⁻ ᶤ ʰᵃᵈ ᶰᵒ ᵒᶰᵉ ;;

You  got  The  powerful  queen

Perhaps you are Titania, fairy queen of the forest. Or maybe you’re Cleopatra, clever queen of Egypt. Possibly you’re Lady Macbeth, who becomes queen of Scotland in the fullness of time. The point is there are many ways to be a queen, and whether you live or die depends entirely on how many murders you committed, oversaw, or actively encouraged during your reign. (Unless you are Anne Boleyn, in which case good luck with that.)

          ❛ my comfort is no concern of yours, eurus. if you’re trying to tell me it is YOU who is uncomfortable, by all means, do so. ❜   dismissal of PRYING eyes and personal inquiries is all but second NATURE. professionalism learnt ( well-trained PUPPET no longer reliant ‘pon strings ) not birthed.   ❛ if not, please, do continue.  ❜

                     ❛     ––––––––  well,  don’t say that like it’s  impressive.  rules aren’t  MEANT  to hold anyone playing the  game.     ❜     for the  fantasy  of creatures has never come to kiss the inside of the zoo glass;  the  PHOENIX  will never light its tail beside the pride of the stalking peacock,  to  pale  its flourished plumage.  while the  monkeys  of  queer,  little people tumble on,  in their grooming,  and in their simple clamour;  jaime has only ever learned to  SEE.  hold the little  irish  girl,  from her society.  keep her from the dance and song that all others will come to  live,  forever.  turn her into the watchful  GLASS,  sharp,  and ready.  she who is no  animal  will come to rule it all. 

jaime can relish the sound of her chair,  against concrete,  and the tap of her shoes.  (  she comes close,  with every louboutin  tap,  and sits.  STORYTIME !  )

❛     make yours good.  i’d like a  GOOD  little gift for coming all the way  here.     ❜

                  [  I  WAN’T  THE  SECRETS  YOUR  SECRETS  HAVEN’T  FOUND  ]   -----      oh,  watch  in  awe  as  the  world  is  turned  to  dust  by  girls  turned  weapons  !!  you  fear  not  blood  nor  gore,  your  tongues  (  SPLIT  !!  SERPENTINE  !!  DRENCHED  IN  HONEY  &&  POISON  --  !!  )  unafraid  of  the  fire  to  spit  from  clenched  throats,  the  flames  licking  at  the  soles  of  your  feet  and  turning  them  black...            LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN(S)  !!        long  live  she,  with  hair  of  ebony  and  eyes  of  ice,  scales  glistering  in  the  moonlight  wherein  SKIN  ought  to  be.        long  live  the  spider  too,  webs  of  lies  holding  captive  anyone  who  dares  stand  in  the  way  of  her  heel.  

      ❛       WHAT ONE MUST DO,  my dear, is work. work like eeeverybody else, find somethin’ you’re good at, and HELP to produce it. what you see around you–? this does not all run so fuckin’ SMOOTH by people standin around, playin’ with their dicks .. or their pussies.                                              now you–? you are too good to be workin’ in the mess hall, making food.. making soaps, cleaning up SHIT – nah; you’d be one of my runners, and a DAMN good one – hell, ain’t NOBODY gonna mess with you and that mouth you got. ❜

   the wolf   l e a n s   to the side, && though the mouth be pressed into a thin smirk that pulls lightly into the features, the jowls are SLOBBERING; watered merely at the sight of her. like a SLAB of raw, twitching meat before the maw of starved HOUND.. a single, dark brow quirks upward.   

             ❛ or.. you could marry me. i already told you, that shit is NOT a one-time-only offer, especially for you. believe it or not, i can be very, VERY patient – i’m a stand-up-guy like that. ❜

               WHAT  OF  YOUR  EMPIRE,  SERPENT  ??        what  of  sherrinford,  isle  of  your  childhood,  whose  waves  and  howls  hath  been  lullaby  to  your  infancy  ??  deserted.  BURNT  TO  ASHES.  left  for  the  dead.  ruthlessness  carried  you  forth  through  this  world  of  HORRORS  &&  you’ve  never  felt  more  alive  than  with  the  gun  clenched  in  your  grasp.  

