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possiblyimbiassed · 3 years ago

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Time, Space and Sherlock

After the surrealistic ending of BBC Sherlock’s fourth series in 2017, many of us might have asked ourselves: is it even possible to construct a coherent plot line out of this mess? Is it possible to trace some ‘real’, believable story arc for the show; a narrative where things would still make logical sense? Or is the whole show rather a sort of abstract work of art, where everything is to be read metaphorically? Strangely enough, I think both. :)

One of the things that don’t exactly behave normally in BBC Sherlock is time. And this is not limited to S4, but can be found all over the show. We see people perform things that would be highly questionable, or even wouldn’t be physically possible, to do in our real world, considering the time it would take. Like Sherlock and John climbing over rooftops and still arriving in time to shortcut a taxi in ASiP. Or Moriarty in TRF, arriving to have a chat with Sherlock at 221B from having been in custody at The Old Bailey (at least 15 minutes apart with car, according to the maps), basically within the time it takes for Sherlock’s kettle to boil.

Or Mary showing up in the top apartment of a sky scraper in HLV, knocking out people and wreaking havoc, within the time it takes for John and Sherlock to ascend there with the only elevator. Or Sherlock, when Mary shoots him, having three seconds of consciousness left, and yet he’s able to notice how many minutes it takes for John to get there and call the ambulance. It really doesn’t add up, does it?

We also see and hear these specific elements (along with other, similar examples that I won’t bore you with now) being repeated again and again in the show, in a seemingly haphazardly and meaningless manner. In TSoT we see a sequence from Sherlock’s best man speech where he and John are chased over rooftops by Cupid a short man with a blow pipe. A rooftop is also where Sherlock chooses to meet Moriarty in TRF, and consequently then uses for his fake suicide.

Apparently Sherlock had predicted the exact method of Moriarty’s blackmail from start. But if he knew beforehand, why even put himself in this situation? Couldn’t he thus prevent it? Or is he some kind of oracle that can predict but not interfere with the course of the events? And who was he really planning to con here - Moriarty or John? From the angle they were standing, Jim would have seen the whole theatre from above, had he not opted for a sudden - supposedly unpredicted - suicide on the rooftop. Logic fails when time is twisted here, I believe.

The boiling kettle is mentioned by John in another not too dissimilar context in THoB (thanks for the transcripts, Ariane De Vere X), when Sherlock and John are trying to fake their way into Baskerville’s military facility:

SHERLOCK: What’s the matter?

JOHN: We’ll get caught.

SHERLOCK: No we won’t – well, not just yet.

JOHN: Caught in five minutes. “Oh, hi, we just thought we’d come and have a wander round your top secret weapons base.” “Really? Great! Come in – kettle’s just boiled.” That’s if we don’t get shot.

John is ironic here of course, ridiculing the idea that the military would immediately welcome their intrusion by offering them tea. But this is exactly what Sherlock absurdly does with his arch enemy the very next episode. He even uses precisely the same words: ”Kettle’s just boiled” to greet Moriarty. It’s almost as if he would aim to fulfill John’s ironic ‘prophecy’, isn’t it?

If it was strange in HLV how an unconscious Sherlock could know how long it took for John to find him after he was shot, it’s even weirder in TST to see Mary perform a long speech after being shot. And the way she throws herself in front of the bullet after it has been fired is physically impossible. In real life with a real time frame, she wouldn’t have the time to move, because no human being can move faster than a bullet.

In the show we can also see scenes shifting forwards and backwards in time, where later events are superimposed over former events without any explanation. Like in HLV when John and Mary are being welcomed as Christmas guests at Sherlock’s parents’ house, shown before the trio had even attempted to sort out the horrible event when Mary had tried to kill their son (which they actually didn’t sort out - they were interrupted by Sherlock’s second heart failure).

And in S4 we have these inexplicable ’jumps’ in time where big chunks that would be explanatory for the story line are simply skipped over. What happened, for example, in TST after Mary had ordered John to ”pull over” - did she give birth in the car? Or was little Rosie born on the sidewalk in the middle of London? Or was this just another labour pain after which they could continue to the hospital? We don’t get to know, because suddenly it’s time for the baby shower. Or in TFP, John and Sherlock jump out of an exploding 221B Baker Street in London, but next moment they’re suddenly hijacking a fisher boat out at sea, perfectly unharmed. How did they even get there? And what happened in between? We never get to know.

This is not how you construct a believable story, is it? All in all, time and space are being handled in a very sloppy manner in BBC Sherlock - actually from start, but increasingly so until it gets really absurd at the end of TFP. Which is a bit illogical in a story about a detective where the facts and details are supposedly essential to his crime solving. In this show one can get the impression that time is not a linear chain of events, and space is not even relevant. But maybe it’s all just a matter of perspective?

The space-time continuum

Not so long ago, I saw this post from 2014 on my dash (X), now with an addition by @sarahthecoat (X) which in turn linked to this very interesting meta by @impatient14 (X). The latter is about BBC Sherlock seen from a space-time continuum, a concept which I find truly mind-boggling and very fascinating - thanks for the link, @sarahthecoat! Here’s Wikipedia’s representation of the space-time continuum (X):

This idea originates from Einstein’s theory of relativity. The speed of light is constant. If space has three dimensions, time can be seen as the fourth dimension. In the representation above, space has been reduced to only two dimensions, leaving the third for time. The observer is placed at an event in Origo (O), the null point where all the time and space axes and the two ’light cones’ of future and past events meet. A signal with equal or less speed than light can travel from O to a position and time within the future light cone. Therefore it’s possible for event O to have a causal influence on this future event. The future light cone contains all the possible events that could be causally affected by O.

Likewise, a signal with equal or less speed than light could have travelled from a position and time within the past light cone to O. The past light cone contains all the possible events that could have had a causal influence on O.

What is real?

But what has this to do with BBC Sherlock? Years ago, we had this really interesting discussion based on a meta by @gosherlocked about ill-treated children in BBC Sherlock (X), where we tried to explore what could be seen as ’real’ events in BBC Sherlock, and what could be seen as purely metaphorical representations. @ebaeschnbliah made a good point explaining how things only happening inside Sherlock’s head would still appear just as ’real’ to him, since every action from a person always starts from within their own brain. I think this idea of a ‘inner universe’ might also be consistent with space-time continuum: within the light cone of possible, future events even absurd things can occur, because in our fantasy everything is possible. So if Sherlock is setting up scenarios within his mind palace, separated from other people’s reality, he might get to absurd conclusions that appear very true to him. And to him the time-line might even seem logical and normal, even if it would appear twisted to an outside observer.

In light of more recent discussions around @sagestreet’s analyses of possible starting points for Sherlock’s extended mind-palace - EMP - (X), I felt inspired to try to apply @impatient14’s idea of the space-time continuum to my own view of this show.

As far as I can see (with my very limited understanding of the topic, because this ’timey-wimey’ stuff is a bit confusing, and a far cry beyond my ’event horizon’ :D) the space-time continuum idea seems to correspond with EMP theory and also with a lot of other stuff we’ve been discussing for the last few years after S4 aired.

However, when it comes to the observer’s point in the space-time continuum, the moment when Sherlock presumably enters his EMP and starts running scenarios of possible future events, I like to see things a bit differently. I’m still inclined to hold on to the ’possibly-raggedy-theory’ as @sagestreet calls it, which places this moment right after John’s wedding.

I have several arguments for this, and some of them involve John’s online blog, which we can all still find on the wayback-machine (X), and also in the mirrored version on tumblr (X). I’ll try to describe my view here, followed by an attempt at argumentation. It might be a bit much to read, but I’ll do my best to point out the main components, so please bear with me 😊. But first of all I recommend you to read @impatient14 ’s space-time meta (X).

Trying to apply @impatient14 ’s space-time continuum idea on the ’possibly-raggedy-theory’ (which is originally @raggedyblue’s brilliant idea; here’s my meta series about it: X), I would suggest the following:

The event when Sherlock enters his EMP - the null point in his space-time continuum - is caused by an overdose of drugs, and this point in time occurs ’off-screen’ on one of the days following John’s wedding.

The past light cone would cover ASiP to TSoT.

The future light cone would cover HLV to the last episode of S4.

Within the closest part of the past light-cone, Sherlock has been reading all the posts on John’s blog, and what we see in the show up until TSoT is Sherlock reminiscing real and imagined past events inside his own mind. They all have a causal influence on the null point (O), but not all of them have necessarily occurred in other people’s reality.

We’re seeing the whole show from Sherlock’s point of view. But he’s trying to look at the events from John’s perspective, in order to better understand John. He imagines, for example, John waking up from a nightmare or John attending a session with his therapist or John having a chat with Mycroft.

Within the future light-cone, there lies a huge amount of hypothetical ’time-strands’ of possible future events. But the null point (O) when Sherlock loses contact with John’s and the other characters’ reality has a causal influence on these future time strands. What we see in HLV-TFP is Sherlock’s drug-induced scenarios where he, inside his comatose but still working brain, tries to follow one of these hypothetical time strands to see where it leads.

In his dream-like state, Sherlock believes that he experiences real events within real light cones, but within his imagination there’s no real materia, so physical realities and limits like the speed of light are no obstacle.

But to an outside observer (like John) time behaves differently. Throughout Sherlock’s perhaps year-long experience, John might only experience a short time when Sherlock lies comatose in hospital, perhaps weeks, and apparently with not much hope of survival.

The time-strand Sherlock has followed in HLV-TFP, however, might end up being a circular time-line, because Sherlock has only his own experience to draw from to make scenarios, and his real-life experience stopped at O. Sherlock can’t possibly predict his real-life future, even though he believes he can; he just doesn’t possess the data of future events, and therefore the higher up the future light cone that his mind travels, the more absurd becomes the result. There are far too many possible variables to take into account for this ‘modeling’ to be a good idea. So this time-strand winds up where we started from, with Sherlock and John eternally solving crimes together, eternally beeing ‘just friends’. And a Ghost!Mary telling him that this is just fine. At the end of the show as we know it for now (TFP), there’s apparently no progression.

What could make Sherlock Holmes ‘come alive’?

The issue of progression in time is, in my opinion, what needs to be solved by a potential S5. For now, this show only ends up where it started; Sherlock goes directly from the absurd, surrealistic events at the prison of Sherrinford to a ’normal’ but never-ending story of crime-solving at 221B. And in the last scene of TFP, time seems to be frozen:

At the end of S4 we can see no progression, only ’business as usual’, in spite of all the things Sherlock has learned about ’emotional context’ after John’s wedding. Continuing the story further, however, based on Sherlock’s new insights, could break this circular timeline. S5 would have the potential to transfer Sherlock and John from the eternal, crime-solving stereotyped friends, to a couple of characters that have an actual, believable life together. But this would require Sherlock waking up from his current state of surrealism.

In ACD canon it may be difficult to follow an actual story arc, but at least Holmes and Watson grow older. In the latter part of Conan Doyle’s stories, we’re told that Holmes retired and moved alone to Sussex Downs to calmly indulge in bee-keeping, while Watson seemingly remained in London. The very last story, though - His Last Bow (LAST) - ends differently. With the villain securely tied up in the back seat, the now older Holmes and Watson leave the scene together in a car. Holmes talks about an impending ‘East Wind’ that will change everything, and now they’re traveling together into the future in a modern (for their time) vehicle of transport to cash in a check for five hundred pounds. ACD didn’t spell it out, but this to me gives a hint of potential.

But how could Sherlock re-enter the same space-time continuum as John? In short, my assumption here is that in John’s ’reality’, HLV-TFP mark a slowly progressing time strand in John’s space-time continuum where Sherlock is hospitalized after an OD of drugs. He’s comatose and in a serious condition between life and death. He needs, of course, to stay alive and wake up from this. But then what? What could he do to change this reality into something new?

What John doesn’t know is that Sherlock’s brain is still working frantically, trying to run scenarios of a hypothetical future in his extended mind palace (EMP). To Sherlock all this appears ’real’ while to us, the onlookers, it seems surreal and increasingly absurd. But the only benefit this serious condition has for Sherlock is an opportunity for self-reflection. In his EMP, he can learn things about himself and his feelings for John, even if he gets all his predictions of the future events essentially wrong. But the things Sherlock (and by extension the audience) experiences within his EMP have a symbolic and metaphoric value to him (us). Even if they’re not ’real’ to other characters, they represent a reality which Sherlock - if he survives to wake up to it - can act upon and influence, very much like a living, breathing person.

One important thing of symbolic value for Sherlock is the change in his view of love, intimacy and emotions. In HLV-TLD Love is represented by Lady Smallwood. @sagestreet has described it beautifully in this meta (X). She’s a new character who isn’t even mentioned before HLV, which to me indicates that in this alternate reality, Sherlock has started to look more closely at Love and what it might actually mean to him. At first he (and Mycroft, representing Sherlock’s brain) is very suspiscious and accuses Lady Smallwood of being a killer and a traitor. But at the end of TLD Mycroft considers to actually meet up with her for a drink. ;) Likewise, at the end of TLD Sherlock realises that he must comfort John with a hug rather than with words - Sentiment is important.

And at the end of TFP he learns that in order to help John, he needs to embrace his crazy sister (who probably represents another, long neglected, part of himself) and start to communicate with her through feelings (= the violin).

The null point from a meta level perspective

But even in a space-time continuum as experienced by Sherlock, why should we place ”O”, the null point of the observer, exactly where I suggest here (immediately after TSoT)? There are many other good and valid ideas about EMP starting points floating around, for example that it would occur when Mary shoots Sherlock in HLV. Or much earlier when he jumps from Barts in TRF. Or even from the very start of the Pilot or at least from ASiP. So what would be particularly convincing about this one? We have no chance of knowing, of course, but I’ll try to argue my case below.

