#fff234

[lisbeth-kk]

Sherlock fandom.

I can’t get you off my mind

I knew Mrs. Hudson was wrong when she told me marriage changes people. 

Not my John, I thought.

How wrong I was.  

Seen in hindsight; has it been three months already, she was right. I should have known that. After all, she was more of an expert on relationships than me. What did I have to show for? My only relationship, if you didn’t count family, had been with John. He was the only one who could fit that term. 

I told Mrs. Hudson that Mary would be reasonable when I needed John on a case. Her response baffled me. 

“Don’t ever use that word and her name in the same sentence, Sherlock. They don’t match. At all.”

Then she huffed and clenched her jaw tight, unwilling to explain herself. So, I’d turned to Mycroft. If anyone knew what was going on, it was him.

“Brother mine,” he said quietly when I came forth with my request about John’s wife. 

“Don’t patronise me, Mycroft,” I snapped. “Just tell me what’s going on. Is John safe?”

“Why would you ask…” Mycroft began, but something about my appearance stopped him from whatever nonsense he was going to utter. 

He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. Neither were good signs. 

“She’s an assassin with a prize on her head. We have her under surveillance. I suspect she’ll attempt to flee any day to escape,” Mycroft told me. 

My brain buzzed, analysed, and calculated in quick succession, but in vain. All I could think of was John, unknowing, unsafe, and the baby.

“Mary isn’t pregnant, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. 

“Excuse me?” Were you ever going to tell me any of this?” I asked furiously.

*** 

It’s over now. John’s personal Armageddon. His wife gone when he woke. A letter explaining nothing. The fake pregnancy belly was the final nail in the coffin. I tried to reach out to him, but he was so angry. Thought I’d known all along. He didn’t want to listen to reason. I didn’t blame him. I still don’t. 

Again, it’s Mrs. Hudson’s words putting things in motion.

“Are you just going to let it slide? He needs you, Sherlock! You are his best friend, his entire world. Save him, dear, and yourself. Ask him to come home.”

“He is home,” I protest. 

The look she gives me, makes me feel like a five-year old again. She doesn’t pester me further, but it’s enough. I fetch my laptop and start to write an email. The most important one I’ve ever written.

Dear, John

Believe me when I say I didn’t know anything about Mary or the baby until the day before she left. I would’ve told you if I knew. I was terrified when Mycroft told me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you being unsafe and unknowing. My plan was to tell you the day you woke up without her, but by then it was too late. 

I don’t blame you for not believing me, John. After all, I’ve lied to you about severe things in the past. If you want to talk, we can. Whenever you want. I’m just a text away. And if you can’t bear the thought of staying where you live; know that you’re always welcome at Baker Street. It was your home, and it’s empty without you. 

We’re not good with words, John. Not these kinds, anyway, but don’t let our friendship end like this. I want you in my life, in my home, our home. I can’t get you off my mind, John. I never could. Please, consider coming back. 

If you don’t answer this email, text, phone or come to Baker Street, I’ll understand, but I hope you’ll do at least one of those things. To let me know where we stand. 

SH

***

I’m mentally exhausted after I’ve sent the email, and go to bed, sleeping like the dead for almost ten hours. When I’ve showered and had some tea and toast, I take out my violin and play all of John’s favourites. 

This can’t be how it ends; I think when I lower the violin and bow. After I’ve placed the instrument back in its case, I hear a sound. I’d been so lost in my own head and haven’t been paying attention to my surroundings. And why would I? I’ve lived alone for months, but now I sense a presence. 

I turn, slowly, alert, and there he is, in his chair, looking at me with eyes filled with unshed tears. Any second now they will trickle down his cheeks. In an instant I’m kneeling in front of him, letting my hands rest on his knees. 

“John, is everything okay? Are you…”

“I’m okay, Sherlock. Just…”

His voice his hoarse. I can tell this isn’t the first time he’s been crying today. Something catches my eye just inside the door. John’s duffle bag. I jerk my head back to look at him.

