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veinsandknuckles · 3 years

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Long hard road, pt 2

So, this is a new part 2, making what used to be part 2 part 3. Makes total sense, right?

Vimes/f!Reader Slow burn AU where Vimes isn’t married. Will definitely become hard R down the line. Content warnings: none Read part 1 here, part 3 here One sunny day about two weeks after Stone’s arrival, you found him lurking in a shady corner of the courtyard, leaning against a crate with an amused expression on his face. Today you were shirking so you followed his gaze to see what he was seeing.

It was Conrad and one of the local boys, around thirteen or so, engaged in a mock battle with a stick each for a sword. They weren’t playing, either. Conrad stopped every other minute to give minute advice with an air of great authority. Stone nodded to you when you joined him. “He’s always fancied himself a bit of a strongman, I think,” you said by way of a greeting. Conrad did have endless stories about his adventures, and it was fun to keep track of the details he got wrong with each retelling. “He’s got the posture down, I’ll give him that.” It really was the kind of form you’d see in an instructional engraving; shoulders drawn back, chin in the air and his free hand behind his back. The boy caught him a blow on the outside of the thigh and Conrad loudly discounted it as unsportsmanlike. It was hard to tell if the kid was actually holding on to his every word, or just playing along for the excuse to beat a grown man and get away with it.

“Could you do better?”

Stone looked over at you with a suspicious frown. Then he shook his head. “You can’t bait me that easily.”

You nodded to the sword at his side. He never left the inn without it, and as plain as it was, it couldn’t be because he worried about it going missing. “So, what, you just carry that thing to impress the ladies?”

“Good grief.” But he must be in a good mood because then he smiled with a faraway look in his eye. “You know, I did try that for a time in my youth. When things grew desperate.”

“Did it work?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure where that idea came from in the first place.” Conrad had backed the kid up against a wall with the point of the stick at his chest and looked a little too pleased about his victory. “In my experience, any excited talk between women about a big sword and the like is usually intended as a humorous metaphor.”

“You give men too much credit if you think we can tell the difference.” Stone still smiled, but you knew his words were a little too true for comfort. It was interesting that he could join in with this kind of talk so easily as long as it remained impersonal.

When Conrad turned his back to return to his starting position, the kid whacked him with his full strength across the leg. Conrad howled and nearly lost his balance. You couldn’t help laughing and the two knights in training finally discovered their audience. The boy bolted, Conrad scowled and limped off towards the kitchen, throwing the stick to the ground as he went.

“Show’s over,” said Stone and stood up straight. “Suppose I’d better get my own exercise in while there’s some daylight left.”

“Want some company?”

He sighed with an expression that was half amused, half irritated. “Do I have a choice?”

Of course he did, but if you said so he’d feel obligated to turn you down. He had to be able to tell himself he was being befriended against his will. After all, if he really wanted to avoid you, you knew he was more than capable of being impolite enough to say so. “What do you think?”

“Fine. A short walk, then.” Stone gestured for you to choose a direction and you headed out through the gates with him beside you, falling quickly into his leisurely pace.

The thaw had gotten an early start this year and everyone was fooled by it into hoping it would last, despite years of experience to the contrary. Every winter it was the same way - half a week of mild, sunny weather and not even the born locals could help thinking that this time it might be different, this time spring might arrive a month before it was due. Perhaps it was just human nature to talk big about expecting the worst and getting suckered despite of it.

Stone seemed a wonderful exception to this rule. There didn’t seem to be a silence thick enough to tempt him into speaking of the weather. He walked beside you, occupied with his own thoughts, completely at his ease.

“How long do you think you’ll be staying with us, mr Stone?”

He snorted. “Not a moment longer than I have to.”

The road you followed clung to the side of the mountain and bordered on the other side to dense pine forest growing from almost vertical ground. The little buildings of the inn huddled together on one of the wider plateaus and marked the edge of real vegetation before the path continued up towards the pass. You had just reached a bend in the road, a perfect vantage point to take in the stunning view of the mountain range to the side and the valleys below. On such a clear day, you could see the wide river even from here, snaking through the landscape like a silver inlay.

“How is it possible to tire of all this?”

Stone raised his eyebrows and regarded it dispassionately. “It’s just nature.”

You laughed. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

“Since when are you so in love with the place? Thought you were bored to tears.”

“I’m not,” you conceded and tore yourself away from the view. “Just making the best of it.”

Stone took the lead now and followed the next trail leading in between the trees.

“Why not leave?”

“And go where? To do what?”

“I don’t know,” Stone shrugged. “You must want more than this, surely. You could settle down, start a family...” His ears caught up with his mouth and you saw him screw his eyes shut and shake his head.

Because of course the height of every woman’s ambition is a husband and children. You laughed and elbowed him in the side. “Mr Stone, are you offering to take me away from all of this?”

“Hah!” For once, he looked more amused than uncomfortable with the suggestion. “That’s me, walking model of fairy tale prince.”

“I’d say you’re more like the dangerous, good-for-nothing rogues that my mother should have warned me about. I’m sure you’ve left a few broken hearts in your wake.”

Stone snorted. “Right. You’ve really got me pegged.”

You bit your lip and kept watching him, but he was resolutely focused on the trail ahead. It didn’t seem like false modesty; he really did seem completely ignorant of his own charms. How could he not be, if he mistook every kind of flirtation for a joke?

Perhaps you weren’t his type. It happened. Not every man was ready to pounce on every opportunity that presented itself. Perhaps he didn’t want to pounce on anything in the first place.

But if that were the case, surely he would say so, instead of sarcastically playing along or pretending to misunderstand you. Whatever other obstacles may present themselves, the first and largest was that he wouldn’t believe you.

“Oh well,” you said. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“No, I suppose I can’t,” he said, as if wishing he could. “But I can judge you for having poor taste.”

That was exactly the kind of comment you could hardly interpret as anything other than encouragement for you to continue.

“Are you asking to be complimented?”

Stone half turned towards you with a look of startled dread. “Absolutely not.”

Exasperated, you rolled your eyes and decided to drop it for the time being. “Fine. You pick a subject, then.”

For a moment, it seemed as if Stone couldn’t pull himself back together. The silence was thick and uncomfortable and you could have sworn you saw him, out of the corner of your eye, looking at you with some earnestness.

“Do you... er. Have you lived here long?”

“A few years.” The poor man really was ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel, but you felt like you owed him a little help in steering back into safer waters. “You’re from Ankh-Morpork, aren’t you?”

The little path forked up ahead and Stone chose the path that looped around to the other side of the inn. He really had explored his surroundings. “I suppose that’s not much of a secret.”

“The accent is pretty strong.”

“Huh.” He sniffed. “Your Morporkian is, er... it’s very good.”

“Thank you.”

“Must be from reading all those books.” He’d seen you read once, but apparently that was enough to set you down as a confirmed book worm.

For a while, you walked together in silence and slowly his ruffled feathers seemed to settle down. It was beautiful out here, every shadow in the snow a rich blue, every dapple of sunshine glowing peach and gold as the afternoon wore on. Your footfalls made a pleasant, hypnotising creaking sound with each step you took.

Before you could think it through, you asked a question that had been weighing on you for some time. “Is it safe for you to be here?”

There was a pause. “...for me or for you?”

Oh gods. “Either, I suppose.”

Stone thought this through. He looked very weary.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

You tried to smile. “I guess I wasn’t too far off with the ‘dangerous rogue’ thing, then.”

“Well, you knew that already.”

“Yeah... next time you should have a backstory and name picked out before you introduce yourself.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he replied drily.

Despite everything he’d said (and failed to say) and despite how incredibly intimidating he could be, it was impossible for you to view Stone as a threat. If he had tried to make himself likeable or if he’d tried harder to bullshit an excuse for being here in the first place, it would have been another thing altogether. He didn’t seem as if he wanted anyone to like him very much and that indifference was predictably irresistible.

He was just so... self-contained. He seemed perfectly content on his own and perfectly careless of his reputation. His attitude towards whatever danger he was in seemed to consist mostly of boredom, as if he was just waiting to get it over with and wasn’t all that invested in the outcome. In many ways, he was untouchable, and of course that only made you more desperate to try. It was also very difficult to believe he didn’t have to fight people off with a stick.

You should really know better. So far everything had gone his way, which meant he could afford to be a gentleman, but who knew what desperation could drive him to do? When his reality caught up with him, you might all be acceptable casualties - to him as well as to whoever, or whatever, was chasing him. Somehow, all these facts were trumped by a strong gut feeling in his favour and here you were, walking beside him feeling as safe as if you’d known him for years.

The inn was coming back into view. Stone was deep in thought, but when the climb to get back onto the road got a little steep, he scaled it ahead of you, turned and offered his hand to help pull you up.

It was big, rough and warm - you felt the heat of his skin even through your mittens - and yours seemed almost to disappear into his grip. With a slowly creeping flush you realised that your attraction to him had grown much quicker than you had intended it to. Soon, if he kept deflecting your advances, you might find yourself too shy to continue them or, if you were very careless, growing lovesick.