Placing the null point directly after the wedding and making Sherlock’s transition into EMP self-inflicted by drugs gives the whole show structure a different centre of gravity, because it enhances the importance of Sherlock’s heartbreak as a game turner. Instead of being shot in the chest by an assassin, the real cause of Sherlock entering his EMP becomes his own emotional reaction to John marrying another - adding the prospect of John having a child with them. Which would have started after Sherlock’s deduction about Mary’s pregnancy at the end of TSoT:

That would have ‘sealed the deal’ for Sherlock, wouldn’t it? Whatever would happen with John’s marriage, his responsabilities as a father would weigh heavy on John, limiting whatever spare time he’d have for Sherlock in his life to a mere minimum. The last nail in the coffin… And that’s a far more interesting reason than a gun shot in my opinion, because Sherlock will have to deal with this emotional conundrum in a different way than how he usually solves puzzles. The drugs reason would also be far more canon consistent - as I suggested in this meta long ago (X) - since this is what happens at the end of SIGN, when Watson declares his intention to marry Mary Morstan:

“The division seems rather unfair,”I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”

“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.

@victorianpining has elegantly described in this episode (X) of the video series ’TJLC Explained’ how, in many ways, BBC Sherlock has picked up on Billy Wilder’s adaptation, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (TPLoSH). In this film from the 1970:s the real reason behind Holmes’ drug use is strongly hinted at: his frustration over his own desire for Watson.

Also: Assuming an impending S5 and a five-act structure to the show, like @garkgatiss has suggested in this excellent meta (X), each series of BBC sherlock would represent one act. And the midpoint of the show would fall somewhere in the middle of TSoT (perhaps around Sherlock’s speech about the stag night? ;)) Thus the two halves of the show could be folded nicely around this point in TSoT, with 7,5 episodes before and 7,5 episodes after. But what about TAB? The ’Christmas Special’ was said to be separate from the rest of the show, but this wasn’t true, was it? There were ’moden’ scenes in TAB which seemed to be caused by events in HLV, which means TAB would follow logically after it in Sherlock’s space-time continuum. So if we add TAB to the equation, the midpoint would instead fall between TSoT and HLV, with 8 episodes before and 8 after.

A ‘Watsonian’ perspective?

Another possible start for EMP - thus an alternative null point - has been suggested to be the moment when Sherlock jumps from Barts’ hospital in TRF to fake his own suicide (or even the moment when he decides to do this). This could of course be seen as a crucial point; a causal event when Sherlock took a decision that would later perjudicate his whole relationship with John, resulting in John marrying Mary Morstan. But from John’s perspective I think it’s important to remember that he didn’t ’move on’ to marry Mary Morstan immediately after Sherlock jumped and (apparently) died in front of him - however cruel this may have been. No, John finally felt it necessary to ’move on’ because Sherlock stayed ’dead’ for two years, letting John grieve him without even a hint that he was alive. If Sherlock had told John at least shortly afterwards what he was doing and why, I believe much could have been forgiven. And I think this is obvious, both from John’s blog posts and from TEH:

JOHN: One Word, Sherlock. That is all I would have needed. One word to let me know that you were alive.

I’d rather see ’The Fall’ when Sherlock jumps from Barts’ rooftop as a symbol of Sherlock’s ’fall from grace’ in John’s eyes - and probably also in Sherlock’s own eyes. In the scene with the boiling kettle, Moriarty seems to be the ’tempter’ with the apple, and he claims to owe Sherlock ”a fall” - an obvious symbolic reference to the biblical ”Fall of Man” when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. (I won’t go much further into this here, but maybe Sherlock later on gaining insight about his emotional self and his feelings for John could count as a forbidden, original ‘sin’, that would threaten to break his self-imposed celibacy? The ‘headless nun’ with the intellect stored in the fridge of 221B? Knowledge is power...)

But The Fall, however, was not a crucial point in time when John decided to marry a woman. It was Sherlock’s continued behaviour (= his absence) for a prolonged time period that made that decision necessary in John’s view. So John’s decision - even after Sherlock’s return - to ’move on’ is probably not caused by a single, crucial event, but rather by Sherlock’s whole treatment of John; his (apparent) idea that John was safer and better off without Sherlock, and not capable of confronting a dangerous enemy like Moriarty at Sherlock’s side. Why does John proceed with his wedding plans with Mary even after Sherlock has come back to his life? Because his trust is broken. John can’t risk revealing his true feelings to someone who keeps shutting him out and keeps exposing him to cruel jokes, trying to coax him into confessing things that have no apparent reciprocation.

A ‘Holmesian’ perspective!

But the important thing is, in my opinion, that we’re probably not seeing this show from John’s perspective; we’re seeing it from Sherlock’s point of view. And in Sherlock’s eyes, John marrying Mary, together with the revelation that they’re expecting a child together, would be a far more crucial event than him jumping from Barts. If this null point in time of the observer occurs shortly after Sherlock goes home alone to his ‘solitary confinement’, starts taking drugs while reading John’s blog and in a couple of days loses consciousness due to an OD, then everything we see after that, up until TFP, will only have happened in his head - within a hypothetical light cone of possible future events.

And Mary shooting Sherlock in the heart in HLV would also be merely a symbol of what she did to him by marrying John and (apparently) getting pregnant with him; a metaphor produced by Sherlock’s brain scenario within his potential future light cone.

But I suspect the shot was never real; hence the weird sliding flower pot at the actual moment, and this later image of Mary dressed as a bride with a gun, and even later Moriarty dressed as a bride in TAB - an ’abominable bride’ symbolising Sherlock’s heartbreak. So I don’t think Mary did shoot him; she didn’t have to, because Sentiment was enough to tip Sherlock over the allegorical rooftop. If Moriarty was somehow behind Mary marrying John, he really managed to ’burn Sherlock’s heart out’.

Everything we see before this crucial point in time might be Sherlock’s recollection of past events, inspired by reading John’s blog and projected within his light cone of past time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything we see really happened, though; it might be mixed up with little fantasies of Sherlock’s, where he embellished and dramatized the ‘real’ events in scenarios where he could play the hero. And perhaps a very James Bond-like hero at that, based on all the movies John had made him watch, according to both John’s blog (X) and Sherlock’s website (X). Because Sherlock is trying to see everything through John’s eyes, and he thinks John at least used to hero-worship him.

It might be within this light cone of the past that we see Sherlock do all the things that do make logical sense, yes. But already here we also see him do fantastical, exaggerated things that rather seem taken from action movies. Like short-cutting a taxi by climbing rooftops in ASiP. Or battling a veiled villain, knocking them out and getting rid of them in the short time-window when John went to the grocery’s in TBB. Or traveling to Karachi in no-time to single-handedly save Irene Adler from a bunch of armed terrorists in ASiB. Or the scene where he’s being tortured while his brother is watching in TEH. There’s lots of questionable stuff happening in ASiP-TSoT - much more so than what ever happened in canon.

For this theory to be confirmed, however, we need to finally see the scene when Sherlock takes an overdose after the wedding - or at least be told that it did happen. And this is what S5 could reveal. For now, this is mostly speculation.

OK, so this is basically how I view this show, trying to place it within the concept of time-space continuum proposed by @impatient14. I might not have grasped the terms of this concept properly, but in my view it seems to fit with my points above - please correct me if I’m wrong.

To me it would make sense if the increasing surrealism of the show from HLV to TFP were basically due to three things:

Sherlock’s serious health condition; he’s near death, with the implications this has for his brain activity.

He has lost contact with reality almost completely; he’s operating within a hypothetical, drug-induced universe with its very own natural laws and space-time continuum.

He’s biased by strong emotions; heartbreak, guilt and self-loathing, which makes him draw some incorrect conclusions based on misconceptions about John.

Recurring events - a circular time strand

I’m certainly not the only one who has noticed how the story line seems to fold into itself as this show progresses, and how new versions of things we’ve already seen before seem to come back. In fact, it’s not at all difficult to make a long list of the events and elements that are repeated in BBC Sherlock (X). ’The wheel turns, and nothing is ever new’, as Sherlock says in ASiB. That line originates from canon, by the way; Holmes utters something similar in VALL:

“Everything comes in circles – even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”

Actually, I think the concept of recurring events was already incorporated into Doyle’s stories. But the time line still at least made some logical sense - roughly. ;-)

In any case, what we see in BBC Sherlock - especially S4 - is not how time works for a human being living in the real world. Even if some things sometimes seem to repeat themselves in our lives, and even if our time sometimes appear to pass faster and other times slower, we don’t usually experience our lifetime as circular or even spiral, do we? These things might occur in a dream world, though; in a space-time continuum constructed inside someone’s brain.

In @impatient14’s meta, Sherlock’s statements in TST and TLD are quoted, where he claims he could totally predict the future if he only had enough data:

The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

An advanced grasp of the mathematics of probability mapped onto a thorough apprehension of human psychology and the known dispositions of any given individual can reduce the number of variables considerably. I myself know of at least fifty-eight techniques to refine this seemingly infinite array of randomly generated possibilities down to the smallest number of feasible variables.

I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

And already at the end of ASiP, Sherlock claimed something similar:

The thing is, though: while these things in theory may be totally cool in Sherlock’s imagination, where his own brain controls everything, in our real, physical world it’s still impossible.

No human being is omnipotent or omniscient. But inside his drug-influenced brain, Sherlock might like to believe that this is his super-power. It’s not credible though, that someone could foresee events with the precision that Sherlock predicts them in TLD, because there are simply too many “feasible variables” to keep track on. No one can collect that much data. But if you recycle old, already collected data, you might come up with some new combinations of it. Just look at the world Sherlock dreamed up in S4! This is not a realistic future based on correct predictions; it’s a dystopic future where no one is happy and everything is bleak and depressing, but it’s also absurd and surrealistic. Because the person doing the modelling is only human; he’s biased by his own emotions and bad experiences.

John’s blog as a “second opinion”

If we assume that the null point indeed occurs shortly after John’s wedding, that also coincides with the point in time when John’s blog stops updating. Up till that point, we have been able to read John’s own version of the events as a kind of ’second opinion’ - like the one you get from a second doctor. :)

As I see it, John’s blog is the litteral ‘Watsonian perspective’; the blog, rather than the show, is the equivalent of Watson’s stories published in the Strand Magazine. And the blog posts have also been fairly consistent with the order of the events in the show. When we read John’s blog, it’s not difficult to form a coherent plot line in our heads from it. All in all, even with all their fantastic ’adventures’ described, I think the blog is a fairly logical recollection of events, and the conclusions of the crime cases do make sense - at least to the point we can expect from a fictional story. The problem is, hovewer, that the real-life blog stops updating mid-show, directly after TSoT, which is rather illogical. What happened there? This fact would only make sense to me within the context of what we can see in the show, if the stopping has an in-story reason. But in TST (which bears the name of an old blog post!) the blogging has seemingly continued. In TST we can see several cases described on John’s blog which never actually appear on the stopped version online.

The discrepancy between John’s blog and the weird references to it in S4 is particularly interesting, I believe. Since these S4 blogposts are never confirmed by the real, online blog, it gives food for the suspicion that they are all made up by Sherlock’s brain. And why do people, like nurse Cornish in TLD, talk about the blog as if it were Sherlock’s rather than John’s? Because Sherlock is the author of the very last post on the online version (X); he obviously hacked John’s blog after the wedding and took over it, while John was occupied with his "sex holiday” with Mary. Sherlock’s excuse was to publish some wedding photos, but neither them nor Sherlock’s claims about having solved the cases of The Bloody Guardsman and The Mayfly Man seem to impress John. In his comments to Sherlock’s hacked wedding post, John does not confirm that Sherlock solved these two cases. Instead, he tells Sherlock to stop.

From Sherlock’s perspective, reading John’s blogposts as well as his readers’ comments, would have been a great support for Sherlock’s memory; he could have used them as inspiration and incentive to re-live the events in his mind to try to better understand John. One interesting thing with the blog is that the order in time of the posts seems to fit with the order in which the events can be seen in the show. There are cases written on the blog that aren’t presented in the show, or even referred to, but most of the cases that John describes on the blog also figure in the show - either as full-blown plot lines or referred to by Sherlock and other characters. All in all, I think John’s blog represents a fairly coherent story arc, up until his wedding in TSoT when it suddenly stops.

But if this marks the null point when Sherlock loses contact with reality, Sherlock’s perspective might begin to differ more and more from John’s perspective, right? The order of certain events in Sherlock’s EMP might also be altered, if his mind no longer needs to experience them in a coherent order. Which might explain, for example, why he recycles a case - The Six Thatchers - that already has been described by John on the blog years ago (X), but in S4 it’s casted with almost entirely new ’actors’. Please note that the original case of The Six Thatchers is never referenced in the show. It doesn’t contribute to ’our’ (Sherlock’s) story, nor does it have the potential to alter it in any way. It could be said to have no causal influence on Sherlock’s null point, nor on his light-cone of future events. But the case could still be stored somewhere in Sherlock’s subconcious, right?

Causality and non-causality

In Wikipedia’s explanation of the space-time continuum, there’s also a part (see ’Relativity of simultaneity’, X) that explains how different observers’ experiences of the order of events could differ, depending on the speed with which they travel, provided that these events have no causal influence over each other. In the presentation of the light cones, these events are space-related rather than time-related, and are said to occur ‘elsewhere’. If an observer approaches the speed of light, they can even experience these not-causally-connected events in a reversed order, due to their own altered frame of reference:

Not that Sherlock physically can travel with the speed of light, of course, but inside his imagination this would not be a problem, because his thoughts can travel very fast, so following physical laws is not required.