“John?”

“I’m coming home, Sherlock. For good,” he says and manages to smile while he’s crying. 

***

So, this is how it ends. With a pair of broken hearts that are going to be mended. We only have to give it some time, and we will get there. Together.

@flashfictionfridayofficial @totallysilvergirl @keirgreeneyes @calaisreno @a-victorian-girl @phoenix27884 @sabsi221b @safedistancefrombeingsmart @gregorovitchworld @raina-at @helloliriels @peanitbear @topsyturvy-turtely

[reblog-house]

At the End of the Game, Thinking of Lives Past

Characters: GoodTimesWithScar, mentioned Pearlescentmoon and the Clockers

Wc: 700

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt 234, "How it Ends"

Secret Life finale spoilers

AO3: Here!

It ends in silence.

The moments before it all ends, all he could hear was his voice of gratitude for something he never thought could be his. He didn’t know who he was thanking, but he found himself in front of the buttons looking at where the rest of the members would be, had they still been alive, and thanking the Nothing for how far he’d come on his own.

The silence was eerie.

Still, he pressed on. 

He remembered a life before this Game. He remembered multiple, in fact, but the farther away, the harder it was for him to remember them. He knew he’d had a life before the desert, but everything about it had long been lost to obscurity. He could barely remember his life before the second game. He had been a wizard, that’s for sure. That’s something he’d hoped would bring him alliances when he went into the Game and his brain filled with the knowledge of the first Game and what the rules were the second time around. Starting out with six lives had felt like a blessing at first. It wasn’t, he’d soon find. For the first time in a Game, he felt lonely.

He remembered a bit more about his life before the third Game. He’d worked with animals, he was friends with Pearl at school but both drifted off after finishing. He’d lived in the city but always wanted to move somewhere with less people, and what was keeping him tied was the knowledge that he’d have to part ways with his zoo friends — the animals he took care of. And then the Game happened and the choice was taken from him. And see how that turned out. A place with less people, more nature, his own Jellie Panda sanctuary, and new memories of previous Games, betrayals, and the loneliness that came with it.

The Jellie Pandas were his true soulmates. He’d remembered the previous Games, but they weren’t Him.

His fourth life… he remembered the most of, from his old lives. Mother Cleo, brother Bdubs, deadbeat dad Etho. It had seemed a bit strange back then to imagine and know that in previous Games and the lives that came before them, things between the four had been very different. That in not a single other… universe? Life? were they related in any way. Looking back, the whole idea of them as a family was very funny. Good thing they established early on that the current them were not related and things didn’t have to stay the same and that the previous Game didn’t have to affect their dynamic.

He still had his fun pretending, though. Cleo and Bdubs sometimes joined in the fun.

Etho was excluded, though.

You’re not really meant to carry over emotions from previous lives, just their knowledge, he’d found, but after that Game, he found Etho particularly enjoyable to kill.

His last and previous life before this, his life, was nothing special. No close friends to speak of, some acquaintances here and there, a fascination with Westerns and futuristic stories… Finding out that in a previous Game he had lived in the desert felt almost fitting. But most of all, his life had been lonely.

He’d hoped this Game wouldn’t continue that trend.

And here he was, alone at the end of the Game, having won, with never anyone he could call a friend.

Sure, he wished things had been different, that he’d had grouped up with someone near the start, before his tasks pulled and pulled him away from people — maybe Pearl, maybe he should’ve moved in with the Mounders back when his task had forced him to be her hype man. Pearl seemed like she’d understand. She won her Game alone too — but it was all too late now.

He turned around and looked at the Secret Keeper.

It had no eyes, yet he felt them all on him as he stared at the symbol on the place where a face would be.

With a deep breath, he readied himself and pushed the left button.

‘Succeed task’

Magic swirled around, five hearts replenished, and a new task dropped on his hand.

‘Win Secret Life’

[fourohfourrealitynotfound]

Future Home

For @flashfictionfridayofficial #FFF235 - Little Pink Houses

649 words. Fanfic for Voltron: Legendary Defender. Established Relationship Klance.

