bakerstreet | The Promises Meme

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[meme] characterization

The Promises Meme

the promises meme

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prompts

i. family. A promise made in the name of family, whether literal or metaphorical.

ii. business. No personal feelings involved. Just a working agreement.

iii. romantic. A promise to your lover, something that binds you together.

iv. enemy. Looks like you made a deal with the devil.

v. too good to be true. A promise with hidden caveats.

vi. false. A promise you don't intend to keep.

vii. broken. A promise you've betrayed.

viii. fulfilled. The time has come to make good on your word.

ix. bound. A promise you have to keep, whether by threat, blackmail or magic.

x. secret. A pact you can't reveal.

xi. forever. You're promising forever after.

xii. never. You promise that something will never happen. Ever.

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It varies, but most coma patients don't remember anything. There are cases of women your grandmother's age waking up still thinking they're nineteen. There's no classic case: if head trauma's involved, or oxygen starvation, someone can be out three days and wake up a completely different person to the one everybody knew before. Or the same one they were five minutes before the accident three years ago.

[This is why people like House exist. If medicine were like mathematics they could use the same formula on everyone, but some people just have to be outliers.

The ground is much less level in the woods, some overgrown and ancient remnant of America's prehistoric past. Chase somehow manages to navigate the littered pathways between the trees gracefully, keeping part of his attention on making sure Emma achieves the same.]

And I know criminals can too. This probably sounds like something I should be saying huddled over a campfire your flashlight under my chin - we treated a serial killer recently.

A campfire would be a good idea if we had time to stop. [She laughs and loses her footing for a moment, slipping just slightly ahead of him and instantly catching her balance. It's mostly downhill and close to the water, far enough away that she can't see it yet, but close enough to be heard.]

What happened? [When he treated the serial killer. He hasn't been much for sharing, Emma isn't either, but it's pretty dark with the exception of her flashlight. It's freezing. Chase is insane to have been willing to do this, but since they're both here, they might as well keep talking.]

I don't think I could do that. [Help someone who kills people. She's not that kind.]

[His hand is under her elbow as she slips, his reaction as quick as her own instinct to balance herself.]

Careful, the ground's always going to be damp this near a river.

[It's practically an aside, and probably like teaching an old woman to suck eggs, but he mutters it anyway. And sharing cases isn't like sharing his personal life: in his job patient stories make up most of what passes for small-talk. Although, he doesn't usually tell this one.]

We didn't have the chance to say no. The man we admitted was a homeless guy, sick and being kicked around by local kids in the park. You know those stories. Abusive dad, drug problem, time in rehab. We figured out that whole identity was ripped off around the same time we figured out what was killing him. Unfortunately a little too soon for his DNA markers to come back. When they did, there were red flags from thirteen states... all linked to murder cases involving cannibalism. The guy's still on the run.

[After falling into silence for a second, Chase reaches to catch her wrist - the one holding the flashlight - long enough to bring it up and direct the beam under his chin. Any attempt at looking intimidating lasts all of five seconds before he smiles, letting her go.]

Maybe the dramatic storylines aren't confined to your home town.

Did I say they were? [She smiles at his attempt to look even remotely threatening and holds the flashlight out, walking more carefully after that slide.]

To hear the rest of the town tell it, nothing ever happened until I showed up. [Henry takes it as a sign that she's the savior, but Emma just takes it to mean that they were set in their ways. And coincidentally, her arrival happened around the same time as a few other significant events. She refuses to buy into the idea that anything else is at work there.] No affairs, no one ever went missing. The only person who spent any time in a cell was Leroy when he had a few too many.]

It would be flattering if what they were saying I brought with me wasn't more problems than they know how to manage. [And that's why she doesn't buy it.] Oh, and of course, no one stood up to Regina before.

I guess it explains why she's out to get me. She never thought I'd stick around this long.

So they're saying you make things less boring.

[He's beside her and then he's not, having jumped rather than skidded the last little way down to the riverbank and turned to offer her a hand down.]

You didn't bring any problems with you. You're not responsible for other people's personal screw-ups, however dramatically they end up playing out. Trust me, if someone's life is going to explode, it'll find it's own way. People always blame their issues on what's changed in their lives, without thinking about what might always have been there, building up to this. You're just the hot new thing.

Besides, you're meant to be here to the world, right? Not to police who sleeps around.

