bakerstreet | Come with me if you want to live.

Come with me if you want to live.

your ｐａｓｔ, my ｆｕｔｕｒｅ.

"John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn’t know why at the time. It was very old-torn, faded. You were young like you are now. You seemed just a little sad. I used to always wonder what you were thinking at that moment. I memorized every line, every curve. I came across time for you Sarah. I love you; I always have."

You have one important task that makes you willing to risk sending your very atoms across time, to a part you know little about: you have to make sure one person stays safe. Even if they're nothing much now, in the future, they're the key. That much you know. Aside from this one imperative goal, you have strict orders to not shape the past in any other way.

Falling for the person you've been sent back to protect surely qualifies as bending the past beyond repair. Will you allow these growing feelings to take root and potentially change the path of time, or will you deny yourself and focus on what you know must be done? Of course, the latter may be especially hard should your attraction towards this person have its beginnings in your future, back when you first heard of them...or first saw their face in something like a faded picture or a hologram. But there should be no time for romance, as danger is pressing closer and closer, threatening to make both of your lives come undone at the seams.

ｈｏｗｔｏｐｌａｙ

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[ooc: Either / or.]

[Late 19th Century/Early 20th Century version! OC/AU/Crossover friendly!]

[TIME TRAVEL TIME TRAVEL come visit her in 1897 or drag her back to present day or whatever!]

[Was this a real mission or just one the boys had declared on their own and passed around? Personally, Haruka didn't care. Either way, they were still to do this multiple-worlds extraction mission with the greatest of care to ensure the best results and...

...and Haruka's not having any of that, because really, when else are you going to get the chance to scale a building and climb through someone's window in a Victorian ballgown that you've had on ten minutes and already gotten dirty.]

"Lucky!" Operation Mass Meri-Meri Retrieval is going great! ...Now where do I actually find a Meri-Meri...

[2007, and her canon involves time loops and time travel, too!]

[somebody take this precious child out of 1963]

[It isn't as if she's never meddled in time and space before. In fact, she's done it on multiple occasions-- over a hundred times, now, restarting a timeline every time that idiot she was helping got himself killed. She's a professional at meddling in time and space. She's an expert.

(Not that it's hard to be an expert when you're only one of three people who can do it. But even if everyone could do it, she'd be an expert, because she's that intelligent).

Anyway . . . after all was said and done, she and Robert had traveled through time and space, stopping in this universe and that, examining all sorts of things. Rosalind is more interested in going forward, seeing how science has advanced, but it's Robert who keeps dragging them back, fascinated by the stories he hears. And sometimes he gets it in his fool head to interfere.

They're both interested in this girl. A girl who lives on after death; a girl who has abilities beyond the average human. But it's Rosalind who actually goes to see her-- because, though she'll never admit it, she has a soft spot for women in this time and place who have a rough spot of it.

She arrives in the countryside, which is just as well. Better for only the girl to see her; she hates having to deal with bystanders. Rosalind stands tall and severe, imposing for all she's only five-foot-eight. Her mouth is pinched-- but her blue eyes light up when she sees Meridiana.]

[Honestly, if he could have done this any other way, Giorno would not have come to 1897. No one in their right mind would want to come to 1897. 1897 is some garbage.]

[That being said, one must occasionally compromise one's preferences to achieve one's goals, and while generally his preferences (beautiful things, justice, sunny days, pretty flowers) align neatly with his job (literally ruling most of Europe), sometimes it doesn't work out like that. Like now, for instance. Admittedly this is a little more like an extracurricular activity — he's pretty sure certain people, that is, almost everyone he knows, would have a moral problem with his investigation into resurrection technology — and so maybe he shouldn't complain.]

[He doesn't complain. But he doesn't compromise anything more than the single principle that is leaving his own time and coming to Basically Literal Hell 1897. Which means that it takes about half a day for everyone in the immediate vicinity of the "Delilah" rumors to know that there is a certified weirdo wandering around in clothing heretofore never seen in this Victorian shithole.]

[It takes another half a day for the second half of the rumor to circulate: that someone in the inner city thought he was an easy mark and was subsequently punched (maybe) by a ghost (or something). That doesn't cause people to give him nearly a wide enough berth, but it's a start.]

