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@shootingstarpilot
Yeah, sorry, this is a Star Wars blog now. Night_Fury on AO3, author of the Shoulder the Sky series. Aggressively Pro-Jedi. Fantastic icon is drawn by @wolfspider-appreciation.
Folks, if you've enjoyed shoulder the sky, I hope you'll take a moment to give this a read.
I live on Oahu, in Hawaii, and between March 9 to March 23, two Kona low storm systems slammed into the islands. Oahu's North Shore got hit particularly hard. Residents had to be rescued by bulldozer; the town of Haleiwa was completely cut off by floodwaters. It's a testament to the strength of the community and the first responders on the ground that no one died. I got lucky, only a few possessions of mine got damaged, but I have friends up there who have lost everything.
I was up in Waialua this weekend assisting with clean-up and supply distribution, and while a lot of places are donating materials, the need is just so great- we ran out of diapers larger than a size 3 within the first hour. If you have a few bucks to spare, please consider donating to one of the following organizations who are doing good work on Oahu and the other islands to help communities recover.
Aloha United Way supports disaster response and recovery efforts for individuals and families, as well as nonprofit organizations serving on the front lines.
The Hawaii Agricultural Foundation has launched a relief effort with the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation to support farmers impacted by the Kona low storms and provide resources for recovery and rebuilding.
The Hawaii Food Bank is holding emergency food distributions for flood-impacted residents across Oahu.
The Hawaii Workers Center prioritizes support for those considered part of Hawaii's working poor, including recent immigrants, low-wage workers, and survivors of labor trafficking.
The Hawaiian Council is matching every donation, dollar for dollar, up to $100,000, doubling the resources available for relief and recovery efforts.
You can find more information about the storms and more places to donate at Hawaii News Now and Honolulu Civil Beat. Mahalo nui!
(Also, as a thank you, if you donate and send me a screenshot of the receipt, I'll write you a lil Star Wars something of your choosing! Minimum 100 words per dollar, but probably longer if I feel inspired- y'all know my word count problems by now.)
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Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!
The plane comes on the seventh day.
Zylon is a mining planet. Barren, stripped to the core, and abandoned until satellites in orbit around a nearby planet had picked up distortions in seismic data. Preliminary investigations had uncovered a renewed Separatist presence on the deserted ground. The 212th-- scheduled leave and the accompanying resupply having been suspended once again-- had been deployed to investigate.
A scouting mission. Determine and destroy. Fine. But the suspended resupply had been desperately needed. They had no air support. No surveillance drones. Why send them on a reconnaissance mission without reconnaissance equipment?
But their protests go unheard by the Senate. Surveillance drones-- from the Senate's point of view, the 212th had plenty. What else was a clone, really, if not a drone with legs?
So. Zylon it is.
Cody knows this is going to be a shitshow from the beginning. He knows it when the orders come in. He knows it when the leave gets cancelled. He knows it when their resupply is cancelled next-- because oh, he knows what "suspended" means when it comes to the 212th, even barely two months in; if he didn't know better, he'd think the Chancellor's trying to kill them off.
But he really knows it when General Kenobi's expression empties out as soon he jumps down from the gunship.
Kenobi's face is never empty. Quiet, sure. Calm. Controlled. But there's always something dancing behind his eyes, even when the rest of his expression is wholly and utterly motionless. He smiles easily, too, for all of them (and the treacherous little voice in the back of his mind that keeps count notes that he smiles for you most of all), and the fierce brightness in his face that Cody glimpses in the thick of battle makes his blood sing. But this awful emptiness...
He dares to touch a hand to Kenobi's arm-- the palm against the elbow, fingers curled against his forearm. A gentle pressure, because Kenobi is set apart, but Cody has begun to notice the way he sways into every absent-minded touch.
"Sir?"
There. A blink. A resettling. The blank eyes clear; the thin-lipped emptiness twists into a rueful grin. "Dead earth," Kenobi says, and scuffs a heel against the dusty ground. "Apologies, Commander. It's starving."
Cody does not like the sound of that, and says so.
Kenobi laughs. Cody preens.
"Hungry in the Force, I mean," he says. "It wants energy. Poor thing. It's been drained completely."
Only his General, Cody thinks helplessly, would call an entire planet poor thing.
But. Nothing to be done about it.
