “--Moran is going to--”

“What did you say?” She barks at him and a man seems to used to follow commands to argue with her, although she seems to have also scared him. “What did you say about Moran?”

Sheepishly, he draws closer. “Only that Mr Moran was directing his staff to--”

“To where?” Of course, of course, he’s alive. “Where is he?”

“I think they were going to Lady Chapel,” and then, as an afterthought, “ma’am.”

Celia didn’t hang around any longer that she needed to. She didn’t know why she ran this time, heels hitting the pavement with an ungodly amount of noise. If Seb was well enough to be directing people somewhere, there was no real need to worry. But something had shaken her when she had heard the news. It was the first time she had really considered what it might be like if Seb did die. They had been partners, in one way or another, for nearly fifteen years and all her future plans and hopes were pinned upon him.

She rounded the corner and stopped to catch her breath, smooth out her coat, look less worried. When she looked up, she saw him immediately; standing by the church’s doors, talking seriously with a police chief. He only glanced in her direction and had to do a double-take.

“What are you doing here?” Seb asked, moving over to her.

“You weren’t answering your phone.” Annoyingly, she’s still breathless.

“Bit of an emergency. Did you run?”

Maybe to avoid the embarrassing question, maybe because she was so relieved to see him standing, she threw her arms around him and kissed him, with slightly more passion than normal. She couldn’t say for sure, but she thought Seb kissed her back with a matched ferocity and held her a little tight than normal too. Maybe he was glad to see her too.

[the-desolated-quill]

It’s Summer And We’re Running Out Of Ice - Watchmen (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I’m not going to lie. I was incredibly sceptical going into this. This isn’t the first TV adaptation of a classic novel to go beyond the source material and try to continue the story, and they nearly always suck (see The Handmaid’s Tale and The Man In The High Castle). There’s a reason why books end where they’re supposed to end. If the author intended to carry the story on, they would have done so. This is why I get angry when the TV industry arrogantly oversteps the mark and try to continue a plot that has already come to a satisfactory conclusion. Doing a sequel to Watchmen, a story that hinges on the ambiguity of its ending, is just utter madness to me, and allowing Damon Lindelof to write that sequel borders on moronic at first glance. This is the man behind the TV series Lost, a show that ran out of steam within the first couple of episodes due to the fact that the plot was complete and total bollocks and the fact that nobody could be bothered to come up with satisfying answers for these ludicrous mysteries and series arcs beforehand. They were just making that shit up as he went along. Now you’re handing Lindelof the keys to one of the most intricate and detailed comic book properties of all time?! Fuck, why don’t you just let JJ Abrams direct the next Star Wars mo- Oh yeah, I forgot, he already did that.

Thankfully, judging by this first episode anyway, HBO’s Watchmen is nowhere near as bad as Lost. It’s certainly far more engaging and coherent. Does that mean I’m looking forward to the rest of this season? Well... I don’t know if I’d go that far. I’m definitely intrigued though.

HBO’s Watchmen is a sequel to the graphic novel (Lindelof called it a remix, but come on. Grow a pair and call it what it is. A sequel). Superheroes are still illegal, Robert Redford is now the President, Rorschach’s death has inspired a white supremacist cult, and it’s raining squid.

Yeah, the raining squid thing feels like the only egregious bit of fanwank in here, to be fair. Maybe they’re going somewhere with this, but I have my doubts. Are we supposed to assume that Ozymandias has been making squid rain for the past thirty odd years in order to keep up the whole alien invasion ruse? Why squid rain? And why is everyone so nonchalant about it? Shouldn’t people be just a bit concerned by this, considering what happened in New York?

Speaking of Ozymandias, we see him riding a horse and writing plays for his butler and maid in some fancy mansion. Quite what the significance of The Watchmaker’s Son is, I don’t know. All I do know is I’m not going to be able to sleep at night without thinking about Jeremy Irons’ thighs from now on, so thanks for that.

Putting my cynicism aside for a moment, I do like what Lindelof is trying to do here. He’s not merely cashing in on the Watchmen brand. There is a genuine effort to do something fresh and different with this material, and I commend that. Watchmen’s central theme has always been about power, but whereas the source material focused mainly on its relation to sex (Comedian’s hedonism, Nite Owl’s impotence, Rorschach’s mummy issues and the sexual objectification of Silk Spectre), the TV series seems to be zeroing in on race as a topic. This I applaud. Expanding on certain areas that the graphic novel only ever really touched upon is a great idea. This doesn’t feel like a repeat of the graphic novel, but rather a clarification of it, exploring areas and themes that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons may have overlooked. This helps set this series apart from the outset. 

The opening scenes where we see the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 is a pretty harrowing way to start. I’m ashamed to say I had no idea about the Tulsa Massacre prior to this, and we could have a whole other discussion about why schools seem to have been avoiding teaching specific topics like this in favour of the broad strokes of the Jim Crow era, but now is not the time. The fact that it’s depicted here sets the stage for what’s to come. Some have criticised the show for the length of time the opening focuses on Tulsa, claiming that it sensationalises the pain of black people at that time. I personally don’t think it does. It’s not overly graphic or gratuitous, at least in my opinion, but it is a very shocking way to open a series. Some might say even upsetting, but I think it’s important that we saw this because it’s relevant in setting the tone for the episode and indeed the season as a whole, as well as letting the audience know that this show isn’t going to fuck around or shy away from more sensitive topics, and I can respect that. Unlike Zack Snyder’s overly stylised adaptation from 2009, Watchmen the HBO series is grounded very firmly in reality.

Let’s discuss characters. This episode mostly focuses on Angela Abar, also known as Sister Night. Regina King has given some terrific performances in the past and this is no exception. She’s simply phenomenal. The way she switches from light-hearted wife and baker to violent, no nonsense vigilante cop. The shift is noticeable and yet both personas feel like they’re aspects of the same character. It’s exceptionally good. It also helps that the character herself makes for a great protagonist. Having survived the ‘White Night’ four years prior, where the Seventh Kavalry attacked the families of forty Tulsa police officers in response to the government giving special reparations to the victims of racial injustice, Angela has become cynical and battle hardened. She has no sympathy for Kavlary members and is willing to skip due process by beating one of them to a pulp and bundling him in the back of her car. She’s angry and in pain, and yet retains the audience's sympathy. I’m interested to see what happens to her over the course of the season.

I also really liked her friendship with Don Johnson’s character Judd Crawford. Johnson is a charismatic performer and Crawford is a charismatic character. He really dives into the olde western sheriff persona and seems to be having a lot of fun with it. Crawford is the only other character, besides Angela, who stayed on as a police officer after the White Night, and the two characters seem to have a great relationship. They laugh and joke around and there’s clearly a mutual respect between the two. I genuinely like this character, which is what makes his murder at the end so much more heartbreaking. Not to mention all the little details that force us to realise he may not be what he seems. We see him sniff cocaine in private and there’s a photo on his desk featuring the kid from school who aggressively asked Angela why black people deserve reparations. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Crawford himself is racist, but there’s clearly more going on with him that we don’t know about.

The final character of interest at the moment is Tim Blake Nelson’s character Wade Tillman, aka Looking Glass. We don’t know anything about him yet other than he’s a human lie detector, which I find very intriguing and I hope will be explored further as the show goes on. There’s a lot to play around with there, and the moral implications are tantalising. A conviction based not on physical evidence, but rather on the observations of one man. Even Sherlock Holmes has to back his deductions up with evidence, and yet Looking Glass clearly doesn’t need to. That just raises so many ethical questions. What if he has a particular bias towards someone? What about burden of proof? What if forensic evidence contradicts him? If Looking Glass is supposedly that accurate, does that mean the police will side with him regardless? It’s a great premise for a character and I really like Nelson’s performance, giving him a cold and detached personality that contrasts beautifully with Angela’s.

The characters and ideas are solid, however where I feel the show is lacking is with the consistency of its world building. Let’s analyse. This is an alternate history where Nixon used superheroes to extend his term limits, but after the New York attack at the end of the graphic novel, he’s been kicked out in favour of Robert Redford (nice nod to the source material there by the way. lol). As a result, black people got reparations for the racial injustices their ancestors went through and police are now unable to openly carry firearms without special permission from Panda (literally a cop wearing a panda costume). However, after the events of White Night, the government agrees to allow cops to wear masks to protect their identities, hence why quote/unquote ‘superheroes’ like Sister Night and Looking Glass are around despite the existence of the Keene Act. These are, in effect, legal vigilantes. Except already there’s a problem with conflicting messages. I like the idea of masked cops. In the current age of Black Lives Matter and police accountability, it makes sense and could be interesting to explore. However this is hindered by the whole ‘no guns’ stuff. Again, not a bad idea. America’s current gun laws are, to put it mildly, woefully inadequate. What if we went the other way? What if not only was it near impossible to own a gun, cops couldn’t even use a taser without special permission. Both ideas could work... but not at the same time.

Cops being allowed to wear masks creates the effect of empowering them through anonymity, and runs the risk of officers overstepping the mark and normal citizens being unable to hold them to account. But on the other hand, we’ve also got cops whose lives are constantly at risk and who are hindered in their duties by an overprotective nanny state, which effectively depowers them. So... which is it? It can’t be both. I like the scene where Panda reads the law about how the use of firearms can only be permitted in extreme circumstances, and everyone just angrily shouts him down because it tells us how the police feel about this new system. The fact that they’ve made one cop the sole arbiter of these new restrictions and forced him to dress like some ridiculous furry demonstrates the sheer amount of disdain they have towards this policy. But having said that, with the masks on, they have the power and freedom to break into people’s caravans and basically kidnap and assault them without consequence anyway. So what the fuck are they complaining about? It just doesn’t gel together. Either have it that the rules and regulations of the police are the same as our world except that cops can wear masks now, which has led to an increasing problem of police brutality and corruption, or have it that the police are being too heavily restricted and so a few have chosen to turn toward more ‘unorthodox’ methods of crime fighting out of frustration. Pick one and go with it.

Then there’s the Seventh Kavalry. Again, not a bad idea. In fact I love it. A white supremacist cult that’s taken Rorschach’s journal as gospel and have banded together out of a fear of being sidelined in a more liberal world. Very relevant and very interesting. Except... well... there’s not an awful lot to it, is there? In the original graphic novel, there was no clear bad guy. Ozymandias believed he was doing the ultimate good by killing millions of people to save the world, and everyone reluctantly went along with it. It was morally complicated. This, not so much. They’re unambiguously evil. The end. So what? What is there to discuss? It just feels lacking compared to the graphic novel and it runs the risk of creating a conflict that’s too clear cut. Obviously we’re going to end up siding with the cops, regardless of what they do, because the alternative is objectively bad. Hopefully Lindelof is going somewhere with this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I was slightly concerned.

So on the whole, would I say I enjoyed this first episode? Well... I’d say I did, but with reservations. There’s some good characters and ideas that could be interesting to explore and develop, but its execution feels a little shaky in places. Hopefully the episodes to come will offer further clarity.

[marypsue]

dubsdeedubs said:  lich + ford ´･ᴗ･ `

Once upon a time, I asked for prompts of a character and a monster, for which I would write a hundred-word drabble. This is...more than a hundred words, as you may be able to tell. Featuring major character undeath, Bill Cipher being Bill Cipher, a TAZ: Balance crossover, Greek mythology references, the Power of Mabel, and many many more words than I expected to write.

I’m also on AO3 as MaryPSue!

...

It takes barely any voltage at all to set Fordsy’s hair on fire.

It’s honestly a little disappointing. Keratin has no heat tolerance! And sheesh, does it ever whiff when it burns! It’s really inconsiderate of Fordsy, to stink up the place. Bill’s gonna have to punish him for that. As soon as he regains consciousness, of course. No fun in electrocuting somebody who isn’t awake to hate it!

Speaking of ‘being awake’, Sixer’s been hanging there with his head down for an ominously long time now. Bill gives his belly a poke, but the momentum just swings him limply back and forth, the chains giving a faint, pathetic clink-clink.

“You, uh, sure you didn’t break him there, boss?” Kryptos whines from somewhere behind Bill, and Bill can feel his faces heating up with rage. How dare that – that polygon question him? Bill Cipher?

“OF COURSE NOT!” he snaps. “I KNOW THIS HUMAN’S LIMITS BETTER THAN HE DOES! TESTED MOST OF ‘EM MYSELF!”

“Okay, but, he’s not doing a whole lot of screaming anymore.” Kryptos points one cautious finger around Bill, in Ford’s direction. “Or, um, moving.”

“KRYPTOS?” Bill says, cheerfully.

“Uh, yes, boss?”

“IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP I’LL FEED YOU TO PYRONICA,” Bill says, still cheerful, turning back to his favourite pet human.

Unfortunately, Kryptos is right about one thing – Sixer isn’t doing a whole lot of moving anymore. More just kind of…hanging there and smoking slightly.

Boooo-ring.

Bill snaps his fingers, and a crackling blue arc of electricity leaps out of his pointed index finger to earth itself in Ford’s chest. Ford gives a pretty lame reprisal of the old kicking-and-screaming routine, his legs wobbling feebly against thin air, his ‘scream’ more of a tortured groan. It’s like he isn’t even trying.

“C’MON, SIXER, PUT SOME OOMPH INTO IT!” Bill complains, cutting the lightshow short. “THIS IS GETTING OLD! HAHA! JUST LIKE YOU!”

The only response he gets is the faint hiss of the little fires still going in Fordsy’s hair. He’s gonna have a constellation of bald spots when this is over.

