040 || dictated;

[workaphilic]

[There are a lot of things he could take away from the past week. A lot of things he has taken away. But there's only one that's worth mentioning publicly on the journal with the amount of urgency he's displaying now.]

I want to learn how to do that. [A beat. Clarifying:] The magic. It doesn't have to be that exact type, I'm not picky. I don't care about anything advanced, it just makes things easier.

If you'll teach, I'll pay you. I don't care. Just as long as it's quick.

[A pause. His pen taps restlessly.]

If your instinct is to tell me it can't be done, go away. I'm not talking to you.

Comments

[workaphilic]

Only if I keep all of them.

[indirectcause]

What would you even do with them if you don't keep them? Give them away as gifts?


...Please, God, don't give them away as gifts.

[workaphilic]

What? No.

[From his perspective, he is not the weirdo in this conversation.]

I use them to get the information I need, and then I dispose of them.

[indirectcause]

[Sherlock you keep EYES IN A JAR]

And you get information out of eyeballs?

[workaphilic]

I get information from my experiments. Sometimes with eyeballs.

[indirectcause]

So you're a scientist. Like a doctor or something? [Because that would explain so much in way that doesn't make Sherlock look like a crazy guy]

[workaphilic]

[No such luck.]

I'm a consulting detective.

[indirectcause]

[What the everloving fuck]

And you need to do experiments for that?

[workaphilic]

[A pause. Then, conversationally:]

Had a case once, serial killer. Removed the eyes of each of his victims, trophies, very standard, bit dull. There had been three victims already by the time I was called in on the case.

Knowledge from my past experiments enabled me to deduce height, build, gouging implement of choice, career history, mental state, and handedness. Information I collected in seconds that the police would have taken days to collect, if ever.

He was caught the next afternoon.

[Another pause, for effect.]

So, yes. I do.

[indirectcause]

[He takes a moment to digest this information. Sometimes, it's easy to forget how broken the world already was, before everything happened. There were people like that, creepy ass serial killers, long before the walkers showed up. And other people needed to stop them, with intelligence and law, not with guns like it is now]

...Okay, that's actually impressive.

[workaphilic]

[He makes a noncommittal sound.]

To be fair, the killer was also a moron. I've had better. That one was just the most relevant.

[indirectcause]

I don't know man. Moron or not, that's pretty cool.

[workaphilic]

[A pause.]

That's what I do.

[be cool, that is.

stroking his ego is never a good idea]

[indirectcause]

[He'll regret it later, he's sure of it]

I guess you must get bored, not having a lot of investigating to do around here.

[workaphilic]

There isn't a powerful enough word to describe the depth of that understatement.

[indirectcause]

So the thing with the honey was you just being bored?

[He sounds so relieved. Maybe you're not a complete psychopath]

[workaphilic]

The thing with the honey was that I keep bees and I had too much honey. You're the one who read into it.

[indirectcause]

Yeah, well. I'm still pretty fresh from a place where you'd come across crazy fuckers who might leave poison food out just to kill people. For the hell of it.

You can't trust anyone. [That is a lesson hard earned, and he's not willing to let go of it easily]

[workaphilic]

It's not a bad strategy.

[He does it, too. Nobody here, anyway.

Then, lightly:]

I wouldn't be that obvious anyway.

[indirectcause]

It's the only one you can use. [He misses when he used to actually believe there was GOOD in people, he's aware it was naive as hell, but at least it was pleasant]

No. I've figured out that much now.

[workaphilic]

You're learning quicker than most, then.

[indirectcause]

It's kind of a pre-requisite of surviving in my world, being a fast learner.

[workaphilic]

The undead didn't strike me as a particularly cunning adversary.

[indirectcause]

It isn't just the dead you've got to worry about.

[workaphilic]

No, but that's the only thing that makes your world different from mine.