                                   “  --  what’s  in  it  for  me  ??  what  makes  you  any  more  SPECIAL  than  any  other  so  --  called  leaders  ??  i  can  bring  men  to  their  knees  for  you  and  i  can  wind  them  up  like  little  toys  and  i  can  give  you  SECRETS  unknown  to  anyone  else,  but  why  would  i  ??  ”                RHETORICAL  QUESTION,  really,  worded  only  to  satisfy  curiosity  brought  forth  by  his  effervescent  personality.  make  him  aware,  QUEEN,  that  you  bow  to  no  man.  boredom,  you  know  so  very  well,  is  a  great  motivation.            survival,  too.

her arms around him REASSURED him as much as her words did, successfully banishing his dark thoughts in the heat of the moment. crutchie coughed, blinking wide eyes as he heard eurus refuse to have him think badly of himself. of course it was a reasonable request, but he had never heard anyone respond so SERIOUSLY about it. anyone else would have – but eurus was not just anyone else, was she?

so he nodded, anger SUBDUED by her soft words, only for uncertainty to grace his face in a nervous smile next. “hey, i ain’t COMPLAININ’ if you wanted t’ know – i think they needed a dose of their own medicine, that’s all!” it might not teach them a lesson not to beat up on dumb crips, but it would certainly send a MESSAGE. and crutchie knew if there was anyone who could send some kind of message to any thug, it was bound to be eurus. 

he slid off the chair, wincing only SLIGHTLY as he put pressure on his good leg. but if eurus wanted to show him something, a little pain wasn’t going to STOP him from walking with her to see whatever it was. with his crutch carefully tucked under his ARM, he limped over to his pseudo-guardian, most of the care erased from his eyes. “somethin’ like what?”

             perhaps  you  see  in  him  what  it  could  have  been  -------  your  own  child  plucked  away  from  you  much  too  soon,  a  death  you  shall  carry  --  oh,  scar  !!  --  to  your  grave  only  for  the  secret  to  die  along  with  you.     &&  the  flames  of  HELL  shall  lick  at  your  skin,  but  do  they  not  know  that  fire  only  hardens  porcelain  ??      doesn’t  matter.  whatever  reminiscence  remains  you  push  it  away  to  focus  your  whole  attention  on  the  boy.

                  and  when  he  moves,  the  whole  world  seems  to  SHIFT  with  one  step  of  narrow  limbs  and  not  you  to  move,  until  an  arm  can  come  to  rest  upon  a  shoulder,  not  in  immediate  aid  but  a  quiet  reminder  that  help  will  come  with  a  single  motion  on  his  part.              you  are  not  GENTLE  outside  this  little  sphere  you’ve  wrapped  the  both  of  us  within.  you  are  not  sweet  and  caring,  but  for  a  moment,      you  are.

          two siblings, older but not wiser than their years, so similar, yet so different, and still mycroft is always baffled by eurus. everything about her. and somehow, her words are reassuring, because he believes her (or he knows it’s true), and maybe he’s selfish for it, but he holds onto those words. they don’t hate me as much as they hate her. not yet.

          if he could’ve known that years down the road, eurus would be gone, presumed dead, and he would’ve gotten the blame and the brunt of the work related to it all thrust upon him, he would’ve laughed at his teenager self for being so petty. why did he think his parents hated him then? because he was overweight, didn’t have good social skills, didn’t always make perfect marks, or god forbid he wanted to be an actor? how does something like that compare to getting the blame for not taking good enough care of his sister, for letting her kill, for letting her die, for letting her rot away in prison and NOT be dead, for failing his whole family? kids. 

        but the question keeps him grounded, in a terrible way, and mycroft shakes his head– he’s so innocent, in a tragically beautiful way. “not while i’m gone,” he says sadly, for himself and for her. “but when i come back on holiday. i promise we’ll do extra plays then.”

                CHILD  OF  THE  APOCALYPSE,  bringer  of  demise,  you  ride  a  pale  horse,  war  and  famine  and  DEATH  at  the  tips  of  fingers  stained  red  --  was  the  apple  you  plucked  from  the  tree  of  knowledge  worth  it  ??  the  serpent  did  not  tell  you  that  upon  biting  down  you’d  shed  your  skin  &&  when  it  grows  anew,  instead  of  flesh  there  would  be  SCALE.                     you’d  do  it  again.  you’d  give  your  blood  and  your  soul  and  your  voice  and  you’d  do  it  again.

                   there’s  an  eerie  silence  following  his  words  and  you  look  at  your  brother  UNBLINKING,  glacial  hues  seemingly  a  tempest  as  they  shift  with  sentiment  unknown  and  not  understood.  promises  weigh  nothing  when  you  KNOW  his  words  are  spoken  in  comfort  and  not  in  the  entirety  of  truth.            (  he’s  leaving  you.  he’s  leaving  you  forever  &&  the  next  time  you  meet,  nothing  will  be  the  same.  your  fingers  itch  for  MURDER  )

“ Nothing. ”

The word is bitten out through clenched teeth, his hands clenching by his sides in turn.

