thedogbard

I'm an incurable writer. Original stuff, fanfics, all kinds of sh*t. I also love reading, dogs, animals in general, baking, walking, and laughing at the random stuff my brain comes up with. I also have controversial ships. Live and let live, please.

Fandoms I'm in or love: Skulduggery Pleasant, Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, Lockwood & Co, Dr Strange (movies), Sherlock BBC (also ACD Sherlock, Mary Russell series, and Elementary), Day of the Jackal, The Aeronauts, Little Women...and possibly more? I've read all the Riordan books...

Individual books I love (and their fandoms): Jane Eyre, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Villette, Shirley, (or anything by the Brontes), Emily's Ghost, The Blue Castle, Knights of the Borrowed Dark trilogy, The Lost World and The Poison Belt, I Capture The Castle, Little Women, and many more I can't think of right now. Little-kid-me demands that I also add A Little Princess and Coral Island to this list...

Music I love: Roxette, Taylor Swift, Adele, Emeli Sande, Enya, Dua Lipa, and some other select songs, like Money Run Low by The Score.

Songs I can't stop listening to that might well be a part of my DNA by now: Haunted, Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince, Listen To Your Heart, Anywhere Is, Getaway Car (my no.1 spotify wrapped this year, and i'm not ashamed), I Knew You Were Trouble, Seven Wonders, The Look, This Love, Wonderland, There's Nothing Holding Me Back, Blow Your Mind, The Wind and a bunch more. If you're a Swiftie, DM me your favourites. Let's agree and argue and have fun!

I am so emotionally mature for my age that I've been told I have the soul of a pensioner. It was a compliment and I'm taking it as such.

In one country I am tall, decent-looking, and socially funny. In another I'm average-heighted, average-looking, and averagely-funny. Which is weird for my esteem and opinion of myself. Whatever.

I'm not a very ambitious person. My great dream in life is to be an author. I'm also funny, weirdly knowledgeable about niche things, and addicted to chocolate. (It's becoming a problem).

Send me asks or interact! I'll send asks or interact in return - or random asks whenever I'm bored. I love meeting new people. Whoever, whatever you are, just so long as you're not a...Think of all the worst kinds of people. If you're not one of 'em, then hang out with me.

@the-archivist-system is my beloved adopted sibling and one of my best friends 🐾 They're the only one who gets to call me Logios, because of this post!!✨️

Thank you to @dramatic1nlyf for this amazing moodboard!!!!

(right at the bottom, in uncertain small print...): if you want you can request a fic. Here's my "guideline" post.

Oh and I'm adding these posts here so I can never lose them because OHMYGOSH

AFJAFSGHHDAF THANK YOU @skeletal-spire-man-aka-overfit this literally made my YEAR

okay wait - @catastrophiccblues I'm also saving this here because it's too good to ever lose ✨️

And lastly, here are song lyrics from songs that have stuck to me like glue, arranged to tell a vaguely coherent story.

Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile

You’ve got the words to change a nation but you’re biting your tongue

Something keeps me holding on to nothing

Who can say where the road goes, where the day flows?

And you know it’s never simple, never easy

Wasn’t it beautiful, running wild till you fell asleep?

I’m only one, but not alone, my finest day is yet unknown

You go there, you're gone forever, I go there, I'll lose my way

God rest my soul, I miss who I used to be

I attend Christmas parties from outside

It’s all fun and games til somebody loses their mind

There’s no comfort in the truth, pain is all that you’ll find

I held that grudge till it tore me apart

It’s the first time, the last time, we ever met

It's no surprise I turned you in, 'cause us traitors never win

You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes

And now they’ve broken you like they’ve broken me, but a shattered glass is a lot more sharp

And if I’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too

I pass it and lose track of what I’m saying, cause that’s where I was when I lost it all

Always learning everything the hard way

Some say illusions are her game

Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth

And nobody comes to save you now, but you got something they don't

When the violence causes silence, we must be mistaken

I remember all of the things that I thought I wanted to be

When you’re young, you just run, but you come back to what you need

So, baby, can we dance, oh, through an avalanche?

You don’t need to save me, but would you run away with me?

Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world

"Don't you see the starlight, starlight? Don't you dream impossible things?"

