I lied! There is Plot!
I couldn't help myself, I'm sorry.
I went back to the story cause I haven't updated in a while and this shit came up! But damn! Where it come from! Where did I go! Where did it come from Cotton-Eyed Joe!
Walking into the evidence hall, Samara took to following Lestrade's lead. Turning left, the older man stopped and turned to her, giving the finely dressed woman a stern expression. "What you're about to see hasn't been told to anyone in the media, so please, don't tell anyone else, alright?"
After she gave a nod and voiced an affirmative, he continued on, opening a door to a nearly empty room aside from a few choice boxes filled with evidence and paper and the paintings hung on the opposite wall.
While two of these paintings were small and similar, depicting a teary-eyed man and woman on the two-separate canvas', there was one darker painting that caught her interest. It was one of the largest painting, 40 x 30, so it wasn't easy to glance over, not like she would have anyway. The composition was disturbingly dark, the model shown in the painting was terrified. A beautiful young woman, her eyes wide with fear and horror, her light hair was a mess and matted on one side of her head, while her entire body was shown, revealing a disheveled business woman. The woman had a gag around her mouth and was bound by her torso legs and feet, her hands behind her back. Everything around her was dying, a rotten skull visible in the lower right corner of the canvas, except for a lightly painted butterfly, leaving the canvas through the right where most of the light was coming from. Everything about the paintings were disturbing, especially how they were all painted monochromatic red.
"Ah, Samara, so glad you could make it." Turning around the amber eyed woman saw Sherlock and John walking over, the taller man impeccably dressed, as always, while John simply wore a faded blue button down and dark pants.
Samara shook her head with a smile, "You nearly sound as if you didn't ask for my help."
Sherlock gave a quick false smile, returning to his neutral indifferent expression. "Yes, quite." He turned to the paintings. "What can you tell by these paintings?"
"What makes you think I can tell you anything at all?" The brunette questioned haughtily, crossing her arms. She didn't mean to come off standoffish, but she was curious. What made this man think she can help them?
Sherlock rolled his head back, taking a breath. Samara didn't miss how John was shaking his head in resignation while Lestrade seemed to be looking up to the ceiling and mumbling something like, "Dear God, why?"
While she didn't initially know, she got her answer when Sherlock opened his mouth, looking back at her, but it was almost as if he was looking right through her. "You come from San Antonio, it's written all over your face; you already mentioned being from Texas and your father was a military detective or so Lestrade said. –"
Samara gave the mentioned man a quirked brow before looking back to Sherlock, confused and slightly unnerved.
"- 'But San Antonio, why San Antonio?' Because San Antonio is the largest city in Texas with multiple military bases, and because of your pictures I glanced at the day we met. There were pictures of the few Missions and the Alamo, along with the San Antonio River. You could've just been visiting, but your expressions were too bland and clothes fit in, you weren't tourists you lived there but went to see it to make memories before you moved here to London. You're a college graduate, Masters in Fine Arts and Bachelors in Animal Behavior. Obvious because of the diplomas that hung on your wall."
His face shifted to interested. "But why two separate majors? You enjoy animals, but not enough to focus on it, no, you have an affinity for the arts, and not just drawing. Back home, you most likely did train the K-9 unit at your father's military base to please him, but grew bored with it, so you started focusing on the Arts, and not just drawing, appraising. You enjoy analyzing the paintings, figuring out what makes them tick. I could tell by the multiple books concerning the effects of different paint brushes and the history of drawing, along with a few biographies of Artists. With your insight and passion, it's easy to deduce that you've judged paintings in the past back home, and now here in London, you still do from time to time but went back to training dogs because that's originally what your parents wanted, isn't it? A stable career for their wayward daughter. But that isn't what you want, is it? You like training dogs. But you love appraising art, loved it so much you ran from home to attempt a fresh start, only to find yourself doing it all over again. Find yourself getting a 'real' job with a police station so you can have a sense of home but deep down you realize that this is exactly what happened back in the states, isn't that right?"
There was a pause, John looking between Sherlock and Samara as a tension filled the air.
Eventually Samara nodded. "… Yes. That's true." She carefully avoided Lestrade's gaze, looking down at her cream-colored flats. "All of it."
The blue-eyed man nodded, his eyes bland though held a certain self-pride into them. "Then it wouldn't be hard for you to judge this painting, now would it?" He gestured to the paintings.
Samara sighed, glaring lightly at the man. "You can be a real ass, do you know that."
John nodded, quickly answering, "Oh he's well aware." Before Sherlock could open his mouth, earning an indignant expression from the raven haired man and a smight smirk from the girl he just read like a book.
