⇨ The Tourist Trap: PROLOGUE

[ringleaders]

Who: Anyone, anywhere in Portland.
When: Any time before the start of the event.
Where: Portland area, in the new reality.
What: Once you've submitted your AU summary, you can use this post to do some CLOSED THREADING to play out some character interactions that happened before the event start. This means that memory regains will not be in play yet. Open top levels are not allowed - these threads are intended to sort out closed interactions between planned backstory connections, during the week leading up to the actual event start.
Warnings: Could be anything.

PORTLAND, AS YOU KNEW IT↴ The shift went unseen and unfelt. One moment you were one person, and the next, another. This before all that, though, in the new life that you remember living here in Portland. No memories of your true self have arisen yet, and at the time this was the only life you knew. Did these events truly happen at all? Or do they only exist in memory?

Comments

[promnibusanctis]

"I wish it was anything but this," Helen whispered, "but even I cannot undo this for you." Helen half reached for him, her fingers shaking a little with the force of her own emotions. When Helen felt it was always too much and now was no exception as tears welled in her eyes. Even with all of her concentration, eventually, they'd fall.

"I will not leave you," she said once more. "That is a promise I aim to keep if you will let me. I should have sensed something sooner and you might not--" She stopped herself quite suddenly and let out a sharp, pained, breath. His pain rested with her put in a box and shut away in the back of her mind but it was a howling thing, an awful thing and all she could do was reach out to him.

[thevictoriandetective]

He'd let her touch him, he probably needed it.

There'd be tears in his eyes if his tear ducts had actually been working. Instead he just felt...cold. His body felt more and more like a foreign thing, something he was inhabiting, rather than part of him. Which, he'd always sort of treated it as, and now he wished he'd appreciated what it felt like to be alive, now that he knew the difference. He'd been so reckless...

"I'm dead."

The words came out in half-a-sob.

He looked back up at her, still reeling, the oddness of expecting his body to be reacting to his fear and panic with a raised heart rate, rapid breathing--and experiencing none of that...he was rather overwhelmed. What did it mean now? Was he trapped on earth, never to move on? He'd not actually considered the mechanics of 'moving on,' he'd been skeptical that it actually even happened, but now that it was proven it worried him. His body...how long would it stay intact before completely rotting away? Would he still inhabit it even if it was unable to move? That was a dark thought.

And he was angry.

"The Professor..." he growled. "That idiot!" So apparently he had been dabbling in some terrible things. What exactly had been done to him? Enough that he needed intervention, and that it was terrible...

He turned his attention to his rescuer. She looked like a woman, but he knew she was much, much more than that. Her heart seemed to be breaking for him. She wouldn't leave him.

That was a very strange promise to make for someone you've just met.

"Wh...what are you?"

[promnibusanctis]

"I am an angel of God, a warrior, a guardian," she said half-tilting her head with a soft sort of expression it was both sad as it was hopeful. Her hands fell against her knees and she blinked a few times in order to keep her composure.

"And I heard you." Helen paused minutely, her eyes wide, bright, and shining.

He had been right, she was more than a little tired, perhaps fading even just a little. It was not often that she delved and affixed souls like this - she was not psycho-pomp, her prowess had always been battle, holy magic. But sometimes, there were other things that needed to be tended to with hands of healing, not of war. Helen had found that she liked that perhaps even more than besting demons. So, now, she was responsible for him, for this man who neither lived nor died in his present state.

"I heard your soul cry out and I answered it with all that I possessed, save enough to keep my form." How could she not have answered him? How would she not continue to answer him? This was the way of things but he was no mistake. One day, she would fix it properly.

One day.

[thevictoriandetective]

Well.

All right then.

Sherlock was far more concerned with more mortal matters, he never gave much thought to the existence of angels, and he'd always been skeptical, but his old opinions were really quite moot. He was proof of her abilities, after all.

He knew he should thank her, but he was sort of reeling from all of this, that it was just one thing on top of another. He barked out a bitter laugh, his life was literally over, and yet not. But there was nothing he could do about it.

"And this...this was all you could do?"

He guestured to himself, the bitterness evident in his tone. It wasn't blame for her, per se--she did her best. He was angry at the Professor, and angry at himself--he was stupid enough to get himself killed.

[promnibusanctis]

"This is the beginning of what I can do," Helen said gently, both hands cupping his cheeks as gently as she could. "We will find the man who did this to you," her voice dropped to a determined whisper as she rested her forehead against his, "and he will pay for this. My word is my bond."

Her eyes opened, the glow of them bright and fierce.

"I will do this with you, no matter the eventual cost." If God himself should take the wings from her back, then it would be a fair price. If He demanded she rip them free, it, too, would be a fair price. It was not right that a man should suffer so, to have his soul-- No. His case was just to her. They would find this man together and she would smite him.

She would smite him straight to Hell.

[thevictoriandetective]

There was something unsettling in all of this--and not the just obvious, as he was dead and that was certainly very unsettling anyway--but even if he didn't believe that Helen was who she said she was--something in his gut told him that she was definitely not of his world. If she hasn't been so kind to him already, he would have probably quickly exited the area. It was the feeling of stumbling into something that an ordinary human wasn't meant to be involved in, like he had accidentally caught a glimpse of the mechanisms that built the universe and if he looked further it would drive him out of his mind.

Though honestly if given the chance, he was the type of person that would definitely peek.

And despite the chill when her eyes glowed--so to speak, as he was already cold and probably would never retain heat again-there was a strange...he wasn't sure how to explain it, but...someone was doing this for him. Someone was going out of their way to save him. She cared.

He didn't deserve this.

Shelrock didn't know what to say. He just looked sort of sad and confused. "You care, that much?"

[promnibusanctis]

"Do you think someone would care so little?" she asked, staring at him with wide, serious, unearthly eyes. "I would pull you from the water again if given the choice, just as I will always say that I will aid your cause tomorrow or the next day. It is just and sound."

Helen smiled, then, and it lit her face like the sun.

"You are worthy of being saved, Sherlock Holmes. And you are worthy of the justice we both seek. It is better that you accept that now than waste useless words in an argument you will not win."

[thevictoriandetective]

"Most people don't care," he admitted.

He simply looked baffled when she assured him that his cause was just, and that he was worthy of being saved. He blinked, his mouth opening and closing a bit, as everything he tried to say sort of died on his lips.

What could he say? She was obviously who she said she was...there was a part of him that was just as fascinated as baffled.

Sherlock's self esteem was severely left wanting, which contributed to his confusion and insistence that he wasn't worth it.

But someone else thought he was.

And to him...that was everything.

[promnibusanctis]

"I have never been 'most people'," Helen said with a soft laugh and a quick wink. "How boring that would be if I were."

Her hands slid away carefully as if she were a little afraid she'd damage him, but her touch had been so soft that was barely an issue. It also seemed silly to think that most people wouldn't care.

"I cannot fathom why someone would not care. But then again, some people cannot seem to see beyond face-value. It is their loss."