An interesting thing about the Thatcher case is that in TST:s recycled version, Sherlock seems to have inserted the case in a new setting into his EMP, fitting it into a time strand with a causal chain of events within his light cone of possible future. Because this time the Thatcher case definitely has an impact on the events that follow. The smashed Thatcher busts lead Sherlock to the memory stick, which in turn leads him to Mary and him and John to Morocco, a story which ultimately leads to Vivian Norbury and to Mary’s death. All these events are now causally linked in Sherlock’s EMP.

John’s version of their time together is more ‘down-to-earth’, though, even if John sometimes appear to be a slightly unreliable narrator. It’s an ‘alternate historical source’, if you like. The blog is still useful, in my opinion, to confirm the ‘authenticity’ of different events in the show. Thanks to the blog, we can find evidence that John’s wedding truly occurred, and that Mary really exists, because Sherlock has posted documentation - wedding photos - on John’s blog, and Mary has made several comments on the blog. (We don’t actually have Mary’s pregnancy confirmed by herself on the blog; when Sherlock mansplains that she needs to avoid seafood alludes to it in a comment, she merely tells him to shut up).

But the show represents, I believe, Sherlock’s own perspective. While reading the blog he also, of course, would add his own memories to the experiences. If Sherlock was affected by drugs already while reading, that could explain all of the weird scenes in ASiP - TSoT mentioned above, which don’t appear very realistic and aren’t mentioned on the blog.

This explanation - with or without the space-time continuum - is of course not something I’m sure of, it’s merely a hypothesis. Anyone is welcome to try to debunk it. :) But this far I haven’t been able to find any convincing evidence against it. The fact that Sherlock’s OD would have occurred ’off stage’ is not a problem in my opinion, because

a) this method of reasoning backwards to reach a solution which is not shown in the story but still most likely has ocurred, is very much Sherlock Holmes’ MO already in canon and

b) his OD is talked about a lot in TAB, and still we never actually see it happen.

As far as I can see, all the ingredients are there, but the time sequence in which they occur is twisted and folded in on itself:

Sherlock’s ‘week of solitary confinement’ before his OD (described by Mycroft in TAB) happens in TLD, when Sherlock isolates himself at 221B taking drugs

Sherlock’s OD happens in TAB

Sherlock being taken to hospital happens in HLV

Hints of different life-threatening health problems and hospital equipment are sprinkled all over S4, but they don’t have a logically satisfactory context

Maybe this could be explained because in Sherlock’s mind, these events are not causally linked - they occur ‘elsewhere’. He hasn’t yet fully recognised what he’s been doing to himself and the real reason why. This realisation remains for the next series to explore, along with Sherlock’s solution to get out of the situation. In the mean time, he’s woven them into his alternate inner universe with a hypothetical time strand where they are not causally linked.

Predictions...

... are of course very difficult to make for BBC Sherlock - especially since the show makers still refuse to give us any details as to whether we’ll even have a fifth series and when, in that case. And there are so many ‘feasible variables’ to take into account. So maybe it’s more interesting to see what we might draw from canon? Doyle treated his audience very much the same, when he killed off Sherlock Holmes and remained silent about his future for a decade. But, as I mentioned earlier, there are differences. The plot line we’ve seen this far in BBC Sherlock seems to go on and on in circles, frozen in time, with our two eternal friends “sitting arguing in a scruffy flat”, where we could imagine that ‘it’s always 1895′:

But ACD canon’s ending was far more open-ended and took place at the beginning of a new century. In LAST we learn that Holmes and Watson have indeed aged and at least Holmes, who supposedly no longer lives at 221B, has retired to Sussex Downs and written a handbook about beekeeping. Except for this last case, where he very much acts as a Bond-like action hero still going strong. As a double agent in disguise, Holmes effectively fools and wrestles down his opponent, saves his country from enemy attacks and then he steps into a modern car with Watson at the wheel, and they travel together into the future. I so wish that Sidney Paget had made an illustration of this, but we are left to our own deductions about it... ;-). Instead, I’ll post this picture of Claridge’s Hotel, London, where Holmes told Martha Hudson in LAST that he was now staying:

Claridge’s is a famous, still existing, five-star hotel not very far from Baker Street and - ironically - equally close to the subway station Bond Street. :-) From the video on their website (X) we can indulge in any fantasy about Holmes spending a couple of nights in this glamorous luxury hotel with his Watson (maybe a prompt for a fan fiction?): There is nowhere quite like Claridge’s. The hotel began life in 1856 and soon attracted royal notice. During the 1920s it became an English institution; an art deco landmark, loved by movie stars and statesmen, fashion designers and global dignitaries.

As for BBC Sherlock, I think the dystopic, circular plot line needs to be broken in S5, even if we won’t reach the speed of light; John and Sherlock literally need to run out from Rathbone place. Even if the plot line didn’t advance in S4, there still has been a lot of character development, at least for Sherlock. If we’ll indeed have a S5, I expect Sherlock to be able to now act on his new insights and experiences in the physical world, even if it turns out that some of them only took place inside his own head. I do expect some true progression of the plot line in S5, I do expect to see a similar character development in John and that certain predominant issues with this show - like heteronormativity - will finally be properly addressed.

Well, hereby endeth the monster post. Thanks to anyone patient enough to have followed my ramblings this far! :) Tagging some people who might be interested.

@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy

#space-time continuum #bbc sherlock #canon ending

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high-functioning-lokipath · 4 years ago

Text

All About Eavesdropping - Loki x Reader - Words: 1,835

“You want us to what?” You yelled.

“I need you and Elsa here to go to Greenland for about a month,” Tony said. You stared at him from across his worktable in his lab.

“Why in Valhalla would we need to do that, Stark?” Loki retorted. “And don’t call me Elsa.” Tony had called the two of you in there right after breakfast saying that he had a very important job for you. This, however, did not seem to be all that special.

“For purely scientific purposes, of course,” He replied, mouthful of blueberries.

“And those would be?” You sighed, facedesking.

“The new winter stealth suits I designed. I need them tested in the field. I’ve run as many lab tests as possible but,” Tony shrugged. “Field tests are absolutely necessary. Everything you’ll need is either in these boxes or in the house in Greenland. If you want to take any other personal stuff you’ll want to grab it before you leave.”

“And you think we’re the best for the job?” You asked.

“He’s already a popsicle so if it gets too cold he can deal with it and you can heal yourself or him anyway,” Tony said like it was the most logical thing in the world. Loki tensed at his words but didn’t say anything about it.

“Fine,” Loki grunted. He grabbed the box Tony had marked for him and headed for the doors.

“You leave at 6! Don’t be late!”

“I wouldn’t dare disappoint you, Stark,” Loki sassed before finally stalking out.

“Have fun!” Tony grinned at you, wiggling his eyebrows.

“First of all, perv. Second of all, ain’t gonna happen!” You replied. “Why are you doing this? This whole thing is a direct attack on a part of him he doesn’t like to address!”

“Well I figured he has to grow up one day and deal with it. We all have inner demons to fight. I figured I’d help him.”

“A bit not good there, Sherlock.” Tony snorted in laughter and shook his head.

“Would you rather I send him with Steve?” Your eyes widened comically.

“Nope!” You exclaimed, popping the p. “I think we’ll do just fine.” You grabbed your box and headed out as well.

By 6 o'clock, the two of you were flying out on one of Tony's jets. "So, what do you think of the new suits?" You asked Loki, trying to make some conversation.

"They are no match for true Asgardian leather and would be greatly improved by at least a cape," He replied sounding rather bored.

"Oh," You said. "How exactly are we to be testing the suits again? I forget what Tony said."

"He said nothing, darling. It was all in his infernal little packet." You blushed lightly at the pet name and nodded.

"Alright, well, I guess I'm just going to," You paused, unsure of what to do. It was obvious Loki was not interested in conversation but there wasn't much to do on the jet. "I'm just going to sit over there," You said, getting up quickly and moving to the other side of the jet. The rest of the flight was quiet, Loki only speaking up to alert you that you were about to land.

"Surely the man of iron could not possibly want us to stay here," Loki said, getting out and seeing the small house.

"Maybe it's bigger on the inside," You said hopefully. Gathering your few things, you both headed in. "Oh this is so much worse," You groaned. The large main room consisted of the dining and living rooms and the kitchen. However, it was very sparsely decorated. You could see a stack of groceries in the kitchen along with a note. Loki wandered off to explore the bathroom and bedrooms, you assumed, while you read the note.

"Find anything of interest?" Loki called out, surprising you.

"Just that Tony said if we didn't like the food or somehow ran out there's a grocery store about 10 miles away."

"And just how does he expect us to go there?" Loki yelled, getting increasingly frustrated.

"The note says our transportation is out back." You walked down the small hallway to the back door and looked outside. Stifling a laugh you called out, "Hey, Loki! I think your ex is here!"

"My who?" Loki replied, very confused. "I have no 'exes', as you call them, on Midgard." You smirked and moved aside so Loki could look. When he saw what was in the backyard, a strange look crossed over his face. "Run," He said in a dangerously calm voice.

"I beg your pardon?" You replied.

"Run if you don't want to lose your phone," He smirked back. You laughed but you did take off running. He chased you back out to the main room but you ran out the front door. "Don't think you can escape me!" He called out.

"Wanna bet?" You called back, running to the backyard. You quickly jumped on one of the two horses you had seen and took off.

"Oh, you'll regret saying that, my dear," Loki grinned, getting on the other horse and taking off after you.

The next few days continued in a similar pattern. There wasn't much to do so you and Loki would often spend your time exploring the woods behind the house or riding the horses or just talking. Loki had warmed up to you quite a bit, pun intended, and you were quite happy. Of course, you recorded the events of each day in your diary. Well, it was less of a diary and more of a collection of special moments you wanted to remember and sketches you'd made. You had just finished writing today's events when you heard a loud clatter and Loki call you from the kitchen.

"Y/N!" He said. "Can you come here please?" You quickly put your notebook in the nightstand drawer and hurried out to the kitchen.

"What in the world happened, Loki?" You exclaimed, holding back a laugh. Loki was laying on the floor, covered in a mixture of flour and eggs it seemed, with various cups and bowls around him.

"I was attempting to reach a mixing bowl on the top shelf when I slipped on an egg and pulled the shelf down," He admitted.

"You're telling the truth!" You gasped, openly chuckling at the situation now.

"Of course, love! I couldn't lie to you." You blushed brightly, as he often made you do with those pet names.

"Uh, well," You stuttered. "Why don't you go wash up and I'll finish," You paused, glancing around. "Whatever you were making."

"I was attempting to make breakfast," He grinned. "But I think I should make myself clean instead, hm?"

"Yes, you should," You smirked. "Wouldn't want anyone thinking you were greying early."

"You-" He exclaimed, standing quickly. For a moment you thought he was truly angry, but his eyes sparkled with mischief. He reached onto the counter and threw a handful of flour at you before running off to the bathroom. You laughed, dusted yourself off, and got to work on breakfast.

About an hour later, he came back out and sat across you at the counter. "Your breakfast, my prince," You smiled, presenting him his plate. He smiled and you ate in silence for a time.

"I've been reading a lot lately," He commented.

"Mhm," You replied, mouthful of syrupy pancakes.

"The last book I read had some rather interesting sketches in it too."

"Really?" You asked, truly interested. "I love art. Can you show it to me?" You took a large gulp of milk as he replied.

"My dear," He said, setting down his fork. "I read your diary." You coughed, almost choking on your ill-timed drink.

"You what?" You screeched. "How dare you invade my privacy like that and-"

"Don't you care to know what I thought?" He interrupted.

"Why? So you can laugh at me, oh Mr. High-and-" He cut you off by leaning over the counter and kissing you earnestly. "Oh, that's nice," You said once you pulled away.

"Just nice?" He smirked. "I guess I'll have to work on that." He kissed you once more before you pulled away, cheeks flushed and eyes wide.

"I just remembered something!" You gasped.

"What's wrong?" You quickly pulled out the pamphlet Tony had made you about the suit testing. You then gestured to a paragraph under a subheading of RECORDING ANY AND ALL TEST RESULTS

ALL TEST RESULTS MUST BE RECORDED BY THE TESTERS USING THE STEPS LISTED. TO ENSURE NOTHING IS MISSED, HOWEVER, THE HOUSE WILL ALSO BE UNDER 24/7 SURVEILLANCE TO TRACK ANY UNRECORDED RESULTS.

OUTSIDE - AUDIO/VIDEO

INSIDE - AUDIO ONLY

Loki grinned and leaned into you, lips brushing against your ear. He whispered something and you giggled. "Loki!" You gasped. "We can’t do that here!"

"Oh, yes," He purred. "We can do it anywhere we want if we're creative enough."

"But outside is so much more exciting," You grinned. "So," you paused, struggling to find the right word. "Freeing!"

"Please do not do anything outdoors where I can see!" You heard a loud voice yell. You both quickly realized it was coming from the monitoring system.

"Steve? Is that you?" You called back with a chuckle.

"Yeah, Tony insisted I take a turn on guard duty," He grumbled. "Look, I'm sorry I interrupted," He paused awkwardly. "Whatever you were doing but could you please not do it outside? Outside has cameras." Loki laughed loudly and you did too.

"We really didn't mean to prank you, Cap. I thought Tony was on the other end of that mic."

"I however have no objections to how this turned out," Loki added. You whacked him arm lightly and shook your head. "Truthfully, though, we were only speaking of testing another aspect of the suit. I whispered to Y/N my idea and-"

"I get it," Cap replied quickly. You couldn't see him but you could tell he was embarrassed. "I'll make you two a deal. Behave yourselves, finish the tests, and get home early and I'll help you prank Tony here in the tower. Ok?"

"You have yourself a deal, Captain," Loki grinned.

"Alright. I'm going to take a nap now. Don't do anything stupid."

"Oh we won't," Loki smirked, wrapping his arms around you and planting light kisses on your neck.

"Loki!" You squealed.