“AW, COME ON,” Bill coos, tucking one finger under Ford’s tiny chin and gently lifting it from his chest. “DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE STILL SULKING ABOUT THE WHOLE ME-LYING-TO-GET-YOU-TO-DESTROY-YOUR-ENTIRE-DIMENSION THING!”

Ford’s eyes, which had been half-closed and downturned like he was ignoring Bill, suddenly flick up to stare directly into Bill’s pupil. Bill nearly drops Ford’s bristly little face in surprise at the ring of flickering red wrapped around each iris.

“OOH, SIXER, YOU’VE BEEN HOLDING OUT ON ME!” Bill crows, delighted. “SHOULDA KNOWN YOU HAD ONE LAST TRICK UP YOUR SLEEVE! THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU, HOW THAT FUNNY LITTLE MEAT BRAIN OF YOURS NEVER STOPS TICKING!”

“Get your hands off me, Cipher,” Ford growls, under his breath, and it seems to Bill to have harmonics that it could only have picked up by echoing through some of the more Escherian corners of the Fearamid. “Or I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”

“OH, I’M SO SCARED!” Bill laughs, rolling his eye. “WHAT’RE YOU GONNA DO TO ME, FORDSY, BITE MY KNEES OFF?”

When Ford’s eyes narrow, spitting red sparks, Bill can’t help but laugh again. “NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GONNA DO HERE? I’M ALREADY HERE! THIS DIMENSION’S AS GOOD AS MINE!” He throws his arms wide, gesturing to the whole of the Fearamid and his crew, the carnage outside, the enormous rift that dominates the yellow sky. “AND IF IT WAS THE MAIN COURSE, THEN YOUR LAWS OF PHYSICS MADE A NICE AFTER-DINNER MINT! A LITTLE BLACK MAGIC’LL BE THE PERFECT TOOTHPICK! BUT GO AHEAD! LAY IT ON ME!”

Ford starts to open his big mouth, probably to make some stupid speech about the power of friendship or something, and Bill zaps him again. Whatever he was about to say vanishes in a strangled half-scream as his whole body jerks, jittering like a marionette with its strings caught in a high-voltage power line.

Oh, wait. That’s exactly what he is!

“WELL?” Bill demands, in between zaps and the hoarse, exhausted noises of distress Ford keeps making. “DO YOUR WORST! REALLY LET ME HAVE IT, SIXER! SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT! DON’T – HOLD – BACK!”

Ford’s body gives one final, enormous spasm, and then falls limp, his voice cutting out as his head falls backwards. One boot twitches, one shoulder jumps, but there’s no intelligence, no intention behind the movements. Just leftover electricity sparking frazzled nerves and jerking Ford’s limbs around like the puppet he is.

Bill twirls to face the audience of Henchmaniacs who’ve assembled to watch the fun, blowing across the tip of his pointed finger like he’s blowing smoke away from the barrel of a pistol. He quickly considers a variety of clever one-liners, discards them all just as quickly as not clever enough. “WELL, THAT WAS DISAPPOINTING! SOMEBODY GET ME ANOTHER MARTINI.”

Nobody laughs. Nobody cheers. Nobody raises a glass. They all just stare, with these stupefied expressions.

“WHAT? YOU’VE NEVER SEEN ME CRISPY-FRY A GUY ALIVE BEFORE?” Bill asks, looking over the assembled crew of nightmares and monsters.

“Uh, boss?” Kryptos quavers, slowly raising one hand, and that’s when Bill realises that those expressions of awe mingled with horrified respect aren’t aimed at him, but at something slightly behind him.

“OH, SH-” he starts.

...

It was about a decade into his thirty years of wandering the multiverse that Ford had first stumbled across the crew of the Starblaster.

It wouldn’t be the last time their paths would cross. Over those thirty years, Ford thinks he’d encountered the IPRE no fewer than seventeen times. Whether or not they were the same IPRE every time is a matter he prefers not to think about. It raises entirely too many questions that he isn’t certain he even wants the answers to.

He doesn’t remember exactly when the seed of an idea was planted. Doesn’t remember exactly when he realised the parallels between their situation and his. Both running from a world-devouring horror, both the only ones able to end its reign of terror. But, unlike the crew of the Starblaster, if Ford loses his life in his travels, he doesn’t get another at the end of a year. And there’s no one else who can stop Bill Cipher if he falls.

Ford’s always known that Bill Cipher would kill him, one day. He’d dared to hope that they would go down together, Holmes and Moriarty locked in deadly struggle over the edge of the Reichenbach Falls. But he’s always known, in the back of his mind, that it might come to this. That he might die before he has a chance to defeat Bill Cipher.

Thankfully, he thinks, before the electrical charge stops his heart and short-circuits his brain for good, he’s made sure that’s not a problem anymore.

...

The Shacktron’s almost within punching distance of the ominous floating black pyramid when the pyramid suddenly shudders in the sky.

“What -” Dipper starts, peering up through the Shacktron’s window. He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, though, because the pyramid gives another heaving shudder and then – explodes.

Well, okay, only one side of it explodes, with a sound like extremely distant and extremely loud fireworks, a burst of rainbow-edged black rubble, and ropes of crackling red lightning. Dipper has to blink a couple times to be sure he’s seeing right, but – yep, that’s the gigantic, hateful yellow face of Bill Cipher flying at top speed out of the middle of the pyramid wall in a shower of rubble, looking extremely surprised.

He’s followed by –

Dipper’s first, slightly crazy thought is that it’s a ball of red neon yarn, halfway through unravelling, like the ones Mabel’s always got three or four of hidden somewhere under her sweater. Then he thinks it’s ball lightning, like they’re always trying to use to explain away UFO sightings. But it’s more like…a ball of yarn, only the yarn is lightning. And wearing…a ratty old tan trenchcoat?

“Oh no,” Dipper mutters.

Bill whirls in midair, rounding on the crackling ball of electricity that Dipper’s somehow sure is his Great-Uncle Ford. Somehow. The last time he’d seen Ford, Ford had admittedly not been an amorphous mass – okay, more of a very rough, gigantic, skeletal humanoid figure, now – made of red lightning. But then again, the last time Ford had seen Dipper, Dipper wasn’t helping pilot a giant robot. It’s the end of the world. His great-uncle turning into a lightning-monster…skeleton?...isn’t the weirdest thing Dipper’s seen in the last twenty-four hours.

Although, he has to admit, it’s up there.

Bill’s voice reverberates through the air, rattling the Shacktron’s windows. “WELL THEN! THANKS FOR THE NEW PICTURE WINDOW, BUT I CAN’T SAY YOU’VE GOT MUCH OF A FUTURE IN INTERIOR DESIGN, SIXER!”

He raises one monstrous, noodly black fist, and Dipper feels something cold slither down his spine.

“CAN’T SAY YOU’VE GOT MUCH OF A FUTURE AT ALL!” Bill crows, before swinging that fist, like the hand of Fate, at the sparking figure that is Ford –

- and right through him.

“WHAT?!” Bill screeches, a feedback whine that forces Dipper to clap both hands over his ears if he wants to keep his eardrums.

Despite the fact that the thing that was Ford doesn’t really have any clear facial features, Dipper can still tell, somehow, that he’s smiling.

Bill’s eye narrows, going flame-blue, and Dipper throws out an arm, like he can reach across the mile or more between them and stop Bill in his tracks. But before Bill can do whatever he’s planning to do, two bolts of crimson lightning arc out from Ford’s trenchcoat, blowing it back in some eldritch wind, and earth themselves in the centre of Bill’s eye.

Bill doesn’t move, for a moment, and Dipper realises he’s holding his breath.

And then red lightning erupts, from between each and every one of Bill’s bricks, forcing them apart. Bill shakes, for a second, like the black pyramid had, his body straining to hold together even as lightning lashes through and between his bricks, pushing them apart. Dipper can see daylight through the cracks in Bill’s form.

And then –

Dipper has to throw up an arm to protect his eyes from the burst of red light as Bill – explodes, like he’s been stuffed full of dynamite and it’s all going off in a string, bricks flying in all directions and shattering into pieces as they fly apart. The roar is deafening.

The Shacktron erupts into cheers, almost drowning out the patter of smoking chunks of yellow triangle raining down around them. Dipper throws an arm up, instinctively, to protect his head, as one lump hisses past inches from the Shacktron’s main window, momentarily blotting out the sun. It’s hard to make out more than a hazy red glow through the clouds of drifting, slightly sparking smoke. And that glow could be the sun, the rift, or whatever power Ford’s summoned up.

“Well, guess we didn’t need to do all that planning after all,” Mabel says brightly, from somewhere to Dipper’s left. “Go, Grunkle Ford!”

To Dipper’s right, Stan crosses his arms over his chest. “See, kid? Told you my nerd brother didn’t need me to rescue him.”

“Um,” Dipper says. He’s pretty sure he’s not just imagining that that hazy red glow is getting brighter. And bigger.

And closer.

...

Cipher falls in pieces.

It's harder to think when you're dead. 

No. Not think. Focus. 

Focus.

Focus on what? 

Clouds of smoke too thick. Impossible to see if Cipher is re-forming. Too easy. This can't be it. After all this time? Can't be this simple.

Movement. On the left. Cipher's Henchmaniacs? Cipher himself? Immolated with a thought. So easy. Too easy.

Lup said something about this. About the power. About something else too. A warning. Not that he needs to be warned about anything anymore. Movement to the right this time becomes a pillar of flame. It’s so easy. 

He should have died years ago. If he’d known it would be like this, he would have. All that time wasted on quantum destabilizers when this power was waiting just under his skin? Foolishness. Selfish foolishness. 

So easy. After all this time. So easy to make Cipher burn.

So easy to make everything burn.

...

“Um, guys?” Dipper quavers, pointing towards the window where the red lightning skeleton guy is hovering. Sure, he’s wearing Grunkle Ford’s trenchcoat, and sure, he just blew up Bill Cipher, so it’s definitely Grunkle Ford, but it’s very important to take a moment and just appreciate this new look he’s rockin’. It’s a big change! He’s probably a little self-conscious about it. He’s gonna need lots of compliments. 

Good thing nobody gives compliments like Mabel!

“Grunkle Ford!” she cheers, running for the window. She ignores Dipper’s yell of “Mabel, wait!”. He can go be a big worrywart somewhere else. Mabel knows her great-uncles when she sees them. “That was so cool!” 

Mabel slaps both hands against the glass, leans her forehead against the window. On the other side of the glass, Grunkle Ford’s head tilts slightly to the left, lightning arcing from his shoulder down to his wrist in a wild, agitated wiggle. He raises his hand, palm towards the glass, and Mabel smacks her own hand against the glass between them in the best high-five she can give a skeleton guy made of lightning. Or should that be a high-six? Or - wait, now there’s another lightning bolt coming from Grunkle Ford’s hand, does that make it a high-seven - 

Stan tackles her around the waist and knocks her away from the window a second before it explodes.

...

Tiny figures scatter.

Mechanical monster lurches, roars. Another blast into its eye. Stumbles. Slow, certain, driving it back. 

Screaming. High and small and distant.

Monsters. All of Cipher’s monsters. All his waking nightmares. All his followers and friends.

Burn them all.

“Mabel, give it up! That’s not Grunkle Ford anymore!”

“For once I agree with your brother. My idiot twin’s lost whatever was left of his mind, we gotta get outta here before he explodes us too!”

“No!” A note to shatter glass. “Grunkle Ford, please! We’re your family! You have to remember!”

“Mabel!” 

“Sweetie, no!”

Tiny figure charges forwards. Arms raised. Skids to a stop at the burst of flame.

“Please! It’s me, it’s Mabel! And Dipper, and Stan - you have to remember your own twin brother -”

Twin...?

some brother you turned out to

“No!”

Tiny figure, darting forward. Two of them, now. Mirrored. Why? What new trick of Cipher’s - 

“Great-Uncle Ford, I know you don’t want to do this! You’re a hero, remember? Not the bad guy!”

because that’s what heroes

“Kids!”

That voice. Scared raw, tiny under metal shrieks and crackling flames, but - 

That voice - 

you stay away from those kids I don’t want

some brother

accident

poindexter

high six?

Ford gives himself a shake, all over. Like he’s waking from a long, long nightmare.

Stanley, crouched in front of the kids, glowers up from the wreckage of the Shack’s main window. Wait. The Shack isn’t - Legs. It has legs?

“You wanna hurt these kids,” Stan growls. Threatening a force of nature with his bare fis- oh. No. With Pa’s old knuckledusters. Well, that makes this so much less idiotic. “You gotta go through me first.”

“I’d...prefer not to,” Ford manages. Has that hiss in his voice always - No. That way madness lies. “I - is anyone hurt?”

“Hurt, no. Traumatized for life, probably,” Dipper says. “Great-Uncle Ford, what the fuck.”

“Dipper!” Mabel gasps.

“Mabel, we’re almost thirteen, you can stop pretending like we don’t know what swear words are! I know you only do it because you think Stan’s swear-substitutes are funny!”

“Wait, what? Have you kids been fucking with me all summer just to hear me say ‘hot Belgian waffles’ every time something went wrong?”

“No, just Mabel,” Dipper says. “For the record, none of this was my idea.”

“We’re gonna talk about this when we’re not standing in a giant robot that’s on fire,” Stan says. Glances up at Ford as he says it. “No thanks to you, Sixer.”

