thecapitol | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Sherlock and Openish!
What| Kind of a catchall from between the crowning / christmas and the district tours
Where| See individual prompts
When| from the crowning to the night before the district tours
Warnings/Notes| This is a catchall to catch up on a bunch of stuff for Sherlock, mostly threads that I've already discussed with people. HOWEVER! If you'd like a thread either hit me up or grab one of the open prompt tags below!

See the comments for prompts!

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"Fine," He lied flatly. Of course he wasn't fine, but he knew there was little he could do to escape Joan and John fretting over him save lying through his teeth. He walked over to his bed and picked up the beautiful, but utterly useless, glass violin.

"Cruentus sent me a present."

He was a terrible liar, at least when it came to her. He wasn't fine, and a single word that was obviously a lie wasn't going to keep her away. She raised her eyebrows when he picked up the glass violin, though. Another thing the two Sherlocks had in common, then.

"Quite a gift. Of course, an instrument is only as good as it's performance," she noted. Very like Sherlock, although she doesn't say it out loud. Both instruments rendered silent by this place. Joan wondered if that was Cruentus' point as well. "How thoughtful of her."

Edited 2014-01-15 05:33 (UTC)

"Quite," Sherlock agreed, completely incapable of keeping the bitterness out of his tone. He thought for a moment about smashing it - but he had a massive aversion to damaging violins, even glass ones, so he set it down carefully on the sheets instead.

He then realised that the appropriate response to Joan questioning after him was to question after her - and upon realising that, he also surprised himself with realising that he actually cared about her answer.

"And you? Having a joyous Christmas so far?"

"It's been okay, actually. Maximus gave me a present." She shifted the tablet to the other arm and displayed the snake bracelet coiled around her wrist. She was curious how Sherlock would react to it, considering her own initial reaction.

Sherlock raised his eyebrow as he reached out to raise her wrist, observing the bracelet.

"A snake," He said, flatly. "How very... poignant," He said, sarcastically, as he released her wrist. "Seems a little gaudier than I would have expected you to appreciate."

And a little morbid.

"Typically, yes. But I like it."

She wasn't going to get into the significance right then if he didn't ask.

"Actually, I have a present for you too."

He wasn't going to ask. (Because what was sentiment.) Instead, he raised an eyebrow.

"A present?" He felt a small pang of guilt that he immediately told himself didn't exist. He'd been so caught up in his own misery that he hadn't spared a thought for anyone else.

"I'm afraid I wasn't aware we were going to celebrate--"

"What? Oh, no." She smiled and waved a hand. "No, don't worry about it. Here..." She motioned him over to the couch and sat, turning on the tablet. "Sit down, let me show you something."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes as she sat down but eventually followed, curiousity overcoming the natural inclination to be petulant and sulky.

"What is it?" He asked, frowning. He had known the tablet wasn't hers, obviously, but they did live in the capitol and new things were acquired or borrowed with surprising regularity.

(He totally wasn't set off ease by the idea of someone getting him a present. No. Not at all. Why would that affect him?)

He sat, and Joan smiled. Good. She slid closer and moved the tablet over so he could see the screen.

"There's this TV show here called 'Murder in the Districts.' It's your standard 'Unsolved Mysteries' type of show, only here being here, they show a lot more of the blood and gore. I stumbled across it, and saw this case. Take a look."

She tapped the screen, and a video started playing. Crime scene photos with a cheesy dramatic voice-over. Three siblings found murdered in the apartment they shared in District Three. Their heads had been bashed in, their hands tied behind them with yellow handkerchiefs, their bodies laid out with their feet pointing west. It happened three years ago, the voice said. But there was an update! A local businessman had recently been arrested and executed for the murder! The community is safe again, thanks to the Capitol's Peacekeepers!

Joan stopped the video.

"So, I saw this. It seemed weird to me, but what doesn't here, right? but something caught my eye. Here..."

She went back to one of the photos.

"The view out the windows is clearly the third district. But look right here."

She zoomed in on a blue vase with a shiny glaze. Reflected in it was a very distinctive object. The Capitol Art Museum.

Sherlock frowned, reaching out to take the tablet from her hands, and squint down into the picture. After a very long moment he drew in a breath and let it out again.

"You're right. The record's been altered. That reflection is very clearly from here in the Capitol--" He said, before pausing abruptly as he brought up the map of the city in his mind. That angle of the Art Museum...

"I went digging," she went on. "And I discovered that there was a case with the exact same details as this one in the Capitol ten years ago. I was able to find a photograph. It was the same case."

"So they took a cold case from the Capitol, re-framed it for the district, and arrested someone innocent, I assume." He looked up at her, eyes narrowed.

"Do you have the unaltered photograph?"

"Yeah, they totally railroaded the guy. Planted a pipe in his house and everything."

She nodded and brought up the original image, with the Capitol museum out the window.

"Something I noticed..." She zoomed in on the the victims. "The head wounds. They're not consistent with a bludgeoning cause of death. What's more, look at the blood spatter."

The bludgeoning was clearly postmortem, and there was evidence the victims were shot first.

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