The ground is scarred with narrow canyons as far as the eye can see. They split into groups and trudge single file along the remains of the strip-mining operations, searching in vain for any indication of activity. They traverse the cramped and dim tunnels that intersect the gorges, empty apart from metal scaffolding that's free from rust and gleaming brightly enough to make the hair on the back of Cody's neck rise.
The dust gets everywhere.
No rain has fallen here in decades, and in the absence of living roots, erosion has taken its toll. Every step sends up a puff of dried dirt. Every man's armor soon becomes indistinguishable, coated in the same dull and rusty brown. It sneaks through the seals and itches under their blacks. It gets in hair and under nails and between teeth. The sky above remains a clear and disorienting blue, and Cody watches for smoke-- pollution or presence, he would take either-- to no avail.
For six days, no one fires a shot. There's not another living soul to be found.
On the sixth night, the battalion regathers. Tents are pitched on a wide stretch of open plateau; one of the rare spaces left where more than two men can walk abreast. The vast stretch of space sets Cody's teeth on edge-- visibility goes both ways, after all-- but it's either here or in a valley, and the only thing worse than an ambush is an ambush from above. The canyons around them have already been cleared; a retreat, if necessary, can be managed quickly. At least here, they will meet their enemies on an even footing.
No campfires burn. There is no wood to be found. But Terror and his perpetually terrified rotation of secondaries can work wonders, and they have warm food for latemeal. Cody eats next to Kenobi, the two of them bumping knees on the crowded ground around one of their solar-powered burners amid the low and cheerful chattering of their men.
He tumbles into his cot with a smile on his face and is asleep in an instant.
Waking comes suddenly.
Cody squints into his pillow, rolls over, blinks at the ceiling-- then sits up abruptly, staring into the darkness of the tent.
What is it?
Where?
Were it time for him to be up, he would hear quiet churning outside, and see the shadows of footsteps crossing in front of the flap-- but there is nothing so obvious that draws his attention, and for a long moment he cannot identify what had drawn him so abruptly out of sleep.
Then he glances to his left, and realizes that Kenobi's cot is still neatly made.
Not only are the blankets tucked and folded-- Kenobi is the type of man to take that time, after all-- but they do not appear the slightest bit wrinkled.
Had he ever returned to the tent, after latemeal?
Cody has gotten used to the noise of breathing other than his own. The quiet pricks at his spine, and with a sigh, he swings his legs over the edge of the cot and stands.
It's not that he doesn't trust Kenobi. He does. It's just--
(He walks among them like he is one of them. He knows their names before he learns their ranks. His hands have been blood-soaked since the day they'd met. He is not careless with anyone's lives but his own. He is not just someone Cody likes, he is someone Cody does not want to lose--)
He forgets he has people watching his back sometimes, that's all. Cody occasionally needs to remind him.
He finds Kenobi seated cross-legged about a hundred feet past the troopers on watch.
Cody stands behind him for a long moment. Watching him watching the dark.
Then he clears his throat. He's under no illusion that he'd approached undetected, but Kenobi does him the favor of waiting to acknowledge him until Cody announces himself.
"Sir."
"Commander," Kenobi says. His head tilts back, his eyes meet Cody's-- and then he smiles, a flash of white teeth against the encroaching night, and pats the ground next to him. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Not when a superior office was missing, sir," Cody says drily, and settles next to him.
The camp behind them is full of the crowded silence that emerges alongside a mass of sleeping people. Burps, snores, snorts, murmurs, jabbed elbows, the occasional muffled laugh-- none loud enough to be heard on their own, but all together accumulate into a snow-like layer draped across the tents. Wholly comforting, in its own way.
But beyond them, in the dark, the silence is absolute.
Dead and vast and hungry.
(It's starving, he'd said. Poor thing.)
"I don't like this much," Cody confesses quietly.
Again, a sudden flash of a smile--
"No," Kenobi agrees. "Me neither."
"What's the objective?"
Kenobi sucks at his teeth, drums his fingers against the ground--
"We're pulling out when it's light."
That is not what Cody had expected him to say.
"New orders from the Senate?"
"No. There is something deeply wrong with this place. I thought at first my sight was just obscured, but I went down into the tunnels earlier--"
"Sir," Cody says, exasperated, but Kenobi waves him off--
"-- and there was no activity stirring the earth. None. Only all of you, breathing above me. Whatever that report said, right now we are on an empty planet. If the Senate wants more details, then they can equip us with proper aerial support. We're too vulnerable to bombardment as it is. I'll take whatever lashing they see fit to hand out."