[There's one day, though, that's just too much. He's sick of these people, the way they talk and move and step on each other. So he retreats to a garden in the middle of the city, a place with high hedges and unhealthy roses, and he curls up on a bench and closes his eyes for a while and just breathes.]

[He's sick of these people and this place. Hopefully he won't have to be here for much longer.]

[Whatever it was she'd been expecting, a rescue of this variety...presumably wasn't it.

The problem with the delicate fabric of space-time is mostly the fact that there is a resident expert in it around the B&B, but it's decidedly not her. Or, well, no — that's half of the problem with the delicate fabric of space-time, with the other and more significant half being that apparently sometimes it ruptures and just kind of swallows people up with no warning. Which, evidently, is what had happened, which in turn had slingshotted her straight back to the last place she'd ever wanted to return to, even considering murderschool:

EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN.

Suffice to say, she's happy for the rescue, unexpected though it might be.]

M-Miss Haruka...?

[It's nice, sometimes, when she can get outside and spend time among flowers and blue sky instead of high stone walls and gray smoke and soot. Understandably, she doesn't get outside all that much — they wouldn't let her in the first place, and that sort of thing isn't proper for a lady in large quantities anyway — but she's managed it today. There's a ball set for this evening on this particular property, and the gardens are an important part of showing off the lord and lady's social standing, so there will be people here soon to flood the whole place but for the time being it's only her and the garden, and she's allowed to wander without supervision, at least until someone comes to collect her and return her to her cage.

It's quiet, though. Quiet enough that she can hear footsteps approaching, and she is quiet too — quiet and perfect and doll-like, as she turns to see who's coming and receive them properly, albeit perhaps a little bit more withdrawn than she means to be.]

...Good day, my lady.

[Is this the owner of the estate? She can't remember. The woman looks like it and acts like it, though, so: better safe than sorry.]

This garden...it's very beautiful, isn't it?

[She's heard the rumors, herself, about the strange man that's been turning up here and there in London lately. People talk, of course, and even though she's often removed from being present firsthand at those conversations, she still sometimes hears whispers of them from afar. No one can seem to work out who he is or what business he intends with anyone; some say he's escaped from some sort of traveling circus or another, while others offer up that he must be someone or other from some faraway land, a rather sort of savage who doesn't know a thing about polite society.

She's wondered, once or twice in her idle moments, of how it must be to be a man like that. Scandal never quite seems to attach to men the way it does to everyone else. People speak of him, are wary of him and gossip of him, and yet it makes people want to see him — renders him a curiosity. It's a far cry from being scorned and shunned and cast out. She wonders sometimes what compels him to stand out in that way, rather than seeking to fit in.

What she doesn't expect is that one day she might see him herself. Surely someone like that would never end up anywhere in society; no one respectable would offer up an invitation or a courtesy to someone so clearly backwards about how to behave.

But maybe she should've known better. She's heard tell of him because he's been interested in the doctor, been asking around and ending up a little too close to truths that he shouldn't be allowed to find — and now, suddenly, here she is herself, brought to a garden in the city center with no explanation and turned loose on the pretense of taking some air, permitted to do what she likes.

She's not been turned loose, and this has nothing to do with what she likes. She understands that, as soon as she sees him occupying the bench and realizes that this gift of time in the garden is no coincidence, and neither is the fact that she's ended up in the same place as him.

She could leave, maybe. Say she never saw anyone. Disappoint the doctor and his colleagues with such news.

She makes herself walk toward the bench instead, hands clasped in front of her and feet taking small mincing steps the way she ought to, and tries to make just enough noise to alert him to her approach while still staying quiet enough to be proper.]

[There are furs around his shoulders, pulled effortlessly close to his neck against the damp chill that seems to pervade this place no matter the season. They're heavy, they look heavy, and outrageously expensive, but he wears them as though they weigh nothing and mean less, especially in comparison to the person wearing them. There's an obvious, undeniable air of vanity about him that's as far as can be imagined from the person approaching him; he doesn't bother to hide it, to make it quieter or more acceptable, because he doesn't care. Here, of all places, he aggressively doesn't care.]

[The woman — girl? he thinks, and then lands on woman again, out of some sense of vicious stubbornness — coming towards him with steps that seem designed to get her nowhere, she would melt in the Italian sun. To look at her is to miss Trish and her dagger-sharp smiles like a lost limb. She is not Trish, she is not anyone he knows, she is . . . the type of person who has been told a thousand times or a million to be quiet until, in the end, she's opted simply to disappear. A shadow of a shadow of a shadow.]