“Thank you,” you said as you stepped onto the road and he immediately let go. You worried that you might have sounded a little too breathless and sincere.

“Course.” Stone cleared his throat and walked briskly towards the stables. “And, er. Thank you for the company. Although,” and he shot you a glance, “it shouldn’t become a habit. Seems all people do round here is gossip.”

“Of course.” You couldn’t deny it even if you wanted to, but it was very sweet of him to care about your reputation. “We wouldn’t want anyone to think you were a loose man.”

The shadow of the house crossed your path and Stone immediately seemed more at ease when he stepped into it. You could sense that he wanted to be alone with his thoughts now and so you forced a little smile and waved him off. A curt nod, and then he slunk in among the buildings, off to do whatever mysterious things usually filled his time.

#sam vimes #sam vimes x you #sam vimes x reader #discworld fanfiction #sam vimes imagine #my fics

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the-light-followed · 4 years

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WYRD SISTERS (1988) [DISC. #6; WITCHES #2]

“‘No one would come up here this time of night.’ Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered. ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed. ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.”

Rating: 6/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: Yeah!

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

I’m just going to jump right in with this one: the best part about the Witches sub-series of the Discworld is that they are all, in their own way, stories about stories. They’re stories that follow other stories, the tropes and archetypes and established narrative structure, but they’re also stories that subvert that structure at just the right moment to make something that feels much more truthful, and often, much more real.

Stories about stories.

This is sometimes very literal: Wyrd Sisters, for example, has very obvious Shakespearean roots, notably from Hamlet and Macbeth, and seems to gleefully delight in throwing around references—three witches meeting to cast spells, blood on the murderer’s hands that won’t wash away, the ghost of a murdered father begging his son to seek revenge, a theater called The Dysk that mimics Shakespeare’s Globe, etc., etc., etc.—that then get turned over on their heads. We’ll see it done again with the fairy tale elements of Witches Abroad, and the Phantom of the Opera parody that is Maskerade. These books are, in a very real sense, skipping the setup and instead using cultural touchstones as framework. The books starring the witches are literally new stories being told about stories we, the audience, already know and recognize.

But sometimes it isn’t literal at all: witches, after all, work magic most often through psychology and metaphor. “Headology,” as the witches call it, is the basis of witchcraft, and it’s all about the stories being told. It’s in the things the witches do for respect, like their hats and black outfits and their out-of-the-way cottages they pass down from one witch to the next, or the way they bow instead of curtsey. It’s in the things they call magic even when it isn’t, like using real herbs and medicines to cure illnesses, or waving their hands over a pot of tea and chanting nonsense before ‘reading the future’ in the leaves, all of it only for the look of the thing from the outside.

And it’s also in the things they tell themselves. For example, when Magrat’s broomstick stops working in Wyrd Sisters, she does what she calls a Change spell—which simply means that the rest of the world remains the same, but she changes the way she sees herself. Before, she was a young woman on a broom rapidly falling out of the sky, and now she’s a confident young witch who can deal with any disaster that comes her way, so she’s therefore a lot less worried about it.

And it works. That’s the thing: Magrat is just fine. Witches do magic in and on themselves, it’s all nothing more than a thought, and yet it works.

None of the Witches books are particularly subtle about the point they’re trying to make with the whole deal, either. In Wyrd Sisters, it seems like everyone is talking about the power of words and stories, the way that the things we tell ourselves and each other can shape the reality of the world we inhabit. There are some negatives you can pull out of that message—history is malleable and written by the victors, propaganda triumphs over the truth, etc., etc. But there are a lot of more interesting, thought-provoking ideas to consider, instead. For example: just because narrative structure has already delivered us the broad strokes of the plot (anyone who’s studied any Shakespeare, which can reasonably be assumed to be any native English speaker older than about sixteen, can probably guess the general course of Wyrd Sisters by about page twenty), it doesn’t mean there can’t be originality and meaning in the specifics.

And that originality and meaning is what makes all the Discworld books work so well. Pratchett is parodying, sure, but he’s also creating something very new and earnest and sincere, and that just doesn’t work if the story is an exact beat-for-beat retelling of an already-told tale.

Wyrd Sisters agrees with that idea. Destiny is all well and good—it’s nice to think that what’s to come is pre-planned, easy to predict, and impossible to subvert—but the world just doesn’t work like that. The story isn’t plotted out in advance.

As Pratchett says later in the book: “Destiny was funny stuff…You couldn’t trust it. Often you couldn’t even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.”

The witches certainly don’t truck with destiny. Or, well, it may be a tool in their storytelling arsenal, but they don’t see it as a concrete thing. Destiny is what you make of it, and Granny and Nanny are movers and shakers. That makes it especially ironic that the book is called Wyrd Sisters—the word “wyrd” is an old Anglo-Saxon concept referring to fate or personal destiny, so the “wyrd sisters” themselves typically would be the three Fates, a la Greek mythology, rather than three women who tend to grab Fate and Destiny by the ears and twist until they decide to agree that the witches have the right of it.

Honestly, though, if Granny Weatherwax looked at me like that, I’d do whatever she wanted, too.

I just want to bring up something I really like about Pratchett’s writing style: despite the fantastical setting, despite how far from reality he can get, he’s not afraid to switch to Roundworld concepts or just flat-out break the fourth wall in exchange for better, more impactful descriptions. I like to call this cinematic writing, and sometimes that’s actually very literal. There are quite a few passages in various Discworld books where he starts to write in an almost movie-script style. After Moving Pictures, which is still a good four books away at this point, I think that becomes less notable. Here, and in the previous few Discworld books (Mort, Sourcery, Equal Rites), when Discworld does not have any parallel equivalent to Roundworld’s Hollywood, it’s pretty damn unusual for an author to just outright throw aside their own fantasy setting to make a description in real-world terms.

My favorite example of this from Wyrd Sisters:

“It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words. It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds… Well, you know. Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do. There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened.”

You can practically imagine the way that scene would look in a blockbuster movie, and it’s wonderful that Pratchett describes it crystal clear just to let us know that it is not, in fact, how it looked at all.

There’s a lot more to like about Wyrd Sisters, too, for all that it isn’t one of my favorite Discworld books. It’s a far better introduction to the witches—specifically Granny Weatherwax—than Equal Rites is, even though Equal Rites is technically the first book in the Witches sub-series. It introduces some characters we’ll see a lot more of later, like King Verence and the greater Ogg family, but also characters that will go on to become staples of the Discworld, like Nanny Ogg and Magrat. We also have some lovely cameos from already established characters: notably Death and his interactions during the play at the castle, but there are some good Ankh-Morpork moments, like the Librarian’s appearance at a barfight.

And we get to see the good old Discworld humor really click—it’s all about that balance between absurdism and realism, or between established tropes and self-awareness. One of my favorite examples of this comes right at the beginning of the book:

“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”

Pratchett’s really got a sense for it by this point, and he can deliver zinger after unexpectedly delightful zinger. Discworld books are always beautifully funny, of course, even though after a while you really get a feel for when a good joke is coming. Some people might think that knowing the punchline is coming might make it less funny: it absolutely does not. All it does is make the unexpected, sneaky moments—when the humor Pratchett has been secretly setting up for ages finally creeps up to smack you in the face—hit harder. Maybe others disagree, but I can read Discworld novels again and again, and they always get me just as much as they did the first time through. In my opinion, that’s real comedic talent.

Up next in the series we have Pyramids, our first unconnected one-off story, which is wonderfully weird even for a Discworld book! Stay tuned!

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Every time that oh-so popular Ankh-Morporkian dive bar, the Drum, pops up, it’s fun to note where it’s at these days: Mended Drum, Broken Drum, etc. In Wyrd Sisters, Tomjon and Hwel go drinking in the Mended Drum.

There are several adaptations of Wyrd Sisters, including a 4-part BBC radio show, an animated film, and a stageplay.

As I go over my highlighted quotes and annotations from each book, putting these posts together, I learn more and more about myself. What I like, what I find funny, what I care to notice. For example, Vetinari shows up exactly ONCE in this book, and just in a footnote, and yet I still highlighted it and wrote a note next to it that contained mostly exclamation points. There’s no real point to this; I just want everyone to know how much I love Vetinari.

Favorite Quotes:

“Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.”

“Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down. Or out.”

“‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’ They considered this in silence. ‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you.’”

“His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.”

“Back down on the plains, when you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off.”

“The Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.”

“She gave the guards a nod as she went through. It didn’t occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked. In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force.”

“‘You’re wondering whether I really would cut your throat,’ panted Magrat. ‘I don’t know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out.’”

“Wizards assassinated each other in drafty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street. And they were all as self-centered as a spinning top. Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves. Honestly, they’re just like big children. Except for me, she thought smugly.”

