INFO | "the fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling."

[ligero]

ABOUT PERSONALITY ABILITIES BACKSTORY CODING

ABOUT

Cyrus Douglas

name

43

Age

Male

sex

London, England - 1872

where & when

Trinidadian (Afro-Indian)

ethnicity

Chiwetel Ejiofor

PB

Mycroft Holmes series ↪

canon

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

VISUAL: A Black man in his early 40s. Douglas is tall, standing at a bit over 6 feet. He's fit and muscular, but in the way of working men over vanity. His hair is dark and close-cropped, beginning to gray at the temples.
AURAL: A clear, low baritone. His Trinidadian accent is incredibly slight in English, but if he slips into it (or plays it up on purpose) it's got an almost musical drawl to it. In Patois and Portuguese he's playful, nearly boisterous. His Cantonese is pretty terrible, with a halting accent and the most rudimentary grasp of grammar, but he knows enough vocabulary to almost get by. Douglas' voice carries, but he very rarely raises it.
OLFACTORY: TOBACCO. He always smells like high-quality tobacco, as he still helps manage his shop despite being unable to smoke cigars himself. Otherwise, a decent men's cologne and aftershave; occasionally, sweat and the sea air.
DEMEANOR: Confident and controlled-- at least, to the observant. To the untrained eye, he might come off as retiring or even shy, but really, he's just trying not to draw attention to himself when his height and skin do enough of that as is. He's polite, pleasant, and no-nonsense, but not overly stern. He carries his body with the careful, composed posture of a skilled fighter.

PERSONALITY

TRAITS

+ steadfast:
Cyrus Douglas, as his story's John Watson archetype, is just what one might expect from a Holmes' loyal sidekick and foil. He can be bold and daring when Mycroft is in trouble, or he can be a mediator and voice of reason when Mycroft has caused the trouble. Most of all, he's a true friend and ready to follow his Holmes into hell, if need be. This, of course, is not limited to his best friend-- he's reliable to everyone he cares about or is obligated to, from old friends, to employees and business contacts, to the orphans he supports through Nickolus House. He's a man to count on, and everyone lucky enough to count him as a friend knows it well.
+ worldly and intelligent:
As a businessman, sailor, and immigrant-- as well as a man who's lived a very eventful 40 years-- Cyrus has a breadth of worldly experience that gives him a broad, open-minded perspective. Born in the rich blend of cultures that make up late 1800s Trinidad, then coming into adulthood as a sailor traveling across the world, he's interested in others' lives and experiences and values any opportunity to learn and experience more. He's also a voracious reader and, frankly, a big literature nerd. (Needing entertainment on long ocean voyages will do that.) So, while he's never had a formal higher education, his natural inquisitiveness and independent studying have done a lot to make him both street and book smart.
+ kind-hearted
- modest and somewhat private
- stubborn
- protective & self-sacrificing

ABILITIES

ABILITY

- hand-to-hand (capoeira; familiarity with chinese martial arts)
- firearms (carries a revolver)
- speaks english, patois, spanish, portuguese, sparse cantonese
- Dad Voice

BACKSTORY

(cw: period-typical racism & anti-blackness, hate crimes, slavery, drug abuse, suicide, violence against children)

𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝟏: 𝐌𝐘𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐌𝐄𝐒
In 1869, a 22-year-old Mycroft Holmes, strolling by the docks with his then-fiancee, encounters a 39-year-old Cyrus Douglas by chance. Douglas, an "employee" of Regent Tobaccos, was unloading his stock-- including a difficult-to-find cigar that Mycroft, an enthusiast himself, had been searching for unsuccessfully for months. A cheery conversation leads to a year of thrice-daily visits to Douglas' shop. The two become best friends, against their ages and the day's conventions of station and race. (Mycroft also discovers that Douglas was the real tobacconist all along: conscious of the scrutiny he'd receive as a Black businessman, he'd simply hired a white couple to masquerade as the shop owners.)

In 1870, Douglas hears dark rumors of the serial kidnappings and killings of children in Trinidad, blamed by superstitious locals on the backward-footed douen luring them to death by the bloodsucking lougarou. At the same time, Mycroft's fiancee Georgiana Sutton, raised by plantation owners in Trinidad, suddenly departs for the island. Mycroft convinces Douglas that the two should follow. From the start of their sea journey, they are discouraged and violently intimidated-- both of them beaten, and Mycroft gravely poisoned-- but they arrive in Trinidad more or less in one piece. With the help of Douglas' friends on the island, particularly the Chinese-Trinidadian community, the two uncover a vast conspiracy, of which Georgiana is a part. She plays a key role in a multinational business looking to create a normalized and "humane" form of chattel slavery.

