#rcartwright

' Hagrid and Polly Pocket’re out working out their real IQ. Depresso’s off on a Sherlock Holmes project with the eyes and brains of Watson.  If you can tear yourself away from gazing at the splendors of Ho’s treasure trove, you’re going to find out everything you can about Donovan and his nutbags. Names. Places. Dates. I want to know if he’s married a Yank and settled down in Stonehenge with inbred kids.   ‘

She leaned one elbow on the table, tilting her glass, letting the light glint off it. “History,” she murmured to herself, though loud enough for any curious ears to catch, “has a way of being dramatic. People forget what they took, what they lost. Maybe I like reminding them about it all.”The music thumped again, and she laughed softly… a charade.

Her eyes were cold, perfectly in step with her voice, though her lips curved into something almost playful. “If you’re going to kill someone, you should be close enough to really see them, to hear the panic set in. Otherwise,” she shrugged lightly, “what’s the point?”

Spider had never forgiven River for being randomly assigned to room with him the day they'd arrived in Brecon. (‘Jesus, bad luck mate,’ he’d overhead someone snigger to Cartwright at the time). And it was for this, and no other motive - definitely not because, since he was acing every class, exercise and drill without even trying, Spider’s only form of entertainment was to torment River - that last night, whilst his roommate was snoring away as usual, he had taken apart River's service pistol and removed the tiny firing pin block with a tweezer. Today had been an exercise in clearing a safehouse full of terrorists - and if the gossip at the Mess bar could be believed, River had not passed with flying colours.

“It’s a trap, soldier,” he told him. “The food there is terrible.” That helped sometimes, he had been told. He took off his suit jacket and began to pull on the other man’s clothes to reveal the wound; checking it for a second before he pressed his jacket into it to try and stop the bleeding.

// There is a dirty little secret of an SAS operation gone terribly wrong that was…swept under the table. He wasn’t the commanding officer at the time and not involved directly, but still feels terrible for knowing about it and having done nothing, to prevent it. Everyone had sworn to secrecy and to never talk about it as long as they lived.

"A wise man once said, 'Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions'. You have to be subtle at most aspects of your life. People underestimate you; but never make it too obvious, and don't overdo it."