[He drums his fingers on the bench, once twice three times (she would make Mista sad), and then sits up a little straighter, leaning towards her with eyebrows slightly raised.]

Come posso—

[. . . No. Not that game. She doesn't speak Italian, look at her.]

Excuse me. Do you need help, signorina?

[Exotic. It's the first word that comes to mind when he speaks to her, the word that seems to fit best with the way the syllables roll off his tongue like water skimming over smooth stones in a brook. And she's not quite worldly enough to place the accent or the language, not at first — not until he reaches signorina and it connects that he's spoken Italian to her, which she takes to mean that it must also be his native tongue. Why else should someone who speaks proper English speak anything else, and particularly so while occupying a bench in the city at the center of the civilized world?

Notions of Italy come with their own visions and fantasies, built on pictures she's seen in books and supplemented with images from her own memories and experiences — the ones she can remember enough to draw on, at least. In Italy, the sun always shines, she thinks. In Italy the sky is blue, always, and the cities are green and lush, with no smog. There are no chimneys, there is no soot. Italy brings notions of Verona, which in turn comes accompanied by thoughts of balconies covered in ivy and young lovers trading sweet nothings by the light of a silver moon.

It's very far away from London, a place like Italy.

It's visible, to someone adept at watching for body language, the way she's so careful to pose herself, the way she never takes up too much space; he speaks to her and she lowers her eyes modestly, because there's no intermediary to make a proper introduction but it's the sort of thing that can't be helped right now.]

I do beg your pardon, sir, and I hope you might forgive the boldness, but —

[But. She's here with a purpose, a goal. She mustn't forget that.]

...I...yes. Yes, if you please, if you might help me I should be terribly grateful for it. I was...I've become separated from my guardian, somehow, and I'd not like to simply wander around alone searching in so unseemly a fashion. I wonder if you might perhaps have seen him, or...if perhaps you would be so kind as to assist me...?

Your guardian?

[For some reason, that's what he latches onto immediately. On some level, the concept is entirely foreign to him in that he's had no life experience at having a guardian, only being one. A guardian is someone set out to protect another, a child, and she . . .]

[She's not terribly old. He can't quite pinpoint her age; he thinks anywhere between fifteen and nineteen, maybe, so not much younger than him. Old enough that he doesn't believe she would ordinarily need an escort. Old enough that, unless she's ill, no one needs to have her under their thumb.]

[He feels the desire to cause someone to have an awful day, based purely on paranoia and a dislike of the mores he's waded into. Those things, and the dark, foreboding feeling that lingers at the back of his tongue and the nape of his neck, the instinct that's kept him alive all this time.]

[So unseemly a fashion. Perhaps she's a murderer. Perhaps her guardian is meant to keep her from harming anyone. It would be so nice to believe that. God, he hates it here.]

[His movements, as he straightens fully from his slump to beautiful, perfect posture, are fluid and sinuous, effortlessly graceful, and not quite human, or at least not ordinarily human. An ordinary person from this day and time would find nothing wrong with this encounter, the way this young woman is acting. But for him, it's like seeing the worst of himself reflected in a mirror.]

Beg me for nothing.

[That first statement, curt; then he lowers his eyes briefly, annoyed with himself for snapping even though he barely did, because the problems here aren't her fault, and takes a breath before looking up again with a honey-sweet smile.]

Beg me for nothing. You can ask, or you can demand, but there's no need for begging when assistance is the very least thing one person can give to another.

I haven't seen anyone else here today, to the point, but I'll help you look. The rest of my plans for the day have become inconveniently rearranged.

[Haruka lights up and turns at the voice. She runs over and clasps her hands in front of Meridiana.]

There you are! We had this whole rescue thing planned out, Dave-kun and Silver-kun got, like, everyone looking for you! Do you need to grab anything before I get you out of here? Silver-kun was talking about setting stuff on fire, I forget, I was kinda only listening to the important parts...

