Catch-up: The Speckled Band, The Stockbroker's Clerk, A Study in Scarlet

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Finally back from vacation and over jetlag enough to be coherent. Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes! Special thanks also need to go out to methylviolet10b for holding down the fort while I was away and to tweedisgood for meeting me in London for dim sum and fantastic conversation. This comm and all of you guys are the best! It's so good to be home.

Bit of a dark set for catching up, but hey, we read about murder, it's not all going to be sunshine. A hint: for those looking for sunshine, stick to the middle one for STOC. :)

Canon Story: The Speckled Band
Title: Strength
Author: spacemutineer
Rating: R
Warnings: implied rape
Author's Note: The poor Stoker girls, trapped with that lunatic Roylott. So creepy. Seems like even Holmes was holding back on what really happened behind those closed doors.

"...he hardly knows his own strength."

No, Roylott knew exactly his own strength in that moment. Indeed, that was the point. The angle and pattern of bruising could mean nothing less: up-facing fingertip impressions made forcing her arms above her head, and the wider, flatter marks on the sides of her hands left when he crushed them against the headboard.

---

Canon Story: The Stockbroker's Clerk
Title: Return
Author: spacemutineer
Rating: G

"I trust that you don't consider your collection closed."
"Not at all. I should wish nothing better than to have some more of such experiences."
"To-day, for example?"
"Yes, to-day, if you like."
"And as far off as Birmingham?"
"Certainly, if you wish it."

"...if you like." "...if you wish it."

I liked nothing more. I wished for nothing else.

Much later, when I was the one away and missing for far, far too long, I wondered what Watson would say upon my return. Three months apart or three years apart, his answer remained gloriously the same.

"When you like and where you like."

---

Canon Story: A Study in Scarlet
Title: Stranger
Author: spacemutineer
Rating: PG-13

I was no stranger to death, my enemy in a long war fought on dusty battlefields and candlelit bedsides. No, I was death's intimate then, but it was my first brush with murder. After all I'd seen, somehow I thought it would be the same, that it would make sense to me. I never made that mistake again.