How new thing? [Yeah, Emma is going back to that and implications that she can joke about. And she's going back to it with a smirk, and a chuckle, while not taking his hand as she gets down the bank on her own. It's nothing personal, just that she doesn't need the help. Just that she doesn't like taking help.]

You're right, I know you are. But you should hear how much credit I get for things I had no control over. [Like the clock, for example. She had nothing to do with that.]

Besides, I think we have another hot new thing in town now.

[Women are starting to notice, and she can't say she blames them.

...Is that a howl coming from the trees?]

[Sucking a tutting breath between his teeth as she deliberately evades being helped while pinning him on something that might just have been freudian (and doing both at once is surely some kind of a talent) Chase steps back, letting his arms and his offer of help drop as she joins him.]

If I say hot with any intent behind it, you're going to remind me how hard your punches land, right?

[Obviously she's hot, and he gives her a sidelong look implying there's no way she doesn't know it.]

So far I don't seem to have taken much credit for anything I haven't—

[It sounds remarkably wolf like to the ears of a man who hadn't entirely believed in her sighting until, oh, ten seconds ago. Now he looks at her through the beam of the flashlight.]

Think there are any branches down here dry enough to take a light?

I think we're too far out for that.

[She shines her light in the direction of the sound, trying to get an idea of where the animal is. There's definitely a wolf, and though her eyes widen in surprise, Emma isn't as scared as she would be if she hadn't already encountered one twice since moving here.]

I have my gun, if it comes close.

[To scare the wolf away, not to hurt it. If it's the same wolf, their chances of making it out of this unscathed are pretty good.]

I told you there was a wolf.

[One close enough to hear moving out from where they just came down, at a speed Emma's not entirely comfortable with.]

You have your gun. Now I'm definitely not telling you you're hot.

[The joke comes as a whisper on a rushed exhale of nervous breath. Chase swallows hard, reaching into his jacket for the bottle of whiskey and into his pocket for a lighter. With a little help, even a damp piece of bracken might light.]

Despite what the stories say, a wolf has to be starving or crazy before it goes after a human. Too early in the season for it to be starving.

[Which removes just one of the two less appealing options. The thing sounds like it's stalking them.]

A warning shot might not be a bad idea.

If it's crazy, that might not help.

[She catches a flash of fur with her light before the wolf sidesteps the glow on it's way to them, which immediately has her hand sliding to her holstered weapon just in case. Shifting the flashlight instead of the gun, Emma finds his eyes this time. Two different colors, the same as the night she broke into the mausoleum.]

He won't hurt us.

[That doesn't stop her from staying completely still as the wolf approaches, less than twenty feet away before it begins to circle them. Once, twice, three times before it stops and stares back at them.]

...I think he's trying to get our attention. [Now she knows the wolf isn't the crazy one here.]

[Chase's voice is tight through gritted teeth when he replies but still somehow steady. The animal is more likely to be sizing up which one of them it can take down more easily.]

He's got our attention. What do you think happens next, he gets us to follow him to a man in trouble over the hill? It's not Lassie, Emma, fire a shot.

Robert. [She manages to keep her voice stern and calm, her hand still on the gun while she considers taking the shot.] He's been this close before. Trust me.

[She takes a few slow steps forward, away from Chase and closer to the wolf. What the hell does she think she's doing? Emma couldn't say for sure, but when he sniffs at her instead of lunging, she becomes considerably less tense.]

It's alright.

When he ran you off the road?

[That's kept under his breath but it does flash up a thought pattern of another car abandoned at the roadside, its driver missing. Not a comforting thought pattern. He's too late to catch Emma's arm when she steps forward and just watches as she offers the wolf her scent.

The step he takes after her isn't so much trust, isn't so much courage, as it is having no idea what else to do.]

What if we've just found what happened to Kathryn?

We would have found something else by now. [She's surprisingly more nervous when the wolf moves to sniff Chase than she was when he was beside her. This time she does take her gun out of the holster, just in case he doesn't like the unfamiliar scent.]

And it wasn't then, no.

[She swallows hard when the animal whimpers and backs away, stopping at a spot closer to the river. He sniffs, growls, and begins to dig at the dirt with his paws, staring in their direction one last time before he wanders back the way he came.

