"The Victories of Pyrrhus" (A "Study in Crimson" Pirate AU story), Rated PG

[gardnerhill]

Title: The Victories of Pyrrhus
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (“A Study in Crimson” Pirate AU)
Pairing: None
Word Count: 4323
Rating: PG (violence, mention of violence)
Warning: Violence, implied violence
Summary: No Disney movie is complete without the villain’s big musical number.
Author's Notes: Created as a JWP 2014 prize for maestress83: "I

Comments

[gardnerhill]

It's downright terrifying, delving into the thought processes of someone that sociopathic and amoral. (I used Dick Cheney as a model - a real-life guy who lied my country into a needless war, caused untold damage, death, destruction, debt, and loss in two nations ... and all so his company would make a few extra billions to throw on top of the billions they already had. Every time I have trouble with a villain, I remember that Dick Cheney is a real person.)

Poor Watson would be at the center of a piratical version of a French farce, wouldn't he? Shear-Lock wants to keep him as a companion as much as a surgeon and quartermaster; the Adder wants his expertise and possible fighting skills; Moriarty wants to turn him in for the reward.

Yes, I did have this idea of Moriarty sending the Adder to ruin Sherlock's strikes to smear his reputation as a privateer who follows the rules, before I did "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Moriarty isn't a dashing villain or a meek mathematics professor, he's a brilliant sociopath, a pirate whose treasure is power rather than wealth, since he doesn't understand the concept of fellow-feeling for another person. (In WITHOUT A CLUE, he's baldly called "that homicidal maniac" by Kincaid.)