“ Nothing makes me special. ”

But that’s not quite true. Is it? You are everything I’m not, and yeah, there’s some truth to that, but it’s not the entire truth, is it? No, he didn’t kill his sibling’s best friend when he was but a child, he hasn’t killed as many people as she has, but he has killed. He’s held lives in his hands. He has been utterly, desperately alone. He is not only light where she is only darkness. He is not purity personified where she is drenched in corruption. It would be easier to think of it, of them, like that. Extremes. Polar opposites.

—— Except he has bared himself to her, nocturnal texts full of the broken, jagged pieces of himself he chose not to show his best friend or his wife.

You know. You know, and I hate you for it. I hate myself for showing you. I hate myself for still needing someone to see, really see, and not think me ruined. For someone to understand. Christ, I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come here.

“ But you know that now, don’t you? It’s— it’s over now. It’s done. This— is done. ”

           “  both  you  and  i  know  that’s  not  quite  true.  ”           &&  perchance  you  ought  to  show  any  kind  of  RESENTMENT,  your  morality  to  dictate  actions  and  thoughts,  but  you  have  none.            you  think  that  perchance  it  got  robbed  away  from  you  in  infancy,  along  with  all  sense  of  self  until  you’ve  REBUILT  YOURSELF,  spine  erect,  steel  coated  in  ivory  coated  in  porcelain. 

               or  perhaps  you’ve  always  been  more  STARDUST  than  human,  more  venom  and  less  FLESH,    child  borne  out  of  fire  and  ice.  bare  feet  make  no  sound  against  the  floor  of  your  tiny  cell  as  you  GLIDE  FORWARDS,  palm  outstretched  only  to  press  itself  flat  against  the  glass.

                     “  don’t  be  silly,  john,  OF  COURSE  it’s  over.  it’s  been  over  for  a  while,  hasn’t  it  ??  we  met  at  the  bus  stop  when  the  guilt  got  too  much  to  bear.  funny  feeling  --  guilt.  ”                  but  you’re  not  SMILING   &&   taunts  seem  less  sharp  than  intended.  cat  and  mouse,  be  wary,  good  doctor,  of  the  beast’s  MAW  as  it  opens  like  a  chasm  beneath  your  feet  !!

     she nearly smiles. ‘ a-actually, it was MYCROFT who asked me to come. can’t imagining him being worried about me. ’ surprise, isn’t it? molly herself was in a light state of shock when the older holmes’ brother came to her that morning, giving her a task that seemed entirely impossible in her mind. what questions could eurus have for her? or did he want molly to educate her on some ‘silly human matters’? all she knew was that she had no clue whatsoever why she was brought in. her only hope was that the brunette standing in front of her, won’t decide upon destroying her bit by bit. 

    ‘ i’m allowed to share all the information with you that I deem, well uhm… SAFE. ’ perhaps that bit of information she shouldn’t have revealed. if the woman in front of her was capable of manipulating and reading her brothers like an open book, two men she knew had perfected their abilities at hiding emotional responses to one thing or the other, than she surely was screwed. eurus won’t even have to try hard with her. her best chance at surviving through this was eurus finding her boring and dismissing her presence within span of a few minutes.

               BELLY  OF  THE  MONSTER,  this  prison  of  yours.  stone  &&  concrete  and  chains  made  of  bone,  built  to  hold  back  tempest  and  lighting  and  FIRE...        but  what  about  frost  ??  iron  made  brittle  with  freezing,  all  you  need  to  do  it  TAP  !!  a  fingernail  for  it  to  break.  are  not  not  RULER  OF  THE  DAMNED  ??  had  your  fingers  yanked  at  collars,  they’d  all  be  breaking  glass  of  cells  to  SWARM  within  your  own  and  devour  the  girl  whole.           you  can  change  the  guards  and  you  can  change  the  men  in  power,  but  the  PRISONERS  hold  the  real  danger.

                           “  he  must  be  really  DESPERATE.  ”    but  a  flicker  of  something  appears  within  the  still  blue  of  large  eyes,  something  to  akin  to  FONDNESS  it’s  painful.     akin  to  contempt,  too.    sherlock  has  the  VIOLIN,  melody  pushing  siblings  together,  so  what  does  mycroft  have  ??