“I can’t actually,” Ford starts. “Um. Put it out.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Stan huffs. But he’s smiling. Kids clinging to him are smiling too. He doesn’t have a face, exactly, anymore, but - Ford knows he himself must be smiling as well. “Can you at least get us down from here?”

“Sorry, he’s not gonna be able to help you with that,” a voice - familiar? - says, just behind him, and then - 

a swish - 

a bright, blooming pain - 

and darkness.

...

“What did you do?!” the besweatered kid yowls, shaking tiny fists in the air. She’s like four feet nothing of pure childish adorableness wrapped in a pink confetti sweater, but Barry catches himself taking an involuntary step backwards anyway.

“Yeah, I kinda had to send your uncle -”

“Great-uncle,” the kid who looks like a fifty-year-old university professor in a twelve-year-old’s tiny, sweaty body says. He sounds as unimpressed as he looks. Same with the girl. It’s not the usual reaction to a literal grim reaper. Barry would be lying if he said he wasn’t thrown a little bit off his game.

“Grunkle!” the girl protests. “He’s our Grunkle Ford and you shouldn’t have done...whatever you did!”

“Sent him to the Eternal Stockade,” Barry says, annoyed. “You don’t just get a free pass for being a lich because your great-niblings are cute - wait, did you say Ford?”

Both the girl and the boy nod.

“Oh,” Barry says.

“Oh,” he says, again, looking around at the yellow sky and the big (but shrinking) glowing oil-slick X slashed across it and the menagerie of nightmares and monsters prowling the pines and the smoking chunks of yellow brick dotting the ground at the feet of the flaming robot.

“Uh oh,” he says, with feeling, looking down at the scythe in his hands. His currently very skeletal hands.

“Yeah, uh, Death, or whatever your name is? Can we take this conversation somewhere where we’re not about to burn alive?” the old guy with the kids asks, looking around him at the burning robot house. “Sure, I wanna be with my brother again, but I’d rather not get it by also dying.”

“Oh yeah. Uh, hang on a second,” Barry says.

“Running out of seconds here,” the old guy points out. “Real fast.”

“Okay, just -” Barry sighs. “Look. You want your great-uncle -”

“Grunkle!”

“Your grunkle back, okay, kid. Look, there are rules, and even if it was for a good cause, he broke them. The Raven Queen’s not gonna be too happy about that.”

“The who what with the what now,” the old guy says, deadpan, crossing his arms over his chest. Barry’s realising he kind of likes him. 

“The goddess of Death, can you try to keep up?”

“Wait, wait, so you’re not Death? There’s a hierarchy of Deaths? How does that work? If she’s a Raven Queen, is Death a monarchy? Is it constitutional, or does she rule by divine right? What -”

“Whoa, kid, slow down!” Barry says, partly because he’s a little scared the kid’s going to pass out if he doesn’t take a breath, partly because he doesn’t actually know the answers to at least half of those questions and he’s got a sinking suspicion they only get harder to answer from here. “Like I said. Raven Queen. Real pissed about liches. But -” he says, as they all start grumbling again, “and this is an important but, turns out she’s got a soft spot for heroes.”

“That’s Great-Uncle Ford!” the boy says, excited, sounding like a kid and not a fortysomething pencil-pusher for the first time. “He beat Bill Cipher and saved our dimension, he’s totally a hero -”

“Yeah. Only problem is, I already dropped him off in the Stockade. And, uh, they call it the Eternal Stockade for a reason.”

There’s a moment of silence, during which Barry notices a handful of people wearing colourful parachutes drifting towards the ground from the lower levels of the robot house. Are those...sweaters?

“Well, then, we’ll just have to go and get him!” the girl says, planting her hands on her hips and her feet shoulder-width apart like a tiny, determined Lynda Carter. Barry’s pretty sure the old man grumbles something like ‘oh, not again,’ but he chooses to ignore it.

“That’s the spirit! Now, since I’m kind of the grim reaper, I’m not...technically allowed to help you.” He holds up a hand when the grumbling starts again, gives his scythe a one-handed twirl before cutting a portal through into the Astral Plane. The waters lap quietly against the shore, a beautiful, soothing contrast to the sharp snap and hiss of the flames starting to devour the walls. “I can get you started, but you’re gonna have to get in there and get out with him in tow without me.”

The girl’s already charging through the portal. Barry watches her feet disappear into the Astral Plane, then turns to the other two. 

For the first time, the boy looks uncertain. “I...I don’t know about this. Will we be able to get back? How will we know where to find him?”

“Hey, kid,” Barry says, in what he hopes is a comforting voice. Skin. It would probably be more comforting with skin. He tries it again, with a human face this time. “Look, I knew your great-uncle, so I know what kind of guy he is. I don’t wanna see him stuck in ghost jail for the rest of eternity any more than you do.”

“Really?” the boy asks, looking up at Barry with wide eyes, even as the old man’s eyes narrow.

“You knew Ford.”

“Well, I wasn’t the grim reaper at the time, but yeah. We ran into each other a couple times,” Barry says. He leaves out the part where he is probably personally responsible for Stanford Pines, Lich. That’s a need-to-know. As in, nobody, ever, needs to know. “Your great-uncle’s a big nerd, and that’s coming from me, but he’s got a good heart. He really doesn’t deserve to be treated like a death criminal forever.”

The old man sighs, glaring into the portal. “You’re gonna make me do this stupid thing, too, aren’t you.”

“Grunkle Stan, don’t be such a meanie-pants!” the girl pipes up, sticking her head back out of the portal. “Come on!”

She vanishes again before anyone can say a word.

“I have so many questions,” the boy says, looking up at Barry with an expression that Barry can only describe as ‘hungry’.

“Ask your great-uncle, kid,” Barry says. “When you rescue him.”

The boy bites down on his lower lip, and then looks up with a determined nod. Readjusting the cap on his head, he stalks forward, and into the portal.

The old man gives Barry a sidelong look. “This isn’t some kind of literal death trap, is it?”

Barry shrugs one shoulder. “You’re just gonna have to trust me. Or not.”

The old man - Stan - stares distrustfully at the portal for a long moment, and then sighs, uncrossing his arms and slouching forward in a clear expression of defeat.

“Somebody’s gotta look out for those kids,” he sighs. “And my idiot brother, I guess.” He takes a deep breath, throwing his shoulders back and his chest out. “And it beats burning alive.” 

He stomps forward, through the portal, and Barry can hear a distant, gravelly yell of, “Kids!”

He chuckles, to himself, before digging in the pockets of his flowing black robe for his Stone of Farspeech.

“Hey, babe? Remember that Ford guy we kept running into? ...Yeah, that’s the one. Listen. I need a favour...”

...

Mabel makes it halfway down the beach before a figure entirely draped in ominous black robes rises up before her, blocking her path. The figure hovers in place, its arms outstretched to its sides, skeletal hands peeking from under the edges of its robes. One of them holds an ornate scythe with a pattern of flames along the edge.

“Whoa!” Mabel shouts, skidding to a stop in the pebbly sand. Dipper pours on what little speed he has, running to catch up with her. He’s not sure what he’ll do against the death police, but he’s not letting them take his sister without a fight.

The figure slowly, slowly raises its hands, slowly, slowly peels back its hood to reveal a bare and glinting skull. As Dipper watches, a crimson flame erupts from the dome of the skull, forming a sweeping mane of hair. Red glints in the depths of the empty sockets as the skeletal figure slowly, slowly raises its head, fixing Dipper in place with a hollow, dreadful stare. He can’t move. His legs have frozen under him. His heart rabbits in his chest.

The skull’s lower jaw drops open, and from the depths of its dark robe, a hissing, sinister voice echoes:

“Hey there! Heard you nerds were going on an Orphean underworld quest!”

Dipper and Mabel exchange a startled look. Stan, puffing to a halt behind them, groans. “Oh, what now?”

The skeleton in front of them grins...more somehow. “Name’s Lup, and if I’m gonna be your guide, I literally cannot stress enough how important it is that you not look back.”

[vateacancameos]

Chapters: 1/1 Words:1629 Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Mrs. Hudson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Hudson (Sherlock Holmes) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, vague depictions of domestic abuse, Domestic Violence, Friendship, Tattoos, Healing Series: Part 2 of Tattoo My Name On Your Heart Summary:

Prequel to Secrets Are Mine to Keep. 

Martha Hudson needs to heal after leaving an abusive situation. She stumbles upon a Sherlock at the beginning of his tattooing career. He helps cover more than scars.

This can be read as a stand-alone, but works best when read in conjunction with the previous story in this series. If reading this before Secrets Are Mine to Keep, just know that Sherlock is a tattoo artist instead of a detective.

(CW for mentions of domestic abuse)

-----------------------------------------

Martha Hudson married young, but that didn’t make her stupid. She knew the likelihood of Frank being The One was highly unlikely, but she was in love and he had a great car and a gorgeous body.

There might have been a chance at some long-term happiness if they’d stayed in England, but Florida did her husband no favors. It started with a bad crowd and moved to late-night drug deals and a few people being permanently hushed. But Martha liked an exciting life, so she went along with it, if a little uneasily.

Even then, she might have loved Frank until the end, except that he decided that running a drug empire meant he should start testing the product himself, and like Florida, drugs did her husband no favors. The first time he hit her, she passed it off as a one-time thing. He’d been stressed already, and then she’d nagged him about some chore he’d forgot to do. It wouldn’t happen again, though. They loved each other.

Except that it did. Not often, and nothing so bad that a little makeup or a long-sleeved shirt wouldn’t hide it, but a couple of times a year, it did happen. And yet she stayed. Because Frank needed her. Because where could she go? Because their friends would side with Frank. Because she had no formal education and no skills beyond book keeping for a drug lord.

In the end, fate got Martha out of the bad situation she had found herself in. Frank learned about the warrant for his arrest two hours before the cops arrived. It was enough time to accuse Martha of tipping them off. Two hours later, he left in a cop car with blood on his hands. Martha left in an ambulance with blood on her back.

***

read the rest of the story after the cut or on ao3. 

When Martha met Sherlock Holmes five years later, she saw in his eyes the moment he understood what had happened to her. She walked into the shop on a whim because she wanted to cover the scars. Sherlock was finishing his apprenticeship and was given the walk-ins. He’d been stiff in his greeting, and Martha almost walked back out again. But then he’d looked, and he’d seen her, so she stayed.

After his knowing look, he asked only one question, very softly. “What did you wish for?”

A thousand regrets clamored in her head. There were so many moments she could have ended it. But what came out of her mouth was “I wish I’d flown away.” It was a silly, childish wish and not at all what she’d been thinking, but Sherlock only nodded.

“I need to see them.” They were in a private room, but Sherlock was a young man and Martha was from an era where you didn’t just strip off your shirt in mixed company (unless in specific situations involving exotic dancing). But she was doing this to learn to be brave and to forget her past, so she took a breath, turned to face away from him, and lifted her shirt.

Sherlock’s hands were gentle and warm. He was a perfect gentlemen as he measured her and asked a few questions about placement.

“I need time to work on some ideas,” he finally said, and her heart dropped. She didn’t know if she’d be brave enough to do this if it was drawn out. But then he continued. “Come back tomorrow at noon.”

She settled her shirt back in place and turned to face this solemn young artist she’d been assigned. Looking at him, she could tell his past was no rosier than hers. Despite their differences, she felt a kindred spirit, and her courage came back.

“Alright.”

***

The sound of smashing ceramic and an angry shout almost had her bolting back out of the door, but she took a breath, straightened her shoulders, and walked into the shop. The young man behind the counter rolled his eyes. “Ignore the freak,” he said, pointing to the room where Martha had met Sherlock the day before. “He’s a toddler sometimes.”

“Oh. I have an appointment with him …” She fiddled with the strap of her purse and frowned at the man’s words. ‘Freak’ was a little harsh. These creative types were always overemotional. You’d think people working in a tattoo shop would be used to that sort.

The man sighed again just as Sherlock stomped into the front area. His fierce walk stuttered to a stop when he saw Martha. “Ah, yes. Just a minor setback. Let’s … um, go out.” He exited as quickly as he’d entered, but he was back a moment later wearing a dramatic coat and carrying a sketchpad. He nodded for the front door, holding it open for her (such a gentlemen) as they exited.

“I’m afraid I’m having … difficulties visualizing your art,” he explained after they’d found a nearby café and sat with their drink. He frowned down at the cover of his sketchpad. “Normally …” He shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his wild curls.

“Everyone gets … what’s writer’s block but with art? Artist’s block?” She patted his hand. “It’s alright.” Funny that she was the one comforting him. She did that a lot.

Sherlock scowled. “Not to me. I see a person, and then I visualize their tattoo. It’s what I do. My process has never failed me before.”

“Can I help?”

“What? No. How could you help?”

Martha shrugged. “What else do you need to know? Should I tell you my favorite colors or my childhood dreams?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Purple and dancing. That’s no use.”

She sat back, startled. “Oh. Well. That is impressive.”

He raised his eyes from where they’d been focused on his cup. “You’re not scared I’m some sort of stalker?”

She laughed. “Oh pish. No. You’re observant is all. You said so yourself. So. Tell me what you need to know so you can design my tattoo.”

He sighed dramatically. Oh, yes, this boy would be a handful.

She smiled. “Fine. I’ll just start talking until you tell me to shut up.”