Okay, so! Basically, this is an improvisation fic where we each write a chapter without telling the other about it, based on a randomized song, and attempt to create the most amazing fanfic ever. The first song on my list was Only Ticket Home by Gavin James (it’s been on repeat and I love it SO much), and I felt like it was a very season-3 song, so here ya go! I hope you enjoy it!

Can we take the long way home?

Cause moments like this are hard to hold onto

You’ll be my only ticket home

Oh, I’ve been away for so long

It’s like I’m the ghost in your bedroom

But that never keeps you warm

Can we take the long way home?

Cause moments like this

I had to let them go.

- Only Ticket Home by Gavin James

You’re sitting at a quiet table in a quiet pub. It’s an old building, red-brick and flat outside; dark and golden lamplight and red velvet upholstery inside. Your table is smooth with the history of too many pint glasses; scratched and soothed over. Your back is against the wall, sitting on a bench softened by more of the same red velvet cushioning. You’re alone, so you don’t get a candle. Just a salt-shaker, abandoned there by whoever sat at this table before; whoever decided to eat and had salt with whatever they ate. You wonder if they were alone; if they had a companion or more; what they talked about. Did they laugh?

You’re alone. Alone asides from the drink in your hand. You’re staring quietly across the pub at nothing. It’s a sombre night, not many people and certainly no one being loud. England lost the football yesterday, after the most anticipated match of the century, and most regulars are drowning their sorrows and shames at home. But you don’t care about football and never did. Unlike him.

Your hand tightens around the glass a little bit. Don’t think about him. It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, apart from the fact that you let yourself trust him and he just - betrayed you like you weren’t even worthy of basic human decency.

The woman behind the bar is stout, straw-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, a fringe falling into her eyes, wearing a black-and-white chequered apron over a bright red t-shirt. She gave you your drink, and she’s friendly enough, giving you a sympathetic look as you paid, like she knows why you’re here but she’s too polite to tell you that he was a dickhead anyway.

You listen to the clinking of glasses from a table tucked around the corner, that you can’t quite see; the soft crooning voice overhead murmuring about whispers in the dark. There’s something like sadness in the scent lifting from the dark wooden furniture older than you.

That’s when it happens.

He comes around the corner, edges nimbly between the two tables and slides onto the bench next to you and gives you a smile like he’s only five minutes late.

“I’ll punch him for you,” Sherlock Holmes, a dead man walking, says.

*

Before two years ago, once upon a time, you had a friend. He was eccentric and wild and funny and grumpy and impossible. And incredibly attractive, but that was like finding a pea in a bag of dried lentils; irrelevant and something to be dealt with later, when you called a food-safety authority of some sort.

You’d never been good at directions or train platforms. Not when it was busy. Not when you were in a rush. So when you heard an announcement about the train you needed, and saw the train pulling in, in sync with the overhead voice, you’d stepped forward for it automatically, standing behind the yellow line alongside a bunch of impatient commuters, waiting for it to finally stop so you could find the nearest pair of doors and climb in and try to find a seat and just breathe for the first time in all d-

A hand closed around your upper arm. “Wrong train.”

You whirled around, eyes wide. London. Stranger danger. You nearly screamed when you saw the state of the man. He was in a very nice white shirt. He had gorgeous hair, just wild enough to look rakish. Ironed black trousers. Shoes that had been probably polished very recently. An expensive watch.

A real charmer.

Apart from the fact that he was covered from head to toe in scarlet red blood, running in drastic vertical lines over his face.

And he had a fucking harpoon that was almost as tall as you.

I am going to die in Victoria Station. For one second you were convinced you had already died and were haunting this very platform. Propped against the little office-block was a small memorial gravestone; your name, and the solemn words: harpooned to death by a madman.

And then the man sighed and rolled his eyes, as if you were the one being a nuisance. “No. I’m not going to murder you. Do have some imagination; if I had just murdered someone, I’d hardly be looking for my next victim in this state. That train is going the wrong way. Pay attention, can’t you?”

At that moment the train rolled off, leaving that half of the platform empty. You stared in horror after it before looking back up at the man. Not a single person had even tried to intervene to prevent your murder. That was good ol’ Londoners for you.

“A-alright,” you stuttered, before glancing warily up at the small screens overhead. Dammit. He was actually right. Which led to another question.

“How the hell did you know?” Was he a stalker?

