Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG (5/17)
Good God this just keeps going, doesn't it? Hope you all are enjoying it.
Title: Underland
Authors: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Marquis de Carabas
Word Count: ~ 2300
Summary: John Watson loses a bet, grants a favour, and finds himself in a world unlike anything he has ever seen before. Except for how it's all the same.
Notes / Warnings: MORE ANGST. A few fits, some crows, JW <3 SH. That sort.
So this started with my own prompt on shkinkmeme which never got filled, so I decided to do it myself. :D If you see issues with anything, please feel free to tell me.
Hammersmith's voice is hard to capture, 'cause he keeps translating in my brain as Hagrid. >.< If it gets too inconsistent, smack me and I'll try to fix it, 'kay? Also, Oxford Circus was technically opened as an underground station in 1900, but I figure London Below moves on a different time table than us Upworlders. :D
Underland - Part V
There was a raven watching me when I woke up. Easily two feet tall, it sat perched with its head cocked to the left, peering down at me from the overhanging branches of the trees.
I sat up quickly, and regretted it immediately as my back and neck seized up in deliberate protest against further movement. Twisting to crack my lumbar spine, I felt worse than I had the disastrous day before, with night terrors and the uncomfortable experience of sleeping outside bringing back memories of Afghanistan, though I can safely say that the cold reminded me quite firmly that I was still in London, unfamiliar as it was.
I became caught up in watching as more enormously majestic ravens congregated in the surrounding trees, with a few smaller rooks in their midst, until they increased to such numbers that the boughs they sat on were sinking with the weight.
Realising the sheer number of them, I grew unnerved, and moved quickly to pack my things. I made my way back to Baker Street with no small sense of agitation, to find it was entirely warranted.
True to her word, Mrs. Hudson had removed all my things and set them, packed away in neat boxes, on the curb. I could tell immediately that not everything was there, many of my possessions having migrated from my wardrobe and drawers into the sitting room and often as far as Holmes' rooms, and I could see that those - which apparently took up a greater proportion than I had been previously aware - were not included in my eviction notice.
While I appreciated that I would not be required to face my landlady, it gave me a remorseful feeling to realise that I would not be coming back again, and no one would even remember my having been there at all in the first place.
Holmes would call me foolish for -
Holmes.
I had not thought of my friend and fellow lodger since the day before, when I had still assumed that he, of all people, would not be subject to this madness. That he would receive my message, my call for help through sheer force of will, and come dashing to London to sweep in and rescue me from my own bumbling distress like a damsel in a romance tale.
But he would not. He could not, not while I was lost in this mad world.
And, consequentially, I could never see him again.
Oh, it brought such pain to my heart to think that the last words I had said to him were some trivial quip about breakfast sausages and a denial to join him on his latest case.
But never again would I allow my self to look upon his familiar features, more dear to my soul than my own brother had been. I would never feel the need to mother-hen him, as he called it, in his darkest moments, or see him glow with satisfaction and his own brilliance at the excitement of a new murder to solve.
It was not as though I could not watch him from afar. He would never notice me, of course, but I was sure I would not be able to resist, one day, approaching him.
And the inevitable lack of recognition in his eyes would break my heart more effectively than anything else in this world and the next.
I left Baker Street with a few more changes of clothes and some small trinkets of personal value - my brother's watch, a set of lock picks Holmes had gifted to me some years before, a locket with my mothers miniature, and my revolver, hidden away from prying eyes.
Tucking the locket into the pocket of my waistcoat I felt a slim, stiff piece of pasteboard. I still had the marquis' calling card.
Thinking of my late night acquaintance I felt a surge of anger overwhelm the misery clouding my mood.
He knew this was going to happen. He must have. The warning he had given meant that, whether intentional or no, apologetic or not, he knew this was at least possible, and he still brought me into it, the bastard.
Not bothering to remove the card, I turned my sights to Hanway Place, and the mysterious little alley off of it.
The world seemed duller and dingier as I moved through the streets away from my home for so long. Shadows, ill-shaped and dark where no shadows should fall, flitted at the edges of my vision, never solidifying into anything real and vanishing into nothingness when I turned my head to look. I could hear the cawing of crows and the cries of ravens in great numbers even so deep into the city as I was. A murder. That is what a congregation of crows is called.
A murder.
Orme Place seemed a hundred years and a hundred miles away from me at that point, but I made the walk in the blink of an eye. I kept my gaze down, not wishing to see the faces of total strangers glance over my presence and walk on past, and took to dodging out of people's way so as to avoid the lack of confrontation that would ensue.