"What does your dream house look like?" Lance asked. He and Keith were curled up in a blanket in the observation room, watching the stars float past the window.  

"You saw my house. Before we left," Keith said. The way he said 'left' made it sound like they were on a temporary trip, and that someday they might get to 'return.' Lance knew that this was more for his benefit, a habit Keith had developed after one too many of these 3 AM conversations with a homesick Lance. 

Lance let out a puff of air, deliberately ruffling the short strands above Keith's ear. "No, your dream house. That was barely a house. If you could have all of the time and money and resources, what would you want your house to look like?" 

Keith shrugged. "I never really thought about it."  

"C'mon," Lance said, "think! Would you match it to your aesthetic? Black and red paint on the walls? Throw pillows shaped like rockets? A racecar bed?" He poked Keith's arm with each teasing suggestion. 

Keith's smile at Lance's antics turned wistful, and he glanced at Lance briefly before staring off in the distance. "When I was a kid . . .  this is stupid. When I was a kid, I always wanted those glow in the dark stars. The sticky ones that go on the ceiling? Except, I thought it would be cool to have them through the entire house." 

Lance tilted to rest his head on Keith's shoulder, trying to soak in the moment like a sponge. "That's cool. I'd help you put them up in the constellations."  

"Mm," Keith hummed, "maybe, if I do the black walls, I could paint the constellations on them. Kind of like this." He spread his hands out towards the window before them. "What about you? What's your dream house?" 

"I used to have, like, a Pinterest board for what I wanted my house to be," Lance said. "A yellow kitchen with dark wood cabinets, the kind of bed that's surrounded with bookshelves and has drawers underneath, long vine-y plants that wrapped around the railing on the stairs."  

"Not sure that last one would be such a good idea now," Keith chuckled. He was referring to a mission two planets ago that involved sentient plants that wrapped the Paladins up in thorny vines while they tried to harvest some flower Coran needed for the medbay. 

"Yeah, a lot of it has changed now," Lance said. He snuggled in closer, and Keith draped an arm around his shoulders. "The universe is so vast. Why should I be limited to Earthen furniture styles or materials? But I do know the one thing I would keep." 

"What's that?" 

"At my parent's house, we had these little wooden houses," Lance said. He framed the air with his hands to show an area about half the size of a book. "Wooden blocks, this big, painted to look like houses and apartment buildings and cutesy little shops. Mama put them on top of the doorframes, and my siblings and I used to lay on the ground and imagine them as a little towns, with bridges between the different doors so the people could visit the shops or their friend's houses." 

"That's cute," Keith said. "Maybe your little doorframe-people would like my ceiling-stars." 

Lance marveled at the ease with which he suggested such a thing. This boy, who had never taken the time to imagine himself a home, who had seen far too many people walk out of his life, casually implying that they could have a house together one day. It made Lance think of an old quote he once read on Earth, about the resilience of the human heart. 

He plucked up Keith's hand from where it rested on his thigh and laced their fingers together. "I think they would," he eventually responded.  

Keith hummed and squeezed his hand. 

[a-forbidden-detective]

Here’s where the story ends…

—

This is written for @flashfictionfridayofficial with the prompt #FFF234 How It Ends. The title is from The Sundays’ song with the same title.

* Decided to expand this story into a heartbreaking Toto/Kawasemi-san affair that will devastate the three: Toto, Ron and Kawasemi. I am certain that Toto will choose Ron, but Ron, he wouldn’t take this sitting down. It is becoming a project.

Fandom: Kamonohashi Ron no kindan suiri/Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions

—

“How beautiful are entrances, compared to exits!”

(Herakles, by Euripides, tr. Anne Carson)

The clock struck at half past three in the early morning as the Shinkansen surged to reach Tokyo metropolitan area. In less than two hours, it would be dawn.

