Black and Bruised

Fanfiction
Title:	Black and Bruised
Author(s):	Rosemary C.
Date(s):	1992
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Starsky & Hutch
Relationship(s):
External Links:	Black and Bruised
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By 1992, desk-top publishing had made hand-drawn zine art increasingly very rare. This piece is by J. Jones for "Black and Bruised," an angsty tale taking place after the episode "Black and Blue": "Unconsciously, Starsky had been blaming his partner for the distance between them, noting only Hutch's withdrawal. Now Starsky found himself wondering what he might have done, or failed to do to initiate such a retreat. What act of his would have been bad enough to merit that amnesia stunt or any of the more bizarre games of recent memory?"

Black and Bruised is a Starsky/Hutch story by Rosemary C.

It was printed in TLC, where it has art by J. Jones. The story is archived online.

A Fix-It for an Episode

"Black and Bruised" takes place in the aftermath of the episode "Black and Blue." For some fans, this story was a fix-it for that episode:

As a character, Joan Meredith is one hell of a fleshed out woman. Strong, intelligent, witty, capable, brave and beautiful. She's quite a tough cop and able to put any man in his place within the wink of an eye. I only regret the episode they put her in. She completely takes the focus off of Hutch and takes his place beside Starsky. The episode makes me feel as if Hutch was completely irrelevant and dispensable in everybody's eyes but Dobey's. It's a gut reaction I had while watching the episode for the first time. I instinctively resented her there. It's an episode that hurts to watch, so I've only seen it twice.

And it hurts more after having seen eps like Shootout, ACFS, SL, etc, etc, where Starsky's either physically or emotionally wounded and Hutch's beside him most of the time; and eps like Gillian, The Fix or The Plague where Hutch's physically or emotionally hurt and Starsky's beside him as much time as he can afford, from just a few minutes to all the time. When Hutch's "finally" shot here, I was rubbing my hands waiting for at least a few hurt/comfort moments. As the episode progressed, I went from scratching my head in confusion and disbelief, to irritated and pissed off like hell in the end.

And Starsky's words: "next time my partner gets shot, I'm gonna request you personally", well, no comments. They make me feel like crying sometimes and other times they make me wanna break something.

A bone-chilling, disturbing, painful episode to watch for me. It's got nothing to do with Meredith, who's a wonderful character in herself. What fails for me is... everything else. So, like Keri, I take it out on both Meredith and Mrs. Green.

And Rosemary's story "Black and Bruised" is just a work of art, IMHO.

Inspired Fanworks

A vid by giandujakiss took some of its inspiration from this story:

Comments: "Kryptonite" was conceived as a companion piece to "Wounded," above, although it should stand on its own. Several stories haunted my brain as I created it. Chief among them were Charlotte Frost's Spoils of War, Rosemary's Black and Bruised, and, above all, Suzan Lovett's (gen - yes, gen!! heterosexual, even!) The Thousandth Man.

Fan Comments

Just last night, from Flamingo's site, I read Rosemary's story "Black and Bruised." PHEW, it did affect me!! It dealt with the aftermath of Black and Blue, one of my... let's just say... less favourite episodes. I'm very... weird in my reading tastes, I just like simple, smooth, uncomplicated happy ending stories, and the issues this story dealt with, all too plain to see in the episode itself, the pain it distilled, Starsky and Hutch's raw and bruised feelings... it oozed pain, pain they had thoroughly inflicted on each other. It was an amazing story, one that I'll only be able to read from time to time and on very special occasions. It's difficult for me to deal with stories that upset me. Real life is more than enough. That story was bordering the limit of the pain I can take in any type of reading. In the end, I was emotionally exhausted, but it was worth it. God bless happy endings!

A rift has developed between the partners, and while Hutch has known about it all along, Starsky finally starts to take notice when he tries to help nurse his injured partner back to health. Originally published in the zine TLC, this is one of those hurt/comfort stories that just makes you turn angsty one moment and full of warm fuzzies the next. The author's writing style is one of my favorites to date. She manages to get everything in there, from perfect imagery to believable dialogue.