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Damian's Letter To Raven
from the fanfic: From A Dearly Departed
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 14/14 Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Love Letters, Johnlock - Freeform, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, Fluff, More tags maybe added Summary:
John writes letters to Sherlock just because he loves him.
Last Letter: I was broken from the inside. Slowly, the depression that ground me eventually swallowed me, and I could not overcome it. I despised myself. Holding memories that cut off, no matter how I yelled for sanity there was no reply. If I can’t let out a struggling breath, it’s better to just stop [breathing]. I asked, who can take responsibility for me? Only you. I was all alone. It’s easy to say “I’m ending it.” It’s difficult to end it. I’ve lived up until now with that difficulty. I said I wanted to run away. From me. From you. They asked, who’s there? It was me. I said me. I said me, once again. Why do you keep losing my memory? They say it’s because of my personality. Oh really. Consequently, it ended up being my fault. I hoped someone would notice but no one knew. They’ve never met me so it’s natural for them to not know. I asked about why people live. Just. Just. Everybody just lives. If I ask them why people die they probably would say that they’re tired. I faltered on and pondered. I’d never learned how to turn these pains into joy. Pain is just pain. I told myself to stop. I wanted to find why it hurt. I know too well. I hurt because of me. It’s all because I am defective and it’s all my fault. Did you want to hear these words, doctor? No. I’ve done nothing wrong. When the doctor blamed my personality with a quiet voice he thought of it lightly. It’s fascinating to see why it hurts just so much. People who live lives harder than mine live just fine. People weaker than me live just fine. Maybe not. Maybe there is no one whose life is harder than mine and maybe there’s no weaker person than me. I tried to still live. I asked myself over a hundred times why I live and it’s not because of me. It’s because of you. I wanted to live for myself. Please stop saying what you don’t know. Find why it’s so hard [to live]? I’ve told you several times. Why I’m struggling. Is that not enough to struggle over? Does there have to be a more comprehensive drama? Does there have to be some sad backstory? I’ve already told you. Did you not listen attentively? The things I can overcome does not remain in bruises. Maybe it wasn’t my duty to go against the world. Maybe it wasn’t my fate become known to the world. That’s why it was hard. Because I went against, because I was known. Why did I pick that for myself? It’s a funny thing. It’s surprising that I’ve survived this far. What more can I say? Just tell me I’ve worked hard. Tell me that I’ve done enough. Tell me I’ve struggled. Even if you can’t smile don’t send me off blaming me. Good job. You’ve struggled a lot. Bye.
김종현
Albert Camus to Jean Grenier, Correspondence 1932-1960
The Last Letter of the Ripper: November 9th 1888
WARNING: MAYJOR MAYJOR SPOILER TERRITORY! IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED THE DLC.
We want to thank @swiggle-muffin for sharing this photo for inspiration
My beloved Hellen,
My hand is unsteady; but not due to fear. No. I am feeling closer yet so far to the end of this game Ms. Frye and I had been dancing to for sometime now for these past few day.
The wind and air blowing through these streets are as cold as I always remembered them; yet it doesn’t feel quit the same as I remember it. I only feel a sense of readiness in me as I prepare to finish what I should of preformed so many months ago. I still can’t figure out to this day how I landed into New York City, nor the purpose of me there; one thing for sure my dove, i am happy that it did happened. For it brought me to you. The short six months I had with you, were the happiest I’d ever felt in my lifetime.
If there is one thing if ever anyone understood my life, our life, my beloved Hellen, was that you made me complete. And when we were forced apart. I never realized how alone I truly was. My heart and soul was consumed with a darkness only the devil can tip his hat to me for.
Your love and my love had awakened so many things within me. Awakening of the Death to a brotherhood I saw was tarnished and needed to be refined.