And she did. She told him about her childhood best friend, the stray cat she took in right after she got married, how the weather in Florida always felt wrong. She talked about her wedding day, her older sister, the uncle sent to prison for making moonshine during American Prohibition. She talked and talked, and Sherlock never stopped her. She wasn’t sure he was always listening, but she could see that his brain was working, so she figured she was doing something right.

“And then, they ended up arresting Frank on tax fraud, of all things! He shot a man’s head off and there wasn’t a word, but the moment the government wasn’t getting its due, they raised a fuss. Oh, America. Such a strange country.” Odd how she could talk about that without feeling a thing. And it really was funny, when you thought about how it all went down, minus the hospital visit.

Sherlock’s head shot up. “They have the death penalty in Florida, correct?”

“Oh yes, but not for tax fraud.”

“But for shooting a man’s head off, they would.”

She nodded half-heartedly. “They can’t charge him for that, though. He’s very good at what he does, my Frank.”

“So am I,” Sherlock replied slowly.

“Well that remains to be seen. Seeing as you’ve reneged on our deal to have a sketch ready by today.”

“No, the other thing. I help the police with cases sometimes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh really.” It was sort of sweet how he tried to talk himself up. The poor boy must not have received enough love growing up. Her heart broke for him. He needed someone in his corner.

“Fine, I’ve helped a policeman. Once. And I was sort of high at the time.” He waved a hand. “But that doesn’t matter. I am capable of doing what the detectives do. And far better.” Sherlock grinned. “I’m going to put your husband on death row.”

She stilled. Despite the glib tone, she knew he was serious. At least serious about trying. And yes, they were talking about death, which should never be mentioned lightly. But really, if Frank was put on death row, it was only his own fault for not following American laws. He should be bound by those punishments, shouldn’t he? But it was Frank, and no matter what he’d done, she did love him still, in a way. But …

“I can’t afford to pay for both a tattoo and a detective …” she began slowly.

He leveled a disbelieving look at her. “You took care of his books for years. As if you didn’t squirrel away some money of your own or find a way take the bulk of his fortune after he, well, after.”

“Well, I never.” But she was smiling. He really was very good at his job. Well, one of his jobs, it seemed. She could do worse than to believe in him.

***

In the end, it took less time to find the necessary information to put Frank away for good than it did for Sherlock to design Martha’s tattoo. Still, she couldn’t complain. Her freedom was worth more than some pesky scars she only rarely saw. More than that, Sherlock made her feel comfortable with herself again. The poor boy needed someone looking after and believing in him. And she needed to keep busy.

By the time he’d come up with the final draft of the tattoo, they’d become business partners, opened a little tattoo shop, and Sherlock had moved in upstairs. And truly, the tattoo was worth the wait. She might not be able to fly, but the wings on her back made her feel like she could do anything.

[notgonnarememberthis]

Beautiful- Chapter 9

Wow it has really been half a year since I updated this but I am back and I intend for the next chapter (after this one) to be the last of this story. I knew I wanted to wrap it up somehow but I never knew and FINALLY I have some ideas.

A big ol' thanks to Mislav for getting me back into gear and providing some ideas that I could bounce off of as well as Em for being my ever favorite sounding board and test audience when it comes to my writing.

As for the case, for a large part the profile of the killers are based on the parents (or Pride) in the show Runaways. They have some allusions like jobs, how they know each other, and how they're connected but other than that they're original characters. This case will be tied up with a nice little bow in the next chapter!!

Watson wakes to the feeling of scruff brushing between her shoulder blades. She lets out a soft hum as her body tries to give back in to the pull of sleep. She didn’t even feel the dip of the bed when he climbed back into bed. Soft lips press against her skin muttering her name. Another groan leaves her lips as she stirs back against her partner. A heavy arm draped across her hips pulls her closer to him.

“Joan,” he says softly. Her heart pounds against her chest with the affection laced in just her name. She finds herself at a loss for words.

“Don’t call me Joan,” She mumbles feeling a deep chuckle rumble through his chest. “It’s too weird,” She turns slowly finding bright blue eyes staring at her with a softness she never knew he could possess. “Holmes.”

He smiles at her teasing remark. Her heart swells as her fingers find his cheek, brushing against the corner of his smile. His eyes possess so much wonder that she wishes she could read his mind. “Morning.” He whispers.

“When did you come back?” She shifts so that she can face him. He braces an arm against the bed looking down at her. His other hand slips beneath the sheet tracing her skin with such practiced care she wonders how long he’d thought of this moment.

“I only left for a minute.” The words are uttered so quietly part of her wonders if she imagined them. That she imagined this moment. She’ll wake alone in bed to Sherlock yelling her name rather than his lips on her body.

“Good.” His forehead falls against hers and she allows herself to be swept up in the quiet moment between the two of them. His lips brush against hers and she hums at the contact.

“The Captain called, they arrested Lara Noel this morning. She confessed rather quickly to Marcus out of guilt. It looks like we won’t be needed for the rest of the morning.”

“Is that so?” She hums burrowing into the pillows. “Another hour of sleep sounds really nice.” She opens one eye at his long whine as he lays his head against her shoulder. “No.”

“Watson.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You just said you wanted to sleep.”

“I did not.” She raises her hand, arm now pinned beneath his heavy frame, stroking the fine hairs at the bottom of his neck. “I said sleep sounds nice. But then you woke me up.”

“I always wake you up.”

“I think we both know that this is far different than how we usually behave.” That seems to change the air in the room. His eyes flash up to hers searching for answers to a million questions bouncing around his mind. She swallows heavily wishing more than ever that they were able to read each other.

“Do you want this?” Again his voice is but a whisper, but this one laced with dread. Fear of rejection hides behind his clenched jaw. A broken past has long shattered any expectations of romance for the both of them. It’s too complicated to catch someone up to speed. It’s too dangerous to keep them close. It was inevitable that they’d end up here, clinging to each other in the hurricane.

“Yes.” The answer is without hesitation in her mind. Yet nothing with them is that simple. They both have a fair load of baggage in aspects of relationships. Names forbidden from the home because they hurt too much. “I trust you.”

“Good.” He pops out of bed like a spring pulling on a pair of pajama pants that weren’t there last night.

“Where are you going?”

“You said you were hungry. I’m going to bring you food.”

“Breakfast in bed?” She stretches smiling at the idea.

“It’d be more like brunch by this hour.” He teases gently.

“Well maybe if someone hadn’t kept me up all night.” He opens his mouth to retaliate when her phone ringing breaks the playful moment. She flashes him and apologetic look flipping over to grab her cell off of the nightstand. “You’re on speaker.”

“Hey. I know you guys were trying to get today off but you’re going to want to come in for this.”

“I thought Lara Noel was confessing.”

“It’s another thing. We’ve got eight people in here confessing to multiple murders.” She sees Sherlock’s eyes light up with curiosity, she’s sure her own did as well. She nods to him signaling that they need to leave immediately.

“We’ll be right over.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“We need to keep this between us.” He speaks up when they’re nearing the precinct, their takeout nestled between the two of them. She lets out the breath she’s been holding for a while. Since the call from Marcus he’s been distant, part of her wanted to believe it was due to the odd case they’re walking into but she knows him too well. His muscles were drawn taught, eyes flashing to her only when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“I agree. It’s a liability. We need remain professional.” He finally seems to relax at her words his fingers brushing hers. She feels like a teenager sneaking out of her parents’ house. It’s ridiculous but simultaneously thrilling. He lets go as the precinct comes into sight, a mask of impassiveness sliding onto his face.

They walk into the building side by side with the case at the forefront of both of their minds. Watson spots Marcus first and he looks utterly exhausted. He’s cradling a cup of coffee listening to another detective rattle on details that she can’t hear from this distance.

“Someone order lunch?” Marcus looks up at them then with a grateful smile. Judging by his demeanor he’s been here all morning, likely called in when they brought in Lara Noel and swept up in the next case without break in between.

“You are an angel.” Out of the corner of her eye she sees Sherlock feign offense. “You’re alright too.”

“So the case,”

“It’s a mess. We’ve got several murders being accounted for but none of them know names.” Watson takes a peek at the files noting the names of each of the apparent murderers.

“You’re kidding me right?”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Sherlock looks between the two of them, confusion etched in his face. “Clearly I’m missing out on something, care to fill me in.”

“The Williams, The Lees, Riveras, Jones, Murphy. These are some of the richest people in New York right now why the hell would they be confessing to multiple murders. They could wave a check and someone would confess for them.” When her explanation is met with a blank look from her partner she divulges further. “Alison and Jameson Williams own A&J Law Firm, Mae and Simon Lee are software architects building new programs currently working on renovating facial software for lie detection, Martin and Sloan Rivera are scientific analysts who study pathogenic diseases, Emma Jones runs one of the biggest volunteer profits for the homeless in New York City, and Lena Murphy she’s a software developer but rarely in the spotlight.”

“Until her husband was shot in a mugging gone wrong three months ago, I remember her name.” Sherlock nods eyes combing over the files. “What would compel all of them to confess all at once.”

“They have to be connected in some way. Personal relationships or something.”

“Do you consider children roughly in the same age group attending school together a well enough connection?” He shows a photo on his phone of six teenagers posing for a selfie. “I’d say so.”

Sherlock steps to the boardroom housing the eight potential murderers opening the door for them to step inside first. The best way to start would be to get individual accounts, make sure their stories line up. Sherlock and Gregson take the first half of the suspects and she and Marcus take the second. Her fingers barely brush Sherlock’s hand as he takes away Simon Lee. From the relaxing of his shoulders she knows he noticed without alerting Marcus or Gregson to the silent action. It’s going to be a long day after all they need all the comfort they can get.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Already into the third interrogation Watson is exhausted. She cradles a cup of coffee brought to her by another detective with a sympathetic smile. Thus far, they’d investigated Sloan Rivera and Emma Jones but they got nothing more than a cluster of botched explanations and “I don’t knows”. It was evident that they were nothing more than pawns in the murders but conspirators nonetheless. They had enough information to give descriptions of two victims to a sketch artist. They’ve already sent photos to Mason in hopes of IDing them at least.

“Hey,” Marcus places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Lunch break is up and they got Lena Murphy lined up in there for us. You ready?”

“Yeah. Sorry just running what we got so far through my head.”

“Wouldn’t take long.” She lets out a bitter laugh in agreement. “Sherlock and the captain haven’t had much luck either. From what I could overhear Simon Lee is a ‘blithering idiot for a technological genius’ and Jameson Williams is ‘more dull than a children’s crayon’.” She rolls her eyes fighting the smiling pulling at her lips. “Hey it’s his words not mine.”

“Let’s just get this over with. The sooner we get out of here the sooner I can have coffee that’s not from the station’s machine.”

“Actually I just sent Mayer to McGregor's to get our orders.” She gapes at him for a moment. “Don’t thank me I owed you guys for bringing me lunch earlier.”

Their amicable conversation fades away when they reach the door to the interrogation room. Lena Murphy sits on the other side of the table with one wrist bound to the table by handcuffs. From immediate character analysis she strikes her as a demure woman. Soft spoken and definitely not likely to commit a murder but at the same time she’s seen first hand at how well cons can play the people around them.

“Lena Murphy. My name is Detective Bell and this is my associate. We are going to ask you a few questions about the murder-”

“Xavier Corbero.” Her eyes flash to Marcus as the woman speaks up. “We- I killed a man named Xavier Corbero.”

“You said we.”

“It doesn’t matter if it was me and my husband anymore does it.” She wipes away the tears building in her eyes with her unchained arm. “He told me not to care but I couldn’t do it. I learned his name, his life…”

“So you’re admitting that you and your husband killed Xavier Corbero.”

“Yes.” She sniffles but no more tears fall. From what she can gather, Murphy is telling the truth.

“Why?” An odd look settles over the woman’s face. Her skin goes pale and her breathing increases ever so slightly.

“He came to us. Six years ago.” Lena closes her eyes letting out a shaky breath. “He came with blackmail material and said we had to help him with his cause.” She spits.

“Who came to you?”

“He said his name was Liam Miller but Mae looked into it and didn’t find any indication of a Liam Miller that looks like him.” She looks down at the corner of the desk and initially Watson would attribute to that action of a lie if she weren’t shaking like a leaf. “It was small stuff. We flubbed data, cut corners on safety precautions, planting evidence. But it was enough to run all of our businesses into the ground. We would have lost our life’s work. All of us.” Another deep breath. “But then he asked us to get rid of someone. Naturally we freaked. We all thought he was insane. We’re not killers… We.. weren’t killers.”

“Ms. Murphy.”

“I’m getting somewhere I promise.” She sighs. “We all tried to bail. We couldn’t even think of how to kill someone much less actually commit the act. But he-” Finally she looks up meeting Watson’s eyes with a chilling stare. “Mae’s girl, Amanda overdosed on painkillers and they found her the next morning in her bed. He all but admitted that he coerced her into committing suicide. It was a crystal clear message. We cooperate or our kids would die.”

“Why didn’t you come to the police?”

“We were too afraid. It was like he had eyes everywhere. He had detailed accounts of what my son was doing at school I don’t know how he could have possibly known. Stuff that I didn’t even know!” Her leg begins to bounce beneath the table, likely a nervous habit. “He was sick. He gave us names of people,”

“Victims?”

“Killers. Serial killers.” She rubs the bridge of her nose, likely as exhausted as the both of them. “He would give us names of serial killers and make us… recreate the crimes. If he wasn’t satisfied there would be repercussions.”

“Repercussions.” Marcus sounds as skeptical as her but she doesn’t dismiss anything yet.