“I observed,” he said impatiently, and then turned on his heel, walking off to the other side of the platform.

You hesitated, before following him. At first you put a respectable distance between yourself and him, but more and more people flooded the platform in hordes of anticipation. Then the train pulled in and you realised you wouldn’t be getting a seat at this rate.

And then you spotted Mr Harpoon and saw the enormous gap around him, where people were giving him wary side-eyes and a wide berth. He was probably going to get an entire carriage to himself.

Or not.

You shoved past some tourists and hopped up through the same pair of doors as him. He chose a seat at the end of the carriage, balancing the harpoon next to him. A young woman took one look at him and immediately left the carriage.

You sat down opposite him.

He gave you a mildly surprised glance, just as two girls got on the train, saw him, screamed, and practically shoved each other out again.

His lips quirked up.

And so did yours.

The train pulled out of the station, the announcement of stations crackling above. You leaned your head against the plastic separator between you and the next set of seats. This half of the carriage was fully empty. A few brave suited businessmen were at the other end.

You almost felt like you were travelling in first class. It was, by far, the most peaceful rush-hour commute you’d experienced.

Not so for Mr Harpoon.

“This is tedious,” he muttered, looking around balefully. It probably wasn’t a comment aimed for you to hear, or engage with. That had never stopped you before.

“This is the nicest rush-hour ride I’ve ever had. Really quiet. Spacious.” You flourished your arms.

“None of the taxis would take me.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Oh wow, I wonder why.”

His lips quirked again. Reluctantly. You smiled back, and then pointed at the harpoon. “So, why…Or would I rather not know?”

Throughout that ride, it turned out that you lived one street away from each other. You introduced yourselves, and Sherlock seemed to expect you to know his name - even though you didn’t.

“I’m not shaking your hand,” you said firmly, settling back deeper in your seat in emphasis.

And that was how you met.

Throughout your burgeoning acquaintanceship, Sherlock had proved to be a complete arsehole. He was an idiot. He was funny without meaning to be. He was an addict - whether to drugs or nicotine or Who Do You Think You Are or sour-cream crisps. He would burst in and out of your flat at all hours, demanding things from coffee to friendship to, once, slippers for Christmas. He was impossible and charismatic and sometimes he slowed down enough to watch you living your life and share in it. He was, in short, the most important person you’d ever met, and in the end, you never contacted food-safety authorities about that pea. The fact that he was attractive wasn’t a punishment. He was a show-off, he was a blathering fool sometimes, but he wasn’t arrogant about how he looked and that meant it was fine for you to stare at him, to feel like your eyes had landed on home when they saw him in a crowd.

Long story short, that pea was the reason the lentils became more than friendship. At least, on your end.

And like a rotting bag of food too long abandoned, you didn’t realise what had happened to you until it was far too late.

*

After the fall - after Sherlock died and left you behind with that realisation you could never breathe into words he could hear - you had been devastated. Your flat felt too empty. Your head was empty. You saw him in your peripheral vision, like a ghost. You missed him in ways that no one had ever described grief being like. You found a new thing you enjoyed and you wanted to tell him about it. You wanted him to watch you become the person you were now, even if she wasn’t so very different from the person he’d left behind. You wanted many things, but they all boiled down to the same sum: Sherlock.

You got into a relationship with a guy and, just three days ago, found him cheating on you when you had gone to his flat unexpectedly, bringing the takeaway you knew he liked best. It was a takeaway that Sherlock would’ve hated, and you had thought that when you threw the curry platters down and watched it burst open across his pretentious white carpet. You’d dropped your keys and left him there in your past and gone home and reopened the old wounds by remembering the way Sherlock used to stand in the corner of your bedroom like a very vocal sceptre, voicing deductions like a bedtime story until you woke up enough to pay him attention.

So you went to the pub tonight. You think about John and Mary, about the fact John Watson is going to propose to Mary Morstan, a true love that won’t fade away unless they die, and it hurts because they still get their happy ending, but you can’t get it. Not with the guy you lost, and not with the guy you never loved. So you sit there alone and think about how many sad songs you can play and how it won’t bring back the one person who you’re remembering now. And you think about the way he held onto you when it was a danger night, and the way you fell asleep on your sofa and woke up to find yourself covered in a blanket and Sherlock sitting on the floor, asleep too, the back of his head only inches away from your face, like he needed to be close to you as much as you need him now.