Above them, the sky begins to lighten. The deep, uninterrupted black yields to the very deepest purple at the edge of the horizon.
Cody considers going back to bed. By his estimate, he has another hour and a half until he well and truly must be up-- to coordinate departure, and he swallows back the bubbling relief-- and he should know better than to waste an opportunity for sleep. But the thought of returning to an empty, silent tent makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, and he's sat in less comfortable places.
Not many. But still.
The sky is... kind of pretty, he guesses. Kenobi's watching it too, bright eyes narrowed.
Then Cody hears it, and lurches to his feet.
The low, distant drone of an incoming plane.
Sound precedes appearance. It takes a few moments more for the plane to become visible, streaking just ahead of the lightening horizon. Cody jams his bucket on, watches the visual interface light up; the targeting software locks on, centers the plane for a closer view--
One, two, three seconds for him to notice the peculiarly rounded belly.
Four, five, six seconds for him to realize what it means.
The neutron bomb had been outlawed over two centuries ago. It used the molecular make-up of a planet's atmosphere as raw matter to generate a self-replicating reaction. Once triggered, the detonation would multiply at an exponential rate until it had consumed all organic matter available to it, at which point it would neatly self-extinguish. All organic lifeforms would be reduced to steaming puddles- if not evaporated completely- and all non-organic infrastructure would be left intact. Give it a few centuries for the radiation to die down to treatable levels, and the neutron bomb became a perfect tool for aspiring planetary empires who wanted a tidy little solution to the people in the way.
Detonation was tricky. Portable fusion reactors were famously unstable. The longer it ran, the riskier it was. Wire it too early, and you risked the reaction igniting while still within your planetary orbit. Standard operating prasctice dictated that the bomb be wired en route. The drop bay of the porting plane would be built out with a mechanical rig that could conduct the operation for the pilot, providing the distinctive bulging exterior.
So high above them, the plane appears deceptively slow. Thousands of miles an hour turn into a lazy drift across the brightening sky.
A shout goes up behind them. The watch has caught it. The slow quiet of the camp behind them sharpens in response-- voices rise, waking, calling out.
Cody wishes they hadn't seen it.
In the crystalline silence of his own mind, the truth has sharp edges.
They have no air support. The transports that brought them down are still aboard the Negotiator, and are not designed to chase down a bomber. They have no artillery capabilities; their re-armaments are stocked aboard the resupply tug still waiting in Helva-3's orbit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a half dozen blue blaster bolts streak upwards; they fizzle out before they get close.
But his brothers don't die easy. Cody loves them for it.
"Commander."
A jump, a jolt-- his throat is very dry--
"Sir?"
"It's all just energy, you know."
Cody dares a glance sideways. Kenobi's on his feet, watching him. His eyes are very bright and very blue.
"Not sure that's very comforting at the moment, sir," he admits.
They have less than a minute until the plane arrives above them. The detonation will trigger approximately five hundred meters above them. The flash will blind them first. Then the radiation will cascade in all directions, consuming the atmosphere and all organic matter until there is nothing left to use.
It will, at least, be a quick death.
What is wrong with him? Shouldn't he be panicking? Grieving? At the very least, reaching for his blaster, so he can die with a weapon in his hand?
(Is this why his brothers never fought, on Kamino? Is this what it does to you, knowing there's no escape?)
Kenobi laughs. Dry and quiet, almost resigned, and Cody is struck with the sudden and absurd urge to take his hand.
The plane is almost directly overhead.
"My old master had a particular affinity for the Living Force," Kenobi says conversationally. He kneels, and starts-- digging, methodically, with one hand. Flexing his fingers into the dry and dusty dirt. "He always said that. It's all just energy. Sometimes destructive, sometimes constructive, but energy all the same."
His free hand presses firmly over the other, half-buried in the dead earth, and scrapes the dirt back into place.
"You cannot destroy it, only dissipate it."
Dust puffs up with every motion. His hands, his sleeves, the bridge of his nose: all stained with burnished red.
"You cannot conjure it, only channel it."
Something's wrong with Cody's visual interface; the color grading is out of whack. The blue of Kenobi's eyes is fading, washing out into something pale and bright.
Above them, the belly of the plane swings open. The bomb falls like a shadow, a little blot of black against the night.
Kenobi extends an arm-- reaching out, reaching up, palm open, as if beckoning the explosion towards him. From sky to soil: a straight line. A stretch. A conduit.
