All-new (ACD-ish) Johnlock OS (split in two parts): Johnlock, teen and up audiences, ca. 4k. Endless thanks to @sanguinarysanguinity for the beta. Posted in @sherlockedcarmilla excellent collection.
#case fic #sherlock holmes is a bit not good #john watson is a saint #angst with a happy ending #bad puns #isolation #established johnlock
Cover Art for @a-different-equation Johnlock fanfic A Double Bluff. Thanks to @sanguinarysanguinity for beta and @sherlockedcarmilla for the Johnlock Isolation Collection.
The first part (ca. 3k) will be on Ao3 today. Yes, it’s a OS set in John Taylor’s pastiche series, which I guess most of you know because of Benedict Cumberbatch. And yes, this OS tackles the famous “back entrance”-episode, aka An Inscrutable Masquerade, you’re very welcome.
If I could not speak to Holmes, I could at least alert him by other means. I ran upstairs with the idea of writing a note, which I could slip under the basement door. I would write something along the lines:
'Dear Holmes. Something odd is going on. Please, be careful. Love Watson. Kiss, kiss, kiss.'
No, what was I thinking? Just one kiss. I loved him and I wanted him to be safe, but I was still cross with him. No, one kiss would be sufficed (at least, for now).
My personal favourite scene from “A Double Bluff”, as it might not been in John Taylor’s pastiche but I could always hear Benedict Cumberbatch saying it and smirking because he can impersonate Martin Freeman (if he wants) like no other. And I cannot pinpoint it exactly, but I always imagined their John Watson to be a sassy one.
With this, a blush crept onto Holmes’ pale skin. His voice was barely above a whisper, when he admitted to me: “Further, I could not bear your absence much longer, John. It has only been two nights, but I am a man of habits and the last two nights have confirmed what I have already suspected: I miss you. I wanted to share the plan with you and too hear your wonderment about my transformation. Maybe a line about how adapt I became in duplicating you. And then...”
His blush got deeper the minute. It was truly a sight to withhold. Holmes continued: “Maybe I would have revealed that my performance is indebted to my intimate knowledge about your physic. And... Damn it, John: I missed you. I missed you immensely. And the night of the story in the newspaper... I knew what a distress I have led upon you. I knew that it was necessary. But you are essential to me, John. So, pry tell me how I can let such things happen? To let you walk into danger, not by accident or ill fate, but with open eyes? I ought to not let you consent to this madness. I cannot bear it.”
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I wrote this part more than two years ago, and I think not even @sanguinarysanguinity who kindly beta read parts of the stories some months (years?) ago has read the second part.
The second part is more original - as original a fanfiction based on a pastiche can be, I suppose - and I always liked it, even I hesitated to post it because it doesn’t sound “right” yet. However, maybe, the right time will never come - as @satan-in-a-tea-cup reminded me yesterday: better post and edit than never post at all. Let’s brush up the 7k of words and then upload it on Ao3.
Note: Sorry about the delay in update. The plot wouldn't write itself when I wanted it to. But here's Chapter 6! Also, thank you so much to everyone who takes the time out to read these! :D
If you haven't already, read the Preface and the first five Chapters on my writing blog!
Chapter 6
“Daddy!” her screams resonated through the passage. “Daddy where are you?”
Anna’s chubby little legs stumbled down the stairs, tears running down her cheeks. She could feel the thick yellow fabric of her night dress cling to the sweat on her torso and her vision was extremely blurry.
“Daddy?”
The staircase was never ending. Where was he? Her throat was closing up quickly. She had to get to Daddy. She had to save her baby sister!
“Daddy? Daddy please! Mommy’s bleeding!”
Her voice held a very audible quiver but she had to get Daddy. Could he not hear her?
“Daddy!”