"Do you want to prank Tony or not?" Steve yelled. "I can't see you but I can hear you! And that didn't sound like suit testing. Get to work! If you do as you're supposed to, you'll be done in a week."

"Yes, sir," You both grumbled. Loki, ever the mischief maker, wasn't about to let up. He grabbed a towel and twirled it, smacking your backside with it as you walked away.

"What was that for?" You asked.

"Loki, did you just-"

"For purely scientific purposes, I assure you," He replied. Steve groaned in frustration.

"This is gonna be a long week."

Loki Taglist

@lucywrites02

@delightfulheartdream

@serpentargo

@khena

@nyx2021

@kaz11283

@weasley-main-lover

@up-to-mischief

@lokislittlesigyn

Marvel (all characters) Taglist

@bartv21

@another-crazy-fangirl

@whatafuckingdumbass

@ladylulu143

@lokislittlesigyn

#loki #loki oneshot #loki imagine #loki fanfic #loki x reader #marvel #avengers

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luxwritesfanfic · 4 years ago

Text

Old Money

In which Sherlock tells you something you’ve wanted to hear for a long time. Or, the one where reader reads auras and as always with Sherlock, things are never as they seem. Thanks for reading!

Sherlock Holmes/Reader

Cursing under your breath at the weather, you pushed the door to 221b open and found solace in the warmth of the building. You didn’t think you’d ever get use to the dreary London winters. Today had been terribly long and as much as you wanted to be in your bed watching Iron Man with last night’s reheated takeaway, Sherlock had texted you saying he needed your help with some experiment and John just wasn’t capable of helping him. You almost said no but the thought of passing up time with Sherlock was unbearable, even if you were just a guinea pig for him to test on. ‘Yeah”, you thought to yourself, ‘I’m down bad’. Doing your best to shake off the snow and fatigue, you made your way to the stairs but stopped at the bottom when you heard a soft melody coming from the second floor. Tilting your head to the side, you furrowed your brows and tried to hone in on the sound. It didn’t sound like a violin so it couldn’t be Sherlock playing. It wasn’t often that he cared to listen to music besides his own so it must be part of his experiment, you thought. You carried on, moments later finding yourself in the doorway when you noticed it.

It was like you were seeing the world through rose colored glasses. Everything was cast in a soft pink glow that made it all seem so delicate and precious that you knew you had to commit this feeling to memory in the chance that nothing in your life brought this shade to you again. Sherlock stood with his back towards you, arms taut behind his back with his hands folded neatly. He gazed out at the busy London street beneath his home and seemed lost in a trance of his own. Music was playing from his laptop and it really brought everything together. You wondered what he would say if he could see it, if he could see how he made the world look for you. You wondered what he must’ve been feeling to project it as beautifully as this. Dragging your eyes away from the skull on the mantle that was illuminated by the pink in a way that almost seemed romantic, you looked back at the man of your every hour.

He was absolutely perfect and that was something you had never been more sure of. You let yourself lean against the door frame to admire him completely. You knew you didn’t look at your other friends like that and while that should have scared you, it didn’t. You loved Sherlock for what he was, everything he was, and if he never returned any affection for you— you would still love him the same. You had the time of your life fighting dragons with him and you could only hope you expressed that to him in a way he could understand. The corner of Sherlock’s lips twitched as he spoke, bringing you back to him. It seemed that was something you did for each other often. “You’re staring, you know. If you stared any harder I’m afraid I’d feel it in my chest.” He was still looking out the window and you hadn’t been sure prior if he knew you were there at all. If it was anyone else, they would have missed the humor in his words. Luckily for you, you could hear him smiling. You were sure it was as lovely as it sounded.

“I’m sorry.” You weren’t. “What did you need help with?”

Sherlock finally turned to face you, fingers playing with the cuffs of his sleeve as he made to roll them up. He walked towards the kitchen and you followed, shrugging your coat off onto the back of John’s chair. “I need to ask you something. And you must be honest with me or it will be for naught.” He leaned against the dining table, one handing holding his elbow up and the other brought up to his lips. He was studying you in the way he thought was less obvious than pyramiding his fingers but you were well aware of the detective’s tells.

You moved to lean against the counter across from him. The tips of your shoes were almost touching. “Okay, shoot.”

Shifting under the weight of his suddenly intense stare, you followed as his eyes moved from your head down as if you were wearing the answer he was looking for. While he was searching, you had happened to notice that the pink that seemed to envelop everything in his flat wasn’t touching him. Hell, your white scrub top looked like it had gotten mixed in with the reds in the wash. But there Sherlock was, unaffected by the light he was supposedly giving off. How strange, you thought.

Before you could fully register what was happening, Sherlock had stepped into your space and left you pinned between him and the kitchen counter. He was still looking at you like that and you could feel blush rise up your neck and onto your cheeks. That seemed to have caught his eye as he brushed a lock of hair behind your ear to get a better view.

“Why is it that whenever I call for you... you never deny me?” Eyes still fixated on your cheek, he brought a hand up and brushed the back of his fingers along your jaw. His other arm still rested on the countertop next to you and his legs on either side of yours.

Your eyes widened at his question. You had no way of explaining why in a way that would both satisfy him and protect you. You stayed silent as he tilted your jaw back with his knuckles and moved to cup your cheek with his palm. He moved to do the same on the other side, taking his time as if the act itself was sacred. His lips parted into a silent ‘oh’ as if he was drinking in your movement and analyzing your every reaction.

“Sherlock,” you croaked, not sure if it came out as whine, plea, or prayer. It was all too much- his hands on your face holding you close to him, your knees knocking together, and if you moved just a little closer you were sure your noses would touch. “Y/N, why?” He urged. He was going to have your answer whether you thought you were capable of giving it to him or not. The air was so thick you thought you were going to choke. “Why do you always come when I call?” His breath was fanning your lips and you had to swallow the involuntary moan that nearly slipped out. You brought your hands to his wrists and held onto him, initially to feel him but you ended up using him to hold yourself steady. “I love you.” You murmured, eyes closed. You couldn’t see his reaction. You squeezed his wrists as you spoke and hoped he understood your silent apology. You were going to ruin your friendship and you were so sorry. “I always come when you call for me because I love you. I love you so much it hurts my head.” Like a faucet, the words slipped through your mouth and dug you deeper and deeper into a hole you never wanted to be in. You closed your eyes tighter than before and tried to keep the oncoming tears at bay. “I love you in the morning when we’ve been at Bart’s all night looking into microscopes and even when my eyes are sore and I’m exhausted, I see you and I know I love you. I love you when I’m scared because you’re chasing some criminal down the streets of London and you have no idea if they have a GUN and I love you even more when come back to me and tell me that ‘I’m stupid for worrying’ because you always outsmart them. I love you when you let me make you tea, or you ask me to cook for you, because I love taking care of you-“ Before you really made him uncomfortable, you forced yourself to stop. Taking in a deep breath and moving your head up to look at him once more, you searched his face for some sort of response. You bared your heart out and you only hoped that he’d still allow you to be friends even after knowing how you truly felt about him. Moments had passed and you still stood there, with his hands still on your cheeks and his eyes roaming your face for something that he still hadn’t found. You needed him to say something. To let you apologize, to tell you that it could be forgotten, that you didn’t ruin everything. “Sherlock?” You whispered, hoping to bring him back to you. “Please say something. Anything.” Your heart was racing and the tears had stopped but you knew it wouldn’t take much for them to start again. You didn’t mean to ruin this. Sherlock blinked and it almost looked like he had returned to his body after being somewhere far away. His hands never left you as he moved them from your cheeks to lock them in your hair. He lips ghosted your cheek as the moved towards your ear and just as he opened his mouth to finally respond- BZZZZZZT. BZZZZZT. BZZZZZT. You pulled back from him in confusion, trying to make sense of what just happened. He was staring at you so intensely you thought he was looking straight into your soul. “What did you just say?” He opened his mouth again and started to speak but all that came out was-

BZZZZZZT. BZZZZZZZT. BZZZZZT.

Your eyes shot open and you pushed yourself up as you looked around your dark apartment trying to make sense of what just happened. There was no glow, you weren’t on Baker street, you weren’t with Sherlock, and you hadn’t ruined everything. Your breathing was labored and you had felt so much emotional whiplash from that dream that you thought about checking to see if this one was a dream, too. You looked to your nightstand where your phone had been vibrating non-stop and went to reach for it.

“You weren’t answering my texts.” Before you could even say hello, Sherlock’s voice rang without missing a beat. You pulled your phone back to check the time. “Sherlock, it’s 3:18 in the morning. I was sleeping.” Your voice was still ladened with sleep and you weren’t even sure that you trusted yourself to speak with the real detective since it didn’t go so well with the dream one.

“Nevermind that. I need you to meet me at Bart’s. There’s been a murder and Molly can get us a look at the body before she does her paperwork if we get there now.” Sherlock sounded like he had been wide awake, and you could faintly hear him shrugging on his jacket in the background.

You thought about your dream and how you had been so afraid that you had lost everything by confessing. You were ready to beg for it to be forgotten and thrown under the bridge so that you would never have to go a day missing these calls. In Sherlock’s own way, he was telling you how much he needed you. The more you thought about it, he could have easily called John who was a floor above him or even Lestrade, who could have cut a lot of corners in getting him the information and access he needed for the case. But he called you. You glanced at the clock. You had work at 8:00, but if you and Sherlock got there by 4:30 you would more than likely be out by 7:00 and you could grab coffee with Sherlock as he walked you to your shift.

“Well?” He insisted. You could tell he was growing impatient, but you swore he had sounded hopeful and whether that was the sleep deprivation talking or the love sickness, you had decided right then. Who were you to keep the brilliant Sherlock Holmes waiting?

“I’m on my way.” Click.

#bbc sherlock fanfiction #bbc sherlock imagine #bbc sherlock x reader #sherlock x reader #sherlock holmes x reader #sherlock x you #sherlock imagine #sherlock holmes imagine #sherlock holmes fanfiction #reader insert #sherlock holmes #benedict cumberbatch #john watson #bbc sherlock #sherlock #fanfic #writing #luxwrites

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trashyswitch · 4 years ago

Text

Day 30: The Ego Costume Party

The Egos are all dressed in costume! And are getting drunk and playing Mario Kart!

Jackie got out of his room with his mask on, and looked around the room. Everyone was dressed in costume. From Chase in an Iron Man costume, and Henrik in a Sherlock Holmes costume, to even Shawn in a Charlie Chaplin costume!

“Love the costumes, everyone!” Jackie reacted.

“No way! Spiderman?!” Chase reacted.

“Yup! In the flesh.” Jackie joked.

Chase looked at himself and smiled. “Guess who’s gonna be your Dad this Halloween?” Chase teased.

Jackie widened his eyes. “Oh my god I didn’t think of that!”

“Gimme a big hug there, buddy!” Chase declared, pulling him into a big hug.

Jamie came out with his costume on: A James Bond costume with a gun and hair flipped back, and everything! And to top it off: The James bond theme playing on Chase’s phone!

“YEEEAAAAH! Lookin’ good, James Bond! Ma Man!” Chase declared.

Jamie immediately cowered away and looked away with embarrassment. He wasn’t used to being called out like this.

“Now now, it’s alright. Come on, Jamie. It’s gonna be okay.” Chase told him.

Jamie bit his lip and looked at him. ‘But...I don’t talk.’ Jamie muttered.

“I know. But James Bond is about the action...not about the words.” Chase told him. “Plus, you rock the costume better than I could ever do.” Chase told him.

Jamie smiled a little and started to gain some courage again.

Jamie looked around and suddenly gasped and covered his mouth with a huge grin on his face. There, standing in the corner, was Shawn Flynn dressed as THEE CHARLIE CHAPLIN! Jamie sprinted to Shawn and started clapping his hands excitedly. ‘Charlie Chaplin!’ He placed his index finger and middle finger on his upper lip, and slid it down fancily down to the bottom right of himself.

“Ihihis...that Charlie Chaplin in sign language?” Shawn asked.

Jamie nodded and pointed to himself. ‘I LOVE your costume!’ Jamie signed. He placed his hands on his cheeks like Kevin did in Home alone, with a huge smile on his face. He looked like he could scream out of pure excitement!

“Wehehell, I got Jamie’s approval!” Shawn told him.

“I love it too! It’s so accurate!” Chase reacted.

“Outdated guy, but fun costume!” Jackie told him.

Marvin smiled as he presented his costume: A rendition of David Copperfield.

Jackie clapped his hands and hugged Marvin. “I love it!” Jackie told him.

“I do too! It suits you greatly!” Henrik told him.

“Thank you!” Marvin replied.

Lastly, there was Henrik in his Sherlock Holmes costume.

“A German Sherlock Holmes! Never thought I’d see the day.” Chase reacted.

“Very vitzig, Chase.” Henrik joked.

“Why thank you!” Chase replied.

Jamie started doing the Sherlock Holmes signature hand gesture. ‘I suspect...murder.’ Jamie signed.

“Fantastic!” Henrik ran to Jamie and started shaking him. “VHERE IS ZHE MURDER?!”

Chase, Marvin and Jackie all bursted out laughing. Shawn giggled and shook his head at the boy's shenanigans.

“Alright! Who wants drinks?”

[20 minutes later]

Jackie, Marvin, Shawn and Chase were playing video games while quite drunk.

“Damn you Peach! Get out of the way! Bowzer coming through!” Chase shouted.

“Hey! Fick dich!” Henrik shouted back.

“Fuck you back!” Chase fought.

“fick dich zurück- YEEEEEEHEHEEEESSSS!” Henrik shouted, cheering and throwing his arms up in the air. “BEAT ZHAT, BRODY!” Henrik yelled.

“Aw, come on!” Chase fought. “That was SO unfair!” Chase whined.

“Dein Arsch is unfair!” Henrik declared, speaking in both german and english.