"Brace yourself," he says, his words soft and slurred around the edges. He looks up at Cody with strange and shining eyes. "And don't call home about this, please."
The bomb detonates.
This is the last thing Cody sees, before instinct throws up an arm and twists him into a bracing crouch equal parts desperate and futile:
The dark and deadly metal cracking open, the ignition within, the spark.
Obi-Wan, his face turned upwards, reaching and holding.
The flood of white light, moving wrongly, not outwards in an instant but spinning downwards into a funnel, snapping and crackling, tumbling over itself in a hungry rush towards the outstretched hand--
And the flash of lightning that leaps up to meet it.
I took this post and then. I got silly with it. Please be nice about the legal stuff; I tried.
___
“Ms. Woods? Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Elle spins around fast, the door of her favourite coffee shop within walking distance of the courthouse jangling closed behind her, her caramel mocha frappuccino sloshing dangerously against the domed plastic lid that’s supposed to contain it. She double- and then triple-checks its spatter pattern, making sure there’s none on her crisp white cotton blouse or magenta pencil skirt. Getting coffee stains out of rayon is beyond annoying.
Under her arm, Bruiser leans forward out of her seashell-pink quilted leather Kate Spade bag, a growl rising behind his teeth. Elle strokes his head with the hand that’s not wrangling her frapp, cooing a reassurance before she looks up to see who’d startled them both.
Her first thought is that the guy is cute. Her second thought is that he’s gigantic. Her third thought is that she knows his face from somewhere. Not the coffeeshop, though. Elle can name all the regulars and staff here on sight, and he’s definitely not one of them.
“I’m sorry, I think your name’s slipped my mind?” Elle says, beaming up at the guy. Her sentence is punctuated by Bruiser’s growl breaking into a sharp flurry of barks, and Elle looks down in surprise. “Bruiser! I’m sorry, he usually has much better manners than this. Don’t you, boy?”
“He probably recognises me from court,” the tall cute guy says, holding out a hand for Elle to shake. “Sam Winchester. I’m with the prosecution.”
Elle puts her head to one side and gives his hand her frostiest look, and he slowly withdraws it, hopeful smile fading.
“My client’s already entered her plea,” Elle says, through the teeth of her brightest smile. “Not guilty. And we’re going to prove it in court.”
She punctuates that sentence by flipping her oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses down off the top of her head onto her face, and moving to walk around the guy.
The guy steps into Elle’s path. This time, when Bruiser snaps at him, she doesn’t scold her dog.
The guy gives Bruiser only the briefest glance. “Unless you have some explosive evidence that wasn’t included in discovery, I think we both know that’s going to be difficult. The prosecution has your client on video committing the murder.”
“That was so not Sophie. She got her nails done just that morning. Mediterranean Blue, to match her bridesmaid dress. We included the receipts in discovery.” Elle scootches her sunglasses back up onto her head just so she can bat her eyelashes innocently up at the prosecution guy. Guys hate it when she does that. “Tell me, did you see Mediterranean Blue anywhere in that footage?”
She pushes her way around the prosecution guy, hip-checking him as she passes when he moves like he’s going to get in her way again.
Elle hasn’t gotten more than about four or five steps before she hears dress shoes hurrying against the pavement behind her. She rolls her eyes at the perfect blue sky overhead. Not quite Mediterranean Blue. Maybe L. A. Lapis?
“What’re you going to try to argue?” prosecution guy says, falling into step beside Elle. “That the murderer was actually someone who looked identical to Sophie, but had different nail polish?”
“It introduces a reasonable doubt,” Elle snips back, without looking over. She’s not going to sink to this guy’s level. And she is not going to consider a plea deal. Especially not now.
Not after Emmett had specifically asked Elle, personally, to take his high school best friend’s fiancée’s maid of honour’s case. Not after the way Sophie had broken down during her first meeting with Elle and begged Elle to believe she hadn’t done it, even though no one else did. Even though every other lawyer Sophie’d spoken to had said she should plead out.
Not after Elle had overheard a couple of people talking in the bathroom during a recess yesterday about how an airhead like Elle Woods couldn’t possibly get so lucky twice.
“And who gets her nails done at ten, gruesomely murders a random stranger at eleven, and then meets the rest of the wedding party for dress fittings and sushi at eleven forty-five?” Elle tosses her hair over her shoulder. “You couldn’t get all the blood off in that time. At least, not to be sure you didn’t have any splashed somewhere you couldn’t see. And then it might rub off on the bridesmaid dress. It’s pure silk! You’d never get the blood out. And do you have any idea how hard it would be to get that gown replaced on such short notice?”