Emma would usually have some smartass comment to make, but this time? Nothing. Not a word, not a move.]

[The silence stretches long while the wolf digs, and longer afterwards, until it's true quiet again on the riverbank. Just the water and the night birds, no more snap and rustle of an animal moving away from them at speed. When Chase puts his hand on her arm, it's to reassure himself there's someone still there.

This is insane, and he's far too new to town not to know it. But the words come anyway.]

We have to go look.

I thought you said he wasn't Lassie?

[She's going to look, but that question comes before she can stop it. As soon as she puts the gun away, her hand reaches up to pull his off of her arm; to hold it within hers for a moment and give him a gentle squeeze before she lets go again, picking up speed herself as she moves toward the edge of the riverbank.

As soon as she's close enough, she catches the sight of something just barely unearthed by the digging.]

There's something in there.

[Handing Chase her light, she crouches down to push the rest of the dirt aside. Taking her time, careful to disrupt as little as possible as she forces a heavy, decorated box out of the ground. There's already a distracting scent to it before she opens it up, a sign that she does not want to know what's in there.]

I guess I should - [Open it]

Edited 2012-11-15 12:29 (UTC)

No, hey-

[He moves quick before she can do exactly that - keeping the flashlight raised but crouching to ditch the bottle in river silt and unzip his jacket. It looks like a jewellery box, but considering the circumstances of the finding it doesn't seem like something that should be opened with bare hands.

He clasps his own hand through the leather of his jacket to take the box from her - carefully. That smell isn't encouraging.]

Did you bring anything for evidence handling? Gloves?

[If not, he's already shucking off the other sleeve to use as a makeshift hand cover.]

Wait - [She pulls a pair of gloves out of her pocket, sighing when she realizes that she almost screwed this up. Her head and her heart are still pounding loud and heavy as she pulls on the gloves to lift the lid.]

Oh, my god.

[Chase doesn't quite recoil (he's exhumed worse) but he does glance away, setting his jaw before looking back down into the box, using the torch to confirm beyond doubt what that first look had already told him.]

We need to take this in to the hospital. [His voice is quiet, flat.] These are human remains.

[One, specifically. A human heart.]

I know what it is. [Kathryn's heart. No one else is missing.

She closes the box and takes it from Chase, letting out a shaky breath. He may be used to seeing human organs, but Emma isn't. The sight of it - and the growing understanding that something terrible happened to Kathryn, has her pale and nauseas, but she forces it all down. She's the sheriff, this is a murder investigation. It's her job to hold it together.]

Do you want me to drop you off at Grannys before I head over to the hospital? [She wouldn't offer, but he's been through a lot for one night.]

[It's a cold night but he shrugs out of his jacket anyway, giving it to her to wrap the box in, for security and to put just a little more distance between her and it's contents. Besides, he's not going to want to wear the thing again without some kind of dry cleaning process.]

No, but I'd like you to do something else, if you can.

[He looks around them - the river and its burial site behind (and he checks the location of it, its positioning between two rocky outcrops, keeping it in memory) and the forest with its potential wolfpack ahead. The sooner they're back on the road the better, gruesome cargo or not.]

Tell me what it is, I owe you.

[She wraps the box in the jacket, keeping a tight hold on it as she starts back up for the main road. It occurs to her that Mary Margaret has mentioned this particular spot of land before and that only adds to her concerns. But the first one on her mind is getting the heart to the hospital and Chase out of the cold.]

[He's on her heels as she walks, keeping his attention focused on the woods around them with senses heightened to a whole new level by the shot of adrenaline in his veins. It's the kind of stance referred to in cop movies as having someone's back.

(He wouldn't change his mind and not have come out here, even if he could.)]

I'd like you to let me drive.

[He recognises shock when he sees it pull the colour from someone's face. Not the best conditions for road safety.]

[Emma nods at his request, knowing she's not in the best position to turn him down. As much as she would like to be in control of her emotions, she's not.]

You can drive.

[Her mind is racing faster than she can make sense of things, anyway.]

The wolf must've... [Smelled it.]

He comes out once in a while. [Like he knows what they're looking for.

You have a pet wolf. [He looks across at her without breaking step.] Fortunately we're at the point of the night where I don't even think that's weird anymore. Is that the car?

[The thing's a beacon even on a dark night, but he's ridiculously pleased to see it.]

the promises meme

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