“My ass is unfair now?” Chase reacted. “Alright. Talk to the hands!”

Chase leaned his hands closer to Henrik and started tickling his belly. “A tickletickletickletickletickle!”

Henrik screeched and bursted out laughing. “SCHEHEHEHEHEIßEHE!” Henrik laughed.

“Shit is right, my main man!” Chase reacted.

“STAHAHAHAP ZHAHAHAHAT!” Henrik ordered.

“Sorry Sherlock, but you need to be distracted for a while! And what a better way than tickling!” Chase declared.

“THIHIHIHIS IHIHIS STUHUHUHUPIHIHIHID!”

“Stupid?! THIS IS! SPARTAAAA!” Chase shouted before bursting out laughing on his own.

Henrik pushed Chase off him and started tickling him back. “Revenge is mine, Dear Vatson!”

“NOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAH!” Chase laughed. “HAHAHAHANDS OHOHOHOHOFF!”

“No vay!” Henrik replied.

“YEHEHEHES WAHAHAHAY!” Chase shouted back.

“Again, no vay.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! EHEHEHEHEVIHIHIHIL!” Chase shouted.

“Now now Lestrade…” Henrik mimicked. He changed his voice to a british voice. “This is no time for dilly dallying.”

Chase widened his eyes. Hold up! Did Henrik just speak in a BRITISH ACCENT?!

“Whoa!” Marvin reacted. “I got all the powers!”

“There should be a freezing power for Mario Kart.” Jackie told him.

“Yeah, I agree!” Marvin added.

“GUHUHUHUYS! HEHEHEHELP MEHEHEHEHE!” Chase shouted.

“Having fun there, Chase?” Jackie asked.

Jamie walked up to Chase’s feet and casually sat onto them.

Uh oh!

“NO! NOHOHO JAHAHAMIHIHIHIE NOHOHOHO!” Chase begged.

“Jamie! Get zhe toes!” Henrik encouraged.

Jamie nodded and started going for the toes the moment the socks were off.

“YYAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Chase SCREEEECHED super loudly and completely lost it.

“Wow!” Henrik reacted. “Vhat a ticklish man zhis is!” Henrik reacted.

“NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Chase begged.

“Yes!” Henrik declared.

“NO!” Chase shouted.

‘Yes!’ Jamie signed in his face.

“NO!” Someone yelled. “Dammit!”

“WOOO HOOOO!” Marvin yelled out. “GET GOT, BOOOOIII!” Marvin shouted.

“Shut up!” Jackie fought. “I can fight you with my ULTIMATE SEXY MUSCLES!”

“Oh really now, Spidey sensey?” Marvin teased.

“You bet!” Jackie smiled.

Suddenly, a pair of hands tickled up his ribs.

“EEEEEEHEHEHEHEH!” Jackie shrieked, losing himself in his laughter.

The person that had tickled him...was Shawn. “Sexy, ticklish ribs!” Shawn teased.

“Ohoho, you wanna play it THAT way, now huh?” Jackie asked.

Shawn widened his eyes and quickly gulped as he realized how screwed he was.

“Nohow wahahait...Lehehet’s tahahahalk ahabout thihihis!” Shawn begged, putting his arms up.

“Oh, I’ll help you alright.” Jackie pulled Shawn’s feet closer to him and started tickling them. “Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle!” Jackie teased.

“EEEHehehehehehehe! Hahahahahahahahaha!” Shawn laughed.

“Kitchy kitchy koo! Look at dese tickwish toesies!” Jackie teased.

“Nahahahahat thehehe tohohohohoes!” Shawn begged.

“BUt YES the toes! The toesie-woesies are the best part!” Jackie teased.

“Ahahahahare nahahahat!” Shawn laughed.

“Are tooo!” Jackie replied.

Meanwhile, Chase was still being tickled beyond his years by Henrik and Jamie all at once.

Jamie was writing the word ‘tickle’ on his foot as he tickled, while Henrik was teasing him nonestop.

“Awwww! Poor Chase! Stuck in a ticklish situvation! Vhatever vill he do?!” Henrik teased.

“IHIHIHIHI’LL GEHEHEHEHEHEHEHET YOHOHOHOHOHOHOU!” Chase fought.

“Oooooh! You’ll get us?! And vhen vill zhat be?” Henrik asked.

“NOHOHOW!” Chase reached up and tried tickling his armpits. But his armpits were just not ticklish.

“Hahaha...Good try, mein Freund.” Henrik said with a smile.

“........Uh oh…” Chase mumbled.

And that was the moment Chase truly knew, he was screwed. Henrik and Jamie continued to tickle him till he went completely red and exhausted from all the tickles. And Chase did get revenge...Just eventually.

#ler!jamie #switch!chase #switch!henrik #switch!jackie #switch!shawn #fluff #funny

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mirrorfalls · 4 years ago

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Hi Mirror,

I thoroughly enjoyed your post about what makes Ran so wonderful, especially in regards to the flexibility of her character and the roles she can fulfill (even if canon isn't always good at doing her justice). I'm going to try my best to add to the quality Ran content in the fandom for your gift - hopefully you like the end result!

What encouraged you to get into Detective Conan in the first place? Are you a mystery/ detective fiction fan?

~Santa

Ah, therein lies a long but not particularly interesting story...

As a grade-schooler I read the usual pack of paperback mysteries - Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jensen, Jigsaw Jones - and I loved Arthur's occasional mystery-centric episodes (in fact, I think it might've been where I first heard of Sherlock Holmes), but by the time I got into Conan I'd pretty much outgrown all of that.

So what did lead me there? TV listings. Specifically, listings for that magic land known as [adult swim], forever beyond the reaches of my bedtime. Even on the rare nights my parents forgot about that, there was no goddamn way my tiny metabolism could stay up 'til two in the morning. So all I had to go on was the bare-bones summary from [as]' homepage, which confused the hell out of me (did I mention there wasn't even one screenshot, so I hadn't clue number one what this "Case Closed" even looked like?). A teenage detective is poisoned into... a kid? In what universe was this the stuff of Serious Adult Drama?

Fast-forward to... seventh grade or thereabouts, when I discovered the magic of YouTube and also scanlations. Poured myself around ten episodes of the Funimation dub, then hopped over to sub, and from there it was only a short jump to the manga (if you're of my generation, you may remember those Bad Ol' Days when most of the scans after Ch. 70 or so were cobbled from Vietnamese efforts that made your average Hong Kong bootleg look respectable). My brain was still soft and malleable enough to take damn near any new series at face-value, and those early cases had more than enough whiz-bang action to keep me hooked (the debut of the super-sneakers in Vol. 2 remains a quiet favorite). I don't think I ever tried to play along with the case-cracking - never had much of a head for that, and still don't. I was there to see all the personalities bounce off each other; all the piano-wire magic just bored me.

Even more... I-don't-want-to-say-ironically-but-I-don't-know-what-else-to-call-it... Conan was my gateway into Classic Mystery Fiction. I read the entire Holmes canon in Undergrad so I could understand how to write from Shinichi's POV better, chased it down with the likes of Hammett and Chandler, and up through today I've got a small side-hobby of collecting obscure Japanese mysteries purely on the manga's recommendations. One day - one day I might even become a Legit Connoisseur.

'til then - that fic ain't gonna write itself.

#Detective Conan #(Mind you I've always had my finger in a smidgeon of mystery stuff independent of Conan)#(Was a pretty big fan of The Spellman Files throughout middle school - even though it probably hasn't aged well #And I was in any case way the fuck too young to read it)

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weeinterpreter · 4 years ago

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Wee’s Wannabe Investigation

Or: How I Did All The Mistakes, So You Don’t Have To

Almost ten years ago, I spent half a year in Tralee in the South of Ireland during my exchange semester from university. You know who also lived in Ireland, only 3 hours away from Tralee? My favourite Irish author, Eoin Colfer.

So, I thought, “I bet I could meet him in his hometown. How hard can it be?”

Well, let me tell you...

I took a bus to Wexford with a foolproof plan. Or so I thought. Once I reached, I checked the local phone book and called the first Colfer on the list. The man on the other end wasn’t too pleased (understandably so!) when I told him that I wanted to meet Colfer. He told me to call his agency.

Disappointed, I spent the day in Wexford and joined a literary evening, during which a lot of talented hobby writers read out their texts. Obviously, everybody knew each other and I, the stranger, attracted everybody's attention.

The locals started to ask me what I was doing in their little town and I told them that I was looking for my favourite author, a certain Eoin Colfer. One gentleman quipped up: “Oh yeah, Eoin. We went to school together. He sometimes comes to town. Actually, I have his number somewhere, I’ll call him tomorrow. Why don’t you come over to my shop in the morning and I’ll let you know?”

Long story short, Colfer was about to leave soon for a book tour but he promised to send over his wife with a signed book for me. Was I happy? Yes. Did I stop there? No. I went to the book stores in town and asked if anybody knew where he lived.

Why did I think this was a good idea? There really is no excuse for it, but in my head, I didn’t see myself as a creepy stalker fan. I was 21 and thought I was some sort of Sherlock Holmes, who would go on a great adventure to meet her favourite author. And wouldn’t it be so cool if this actually worked...?!

Older me: It is not.

Following the lead of a shop keeper I ended up on the highway several hours later, no Colfer in sight. I had to walk the whole way back, was chased by a dog when I tried to find a shortcut through a field path and ripped my jacket on some raspberry vines, while I was running through Wexford’s wilderness...

Have I mentioned that I have a terrible sense of direction? I got totally lost. Hours later, I passed a small cottage that I hadn’t seen on my way to the highway. An elderly lady came out, most surprised to see someone. (”Not even the postman can find this house!”)

To this day, I am not 100% sure if I didn’t step into the fairy world, but considering that I drank tea and ate cookies with the lady and was able to leave, I (mostly) doubt it. Kids, do NOT do that. I should be an example of what not to do when you come across a gingerbread house with an elderly lady living inside. It’s a wonder, I am still alive... Either way, I told her my story and spent the afternoon with her and her cats. Then, she told me how to get out of her realm... I mean how to get back to town and in the early evening, I finally reached.

I looked like I had been hit by a bus. But at least I would get the signed book, I thought, and went to the shop, only for the owner to tell me that Eoin (he, himself! The man! The author!) had actually dropped by to leave the book... I almost cried.

I did get a signed copy of “The Half Moon Investigations” and took the bus to Dublin, half-satisfied. The End? Not quite. I reached Dublin late at night and thought I could find my hostel on foot. Back then I was a poor student and tried to save as much money as possible. The walk would have probably taken a normal person half an hour. I was out and about for almost two hours.

On the way, I was surprised by a rainstorm of such dimensions... Noah would have been scared! I reached the hostel, drenched and ready for bed. I poured the contents of my bags on to the floor, only to discover that my precious signed book had also been hit by the rain.

I spent the night placing toilet paper between the pages in lack of anything else and ran into town to find someone to help me save the book the next morning. Of course, water damage is hard to fix and it took only five book shops to tell me the exact same thing.

In the end, I went back to Tralee and spent about a day, ironing the pages, crying and vowing to come back the next year to continue my search.

You (and probably the entire Colfer family) will be glad to hear that as of now, I haven’t managed to go back to Ireland. And if I do, it won’t be to stalk innocent authors...

Seriously though, don’t repeat my foolish actions, guys. It’s not cool. Go to a book signing event and tell him how much you adore him. That’s much more polite than trying to show up at his doorstep.

Also, don’t accept cookies from strangers. No, not even if they let you pat their cats!

#eoin colfer #ireland #wexford #wannabe detective #travels #favourite author #adventures #i am not a good rolemodel #do not repeat #in my head it was much less creepy #x

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strangelyineffable · 6 years ago

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Crowley will hang out in snake form at Aziraphale’s bookshop and whisper from places where nobody can see him “the earth is a cube.”

LOL. He WOULD. He would pick up on whatever would drive that particular person round the twist and he would whisper it so softly. Just to plant that seed of annoyance.

The earth is a cube

The Oxford comma is useless

Knitting and crochet are the same

Climate change isn’t real

Sherlock Holmes was gay (this one is true but you should see the old men steam)

Modern art is bullshit

Michaelangelo was a hack

And sometimes it has nothing to do with the reason they are there researching. Sometimes he just enjoys how easy it is to use every day problems to annoy a truly evil soul.

Did you leave the iron on?

Can you believe how he looked at you?

How long do you have on the meter?

They’re never going to call back.

And Aziraphale knows. Of course he knows. But he just smiles and lets his wily old serpent amuse himself and chase away those annoying customers.

#that got away from me #haha #thanks anon!#i enjoyed that!#reply #good omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale/crowley #tumblr ficlets #my headcanons

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dragonnan · 5 years ago

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Fic Rec Sunday

I think every day of the week should be a day to rec fics but I’m gonna start with Sunday!

Here are some stories I find myself reading over and over again!

MCU

Identity Theft by KitCat992 It's been months since the events of Civil War, and the Avengers are doing their best to remain a team, having promised to forgive and forget. Unfortunately for them, Tony Stark's latest invention has been stolen and recovering it causes tension to reappear. Meanwhile, in Queens, Peter Parker has two main priorities on his plate — complete his midterm finals, and track down a fishbowl wearing criminal that may or may not lead him right into the hands of the Avengers. Somehow between all of this, Spider-man's identity is revealed to the Avengers, Steve and Tony's friendship may permanently be damaged due to continued hidden secrets, and Happy struggles to buy a youth-sized casket for Peter's funeral. Things were a lot easier when they were fighting over Bucky Barnes. (Be sure to check out the in-progress sequel, Identity Crisis!)

Dawn of Red Skies by Aelaer The day started off as any other day for newly-minted Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange. Then the flip switched and the next 48 hours were filled only with grief, anger, and pain.