“So you’ve come to the conclusion that, since Sophie’s too fashion-conscious to commit this murder, she must have an evil twin?”
“Reasonable doubt,” Elle reminds the prosecution guy, sweetly. Bruiser’s growling again. Elle kind of feels like growling, too.
“You’re going to have a hard time convincing the jury of a theory that comes straight out of daytime TV.” Elle opens her mouth to offer a witty verbal rejoinder, but the prosecution guy cuts her off. “Which is why you should give this number a call.”
Elle’s aware that her mouth is flapping like an unfortunate fish. Luckily, the prosecution guy isn’t looking at her. He’s scanning the street all around them, frowning suspiciously at every passing face.
He passes over the folded piece of yellow notepaper deliberately nonchalantly, without looking at Elle. She takes it without thinking.
“Tell him Sam Winchester gave you that number,” the prosecution guy says, glaring after a passing dude in a shearling-lined denim jacket. Elle glares a little too, just on principle. So out of season, and in this weather? Well, she’s not the one sweating her brains out.
“I told you already. We’re not interested in pleading out. If you have something new and exonerating, introduce it into evidence. Like you’re supposed to.” Elle stops in her high-heeled tracks and plants a hand on her hip as she stares up at the prosecution guy. She’s tempted to rip his dumb phone number up right in front of him, but Bruiser beats her to it, snatching the little yellow paper from her hand with his tiny sharp teeth. “And I don’t appreciate being propositioned by people who just spent ten minutes telling me why my defense strategy is stupid.”
She has to give the prosecution guy this, he does look like he hadn’t even considered that Elle would assume he’d given her his number. “What? Wait, that’s not -”
Elle cocks an eyebrow. The prosecution guy huffs out an exasperated breath, running a hand through his floppy bangs before he meets her eyes. Bruiser gives Elle eyes like that sometimes when he wants a little of whatever she’s eating. Or belly rubs. Or a pedicure.
“You have a reputation for being brilliant, innovative, and unorthodox,” the prosecution guy says, his puppy-dog eyes all sincerity. Elle bites down on the urge to tell him that she knows when she’s being made fun of. “I’m hoping all of that’s true. For your client’s sake. And who knows how many others like her.”
Elle doesn’t really want to admit that she’s not sure what he’s talking about. If law school taught her anything, it was to never show weakness. Of course, life’s taught her a little differently. But there’s a time and a place, and in front of somebody she’s up against in court tomorrow – and whose taste in ties is so deeply questionable – is neither of those.
Still. If Elle didn’t know better –
“Do you think Sophie’s innocent?” she asks the prosecution guy.
The prosecution guy – Sam – makes a face, a kind of smile without any happiness in it, and looks away.
“Call that number,” he says, instead of answering Elle’s question. “From somewhere private. And – don’t tell anybody that we talked about anything other than your client’s possible openness to a plea deal? I just got this job. I’d like to keep it.”
Elle squints at him. It doesn’t really help her make up her mind.
He doesn’t give her a chance to. “I’ll look forward to seeing you and, uh -”
“Bruiser,” Elle says. Bruiser barks.
“You and Bruiser tomorrow in court, Ms. Woods.”
“Mr. Winchester,” Elle answers, automatically.
The prosecution guy – Sam – nods at her a little awkwardly, and then turns and starts walking back in the direction of the courthouse. Elle watches him go, and considers.
That basic-black suit fits him pretty well, but it’s also obviously not custom. And obviously not new. The carefully brushed and pressed wool gabardine is shiny at the elbows and worn at the slightly-too-short cuffs and slightly-too-tight collar. Same with those nice black leather dress shoes – polished to a high shine, but worn down at the heel. Elle hadn’t noticed a fancy Rolex or Bvlgari when he’d offered to shake her hand or passed her the phone number, either, just a cheap digital Timex. His hair’s obviously cut that way on purpose, but by the way he’d kept shaking it out of his eyes, he’s overdue for a trim. And then there’s that tie.
It all paints a picture of a careful, thoughtful man, conscious of the impression he makes on others, doing everything he can with what he’s got. Maybe with…questionable taste, in patterns especially. But what he said rings true. He probably needs the job. So for him to offer to stick his neck out to help the defense, in what Elle’s suspecting more and more is a not-entirely-aboveboard sort of way…
Either he really does believe in Sophie’s innocence, and he’s got something that proves it that he can’t enter into evidence for some reason, client confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement or who knows, as well as principles of steel. Or…
Or this is a trap.
