Fic: In Conclusion, Let Me Just Say This
Title: In Conclusion, Let Me Just Say This
Author: nirejseki
For: unsettledink
Rating: PG-13
Prompts Used/Author's Notes: "something smoking with bloodied palms - something where one of the angsts about wanting the other, and there is no happy ending"
Summary: Coward comes to a conclusion about how he wants the rest of his life to go
The gun left powder burns in his hands; his hands, which were raw and bleeding from clutching at the gun for hours - days - forever - from having climbed the window and waited, patiently, for a chance to prove that to kill a great detective all you need to do is to plan nothing. No hints that would alert the gigantic intellect, no subtle signs on the clothing or face or mind, nothing at all, just the decision one morning while staring at one’s hollow gaze in the mirror that one just didn’t want to put up with this anymore. He’d been acquitted of his involvement in the Blackwood affair - one dead body was enough to sate the public - but in the process quietly lost his job and his position in the Order. And more than that, he’d lost Henry. And that was everything, really. Everything he’d ever wanted and never had.
He rather liked looking at his hands now, though he’d hated to before when they were whole and perfect, fully healed without the slightest mark to the contrary. Now they were stained and marked, cut and bleeding and burnt, just like after a ritual where they’d cut deep into their palms to swear allegiance to England and magic and Blackwood, had held their hands over the ritual fire and rejoiced in the sizzle of the dripping blood. Blackwood had always become Henry after one of those, had taken him aside when he was still in the throes of ritual ecstasy, had smiled and petted him and bandaged his hands.
No one would bandage them now, Coward thought, at peace at least a little, as he waited for the doctor to come to his old friend’s room as he did every afternoon - after having abandoned the man he ought to have been loyal to for a woman, of all foolish things - waited for the inevitable gasp of disbelief, the cry of accepting realizing pain and the sharp hiss of the sword coming out of the cane -
And when it did, he would fire the bullet at the lump of powder that was central to the stuff he’d dusted all over the entire room, and take the three of them - Coward, the doctor, and the corpse that sprawled on the carpet plain to see - take all three of them straight to hell.
Coward didn’t mind.
After all, Henry would be waiting there.
Author: nirejseki
For: unsettledink
Rating: PG-13
Prompts Used/Author's Notes: "something smoking with bloodied palms - something where one of the angsts about wanting the other, and there is no happy ending"
Summary: Coward comes to a conclusion about how he wants the rest of his life to go
The gun left powder burns in his hands; his hands, which were raw and bleeding from clutching at the gun for hours - days - forever - from having climbed the window and waited, patiently, for a chance to prove that to kill a great detective all you need to do is to plan nothing. No hints that would alert the gigantic intellect, no subtle signs on the clothing or face or mind, nothing at all, just the decision one morning while staring at one’s hollow gaze in the mirror that one just didn’t want to put up with this anymore. He’d been acquitted of his involvement in the Blackwood affair - one dead body was enough to sate the public - but in the process quietly lost his job and his position in the Order. And more than that, he’d lost Henry. And that was everything, really. Everything he’d ever wanted and never had.
He rather liked looking at his hands now, though he’d hated to before when they were whole and perfect, fully healed without the slightest mark to the contrary. Now they were stained and marked, cut and bleeding and burnt, just like after a ritual where they’d cut deep into their palms to swear allegiance to England and magic and Blackwood, had held their hands over the ritual fire and rejoiced in the sizzle of the dripping blood. Blackwood had always become Henry after one of those, had taken him aside when he was still in the throes of ritual ecstasy, had smiled and petted him and bandaged his hands.
No one would bandage them now, Coward thought, at peace at least a little, as he waited for the doctor to come to his old friend’s room as he did every afternoon - after having abandoned the man he ought to have been loyal to for a woman, of all foolish things - waited for the inevitable gasp of disbelief, the cry of accepting realizing pain and the sharp hiss of the sword coming out of the cane -
And when it did, he would fire the bullet at the lump of powder that was central to the stuff he’d dusted all over the entire room, and take the three of them - Coward, the doctor, and the corpse that sprawled on the carpet plain to see - take all three of them straight to hell.
Coward didn’t mind.
After all, Henry would be waiting there.