Omertà by HanukoYoukai After chasing down the criminal that took Uncle Ben's life, Peter is found by James Wesley, the right-hand man of Wilson Fisk--a wealthy businessman trying to clean up Hell's Kitchen. Having left a strong impression on the man, soon Peter finds himself working for Fisk, doing an internship for his business projects by day, and catching bad guys at night. If Mr. Fisk wants a few specific criminals delivered to him personally, who is Peter to object? All his boss wants to do is talk, after all, and ever since this internship began, things were finally looking up for the Parkers. Then Peter hears the whispers in the underworld about the elusive and terrifying Kingpin, and somehow there are rumors that Spider-Man is on the Crime Lord's payroll. When he decides to use his own judgement and go against Mr. Fisk's wishes, Peter suddenly finds himself neck deep in mob activity with no means to get himself out. To make matters worse, now Iron Man has Peter in his sights.....

A Twisted Upheaval by silentsaebyeok (WIP) “I’m afraid, Harrison, you’ve awakened a sleeping giant.” Wilson said. “Tony Stark will do anything and everything to protect those he loves. And with your carelessness, it is inevitable that my criminal empire will be brought to its knees. This is your last opportunity, your last chance to get this right. He is on our radar now.” -- The Kingpin runs the criminal underworld. He is the mastermind and the puppeteer. Tony Stark has been trying to find the elusive gangster for years, but with no luck. But then Peter Parker is kidnapped by an agent of the Kingpin’s, revealing the cracks in an otherwise unshakeable organization. Unlikely alliances form and friendships are made as the criminal underworld begins to unravel.

Comrades by Nefhiriel Five times Thor defended his friends from people who should've been on their side, and one time his friends defended him.

9/11 by spockside Pepper Potts had only been working for Tony Stark six months when she found herself running away from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Sherlock

The Least of All Possible Mistakes by rageprufrock (AU where the character of Greg is a woman named Lestrade. Utterly freaking brilliant!) If ever a people deserved tasering, it’s Holmeses. (Be sure to check out the sequel!)

A City on the Head of a Pin by Mad_Maudlin (Magical AU) Post-TGG fic. John, for once, sees something Sherlock doesn't.

Vendetta by avidbeader Sherlock must find out why Molly Hooper is one of a select group of people being targeted before the assassin can finish the job.

Define Vulnerabilty by TheGracefulBlueCat Shortly after Sherlock's return John realises something is very wrong with his friend. He, Greg and Mycroft try to help Sherlock as he falls deeper and deeper into the abyss called PTSD. But Sherlock is not ready to allow anyone in, but then the events of the current case cause him to hit bottom hard.

A Sharp, Dressed Man 'verse by sgam76 A grand series of stories set in an AU version of Sherlock wherein the characters aren’t all, exactly... “human”.

The Precipice by takethesky87 “Sherlock,” he says, but his voice is smothered by the waves. “Sherlock!” He shouts it this time, straining his ears for a reply. Nothing. Twice more he calls, his stomach clenching as each goes unanswered.

Lost for Words by awanderingbard Sherlock is assaulted by an unknown assailant while John is away at a medical conference, leaving him with a severe brain injury. While his intellect and personality are intact, he's lost the use of his right-side limbs and his ability to speak freely. John suddenly finds himself as the main source of support, and possibly a caregiver, to a flatmate who is struggling to do the things he loves most. And Sherlock Holmes has never been the best of patients.

The Holiday by Scriblit (Warnings for rape) A month following an horrific, sadistic attack during a case, Sherlock is still physically incapacitated and emotionally damaged. A holiday is suggested, but even stuck out in the middle of nowhere, he and John happen upon a case that could make Sherlock begin to feel like his old self again - or could kill him.

#Mcu fic recs #Sherlock fic recs

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atamascolily · 5 years ago

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lily liveblogs BBC Atlantis 1x02, “A Girl By Any Other Name” (first half)

I actually watched this months ago, but I got interrupted about halfway through, and then there was a global pandemic and I lost my groove. This got super-long, so I’m gonna post it in two parts.

Thanks to @girlwhowasntthere for her help in making sure I could see it, and also for pointing out that Ariadne draws a stone in the first episode (which I totally missed!) so she's not just resting on her privilege there. Good for her!

In the pilot, we were introduced to Atlantis through the eyes of Jason, a dude from our world who has surprising connections to this city of dragons and despots that nobody *cough ORACLE cough* wants to tell him about. But he's managed to pick up two new friends - gruff-but-not-so-secretly soft Hercules, and Pythagoras (yes, that one) - as well as a love interest, an ominous enemy, and Not Die several times in exciting and dramatic ways.

Based on the teaser, it looks like the show is about to introduce another female character, which I am super-excited about, even though the name "Medusa" brings up All Kinds of Questions.

(cut for length and for lots and lots of botanical confusion)

Forest at night. Woman running through the woods while something ominous chases her. Are there forests in Atlantis? I don't remember seeing any in the surrounding wide shots when Jason first showed up from the beach. Where the hell is this supposed to be?

(Side note because I am a Certified Plant Nerd: Where was this FILMED? I'm gonna guess England because BBC and also the leaves look SUPER TEMPERATE, there are definitely maples in there.)

Woman collapses and the camera focuses on her bracelet, which I am sure will be significant later on. We don't hear anything, she starts to get up and I brace myself for a jump scare.

She's got a necklace, too, and I wonder if that's a Plot MacGuffin or if she just has good taste in jewelry.

Ok, so we see her pursuer sneaking up on her, and she turns, and we see it for the first time from her POV and... it's a cave troll! Or something very much like it. She screams, we go to credits.

None of the credits are backwards this time, and I'm so relieved because THAT WAS ANNOYING.

I like the juxtaposition of the ocean and the ruins, then the view of the city, because this show is called ATLANTIS, which implies it's really about the city as a whole (or the city as a character) rather than Jason, even though Jason is the protagonist and audience surrogate.

There are some mountains in the background that look like they COULD have forests, and I will reserve judgement until I see the sets in the daylight, but those mountains look like they ought to be chapparral or the local equivalent, NOT the kind of forest shown in the opening. I'm just saying. I have strong opinions about flora and I will share them.

I am so curious where Atlantis is supposed to be, but I think it's Crete? I'm going with Crete for now until I get more information.

Jason is tossing rocks into a pool because... he's just that bored? Missing the Internet? He's wearing a leather tunic thing and not shirtless, but I'm sure he'll lose it by the end of the episode.

He hears something and gets up and sneaks up on the person coming in the doorway, but I already know it's either Hercules or Pythagoras, and most likely Herc, so I am not surprised when it's Herc. Herc is late AND drunk and Jason is pissed. Apparently, he and Herc are working as security guards for a rich merchant?? (So that answers my question about how they're making money and paying the rent!!)

Jason runs to the Oracle's temple because he's in dire need of Cryptic Exposition and also a Greater Purpose in Life and where better to acquire a Noble Destiny?

"You should not be here," says the Oracle, which is just a classy way of saying GTFO.

"I need answers," Jason demands.

LOL, not happening, dude. She only deals in Cryptic Sayings, not answers. (Although kinda ironic given that the Delphic Oracle’s motto was “Know Thyself”.)

Jason mentions that the minotaur dude claimed he had a great destiny and you can just see the Oracle rolling her eyes, and be all, And you believed him?? LOL.

But Jason DOES have a destiny, even though it doesn't feel like it so the Oracle has to explain that this, too, is also a part of his destiny, and he should just lean into the suck.

Jason calls bullshit. Oracle explains she's trying to protect him, and "all will become clear", mic drop. Jason walks away bummed, but it's DESTINY for him to be confused right now, and I am sure he will have some sort of Character Development about this by the end of the episode.

Herc fell asleep on the job and wakes up to being licked by a goat, which is probably not the most undignified thing that will happen to him in this episode. Also, somebody stole his keys and robbed the thing he was supposed to be guarding, so I'm sure this will end well.

Cut to Herc trying to explain this to Pythagoras, and Pythagoras is calling bullshit. Pythagoras notes the goat slobber and does the best eyeroll to Jason, I love him.

(Hercules is like the roommate from HELL here. How did he and Pythagoras end up rooming together in the first place?)

There's a knock on the door, but it's not the angry merchant, it's the CALL TO ADVENTURE... an old man who's heard that they killed the Minotaur and wants help locating his daughter. I'm picturing an Atlantis version of Sherlock Holmes starring Pythagoras and Jason and it's awesome.

Herc does not want to touch this with a ten foot pole but Jason is bored and eager to help, and so Herc is going to get dragged into this whether he likes it or not. He tries to reject it on the grounds of money, but it doesn't work. The old man talks about his "duty as a father" to make sure his kid is safe, and that's all he needs to say to get Jason on board, because Daddy Issues.

Jason and a new female character, Corinna, are in the palace, trying to be stealthy and they run into Ariadne, which is... awkward. Jason tries to explain, and Ariadne says it's forbidden for Jason to be here... why? Because he's a man? Because he's a stranger? Because he's on Minos's personal shit list? I need some context here.

Jason quizzes Celandine, a kitchen worker, and learns that Demetria, the missing girl, went to the forest to gather herbs and was never seen again. I don't understand what Corinna's role in all this is , but she persuades Celandine to help Jason out by showing him the place where Demetria went.

Time for another marketplace chase! This time it's the merchant after Herc. Meanwhile, Celandine takes Jason to a forest that's super-arid and looks nothing like the one we saw in the opening. There's rock outcroppings in the background, too. No leaf litter at ALL. All dry ever greens... and then a wide shot showing a hill that looks like chapparral, with a series of mountains beyond THAT that look more temperate and have actual snow capped peaks and those are NOT IN THE CREDITS, NONE OF THIS GEOGRAPHY MAKES ACTUAL SENSE, BUT FINE.

Also, it makes zero sense that Minos would send kitchen servants to the forest WAY outside the city limits... wouldn't it be easier for everyone if they sent special people to do that and the kitchen just picked them up or bought them from poorer folk who did? Where are the roads? Are there any surrounding villages and encampments outside the walls? Shepherds watching their flocks? A road? How do the servants know where to go? What stops them from running away? Etc. Etc. I HAVE QUESTIONS, OKAY?

Cut to them in a different forest - still evergreen trees, but a different kind. Looks like a plantation. Everything is too neat and open and in rows. There's greenery, but no sign of any herbs or really any kind of understory. LOL.

Are we there yet? Jason wants to know.

These woods are rich with herbs, Celandine says, and I can't tell if she's being ironic or not because I DO NOT SEE ANY, THERE IS NOTHING BUT CONIFERS HERE, CONIFERS ARE NOT HERBS (though they can have medicinal uses!). Then she adds "If you know where to look" and pulls a knife to stab an unsuspecting Jason while he's looking at the ground, so I guess that answers that question.

(For the record, Celandine is a toxic plant that is actually native to n. Africa, and the Mediterranean and western Asia, so I kinda saw that coming from the name and also the ominous music and close-ups of her face.)

Jason wises up in time to Not Get Stabbed, and Celandine runs away. Jason chases after her, and I saw some FERNS this time in the chase scene, but again NO LEAVES or much in the way of forest diversity at all. Celandine drinks something that looks like poison and dies while Jason is interrogating her. The troll-creature lurks in the woods.

Pythagoras IDs the poison as hemlock. (LOL, of course he would know!) The only reason he doesn't mention that it killed Socrates is probably because Socrates hasn't been born yet, but I am sure the writers were tempted. Jason fell asleep in World History, and also every Literature class ever, because he has no idea what a thyrsus is, or who Dionysus and the maenads are, so Pythagoras and Herc get to explain for the audience! Apparently, the satyrs kill any men who crash their clubhouse, so that's what the troll thing is, I guess?

So apparently the maenads just kidnap girls to join their cult? This is not how I remember it, but okay, fine, let's have the all-female religion be EVIL for DRAMA. Does this mean the trio's going to cross-dress?

Demetria (?) is trying to dig her way out of cell, only to get called to a Secret Evil Ceremony that involves blood, chanting, and tearing apart a dude with their bare hands. Oh, wait, no, they just toss him to the cave trolls (LITERALLY LURKING IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND), which is easier to show on network TV, I guess.

Jason breaks the news to Demetria's father, and he's... aghast. "I won't allow it!" he cries. The show has not explained why it's a bad thing to be a maenad... aside from the whole killing people bit, but I mean, the king kills people all the time in the name of the gods, what makes this any different? (I mean, Minos's evil, but still! He's in charge!) Why can't Demetria be a maenad and still work in the palace and visit her dad? Isn't that what Celandine did?? I AM SO CONFUSED.

Also: father trying to control his daughter's actions is historically accurate, but sits poorly with me, even though she WAS kidnapped in this case and doesn't want to be there. But what if she wasn't? So far the show hasn't explained to me why EVERY WOMAN wouldn't want to be a maenad. Hanging out in the woods without any men and a lot of intoxicants sounds... way better than almost anything else they could be doing.

The old man collapses in grief and Pythagoras is also a healer, because he makes an infusion of what sounds like "Magnolia remenalis" (??). Which is odd because that genus is located in the Americas and eastern Asia, and even assuming trade routes from China are a Thing here, that wouldn't likely be a part of the typical pharmacopeia, especially if Pythagoras has no money...? And I know there are a bajillion species of magnolia, but I've never heard of this... and would he call it by a Latin binomial anyway? But if it's not that, what is he TALKING about? THIS IS WHY I HATE WATCHING THINGS WITHOUT SUBTITLES.

The old man guilts Jason into going after Demetria, of course, thanks to Daddy Issues. Herc is pissed, especially when he realizes they put the old man in his bed. I love Pythagoras's little smile when he explains that Herc is in charge of their guest, since he's not going on the Mission of Certain Doom!