[If she were capable of reading thoughts at will instead of reading hearts by touch, she might be surprised to discover how accurate so many of the gentleman's considerations are, in at least one way or another. It's difficult to remember precisely how old she is, or how to calculate it with the passage of time; she remembers being sixteen when she died, and she doesn't recall whether the half-year she's been alive beyond it has crossed through her former birthdate or not. There's something to be said for the flower of youth, though; far better to be in a position of needing only to appear a little older than to be one of the many women in society trying valiantly to come away looking younger, and she's arguably just a touch too young to be thinking of marriage but of course, the whole point is to make someone else start thinking of it first, and then simply to act charmed and surprised when the notion comes up, as though she'd never thought of it at all.

He'd be right that she's ill, not that she'll let it show if she can help it. Often she can't, but those are the times when she's afraid or when she's hungry. She's thankfully neither today — or at the very least, she's not particularly hungry.

And of course, he's right that she's a murderer.

If a death happens so as to benefit her, then she's a murderer whether she held the knife or not.

He seems very kind, this man, which she decides must be a facet of his being a foreigner. He doesn't seem to notice that her excuses are flimsy and her behavior suspect; maybe things are different in Italy, where there's no need for begging like there so clearly is in London, the greatest city in the world. She hopes they won't kill him, when they find him. She wonders why he's been asking around about DELILAH at all.

It can't be for her sake, so she resolves not to dwell on it anymore and offers up one of her sweet yet trembling smiles instead.]

You're very kind.

[She should've said, it's kind of you to offer or you're very kind to help me so, but she realizes it too late, once the opportunity has already slipped away from her. It comes out differently in her voice, as well, because of it: an opinion rather than a courtesy, and perhaps the first genuine thing that's escaped her mouth yet.]

If I might ask, then — are you perhaps visiting London? It was Italian you spoke a moment ago, I think...?

R-Rescue thing? Miss Haruka, what are you — how are you —

[WHAT IS HAPPENING]

And what of Dave and Silver? They're here as well? Where are they?!

Breaking you out! We kinda used work resources off the clock to track you down and a bunch of us are running around the city looking for you. [She rubs the back of her head and gives her nervous laugh.] So we're gonna make sure you don't have to stay in here. ...Something wrong?

[Rosalind gives it a cursory glance, which is more than she'd usually give-- but this girl's cooperation will make things far easier.]

I suppose.

[Then again, Rosalind thinks, she could probably insult the garden and have this girl agree with her. There's that familiar cadence to this girl's voice, quiet and innocent and blank. She herself had been trained to use a tone like that, once upon a time; she loathes to hear it from someone else.]

But I didn't come here to see the garden. I came to find you. You are Meridiana Everett, are you not?

[That, now, that's an interesting statement. The way it comes out . . . in a way the meaning is the same as other things she could have said. But in another way, it's not. She's made a definitive statement, passed a judgment rather than defined his kindness or lack thereof by his willingness to speak to her, to help her.]

[That's it, isn't it? The inherent self-deprecation under everything else she's said. All these little niceties that mean I don't know why you're bothering with me when clearly you should know better. What a kindness. Which it isn't, to Giorno's mind. It's not kindness, it's the bare minimum of human decency.]

[He does, of course, retract that bare minimum and replace it with pain when he feels so inclined. But he has to have a reason first. Sadism, cruelty, a pattern of taking advantage . . . hurting someone he loves. There has to be a reason.]

[There doesn't seem to be much reason here.]

[He smiles at her, one of his trademark smiles (still genuine despite its commonness, because he finds so many things in the world to smile about); warm like the sun coming up, soft as the petals of a rose. And then he inclines his head to her and stands, offers her his arm, an invitation that she will in all likelihood decline based on previous behavior, but . . . he has to try, doesn't he?]

I'm visiting, yes. My home is in Napoli, and I'm here on business. But why are you so concerned about me when it's you who's lost someone? Not that I mind in the least; I'm not a terrifically private person.

[Lie lie lie lie lie — but it's a lie that fits his image.]

We could talk and walk, maybe?

It's mostly that I just don't understand why I've ended up needing to be...er, "tracked down", at all. Does anyone know what happened, to bring all this about?

[She gives a little jerk, like a puppet that's just had its strings yanked, when the sound of the name Everett makes something pull desperately inside her. It's...a familiar name — no, it's her name, she's sure of it. It's just been so long since she's been anything but Meridiana, and even then half the time she's called by sweet epithets rather than that.

You are Meridiana Everett, are you not?, she's been asked, and the person asking has a voice that demands to be obeyed. No, even moreso than that, it expects to be obeyed. As though it would be unthinkable not to be, as though it's a law of the universe that she will be.