If ever Ms. Frye defeats me and discovers these letters within your father’s final journal, and had the decently to bury my secret to protect the assassins, the last statement I want to state to you and to the Frye’s. If I’m to die by Miss Frye’s blade or on by own, then the last I want to remember to have my identity by both name and body to laid upon the cold dark earth with my latest victims name as a cover for my legend will live forever.Besides, my last work was a bit chopped for my taste. Ha. But under the guise of my whore pawns in order to bring Jacob and his sister out, I still know that none of their fictional beauties can compare to your simplistic beauty. I miss everything about you my Hellen. Your gentle touch, as callused as mine, your kiss, your hair upon my face, and the security of your body upon mine.
But I’ll curse and place upon harm to myself above and beyond this life to try to forget the pain that has haunted me as deep, perhaps deeper then when my mother died. But I suppose thats what love does to you. It makes you feel beyond the pain. Beyond the joy. And Beyond the grave. But insure my love, the Fryes will receive a gift they will never forget in this last stand. For nothing compares to the gift that was given to me by fate, but was snatched away. Let the Fryes feel out pain my love. But my final sonnet to you from the deepest depths of my heart is that I wish to have the world know of your Lad and the world’s Ripper:
None but the lonely heart can know my sadness. Love lives on forever.
Yours now and always have been
Jack your Lad
the zambian land series: a final letter to zambia
dear zambia.
you have land. more land than you know what to do with — 42 million hectares of it classified as medium-to-high agricultural potential, less than 14 percent currently under cultivation. you have water — the third largest freshwater resource on the african continent — flowing through river systems of such abundance that five of your rivers eventually reach two different oceans. you have rainfall — in most years, in most zones, enough.
and yet you import food when the rains fail.
the yield gap — 2 tonnes per hectare actual against 12 tonnes per hectare potential for maize alone — is not a geological gap. the soil is capable. the rainfall, in most years, is sufficient. the water, in every year, is present in the rivers that flow past un-irrigated farmland. the gap is a policy gap, an investment gap, a market access gap, and a knowledge gap. it is the accumulated consequence of decades of decisions that prioritised the copper economy over the agricultural economy, that treated the smallholder farmer as a welfare recipient rather than an economic agent.
the smallholder farmer — 1.6 million households, working with less than 2 hectares, a hand hoe, and seasonal rainfall — produces 80 percent of the country's maize. she is not the problem. she is the solution. what she needs is not complicated: better seed, reliable inputs, fair markets, weather information she can act on, post-harvest storage. every country that has closed its yield gap has built these elements and delivered them at scale.
the irrigation gap — 5.7 percent of cultivated land — is the single most important structural constraint. the water is in the rivers. the kafue, the zambezi, the luangwa, the chambeshi — rivers that could double or triple the agricultural output of every valley they flow through, if the weirs and the canals and the pump stations were built. the investment required is finite. the development finance is available. the political decision to prioritise it is the missing piece.
the cash crops — tobacco, cotton, arabica coffee, honey, sweet potatoes — all face the same value addition gap the mineral education series documented in every mineral. zambia grows them. the world wants them. the certified, processed, branded version is worth many times the raw commodity.
the regional opportunity — feeding zimbabwe, malawi, mozambique, the DRC from the surplus that 42 million hectares makes possible — is not a fantasy. it is what the land can produce if the decisions are made and sustained across a generation of effort.
the soil above the copper is as extraordinary as the copper beneath it.
make the decisions. build the irrigation. support the smallholder. protect the land rights. process the crops. feed the region.
the zambian land series is complete. 🌍
the coal and energy transition series: a final letter to zambia
dear zambia.
you have electricity. you have had the potential for it for millions of years — in the rivers that fall from the plateau, in the sun that beats down on your territory with a generosity that most of the world would envy, in the water that flows through your drainage basins toward two oceans. you converted that potential into actual electricity through engineering works of remarkable ambition — kariba in 1959, kafue gorge in 1971 and 1977.
and yet — nearly half of your people have no electricity at all.