Hanway Place looked different in the light of day, simultaneously more eventful with the swarms of people moving about through the streets, and also more unreal, as though all these people were some place else, and I was moving through a ghost town.
The sign for Orme Place W1 was still there, high upon the brick wall, but the shadows were deep and desolate within the narrow alley. I picked my way through, watching carefully behind me for anyone following - though of course not a single person even cast their eyes towards the opening.
But the door was gone.
There was no indication it had ever been there, no window, no chalk markings, nothing, not even scraps of wood. Just a bare stretch of brick wall.
I howled for the sake of howling, knowing that no one would hear me but refusing to believe it, dropping my bag to the ground with a clank I knew I would regret later, and flung myself at the bricks, beating and pounding at them, wailing at the top of my lungs for someone to let me in. Just let me in.
No response.
Of course there was no response.
-
I have no notes from this period between my fit of anxiety and my next encounter with someone else on this side of London, and if I am to be honest I cannot recall it fully, sunk so deep into depression that I must have been nearly somnambulant.
What finally shook me out of my daze was the sight of a man climbing out of the ground.
No, not the ground. And not a man.
I had wandered to Kings Cross, where one of the few Underground stations had been opened in '63. I my self had never ventured below the city to traverse the Underground, but had heard talk of expanding in later years. Many of the stations which had originally been opened were closed soon after for some reason or other - not feeling the need to ride on them, I felt no reason to become involved in the politics of the underground trains. It was through the entrance to the Underground, tucked into the side of a building, that he caught my eye.
But seeing him ascend the steps from the depths of the bowels of London, I could not understand why no one paid attention to this mountain of a man.
For one thing, he was enormous even hunched over, with skin so dark I could not tell if he was black, like the marquis de Carabas, or simply caked in soot. His hair, matted and unkempt with an enormous brown beard to compliment it, fell in great shaggy masses about his burnt brown face.
Then, as he ambled by me, he seemed to catch me looking, and said in a voice as deep and dark as the mines beneath the mountains, "Something I can help you with, or was you planning on staring all day?"
"Oh, I'm - you can see me! You can see me!" Ecstatic and completely ignoring the rude tone of his cavernous voice, I was nearly trembling with excitement at being recognised by a fellow human being. He was of this world then. This under world, beneath the eye of my London. "Sir, I do beg your pardon. If you please, I'm searching for the marquis de Carabas, I need to see him."
The man eyed me, a little distastefully, and with significantly more suspicion. "Looking for the Marquis? What do you need with him? You a spy from the Upworld?"
"No, no I'm not a spy." I fumbled in my pockets for the delicate calling card I had received. "Here, look." Holding it out to him, his eyes widened at the flash of silver. He snatched it from me with grubby hands and examined it keenly, turning it side to side, reading front and back, even sniffing experimentally at the edge.
Nodding, satisfied, he handed it back to me, and straightened with a sense of duty suddenly about him. With his posture as rigid as it would go, the hulking man made an imposing figure in the half-light. If I had gotten close enough to measure I am sure I would not have reached his shoulder even with my hat. "Wat's your name, then, sir?" he asked, suddenly much more amiable.
I spoke before I thought.
"I'm Dr. -"
And remembered the marquis' warning. Names have power.
Before I could retract the statement, the man made a hmming noise, and scratched his mangy beard.
"Doctor! Fine name, Doctor. Never heard the like. Well, Doctor, you'll be needing to go to the Circus. On Oxford Street. That's where the Market's at tonight."
"Market? The - the Floating Market? And do you mean Oxford Circus?" That was the rest of the marquis' note. Ask for the Market, ask for him, and I would find him soon enough.
"Aye, that's the one. With all them clowns and fancy ladies. I seen a strong man last time I was there, figure I could probably beat him if I needs to. Well, come on, Doctor."
"There is no circus at Oxford Circus," I said, quite bewildered. "I've been there before, circus comes from the Latin for 'circle', it's merely a convergence of streets -" I had to jog to catch up at that point, for the man was moving steadily away from me, apparently unconcerned about whether or not I was planning to go with him.
He headed back to the entrance of the Underground, and lumbered down onto the gas-lit platform beneath the city.
"Wait, weren't you headed somewhere else?" I asked, trailing after him. He led me towards a large door set into the wall of the platform, presumably for maintenance of some sort, and opened it into the darkness beyond. Pulling a lantern out of somewhere, he lit it, and held it high enough to see that the walls of the passage were damp and rough, not the polished masonry of the city works system. He moved in, motioning me to follow, and walked as silently as a man of his size possibly could, which was apparently rather so, and my cane clacked loudly on the stonework.