The closer they get to the truth, the more aggression and pushback they receive. Friends are likewise threatened; Douglas' family home is burned to the ground. At a critical point while on the run, Mycroft, Douglas, and friend & carriage driver Huan discover the corpse of a dead boy. A panicked Mycroft insists they abandon him for their own safety, and Douglas snaps at him. He is naive; he is just three-and-twenty; if they don't follow the simplest ritual of burying the boy's remains, they'll have lost touch with their own humanity. As the three dig his grave, Douglas finally confides his past in Mycroft. Four years before, his African-American wife, young son, and parents were killed in a violent riot while visiting the American South. Douglas didn't make that trip with them: he was establishing his shop, preparing for his wife and child to immigrate with him.

Eventually, they come upon a suicidal Georgiana. Repentant of the children's deaths, but not her mission, she shares valuable clues to her collaborators before succumbing to a fatal self-administered dose of poison. Douglas and Mycroft recruit a number of local men to sail to the headquarters of the outfit. It's a trap: many are killed, drowned, or gravely wounded, including Douglas. A local English bureaucrat & businessman-- one of the main collaborators-- offers Mycroft and the other survivors the chance to leave, if they leave the business alone. In the ensuing standoff and escape, Douglas is shot twice in the chest and presumably killed. Only at Mycroft's insistence does the group bring Douglas home. But a grieving friend's desperation soon turns miraculous when Douglas begins to breathe once more. His friend had correctly deduced that the bullets were millimeters away from piercing his heart, leaving Douglas critically injured, but very much alive.

After Douglas recovers, he and Mycroft sail home to London; the slaving business is successfully uncovered and broken apart. A major stakeholder, it appears, is a cousin to the Queen, embezzling crown funds and hoping to invest in a future oil digging endeavor carried out by a major perpetrator. Mycroft blackmails him during an audience with the Queen regarding the embezzled funds; he becomes a wealthy man and helps Douglas establish a boy's home in a poorer district of the city. After all, Douglas has two ticking timebombs in his chest, too dangerous to be removed. He can no longer perform the regular physical labor of his shop duties-- and he is forbidden to smoke on doctor's orders.

𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝟐: 𝐌𝐘𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐓 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐊

More than two years later, Douglas is the (secret, of course) benefactor of Nickolus House, a boy's shelter named for his late son. The shelter tutors children and prepares them for apprenticeships to keep them off the streets. Despite this, he's still a 50% partner of Regent Tobaccos, having ceded the bulk of the business' management to his former employees. One day, Mycroft drops by, along with his 18-year-old brother Sherlock. To Douglas' chagrin, he suggests that Sherlock help tutor at Nickolus House, both to teach the young man humility and to prevent him from sticking his nose into the recent string of gruesome murder-dismemberments that have sensationalized London. Mycroft leaves him, heeding a summons by the Queen. Sherlock and Douglas soon discover one of Douglas' new charges, a boy named Charles, has gone missing. Sherlock insists that the boy bears strange puncture marks on his body: some consistent with opium use, but others odd and impossible to have been self-inflicted.

Unhappily, Douglas also receives urgent word that a ship containing his shop's cargo has run around-- and, if not properly salvaged, will be an expense great enough to shut down Nickolus House. Sherlock is left at Nickolus House (miraculously getting through the math lesson, and promptly turning it into a sparring lesson as well) while Douglas investigates his lost cargo. Luckily, most of his merchandise is salvaged, but he also discovers two corpses of young looters with strange puncture marks on their bodies-- matching those of Charles. He also sees the unsettling debris of many bisque dolls floating in the surf.

After Douglas returns to Nickolus House, he and Sherlock track Charles down. Eventually they find the boy being spirited away by strange men, who attack Sherlock and Douglas until they succeed in chasing them off. Under the influence of some unknown drug, the boy overdoses: he speaks the word "baker" in his dying breath. Douglas is distraught as, above all, he values the safety of the children under his care. Alongside Mycroft, he attempts to find the true cause for Charles' death; at the same time, Sherlock conducts an independent investigation. Both brothers conceal valuable leads from each other-- Mycroft to prevent Sherlock from falling too deep into danger, Sherlock to keep Mycroft from stopping him from doing so. All the while, Mycroft hides his failing health from all his loved ones. An underlying heart issue from childhood illness had been exacerbated by an untreated bout of malaria from his Trinidad trip, and he is rapidly growing weaker.