The one person in the world that-

That what? You cut yourself off. That you could ever love? Or lose?

His eyes, his smile, his sarcastic quips, his utter impossibility, the way he hugged you just once ever, lifted you off the ground and spun you around because you had inadvertently helped him solve a case.

And you remember him so well that you bring him back to life.

*

“Ohmygod.”

Sherlock leans forward and grabs the drink from your hand just before it tilts and upends itself over your lap. The rasp of his coat-cuff against your wrist makes you flinch like you’ve been burned. You’re sliding backwards now, away from him, wide-eyed. Your head feels odd, like it might be underwater.

“Y/N,” Sherlock’s saying urgently. “Don’t faint. Mrs Hudson already did that, for God’s sake. At least do something original. Look at me.”

You are looking at him. And the words are too cruel, too sharp, and just a little bit too pleading, for it to be something you’ve conjured up. You blink madly and swallow, your ears popping, and break the surface of the imaginary water drowning you in your brain.

“Oh. My. God,” you whisper hoarsely. “I’m - But-”

Sherlock watches you.

“But you have a headstone.” It is the most absurd possible thing to say. So obviously, you say it.

Sherlock blinks at you, then gives a short laugh. “Yes, I do. Suppose it’s a bit redundant now that I’m back. Mycroft can take care of it.” He looks at your glass, half-drunk. “Another drink? I’ll be ba-”

You lurch forward but stop before you touch him, too afraid. You can’t grab onto dust motes or spiralling steam. Sherlock looks at you in confusion.

“Don’t go.”

“Only to the bar,” Sherlock says reasonably. “I need a drink too. What do you want? Another of the same? I’ll be back in a minute.”

You watch him, your heartbeat thundering in your ears, as he slides out, edges back between the tables, walks over the bar with his coat flaring lightly around him. You can’t swallow properly. You grab your drink from the table and finish it with one crazed gulp. You can’t hear Sherlock talking. You watch the bartender give him two drinks; watch him pay; inclining his head in cursory thanks; walking back over; placing your new drink down next to his pint.

“Now,” he says. “Any calmer? I hope I avoided the hysterics’ part of the evening.” He gives you a searching look.

You let out a weird laugh. “I’m…I’m talking to a ghost.”

“Not a ghost.” Sherlock offers you his hand. “Here. I can prove it.”

You stare at his hand for a long moment, lit by the golden lamplight and shadowed by the dark wood table and the rich red cushioning and edged by his coat sleeve. And then - because you have nothing left to lose, if you’re sitting here having a drink with a ghost - you take it.

You feel it, without meaning to, acutely aware of every sensation, every bone and muscle and involuntary twitch of his fingers; his fingernails - short-clipped and rounded and clean; his knuckles, scarred from old battles; the warmth of his palm, his lifeline jagged across yours, and your fingers push under his sleeve, your knuckles itching against rough wool, and find his pulse, jumping strong through his skin and against yours, irrepressible, unstoppable. Alive.

You look up at him. He’s watching you, and his eyes are blue and gentle and you suddenly want to kiss him, more than anything; slide closer and wrap your arms around his neck and make up for lost time. His face is familiar, altered enough to make you believe he lived for two years - and didn’t die and resurrect himself the way he was.

And then you peer closer. Half his face has been in shadow, so you hadn’t noticed until now, but there’s traces of blood on his cheek and his nose is abnormally large. Swollen.

“What happened?”

“John,” Sherlock says, still holding your hand.

“Oh! Did he propose?”

“Propose?” Sherlock stares at you, eyes narrowing and darting around like cogs are literally turning inside his brain. “Is that what he’s doing?”

You stare back at him. “Sherlock Holmes, did you just fucking gatecrash John’s proposal of marriage?”

He looks around guiltily, unable to actually lie, unwilling to confirm it, and you suddenly start to laugh, light-headed again, his pulse the only thing keeping you grounded. Dear god, he’s impossible and beautiful and somehow, against every odd in the world, he’s alive.

*

Two Years Ago

He watches through the bare trees. Every inhale is tinged with pine and fresh soil and mud. Leaves are rotting underfoot, and he doesn’t dare move in case he rustles, in case she hears, in case she senses. Or maybe he should move, so she sees him, so she looks up and then he has a legitimate reason why he can tell her he’s alive.