“I know you don’t believe me but ask Alison. She kept records of everything. She thought we might need them in the future.”

"What changed?" She shifts, clearly Marcus had struck a nerve. Her chin wobbles for a second and Watson actually wonders if she's going to burst into tears.

"Our kids got away... ran away. We don't know where they are. But they're safer than they were here."

“And this wouldn’t have been helpful to tell us this in the first place?”

“She wanted to wait until we were all together after we were individually questioned.”

“But you didn’t agree.” Murphy stiffens all but confirming Watson’s suspicions. “The others don’t take you very seriously do they? They never have.”

“I’m done answering questions.” The meek persona slides back over her and Marcus guides her back out. Only one more to go. While peeking out the window in the door she catches a glimpse of Sherlock. He looks so focused, lips drawn tight as he cycles information through his mind once more. Before he can notice, though, Marcus and another cop have Alison Williams coming through the door. She is quickly chained to the table and they’re alone once again.

“Alison Williams, I’ve heard of your work. You’re lawfirm is quite successful.”

“I only hire the best.” From the smug smile alone Watson knows that this round will be starkly different from the last. Mrs. Williams holds herself high with confidence, that much shows in her all white attire. She’s practically calling attention to herself wherever she goes. Dark eyes turn on her meeting her with the same curious gaze. “Ms. Watson I presume? I’ve heard of your… work as well.” Great just another person ripe with knowledge of the “controversies”, as the NSA deemed them, rifled through her and Sherlock’s work.

“We do our best.” She defends.

“Now Mrs. Williams let’s cut to the chase,” Marcus interrupts. “Lena Murphy already told us a lot. She said you have records documenting the murders.”

The older woman rolls her eyes. “I knew she couldn’t listen.” She fixes her blouse with her free hand as she leans against the table. “I do. In my bag in your conference room. But I’d rather share them with the entire class present.”

“Who is Liam?”

“Our… employer.” She says it with a self satisfied grin filling Joan with disgust.

“Employer?”

“He didn’t pay us. Not in the traditional sense at least. We got gifts from him. Sometimes it was a connection our people couldn’t see before, others it’s a full ride scholarship for our kids to the college of their choice. If we didn’t well, then he made us pay.”

“How?” It’s no longer a question as much as it is a demand.

A cold gaze settles on Joan once more. The ice in the dark eyes has the power to send chills up and down her spine yet she doesn’t move. This woman clearly has no remorse. In fact, she almost seems to revel in the attention. “Tell me Ms. Watson, how far would you go if you knew Mr. Holmes was in danger?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a simple question. Would you hurt a defenseless person? Kill them? Listen to them beg for mercy and swear that they didn’t do anything wrong?” A look of almost excitement slips over her face. “Have you?”

“That’s enough.” Marcus barks.

“You love him don’t you? It’s quite new, the longing looks and passing touches. It’s sweet actually. I did everything I did for the ones I love. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

She doesn’t let her facade betray her only throwing her a look of vague confusion. Marcus, seeming as finished with this interrogation as she feels, takes Alison Williams out of the room with a strong grip. She waits three beats before she exits as well. She’s careful to keep her steps confident as she struts to the bathroom, the conversation still lingering in the back of her mind. She can’t shake the feeling trapped in her chest feeling like it’s going to suffocate her.

She pushes her way into the ladies room careful to make sure that she’s alone before letting her emotions overwhelm her. The tautness in her chest makes it hard to breathe so she unbuttons her jacket, shaking fingers clutching the sides of the porcelain sink. She’s done a lot for Sherlock and her friends in the past, guilt haunts her behind closed doors but she’d do it again in a heartbeat. Still the cold gaze of Alison Williams stays with her as she stares into the white sink trying to catch her breath.

“Joan!” Her name nearly sends her jumping out of her skin. She spins around quickly to find Sherlock looking down at her, concern etched into his features. “You didn’t answer me the first three times I called to you I thought,”

“I’m okay.” She whispers. He crosses the line first, fingers reaching to her cheek.

“What happened?” His voice feels so wrong compared to his hand on her, all gruff and threatening while his fingertips barely brush the tendrils of hair that had fallen from the tight updo. He’s so gentle with her, as if he’s afraid she might disappear if he dares to touch her more than a passing caress.

“She found us out. Alison Williams knew about us.” She turns her head finding comfort in his touch, as if the warmth of his hand could chase away the chills plaguing her. “I thought we were careful.”

“We are.” He pulls her eyes to his, now grasping her anchoring her to the earth. “Alison Williams is a remarkable lawyer. I’ve had the benefit and misfortune of seeing her in action once before. She’s like us Watson, she’s a master at deduction. Except she uses her powers for evil.”

He dips his head to leave a whisper of a kiss on her hairline. It steadies her and all she can do is cling to his jacket, holding him close to her. They remain like that until her resolve returns to her. His thumb caresses her cheek until she dares to look up at him. Crossing the short distance to place a soft, sweet kiss on his lips. His forehead rests against hers and they revel in the quiet moment.

“You don’t have long before Marcus becomes worried.”

“I know.” She sighs slowly releasing her grip on him. He squeezes her against him once more before letting go as well. They linger in the tight space between them before a knock interrupts their moment.

“Joan? You alright?” He shoots her a look that radiates with ‘I told you so’ that she elbows him lightly.

“Yeah I’ll be out in a minute.” She calls back to Marcus.

She bids Sherlock goodbye and steps out as if nothing was ever wrong. She raises her head ready to dive into the case once again.

[blackaquokat]

16, 17, 31 DAtective if you’re still taking requests? I really love your work!!! :) 💚

I should haveaddressed this earlier, but I try to avoid using the f-word whenever possible.Other swearing I can live with, but I try to avoid that one just on principle.Great rule to have in this fandom, right? *heavy sarcasm* Anyway, hopefullythat doesn’t put anyone off, and if it does, idk what to tell you. I stillwanted to do this prompt, however, so I just watered down the one dialogueprompt. Hopefully you don’t mind! This is the last prompt I’m doing for that list, but thank you to everyone who left on in my inbox! You guys are great for getting my muse up and running! Also, this can be considered canon to my DAtective series “Law & Disorder.” On with the DAtective! @rainbowkittens97

16: “ I never meant tohurt you. ”

17: “ Are you upsetwith me? ”

31: “ I f***** up. ”

Oo00oO

It starts with a case. As it always does.

It’s the first case Abe has taken since his partner cameback into his life, and after they officially moved into their apartmenttogether. It should’ve been straightforward, an open-and-shut “Is my husbandsleeping with the nanny?” kind of case.

“If it’s so straightforward, then why won’t you let me comealong?”

The problem is his partner, who has now decided to embracetheir title with far more decisiveness than they did when he first hired themfor the job.

“Because I don’t need your help,” Abe answers. “I can solvea case like this in my sleep.”

“Then I’ll consider it a learning experience,” they argue. “Howam I going to be your partner if I’ve never worked more than a single casebefore? As a detective, anyway.”

He needs to stop forgetting that his partner was (is) a lawyer. “Will you just stay here?”he finally orders. “I’ll only be gone for a couple of hours, it would literallybe a waste of your time to join me.”

They don’t respond, and Abe assumes that’s the end of it.

“Are you upset with me?” they suddenly say as he’s puttingon his coat.

The question, less vulnerable and more frustrated, catcheshim off-guard. He turns back to them. “What? Of course not! Why would you saythat?”

“Because I feel like…I don’t know, like you’re treating medifferently, and I don’t understand why.”

Are they shittinghim right now?

“Partner,” he begins, “I don’t know if you recall, but ourlast case together? It was a centuryago. And it ended in horrific deaths, including yours and mine. Forgive me if I’mnot ready for a repeat of that, Jesus…”

“You just said this is an open-and-shut case, how does thatsuggest a repeat of what happened at the Manor?” they press. When he doesn’tanswer, they cross their arms. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m made ofglass, you know.”

“Who says I am?” Abe grabs his knapsack of supplies andheads for the door. “Look, I’ll be back in a couple of hours. There’s food inthe fridge—”

“Stop, you’re making it worse,” they grumble.

Abe supposes that’s fair, even if it hadn’t been hisintention to sound like a parent leaving a kid alone for the first time. Forone, the analogy would make this situation verywrong, but also…

Well, he isnervous about leaving them alone. But he’s even more terrified about having themout in the field with him.

So he leaves without another word, with the idea that whenhe gets back, the pair of them can negotiate how the next case will go.

Oo00oO

“Hey, Partner, I’m back!” Abe greets distractedly as heopens the door to their apartment, about five hours later. “Sorry it took solong, but like I said, it was pretty uneventful and I got the evidence I need—”

Abe’s coat is half-off when he steps onto something with acrunch. A glance down reveals the shattered glass of a mirror. The mirror hehas hanging right by the entrance of the apartment for when he’s in a hurry.

A sense of dread builds in his chest, right where his bulletwound has scarred over. “Uh…Partner?” he calls out again, pulling his gun outas he progresses further into the apartment, where he now sees more brokenglass scattered all over the kitchen and living room. When he enters thebedroom, he sees shattered mirror glass trailing from their embarrassinglysmall bathroom.

“Please tell me you’re clumsier than I remember? Or, youknow, just speak up, you’re kindascaring me here, Partner!”

He finally sees them on the bathroom floor, leaning againstthe tub, arms stretched outward atop their bent knees. Blood drips from amillion tiny cuts on their trembling hands and splashes into growing puddlesonto the tile. His partner is staring blankly at the falling drops.

“Partner, what the hellhappened?!” Abe demands as he drops to the tile, heedless of the sharp glass.He takes their hands into his to better examine the damage.

“I…I don’t…”

They look so vacant, so desolate;Abe decides his questions can wait. He helps them to stand, slowly, in order toavoid the hazardous floor.

“Come on, let’s go take care of this in the kitchen. Watchyour feet.”

Oo00oO

Abe sets up the first aid supplies at the kitchen table. Heand his partner sit in chairs on the same side. They haven’t spoken sinceleaving the bathroom.

His partner barely cringes as he cleans their injured palms,something which also tips him off to something bad.

What was he thinking? God,he should have trusted his instincts and not left them alone, but thealternative would have been having them in the field and he just…he’s not readyfor that yet.

“The mirrors…”

Their voice shouldn’t surprise him, but after the long stretchof quiet, it does. Abe shakes hishead in dismissal. “Don’t worry about them, Partner, I can get new—”

“I don’t like mirrors,” they interrupt in a wrecked, chokingtone.

Abe stops applying the antiseptic so he can look at them. “Sincewhen?”

But they’ve clammed up again, staring at the tabletop likethey expect to find some kind of comfort in the wooden whorls.

It must have to do with the Manor, Abe thinks. It’s the onlything they’re secretive about, what happened to them afterwards. And a quickglance around proves that, yes, the only things broken are the mirrors he hadhanging around, and the one handheld one that was next to the bed.

He thinks back to when he first found them in the streets,and the next day, when they asked to move in with him.

I don’t really want tobe on my own again.

Abe curses himself at the memory. “I screwed up,” he muttersaloud.

They finally look up at him again, brow furrowed. “What?”

“You told me you didn’t want to be alone, and I thought youjust meant in the streets.” He starts applying the antiseptic again. “I should’vefigured that was why you wanted to tag along in the first place.”

It’s as close to an apology as he can manage.  

They shrug, a gentle motion so their hands don’t move toomuch. “How could you have known? I didn’t actually say it, and you can’texactly read minds.”

He appreciates their defense, but nonetheless, Abe can ownup to his own flawed logic. “I didn’t want to bring you because…well, I wasworried something could go wrong and…I guess I was worried my Curse might stillbe in effect.”

They pull away from him, suddenly, and Abe worries he mayhave driven them off, with the reminder that all of his other partners havedied too. But they just reach out to hold his hands, loosely, to avoidaggravating the cuts.

“When we talked about this last time,” they start, “youmentioned how hard it was, when I disappeared. I didn’t get to say it before,but I’m saying it now: I’m sorry,” he tries to stop the apology, but they cuthim off, “I never meant to hurt you, and…I missed you too.”

How did they have the courage to say it out loud when Abe couldbarely put it to words in his own head?

Since holding their hands in return isn’t really an option,Abe opts instead to pat their knee. “Thanks…Partner.”

“On that note,” they continue, “considering I’m not dead, Iwould say that your Curse may be a little ineffective, wouldn’t you say?”

Abe rolls his eyes and pulls bandages out of the first aidkit. “I’d rather not tempt fate, so I won’t answer that.”

“Look,” they say. “I’m your Partner. How it happened doesn’tmatter. I’m here with you, and the idea of spending my time alone, waiting to seeif you come back alive or not isn’t appealing at all. I already did that withmy parents during the war, I don’t want to relive that. I’d rather be out therewith you than here, stuck in my own head.” They glance away from him again,surveying the damage done to their home. “As you can probably tell, my headhasn’t been a pleasant place to be, lately.”

Abe lets that digest as he wraps their hands. He sees theirpoint, he really does, but it’s hard to temper down the crippling fear he hasof getting them killed on this job.

Though it didn’t takethe first time, for either of them.

But it might take thistime. And it could break you even worse than before.

Abe’s thoughts run in circles around the argument, both forand against his partner’s offer. In the end, it takes one more look at theirbattered palms to finally cement a decision.

“Looks like I’ll finally have a Watson of my own,” Abedeclares by way of agreement.

The smile that cuts across his partner’s face should not send his pulse racing the way itdoes. “Bold of you to call yourself a Holmes.”