Herc is so predictable, lol. He brings up the prospect of faking his own death to get out of his debts, and I CANNOT HELP BUT WONDER if this is going to be relevant later on. Like... faking your death so the maenads don't find you, perhaps? And changing your name??

(dear writers, if you don't want me to guess your plot twist, please don't PUT THE WHAM LINE IN THE TEASER, kthanx.)

OH MY GOD THIS IS THE SAME FOREST WHERE THEY FILMED THE FIGHT SCENE IN THE FORCE AWAKENS ISN'T IT? I *RECOGNIZE* THIS PLACE!!

(yup, definitely England. Puzzlewood, almost for certain.)

Of course, the most appropriate way to spend the night is to make a fire, eat soup, and tell ghost stories about maenads first, right? Right. The forests rustle. There's a cave troll stalking them. (Yes, it's supposed to be a satyr, but it looks like a cave troll from LOTR, okay??) He tosses something in the food, which probably means it will only impact Hercules, lol. Hallucinations, maybe??

Why anyone would trust Herc with night watch given his track record, ESPECIALLY these two, I don't know, but PLOT.

Yep, definitely the old mine in Puzzlewood. I'd bet money on it.

Herc follows a woman who looks like an elf from LOTR, lol... but it's a satyr in drag. (Or a hallucination?) IDK why everyone is making a big deal about the maenads when they mostly just stand around and let the male satyrs handle everything.

RUN, HERC, RUN! He's rescued by... Demetria, who also wants to get away. Somehow the satyrs don't see them? *shrug*

Demetria uses Herc's knife and cuts herself and walks out with a bloody mouth, claiming the satyrs killed Herc and she drank his blood... I mean, won't the satyrs call her on it?? But the ruse works and she leaves with them.

Meanwhile, Jason and Pythagoras slept through the entire night without incident, and I just... the satyrs KNOW THERE ARE THREE OF THEM. How come they didn't just slaughter them in their sleep, or at least attack them??

Also, if the satyrs only eat human flesh, how does the ecosystem even WORK? How many of them are there?? How often do they eat? Are they omnivores or obligate carnivores? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

#bbc atlantis #lily liveblogs

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angelsandacceptance · 4 years ago

Text

Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester

Harley and Chase sit at the table, a pile of books between them. They’re listening to Dean argue with Sam about Castiel as they research angels.

“What else could it be, Dean?” Sam asks.

“Look, all I know is that I was not groped by an angel.”

“Okay, look, Dean. Why would Castiel lie to you about it?”

“Maybe he’s a demon,” Dean says. “Demons lie.”

Chase rolls her eyes. Even Bobby looks up from his book.

“Yeah, a demon who’s immune to salt rounds, devil’s traps. And let’s not forget Ruby’s knife,” Harley says sarcastically.

“Not helping,” Dean says gruffly.

“Harley’s right,” Chase says. “Even Lilith is scared of that knife.”

“Don’t you think that if angels were real, that some hunter somewhere would have seen one? At some point? Ever?” Dean counters.

“Yeah, Dean. A hunter has. The three of us just did,” Chase says.

“Maybe they were laying low in heaven? It’s crazy I know, but so is everything else in our lives,” Harley adds.

“I’m just trying to think of a theory,” Dean says, trying to defend himself.

“We have a theory,” Sam says.

“Yeah, well, one with a little less fairy dust on it, please.”

“Okay, look, I’m not saying we know for certain. I’m just saying that I think we-”

“Okay, okay, but that’s the point. We don’t know for sure, so I’m not gonna believe that it’s a freaking Angel of the Lord just because it says so!”

“You four chuckleheads want to keep arguing religion, or do you want to come take a look at this?” Bobby asks, pointing at a lore book.

They all look at Bobby.

“I’ve got stacks of lore - some biblical, some pre-biblical. Damn, some of it is in cuneiform. It all says that angels can snatch a soul from the pit.”

“All the books I’ve read say that too,” Chase adds, setting her current book down.

“What else?” Dean asks.

“What else, what?” Bobby replies.

“What else could do it?”

“Airlift your ass out of the hot box? As far as I can tell, nothing.”

“Dean, this is good news.” Sam says.

“How?”

“Because for once, this isn't just another round of demon crap. I mean, maybe you were saved by one of the good guys, you know?”

“Okay. Say it's true. Say there are angels. Then what? There's a God?”

“At this point, Vegas money's on yeah.” Bobby says.

“I don't know, guys,” Dean says, reluctant to admit any of it true.

“Okay, look. I know you're not all choirboy about this stuff, but this is becoming less and less about faith and more and more about proof.” Sam says, trying to convince him.

“Proof?”

“Yes Dean, it’s this thing where you have evidence of something and it’s staring you right in the face.” Harley adds sarcastically.

“But why me? If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?”

“Because you're amazing and fantastic.”

“I mean, I've saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and the ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy.”

“Apparently, you're a regular guy that's important to the man upstairs,” Sam says.

“Well, that creeps me out. I mean, I don't like getting singled out at birthday parties, much less by... God.”

“Okay, well, too bad, Dean, because I think he wants you to strap on your party hat,” Sam jokes.

Chase laughs slightly at the joke, remembering the year Dean got birthday hats for Sam and her, as well as himself for her thirteenth birthday.

“Fine,” Dean concedes. “What do we know about angels?”

Bobby hands him a book. “Start reading.”

“You're gonna get me some pie,” Dean says, turning to Sam.

“Ooo! Me too!” Harley pipes up.

“You know I always am up for pie!” Chase adds.

Sam rolls his eyes, but can’t fight the smile on his face.

***

Sam pulls up to Bobby’s house. He forgot the pie. Bobby walks to the car window and tells Sam to keep the car running because Olivia Lowry hasn’t been answering her phone.

“Olivia Lowry.. a hunter, right?” Sam asks.

“Yeah. We're gonna go check on her. You guys follow me.” Bobby replies, before heading to his own car.

Harley and Dean walk over to the Impala. Dean to get in and Harley to retrieve her pie.

“Dude, where’s the pie?” Harley says after peering into the car.

“I forgot it. Sorry,”

“Dammit, Sammy.” Dean says, realizing that there’s no pie.

Harley walks away towards the Lincoln. “Sam forgot the pie,” she sighs, getting into the passenger side.

Chase scoffs, starting the Lincoln. “‘When do I ever forget the pie?’ he says. Well, now, apparently. Just as I was getting hungry too.”

“So that angel, bit weird. I mean who says ‘perdition’?” Harley says starting the flow of conversation to take them to the next state over.

“We meet an actual, legitimate, awesome looking angel, and you decide to focus on his vocabulary before anything else?” Chase asks. She laughs, trying to keep her eyes on the road. “You are so lucky I love you, because you have some weird ass priorities.”

“Aww, love you too. But seriously it was weird and I stand by that. No one uses ‘perdition’ anymore. If they ever did, and he wasn’t really that awesome looking. He just kinda looked normal. Bit tax accountant-ish.”

Chase turns a bright red. She constantly does this. “I didn’t mean like, you know, good looking. I just meant like awesome. Like, I dunno, cool I guess. You know, the wing thing was pretty wicked. Plus his eyes are really blue. Kinda eerie looking. Though you are kinda right about the accountant thing. The trenchcoat was a bit much,” Chase laughs.

“So how blue are his eyes exactly?” Harley teases.

“Well, you know, just. Blue? A very crystal-y blue.”

“Aquamarine?”

“Well, no. More sky-blue. Like powder blue but crystalized.”

“You think he’s cute. No one pays that much attention to someone’s eyes unless they fancy them.”

“That’s so not true! What color are Dean’s eyes?” Chase demands.

“Green, I think? Dunno?”

“Uh huh, you ‘think’,” Chase scoffs.

“I’d have to look at them again. I think Sam’s are green too though.”

“Okay,” Chase starts, sparing a glance at Harley. “Now I can’t tell if you’re just trying to make me believe that you don’t know my brother’s eye color, or if you genuinely don’t pay attention.”

“I just genuinely don’t pay attention because I don’t fancy either of them.”

“Well, just because I’m a little less oblivious than you, though not by much, doesn’t mean I fancy some guy who may or may not be trying to screw us over. If any of the Winchester’s are going to do that, it’s gonna be Sam.”

“Okay fair point, but you don’t have to trust someone to think they’re cute.”

“Fair,” Chase relents. “But I wouldn’t say cute. His eyes are just cool. But I also have a weird fascination with eyes, which you already know about so I don’t know why you’re teasing me. Is this just to get back at me for the Dean thing?”

“Maybe? Who knows?”

Chase rolls her eyes. “I think I know.”

“Excuse you? I am an enigma.”

Chase laughs, shrugging off her best friend’s odd ways. “That is one of the truest statements.”

“I mean I only ever speak the truth, except for when I lie of course. Then I’m lying.”

***

Bobby enters Olivia’s house first closely followed by the rest of the younger hunters.

“Olivia?” Bobby calls.

Dean motions for Chase and Harley to go one way, while they search another part of the house. Chase nods and follows Harley, who is sporting her usual gun, while covering her by sweeping her gun across the room, looking for any movement.

While looking for movement, however, Chase misses that Harley had stopped. She bumps into her.

“What is it?” Chase asks, following Harley’s gaze. A woman’s body lays on the ground, covered in blood, quite literally torn into. Grimacing, she turns back to the hall. “Guys! We found her!”

The three other hunters come into the room. Sam’s the first to point out the line of salt at the doorway. They all started looking around the room. Dean walked over to Olivia’s weapon store and picked up an out of place EMF meter, “Olivia was rocking the EMF meter.”

“So a brutal ghost.” Harley comments on the state of the body.

“Yeah. I never seen a ghost do this to a person.” Dean says.

Bobby had left unnoticed while the younger hunters were talking and had just come back in the room with a worried expression on his face.

“Bobby, you all right?” Dean asks.

“I called some hunters nearby,” Bobby hesitated towards the end.

“Great,” Chase says. “We’ll probably need help with this one.”

“Except they ain't answering their phones either.”

“Well that’s fantastic.” Harley says, her voice dripping in sarcasm.

“Something's up, huh?” Sam asks.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

***

They made a stop at an empty gas station. Harley went in to retrieve a couple of pies.

“You replaced me,” Harley turned around to see her dead best friend Adina. She was the reason Harley started hunting. A werewolf got her. She had to put a silver bullet she got on Amazon in it. “You let me die, and then you replaced me!”

“I could never replace you.”

“You already did.”

“Adina love. You were like a daughter to me. You still are.”

“You watched as that thing ripped me apart!”

“I couldn’t get to you in time. I tried. I really really tried,” A single tear ran down Harley’s cheek. “I killed it. It’s my fault it was even there. It was because of what I am. It could smell it on me. I’m so so sorry. I love you so much.”

“Now you get to know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out,” Adina stalked closer to Harley who was backing up towards the door. She tumbled out the door of the gas station and fell to the ground.

***

Chase sits in the Lincoln, her music quietly playing in the background as she scans a book about ghost activity. She fidgets with her iron pocket knife, a nervous tic she has.

“Miss me?” A male voice asks. Chase whirls to look at whoever the Hell managed to get into her car undetected. Her ex-best friend stares back at her, unconcerned about the knife pointed at him. “I knew you would. I told you the last time we talked. You were going to miss me.”

Chase stares in horror, eyes wide as she takes in his appearance. He looked the same as he did in college, right before the accident. His blonde hair sticks up wildly, and his smile is painted on his face the way it always was; like he knew something you didn’t.

As if snapping out of paralysis, her body responds of its own accord while her mind stays as blank as before. She quickly jabs the knife through his body, already exiting the car as his body is reappearing outside of it. She runs in the direction of the gas station, hoping to find Harley alright, before she skids to a stop, avoiding running into him.

“Nathaniel, please, stop,” Chase says, her voice shaking. His image starts to flicker, flashing from normal to when he’d died.

“Why should I?” He asks harshly, water dripping down his body in quick streams. His normally blue eyes are white, his skin holding a sickly blue-green tint. “You used me for information and then abandoned me to die, as soon as I wasn’t convenient.”

“Nathaniel, I tried to save you! I tried so hard! I did everything I could.” Chase backs up slowly, fearing the anger radiating off of his ghostly apparition. Pulling out a pistol from behind her, where she’d kept it tucked in her jeans upon discovering the high EMF levels, she takes a breath, looking at him.

She aims it at him, only for him to disappear when she shoots. Cursing, she keeps the pocket knife at eye level, the gun straight out in front of her as she sweeps the area.

“I never forgave you, you know.”

Chase freezes, feeling the cold chill from behind her.

“I know I said, as I was about to be dragged into the water, that I forgave you. That I believed you. That you actually loved me. But I didn’t. I died, blaming you.”

Tears start to burn in Chase’s eyes. “I did care about you. I did love you. I never used you,” she says rapidly, trying to justify herself. “I know it was my fault you died. If I’d discovered that stupid bitch earlier. If I’d done what I promised, you’d still be here.”

“But you didn’t! You didn’t find her fast enough because you just didn’t actually care!” Nathaniel shouts, his voice echoing in Chase’s ears.

Chase spins on her heel and fires, shooting Nathaniel in the chest. He disappears and doesn’t reappear.

Taking a few steady breaths, Chase rushes to the gas station just in time for Harley to fall through the door, the glass shattering around her.

Looking up and seeing a girl with brown and neon green hair standing above her.

“Adina, come on it’s me, Harley!” she shouts, crying. “I love you!”

Chase shoots and Adina disappears. Harley slowly got up wiping away her tears. “Thanks, Chase. I just couldn’t bring myself to hurt her. Even if she is dead.”

“No, I-” Chase takes a deep breath and then speaks again. “I get it. You missed, uh, Nathaniel was here.” Chase had told Harley a while back about her ex-best friend who’d died from drowning. A witch had been going after the swim team of the college to get back at the coach.