Anna woke with a start, her mind throwing her into the present with a painful jolt. Her dreams had been getting increasingly vivid, and this one had been an exaggeration of a rather unpleasant memory. Her lungs burned with the exertion of breathing hard and her eyes were very wet. A phantom ache ran through her thighs as she blinked rapidly, trying to see clearer. The blanket over her suddenly stifling, Anna flung it off and sat up, swearing under her breath. She was positive that the strange lady living two doors down could hear her pounding heart.
“Just a dream,” she mumbled, willing herself to believe it. “Ellie’s okay, and Mum’s okay, and Dad heard me and took Mum to the hospital. Ellie’s okay.”
She reached for the bottle of water she kept on the nightstand and uncapped it, the soothing liquid flowing down her parched throat. Her breathing was still ragged but it was calming. Anna picked up the mobile phone Alex had handed to her a few days ago and unlocked the screen, checking the time. It was the same as it had been these last two weeks- five a.m. It was unnerving how her brain seemed to have an alarm system of its own. She was contemplating calling Alex up just to hear his voice so she didn’t feel so lonely (however sad that sounded), when the phone vibrated with an incoming text from an unknown number.
Ellie’s okay.
Anna would’ve breathed a sigh of relief, except she could not begin to fathom what just happened. She was about to type an elegantly composed reply along the lines of “What? Who? How?” when her phone vibrated again, this time with a picture message. She opened it, flinching at the image of a grainy, pixelated little sister staring right at her. Anna felt her stomach twist. She would never admit it in the light of day, but she was fairly certain that the night she left home her heart had ripped into little pieces, all of which had decided to stay in Ellie’s bed. That explained the hollow in her chest anyway.
Who the hell is this? AM
Your sister.
Anna swore out loud this time.
You, smartarse. Whom am I texting? AM
She waited for a reply, but none came.
How did you take a picture of my sister? AM
Still nothing. Anna was growing frustrated with this world and these people.
What the hell do you want from me?! AM
“Argh!” she cried when there was still no reply, throwing the phone on to the floor. If it broke, she couldn’t care less.
Anna got out of bed, stomping to the dresser they insisted on stocking up for her. She still didn’t know who “they” were, but Alex had cajoled her into keeping the clothes and the shoes.
“Compliments of the crew,” he had joked, his fern-coloured eyes twinkling the way they did when he thought he’d said something extremely clever.
Anna opened one of the drawers, the slight creaking of the wood unusually loud in the silence of her room, and pulled out an oversized t-shirt, putting it on over her pyjama bottoms. She stepped out of the room, trying to be as quiet as she could while closing the door. The artificial brightness of the corridor hurt her head and it took a while for her eyes to adjust. She entered the cafeteria and poured herself a very strong cup of coffee, half wondering whether she should have brought her mobile phone along with her. True, she literally had three contacts- A&E, Adelaide and Alex- but now there was a secret observer who was stalking her sister. She wondered if she could track the phone number using one of the crappy computers they had in the IT room. What sort of Super Secret Military Base was this anyway?
She was halfway through her cup of coffee when a warm hand settled on her right shoulder, startling her slightly.
“Annabeth?”
Anna turned to look, finding dark, almost black eyes looking right at her.
“Adele,” Anna acknowledged with a smile. “What are you doing up this early?”
Adelaide paused the way she did when she was trying to construct a sentence in English, then said, “I am always up at this time every day.”
“Really?”
Adelaide nodded, sitting down next to Anna. “It is…” she paused, looking for the right word. “Helpful to my abilities.”
“Your psychic abilities,” Anna elaborated and Adele nodded again.
“And how is it that you are awake?” the girl asked, her eyes widening slightly with curiosity. Anna couldn’t help but smile at her expression.
“Bad dream,” she replied, taking another sip of the steaming black liquid. “Again. Coffee?”
Adele shook her head no, then patiently asked, “What dream was this?”
Anna hesitated for a moment. Adele had asked her the same thing on an evening last week when she had had another nightmare, then again, three days ago. Each time she had evaded, then scolded herself in private for being such a closed off person. She took a deep breath, then spoke. “It was a memory, actually.” She stole a momentary glance at Adele- who only smiled encouragingly- before looking back into the cup. “My sister, Ellen. She was born when I was three.” Anna smiled fondly, remembering the round pink mouth and the tiny fingernails that had fascinated her from the moment she had clapped eyes on the little bundle covered in blankets in her Mum’s hands.