“‘Man just went past with a cat on his head,’ one of them remarked, after a minute or two’s reflection. ‘See who it was?’ ‘The Fool, I think.’ There was a thoughtful pause. The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd. ‘It’s a rotten job,’ he said. ‘But I suppose someone’s got to do it.’”

“Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.”

“Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.”

“Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”

“‘Witches just aren’t like that,’ said Magrat. ‘We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.’”

“‘I shall haunt their corridors,’ he said, ‘and whisper under the doors on still nights.’ His voice grew fainter, almost lost in the ceaseless roar of the river. ‘I shall make basket chairs creak most alarmingly, just you wait and see.’ Death grinned at him. NOW YOU’RE TALKING.”

#discworld #wyrd sisters

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karanguni · 4 years

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Yuletide Gifts

I had quite the embarrassment of riches this Yuletide: 5 gifts! All of them wonderful. A few in John Wick: A Suitable Interest (2614 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: John Wick (Movies) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Marcus/John Wick Characters: John Wick, Marcus (John Wick) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Suits, Banter, Consensual Power Imbalance, Semi-Public Sex, Age Difference, Tape Measure, Breathplay, Yuleporn, Voyeurism, Mentor/Protégé Summary: Marcus Watches John get dressed. This is the clothing porn of my dreams, with a generous dash of mentor/protege thrown in. Gorgeous descriptions and very witty banter. Night Spirit (1169 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: John Wick (Movies) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: John Wick, Avi (John Wick) Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Pre-Canon Summary: “Sit with me,” Mana rasped, and patted the bar stool beside her. “Bring the bottle and another glass, and sit with me. Sit with babulya and she’ll tell you a fairy tale.” Here's a lovely worldbuild, outside-perspective, nearly-noir fic that is very in keeping with the spirit and aesthetic of the movie. Very mythological. A Fresh Start (1738 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: John Wick (Movies) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Helen Wick/John Wick, Aurelio & John Wick Characters: John Wick, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick) Additional Tags: Pre-John Wick (2014), John prepares Summary: It was something Marcus has suggested when John had said his goodbyes. You can never be too careful, he’d said, never know who might stab you in the back. Always have an out.

He’s retired. His remaining accounts firmly closed, debts settled.

Still.

John in the movies has such a great sense of preparedness and readiness even in retirement, and this fic fills in the blanks of how he went about it. A wonderful worldbuild, and with such lovely cameos from the people in John's life. Two in Discworld/Thief of Time: Wayfinding (1918 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Lu-Tze (Discworld), Marietta Cosmopilite Additional Tags: Backstory, Yuletide Treat Summary: All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, including the one to enlightenment. It's just that some people choose to walk a different way. Lu Tze finds his Way, in the best possible way. Some serious laugh-out-loud moments and excellent, excellent Pratchett pastiche. Cut-me-own-throat's cameo made me cackle repeatedly, and Lu Tze's understanding by the end of the fic is a lovely tie-in to how he works so well for the History Monks. Promotion (385 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Lu-Tze (Discworld), Rinpo (Discworld) Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat Summary: "The Abbot was quite clear on his instructions. Until he returns to Oi Dong, he wishes for you to act as Abbot in his stead." Lu Tze gets promoted to Abbot. Need I say more? And one in Breakfast with Scot: Love Is A Contact Sport (6091 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Breakfast with Scot (2007) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eric McNally/Sam Miller Characters: Eric McNally, Sam Miller, Billy Miller Additional Tags: Backstory, Romantic Comedy, Media Scandal, Forced Proximity, Mutual Pining, Awkward Flirting, Falling In Love, Self-Discovery, Real Estate Porn, Injury Recovery, Internalized Homophobia, Closeted Character, Hockey, enforcers gonna enforce, Everyone Thinks They're Together, Public Display of Affection, Yuletide Treat, trapped together for a weekend Summary: All of Canada is looking for Eric, but Sam is the one who finds him. Sam and Eric get-together backstory that has lovely bits of both of them throughout. There are lines in the fic that read right out of the movie, and Eric's mental voice is pitch-perfect: far from just a stupid bruiser, but also so confused at the brave new world he's ended up in. comments Comment on DW: https://ift.tt/2ZwhvME

#crossposted #dreamwidth #yuletide rec #yuletide

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moreterrypratchett · 5 years

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“I know. I’ll tell you, the day someone pulls the plug out of the bottom of the universe, the chain will lead all the way to Ankh-Morpork and some bugger saying, ‘I just wanted to see what would happen.’ All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.”

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

#terry pratchett #discworld #quote #literature

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sirpoley · 6 years

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On Towns in RPGs, Part 5: Building a Playable City

In the first article in this series, I embarked on an ill-defined quest to figure out what, if anything, a town map is actually for in tabletop play.

In the second, I took a look at the common metaphor comparing towns to dungeons—unfavourably.

In the third, I proposed an alternate metaphor: that cities are more like forests than dungeons.

In the fourth, I looked at how forests are used in D&D to see what we could use when thinking about cities.

Now, we're going to get to the nuts and bolts of designing cities for use in D&D.

Think In Terms of Districts, not Distance

No player is ever going to remember, or care about, the actual distance between their current location and the tavern they're trying to get to. Similarly, they won't remember, or care about, the roads they have to cross to get there.

The absolute most you can hope for is that they'll remember and care about some of (but not all of) the neighbourhoods they have to go through. In Terry Pratchet's Ankh-Morpork, the Shades is an extremely memorable and dangerous area. Like Pratchett's characters, players are going to avoid it wherever possible and yet always find that they have to go through it. Planescape: Torment's Hive and Fallout: New Vegas's Freeside have similar qualities. If you grimly tell the players: "the quickest way to the princess is through—oh, dear—the Shades," they'll have a reaction to it.

Don't overdo it with districts; keep the number small enough for them to be memorable. I'd recommend seven as an absolute maximum, but as few as three is perfectly acceptable. Lantzberg, from City of Eternal Rain, only used three (one each for lower, middle, and upper class—end elevation). A district can be as big as you like; feel free to simply scale them up for larger cities.

Forget Thee Not House Hufflepuff

It's no secret that in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, only two of the four houses matter at all. If you're not Gryffindor or Slytherin, you're lucky to get any screentime at all. However, if they were simply cut from the series, then Hogwarts would feel terribly small, as if it were built solely for Harry to gallivant around in, and not part of a living, breathing world. Your city can't just have people to tell your players who to kill and people to be killed, it needs someone to clean up the mess after, also. From a narrative standpoint, these people don't matter, and will rarely be mentioned, but they can be used to pad your world out. When dividing up your map into districts, include a few that, as far as you're concerned, will never see an adventure, and give it maybe one or two notable characteristics. These are areas that are primarily residential, or involve industries not relevant to adventure (i.e., anyone other than an alchemist, blacksmith, or arcane university). Feel free to leave these places utterly devoid of points of interest.

In the adventure written for Lantzberg, for instance, there's little to no reason to ever visit the castle at the peak of the hill. It's there for verisimilitude (someone has to be in charge) and for the GM to hook later adventures to (which I'll elaborate on in my next point), but mainly it's just there to make the city seem larger. Similarly, most of the buildings in Castleview are manors of rich and important citizens, each one of which might have any number of use for a band of adventurers, but only a handful are actually fleshed out. After all, it would hardly feel like a living, breathing city if every single building was tied into a single adventure, would it?

Gaming is full of Hufflepuff Houses: the 996 Space Marine chapters that aren't lucky enough to be Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, or Space Wolves; D&D fiends that are neither lawful nor chaotic, Morrowind's Houses Dres and Indoril, and any of Homeworld's Kushan other than Kiith S'jet. This isn't laziness; they're there for a reason: they make the world feel larger.

Leave Room to Grow

Try to design a city large enough, and versatile enough, that once the current quest is wrapped up, you can inject some more content into it without serious retconning. This is part of where your Hufflepuff-tier-neighbourhoods come in—maybe one of them has been under the heel of a violent gang the whole time, but the party never found out because they never went there. Once the players have started to clear out your adventure ideas and points of interest, there's still plenty of room to pump some more in without the city bursting like an over-inflated balloon.

The map I posted earlier probably represents the upper limit of how detailed you should make your city. A GM could run a few more adventures out of Lantzberg, but a long-running campaign would probably benefit from a bit more room to breathe.

A Few Key Details

What are the kinds of things a DM really needs to know about a city? D&D3.5 had little statblocks for cities and settlements that broke down the demographics of different areas, but that's probably more granular than is actually necessary. Remember—every bit of detail that you include has the potential to distract the GM from finding the fact they actually need. It isn't for instance, particularly important to know that 12.5% of a neighbourhood's population are halflings while 54% are elves, but it might be useful to know that a neighbourhood has a notably large elf population and an often-overlooked halfling minority.

Who are the Watchmen that the Watchers Watch?