"Nah," he said finally, with a hearty chuckle as the door closed behind us with a whisper and a click. "Was the rat-speakers that told me to go up. 'Look for the man with the mark of the Marquis,' they said, on order of the Golden no less, so I did, and found you." He twisted his head around to give me a sideways grin, and added "Hope you weren't offended by my questions, sir. We don't much like outsiders, but I can tell you'se a good type."
I thought he was referring to the card the marquis had left me, which now sat in my jacket pocket, but he was pointing instead to my right elbow.
It was too much to process, and I was already too overwhelmed to even think of debating the reason or sanity of his words. This world was not made for sanity. I instead focused on the other part of his statement.
"Rat speakers? What are those?"
"Who, you mean. They're the ones who speak for the rats. 'Course there's more can speak to rats, but the rat-speakers do more, complete tasks for them. Fancy themselves above the rest of us, 'cause they got the direct connection, but they're just tools. The Lord Rat-speaker is growing old though, see, and his apprentice is young and headstrong, thinks he's got more influence than he really does, but the other rat-speakers, they can't speak up, see, or the Lord Rat-speaker will kill 'em - he holds his apprentice in high regard, see."
The man continued dispensing on the politics of rats, a concept I was beginning to accept with little else to do, and walked forward with no hesitation, twisting and turning through forks and hidden entrances, never once losing pace.
And all I could do was follow.
-
| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV || Part V || Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X |
| Part XI | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV | Part XVI | Part XVII |
Title: Underland
Authors: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Marquis de Carabas
Word Count: ~ 2300
Summary: John Watson loses a bet, grants a favour, and finds himself in a world unlike anything he has ever seen before. Except for how it's all the same.
Notes / Warnings: MORE ANGST. A few fits, some crows, JW <3 SH. That sort.
So this started with my own prompt on shkinkmeme which never got filled, so I decided to do it myself. :D If you see issues with anything, please feel free to tell me.
Hammersmith's voice is hard to capture, 'cause he keeps translating in my brain as Hagrid. >.< If it gets too inconsistent, smack me and I'll try to fix it, 'kay? Also, Oxford Circus was technically opened as an underground station in 1900, but I figure London Below moves on a different time table than us Upworlders. :D
Underland - Part V
There was a raven watching me when I woke up. Easily two feet tall, it sat perched with its head cocked to the left, peering down at me from the overhanging branches of the trees.
I sat up quickly, and regretted it immediately as my back and neck seized up in deliberate protest against further movement. Twisting to crack my lumbar spine, I felt worse than I had the disastrous day before, with night terrors and the uncomfortable experience of sleeping outside bringing back memories of Afghanistan, though I can safely say that the cold reminded me quite firmly that I was still in London, unfamiliar as it was.
I became caught up in watching as more enormously majestic ravens congregated in the surrounding trees, with a few smaller rooks in their midst, until they increased to such numbers that the boughs they sat on were sinking with the weight.
Realising the sheer number of them, I grew unnerved, and moved quickly to pack my things. I made my way back to Baker Street with no small sense of agitation, to find it was entirely warranted.
True to her word, Mrs. Hudson had removed all my things and set them, packed away in neat boxes, on the curb. I could tell immediately that not everything was there, many of my possessions having migrated from my wardrobe and drawers into the sitting room and often as far as Holmes' rooms, and I could see that those - which apparently took up a greater proportion than I had been previously aware - were not included in my eviction notice.
While I appreciated that I would not be required to face my landlady, it gave me a remorseful feeling to realise that I would not be coming back again, and no one would even remember my having been there at all in the first place.
Holmes would call me foolish for -
Holmes.
I had not thought of my friend and fellow lodger since the day before, when I had still assumed that he, of all people, would not be subject to this madness. That he would receive my message, my call for help through sheer force of will, and come dashing to London to sweep in and rescue me from my own bumbling distress like a damsel in a romance tale.
But he would not. He could not, not while I was lost in this mad world.
And, consequentially, I could never see him again.
Oh, it brought such pain to my heart to think that the last words I had said to him were some trivial quip about breakfast sausages and a denial to join him on his latest case.
But never again would I allow my self to look upon his familiar features, more dear to my soul than my own brother had been. I would never feel the need to mother-hen him, as he called it, in his darkest moments, or see him glow with satisfaction and his own brilliance at the excitement of a new murder to solve.