Well, at least Elle knows one thing for sure. Sam’s definitely not one of Warner’s crowd. They’d rather be caught naked in public than looking so dangerously close to shabby.
“Hm,” Elle says, and takes a long drag of slightly-melted caramel mocha goodness. “What do you think, Bruiser?”
Bruiser yips, once.
Elle nods, and absentmindedly scratches behind his ears. “You know? I think so too.”
…
It’s past nine by the time Elle finally makes it home. She kicks off her seashell-pink kitten heels and peels off her pantyhose with a bone-deep sigh of relief. She’s given Bruiser his dinner, wrapped herself up in her marabou-trimmed blush satin robe, and is just pouring herself a glass of rosé when Bruiser pads into the kitchen with something yellow in his mouth.
“Are you sure?” Elle asks, and Bruiser barks, spitting the folded piece of notepaper to the tile. It flutters over to rest on the little pink nose of one of Elle’s baby-pink bunny slippers.
Elle bends (and snaps, a girl’s got to stay in practice even when there’s no audience around) to pick it up.
Ordinarily, she’d think twice about calling anyone after nine PM. But ordinarily, the prosecution wouldn’t be furtively handing her shady leads outside her favourite coffee shop, either. It occurs to Elle to wonder, as the phone rings in her ear, just how Sam had known to look for her there. Not that it’s exactly a secret, but – something about the thought of him observing her, asking around about her, learning her habits without her even noticing, sends a little chill shivering under her skin.
Before she can think too hard about that, though, there’s a click from the phone and then a gruff, Midwestern accent is saying, “Federal Bureau of Investigation. Supervisory Special Agent Clayton. Who are you and whaddaya want.”
“Um,” Elle says. Of course, a murder case could easily bump into the FBI’s jurisdiction, but. This is starting to scream ‘trap’.
Still, there’s one last card left up her marabou-trimmed bell sleeve, and she plays it. “This is Elle Woods. Sam Winchester gave me this number?”
The silence on the other end of the line is briefly broken by a distant, muffled burst of swearing. Elle waits patiently, gnawing a little at her bottom lip, as the swearing gives way to a heavy thumping sound and then silence again.
A moment later, the Midwestern-accented voice is back, sounding slightly less hostile and slightly more out of breath. “He did, did he. And just who the hell is Elle Woods?”
“I’m a defense attorney in the murder case he’s prosecuting?” Elle didn’t mean it to come out sounding like a question. She clears her throat, shakes her hair back, squares her shoulders, and summons her inner Vivian. “Mr. Winchester intimated that you might have access to vital evidence that could help decide the fate of my client.”
“He did, did he.” Elle thinks she catches a quiet, “Idjit,” muttered away from the phone’s handset. “And what kind of ‘vital evidence’ would that be?”
Elle turns in a slow circle on the kitchen floor, crumpling and uncrumpling the little yellow piece of paper in the hand that’s not pressing the cordless handset to her ear. She’s keenly aware that one wrong word here could easily cost her – and Sophie – the entire case. Fruit of the poisoned tree, and all that. But – if this could help Sophie, Elle has to know. “Are you aware that the murder trial of Sophie Dumont commenced this week?”
“Sophie Dumont?” the voice on the other end of the line says, and then there’s a creaking and a sound like paper flicking and then a knowing, “Oh, Sophie Dumont. Caught on camera skinning some poor bastard alive, wasn’t she?”
“Sophie has entered a plea of not guilty,” Elle says sharply.
“Yeah, I bet she has.” It strikes Elle as a strange thing to say, especially in that tone. She’d have expected sarcasm. But the man on the other end of the line sounds – resigned? Maybe? Definitely some flavour of totally bummed out. “Still. Not sure how I can help, Miss -”
“Ms. Ms. Elle Woods.” Elle takes a breath, and a chance. “We have evidence to support that the person captured in the camera footage is not, in fact, Sophie Dumont. Unfortunately, it’s…limited in scope. And Sophie was alone in her apartment during the hour in which the murder occurred. We’ve as yet been unable to locate anyone who can confirm her alibi, or an eyewitness to the murder who would be willing to come forward…”
She bounces up and down on her toes, crossing the fingers of her free hand hard and squinching her eyes shut as she holds her breath.
