out. i sometimes ponder reid's choices and influences, and wonder what he might have done if he'd decided to leave the bau back when he was considering it in nola? or if he'd left after gideon did, his string having been ( in some ways ) effectively cut, dropped-marionette style. nevermind that i think he stuck around at the bau partly out of sheer stubbornness -- because he loves his job and even gideon abandoning him/them out of sheer self-preservation ( the first sentinel of the bau; the old guard, played out ) doesn't change that; sheer stubborn love for his work, reid has -- and a fondness of security and routine. but ignoring that -- what if he had decided to leave the bau?
he could have gone back to school and gotten another degree / doctorate. or he could have taught, at that point, if he could stand to; we know he loves to educate, but i don't think he has the social impetus to put himself out there, even though we know he'd make a great 'hot professor', okay. reid surrounded by college-age girls who think he's the cutest / most off-beat awesome thing since hipsters; reid absolutely staring through them while not looking at them and/or rambling/stuttering, etc, because teaching's one thing, flirting's another, and how do.
mostly i like to think reid would have stayed with the fbi; i don't think he would have been able to move away from it entirely. he might have transferred to the white collar division; he loves a good paper trail, has an air for detail and discrepancy, and he'd make an amazing field or desk agent in that division -- and his profiling expertise would help at both. and maybe he'd be happy-ish there, but he'd miss the team, and maybe maybe miss the hunt? knowing that he's doing some good out in the world?? ( not that the white collar division doesn't do some good -- ponzi schemes are world ruiners, and genuinely damage the lives of thousands daily -- but it's not the same as what the bau does. ) and maybe he likes that at first, maybe he needed the change and the distraction, but then -- over time -- he starts to miss it? and i just? i dunno, the team reaching out to him? him reaching out to the team? can i have it maybe or -- gawsh.
i dunno man; white collar fbi ! specner reid. i could get behind an au of that. where my peter burke's and my neal caffrey's at? in fact -- all the other fbi shows, all of them. the mentalist, white collar, numb3rs, perception. let me do all the things. shit.
Holmes Brothers AU: The EAST WIND
↳ ( feat. Sherrinford/Q, Sherlock & Mycroft. )
wherein the Holmes boys grow up to find themselves a little less inclined to allow the whole of their individual talents to be directed by Queen & Country, and instead go into business ( so to speak ) for themselves. Collectively.
And oh, no, it's not that obvious, of course -- because they are so very good at finding other things to occupy themselves with, functional covers to while away the time. Mycroft takes a minor position in the British Government ( & what a prime vantage point it is, by sheer coincidence ). Sherlock continues to perfect his art of deduction on the streets for anyone who can afford it ( & for the ones who aren't boring ). And Sherrinford flies the coop as soon as he can manage to set up shop half a world away, where he gets into all sorts of secret, supposedly-secure places he shouldn't be, and does things the authorities should never find out about.
And they don't talk much, except for the occasional short back-and-forth text, or a succinct phone call late in the evening -- but they have plans, you see. They've always had plans.
( & no -- no one talks about the organization called the East Wind, but they whisper about it. Quietly. Privately. You don't find them, people say; they find you. And God help the ones who find themselves caught in it.
Those ones, people say, no one ever sees again. )
Because the world is a sometimes-vile proof of the indiscrete, unforgiving nature of mankind, led by troublesome political leaders, governed by corrupted officials making ill-use of faulty systems. And such weaknesses might be exploited by weaker men, oh, yes -- but they're the EAST WIND, and they pluck the unworthy from the earth, and they sweep over the void that's left, to put things to order with cool, relentless efficiency. So much of the world's current structure is like an obsolete, faltering machine in need of updating, of streamlining. There are vulnerabilities, like badly healed fractures which cripple their host; which make new, healthy growth impossible.
( But they will tear apart the old to rebuild it anew, better than before & they will find the weakened bones and break them, to set them again and watch them heal up, reforged twice as strong. )
They will strip the malicious ones from the world and put what's left to rights, because someone really must, and they do it together because no one man should have all that power.
And because, if not them -- then who?
( & because -- frankly, they've always been BORED. )
——out. okay, but you realize that what's happened here is that Moriarty faked his death and went into hiding, but got tired of waiting for Sherlock to dismantle his network and come back to play, so he decided to entertain himself for a bit with some undercover shenanigans of his own. He gets his kicks for two years by posing as a right hand henchmen to some nameless SPECTRE big bad. YOU KNOW IT COULD BE A THING.
whispers, please don't let me expand on this idea because I've always had Moriarty & Q connections for my Bondlockian verse and I just--- please don't let me talk about it.