“Don’t make me demote you, smart-ass, you just got hired.”

Oo00oO

@skidspace , @peaceiplier , @wkm-detective-abe-squad , @veryobsessivefan , @starcrossedforever87 , @dontworryaboutanything , @falseroar , @intemperantiae , @cosmic–frappucino , @beereblogsstuff , @musical-jim , @silver-owl413 , @sassy-in-glasses , @chelseareferenced , @sketchy-scribs-n-doods

[caseysbell]

Whodunit

If you’re a reader who finds joy in the “whodunit” books then Daniella Bernett is the author for you. A member of the Mystery Writers of America NY Chapter, Daniella by day is a research manager for an engineering, architectural and construction management firm, and by night is a murder mystery, crime solving writer. If you are a Sherlock Holmes or a Matlock at heart than get your hands on her books. Daniella has a string of mystery series that will attend to your reading addiction. I had the chance to talk with her and ask a few questions about her and her series. 1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was nine years old. The spark that launched me into the writing world was my fourth grade teacher. Once a week, she had Creative Writing hour and gave us different assignments. I absolutely loved it. However, I think it all started with a love of reading and an appreciation of language and the written word. I am, and always have been, a voracious reader. Mysteries, spy thrillers, the classics, history, biographies, anything except science fiction and horror. (I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I read those types of books). 2. What inspires you to write? Inspiration is derived from all sorts of places. It could be a newspaper article; a snippet of overheard conversation; a real-life crime; or a dream. I get a lot of ideas from the sights and sounds of a city or an area that has made a strong impression on me. You’re either going to laugh or you’re going to run very quickly in the opposite direction, but oftentimes I come across a place and think, “Wouldn’t this be the perfect setting to find a dead body?” Location plays an important role in my books. I’ve been an Anglophile since I was a little kid, so naturally, my characters had to be British, and London and the UK had to figure prominently in my books. I also adore Venice. That enchanted city’s history of intrigues was simply begging to be featured in Lead Me Into Danger, Book 1 in Emmeline Kirby-Gregory Longdon mystery series. In terms of Deadly Legacy, Book 2, what set the story in motion in my mind was the 2003 heist at the Antwerp Diamond Centre. A group of Italian thieves stole $100 million in diamonds, gold, and other jewelry. Only one man was caught. The diamonds were never found. This captivated my imagination. From Beyond The Grave, Book 3, focuses on Emmeline and Gregory’s rekindled relationship. His recent resurfacing has thrown her safe world into turmoil. Therefore, I wanted to take them outside of London, where they wouldn’t be distracted by daily routines. I selected Torquay along the English Riviera in Devon because I love the sea. Gently lapping tides, a rugged coastline, romantic sunsets, and murder. 3. What was your first published book? Lead Me Into Danger, Book 1 in my series, which features journalist Emmeline Kirby and jewel thief Gregory Longdon, was my first mystery published. My first book published was Timeless Allure, a poetry collection. 4. What is a brief synopsis of your mystery novel? In Lead Me Into Danger, Emmeline and Gregory haven’t seen each other in two years, but she literally runs into him in Venice after witnessing two men try to murder her colleague. Then, Emmeline and Gregory become ensnared in a hunt for a Russian spy in the British Foreign Office. 5. What was your first response to receiving your book and holding it? My heart stopped for the briefest instant, my breath caught in my throat, and my fingertips tingled. The feeling never changes. 6. What is your latest published book and the synopsis? A Checkered Past, Book 4, is the latest installment in my series. Here’s the back cover copy to whet your appetite: A looted Nazi painting…A former IRA commander…The tie that binds is murder Emmeline Kirby is back in London determined to make a success of her new job as editorial director of investigative features at The Clarion. Three months have passed since her trip to Torquay and the devastating revelations that surfaced about her fiancé Gregory Longdon. The whole interlude has left a bitter taste in her mouth, and she is keeping him at arm’s length. But a suave and dashing jewel thief like Gregory is not easily daunted. After all, faint heart never won fair lady. It doesn’t hurt that Emmeline’s grandmother and her best friend, Maggie, are on his side. Only his shadowy past could ruin his chances. All of these relationships are threatened as Emmeline stubbornly pursues a story about looted Nazi art and an IRA collaborator. When a stolen Constable painting belonging to Maggie’s family turns up in the collection of Max Sanborn, the chairman of the company that owns the Clarion, her personal crusade brings danger close to home. To find the truth, Emmeline and Gregory must untangle a web of deception, betrayal, and dark deeds. But will they learn too late that justice can be cold comfort if you’re dead? 7. What inspired you to write this book? I am passionate about the issue of looted Nazi art, as everyone should be about injustice. Sadly, as 2018 comes to a close and we enter 2019, we routinely read these stories in the papers. Each one another ugly stigma of shame that the Holocaust was allowed to take place. That’s why it infuriates me when people continue to deny that it ever happened and that its victims are “greedy” for attempting to have THEIR property returned. I simply attempted to keep the issue alive and to show how it reverberates today. In addition, the resurgence of such sentiments terrifies me. The war is never over for those who suffered, and continue to suffer, because of the injustices perpetrated against them. If we forget, humanity’s soul will be condemned in perpetuity. 8. What advice would you give people who are thinking about writing a book, but have not taken the steps yet? I believe all writers are readers at heart. Therefore, I would tell an aspiring writer to READ. Read everything you can get your hands on to get a feel for the pacing, moods evoked, subjects written about and the language. Read different authors to see how each handles the narrative and plot twists. In the end though, let these other books merely be your guides. The most important thing is to write the story that you want to write and not what others tell you or what the current market trends are. To write a great story, you have to breathe it, live with it, and nurture it in your dreams and waking hours. 9. Are you working on any new book(s)? Book 5 will be released in September 2019. I just finished Book 6. I usually take a couple of months off in between books to allow the next one to percolate in mind. Then, Emmeline and Gregory drag me off on another adventure. 10. Anything else you would like to say that was not asked? Many people ask me why I chose a journalist and a jewel thief as protagonists. A journalist is inherently curious about many subjects. His or her job is to ask questions to uncover the truth and ensure transparency. Naturally, a journalist would be intrigued by crime, especially murder. The determination to find answers and see that justice is served are all important. Meanwhile, a jewel thief’s modus operandi are lying and evasion of the law. Isn’t this in stark contrast to a journalist’s reverence for the truth and justice? Most definitely. That’s exactly the point. A portrait in contrasts. Who better than someone on the wrong side of the law to discern the twisted workings of a fellow criminal’s mind? A thief immediately recognizes things that the honest person would never even contemplate. In Gregory’s case, he has a certain code of honor. Murder is an offensive transgression. A line that should never be crossed. Thus, I have two diametrically opposed sleuths who are of one mind when it comes to the taking of a human life: the culprit must pay for the crime, otherwise chaos would reign in the world. 11. How can one contact you? Email, website, social media, etc? My website is http://www.daniellabernett.com/ I’d love to hear from readers. If they’d like to drop me a little note, there is an e-mail address on my website. Readers also can follow me on Facebook and Goodreads. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4450173.Daniella_Bernett https://www.facebook.com/people/Daniella-Bernett/100008802318282

[translationandbetrayals]

Milky Holmes' Rise to Fall, or How to Find Hope in Troubled Times

Milky Holmes reminds me of Žižek. And while it might seem quite nonsensical to tie this sentence together, it’s also something that gives us light about the times we’re facing.

Milky GODS

Always controversial, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek does have some interesting things to say. But even though he’s mostly known for his approach of leftist politics, the analysis of his that has stuck with me the most doesn’t relate to politics, or at least not directly. It’s his commentary about the animated film Kung Fu Panda, produced by Dreamworks. He has referred to the film a couple of times while highlighting something that has now become sort of a recurrent topic of his mythos. The idea of faith. This idea, also explained by him in the form of an anecdote about a scientist (Niels Bohr) who didn’t believe in charms, yet used to put one in his house just because he was told “it would work, even if he didn’t believe in it”, is essential to Kung Fu Panda and to Dreamworks as a whole (even if Žižek doesn’t directly acknowledge it). While the film works as a parody of Chinese martial arts films, and spends part of its runtime satirizing Chinese philosophy, in the end these principles are embraced, as Po’s wu wei defeats Tai Lung’s ambition (and we can say the same about the way Shrek and Megamind relate to fairy tales and superhero fantasy, just to cite other examples). 

But what does any of this have to do with Milky Holmes? What is this Milky Holmes, even? And as many of you might not be familiar with this long running multimedia franchise, it wouldn’t do harm to recapitulate its history. To understand Milky Holmes, we must first understand its seeds, which are in Broccoli and Bushiroad, two Japanese companies which were both founded by a single man, named Takaaki Kidani. Kidani started Broccoli in the late ‘90s, which first worked as a doujin management company for events, then expanding itself through Gamers, a goods store directed towards the otaku market. Gamers was immortalized and popularized through the Di Gi Charat franchise, produced by Broccoli and extremely massive through the late 90s and early 2000s. Spanning various anime adaptations, numerous manga, and lots of merchandise, the now classic characters were a boom within this same otaku market, and part of this success even crossed overseas, as you might see if you venture into old anime archives.

This really handsome dude is Takaaki Kidani

Now the success of Di Gi Charat probably wasn’t just because of the mascot made designs, though of course that had a part in its popularity. Aside from the already obvious fact, the Di Gi Charat franchise, at least in its first animated adaptation, had a pretty good sense of humor and irony. In a way, it was mocking the very own otaku it was targeted towards, and while it sure wasn’t the first to do so, this style of self-deprecating and sometimes grotesque or even infantile humor the series subjected its viewers to was something special. And while Di Gi Charat had quite the acid tone, it wasn’t without its share of tame and even heartwarming moments. It was moe, marketable of course, but there was something else as well. This series had a heart.

The heart of the show has a name and it’s Puchiko

It’s this spirit that Milky Holmes, more than 10 years after the creation of Di Gi Charat, held as its foundation as one of the star projects of the then recently started Bushiroad, founded after Kidani left Broccoli. Learning from his success in Broccoli’s projects such as the aforementioned Di Gi Charat, and also the media franchise Galaxy Angel, Milky Holmes was thought of as a multimedia project from the start. In the case of Milky Holmes, radio dramas, a manga, a PSP video game, an anime adaptation, and, perhaps most importantly, a seiyuu/idol unit were launched. I say most importantly because it was the disbandment of this unit that signaled the end of the franchise as a whole. In January’s 28th of 2019, Milky Holmes gave their final live performance at the Budokan, in fact ending the decade old franchise.

The end of Milky Holmes

On the anime side of things, the last installment was Psycho no Aisatsu, a crossover special episode featuring the main character of the Cardfight!! Vanguard franchise, a trading card game series for kids that was also created by Bushiroad. It was the symbolic pass on the torch to a younger, still profitable franchise in Bushi, that hopefully might keep the spirit of the Milkies alive. But we must not be sad for what has ended, as this franchise will always stay there to be revisited, even for people who never got to experience it when it was still active.

And it’s because of this that I have not forgotten about Milky Holmes, even though it has been years since it ended. I feel especially partial to the anime, particularly its first two seasons, and the 2016 movie: Milky Holmes' Counterattack (and what a movie is that one). One common thing about these three is that all of them feature Makoto Moriwaki as a director. And I feel she’s the one who better captures the spirit I mentioned above when talking about Di Gi Charat. It isn’t the only way to understand the series: there’s the video games, that might be seen as the source material; the Alternative OVAs, that are a closer adaptation of the games; and the two other anime seasons, which are completely different to anything else (and most people don’t seem to like); but Morikawi’s interpretation is the most interesting one, at least to me.

Now, you might be tired of so much anticipation and context, but it’s important to understand the background of this director to realize what she brought to the franchise (because yes, it’s a she) to, as I believe, perfect it. Makoto Moriwaki has mostly made a career out of directing children’s anime, more specifically anime for girls. Series such as the Sanrio based My Melody and PriPara have been directed by her, along with some Jewelpet seasons and even some Doraemon episodes. But a sort of black sheep among all that family friendly content is the raunchy adult comedy Ebichu, which, in spite of its cutesy visuals reminiscent of Hamtaro, is a series mostly targeted towards older women, full of jokes about adult life that, of course, involve a lot of sex.

it means a dirty word, if you didn’t realize

The Milky Holmes directed by Moriwaki is a middle ground between those two poles. On one hand, the cynicism, irony, and hidden sexual references in an outwardly kids friendly series, and on the other, the fantasy and the hopeful nature of magical girls and idol anime. And this dichotomy is also highlighted when we understand the target of this series. Despite its looks, Milky Holmes is not directed towards children. It’s not a kids show, but rather, a completely otaku business. It was broadcasted as shinya anime at 11 pm, it has its share of adult humor, and of course, the moe characters are exactly that, there’s no ambiguity there. It’s made to sell merchandise, discs and BDs to fat weirdos. But it’s quite interesting how the show treats its own audience, because if we’re to take Milky Holmes as an otaku product, it isn’t simply cynical.

Yes, that there is a ****plug

We have talked about Milky Holmes as a product and as a media franchise, but let’s review the series itself. To those who don’t know, Milky Holmes is set in a fantastical time and space called the Age of Great Detectives. In this world, Great Detectives and their eternal rivals, Gentlemen Thieves, are in constant struggle. They’re aided by their Toys, special powers whose name might be an irony on Bushiroad’s own status as a company.

