Fic Rec: Chez les bêtes

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Title: Chez les bêtes
Author: breathedout
Pairing: Irene Adler/Various, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette/Mathilde de Morny
Length: 12,923
Rating: E
Warnings: Underage Sex
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: Le Havre, 1908. The Child is mother of the Woman.

Reccer's comments: BBC's version of Irene Adler is a character I've had problems connecting with (unlike Doyle's Irene), primarily because the writing for ASiB is chaotic and full of holes, leaving us with an Irene who to me feels more like a symbol than a fully realized personality. In contrast, BreathedOut's brilliant history AU, which moves Irene to early-twentieth-century England and France, presents the reader with a raw and ferocious young woman who feels very human, with her artistic talents, youthful uncertainty, love for her mother, and her capacity to manipulate. The cultural beliefs of turn-of-the-century working- and middle-class Britons are on full display here, demonstrating how very difficult it is for a working-class woman, even one with Irene's abilities, to struggle against these values and expectations. As a result, Irene's attempts to escape the expected routine of grueling, poorly paid, and often unsafe "respectable" work, as well as the conventional roles of wife and mother are all the more powerful.

Alternating the past and present throughout the story effectively shows how "The Woman" came to be in a process neither direct nor easy. It's that structure that allows Irene's epiphany to feel earned rather than a bolt out of the blue. I look forward to seeing this Irene meet Violet Hour's Sherlock and John in the next installment of the Unreal Histories series. I suspect it will be a memorable confrontation!

Excerpt: ‘Disgusts you, does it?’ she hissed. Spat a bit in [Wague's] face and her stomach leapt when he flinched. ‘Makes you angry? You think: what does she have that you don’t? You think: you’re ten times the actor that old bluestocking is. You think: why couldn’t it be you? Buying her flowers? Feeding her oysters? You with all your filthy parts,’ and Irene’s thumb caught, harsh, dragged down his bottom lip as he shuddered, ‘up inside her, in the morning?’

His mouth, stretched. His gusting, panting breath across her thumb.

He tried to say—something. Wrongfooted, searching for words, struggling to speak with his lip trapped. Like a horse for inspection in the auction-yard; the whites of his eyes. But after all, he’d brought it on himself. Looking like a kicked dog; boring all the dancing girls with his boasting. Mooning about after Colette when she never even noticed him; it was pathetic, she thought, repulsive it was, and then she—

Christ.

Stumbling back. Wague shocked; frozen. She’d—with her free hand she’d reached up and she must have—must have struck him. Struck his face. With an open hand, her palm still stinging. And her arm aching; and her shoulder; white greasepaint on her palms, what had she done? Backing up toward the door, she had to get her breath, keep her head; had to run; and then he—

He moaned. Soft, quiet; but he did. It took the floor out from under her.