——out. look, all I'm saying is that every time they talk about a killing team and/or a sociopathic/psychopathic partnership with a dominant/submissive dynamic, I just really want unsub!Hotch & unsub!Reid, okay. This is my guilty pleasure. Blow me.
And because I sometimes get carried away with my own AU ideas, I expanded on the hypothetical backstory of my still mostly unofficial Divergent verse.
Featuring:
- Q as an Erudite transfer to Dauntless.
- Sherlock as a Erudite genius with Factionless friends.
- Mycroft transferring from Erudite to later occupy a minor position as an Abnegation undersecretary.
In which Quinn is the youngest son of the Holmes family, who have all been Erudite for as long as anyone can remember. Quinn is intellectual, astute and particularly gifted with technologies and computer sciences, even in comparison to his fellow faction members. But he's is also a number of other things, things that his friends and family are not: prone to impulsive, illogical decision making (when he deems it necessary), an inclination toward self-sacrifice or helpfulness even when there is no logical gain, and a willingness to utilize opaqueness and concealment of information that is at odds with Erudite's creed and teachings. Coming from a family of gifted pretenders, however, is not without its benefits. Quinn learns early to behave as he's expected to, not as he's inclined to—and manages to do just that, very well, for most of his life. Until his testing day, when everything becomes that much more complicated.
In the background of Quinn's life are his brothers: Sherlock, and Mycroft. Sherlock is a Erudite, through and through; astute, logical, casually and unthinkingly arrogant, and confident in his mental prowess above all other things. He is also easily bored. Despite the enjoyment he takes from any number of active experiments he runs in his dedicated lab, Sherlock finds the greatest interest and challenge in deduction and in that vein lends his not inconsiderate observational and investigational skills to the Dauntless division responsible for the handling of crime and law in the city. Widely considered abnormal for his interests, Sherlock is nevertheless an important tool and ally to Dauntless, despite their rather infamous distaste for asking for or accepting help from others. (And it is through this association with the other faction that Sherlock first meets John Watson, a Dauntless man and physician who has been injured in recent combat outside the Wall.)
Mycroft too, is a prime example of being Erudite to the core: he is objective, analytical, disinclined to do anything without purpose and intellectually incomparable. In light of these things, it came as a shock when, on his Choosing Day, Mycroft made the decision to transfer from Erudite to Abnegation. It shocked everyone who knew him, personally or by reputation—though the latter were far more common. Still, Mycroft spoke privately of his decision to his mother and father on Visiting Day and no more fuss was made over the transfer again, at least not within earshot of the Holmes family. But that's not to say people didn't talk—because they did. Abnegation, they said, was ill-suiting for someone like Mycroft. Abnegation prided itself on self-sacrifice, on giving without expectation of return; they taught a humbleness and unenvious nature that should pervade every aspect of one's life. They were not interested in personal appearances, or creature comforts; they believed truth and peace were found in kindness and self-denial, not in knowledge. Mycroft, people whispered, was not suited for Abnegation at all.
Perhaps it's a measure of how narrow-sighted people can be—even the Erudite who pride themselves on wisdom and observation—that they failed to predict Mycroft's rather quick appointment to a minor position in the Abnegation run-and-led government. Perhaps they never imagined that Mycroft Holmes might pursue an interest in government at all. (But that goes to show then, how many people really know Mycroft at all.) For their parts, Sherlock and Quinn—once he grew bit older—were not at all surprised.
The Holmes children are all made to shock, in their own fashions. Quinn's came on Choosing Day when he too transferred from Erudite—to Dauntless. People thought he might be foolish; might be struggling under the shadow of his two brothers, absentee as they often were. People thought it was a rebellious choice, and that he would fail the unforgiving Dauntless initiation and become factionless. People expected it. They waited to hear about it.
What they couldn't know was: that on his testing day, his results were inconclusive; that he had an aptitude not just for one faction, but for several. They couldn't know that his results—later proclaimed Erudite—were manually manufactured after a computer malfunction his tester had him create ruined the generated results. They couldn't know that the Dauntless woman, who simply called herself M, had whispered a dangerous word to him—Divergent—and told him that his life would be forfeit if anyone discovered; she told him he needed to keep his head down, and that he needed to make a choice.
On Choosing Day, flying in the face of anyone's predictions (even his brothers') and against all odds, Quinn Holmes chose Dauntless. Later, after walking off the edge of a rooftop to plummet freely through the sky and into the darkness below—when he's dragged from the net and a helpful stranger grasps him by the forearm and tells him he needs to pick a name—Quinn thinks of the life he left behind, of his brothers and of M...