Mycroft soon uncovers connections between Sherlock's chemistry professor, Cainborn; Deshi Hai Lin, a Chinese businessman whose ships import and export goods; and Madam Matalin, a wealthy sponsor of Nickolus House who is also an opium addict. He and Douglas resolve not to share Cainborn's possible involvement with Sherlock until he is found guilty of wrongdoing, as Sherlock admires the man. By chance, Mycroft meets (and becomes infatuated with) the man's daughter, Ai Lin, who invites him and Sherlock-- a school acquaintance of her younger brother-- to dinner the following week.

Meanwhile, Sherlock traces the Chinese opium dealers that Charles had worked for, disguising himself as a youth looking to work with the operation. After he successfully completes the strange task of recording Chinese characters hidden among local train stations, he is permitted to join the group. At this point, he finally reveals just these clues to Mycroft and Douglas. Douglas, through Huan's connections to the local Chinese community, is able to secure Sherlock a translator to help decipher the characters. To Douglas' chagrin, again, Sherlock frustrates and insults the translator far enough that he leaves before all the symbols can be translated. Douglas scolds him, urging him to keep his patience and humility, especially in the face of people who talk. Rather than risk Sherlock's now ruined reputation with Huan's circle, Douglas and Mycroft take over with a new translator. The symbols are all names of plants and flowers: for now, they are out of leads.

Later, Sherlock returns to the dealers. Having accomplished his task, he is then injected with a test dose of opium strong enough to put him out of commission for days. When he comes to his senses, he realizes that he recognizes the blend. In secret, he'd been working with Professor Cainborn (and experimenting on himself and two classmates) to develop a new a blend of opium, concentrated enough to use as a powerful painkiller. All this was for the sake of his mother, who suffers from drug addiction and debilitating chronic pain.

All comes to a head at dinner with the Lin family. Sherlock has cleaned up but is still sobering from his experience; Mycroft, Douglas, and Huan, fearing the worst, place Douglas and Huan outside the home in a cab in case of trouble. Lin's driver William Angel, a man who'd once had connections to the drug trade and whose cab Mycroft and Douglas had spotted tailing them, implores Mycroft to help his employer. Deshi Hai Lin is late, anxious, and feeling unwell enough to retire from dinner early. Before he leaves, however, it comes to light through Ai Lin's urging that her father has long opposed the coolie trade and seeks to end it in his own time by employing his countrymen through his shipping business.

But before all can be resolved, Ai Lin receives urgent word that Madame Matalin, an acquaintance, has suddenly died. She and Sherlock take off for the crime scene; Douglas and Huan remain behind as Angel is sure that Deshi Hai Lin's enemies will come to attack the man while he is alone and vulnerable. Ai Lin, Sherlock, and Mycroft discover that Matalin's murder has been arranged to look like an overdose. Douglas and Huan indeed face several men, only narrowly gaining the upper hand when Ai Lin's bodyguards come to their aid.

As the group reconvenes and shares information, they come to a number of conclusions. For his previous violent actions in China to liberate coolie workers, Deshi Hai Lin has been blackmailed by an old friend who knew his past. His ships secretly transport opium from England back to China. The drugs are being smuggled in hollow bisque dolls, with the loaded dolls identified with tags named for flowers and plants; Madame Matalin was one of many rich customers involved in vetting opium strains and using poor street children to test them. Sherlock, independently, realizes that Cainborn has betrayed him and used their research for his own gain-- and flees to confront his professor, too soon for anyone to stop him.

Mycroft spends a sleepless night and day both trying to stop Deshi Hai Lin's ships from sailing off, informing the authorities, and searching for Sherlock. At last, Sherlock is spotted being attacked and drowned by Cainborn and men tied to the drug trade... by the Chinese translator he'd previously belittled. The man hurries to Mycroft, Douglas, and Huan, and the three rush to Sherlock's aid. However, due to his failing heart, Mycroft is not strong enough to join the two: he nearly collapses merely running to help. Ultimately, it's Douglas who pulls Sherlock out of the water and saves his life. Cainborn and the opium dealers are arrested.

For the next few days, Sherlock rests in a spare bed in Nickolus House under the watchful eye of Mycroft, Douglas, and friends. He, and all others, remain ignorant of Mycroft's health; in a moment of vulnerability, Sherlock breaks down in tears, asking Mycroft why Douglas came to his rescue, and not him. Mycroft avoids the question: he insists that Sherlock must believe he cares for him, even in the absence of proof.

(i'm still reading book 3 congrats if you read all this)