Black skirt; black tights; black boots; a black blanket-coat with a scarlet red collar that she had attempted to hide by turning it down and covering it with a a black wool scarf that had tasselled ends. The scarf looks soft. He wishes he could touch it. Unwind it, perhaps, because he and her had arrived in a warm indoors’ building. 221b. It hurts like an ache, to think about a moment when he is unwinding that scarf in the safety of 221b and she is looking up at him like she doesn’t mind the chivalry because really, it is her being chivalrous to him by indulging him, by allowing him to stand that close, to touch her and anything in her proximity.

It’s a still, cold, winter day, the day that Sherlock Holmes was laid to rest. She isn’t speaking, not even under her breath, because no white puffs crystallize on the frozen air. It’s just her, now, standing by his headstone. She reaches out, her fingers brushing the top, and he feels it like a burning cold touch on his own forearm.

“Anything,” she murmurs, and because it is such a still, cold day her words carry over to him. “Anything.” It’s a train of thought she was carrying already in her mind, and he is profoundly thankful that she voices it now. “I’d do anything to have you be alive now.”

She stops, swallows. “And if it turned out…If it could ever turn out…” Another swallow. He’s too far away to see if there’s tears in her eyes. “If it ever turned out that you were alive…” She stops.

He waits, a dead man with a pulse, for her jury and judge’s verdict.

“I’d promise to forgive you one day for letting us believe you were dead, right now.” She slowly lifts her hand from his headstone. “I promise it.”

That promise is his only ticket home.

*

Now

Once Sherlock’s through with all the explanations that aren’t really, but are enough for the moment, (just saw John and Mary, watched them leave in a taxi, cleaned up a bit and came to find you), he pauses, takes a sip of his pint.

“I mean it, you know,” he says, putting the glass down. “I’ll punch him for you.”

“Nah,” you say, “it’s fine. Your knuckles don’t deserve the bruising. He was a dickhead and…honestly, I knew it. I only-”

You look down at your knees.

“You only what?”

“I needed someone. Someone to just…be around.” You let out a bitter laugh. “And he wasn’t even a consolation prize. He was nothing. But I needed someone.” You swallow.

“And you weren’t there.”

Silence. Not silence, not in a pub and not in London, but as close as it could ever get to that. You dare to look up at his face. He’s watching you again, with that same singular gentleness. You see the line of his eyelashes when he glances down momentarily; you feel your jumper around you, and the taste of your drink in the back of your mouth.

“Y/N-”

“No,” you say quickly. “Maybe don’t say anything. I know I’m being stupid. It’s just the emotions - the hormones of seeing you again.” You cannot believe you just said that aloud. You try for a self-deprecating laugh. “It was just…I missed you.” (Crying alone for him, walking past the netted windows and knowing no one was standing behind them, watching John walk away with a cane, remembering what it felt like to practise juggling bananas with him). “I - Sherlock, I needed you more than I ever realised. And I know that’s a one way street. You’re not my one and only ticket to happiness.” (Because that wouldn’t be fair on you. Maybe you’re just my ticket home). “It’s okay. You don’t need to pretend.”

He lets you finish. You study the faded scratches in the wood, wondering if any lovers carved their initials into the wooden surfaces of this pub, once upon a dozen decades.

“No,” Sherlock says, and his voice is deep, and still soft, and that’s how two years have changed him, you realise. “I’ve missed you. Moments like…this. Or the moments we…had. We were friends, and I had to let them go. Let you go, all of you, in order to keep you. It was not…” His fingers do a strange drumming rhythm on the table, skipping beats like Morse code. “Not an easy choice - but it was easier than I expected. And-”

You look at him. “And?”

“I am fully aware it’s been a while. Twenty-six months and two weeks, to be exact. I’ve been busy. Been all around the world, destabilising Moriarty’s festering network. Didn’t expect it to take quite so long, but I wanted to be…thorough.”

“You took the long way home.”

He smiles a bit. “Yes. I did.”

A moment. For once there isn’t a clock ticking. You finish your drink; look at the froth left on the side of Sherlock’s mostly untouched pint. There’s the undeniable expectancy, now, of two people who are going to leave together.

He speaks like he’s finishing his earlier sentence and yours, both together.