Adele laid a hand on Anna’s forearm, closing her eyes. Her eyeballs moved rapidly under their lids- she was Seeing. Her lips parted around a slight gasp, then she opened her eyes and looked at Anna in wonder. “Your sister,” she said. “She is beautiful.”
Anna smiled softly, feeling her own eyes well up. She blinked rapidly to prevent a full-blown cry. “Yes,” she agreed. “She is.”
“But your dream,” Adele continued. “Was not good?”
“It was about the night she was born,” Anna replied, shuddering slightly at the memory. “Mum wasn’t due for another week and a half. She was sitting at the edge of my bed, reading me a story. After she was done she kissed my forehead, and when she stood up, there was a large red patch where she had been sitting.”
Adele’s eyebrows knitted together. “She was bleeding.”
Anna nodded. “Her stomach started to cramp really badly and she fell to her knees. I didn’t know what to do. It was” Anna paused, looking for a word to describe just how horrified she was. She shook her head to clear it, then continued. “She told me to fetch Dad. He was downstairs in the study, working. So I did. They had to do an emergency C-Section- they cut her abdomen open to take the baby out- because she had lost way too much blood.”
“Was your sister okay?” Adele asked.
“Oh yeah,” Anna said, smiling again. “She was an angel. She cried when they made her, and was quiet when they checked her out after. Hasn’t stayed so quiet ever since, though.”
Adele grinned at that, then grew serious again. “Your dream,” she reminded again.
“Right,” Anna said. “It was about that bit where I was running down the stairs to get Dad, except the staircase would never end and he couldn’t hear me.”
Adele rested her chin on her palm and her elbow on the table. “You were frightened.”
“Try terrified,” Anna retorted.
Adelaide looked at her, thinking. “But the end of the dream was happy?”
“I woke up in the middle of it.”
“Hmm…” Adele trailed off.
“Listen, anyway,” Anna prevaricated, desperately wanting to change the subject. “This whole…prophecy thing.”
Adele’s attention caught at that.
“What does it even mean?”
“But I explained to you two days ago what it means,” Adele said, frowning.
“No I understand how I’m the ‘chosen one’ or whatever,” Anna replied. “I just can’t wrap my head around this whole alternate dimension thing. What is this? What are we even doing here?”
“Your civilisation is most easily scared,” Adele said. “Before war is remotely imminent, your people panic. And yet, they are clever. There is no secrecy in your world- somebody always discovers, then it spreads like wildfire.”
“So…”
“This dimension is exactly like your world, without all of your people,” she continued. “Only the chosen few will stand in battle. It will reduce the damage that would otherwise be caused to an unsuspecting People.”
“Your people,” Anna noted. “You keep saying ‘your people’. You’re not one of us?”
“No,” Adele replied simply.
Anna just looked at her blankly.
“My people,” Adele began, then paused. “I can not put them into words. We come from a planet of joy and love. Everybody knows everybody, and nobody goes without.”
“You’re from a different planet,” Anna stated. Adele had always seemed different, but this was a whole new level of crazy. “But you look…”
“This,” said Adele, indicating her entire body, “is a medium. A physical shell. This skin, this hair, this name- it is me, yet it is not who I am.”
“How do you mean?” Anna asked.
“My soul- the energy that makes up who I am- is in and around this body, but it is separate from it. Like water. You fill a cup with water, and it takes the shape of the cup. From the outside, the cup looks as it did when empty, but now it is heavy with the weight of the water and all that is in it. In essence, the cup and the water are one, yet when you look into the cup, you can see that they are completely different.”
Anna thought about that for a moment. “But why are you even here?”
“To help these people,” Adele said, gesturing to the building as a whole. “Like you will.”