Chase shakes her head, holding out her hand to help Harley to her feet. “C’mon. Let’s get back to the others.”

“Hopefully they’re having a better time,” Harley smiles, not a genuine smile more so for show. Unfortunately they weren't, not that the two girls knew.

***

Chase and Harley sit in the kitchen, flipping through lore and eating pie. The boys had gone down the hall to discuss their events with different ghosts. Bobby comes through the kitchen, the boys hot on his tail. He looks to the girls, points at them, then down the hall.

“Follow me.”

Casting a confused glance towards each other, they get up and follow Bobby.

“Okay, where are we going?” Sam asks, confused.

Chase nods, “Yeah, that’s a great question.”

“Some safe place, you idiots,” Bobby says.

Bobby grabs a few books off a shelf, hands them to Harley, and then leads them down into a basement.

“Is this…” Sam trails off, gazing at an iron door.

“Solid iron,” Bobby says. “Completely coated in salt. One hundred percent ghost proof.”

Chase whistles.

“You built a panic room?” Sam asks in disbelief.

Bobby shrugs. “I had a weekend off.”

“Bobby,” Harley says, nodding, impressed.

“What?”

“You’re awesome,” Dean says.

***

Each hunter works on something individually from within the panic room. Sam and Dean are making salt bullets in iron casing, while Chase, Bobby, and Harley read up on the symbol the others had seen on the ghosts. Chase fiddles with her pocket knife, sharpening it slowly as she reads. Harley is tapping her fingers on the spine of her book.

“See, this is why I can’t get behind God.”

The others turn to look at Dean, who hasn’t averted his gaze from his work.

“What are you talking about?” Sam asks.

“If he doesn't exist, fine. Bad crap happens to good people. That's how it is. There's no rhyme or reason -- just random, horrible, evil -- I get it, okay. I can roll with that. But if he is out there, what's wrong with him? Where the hell is he while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does he live with himself? You know, why doesn't he help?”

“Just because he’s God, doesn’t mean he has to care. If you were God, how long would it take before you got desensitised to it all?” Chase says.

“I ain’t touching this one with a ten-foot pole,” Bobby says.

“Yeah,” Dean says bluntly.

“Found it,” Bobby says, getting up from the table.

“Found what,” Sam asks.

Chase rolls her eyes. “I dunno, maybe the symbol we’ve been looking for for the past hour and a half?” she asks sarcastically.

“The symbol you saw, it’s called the Mark of the Witness,” Bobby says.

“Witness? Witness to what?” Sam asks.

“The unnatural. None of them died what you'd call ordinary deaths. See, these ghosts -- they were forced to rise. They woke up in agony. They were like rabid dogs. It ain't their fault. Someone rose them... on purpose.”

“Who?”

“Do I look like I know? But whoever it was used a spell so powerful it left a mark, a brand on their souls. Whoever did this had big plans. It's called ‘the rising of the witnesses.’ It figures into an ancient prophecy.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dean says. “What book is this prophecy from?”

“Well, the widely distributed version's just for tourists, you know. But long story short -- Revelations. This is a sign, guys.”

“Sign of what?” All four younger hunters chorus.

“The apocalypse.”

“Apocalypse? The apocalypse, apocalypse? The four horsemen, pestilence, $5-a-gallon-gas apocalypse?” Dean asks.

“That’s the one,” Bobby says. “The rise of the witnesses is a mile-marker.”

“That’s insane,” Chase says.

“Of course the world is ending in our lifetime.” Harley groans.

“Okay, so, what do we do now?” Sam asks, confused.

“Road trip. Grand Canyon, Star Trek Experience. Bunny Ranch.” Dean jokes, going to sit down again.

“First things first. How about we survive our friends out there?” Bobby says.

“Great. Any ideas aside from staying in this room until Judgment Day?” Dean asks.

“It’s a spell,” Bobby points at a piece of paper, “to send the witnesses back to rest. Should work.”

“Should. Great.” Sam says, disappointed.

“It’s a shot. Better than nothing.” Harley adds.

“Yeah. Let’s just hope we can stand their taunting long enough to do it,” Chase mutters.

“If I translate it correctly, I should have everything here at the house,” Bobby continues.

“If. I don’t like that word,” Chase says. “But sure. Better this than being stuck here with you guys indefinitely.”

“Oh, you’re still gonna be stuck with me indefinitely.” Harley jokes.

“Any chance you got everything we need here in this room?” Dean asks.

“When have we ever been that lucky?”

“Spell's got to be cast over an open fire.” Bobby mentions.

“The fireplace in the library.” Sam says.

“Can’t we just start a fire in here? The floor’s concrete,” Harley points out.

“True,” Chase says. “But, there isn’t anything here we can burn. All of these books are way too important to our jobs.”

“So the library,” Sam says.

“Bingo,” Bobby says. He starts to grab the salt bullets and hand them out to us. Chase, Sam, and Harley load their guns.

“That just doesn’t sound as appealing as, say, a ghost-proof panic room,” Dean tries arguing once more. He is ignored.

“Cover each other,” Bobby says, about to open the door. “And aim careful. Don’t run out of ammo until I’m done, or they’ll shred you. Ready?”

“Right, don’t run out of ammo,” Chase says sarcastically. “Maybe they’ll even refrain from attacking us if we tell them we’re getting low.”

Bobby gives her a pointed look, opening the door. “Just be careful.”

They all slowly exit the bunker, weapons raised, carefully scanning the room as they proceed to the stairs.

They pause, seeing a man in his early twenties sitting there. “Hey, Dean,” he says. “Remember me?”

Dean pauses before nodding. “Ronald, huh? With the laser eyes. I wish I could say it’s good to see you.”

“I’m dead because of you,” the ghost - Ronald - says, suddenly angry. “You were supposed to help me!”

A bang goes off, and everyone turns to see Bobby with his gun still aimed at where Ronald had been. “If you’re gonna shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”

Everyone then makes their way to the living room with caution. Sam makes a salt circle while Dean starts the fire. Chase and Harley scan the room, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.

“Upstairs,” Bobby says to Sam. “linen closet - red hex box. It’ll be heavy.”

“Got it.” Sam leaves as two girls reappear in the living room, focusing solely on Bobby.

“Bobby,” one of the girls starts. Chase shoots.

“Dean, in the kitchen. Cutlery drawer has a false bottom. Hemlock, opium, wormwood.”

“Opium?” Dean asks.

“Go!” Harley shouts at him. Dean rushes out.

The girls reappear. Bobby tries to ignore them as he draws with chalk on the desk. Harley and Chase don’t shoot just yet, taking caution with the number of bullets they each have.

“You walked right by us when that monster ate us all up.”

“You could have saved us.”

Harley and Chase both shoot one of the girls. Bobby continues to focus on his task.

“You know what I hate most?” Chase asks, the girls reappearing, but farther away. “When there are two little girls. Why is it the creepiest when there are two?”

She shoots.

The door to the kitchen closes suddenly, and the three of them snap to attention.

“Dean?” Harley calls out.

“I’m fine!” They let out a breath at hearing Dean. “Keep working, guys!”

They boys rush back into the living room, reloading their guns once they put the stuff down.

Ronald reappears.

“Ronald, hey, come on. I thought we were pals,” Dean laughs.

“That’s when I was still alive. Now, I want to eat you alive.”

“Well, I’m not a cheeseburger.” He shoots, but Ronald is already gone.

A college-aged girl with black hair appears in front of Chase. “Faith.”

Faith stares at Chase in melancholy. “You left me there, C. I thought we were going to do it together. You were supposed to be there that day. Why didn’t you show up?”

Chase shoots, blinking away tears.

Bobby recites some Latin words and the windows blow open and a wind fills the room. The wind moves the salt so they are no longer protected by it. Meg appears and Sam quickly shoots at her, as Bobby continues to recite the spell.

Ronald appears and they shoot at him. Sam and Dean continue to fire as the ghosts appear. Henriksen knocks Dean’s gun out of his hands when he is reloading, and approaches him. Dean grabs another gun, and shoots it, only to find it empty. He quickly picks up an iron rod and hits at Henriksen. Meg appears and pushes Sam against the wall, trapping him there with a desk. Sam tries to push the desk away without success.

Nathaniel appears behind Chase, reaching an arm into her chest. Chase gasps out in pain before the feeling suddenly disappears. Harley had shot him.

“Thanks,” Chase breathes out, shooting at Meg, who was still harassing Sam.

“No problem.”

Chase and Harley turn just in time to hear Bobby shout, “Dean!”

Dean catches the bowl of ingredients, which Bobby had dropped when Meg plunged a hand into Bobby’s neck. The two girls sit on his desk. Chase and Harley take one out each, but don’t shoot at Meg, in fear of hitting Bobby.

Dean throws the contents of the bowl into the fireplace. The fire turns a brilliant blue, before everything suddenly stops. The ghosts disappear, and the wind stops, allowing everything in the room to settle.

They are all breathing hard and looking to one another.

“Bobby?” Dean asks.

Bobby nods, indicating he’s okay.

Sam gets free of the desk that had been pinning him.

They all take the moment to breathe.

***

It was the middle of the night. Harley sat at the kitchen table reading up on angels. She would normally be on the couch, but that was currently taken up by a sleeping Sam Winchester.

Chase sat on the counter, swinging her legs back and forth as she quietly ate a bowl of cereal. She looks up to make a comment to Harley about the ghosts earlier that day, but stops short and almost chokes on her food at the sight of the angel, Castiel. He stands facing the living room, very still, as though waiting for something.

“What the hell?” Chase asks loudly. Castiel looks backwards only a mere second, his facial expression screaming indifference to her. Her eyes widen as she looks to see if she’d disturbed the boys’ sleep. Sam lay as still as ever, snoring quietly. Dean however, had heard her, and was now sitting up. His face hardens upon seeing Castiel.

“So, um...Castiel, right? Why are you here in the middle of the night? Some people actually need sleep,” Harley asks, increasingly confused.

Dean walks over, and Castiel, having ignored both of the girls, nods to him. “Good job with the witnesses.”

“You were hip to all this?”

Chase snorts slightly at Dean’s choice of words.

“I was, uh, made aware,” Castiel responds, his voice gravelly, as though it hadn’t been used in a long time.

“Well, thanks for the angelic assistance. You know, I almost got my heart ripped out.”

“Oh, me too,” Chase pipes up. “Interesting experience, really.”

“But you didn’t,” Castiel says, still not addressing Chase. Chase shoots Harley an irritated glare, gesturing to Castiel and mouthing, ‘What’s his problem?’ to her.

“Look, Cas. Can I call you Cas? Actually don’t bother. I am. You can’t just be all ‘But you didn’t’ to my friends. They are amazing and wonderful and the second you realize that you’ll be poofing yourself over here in a second to save their asses as much as they need,” Harley scolds the angel.

“I don’t ‘poof’,” Castiel says.

“I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos -- you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks.”

“Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I'm a soldier.”

“He’s right,” Harley pipes up.

“Yeah? Then, why didn't you fight?” Dean turns to Harley confused. “Wait… How would you know?”

“I went to Catholic school.”

“You? You went to Catholic school? Miss Constantly-Avoids-Churches? That’s actually really hot. I bet you were a bad girl weren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Castiel sighs, “I'm not here to perch on your shoulder. We had larger concerns,”

“Concerns? There were people getting torn to shreds down here! And, by the way, while all this is going on, where the hell is your boss, huh, if there is a God?” Dean practically shouts.

“Dean, you’re gonna wake up Sam,” Harley scolds.

“There's a God.” Castiel says, utterly unfazed and a little annoyed.

“I'm not convinced. 'Cause if there's a God, what the hell is he waiting for, huh? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The freaking apocalypse? At what point does he lift a damn finger and help the poor bastards that are stuck down here?” Dean says.

“The Lord works-”

“If you say mysterious ways, Imma kick your ass,” Harley threatens. Castiel puts his hands up in surrender.

“So, Bobby was right... about the witnesses. This is some kind of a... sign of the apocalypse?” Dean asks.

“That's why we're here. Big things afoot,” Castiel says.

“Do we want to know what kind of things?” Chase asks.

“I sincerely doubt it, but you need to know. The rising of the witnesses is one of the 66 seals.”

‘Oh, look. He can talk to me. Miraculous,’ Chase mouths to Harley.

“Okay. I'm guessing that's not a show at Seaworld,” Dean jokes.

“Those seals are being broken by Lilith.”

“Bitch,” Harley murmurs.

“She did the spell. She rose the witnesses,” Dean says, stating the obvious.

“Mm-hmm. And not just here. 20 other hunters are dead.”

“Of course. She picked victims that the hunters couldn't save so that they would barrel right after us,” Dean concluded.

“Lilith has a certain sense of humor.”

“Well, we put those spirits back to rest.”

“It doesn't matter. The seal was broken.”

“Why break the seal anyway?”

“You think of the seals as locks on a door.”

“Okay. Last one opens and…”

“Lucifer walks free.”

“Lovely. I reckon now he has a chance to wear Prada,” Harley jokes.

Chase laughs and Dean smiles. Castiel doesn't even acknowledge the joke.

“Lucifer? But I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday school. There's no such thing,” Dean says, unsure.

“Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me. Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in 2,000 years?” Castiel asks.

“To stop Lucifer.”

“That's why we've arrived.”

“Well... bang-up job so far. Stellar work with the witnesses. That's nice.”

“We tried. And there are other battles, other seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose. This one we lost. Our numbers are not unlimited. Six of my brothers died in the field this week. You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around? There's a bigger picture here. You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in,” Castiel threatens before disappearing.

“Well…… That happened,” Harley stated plainly.

#AngelsandAcceptance #AaA #supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #bobby singer #chase winchester #harley pawlak #castiel

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