A fascinating part of the Milky Holmes franchise for any crime or detective fiction freak is that most of the character names are taken from legendary detectives and criminals. There’s the 4 Milky Holmes members, which are respectively: Sherlock “Sheryl” Shellingford, the always energetic and optimistic leader (named after the most famous detective of all); Nero Yurizaki, a greedy, egotistical bokukko (named after the gluttonous Nero Wolfe); Hercule “Elly” Burton, a shy girl who has the most awareness inside the Milkies (named after Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot); and Cordelia Glauca, the shoujo-esque dramatic and delusional member of the crew (named after Cordelia Gray, the only character of the four that is originally female).

From left to right, unlike your Japanese mangos

They battle constantly against the Gentlemen Thief Empire, led by the intense and prideful Arsene (after Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief also recalled by the Monkey Punch character); and completed with Twenty, a narcissistic nudist that weaponizes his erect nipples (based on Menso Nijuu, a villain from the Ranpo Edogawa canon); Stone River, a prude warrior with a samurai pride (based on Goemon Ishikawa, the outlaw hero from Japanese folklore, also referenced by Lupin III); and Rat, who’s victim of everyone’s forgetfulness (based on Kozo Nezumi, a folk hero from the Edo period).

Twenty, Arsene, Stone River, and Rat

There’s also a third party in discord, that can either work as ally or enemy depending on circumstance (much like in your typical detective story) which is of course formed by the cops. The G4 is the “elite” patrol of law enforcement whose effectiveness also depends on plot convenience, and their leader (and child genius with infinite amounts of IQ) Kokoro-chan’s (named after Kogoro Akechi, the famous Ranpo Edogawa detective) mood. The other members are Tsugiko Zenigata (after Heiji Zenigata, a Japanese legend), a somewhat tomboyish girl voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro; Hirano Hasegawa (after Heizo Hasegawa, from the Onihei Hankacho novels), a traditional Japanese girl who is a master of combat; and Saku Toyama (after Kagemoto Toyama, a historic character made legend), the technological expert of the gang.

She just keeps it going up

Don’t call her Kokoro-chan, she’ll get angry

However, the main source of conflict (and comedy) in the series is that, despite being quite powerful and capable as detectives with the aid of their toys, the Milkies are pretty much nothing without them. Dame dame (useless), is something they’ll often have to hear, as they constantly struggle with the loss of their toys at the start of almost every new installment (save for Futari wa and TD, in which they weren’t the main characters because of this exact reason). Nonetheless, in spite of how hard they might fall, how much they can be humiliated and degraded (and they sure will), and basically turn into dumb slapstick cartoons, they will always stand up again, never losing hope even when taking a detour, or when they’re becoming farmers instead.

Milky farmers

In this acknowledgment of the cyclical and absurd nature of their misfortunes, made explicit in the movie by the (unintentional) use of words by Sheryl: “it’s rise to fall”, the philosophical implications of the series are unlocked, at least from the Moriwaki iteration of it. It’s an absurd reality, in which no matter how high one can be, one can always fall to the lowest of the low. Yet, when you have fallen, there’s nothing else you can do but go up, try and hope for the best, never giving in to life no matter how discouraging or absurd it might become.

It’s existential philosophy, right inside a moe anime, and one can’t be anything but thankful of someone who is giving such messages inside a work that could conform to just offering a product for profit. Instead, what Milky Holmes is doing is to tell its audience that no matter how hard their lives might get, no matter how repeatedly they might hear that they’re useless, that they’re dumb or hopeless, they must never give up. It’s quite beautiful, even more so when you’re aware of the darker sides of the otaku and the stigma and social alienation a lot of these people face in their country. And so, Milky Holmes might be a ray of light amidst a rabbit hole of isolation, which can be relatable to most of us as we face the current pandemic. A sign that even if we can’t see it, there’s hope at the end of the tunnel.

Yes, she’s saying that when they’re in prison

Closing on a hopeful note, I’ll let you in on a cool fact. Do you know who directed the Milky Holmes movie alongside Moriwaki? I will give you some lines to guess, if you think you’re smart detectives.

… 

… 

… 

… 

… 

… 

… 

… 

Yes! It was Hiroaki Sakurai, who, coincidentally (or not), was the series director for most of the Di Gi Charat anime versions since its first installment in 1999. It’s really cool how everything circles back to a now almost prehistoric franchise, but it also circles back in a less symbolic way. 2021 seems to be a new year for Di Gi Charat, as the franchise is getting a revival as “Di Gi Charat Reiwa”, a new generation of the series which contemplates lots of merchandise and, most importantly, a new anime series, helmed by no other than the same Hiroaki Sakurai. Here’s hoping for a revitalization of this lively spirit, a hopeful affirmation of the disgusting manchildren we all have inside.

Promotional image for this era’s own Charat

Salvador González Turrientes

Links and additional sources of information:

Žižek on Kung Fu Panda 

The Milky Holmes article from the English Wikipedia 

Wikipedia list of the Milky Holmes characters (in English)

Takaaki Kidani's article (in English)

Takaaki Kidani’s article (in Japanese)

Di Gi Charat's Wikipedia (in English)  

Hiroaki Sakurai's (in English) 

Makoto Moriwaki's article (in English as well) 

The news of the Di Gi Charat Reiwa anime (from ANN) 

[ask-maxie-boy]

Not to shoehorn more balance characters into this, but

Magnus Burnsides is the Thomsons to Taako and Angus’s Tintin, the Detective Gumshoe to their Phoenix Wright, the Inspector Lestrade to their Sherlock Holmes. AKA he’s an Actual Cop, who sometimes gives tips and what little background he knows about the case at hand, but his own competency at his job is... questionable at best. The kind of cop who’d watch someone commit a crime in front of his eyes and then wish the perpetrator a nice day as they run by without a chase. He picks up the office phone like “Hello, this is the police... what? You’re being robbed? That’s illegal, people can’t do that!” Still, he means well, and has a heart of gold. He has an affinity for the K-9 unit, but in the sense that he plays with the dogs when he can, and hopes it can be abolished because this isn’t the type of things dogs should be doing :(.

Merle’s both the governor mayor of Fantasy London or wherever they are, and Taako’s landlord. Well, “landlord” is a bit of a strong word, since he doesn’t charge rent. Merle got a neat new place to stay when he was mayor’d, so he’s letting Taako live in his old house, both to keep it clean, and as a thanks for solving the mystery of what happened to his late cousin Gundren.

The Director is chief of the local law enforcement. Its rare for Angus and Taako to actually meet with her, but she’s as scary and nearly as powerful as she is in canon. Every once in a while she lets slip that she’s chasing down some kind of shadowy organization, but refuses to elaborate if pressed, to the point of hostility if necessary. Magnus seems to have some idea of what it is, but even he’s not dumb enough to get on the director’s bad side and spill the beans.

Davenport! Davenport Davenport Davenport, Davenport Davenport. Davenport Davenport... Davenport Davenport Davenport Davenport Davenport. Davenport?

Okay jokes aside, Davenport does still act as Chief Lucretia’s personal lapdog. A very mirthful soul overall, but will become deadly serious when the time calls for it. A high ranking officer who’s probably got there because nepotism, but has since made it evident that he’s worthy of his station.

On that topic, most of the Bureau are just cops, with a few exceptions like Street Performer Johan who loiters outside the department spilling the Hot Goss. Everyone in the office refuses to get rid of him despite the Director’s orders and loitering being a crime, because he ain’t hurtin nobody and he’s got the Good Jams.

Each case sprinkles in some new details on the ongoing enemies-to-lovers situation that is Notorious Outlaw Cary Fangbattle and the officer who’s devoted the past few years to hunting her down, Killian Adventurezone. Its a background thing, but its nice.

Of course, what’s a private investigator without their Criminal Informant? That’s where Barrold J. Bluejeans steps in. Is that his real name? Absolutely not! It’s Sildar Hallwinter, but he’s not gonna be the one to tell you that. He’s pretty in the know about some Big Crime Things, and while Taako and Angus aren’t particularly fond of not knowing his methods, they can’t exactly argue with the results he provides at times. He also claims to have had a run in or five with the guy they’re tracking, and gives some important details. Angus is rightfully creeped out by Bary, but for some reason Taako has a lot of faith in the guy, and takes his word as Law, much to even Taako’s surprise. Bary’s price is always the same, or rather is still attempting to be paid: Keep looking for what happened to his wife. Their only leads they have are some tattered red cloth, what seems like a broken cane that Taako has been using and Barry claims was hers, and a locket with her picture... even if they cant really make out the image, or the name. Barry takes it on good faith that they’ll figure it out one day. Bary’s a good egg, even if he’s kinda sketchy. 

Jenkins reprises his role as the Rockport Slayer, because idk its interesting.

That’s all i got for now, but i feel like this is Neat.

Look I just want a buddy-private-detective au with Taako and Literal Child Angus McDonald teaming up and ruthlessly dunking on each other and also they chase down Kravitz for the trail of dead necromancers he leaves behind for an enemies to lovers taakitz thing.

Angus MUST curse like he does in Rockport Limited and he and Taako MUST be equally skilled but have completely different skill sets so they can each razz the other for missing “obvious” things. Taako is arcane detective and Angus is physical detective.

They’re partners but when people go up to Taako all concerned about bringing a child to a crime scene he’s like “that’s my fucking BOSS” and then either plays the beleaguered assistant to child prodigy or feeds them some line about a backfired eternal youth spell or something depending on what he wants from them

Also Taako DEFINITELY tries to be all noir and shit and Angus is over here doing his encyclopedia brown/half-moon investigations/nancy drew/hardy boys act

[possiblyimbiassed]

For God’s sake; “The Speckled Blonde”?

Just some observations here that I can’t really get out of my mind. Maybe this has already been discussed ages ago, but since I can’t remember seeing it anywhere, here goes:

In TEH ‘Mary’ is reading John’s “famous blog, finally”. She’s reading the introduction out loud and with a slightly theatrical expression. 

(Side note: John and ‘Mary’ aren’t married yet, have only known each other for six months, but apparently they have already invested in a double bed? Or is this just ‘Mary’s own bed being ‘king sized’? Or John’s?)

Anyway. John’s written language is dramatic, almost poetical at first, and we can all see what’s written in his own admin’s interface before publishing, while ‘Mary’ is reading: 

This is my transcript of what it says:

“His movements were so silent. So furtive, he reminded me of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent.  I couldn’t help thinking what an amazing criminal he’d make if he turned his talents against the law.

The case went on for a few days but we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Sherlock was convinced that Julia had been murdered in some way. He didn’t believe that a snake could get into someone’s bedroom, kill them in their [sleep] and then leave without being spotted by anyone [...] without ever being seen again since. Percy h[...] the night Julia was killed and he kept his [...] own flat. Wherever we turned, we [...]

It was only after performing [...] discovered two tiny p[...] traces of an unid[...]  obvious ans[...] something [...]”

OK. But wait a minute - several things strike me at the same time here, adding to the general weirdness of this show: 

1. The first part of this is almost verbatim taken from ACD Canon from The Sign of Four (Ch 6; Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration), see my bolding:

“He whipped out his lens and a tape measure and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long thin nose only a few inches from the planks and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence”.

This may be a perfect example of John Watson’s storytelling from ACD canon, but it certainly doesn’t feel like the John we know from the show; John is never using this kind of language on his blog, nor in spoken words. And as far as I’ve seen, he’s never described Sherlock in these kind of terms. Weird, isn’t it? ;)

2. However, the language in the rest of John’s description of this (supposedly un-published) case is much more straight-forward, and it’s verbatim consistent with the blog entry he published already within the timeline of ASiB; The Speckled Blonde (except that two paragraphs have switched place with each other).

This case, in turn, seems to be very similar to another case in ACD Canon called The Speckled Band. The story is basically the same, except that on John’s blog there’s a slow-acting poison applied on the victim sisters by a cosmetic product, rather than a snakebite (the snake is the ‘speckled band’ in canon). Snakes are mentioned also in the blogpost, since Julia’s boyfriend keeps some as pets, and he’s accused of the murder. But he and his snakes turn out to be innocent. 

The Speckled Blonde case is shown in a quick flash scene in ASiB, where Julia, the murdered sister, is exposed at the morgue:

This show’s canon references are always a nice touch in my opinion, so that’s in no way my problem with this. My problem is rather that John’s blog posts really don’t resemble John Watson’s Strand Magazine stories from canon in style. As I’ve tried to show here and here, I rather think that John’s blog is the version most faithful to ‘reality’, while the show often seems exaggerated and overly dramatized. As if Sherlock the Drama Queen were telling us what happened, rather than John. So, my point is that this part in TEH with ‘Mary’ reading John’s (supposedly unpublished) blog entry could just as well be imagined by Sherlock, while reading John’s blog and remembering his time together with John...

3. Speaking of trained bloodhounds picking out a scent, in T6T we do have a (supposedly) real bloodhound; Toby, who does pick out a scent.

Even if Toby later loses the trace and fails to discover the real source of the blood sample that Sherlock found on a smashed Thatcher bust, and even if Toby is compared to John by Sherlock, he is undeniably a bloodhound. ;) 

So, well. EMP again, isn’t it? Sherlock is remembering this fantasy of his own (or this ‘real’ event, if you like) of being compared to a bloodhound, and using the idea further to run his EMP scenarios in S4, that’s what I think he’s doing.

4. Just one more little detail. On that published blog post of John’s, the comment section ends with this:

Good question, Jim theimprobableone! A hint, if I ever knew one. ;)

Tags under the cut.

@raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @monikakrasnorada @sagestreet @gosherlocked @tjlcisthenewsexy @kateis-cakeis @sherlockshadow @darlingtonsubstitution @fellshish @88thparallel @mrskolesouniverse @sectoralheterochromiairidum @csi-baker-street-babes @meta-lock

[dipulb3]

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-how-dr-seuss-explains-bidens-big-win-on-covid-bill/

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

That stress on cultural complaints reflects the shifting source of motivation inside the GOP coalition, with fewer voters responding to the warnings against “big government” once central to the party’s appeal and more viscerally responding to alarms that Democrats intend to transform “our country,” as former President Donald Trump often calls it, into something culturally unrecognizable.

Rahm Emanuel lived through both of those earlier fights as a top White House side to Clinton and Obama’s chief of staff. Compared with the gyrations required to pass those economic plans, he told me, the changes that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other moderates demanded this time were “a nip and tuck. It’s not even plastic surgery.” The modest changes, he says, shows that compared with those earlier periods, the Democratic congressional caucus today is “much more ideologically cohesive.”

Some Democratic strategists warn that the cumulative price tag of the Biden agenda might still trigger a backlash, particularly if interest rates and/or inflation rise, as some economists warn. But for now it’s clear that Democratic moderates are displaying less fear of being tagged with the “big government” label from the right than their counterparts did during the early months of the Clinton and Obama presidencies. That could help Biden consolidate his party for another expensive proposal he’s likely to unveil soon: a broader, infrastructure-centered, economic recovery plan whose price tag will also likely reach the trillion-dollar level.

“I think it’s very clear that on economic issues, the voters … want them to pass stuff and take action, and there’s not a lot of opposition out there,” says Democratic pollster Nick Gourevitch. “So Biden’s got running room.”

Why it’s different this time

As in the famous Sherlock Holmes story, the most revealing dynamic in the legislative debate over the Covid plan may have been “the dog that didn’t bark”: in this case, the absence of a grassroots conservative uprising against the plan, even though its price tag vastly exceeded the Clinton and Obama proposals that ignited more resistance. Polls have consistently found significant majorities of Americans support the Covid relief plan, with Gourevitch’s firm releasing one survey last week that showed it winning support from more than two-thirds of adults, including a plurality of Republicans.

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind, who represents a rural-flavored western Wisconsin district that Trump carried by almost 5 percentage points last November, told me he felt no hesitation about backing the Covid bill. Calls coming into his office, Kind told me, have been “10 to one positive. … The reaction has been amazing: overwhelming support.”

Likewise, Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, who also holds a seat in a blue-collar district Trump won by more than 4 points, says that among his colleagues in swing districts, “Teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, pearl-clutching: All of those were absent in this.”

Changed circumstances partly explain the GOP’s inability to stir serious resistance to the plan. Obama’s economic recovery package was buffeted by the broader public anger over financial institutions’ role in triggering the 2008 housing crisis and severe recession. This time, despite Trump’s frequent efforts to blame the virus on China, Americans seem much more inclined to view the outbreak as a kind of natural disaster that demands a collective response.

“In ’09 there was so much anger in the air, the big fat cats being bailed out … and people were looking for blood and who do we hold accountable,” Kind says. “And that’s not as easy to do when you’ve got a global pandemic.”

Different, too, is the breadth of the pain the virus has inflicted. Clinton’s economic plan followed a relatively mild recession; and while Obama’s responded to a much more serious downturn, the housing crisis still spared most homeowners while crushing others. The small-government “tea party” movement that helped power the huge GOP gains in the 2010 election began with a television rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who asked, “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

By contrast, the coronavirus outbreak has touched virtually all Americans: Even those who haven’t faced illness in their families, or disruption to their incomes, have seen the routines of daily life disintegrate.

In his central Pennsylvania district, Cartwright says, “you would struggle to find somebody who wasn’t affected by this pandemic negatively in some way.”

That includes local Republican officials in cities and towns, Kind notes, who are eager for the bill’s assistance — despite congressional Republican attempts to tag its aid for local governments as a bailout to poorly run Democratic cities and states. “The [congressional] Republicans are overplaying their hand by trying to make this more partisan than it is back home,” he says. One Republican police chief in his district, Kind says, even told him that by opposing the local aid, Republicans “are the ones who are really defunding law enforcement and our first responders.”

Yet just as important as the changed circumstances may be the evolving priorities of the GOP voter base.

“Donald Trump may have shifted the GOP coalition to a more economically populist position or revealed that there’s just less appetite for spending discipline on the right than there was before,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told me in an email.

If anything, questions about whether to increase or shrink government are now more likely to divide than unite Republican voters, notes Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. Though Republican partisans still generally recoil at higher taxes and oppose programs they view as transfer payments for the poor, a recent poll of Trump voters that Olsen supervised, for instance, found substantial support among them for spending on Social Security and Medicare (entitlements that benefit the predominantly White senior population).

“I think it’s pretty clear that in the modern Republican Party, spending control for its own sake is a minority taste, not a majority taste, and that partly explains why there hasn’t been this massive uprising at a $1.9 trillion bill,” Olsen says.

GOP anxiety about way of life widespread

As concerns about big government recede, anxiety about America’s changing identity in an era of growing racial and religious diversity has emerged as the core unifying principle of the GOP coalition. A February poll from Echelon Insights, Anderson’s firm, offers one measure of that shift. Asked their top priorities, Republican voters identified illegal immigration, lack of support for the police, liberal bias in media and general moral decline among their top five concerns; high taxes was the sole economic issue that cracked the list.

Olsen’s national survey of Trump voters, conducted in January, found them crackling with the sense that they are culturally and demographically besieged. In that poll, roughly 9 in 10 Trump voters agreed with a series of stark propositions: that America is losing faith in the ideas that make the country great, that Christianity is under attack in the US and that discrimination against Whites “will increase a lot” in years ahead. Overwhelming majorities rejected the idea that Whites have any intrinsic advantage in American society or that Hispanic and Asian immigrants face discrimination. In the recent national American Enterprise Institute survey supervised by Cox, three-fourths of Republicans asserted that discrimination against Whites was as big a problem as bias against minorities.

Olsen argues that racial resentment is overstated as a unifying principle for Trump supporters, instead portraying the common thread as a more general “sense that the American way of life is under attack.” Cox, along with many other political scientists and opinion analysts, disagrees: They argue the claim that Whites face discrimination has been the best predictor of not only support for Trump but also of the belief that the “American way of life” is under such threat that anti-democratic means, including violence, are justified to protect it.

Either way, whether these cultural anxieties are motivated primarily by racial resentment or not, what’s clear is they are burning brighter for GOP voters now than hostility to “big government.” “As conservative White Protestants moved from operating at the periphery of Republican politics to becoming the most critical part of the GOP base, their manifest cultural concerns, which have always incredibly important to these voters, have overshadowed the GOP’s traditional economic agenda,” says Cox.

House Republicans effectively acknowledged that shift by devoting so much attention to the controversy over Dr. Seuss — the National Republican Congressional Committee offered copies of his books to donors — while Democrats were passing a spending bill that towered over anything they had approved under Clinton or Obama. Other Republicans, meanwhile, tried to portray Biden’s use of the word “Neanderthal” to criticize GOP governor rollbacks of Covid restrictions as a slur on Republican voters, like Hillary Clinton’s description of some Trump backers as “deplorables.” While congressional Republicans called the Covid plan “socialist” or charged it was stuffed with Democratic pet projects, they hardly pressed that case with as much enthusiasm as these cultural attacks: “It doesn’t seem like they are even really trying” to discredit the package, says Gourevitch, in a verdict privately echoed by some Republicans.

Next up: Big spending on infrastructure

That half-hearted resistance seems likely to encourage Democrats to go big on the next stage of Biden’s economic agenda: the “Build Back Better” long-term growth proposal that will include a substantial infrastructure investment. Though the White House has not decided when to introduce the proposal, it will almost certainly include infrastructure spending in the range of about $300 billion annually, for a cumulative price tag over 10 years in the trillions.

Yet both inside the White House and Congress, Democrats are showing little hesitation about proposing that much new spending immediately after a package this big. Both Kind and Cartwright, holding districts that stretch deep into Trump country, say they would enthusiastically support a big infrastructure plan.

“I’d be very comfortable with it,” Cartwright says. “I have been serving in the US House since January 2013 and the whole time I have been saying out loud we need a big, big infrastructure package. It’s not just that the folks around here who build things for a living will benefit, it’s that the entire American economy will benefit.”

Steve Ricchetti, the White House counselor to Biden, told me the administration expects broad support for the infrastructure package when the President eventually unveils it.

“I believe there will be wide, deep bipartisan support for infrastructure because the need is so great,” he says. “I believe there’s a prospect for securing bipartisan support in Congress for this, but I am certain there will be bipartisan support throughout the country for this: governors, mayors, local officials whose economies are dependent on infrastructure investment, digital, energy, transportation, water. The business community will be enormously supportive of this; it’s an engine for the recovery.”

The open question for Biden, as he finalizes his next proposals, is whether there’s a cumulative weight of proposed spending that awakens the slumbering conservative recoil against “big government.” Both Clinton and Obama saw the grassroots backlashes against their agendas intensify when they followed their initial economic plans with other expensive proposals, particularly their efforts to overhaul the health care system. Each of those dynamics culminated in crushing losses for them in the first midterm after their election.

Compared with the Clinton or Obama experience, Democrats unquestionably feel they have more runway to advance new programs today, largely because the GOP coalition no longer seems as energized by opposition to spending. But if the political limits on new spending seem relaxed, that doesn’t ensure they have been eliminated. It’s possible Americans will accept trillions in spending beyond the Covid plan, but it’s also possible Biden and fellow Democrats might trigger a circuit breaker in public opinion if they go too far — particularly if inflation and interest rates rise from all the economic stimulus as even some Democratic economists have warned. Demands from moderates such as Manchin to find offsetting tax revenues for some or all of the infrastructure plan could also stir more conservative opposition.

The problem is that both the cost of the federal response and the underlying disruption to society from the pandemic are so unprecedented that no one can confidently predict how much more spending Biden can add to his tab without provoking the backlash he has conspicuously avoided so far. Even Emanuel, who rarely expresses doubt, acknowledges, “I’m not even sure I can give you an educated guess on that.”

The safest bet is that so long as the GOP remains fixated on cultural and racial grievance, Democrats will feel confident pushing forward the most aggressive expansion of government’s role in the economy since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society during the 1960s.

[ylc1]

Master fic list (rare pairs)

So, I wanted to update my fic master list, but it’s gotten ridiculously long (I’ve written 39 sherlock fics and counting), so I decided to break it down by pairings, to keep it slightly simplier. I think I’m going to start with the rare pairings because those are the fewer :P

Enjoy!

Long term complications of arranged marriages

Myjohnlock, complete, 78800 words.

Summary: Originally, Mummy Holmes wanted to arrange a marriage for her younger son, not wanting him to be lonely. When Sherlock refused, Mycroft agreed to step in, which ended up with him marrying John Watson. Things worked well between them- until John met his brother-in-law.

Some personal notes on it: My first work for the fandom and I’m so ridiculously proud of it. I never actually intended for it to end the way it did, but boy was it a fun ride!

Additional notes: quite a lot of angst/hurt, conflicted feelings, more or less canon compliant. Ends more hopeful than happy.

Crush

Johncroft & Sherstrade, complete, 20000 words.

Summary: Sherlock has been nursing a crush on DI Greg Lestrade since they met. Of course the poor man has no clue whatsoever and somehow his newest friend, John Watson is stuck with the task of helping him win the other man over, all while attempting to deal with his own crush on the older Holmes.

Some personal notes: I started working on this in an attempt to get myself to work on the continuation of “Long term complications of arranged marriages”. Also, an attempt of humor, although I’m not sure how well it worked out.

Additional notes: attempted humor, silly situations, bit of rom com and perhaps a tad of angst here and there. Sort of canon compliant (if you ignore S3)

Baby, don't call me your friend

Mollrene, side Johnlock, on hiatus.

Summary: Irene watches John and Sherlock dance around each other while she avoids thinking of her own crush on her friend Molly.

Some personal notes: Another idea that came to me through music… I like it, but I’m not quite sure where it is going :P

Additional notes: alternate universe-high school, jealousy, pining, humor.

There’s always time for love (even at the end of the world)

Johnlock (1st chapter), Mollrene (2nd chapter), complete, 3700 words

Summary: In the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, John and Sherlock run into Dr. Irene Adler while on a supply run.

Some personal notes: My daughter ADORES zombie movies, which translates on me having watched almost every single one on netflix’s catalogue. So of course inspiration struck.

Additional notes: alternate universe-zombie apocalypse, referenced past character death (that’s one hell of a downside with zombie apocalypses), jealousy, romance

Extra hours

Salthea, side Mystrade, complete, 5900 words

Summary: Sally & Anthea work entirely too much, since their bosses are workaholics. But then they met and things work out for everyone.

Some personal notes: this is vaguely inspired on the movie “set it up”, except I haven’t actually watched it, so it’s based on the trailer :P I just liked the idea too much and had to write it.

Additional notes: rom com, not a single hint of angst here, silly, fluffy, alternate universe- different professions.

I hope you’ll enjoy them! Kudos & comments mean the world to me.

And if you can, maybe Buy Me a Coffee

My other lists are here: johnlock, johnlock & mystrade, mystrade