the 46 percent who live without grid connection are not a footnote to the energy debate. they are its most important fact.
the series compressed to its essence: zambia's hydropower system is extraordinary and climate-vulnerable. the 2024 drought demonstrated that 85 percent dependence on rainfall is a structural risk in a warming world. maamba's 300 megawatts of coal-fired generation is the drought-resilient baseload that holds the grid together when the rivers run low. it should not be expanded. it should not be abandoned. it should be the strategic reserve that solar and battery storage progressively replace as the renewable buildout scales.
solar is the answer — not as a slogan but as an engineering and economic fact. zambia has among the highest solar irradiation in the world. solar costs have fallen more than 90 percent since 2010. the chisamba, mabumba, itimpi II, and chipata west plants demonstrate that zambia's solar buildout is real and accelerating. battery storage is available at commercially viable cost. green hydrogen — the longer-term clean fuel that zambia's solar endowment and water abundance make it positioned to produce — is the frontier beyond the grid.
the decision that would change everything is the one that connects the solar buildout to the 46 percent. not just industrial solar for mines and cities. distributed solar — village-scale, school-scale, clinic-scale — reaching communities the ZESCO grid has not yet reached.
the nurse in the rural clinic who cannot refrigerate vaccines. the child studying by candlelight. the farmer whose irrigation pump needs electricity. the entrepreneur bounded by daylight hours.
these are the people the energy transition is for.
zambia has never lacked for energy potential. its sky produces 2,600 to 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. its ground contains the cobalt that goes into the batteries that store solar energy.
what the energy transition requires is the speed and consistency of decisions that convert potential into reality.
the decision is zambia's.
the coal and energy transition series is complete. ⚡☀️
the cobalt series: a final letter to zambia
Dear Zambia.
you have cobalt. you have had it for 880 million years, co-deposited in the same katangan basin sedimentary sequences that gave you copper. the cobalt is not separate from the copper story. it is the copper story's inseparable companion — travelling with it through every ore body, recovered alongside it in every smelter, flowing through chambishi metals as a by-product that the twenty-first century has decided is worth more than many people in this country know.
the world needs your cobalt. not politely, not abstractly. urgently. the electric vehicle revolution — 17 million cars in 2024, 40 million projected by 2030 — is running on NMC batteries that require cobalt to function. the EV makers of seoul and tokyo and detroit and wolfsburg are signing long-term offtake agreements for cobalt right now because the alternative — depending on artisanal cobalt from a DRC artisanal sector whose child labour crisis the EU battery regulation now legally obligates them to audit — is becoming commercially and legally untenable.
your cobalt is clean. that is not a marketing phrase. it is a geological and governance fact. zambia's cobalt is produced as a by-product of large-scale industrial copper mining, in a regulated, documented, auditable supply chain, without the artisanal child labour that makes DRC cobalt a liability in the supply chains of responsible manufacturers.
the processing margin the series has been arguing for — the USD 6,000 per tonne difference between the cobalt sulphate that chambishi metals produces and the NMC precursor that battery manufacturers require — is the difference between zambia being a supplier of inputs to other countries' manufacturing industries and zambia being a participant in the clean energy economy it is physically enabling. the NMC precursor plant — capital cost USD 200 to 400 million, technically feasible, customers available, development finance accessible — is a decision available to be made today.
the lobito corridor is being built. the EV makers are waiting. the development finance institutions are engaged. the ethical sourcing credentials are in place.
the copperbelt worker who recovers cobalt alongside copper deserves to live and work in a province that processes what it mines — that transforms the goblin's ore that 15th-century german miners cursed into the battery material that 21st-century EV makers compete to secure, right here, in zambian facilities, employing zambian engineers and zambian technicians and zambian laboratory analysts.
the cobalt has been waiting 880 million years for zambia to decide what to do with it.
the decision is yours.
the cobalt series is complete. zambia is not just copper. it never was. 🔵