One infamously common thing that comes up in D&D is the city watch. It's shadow looms large over every action the party, and your villains, will take, so it's worth thinking about them a little bit. Its best to err on the side of making them too weak rather than too strong, as a powerful, well-organized law enforcement group can really put a damper on the opportunities for adventure. The counter-argument is that if the city watch isn't strong enough to threaten the party, then the party effectively has the run of the city; my preferred answer to this problem is to give the local lord a powerful knight or champion who can be used as a beat-stick against major threats to law and order (like the PCs) if need be, but can plausibly be busy enough with other problems to leave some for the party to handle.

When deciding who the local authorities are, almost anything you can come up with is more interesting (and historically plausible) than a centralized, professional police force. Here's a few examples:

A militia organized by local guilds

A local gang that provides protection in exchange for money and doesn't want outsiders muscling in on their turf

A semi-legitimate religious militant order

A mercenary group funded by a coalition of wealthy merchants (who just so happen to overlook their own crimes and corruption)

Don't get too bogged down in their stats; just pick a low-level NPC from the back of the Monster Manual and write down who they work for. Different neighbourhoods can share the same organization, but try to prevent a single organization from policing the entire city.

By breaking up law enforcement by district, you also prevent the entire city dogpiling on the party when they break a law, like you see in video games. If the party robs a house in the Ironworker's District, they can lay low in the Lists, where the Ironworkers' Patrol has no jurisdiction, until the heat dies down.

Points of Interest!

All those numbers you see scattered over D&D cities? Now's the time to add them. Each one should correspond to a description in a document somewhere. These descriptions can be as long or as short as you wish. For example, on the short end, #1 from Lantzberg just has this to say:

However, and I won't get into too much detail for fear of spoilers, some of those numbers are elaborate, multi-page dungeons.

While you should endeavour to keep the number of districts low, there is no ceiling to how many points of interest you should put into the city. Don't burn yourself out. If you can come up with six, put in six. If you can come up with fifty, put in fifty.

A point of interest can be anything from a scenic overlook to a toll bridge to an elaborate sewer system packed with kobolds and giant rats and treasure. They can be as fleshed out or as minimal as you are comfortable with. There's a sweet spot that varies from GM to GM, as if you include too much detail you suffer from information overload as the party approaches the point of interest (sixteen pages of description, for instance, for a single shop is less than helpful), while too little information might lead to you having to do too much on the fly. I like maybe one to three sentences per point of interest, or per room in a point of interest if it is important enough to warrant its own map (I typically only map dungeons).

Random Encounters

I'll write a series on handling random encounters later, but for now, breaking up encounters by district is a convenient way to do it. More dangerous districts, for instance, might have muggers or even monsters that attack (especially at night). If you're going to use random encounters in your campaign, creating a table for each district lets you use your local colour to affect actual game mechanics. Castleview, for instance, is very safe due to constant patrols by the Lady-Mayor's Watch, while the flooded Lists are full of man-eating fungi, ghouls, criminals, and who knows what. This lets you follow the age-old advice to "show, don't tell." You don't have to say "this area is full of crime," you can show the players this by throwing some criminals at them.

This post has already gone on way longer than intended. Next time, we'll use what we've learned to answer the original question and make better town maps.

#D&D #RPGs #D&D5e #OnTownsinRPGs

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cat-sophia · 7 years

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I’ll tell you, the day someone pulls the plug out of the bottom of the universe, the chain will lead all the way to Ankh-Morpork and some bugger saying ‘I just wanted to see what would happen.’ All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

#Terry Pratchett #Discworld #quotes #ankh-morpork #rereading discworld

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pratchettquotes · 1 year

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There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities.

At least, there's a saying that there's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.

And it's wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.

Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

#ankh morpork #moving pictures #discworld #terry pratchett #urban myths #direction #wrong way #perspective #superiority complex #all roads lead to ankh-morpork #all roads lead away from ankh-morpork

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victorluvsalice · 7 years

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Weyr Wednesday: Fandom Weyr -- Parole Officer

Welp, there’s not much happening in DragonVale now that I’ve cleared out all the available dragons. And I happen to have run out of Pern Crash ficlets to share. So, it’s time for a piece from the other Pern crossover I came up with ages ago -- Fandom Weyr! As you might guess from the name, this is a multiverse crossover set on Pern itself, with characters from a bunch of my favorite fandoms living on an island with its own little weyr. The place is run by the Pern version of Vetinari -- hey, if he can keep Ankh-Morpork running smoothly, he can sure as hell handle a weyr. Glados leads the kitchen drudges, which of course includes Chell and Wheatley; Victor (now Vitor) lives in nearby Everglot Sea Hold with his fishing family, drawing maps and composing music in his spare time; Alice’s (or Aliss’s) family helped run a crafthall until their murder by wandering Harper Bumby; and so on and so forth. I never fleshed it out as much as Pern Crash (mostly because I’ve only read two Pern books, both of them for young adults, and both of those were for Menolly’s fire lizard family), but I did do a couple of little fic snippets for it. Here’s the first, for the curious.

Set-up: Vitor and Aliss have been taken to Fandom Weyr -- Aliss having been caught for Bumby’s murder, Vitor as a possible Impression candidate -- except the moment he arrived, he had a screaming panic attack about going “Between.” (Because if anything’s going to trigger Victor’s phobia of absolute darkness, it’s an airless void between places and times.) Aliss is meeting with V’tinari about the punishment for her crime, and for some reason he’s just called in Vitor. . .

“Come.”

The door opened, revealing the very pale face of one Vitor of Everglot Sea Hold. Aliss squinted – was it just her, or had he someone managed to become even whiter since she’d last seen him? Then again, he’s just been summoned into the presence of one of the most renowned and reviled Weyrleaders on Pern, after having a panic attack that the whole Weyr must have heard. I’m surprised he’s not unconscious. “Is our appointment over, Weyrleader?” she asked, glancing at the open gap behind Vitor. But it couldn’t be, he hadn’t actually assigned punishment yet. . . .

“Oh no, please, stay where you are,” V’tinari said pleasantly, before nodding at Vitor. “Do come in. You made quite the impression on my Weyr today, young man.”

“I – I am s-so sorry, sir,” Vitor said as he entered the room, hands twisting together before him. “I r-really had no idea I’d–”

“My Ankth has already spoken to the dragon that brought you here,” V’tinari cut him off. “Apparently his decision to take you was more or less an act of pity.”

Vitor blinked, clearly thrown. “Sir?”

“Yes, Arctith didn’t really think you appropriate for a dragon. You have a spark of what’s necessary to be a good rider – but just a spark. No, he and N’rth simply saw how discontent you were in the Hold of your birth – Everglot Sea Hold, correct?” Vitor nodded. “And am I right in assuming you were the unsuccessful suitor for the Lady Holder’s daughter Vitorea – what a remarkable coincidence with your first names, by the by – and the one who found that corpse the wanderer Barkis tried to conceal?”

Vitor blinked rapidly a few times. “I – yes. Y-yes, that’s me,” he confirmed. “I – d-didn’t realize the story had become so famous.”

“Oh, not really,” V’tinari said with a calm smile. “I just make it my business to know as much as I can about everything on Pern. I was apprenticed as a Harper before Ankth called me.” He shrugged with the ease of a man who has everything under control, even things that technically shouldn’t be under his control. “Old habits die hard.”

“I thought everything about Fandom Weyr involved the old habits dying,” Aliss put in, unable to help herself.

V’tinari turned that stony gaze on her. Aliss held out as long as she could, but the Weyrleader was clearly more practiced than she was at outstaring people. “Joke, sir,” she said at last.

“Ah, of course,” he said. “Do tell me when you feel another coming on.” He turned back to the fidgeting Vitor. “Now, don’t be upset, Vitor – I’m quite glad N’rth made the decision to bring you to my Weyr.”

Vitor looked up, his expression absolutely baffled. “You – are, sir? Even with – with what j-just happened?”

“Oh, half of the boys and girls that have been retrieved by my riders will not Impress,” V’tinari said carelessly. “I wish they’d all give such clear signs of their unsuitableness for the post so we don’t have to waste time putting them on the sands. You, Vitor – you I can place in your appropriate position right away.”

“I’m willing to do anything, Weyrleader,” Vitor said with what he thought was a helpful smile but was more a grimace. Aliss resisted the urge to slap her hand against her face. That sentence probably condemned the poor fellow to emptying latrines and spreading dragon dung over nearby Hold fields.

“Excellent! You’re Aliss’s new parole officer.”

. . .what?!

Vitor seemed as startled as she – probably more, as he hadn’t guessed his companion in the room even needed a parole officer. “Ah – I – I b-beg your pardon, Weyrleader?”

“Whatever for? Having a panic attack isn’t a prosecutable offense,” V’tinari replied, voice smooth as fresh-churned butter. “V’mes would have you in his charge if it were. And as far as I know, you haven’t killed anyone like your new charge.”

Vitor’s eyes snapped to her, wide with shock. Aliss winced. “I would like to point out again that the man in questioned killed my entire family when my sister refused to pretend it was a dragon’s mating flight with him,” she said.