It makes her wonder, idly, what it must be like to have a voice like that, one that can do anything and make it so.]

I...

[She is very confused, is what she is, but confused is more alive with emotion than she's been before: awake and uncertain instead of dull and dead.]

I...I am, my lady. Meridiana...M-Miss Meridiana...Everett. Of...

[Of...a place, a white house and a forest and a garden and a lake; where was it?]

O-Of London, my lady.

[She sounds a fright, she's sure — stammering, unpoised, ridiculous. But that really can't be helped, can it.]

I...I should like that, very much.

[She does hesitate, a bit, when he offers his arm; it's hesitation that doesn't last long, however, because an offered arm is a social prompt that she's all but been programmed to respond to by her upbringing. And certainly, there are weights and merits to be balanced — the scandal of a woman walking alone compared to the one of her walking on the arm of a gentleman she doesn't know, the danger of following through on her instructions set against the danger of disobeying a command she's been told to complete. They say that the devil one knows is preferable to the devil one doesn't, but she's not sure if that always holds true, these days. Surely there's no other devil that could be as bad as the one she knows, which means there's always the chance that the one she doesn't won't be a devil at all.

So. She's been asked questions, ones it would be improper to leave hanging. So she reaches carefully for the offer of his arm and takes it as she ought to, all fingertips and feather touches, and falls into step at his side in preparation to be walked wherever he likes — as is, of course, his prerogative.]

It's...terribly awkward, having no one to make introductions in any sort of proper way. I suppose I was only...hoping to ease the discourtesy, somewhat, is all.

[She ducks her head a little, lashes descending along with her chin, and then at length looks up again.]

My Christian name is Meridiana, and my family name is...is Everett. Miss...Meridiana Everett. O-Of London.

Good.

[She pauses for a moment. The girl is obviously terrified, and Rosalind is many things, but needlessly cruel isn't one of them. Besides-- for this girl, at least, she can afford to make a few exceptions.

So her voice is just a touch softer as she speaks. Not anywhere near kind-- but there's less of that cold expectation of the upper class that had been there before.]

When are you due back?

I dunno, actually. They're saying "temporal rift" in the labs, which I guess is some big shift thing that sent some people around? I think Intern-san was using the wormhole machine as a makeout closet again, but that's just a rumour. You're not hurt, right?

...Someone will come for me when it's time, I think.

[Which speaks volumes, in its implication — she has no need to be her own master when it comes to the passage of time, because someone else is keeping track of it for her, and will simply tell her when her idle freedom has run out and expired.]

I had only thought to walk about the garden a little, my lady. My...physician...he says the fresh air does my constitution good.

No, not hurt. Er...not yet, at least. So it's that machine again, is it?

That's what people are saying, but there's, like, a million rumours. Some people said maybe time just ate you, which is kinda terrifying if you ask me. But we should get going, right? I mean... uh...

[Look, Haruka is not the person you ask for revenge favours, and your boyfriends are probably taking care of that anyway, but. She shifts awkwardly and looks at the door just in case someone might burst in.]

[Oh, she bets he does. Rosalind's mouth purses further, but there's no use in scolding the girl for the crimes of her so-called physician.]

Right. Well.

[Bugger that. But she can't just yank her away, she's got to be more delicate about it.]

What if I told you that you could leave? That there would be no . . . medical consequences, shall we call them.

[She thinks of Elizabeth, trapped in her tower, desperate for any kind of escape-- but this isn't Elizabeth, and freedom doesn't come as easily.]

N-No...medical consequences?

[At first, she doesn't quite catch it — the implication is too oblique for her to really grasp hold of it for the first second or two, not until she digs in and really thinks about it. But then it hits her, and then it's hard to believe in a completely different way: impossible, astounding, the thought that someone might both know what's happened to her and have any sort of desire to assist her in alleviating it.]

I...I beg your pardon, please, but...I'm — not certain I can...b-believe that...

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Come with me if you want to live.

Rey | SW:TFA | OTA

Prof. James Moriarty | Sherlock/ACD EU | OTA

Meridiana Everett | Count Cain

inspired by the plurk today

Saigusa Haruka | Little Busters!

Melody Ellison | American Girl

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makin up some bullshit hell yeah

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