Seated all by himself in the seventh row inside Carriage No. 14 was Toto, who looked at his reflection in the glass window. What he saw was someone he didn’t know; someone whose reputation was questionable.

Thoughts of his superior and his friend bogged down his brain. Never had he been so preoccupied with the matters of the heart until now.

In his mind’s eye, he could still see Kawasemi’s downtrodden face at the restaurant and later, on the bed he momentarily shared with the older police investigator. Defeated and forlorn. All because of one Totomaru Isshiki.

Busy with his thoughts he noticed that he was not particularly alone in the carriage. There was a mother and daughter, a bubbly three-year-old girl, seated on the first row and a lone female tourist seven rows behind him.

Toto wore his eye mask and blocked the little girl’s noise by putting on his earplugs. The overhead lamp of the train suddenly offended his eyesight. He recounted the events that happened before he and Kawasemi said goodbye at the main train station’s platform.

After he told the Aichi police officer about his decision, he’d like the earth where he was sitting to swallow him.

“So, this is the end of the road, Isshiki, for us,” Kawasemi lamented. His voice cracked beneath the composed façade of his.

Toto couldn’t spare to look at his superior after his declaration that he took his clothes with him and dressed up at Kawasemi’s big posh bathroom. The flat was located in the center of Nagoya.

When Toto left him alone, the older man who had never smoked in his entire life, had the sudden urge to just stick a cigarette between his lips and inhale it to calm his nerves.

If Toto were a different person who was not in love with his best friend, perhaps, he’d give Kawasemi a chance and be contented with it. Why did he, in the first place, allow himself to be swayed by his weakness, that is, the call of the flesh to sleep with his superior?

It was sheer panic, of course. The fear of losing Ron once he would tell him what he really felt about the forbidden detective. Then came Kawasemi along who at first was unreachable, a living legend among his veteran colleagues when Toto started in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s Investigation Division 1. The same Kawasemi-san who he always admired from afar, the model police investigator whose professional success was suddenly halted when he lost his trusted assistant, but now got his groove back.

“You are the only one who let me realise my folly, Isshiki,” Kawasemi confessed the first time he brought Toto to his flat.

He could still remember the day when he disagreed with him during the hand collector case without hesitation, told him openly how wrong it was to treat Yamane and his colleagues using the magic of his tweezers. True, Toto’s words clipped his wings and pierced his heart, but he also fixed them because he showed his true colours, according to the Aichi police officer. Did he really? Somehow, Toto was not even sure of that.

He was goddamn tired, but sleep was elusive. There was no use even looking outside to marvel at the landscape as everything was pitch black. The guilt nagged at his thoughts. But his affair with Kawasemi was over. And for that he was relieved. Once and for all, he had to tell Ron what he was truly feeling. He glanced at the wrapped birthday gift in his shopping bag.

Less than an hour and he would already be in Tokyo. Not long now.

~ fin ~

[renee-writer]

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt

Ending

It isn't how it starts

It's how it ends

That is what they say

A good ending can

Redeem a bad beginning

Maybe it's true

I pray so

I wasn't a good mom

Unhealed from my own drama

A childhood influenced by my own

Mom’s unhealed trauma

Having my own children

Being able to parent them

Without the poison

Unremoved from my soul

Cut away

I damaged them

They have forgiven me

As I forgave my own parents

The ending counts

Please God

Don't let my grandkids have

To offer the same forgiveness!

May the lessons learned

Become a blessing in their lives.

[blistering-typhoons]

hiii~

first entry for this week's @flashfictionfridayofficial 259 words, and i'm quite happy with it :D! the prompt as seen below is 'how it ends' and it's a horror piece, so warnings for gore and murder and the like- though nothing, I don't think, too dramatic :o

Unstrung

It is unusually hot.

What little wind creeps it's way through does very little but rustle the ivy, clawing it's way up the sides of the house, and does not even stir the smoke stinging into Amy's eyes.

The cigarette itself is mangled- tobacco spilling from the side so that when it burns down to it, it'll all come bursting from the little seam.

