No H8 (Open, casual)

“What’s your name?”

“Lestrade. Gregory Lestrade. First day on the job.”

“Lestrade eh? Well I’ve just got one suggestion for you – Don’t screw up.”


Lestrade walked along the back streets of Manhattan, trolling the area for anything amiss. This wasn’t the job of a detective inspector, he was above questioning teenagers about their after-hours whereabouts. But it was his first day, again, and they’d wanted to start him off easy. He supposed it might have been the boyish voice and Irish accent that had perhaps made the police in New York City doubt his skills, to put him on night patrol for the first week of his new job, but he decided he didn't, or wouldn't, mind too much. Nice to take it easy for a bit, he supposed. But... Maybe too easy. So far he’d told a man off for speeding, assisted an elderly lady in bringing her groceries across the road, and reminded a child to look both ways before crossing the road. After murders and mystery and thrill, this all seemed so very tedious.

He was stopped when he saw out of the corner of his eyes a man, leaning heavily against a building and…crying? He couldn’t tell, so he walked closer. His initial and slightly shameful first reaction was to think, ‘Oh good, something interesting perhaps.’ As Lestrade grew closer, he could see the man appeared to be about the same height as he, had sandy coloured hair, and looked absolutely broken at the moment. Lestrade instantly felt shame in his selfish want for something bad to happen, and strode over to the man who looked a bit too cheerfully dressed for his current position.

“Oi,” Lestrade voiced loudly as he drew closer. “You, are you alright there?” ‘Obviously not,’ Lestrade thought quickly after. But it was a valid question, are-you-alright. The kind of question everybody except the drama queens say ‘fine’ to, always, so many times that it’s just a reaction, and not a reflection on how ones feeling whatsoever.

Lestrade moved closer, growing increasingly concerned when the man did not answer. Rather, he began to sob even louder and sank in a heap of himself. Quickly pacing over to the poor man, Lestrade knelt next to him and put his own hand on the man's shoulder, worried. He squeezed it tightly, trying to get the man to notice him.

"Hey, hey! Just calm down now, tell me what's happened," Lestrade ordered comfortingly, his voice just loud enough to rise above the sound of the other man's sobs. And - God, was he bleeding? Perhaps just a little, he'd split his lip somehow. He looked so broken… At that moment, Lestrade did not give a flying toss whether or not this man was a saint or a devil. No, he just wanted the man to stop sobbing. Seeing the poor sod crying his heart out in public, so utterly gone, was breaking for Lestrade himself to see.

For a moment he remembered another man, lying on his bed with his mouth steadily clasping a loaded gun in his mouth, his heart and nerves shattered to pieces…Perhaps that same man was here now, the only difference being he had taken another form. It didn't matter the cause, because true sadness - the breaking kind - it very quickly became all the same feeling. The falling and falling and never being caught, and the miserable dampness that follows you everywhere, and the hallucinations that you know are real only in your mind, but you desperately need to believe in…The cause was eventually lost and became only a detail.

It was like a mirror that had been shattered and there was no light to make rainbow coloured shadows from the pieces - the mirror could have been broken in any number of ways, but all that really mattered was that it was broken and there seemed to be no possible way to fix it.