“Well, now,” the voice on the other end of the line says. “Let me see what I can dig up.”
Elle lets out her breath in one big gust. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I mean.” She clears her throat, puts on her best Vivian again. “Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.”
The chuckle that comes down the phone line reminds Elle, weirdly, of how her favourite uncle used to laugh when she showed off one of her tumbling tricks. “Don’t mention it. And I mean that – don’t you breathe a word to anyone that I was involved in this.”
Elle nods before remembering, right. Phone. “Of course, Mr. Clayton. Strict confidentiality is the name of the game.”
“Oh, and Ms. Woods?”
“Yes?”
“The next time you see Sam Winchester -” The voice breaks off, into a frustrated huff. “You tell that boy that next time, he can call me himself. And I ain’t the only one wouldn’t mind knowing he’s not dead every now and again.”
Not for the first time since the man calling himself Supervisory Special Agent Clayton picked up the phone, Elle wonders how he and Sam know each other. But that’s none of her business, of course. Just. Clayton sounds like he hasn’t heard from Sam in ages. Like he was really worried about Sam.
Elle might just have to see what she can find out about what happened there. Whether those are fences that could be mended. After all, one good turn deserves another, doesn’t it?
“I will certainly pass that along,” Elle promises into the phone. “Here, let me give you my cell number in case anything turns up.”
She waits for Clayton to be ready with a pen and paper, then rattles off her cell phone number twice. After she’s confirmed it’s correct, there’s a beat. A moment when Elle feels like there’s something she should be saying or asking, that she can’t quite seem to think of.
Before she can make her excuses and get off the line, though, Clayton clears his throat and asks, a little more gruff than he’d been so far, “Before you go. Who’d Sam tell you I was, when he gave you my number?”
“He…didn’t,” Elle admits. “Just said to call.”
“Oh.” There’s another awkward moment of silence. Elle’s just taking her breath to say her goodbyes when Clayton says, “You’ve seen the footage of the murder. Right?”
Unfortunately, Elle has. “It was included in discovery, yes.”
“And what do you think that is in the footage, if it’s not Sophie Dumont?”
Elle looks down at Bruiser, who’s lying beside her bunny slippers. Bruiser looks back up at her, no help at all.
Warner would probably say something about how that’s not what he’s paid to know or care about. Vivian or Emmett would say it was immaterial, which sounds a lot nicer but means pretty much the same thing. But Elle finds herself unintentionally parroting what Sam had said, back at the coffeeshop. “Her evil twin?”
There’s a snort of hastily-stifled laughter from the other end of the phone line. Elle starts to say, “Well, thank you again,” and moves to end the call, but Clayton interrupts her.
“Tell me, Ms. Elle Woods, defense attorney. Are you currently accepting new clients?”
“Not currently,” Elle says, because a murder trial is a lot for anyone to manage. “Why, do you know someone who needs a good lawyer?”
Another of those uncle-ish chuckles. “Who do I know who couldn't use a good lawyer.” He sounds a lot more serious when he adds, “In this line of work, we run into Sophie Dumonts more often than we’d like. Mind if I pass your name along?”
“I would appreciate it,” Elle says, honestly. Even if this whole setup is…a little strange. Even if she really does think that one more big win will really get her name out there – if she can pull it off, of course. In the meantime, she and Bruiser still have to eat. And if the clients are too scary…well, nothing says she has to take on every case.
“I’ll let you know what I turn up,” Clayton says, and Elle thinks she can hear the faintest hint of a smile in his voice. “Nice doing business with you, Ms. Elle Woods. And tell that idjit to call his brother!”
The phone goes dead in Elle’s hand before she can ask any more questions.
She puts the handset back into its charging dock and takes a long sip from her rosé, thinking. There’s something about the conversation she just had that’s sitting uneasy with her, but she can’t quite put her finger on what. Other than the general sense that she’s stumbled into some kind of mafia, which…could end up being a problem.
Elle looks down at Bruiser, who cocks his head to one side and looks back at her with his huge, liquid puppy-dog eyes.
“Oh, all right,” Elle says, and pulls open the cabinet over the stove to get down Bruiser’s treats.
She’s crouched on the floor, feeding Bruiser salmon tidbits, when it hits her like a blinding flash of the obvious. What was sitting so wrong with her about that conversation.
It was something the man calling himself Supervisory Special Agent Clayton had said, when he’d been talking about the murder footage. Something strange. Something really strange.