“Yes, and we have ample evidence of his other – activities,” V’tinari said, tiptoeing delicately around what those activities actually were. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, they were wretched. “But the fact is that you have killed someone, so we can’t exactly allow you to roam free. Vitor will keep an eye on you on his new assignment, and you can pay back society by proving your worth as his assistant.”

Now Aliss and Vitor shared a baffled look. “I’m afraid I’m not following, Weyrleader,” Vitor said with considerably more caution in his voice.

“Do you know how large the island the Weyr and its tithed holds occupies?” Both young people shook their heads. “10,000 miles across at our last estimate, and our last estimate is very poor. We need someone to take a proper measure of the place – to draw maps of the best roads between holds and weyr, to find where the medicinal and food plants grow, and to make sure no dangerous fauna lurks in the darkness waiting to reduce our rather meager numbers even further.” He fixed Vitor with a look. “From what I understand, Everglot Sea Hold prospers at least in part because of your skill in drawing maps. I’d like you to put that skill to work for me.”

“You – want me – to map your island?” Vitor said slowly.

“I see you understand me perfectly! And to send back regular reports of whatever animal and plant life you discover. Anything that might be useful to the running of the Weyr.” He smiled suddenly, something that actually looked like a genuine smile. “We have a number of fire lizards on our beaches, by the way. Any eggs that you could secure would be invaluable. And should you wish to take one or two for yourself. . .well, the dragons assure me you would be perfect for the ‘little ones.’”

“And – I’m expected to help him?” Aliss said, staring. This – this didn’t sound like a punishment at all. It sounded like paradise. Yes, she’d have to put up with Vitor, but – he didn’t seem a bad sort when he wasn’t screaming and comparing the cold dark of between to his worst nightmares. Surely this couldn’t be how he intended to see justice done. . . .

Unless he believed you when you said you’d already done it.

#weyr wednesday #fandom weyr #pern #Discworld #oh dear I probably slaughtered Vetinari #he's hard to write!#I borrowed the 'joke' exchange from Going Postal #it felt appropriate here too #and trying to remember to 'misspell' their names was tough too #stupid Pern having weird naming conventions #still it was an interesting writing exercise #I hope you all enjoy it #queued

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readbookywooks · 7 years

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It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn’t have that much, but stood there anyway.

Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still. The only reason he didn’t move was for fear of treading on something worse.

Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice said: ‘Oook.’

Rincewind looked up.

The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw.

The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested that the word ‘huddled’ would be more appropriate. They had lodged -all right, they had perched - on every crumbling ledge.

They were observing him, in some covert way that had nothing to do with the normal six senses. Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that they were trying to tell him something.

There was another flash. He realised that it was magic from the sourcerer’s tower, reflected down from the distant hole that led on to the roof.

At least it enabled him to identify Wuffles, who was wheezing at his right foot. That was a bit of a relief. Now if he could just put a name to the soft, repetitive slithering noise near his left ear …

There was a further obliging flash, which found him looking directly into the little yellow eyes of the Patrician, who was clawing patiently at the side of his glass jar. It was a gentle, mindless scrabbling, as if the little lizard wasn’t particularly trying to get out but was just vaguely interested in seeing how long it would take to wear the glass away.

Rincewind looked down at the pear-shaped bulk of the Librarian.

‘There’s thousands of them,’ he whispered, his voice being sucked away and silenced by the massed ranks of books. ‘How did you get them all in here?’

‘Oook oook.’

‘They what?’

‘Oook,’ repeated the Librarian, making vigorous flapping motions with his bald elbows.

‘Fly?’

‘Oook.’

‘Can they do that?’

‘Oook,’ nodded the Librarian.

‘That must have been pretty impressive. I’d like to see that one day.’

‘Oook.’

Not every book had made it. Most of the important grimoires had got out but a seven-volume herbal had lost its index to the flames and many a trilogy was mourning for its lost volume. Quite a few books had scorch marks on their bindings; some had lost their covers, and trailed their stitching unpleasantly on the floor.

A match flared, and pages rippled uneasily around the walls. But it was only the Librarian, who lit a candle and shambled across the floor at the base of a menacing shadow big enough to climb skyscrapers. He had set up a rough table against one wall and it was covered with arcane tools, pots of rare adhesives and a bookbinder’s vice which was already holding a stricken folio. A few weak lines of magic fire crawled across it.

The ape pushed the candlestick into Rincewind’s hand, picked up a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, and bent low over the trembling book. Rincewind went pale.

‘Um,’ he said, ‘er, do you mind if I go away? I faint at the sight of glue.’

The Librarian shook his head and jerked a preoccupied thumb towards a tray of tools.

‘Oook,’ he commanded. Rincewind nodded miserably, and obediently handed him a pair of long-nosed scissors. The wizard winced as a couple of damaged pages were snipped free and dropped to the floor.

‘What are you doing to it?’ he managed.

‘Oook.’

‘An appendectomy? Oh.’

The ape jerked his thumb again, without looking up. Rincewind fished a needle and thread out of the ranks on the tray and handed them over. There was silence broken only by the scritching sound of thread being pulled through paper until the Librarian straightened up and said:

‘Oook.’

Rincewind pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the ape’s brow.

‘Oook.’

‘Don’t mention it. Is it - going to be all right?’

The Librarian nodded. There was also a general,

almost inaudible sigh of relief from the tier of books above them.

Rincewind sat down. The books were frightened. In fact they were terrified. The presence of the sourcerer made their spines creep, and the pressure of their attention closed in around him like a vice.

‘All right,’ he mumbled, ‘but what can I do about it?’

‘Oook.’ The Librarian gave Rincewind a look that would have been exactly like a quizzical look over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles, if he had been wearing any, and reached for another broken book.

‘I mean, you know I’m no good at magic.’

‘Oook.’

‘The sourcery that’s about now, it’s terrible stuff. I mean, it’s the original stuff, from right back in the dawn of time. Or around breakfast, at any rate.’

‘Oook.’

‘It’ll destroy everything eventually, won’t it?’

‘Oook.’

‘It’s about time someone put a stop to this sourcery, right?’

‘Oook.’

‘Only it can’t be me, you see. When I came here I thought I could do something, but that tower! It’s so big! It must be proof against all magic! If really powerful wizards won’t do anything about it, how can I?’

‘Oook,’ agreed the Librarian, sewing a ruptured spine.

‘So, you see, I think someone else can save the world this time. I’m no good at it.’

The ape nodded, reached across and lifted Rincewind’s hat from his head.

‘Hey!’

The Librarian ignored him, picked up a pair of shears.

‘Look, that’s my hat, if you don’t mind don’t you dare do that to my-’

He leapt across the floor and was rewarded with a thump across the side of the head, which would have astonished him if he’d had time to think about it; the Librarian might shuffle around the place like a good-natured wobbly balloon, but underneath that oversized skin was a framework of superbly-cantilevered bone and muscle that could drive a fistful of calloused knuckles through a thick oak plank. Running into the Librarian’s arm was like hitting a hairy iron bar.

Wuffles started to bounce up and down, yelping with excitement.

Rincewind screamed a hoarse, untranslatable yell of fury, bounced off the wall, snatched up a fallen rock as a crude club, kicked forward and stopped dead.

The Librarian was crouched in the centre of the floor with the shears touching-but not yet cutting-the hat.

And he was grinning at Rincewind.

They stood like a frozen tableau for some seconds. Then the ape dropped the shears, flicked several imaginary flecks of dust off the hat, straightened the point, and placed it on Rincewind’s head.

A few shocked moments after this Rincewind realised that he was holding up, at arm’s length, a very large and extremely heavy rock. He managed to force it away on one side before it recovered from the shock and remembered to fall on him.

‘I see,’ he said, sinking back against the wall and rubbing his elbows. And all that’s supposed to tell me something, is it? A moral lesson, let Rincewind confront his true self, let him work out what he’s really prepared to fight for. Eh? Well, it was a very cheap trick. And I’ve news for you. If you think it worked-’ he snatched the hat brim - ‘if you think it worked. If you think I’ve. You’ve got another thought. Listen, it’s. If you think.’

His voice stuttered into silence. Then he shrugged.

‘All right. But when you get down to it, what can I actually do?’

The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said ‘oook’, that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard in a jar were optional extras.

Rincewind felt a slight pressure on his foot. Wuffles, who was extremely slow on the uptake, had fastened his toothless gums on the toe of Rincewind’s boot and was giving it a vicious suck.

He picked the little dog up by the scruff of its neck and the bristly stub that, for the want of a better word, it called its tail, and gently lifted it sideways.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’d better tell me what’s been happening here.’

From the Carrack Mountains, overlooking the vast cold Sto Plain in the middle of which Ankh-Morpork sprawled like a bag of dropped groceries, the view was particularly impressive. Mishits and ricochets from the magical battle were expanding outwards and upwards, in a bowl-shaped cloud of curdled air at the heart of which strange lights flashed and sparkled.

The roads leading away from it were packed with refugees, and every inn and wayside tavern was crowded out. Or nearly every one.

