Not ProsWatch Watch: Jack the Ripper - Part One
Well - that was good, wasn't it!
The idea of The Star as a "quality paper", and the beginnings of media pressure, and Kodai amongst the crowd with a touch of the Fagins about him... *g*
And our LC! I've not seen him stick his tongue out yet, as Bodie and Gavin Rumsey both do, but he's got a lovely twist of a smile on him, hasn't he... Hair today, gone tomorrow... *g* Now that was Doyle-worthy. *g*
And oooh, that black coach (not at all overdone, nope... *g*) - rather shiversome just the same, and the light on the cobbles, and the gaslights in the streets...
I was rather stoopidly screen-capped-out from finishing off last Not-ProsWatch Watch's Scarlet Pimpernel commentary tonight, so instead I had a go at rising to a challenge gently tossed in my direction by greengerbil this weekend - have I ever fancied writing fic for any other of LC or MS's characters? And I said I hadn't, and I wasn't sure I could, and so of course I had a little experimental go tonight, all unbetad and un-historically-checked and not feeling entirely in the character after just ninety minute or so, but... If you fancy hurling a cabbage or two, there's brief fic under the cut...
Towards Home
by Slantedlight
Dark, and the lamps guttering above. They shone warmly on the brickwork, reflecting the night, reflecting somehow the autumn that was coming: yellow-gold and brown, though there were blacker shadows in the distance, around corners, down sewers, along rooftops.
Footsteps...
Go home, he'd said, Get some sleep, George...
For sleep may knit the ravelled sleeve of care... That was poetry. Shakespeare, or Keats or somebody, or so his granny had said, sitting knitting in the corner, the creak-creak-creak of her chair rocking back and forth, the candle guttering on the mantlepiece above, shining warmly on her hair, on her yarn, though there were blacker shadows in the crevices behind her chair, the crannies.
He was tired, and he was sickened, and he couldn't go home.
"I won't tell your wife, George," he'd said, a laugh, a joke, a twinkle in his eye, "The Ten Bells..."
And his footsteps faltered, and he stood in front of it once more, and his eyes lifted themselves to the warm glow of the lamp outside, down to the light of the windows, checkered still where this one and that one had been boarded up, still waiting repair.
She'd had her throat slit, and her stomach opened, and the skin of it pulled back, and...
And he was Sergeant Godley of Scotland Yard, and he'd seen it all before.
Not that.
Go home, get some sleep...
"There's a smell in 'ere..."
The door of The Ten Bells opened suddenly, a shout of music and laughter in the night, and the couple who emerged paused to sway slowly, side by side, for just a moment as they determined their way in the night, back home perhaps, back to a bed or a mattress, or maybe somewhere darker than that. An alley, where the longest shadows stretched, reaching away from the autumn light of the lamps, into the rustles and breaths of deep night, of winter.
Temptation...
Movement in the shadows by the corner, a man walking slowly, boldly, turning into Commercial Street. Lamplight shone on his hair, and it was neither the summer gold of Elizabeth's, nor winter-dark like poor Mary Nicholls.
This man's hair glowed autumn-brown as he passed under the gaslight, bubbling in curls about his head, for he wore no hat. He wore no coat tails either, his jacket plain, and there was something about the way that he walked...
"I won't tell your wife, George..."
He lengthened his own step, following quietly along the street behind him, keeping his eyes on the flaps of the plain jacket where they lifted and fell with each stride taken. There was a ripeness there, a welcome...
The man hesitated at the corner by Watley's, as if he were about to look in the window, turned instead and disappeared into a narrow alley beside the building, away from the street, away from decent folk, away...
Go home....
"You'll find me a poor mark."
His voice was rich as autumn in the woods, there was a light glinting in his eyes.
He couldn't speak.
"Are you drunk? Or are you simple?"
Someone had beaten him, had left him with a crooked cheekbone, though it didn't seem to matter, not beneath those eyes, above that mouth.
"Neither," George said, and then it was too late, and he was reaching into his pocket for a coin, pressing it into a warm hand, leaning forwards, to that mouth, to that body, to someone who both knew and didn't know, and never would.
Home again, just once more, just tonight, and he would tell Abberline that he had slept in his own bed, a decent man, a credit to Scotland Yard.