England's mornings are not this hot, no. This has been done especially for her- to make sure she can smell it.

The stench of victory.

There are flies buzzing about her hands, landing upon and peeling off the blood that coats her skin. There is flesh beneath her fingernails, where she'd furiously scratched away at the body of her opponent, stripped back the meat from his cracking bones.

He lays quite dead, here before her. His eyes still somehow watching her, still disapproving. Green as clear, poisonous water.

The mask of terror pulled across his face seems to be just that- a mask. One of the few he'd pulled out during their marriage, when he'd rip her from the shadows, drag his doll from the cupboard and walk her along the ancient wooden floors.

He is still watching her.

She doesn't have to strength to do anything about it now, to fully scrub him from her soul. She might later, or perhaps somebody will find her instead- put her back into another cupboard.

More darkness. Maybe forever, again.

She'll rot here in the sun a little while more then.

For now, it's all over at least.

[writing-far-too-badly]

Pruning

Thanks for the prompt @flashfictionfridayofficial ! This one really took a lot out of me, but I'm glad that I got to explore villanelle form a little more.

Our love was beauty, blooming like a tree We danced among petals which fell just to rise But now all alone, bare branches reach for me

Scattering shadows, as the winds blow happy and free, are gently lain by setting sun which implies Our love was beauty, blooming like a tree

Luminous greens in the springtime, beloved by bees Have all fallen down, have shed their disguise And now all alone, bare branches reach for me

The fruits of summer made it hard to see Til rots of fall forced open my shut eyes Our love, once beauty, still blooming like a tree

For just like a cancer, your love bloomed in me Devouring all, til I looked in surprise And now all alone, bare branches reach for me

A season of winter, though I doubt you agree May be what I need to recover from your lies Our love was beauty, blooming like a tree And now all alone, bare branches reach for me

[on-noon]

A Late Night Talk

for @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt #234 "How It Ends"

Yancy sat on the bench by the creek an talked to her new friend as the night grew deeper, and the few suburban stars appeared.

"I hope I can talk to you some time when I'm back in Wisconsin. It's a shame I only met you just before I'm set to leave," Alec said.

"Yeah," Yancy said. She was pretending to be sympathetic, but it was hard for her to care about anything beyond this night, after so many years. Rather, Yancy was weighing whether or not she should befriend Alec again. She resolved not to do it immediately, that rarely worked out well. But Alec was cool to talk to, so maybe in a few years.

A barred owl hooted.

"I love it out here at night. Chilly, but I still wonder why more people don't hang out outside at night," Yancy said.

"Because it takes so long. It wasn't really dark out here 'till a while after nine. It would be too cold in the winter, though," Alec looked at his watch, illuminating the screen with its weak light. "We've been out here for over five hours now."

"What time is it exactly?" Yancy asked. She knew the time was nearing rapidly, and when Alec started his answer with "eleven," Yancy expected to immediately wake up in her bed a week ago.

"Eleven-fifteen," Alec said.

"How far is your watch ahead by?" Yancy knew it was an odd way to phrase the question, but in just a few moments no one would remember her awkwardness.

"Maybe a minute or two, but not more than that. I used to always try to have my watch accurate within one or two seconds, but I made a few mistakes setting this one that I haven't bothered to correct." Alec said. "Why? Do you need to be back somewhere soon?"

"I think I'm going to need to go home, yeah."

Yancy and Alek walked home together. Yancy was surprised she hadn't met such a close neighbor before, but it took her decades stuck in a loop to make an effort to meet people.

At home Yancy confirmed the time and date. She had never reached this time before. She didn't expect the time loop to end anytime soon – she hadn't been putting any effort into it. This time loop she didn't do anything different. The week had ended as she normally spent it, talking to someone until the last moments of the loop.

Now Yancy would have to figure out how to live in the next week. And then most likely the next.

Yancy pulled out a notebook and tried to work out what exactly she had done in this most recent loop, starting with the conversation that had just happened.

She would have to start keeping promises.