Anna wanted to list all the times she had been unhelpful over the last two weeks, but her curiosity wasn’t satisfied yet. “Why do you want to help them?”
Adele looked at her, her gaze unwavering. “Because I ran from home too.”
It's a day late, but I was caught up drawing Sammy! Anyway, if you haven't read the Preface and the first four chapters, check out my writing blog.
Here's Chapter 5:
Chapter 5
“An alternate universe,” Anna said, although it sounded more like a question.
“Dimension,” Alex corrected. “We are in the same Universe. Your parents and your sister still exist, as does the rest of your life. You’re just not physically present there as of now.”
“Right…” Anna trailed off. The wooden seat of the bench below her felt uncomfortable enough without all the confusing dynamics of how she got here, and no matter how much of the strong, black coffee she consumed, Anna didn’t seem to be able to wrap her head around the concept.
When she’d woken up around dusk, the digital clock on the end table proudly proclaiming 1800h, Anna had learned that the little girl and the handsome man had not, in fact, been a dream. There was still a soft mattress beneath her, and there was still a warm cocoon of blankets surrounding her, and the absence of the mouldy motel smell had seemed jarring at first. The rapidly darkening sky outside had made the long shadows on the ground fade into a constant veil of dull grey and Anna had grudgingly put the table lamp on. The sudden flash of light had made her wince rather spectacularly, a throbbing ache in her head intensifying till it was a consistent pain in her temples.
Swinging her legs off the left side of the bedframe, Anna had found a pair of velvet slippers on the rug (which elicited a snort) and a dressing gown on the back of a chair (which had obviously been repositioned while she slept). Pulling them on, she had been looking around the room, taking in everything through a sleepy haze when a knock on the door made her jump.
“Ms. Moore?” the deep voice of the handsome man- Alex, she remembered vaguely- called.
“It’s open,” Anna called back. “I think.”
The round, golden knob on her left turned, and a hesitant head popped around the mahogany door.
“I thought you might be up,” Alex stated.
“Nice timing,” Anna muttered. It still surprised her how she wasn’t having a panic attack about the entire…situation. Then again, her body had always been late to react to shock and stress- a combat technique the paparazzi had taught her. Any minute now, she would be retching into the toilet- if there was one.
“Care for some coffee?” he asked. “The cafeteria is just down the hall. Or I could bring you a cup up here, if you like?”
“No,” she blurted. She really needed to get out of the confines of this room. “The cafeteria sounds alright.”
Alex looked at her with a strange expression that lasted merely a second before he smiled again- a subtle grin that reached his eyes- and opened the door wider, silently gesturing her out.
As they walked down a rather broad, isolated corridor, Anna kept stealing glances at the man to her right through the corner of her eye. His gait seemed casual, but not nearly relaxed. Who was he? What was this?
“Oh,” she gasped as a sudden realisation hit her, stopping her dead in her tracks. “No.”
“Ms. Moore?” Alex asked, turning as he noticed that she had stopped walking.
“No,” she repeated, starting to back away from him. “No, no, no, no!”
“Ms. Moore!” he called, taking a step towards her with one arm stretched.
“Don’t come any closer!” she yelled, her breathing growing rapid as she felt a roiling in her stomach. She had been stupid to think she could escape forever. Of course they had found her. The pretense of an unknown environment was meant to throw her off. For how long had they been tracking her?
“Whoa,” Alex said, raising his hands in the air, palms open so she could see them- could see that he didn’t mean to harm her. “Okay, I won’t. Please try to calm down, Ms. Moore.”
“Why?” she demanded. “So you can get me back into the room and have people tie me up and bring me to my father as an early Christmas present?”
“Wait, what?” Alex asked, confusion rising.
“How much is he paying you?” Anna demanded again. “A hundred thousand? A million?”
“No, wait, what?” he repeated. “Your father?”
“That’s what this has been about, isn’t it? Bringing me here, calling it a “safe” environment?” Anna’s voice had turned shrill and she could feel the agitation pumping through her veins, burning her blood with every ragged breath she took. “All so you can collect your bounty when they take me back home and lock me up in my bedroom?”