Tomorrow.
The idea of The Star as a "quality paper", and the beginnings of media pressure, and Kodai amongst the crowd with a touch of the Fagins about him... *g*
And our LC! I've not seen him stick his tongue out yet, as Bodie and Gavin Rumsey both do, but he's got a lovely twist of a smile on him, hasn't he... Hair today, gone tomorrow... *g* Now that was Doyle-worthy. *g*
And oooh, that black coach (not at all overdone, nope... *g*) - rather shiversome just the same, and the light on the cobbles, and the gaslights in the streets...
I was rather stoopidly screen-capped-out from finishing off last Not-ProsWatch Watch's Scarlet Pimpernel commentary tonight, so instead I had a go at rising to a challenge gently tossed in my direction by greengerbil this weekend - have I ever fancied writing fic for any other of LC or MS's characters? And I said I hadn't, and I wasn't sure I could, and so of course I had a little experimental go tonight, all unbetad and un-historically-checked and not feeling entirely in the character after just ninety minute or so, but... If you fancy hurling a cabbage or two, there's brief fic under the cut...
Towards Home
by Slantedlight
Dark, and the lamps guttering above. They shone warmly on the brickwork, reflecting the night, reflecting somehow the autumn that was coming: yellow-gold and brown, though there were blacker shadows in the distance, around corners, down sewers, along rooftops.
Footsteps...
Go home, he'd said, Get some sleep, George...
For sleep may knit the ravelled sleeve of care... That was poetry. Shakespeare, or Keats or somebody, or so his granny had said, sitting knitting in the corner, the creak-creak-creak of her chair rocking back and forth, the candle guttering on the mantlepiece above, shining warmly on her hair, on her yarn, though there were blacker shadows in the crevices behind her chair, the crannies.
He was tired, and he was sickened, and he couldn't go home.
"I won't tell your wife, George," he'd said, a laugh, a joke, a twinkle in his eye, "The Ten Bells..."
And his footsteps faltered, and he stood in front of it once more, and his eyes lifted themselves to the warm glow of the lamp outside, down to the light of the windows, checkered still where this one and that one had been boarded up, still waiting repair.
She'd had her throat slit, and her stomach opened, and the skin of it pulled back, and...
And he was Sergeant Godley of Scotland Yard, and he'd seen it all before.
Not that.
Go home, get some sleep...
"There's a smell in 'ere..."
The door of The Ten Bells opened suddenly, a shout of music and laughter in the night, and the couple who emerged paused to sway slowly, side by side, for just a moment as they determined their way in the night, back home perhaps, back to a bed or a mattress, or maybe somewhere darker than that. An alley, where the longest shadows stretched, reaching away from the autumn light of the lamps, into the rustles and breaths of deep night, of winter.
Temptation...
Movement in the shadows by the corner, a man walking slowly, boldly, turning into Commercial Street. Lamplight shone on his hair, and it was neither the summer gold of Elizabeth's, nor winter-dark like poor Mary Nicholls.
This man's hair glowed autumn-brown as he passed under the gaslight, bubbling in curls about his head, for he wore no hat. He wore no coat tails either, his jacket plain, and there was something about the way that he walked...
"I won't tell your wife, George..."
He lengthened his own step, following quietly along the street behind him, keeping his eyes on the flaps of the plain jacket where they lifted and fell with each stride taken. There was a ripeness there, a welcome...
The man hesitated at the corner by Watley's, as if he were about to look in the window, turned instead and disappeared into a narrow alley beside the building, away from the street, away from decent folk, away...
Go home....
"You'll find me a poor mark."
His voice was rich as autumn in the woods, there was a light glinting in his eyes.
He couldn't speak.
"Are you drunk? Or are you simple?"
Someone had beaten him, had left him with a crooked cheekbone, though it didn't seem to matter, not beneath those eyes, above that mouth.
"Neither," George said, and then it was too late, and he was reaching into his pocket for a coin, pressing it into a warm hand, leaning forwards, to that mouth, to that body, to someone who both knew and didn't know, and never would.
Home again, just once more, just tonight, and he would tell Abberline that he had slept in his own bed, a decent man, a credit to Scotland Yard.
Tomorrow.