No-one seemed to want to stop at the rather pleasant little pub nestling among trees just off the road to Quirm. It wasn’t that they were frightened to go inside, it was just that, for the moment, they weren’t being allowed to notice it.

There was a disturbance in the air about half a mile away and three figures dropped out of nowhere into a thicket of lavender.

They lay supine in the sunshine among the broken, fragrant branches, until their sanity came back. Then Creosote said, ‘Where are we, do you suppose?’

‘It smells like someone’s underwear drawer,’ said Conina.

‘Not mine,’ said Nijel, firmly.

He eased himself up gently and added, ‘Has anyone seen the lamp?’

‘Forget it. It’s probably been sold to build a wine-bar,’ said Conina.

Nijel scrabbled around among the lavender stems until his hands found something small and metallic.

‘Got it!’ he declared.

‘Don’t rub it!’ said the other two, in harmony. They were too late anyway, but that didn’t much matter, because all that happened when Nijel gave it a cautious buff was the appearance of some small smoking red letters in mid-air.

‘ ‘Hi”,’ Nijel read aloud. ‘ “Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.” ‘ He added, ‘You know, I think he’s a bit over-committed.’

Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.

‘We ought to get down there as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘It’s very important.’

‘Why?’ said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn’t really restored him to his former easygoing nature.

Conina opened her mouth, and - quite unusually for her - shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.

#Sourcery

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piratekenway · 12 years

Text

FIC: you won't find faith or hope down a telescope

Sob, John, whyyy. Let me hug you and make you tea and drape a shock blanket over you. And before you ask, yes, this is post-Reichenbach and set in "All Roads Lead to Ankh-Morpork". Enjoy the angst.

Title: You Won't Find Faith or Hope Down a Telescope Summary: Time won't be able to heal some wounds, but at least, he's trying. John, in the aftermath of the Reichenbach Fall, picks up the pieces of his life. Rating: T. Warnings: Post-Reichenbach feels. Also, someone do some Britpicking and betaing for me, this is my first time writing in John's POV and Lestrade. And, like, a bunch of other things. Please, somebody, help. Especially with the police rankings, whyyy.

The first few days after Sherlock jumps off the roof, John feels like he's in a dream. That's really all he can call it: a dream, hazy and half-remembered.

People come and go to pay their condolences. Unfortunately, some of those are particularly stupid, with phrases like, "he was a fake, you should just accept it and move on" and "don't feel bad about not seeing through his act". He shoves those people out the door and throws their well-meaning gifts into the bin.

He was real. That brilliance couldn't have been faked. It's impossible.

He leaves one last post on his blog, after some girl shows up at his flat to tell him that it's okay, because Sherlock's gone and he doesn't have to mourn a fake like him. (He shoves her out the door too.)

He was my best friend and I'll always believe in him.

And somehow, it starts a movement.

Sherlock would be amused.

Lestrade shows up at his flat one day, bearing a few bottles of whiskey and two shot glasses.

John almost slams the door in his face.

"Hey, hey," the other man says, managing to keep the door just a crack open, "I've got whiskey."

He stares at him, then says, carefully, "Aren't you supposed to be at the Met?"

"Suspension," Lestrade sighs. "I let Sherlock onto too many cases, according to the super. I say he can go stuff it up his arse." Then he lowers his voice to add, "And honestly, I've been wanting to punch him in the face for a while."

John chuckles, and it's a surprise how easily it comes, despite the fact that he still somewhat resents Lestrade for his part in the entire fiasco, even if he knows it wasn't his fault. "Come in, then," he says.

A few hours later, they are completely, totally smashed, and have finished two bottles of whiskey between themselves.

"He was a complete git," John says.

"I know," Lestrade replies.

"And an arse."

"I know."

"Bloody brilliant, though."

"Oh, gods, I know." Lestrade downs his shot. "Did I ever tell you about how I first met him?"

John raises an eyebrow. "Don't think so," he replies. "How did you first meet?"

"I was a sergeant at the time," he begins. "There was this particularly hard case, with an old man and a waiter as a prime suspect. We didn't have enough evidence to go on, though, and we were just about to close it when this kid, who's most definitely high on something, charges in and yells at us for not noticing his watch. Needless to say, we got him."

Of course. Only Sherlock would barge in on a crime scene while high and yell at the police for failing to notice some minute detail.

"Of course," he says, and downs his own shot. The alcohol slides down easier now than at the start of their meeting.

"We had to drag him in, too," Lestrade continues, pouring himself another shot. "He had coke on him and was higher than a bloody kite on a windy day. Kept talking about skulls and stuff when he wasn't deducing people. That's how I know he wasn't a fake--no one can fake being high in front of an entire police force. We just know."

John is silent for the next few shots, then, finally says, "I miss him."

"Me too."

And that is when the last of his resentment towards Lestrade evaporates.

They spend the rest of the night talking about...well, everything. About Sherlock. About the ex-wife and how Lestrade is coping. About Anderson and Donovan (John still doesn't know if he'll be able to keep himself from punching them if he ever runs into them). About how half of the Met is lobbying to keep him on. About the "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" campaign. About how people are beginning to reexamine Kitty Reilly's news article now that William de Worde has written his piece.

"That was brave of him," John says.

"Agreed," Lestrade replies. "You don't find reporters like him 'round, these days."

"Yeah," he says, not really listening.

Time passes, and slowly things get...well, better. He goes to work, he eats, he sleeps, he checks on Mrs. Hudson, he dates people, he hangs out with Mike and Greg and, if he finds the time, Henry Knight and some of their former clients. Occasionally, when he feels like it, he takes a case.

Usually they're cases he thinks would interest Sherlock. Surprisingly they don't result in his chasing people halfway across London, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, his limp is back with a vengeance. On the other, he misses the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the danger, the excitement.

This one is an exception.

He's racing through the alleys, just like before, and he can almost hear Sherlock's voice in his ears, yelling at him to hurry up or they'll lose the culprit. Adrenaline is rushing through his body, and he's pretty sure he's left his cane somewhere, but that doesn't matter now.

Gunshots ring out, and he's suddenly keenly aware of pain somewhere near his stomach.

Oh, great. He's managed to avoid being shot at for months, and the one time he leaves his gun at his flat he gets shot in the freaking stomach.

He manages to get to his phone, dial a number, and slur, "Help me."

He passes out, then and there.

"...okay? John, are you okay? Listen to me, you'll be fine."

Oh, hell. Not this again. Everything's a blur, and it takes him a moment to remember that he's been shot, and that he's probably delirious. Probably why he's imagining a blurred outline of a dead man's face.

"I've just texted Lestrade, he's coming soon. Stay here, John, don't go yet."

"Parker," he manages to say. "Is he caught?"

"Oh, yes," comes the reply. "Don't worry, there'll be an ambulance soon. I can't stay long, I'm already risking everything as it is."

"The hell...?"

And then everything fades again.

The next thing he sees is a worried Lestrade.

"You okay, John?" he asks.

"Think I saw Sherlock," is his answer.

"I'll take that as a no, then." He lifts him up, and suddenly he realizes that one, Sherlock has been dead for over a year now, and two, there is no way that he could've somehow managed to find him before he bled out in an alleyway.

Then again, there's no way Lestrade could have found him in time either. Not without help.

"Someone sent an anonymous tip," he says as they ride in the ambulance. "All it said was where you were and that you were in danger."

"Who?"

"I've got no idea," he admits. "By the time I got there you were bandaged up. It was a sloppy job, but I think it saved your life."

"Who do you think it was, then?" It can't be Sherlock, that's for sure. He's buried six feet under and has been for over a year.

"One of his homeless network, probably," he tells him.

He thinks back to earlier, when he heard Sherlock's voice telling him to stay.

Was that really a hallucination? It's possible, but a part of him is adamant that it wasn't. And here he thought he'd outgrown wishful thinking.

Life goes on. It always does. The science equipment gets donated to a nearby school, the skull gets relocated to the top of the fridge, the science experiments get binned, the mess gets cleaned up somewhat.

But neither John nor Mrs. Hudson can bring themselves to throw away anything more of Sherlock's things. So the violin stays with him.

He's not very good at it, of course, at least at first. Then he stumbles on a few tutorial videos on YouTube, and soon enough he's good enough that he doesn't scare the cats or wake anyone up with his playing.

He knows Sherlock would be annoyed at him, but he isn't here, and John will take what he can get.

He plays on.

One thing that's different from the both of them is that while his friend preferred classical pieces, he finds that he likes slow songs from more recent times. He's had to practice this one for a few times, but he thinks it sounds all right.

What was the title again...oh, yes. "Science and Faith".

"Wait, what?"

Sarah shrugs. "It's an opportunity for you," she tells him. "You'll get out of London!"

"And into Ankh-Morpork!" He's sure he sounds horrified. He actually is, sort of. William's a perfectly nice person, and they've even kept in touch, but from what he's heard, Ankh-Morpork is not a perfectly nice place.