“Ms. Moore,” Alex began.
“No you listen to me, you jerk,” Anna said, surging towards him and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. “There is nothing- and I mean nothing- that will make me go back there, you understand?”
“Ms. Moore,” he tried again, his voice comically high pitched, as he leaned his head back, trying to pull away from her grasp.
Anna clutched tighter at the bunched up cotton in her hands. “So you can go ahead and tell dear Daddy”- she said the word with as much distaste and disgust as she could muster- “that his little girl is not coming back. Not today.”
“Anna!” Alex pitched his voice just right to cut through her livid rant, understanding finally hitting him. “Listen to me.”
“No you listen to me,” she began.
“Anna!” He grabbed her shoulders, gripping tight enough to leave bruises, and looked straight down into her eyes, his gaze almost as icy as the pale blue of her irises. “I do not work for your father,” he said slowly, as if talking to a child, his tone firm and unwavering. “I do not intend to send you back to your family.”
Anna froze at his words, unable to comprehend them, still agitated from the adrenaline in her system. “You...” she began.
Alex shook his head no, his grip on her shoulders easing now, just holding her. Grounding her. “When I say you are safe here, I mean it,” he said, staring deep at her face, willing her to hold his gaze so she could see that he meant it.
Anna relaxed minutely, part of her wanting nothing more than to trust him. But how could she?
“It’s alright,” he said gently, almost as if he could hear her thoughts. “I know you don’t believe me, and that’s alright. For now, however, I need you to walk to the cafeteria with me. Can you do that, Ms. Moore?”
Anna looked at him for a moment more, her face still guarded, then nodded a fraction, releasing her grip on his shirt. His steady hands lingered on her shoulder for a second, then fell away.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
Twenty minutes later, Anna had swallowed an entire cup of bitter coffee and gobbled down a rather delicious sandwich, slowly draining away the stress in her system. She had gotten weird looks from the few people there- almost all of them in the same white shirt and khaki pants as Alex, except the cafeteria workers who wore absurd white chef’s coats.
“Ms. Moore,” Alex began as she wiped her hands on a tissue.
“Anna,” she corrected, dropping the tissue into the dinner tray and shifting on the wooden bench below her. “Only servants and the Press call me Ms. Moore, and you’re neither.”
The corner of his lips twitched slightly, then he continued. “Anna.”
Anna nodded once, approvingly.
“I’m not sure where or how to begin,” he confessed, embarrassed.
“Well, you could begin by telling me who you are, or where I am, or what the hell is going on,” Anna quipped.
“Right,” he breathed. “Okay. I am Alex Williams, as you already know.”
Anna nodded again.
“We are at the Headquarters of National Security.”
Anna’s eyebrows shot up, her eyes going comically wide. “National Security,” she repeated.
“In an alternate dimension,” he added. “Please don’t freak out again!” he said quickly before she could start doing just that. “I can explain, I promise.”
“Of course you can,” she said dryly, taking in a deep breath and blowing it out loudly through her mouth. “Go on,” she prompted.
“Do you know of lunar cycles, Anna?” he asked suddenly, throwing her off with his abruptness.
“The waxing and waning of the moon. Of course,” she replied, trying to follow this new direction of conversation.
“And you were born on the night of an eclipse, am I correct?”
“Yes,” she said, then frowned. “Wait. How on Earth do you know that?”
“It’s not just me,” he said dismissively. “My point is, the night you were born, the Sun, Moon and the Earth had formed this thing called a Grand Trine- a term usually used for when three planets form a triangle of sorts- and that, Ms. Moore, is a very rare occurring.”
“You believe in this astrology bullcrap?” Anna snorted.
“No,” he replied calmly. “I do, however, believe in a prophecy.”
“Prophecy,” Anna repeated.
“Now this might sound absolutely bonkers,” Alex began.