He hadn’t asked Elle who she thought could have been in that footage, if it hadn’t been Sophie.
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once again unequivocally lost in the sauce at the implication that younger vimes suspects that john keel!vimes is his dad who left when he was young. my favorite subtext of night watch i love the way it just sits there just out of focus
when sam says here's your hard boiled egg i bet you like your toast cut into soldiers and the yolk still runny. because i do. thats the culmination of 'this strange man looks like me and looks at me like he seems almost afraid of me, took me under his wing over every other person in the watch house and acts protective of me even when he doesn't need to. he just came in from pseudopolis but knows this city too well to be anything but a local. and not from the nice part of town, the roughest of the rough part, where i came from, too. he asked after my mum but blew me off when i told him she wanted to meet him. he asked after my dad and looked distinctly unsurprised to hear he wasn't in the picture. he seems to know what i'll do before i do it. sometimes looking at him is like looking in the mirror. there's a tightly coiled anger in him, i can see it, and it looks like something in me i've felt before. on our first patrol he taught me how to walk. i know him i know him i know him'
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thinking about rocky developing a severe case of health anxiety over grace. he can understand starvation and malnutrition and the risks of their atmospheric cross contamination. but then grace has his first full medical check up after he's been on mary for a year. of course rocky wants to understand what's happening and why, so grace explains.
he should not have.
rocky realizing grace has a baseline risk for spontaneously developing both benign and fatal illnesses, that he has this constant ambient threat hanging over him, and rocky spends all his free time trying to learn more about it. at first he can excuse the fixation as needing to understand human health so he can explain it to eridian doctors. he suspected it would be a simple bit of research he could master while grace is asleep that night.
he cannot.
pages upon pages upon endless scrolling pages of wikipedia and medical textbooks detailing every single way the human body can go wrong without outside interference, let alone the risk of injury, the risk of pathogen, the risk of exposure to gases and heavy metals that are commonplace on erid.
he used to think of the human body as a well oiled (is joke! because human plural so wet!) machine. disturbing and revolting and alien but beautiful in its complexity and harmony. how strong it can be despite how fragile it seems, how tough despite its softness, how tightly packed despite how it jiggles and wiggles and twists. a marvel of evolutionary engineering, something he finds himself studying constantly, fascinating and disgusting in equal measures.
now it looks like nothing more than the first pieces of wire stuck together by a pebble. the resilience masking how every moment is a cellular gamble, how every bit of strenuous activity risks delicate blood vessels and tendons and bone. how all that revolting moisture is the human body's first line of defense, how the drippingsloshingleaking reveals to rocky how constantly under siege grace really is.
grace is far too blasé about it all for rocky's liking. telling him to log off, that he's just freaking himself out. reminding rocky that he's a biologist, he's well aware of everything rocky's desperately screeching at him, that he understands it far better than rocky does, and that he needs to trust him when he says it's fine.
but it's not fine. it's bad bad bad bad bad. how do humans live like this? how will this human live like this? how can the doctors of erid possibly keep up this fight?
every time fear strikes him rocky scans grace's body, looking for any changes, anything amiss. any blood where it's not supposed to be, anything shaped differently from yesterday, any masses moving around in odd places. he stops ordering grace around, or, rather, he starts ordering him around in new ways. yelling at him when he lifts wrong, telling him to get things to stand on, demanding he use the pulley system he's made, insisting he expand armando's field of reach not only in case something goes wrong but so that it can do the grunt work for him. panicking like he's never panicked before when he realizes exercise damages grace's muscle tissue.
after weeks of this grace has to sit him down and try to screw his vents on straight because there's only so much over-barring nannying from a stir crazy alien he can take.
anyway. i just think rocky's doing a really good job coping with death is all 👍 no prablems
One moment I liked was that Carl and Grace's time having fun shopping, adding so much duct tape to their cart, playing bowling with stacks of aluminium foil, and wearing safety glasses at the checkout doesn't have the typical comedy beat of "acting suddenly embarrassed once someone asks what they're doing." Because this film is about the importance of having fun and building friendships as an essential component of human existence, and bonding with strangers is one of the purest experiences we can have. To undermine it with the typical punchline of "this kinda stuff is cringe" would undermine the thematic center of the narrative itself, and I'm glad the film is mature enough to realize that.
Edit: I see the power of whimsy and the necessity of earnest expression as an essential component of the human experience resonates with a lot of people on here, doesn't it?
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