"So?"

"I'm not exactly keen on the stuff that happens there," he explains.

"You'll be fine," Sarah sighs. "Look, it's been three years. I know you've been doing a good job, but you need to get out of London for a while."

"I don't exactly want to," he protests. "I'm fine!"

"I signed you up already," she tells him. "It'll only be for six months, at most."

Six months.

In Ankh-Morpork.

Oh, bloody hell.

He bumps into a young man in a tatty gray suit, on his way to the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Strangely enough, there's something about his face that makes him not stand out in John's mind, something about the way he talks that has him suspicious.

Ankh-Morpork, for the most part, isn't exactly what he expected. Sure, there's the problem of the licensed thieves, but otherwise it's a lot more pleasant than he expected.

He wonders, though, just why he thinks he can occasionally see a familiar man with ginger hair stalking around the morgue, or why he can hear a familiar voice.

He finds out soon enough.

Fin

#sherlock #discworld #all roads lead to ankh morpork #well i'm not satisfied with this one #but it's a lead up #and besides i'll edit it when i put it up on ao3 #owww my fingers hurt #and i'm not even sure if this is worth it #ankh morpork is a git okay #my reichenfeels they are overflowing #john just might punch sherlock #or maybe kiss him #i've got my slash goggles on after all

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piratekenway · 12 years

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FIC: whatever remains must be the truth, part 3

Title: Whatever Remains Must Be The Truth, part 3 Summary: William pays his respects to Sherlock Holmes, runs into a cousin of Mr. Wintler who shares his enthusiasm for humorous vegetables, and notices a man in a grey hoodie. Rating: T Warnings: Reichenbach spoilers, yes. But not much in the way of real warnings, really. Also, Britpickers and betas are very much appreciated. Plus there is a reference to a line from Scandal in here, and of course, an assumption on William's part that is not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either.

"So, what was he like?" William asks, a while after the probably-an-Assassin's attempt on his life.

"An arrogant, insufferable, condescending, manic, brilliant genius," is Dr. Watson's reply, and he's taken aback by the affection, venom, grief, anger and sheer pleasure in his tone. "I almost thought he'd outlive God, trying to have the last word. He would tell you everything about your life within five minutes of your first meeting, and then insult you in every way possible. I wouldn't have put it past him to have come up with new ways of insulting people either."

"Is that so," William weakly says. "Interesting."

He's starting to have a good idea of why people would believe, wholeheartedly, that Sherlock Holmes was a lie. Such an intelligent man, with an ego the size of Unseen University's Library and the low opinion of other people to go along with it? They'd have taken the first chance they had to take him down, to believe that he wasn't uncommon, that he was just like them. Just an ordinary man, pretending to be extraordinary.

"Kept body parts in the kitchen," Dr. Watson says, and William realizes that he's not talking to him, precisely, and that they've just reached the graveyard Holmes is buried in. "And sometimes he played violin at two A.M."

"It doesn't sound that bad," William remarks.

"Off-key."

"Oh." How did he even put up with him? he wonders. I would've moved out the first time.

Then he thinks, Of course.

It is, if he could say so himself, brilliant. But of course he doesn't mention it, because Dr. Watson might have heard all the sympathies and "oh, it's okay"s already. Instead he just gives him a meaningful look that, sadly, goes unnoticed. Or maybe Dr. Watson just chose to ignore it.

Either way, William feels a bit put out.

Dr. Watson greets the graveyard's keeper with a cheery "Morning," and gets a, "Top o' the mornin' to ya too, Doc," in return. In contrast, William's polite "Good morning," gets a chilly "Off the graves, lad."

Bit rude, really, and now he feels even more put out. But he soldiers on, and catches up to the good doctor.

He's a bit surprised to see Sherlock's grave--a simple marble headstone, with the name "SHERLOCK HOLMES" etched in gold. He's not sure, but he pictured, from Dr. Watson's description, something that reflected the detective's personality: impressive, arrogant, larger than life. Maybe even some sort of fancy quote, like, "Here lies the greatest detective the world has ever known."

Instead, it's gold letters on black marble. And, yet, it seems so fitting.

William gets an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he watches the doctor stand in front of the grave. He looks so tired, so broken, so alone, and he isn't sure what to do. No one's ever told him what to do, really, in situations like this, where you think you've intruded on something particularly private yet don't know how to remedy it in any way.

He takes the safe solution, and stands off to the side, watches as Dr. Watson tells the grave...things, mostly. Little updates that don't really impact his story, little tidbits that give him a glimpse into Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. They are small and supposedly insignificant, and aren't really part of the big capital-S Story, yet in their own way, they have a huge importance.

At the end of it, Dr. Watson pats the marble headstone.

"All right?" William finds himself asking. "Oh--Oh, gods, I'm sorry--"

"It's fine," Dr. Watson says. "It's...it's okay. I'm fine."

His voice cracks on the last word.

Would I act that way if Sacharissa was called a fake and committed suicide? William thinks, and feels a pang of sympathy. No. No, I'd be worse off.

It's a while after Dr. Watson leaves, promising to meet him tomorrow, that William walks up to the grave as well. He doesn't pat it--too personal--but he does kneel down to place a flower.

"I hear you're an arrogant sod," he begins, "and an insufferable genius. I don't know whether we'd have gotten along if I met you while you were still alive, and we probably wouldn't, but I do know one thing, Mr. Holmes.

"I know you're innocent. And I'll prove it. I bloody well will. I'll dig out the truth and bring it to light, and at least, at the very least, your name will be cleared. For all that Dr. Watson's told me you've done for others, even if it was just to stave off boredom, you at least deserve that much."

He stands up, turns around, and walks away, and leaves the grave behind.

It's as he's walking back to the hotel that he bumps into someone. Or, well, to be exact, he collides into a brick wall, except brick walls don't move. And they certainly don't wear green-and-purple monstrosities with yellow-and-red trousers.

...who even wears those these days? Outside of the Fools' Guild, anyway.

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry," a voice booms, and William thinks, Oh, yes, there go my eardrums. "I wasn't looking! Clumsy of me, really..."

"No," he manages, "it's fine. It's fine, really."

He staggers to his feet and almost chokes back a groan.

Oh, he'd recognize that face anywhere.

"Mr. Wintler," he begins, "I thought you weren't allowed to travel to London."

The man gives him a blank stare, then laughs. "Oh, but I've always been in London!" he exclaims. "You must be mistaking me for my cousin."

...oh, gods, Wintler has a cousin. Well, it isn't like they probably share the same poor sense of humorous vegetables in common, right?

"And you," Wintler's cousin continues, "must be William de Worde, right? My cousin's told me all about you! You're famous in our family, the bloke who started the Ankh-Morpork times!"

"I'm flattered, really," William weakly replies. "But I should really go, I have to get back to my hotel..."

"Don't go yet!" the other man bellows, and again his eardrums are ringing with the sheer force. Doesn't he know how to turn down the volume on his voice? "It's just that I've got a really funny leek for you..."

I really should've expected that.

"Actually, sir," he finally says, "I'm not here for humorous vegetables, I'm here for the Sherlock Holmes story. Please dump your funny leek somewhere, I've had quite enough of vegetables for a lifetime, especially ones that have a silly shape or a human face."

Unfortunately, the man is, after all, built like a brick wall, and could probably mess up his head and break his arms if he so chooses, and somehow the words get rearranged and scrambled from brain to mouth into, "Erm, really?"

The man beams. "Yep!"

"Well, unfortunately," he manages to say, "I'm rather peckish right now, and whatever vegetable you might have may just be eaten. And I don't have a camera so I can take a picture of it before I do, so. You can save it for later, perhaps?"

He silently revels in his victory as the man sighs. "Okay," he says. "I'll bring a camera tomorrow, then! And then you can put it in your newspaper, and we can all have a laugh the next family reunion."

"Yes," he weakly says. "That's...rather thoughtful. Thank you. Please go, though, I'd like to go back to my hotel."

It's a few minutes after his unfortunate encounter with Mr. Wintler's cousin that he realizes he's being followed. And not by the cousin--he'd have noticed almost immediately. No, it's by someone else.

Maybe he's just being paranoid. Maybe he's just imagining things. Maybe it's just sheer coincidence, really.

"Yeah," he mutters to himself, glancing at a glass window and seeing a man in a grey hoodie. "And maybe Commander Vimes is going to willingly invite me to a dinner party when I get back."

It's not coincidence, he knows. It's not paranoia or an active imagination, either. He's a reporter, he can't afford to let his imagination get away from him on the job, especially not right now. Thus, he's being followed.

Bloody hell.

He sucks in a deep breath. He needs to lose this man somehow, he's getting on his nerves and setting off all his alarm bells, for some reason.

So he ducks into a crowd, makes his way through (and keeps his personal belongings safe) and enters the hotel.

All in all, it's a successful day, but he still can't shake the feeling he's being watched, even if the man in the grey hoodie doesn't seem to be around.

Maybe his luck is starting to run out.