“Yes, because everything you’ve said so far makes perfect sense,” she muttered.
“But,” he stressed, ignoring her. “There is a prophecy that states, and I quote, that a girl child with the eyes of dawn and hair like the night sky shall be born in the midst of a Grand Trine. She shall want for nothing, and yet want nothing with all that she has. She shall seek freedom within herself and evade anything that should cause her to feel imprisoned. Now the only person we know that fits this description is…”
“Me,” Anna finished.
Alex nodded solemnly.
“Okay, it describes me. So what?”
“That is not the end of it,” he replied.
Anna looked at him expectantly.
Alex hesitated a moment more before continuing. “She shall be the Champion of the People.”
“The Champion,” Anna repeated.
“You’re to save the world.”
This was rather fun to write, actually. Anyway, do feel free to leave critique! God knows I love reviews. :)
Read the Preface and the first three Chapters on my writing blog!
Okay this one took far too long to write, mainly because I didn't know where I wanted to stop. Anyway, here's Chapter 4!
The dizziness hit her before she was even completely conscious; it felt like diving off a board a hundred feet above the ground, hitting a trampoline, then bouncing right off. Her head swam and she could see patterns on the backs of her eyelids- galaxies and nebulae melding into each other, then breaking off into swirls of meaningless colour. As the real world came back to her, Anna felt a distinctive shift in her environment. She knew for a fact that she wasn’t back at the motel- not that she was very disappointed about that. The mattress beneath her heavy body was a lot more comfortable and there was a soft, almost warm layer of blankets over her.
Eyes still closed, Anna wondered if she had in fact been hit by a freight train while sleep deprived and landed herself in a hospital, but the whiff of air she took in did not smell of antiseptic or alcohol. Her skin felt sticky wherever it touched fabric- which was everywhere, and her limbs seemed to have been broken and refashioned with lead. It took her four attempts to pry her eyelids open, and another minute for the blurry vision to settle. When she could finally focus her gaze onto something solid, she was greeted by an unknown face. A woman. No, a young girl. Couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Anna stared right into a pair of black eyes, surrounded by perfectly clear, brown skin.
The girl raised a feather-soft palm to Anna’s cheek, and Anna looked at it from the corner of her eyes. Why was this kid touching her?
“Annabeth?” she asked in a strange accent- somewhere between Spanish and Russian, but not quite. Anna looked back at her face, taking in the round cheeks and button nose. She looked almost like a baby, but there was something about her eyes. They seemed far too wise for her age- like she had seen a lot. She wore a loose dress made of jute (who wore jute anyway?), which clasped only on her narrow shoulders; the rest of the fabric free to flow as it would.
The girl looked to Anna’s far right and spoke in a strange tongue. Anna followed her gaze, wincing as the motion caused a sharp pain to hit her in the middle of the forehead. The girl looked back at Anna, her hand still on Anna’s face- now covering one side of it- and kept talking in the foreign language, but not to Anna. It took her a while to recognise another presence in the room- the one the little girl was talking to.
A strange man stood leaning against a pale yellow wall in a plain white shirt and khaki trousers. His stance shifted from relaxed to fully alert when Anna’s gaze fell on him. He was rather tanned, but his eyes were a beautiful, translucent green. ‘Like caterpillars,’ Anna’s mind unhelpfully provided. He was older- probably a few years older than Anna was, not too much. The girl said something and his chiselled jaw twitched slightly, before his pink mouth cracked into a smile that reached his eyes. He replied to the little girl, but his accent was rather different- more anglicized. Anna furrowed her brows at that. It took an unusual amount of effort to come up with a coherent sentence, what with her mind feeling like overcooked porridge, but she finally managed to croak a “Wha-?”.
Whom she asked it to, she didn’t know, but suddenly the man was at her right while the little girl took her left, and they were grasping her shoulders and the back of her ribs, propping her up against a headboard she didn’t know existed until she was leaning against it. The man produced a few (rather fluffy) pillows and placed them behind her lower back, while the girl pressed a glass against her lower lip and tilted it, silently asking her to drink. The water was blessedly cool and felt blissful running down her parched throat and into her chest. She downed the entire glass, and when the girl offered her a refill, she downed that as well. She wondered when she was this thirsty last.
