sakura_no_miko

Rating: PG-13 (lots of off-screen happenings)

Pairing: Darien/Bobby

Warnings: serious character injury, unethical medical experimentation, case dealing with kidnapping, drug addiction and prostitution

Other notes: case fic, hurt/recovery, academic setting, undercover work, amnesia,

Length: 159k

Summary: Bobby and Darien investigate a high school drug problem. Bobby begins to act oddly.

I think I squawked the first time I read this. Like, made a terrible, unseemly noise of dissatisfaction.

Because the ending–it doesn’t seem like an ending.

Now, you could argue there are two mysteries in this fic. Not sure if I’d quite say two cases, but definitely two mysteries. First, we have the issue causing Bobby to slowly lose control of his mind and body. Second, we have the investigation at the school, where students are being targeted by drug dealers and disappearing.

The first mystery almost isn’t a mystery, because of the way the story is presented. The reader knows what’s going on, for the most part. However, the characters are trying to figure it out for most of the story, so it’s a mystery to them, and ultimately this is the plot line that gets explained and resolved.

The second mystery is the case itself, an investigation of drug dealers who are making students disappear. This is where I get disappointed. Bobby’s illness ultimately drives the two of them away from the school, and suddenly the focus of the fic changes over to his decline and recovery. I wouldn’t have as much issue with this if the author didn’t escalate the school case right before dropping it. If you look at the last three scenes of the fic, we’re first told that Bobby and Darien are off the case, and that the kid they were initially sent in to protect has disappeared. While recovering, Bobby says that he feels like they need to get back to the case, that he could solve it if only his memories hadn’t been scrambled by his illness. Alright. That’s set-up, right there.

And then—the last scene is Darien and Bobby convalescing, and reconfirming their love for each other, and that’s it.

I feel like a dick when I’m being critical, but it irks me. The whole premise was that these kids were getting lured in by drugs, kidnapped, and possibly sold into sex slavery. That’s not a light matter. And we’ve just been told that yet another student has disappeared—the one who’s been the center of the case, the boss’ own nephew.

Maybe the author was going for some dark, stark realism? I can understand that in real life, sometimes cases go cold, and sometimes you do have to hand it off to other people, but from a narrative standpoint, it’s really disappointing. The school storyline could have been dropped, if need be. I don’t mind that it’s dismissed, that all we get is “other agents are on it”–except that the author kept reminding us about it, kept raising expectations, even as it became more obvious that the story wasn’t going anywhere.

I really squawked. It’s lovely that Darien and Bobby and getting their happy ending, that there’s some chance Bobby will recover enough to save that kid, but ending on that note just felt wrong.

I do enjoy watching Bobby’s sickness slowly wrest control from him, but this author has two other fics that deal with the subject in a much better way—Paranoia, which deals with Bobby being mentally ill and its effects on his daily life and relationships, and Flowers, where Bobby is again the victim of some criminally unethical science and we see his rise and decline in viscous, visceral detail. Both of those fics were focused primarily on the hurt/recovery aspects, and they were fine that way. I don’t know what order these stories were written in–maybe this was an earlier story, and they got better from there. That’s why I hate to be critical. You don’t always know if your criticisms are valid. As this story stands, the ending hits a bad note with me, but I was enjoying the story up until that point.

I really enjoyed the scenes where Darien confessed and Bobby was terrified he wouldn’t remember–although that was also a bit of a moot point, since he did end up remembering. I liked the idea. I’ve seen a similar concept work in Tuition, where a time loop forces Kirk to keep confessing to Bones. of course, I can also see how having multiple confessions could end up seeming annoying or repetitive, so it’s just as well that he did remember.

At any rate, i would rec this story wholeheartedly except for the ending.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originally posted on tumblr 04/03/13