#sherlock #discworld #whatever remains must be the truth #all roads lead to ankh morpork #owww my fingers hurt

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piratekenway · 12 years

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FIC: find out who's there for me

Just re-watched A Scandal in Belgravia, and now I am entertaining the idea that Irene and Adora Belle are cousins.

This is the result. Please don't kill me.

Title: Find Out Who's There For Me Summary: Irene Adler and Adora Belle Dearheart are closer than anyone might think. You don't just abandon family, after all, especially not your favorite cousins. Rating: T. This is Irene Adler we're talking about. Warnings: Allusions to Irene's job, and if you're really into it, maybe some subtext between Adora and Irene, but other than that, not much. Also, if someone wants to correct my math, please do, I absolutely stink at that area.

Adora Belle is eight when she first meets her ten-year-old cousin Irene. The clacks has just taken off, the Grand Trunk is making money in both the clacks and this Internet business, and she's growing tired of watching the pony prance around.

"You're new," she says to the girl, who is making her doll dance.

"I am," the girl says. "I'm Irene."

Adora thinks it over, then carefully says, "You're not gonna laugh, right?"

"I'll try," Irene replies.

"My name's Adora Belle," she tells her, and Irene only gives her a strange, unreadable look that suggests she's pitying her. And Adora hates being pitied, especially over her name.

"That's a funny name," Irene comments, a corner of her mouth turning up in a smirk, but to her credit, at least, she doesn't giggle. And despite the funny name comment and the half-smirk, Adora can't help but think maybe, just maybe, she can bear hanging out with this girl.

"I'm going to work with clay someday," she says to Irene one day, after her father takes her to the university. "I'm going to make clay men."

"You don't know how to make pottery," Irene replies, as she ties her hair up in a bun.

"I'll learn," Adora stubbornly counters.

"Well, we're going to be busy when we grow up," the older girl remarks. "I'll be an actress, and you'll be a...a...sculptor?"

"Maybe," she allows.

"Are you sure?" Irene wonders. "I've seen your drawings. They're terrible."

Adora grins. That's what she likes about her cousin--honest, intelligent, ambitious, willing to do anything to get her way. She's seen the older boys fall all over themselves to give Irene something, like their gifts will make them stand out any more in her mind. She's seen her give them a smile, enjoying the power she holds over them.

"I'll work with clay someday," she says. "I don't know how, but I will." She thinks the next part over, then, resolutely, says, "And I'm not going to fall in love either, if every boy is an idiot like you say they are."

"Good for you, Adora." She presses an affectionate kiss to the top of her forehead, and Adora revels in the fact that she gets to see this tender side of her cousin more than most. "Good for you."

Years pass. Irene moves away to England, but she visits every so often. Dreams of sculptures and audiences transform as they grow, into dreams of clay men and riding crops.

"Really, Adora," Irene remarks. "Golems? I thought you wanted to be a sculptor someday."

"Really, Irene," Adora mimicks. "Blackmailing people? I thought you wanted to be an actress."

"Actresses don't get to misbehave," the older girl shoots back. "How's your little golem research moving along?"

"I know a bit," she says. "They have words in their head, that tell them what to do and keep them alive. Like a brain and heart combined. They work without complaint, without rest. And they don't lie."

"How straightforward," Irene notes. "I suppose that's why people don't like them, then?"

"People are stupid," Adora brazenly says. "Golems are fantastic creatures, they just don't see the world like we do."

"And you see the world like they do?" her cousin asks.

"I try." She rounds on her then, her stare intense, and almost hopes it bores into her older cousin's stubborn head. "All this blackmail, all this misbehaving won't get you anywhere but dead."

"It's for protection," Irene tells her, her head held up, wearing her haughtiness like a cloak. "Honestly, how many times do I have to tell you this?"

"Maybe it protects you now," Adora says, her voice low, almost a growl, "but one day it'll turn on you. One day, you'll slip up, and your protection won't do a thing to save you."

"It won't happen. I'm sure of it."

And there is that arrogance, that haughtiness, that surety that always grates on her nerves. Irene is older than she is, but sometimes Adora wonders just who is the wiser between them, with the older girl's propensity for blackmail--no, sorry, protection--and causing scandals everywhere she goes, making boys and girls alike fall in love with her. All this misbehaving is going to get Irene in trouble someday, if not soon, and if not by Adora's hands, then by the hands of someone far worse.

Far, far worse.

"We lost everything," Adora whispers, the day after her world collapses in front of her.

"Not everything," Irene says, and for once her cloak is lifted, for once she sounds tender. "You still have your pride. You're still breathing."

"That damn Reacher Gilt stole everything out from under us," she snarls. "I knew we shouldn't have trusted him."

"Oh, but he was clever, Adora," Irene approvingly says. "I'm almost impressed." Then her tone lowers to a soft, dangerous hiss. "But he messed with my cousin."

"Your little misbehavior won't work on him," Adora tells her. "He won't fall for it. And I won't let you. It's too dangerous."

"Since when have I let that stop me?" Irene asks.

"Since now," she snarls. "I don't like your little misbehaviors, but I do my best to tolerate them. But this, Irene, is not a simple kiss to photograph for protection. It won't be resolved with a crack of your whip or a flutter of your lashes. All those will do is get you in more trouble than you're used to."

"Don't you want to stop him?" her cousin asks.

"I do," Adora says. "But I don't know a way. I'll find one, though. There has to be one."

"Good luck, then."

"I didn't know you smoked."

Adora breathes in the smoke, lets the nicotine flood her body. She's never felt so alert, so alive. "If you kept in touch, you'll know I started two months ago."

"And you say the things I do are dangerous," Irene teases.

"Still do," Adora replies, blowing out the smoke. "John's going to start up another one."

"Really?" the older woman asks. "I always did think he was clever. Do you think he'll manage it?"

"He's been working on it for a while," Adora says. "It's about time."

"Yes," Irene agrees. "It is. Now, how's this little Golem Trust of yours?"

"It's going perfectly," she says, and she thinks her eyes must be sparkling, with the nicotine and the subject they've steered into.

"Besides the anti-golem graffiti?" Irene asks, and she stiffens. "Oh, don't act so surprised. I dropped by the office earlier, while you were out." She sighs. "People can be so dim sometimes."

"This is Ankh-Morpork," she says. "What were you expecting?"

Her brother falls, and with him, whatever innocence Adora had left falls as well.

"He killed him," she snarls. "I don't care what they say, Reacher Gilt killed my brother."

"It won't help now, Adora," Irene says. "Look, my offer's still open. Anytime you want--"

"No," she cuts her off. "I've just lost my brother, on top of everything else when the Grand Trunk was stolen. I'm not going to lose you as well."

She doesn't hear from her for a long while, after that.

"Trust me," Moist von Lipwig says, and Adora Belle Dearheart finds herself falling with every word he says. Even the lies, even the half-truths, even the mostly-a-truths.

Falling in love isn't as bad as her eight-year-old self once thought it was. In fact, it's almost as good as nicotine, if not better.

And if Moist is an idiot sometimes, well, he's her idiot.

Sherlock Holmes shoots to the top of the world in a few months, and Adora wonders just what it is about the detective that has her fiancee looking rather nostalgic. She can't help but feel a bit jealous about it.

Then, days after Moist's trial, Sherlock Holmes falls, like her brother.

Irene shows up at her doorstep one day, her newly-blonde hair down, wearing a modest white blouse and skinny jeans. Adora blinks at her when she opens the door.

"The outfit's unlike you," she remarks.

"Thank you," Irene replies.

"Care to explain?" she asks.

"Maybe," is the enigmatic response.

"Come in, then."

She told her. She told her that protection would turn on her someday. She'd known it would, the day Irene first misbehaved. She'd known someone would show up who wouldn't fall for her misbehaviors, who would be the first one the Woman fell for. And now, technically, her cousin is dead.

Technically, because she is sitting in her chair drinking tea, which is something definitely dead people do not do.

"So," she says, "what brings you here?"

"I'm in hiding," Irene--or, as her fake papers say, Ellen Pinner--replies. "But sooner or later, I'll need a job, a place to stay, while I figure out what to do next."

"Why come to me, then?" Adora asks. "I thought you didn't like golems."

"I never said I didn't," she responds, smiling that mysterious smile of hers. "Besides, you're one of the few people who aren't out to kill me."

"True," she allows. "As it happens, I've been needing an assistant..."

"You two," Moist begins, his gaze darting between the ginger-haired Sherlock and the blonde Irene, "know each other?"

"Intimately," Irene remarks.

"Something like that," Sherlock says.

Adora catches her cousin's nod and half-smirks, ushering her fiancee out the door.

The last thing she hears, before she shuts the door behind her, is Irene saying, "Well, Mr. Holmes. You gave me quite a scare."

Fin

#discworld #sherlock #all roads lead to ankh morpork #idk what did i just write #owww my fingers hurt #how does this even happen seriously #yep posting these out of order #whatcha gonna do about it

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