The man with the leaf-green eyes dragged a stool from somewhere and sat to her right, his motions slow and deliberate and as noisy as possible, so as not to startle her by sneaking up. The girl sat on the bed near her knees.
“Miss Moore,” the man began, and his voice was so deep and velvety that it took Anna a few moments to realise that she was being addressed. “I’m Alexander Williams, former Captain in the Royal Army.” Anna belatedly noticed the muscles bulging through his arms, but was too hazy to acknowledge, let alone appreciate them. “This,” -he gestured to the girl at her left- “is Adelaide. She is the best Healer we have ever witnessed here at the Base.”
‘Healer? She can’t be more than twelve!’ Anna wanted to say, but her voice wouldn’t work.
“You must be wondering where you are,” he continued. Anna could only nod dumbly. “You’re at the Headquarters of-“
“Alex,” the girl- Adelaide- interrupted. She said something- a long, complex jumble of syllables that Anna, for the life of her, could not understand, or even vaguely place the origin of. Alex seemed to ponder over her words, then nodded gravely and turned back to Anna.
“Adele says you’re rather weak right now,” he said. “Telling you would require at least an hour’s worth of convoluted Physics, and I’m not sure you want to hear that just yet.”
Anna made a face at that. The last thing she needed right now was String Theory, but where on Earth was she? Anna looked around the room and noticed nothing unusual. Four walls and a door, all standard. There was a wooden nightstand to her left, and it held a digital clock that proclaimed the time to be 03:40 PM in bright red, and a night-lamp which wasn’t on. The headboard behind her back was wooden as well, the edges carved with an intricate design that felt slightly bumpy at the back of her neck. The floor was made of large white tiles, almost clinical, and there was a red and green patterned rug on the right side of the bed. They didn’t know she was left-handed. Shouldn’t she have been using said hand to find a weapon and stab them while she made her tactical escape? She felt oddly comfortable here, though, and no one had chained her up to the ceiling. Either way, she had nothing to return to. Might as well pretend her captivity was an adventure.
“Miss Moore,” Alex called, grabbing her attention again. “You’re safe here.” His smile was aimed to reassure her, but it came across as slightly awkward.
“Are you going to sell me to the mafia?” Anna asked, then realised what she had just said. Her eyes widened fractionally and the plain beige duvet was suddenly a lot more interesting than it was three seconds ago.
Alex laughed- an honest, open laugh that seemed out of place in the relatively less vibrant surroundings. He said something to Adelaide- probably translated what she’d just said- and she laughed as well- a high, tinkling bout of giggles. Anna wished the tiles below would part and the Earth would swallow her whole, never to give her back.
“No, ma’am,” he said, still laughing. “We are not about to sell you to the mafia. In fact, if we’re very lucky, you might actually save us from them.”
“What?” Anna asked, not nearly comprehending what he had just said.
“Tonight,” he promised. “I’ll explain later tonight. For now, you must sleep.”
Anna was too out of it to argue, but there was no way she could sleep. She was neither hungry, nor thirsty, but she was too wide awake. Her entire body ached and she wasn’t nearly comfortable enough to drift away. But then Adelaide leaned over her till she occupied her entire field of vision and stared right into her eyes, and Anna found her garbled thoughts stilling- like a jumbled knot of nerves straightening itself out. The word “Hypnosis” registered in the back of her mind, but she could barely acknowledge the concept since her thoughts just wouldn’t work! They remained that was for nearly half a minute. Then Adelaide raised her hand and touched two fingers to the skin between Anna’s eyebrows, and Anna was falling and falling till the room swam around her and shattered into a million pieces and the darkness enveloped her completely.
So, yeah. It's about to get a lot more interesting and I'm really excited about that.