It was not as though I could not watch him from afar. He would never notice me, of course, but I was sure I would not be able to resist, one day, approaching him.
And the inevitable lack of recognition in his eyes would break my heart more effectively than anything else in this world and the next.
I left Baker Street with a few more changes of clothes and some small trinkets of personal value - my brother's watch, a set of lock picks Holmes had gifted to me some years before, a locket with my mothers miniature, and my revolver, hidden away from prying eyes.
Tucking the locket into the pocket of my waistcoat I felt a slim, stiff piece of pasteboard. I still had the marquis' calling card.
Thinking of my late night acquaintance I felt a surge of anger overwhelm the misery clouding my mood.
He knew this was going to happen. He must have. The warning he had given meant that, whether intentional or no, apologetic or not, he knew this was at least possible, and he still brought me into it, the bastard.
Not bothering to remove the card, I turned my sights to Hanway Place, and the mysterious little alley off of it.
The world seemed duller and dingier as I moved through the streets away from my home for so long. Shadows, ill-shaped and dark where no shadows should fall, flitted at the edges of my vision, never solidifying into anything real and vanishing into nothingness when I turned my head to look. I could hear the cawing of crows and the cries of ravens in great numbers even so deep into the city as I was. A murder. That is what a congregation of crows is called.
A murder.
Orme Place seemed a hundred years and a hundred miles away from me at that point, but I made the walk in the blink of an eye. I kept my gaze down, not wishing to see the faces of total strangers glance over my presence and walk on past, and took to dodging out of people's way so as to avoid the lack of confrontation that would ensue.
Hanway Place looked different in the light of day, simultaneously more eventful with the swarms of people moving about through the streets, and also more unreal, as though all these people were some place else, and I was moving through a ghost town.
The sign for Orme Place W1 was still there, high upon the brick wall, but the shadows were deep and desolate within the narrow alley. I picked my way through, watching carefully behind me for anyone following - though of course not a single person even cast their eyes towards the opening.
But the door was gone.
There was no indication it had ever been there, no window, no chalk markings, nothing, not even scraps of wood. Just a bare stretch of brick wall.
I howled for the sake of howling, knowing that no one would hear me but refusing to believe it, dropping my bag to the ground with a clank I knew I would regret later, and flung myself at the bricks, beating and pounding at them, wailing at the top of my lungs for someone to let me in. Just let me in.
No response.
Of course there was no response.
-
I have no notes from this period between my fit of anxiety and my next encounter with someone else on this side of London, and if I am to be honest I cannot recall it fully, sunk so deep into depression that I must have been nearly somnambulant.
What finally shook me out of my daze was the sight of a man climbing out of the ground.
No, not the ground. And not a man.
I had wandered to Kings Cross, where one of the few Underground stations had been opened in '63. I my self had never ventured below the city to traverse the Underground, but had heard talk of expanding in later years. Many of the stations which had originally been opened were closed soon after for some reason or other - not feeling the need to ride on them, I felt no reason to become involved in the politics of the underground trains. It was through the entrance to the Underground, tucked into the side of a building, that he caught my eye.
But seeing him ascend the steps from the depths of the bowels of London, I could not understand why no one paid attention to this mountain of a man.
For one thing, he was enormous even hunched over, with skin so dark I could not tell if he was black, like the marquis de Carabas, or simply caked in soot. His hair, matted and unkempt with an enormous brown beard to compliment it, fell in great shaggy masses about his burnt brown face.
Then, as he ambled by me, he seemed to catch me looking, and said in a voice as deep and dark as the mines beneath the mountains, "Something I can help you with, or was you planning on staring all day?"
"Oh, I'm - you can see me! You can see me!" Ecstatic and completely ignoring the rude tone of his cavernous voice, I was nearly trembling with excitement at being recognised by a fellow human being. He was of this world then. This under world, beneath the eye of my London. "Sir, I do beg your pardon. If you please, I'm searching for the marquis de Carabas, I need to see him."
The man eyed me, a little distastefully, and with significantly more suspicion. "Looking for the Marquis? What do you need with him? You a spy from the Upworld?"
"No, no I'm not a spy." I fumbled in my pockets for the delicate calling card I had received. "Here, look." Holding it out to him, his eyes widened at the flash of silver. He snatched it from me with grubby hands and examined it keenly, turning it side to side, reading front and back, even sniffing experimentally at the edge.
Nodding, satisfied, he handed it back to me, and straightened with a sense of duty suddenly about him. With his posture as rigid as it would go, the hulking man made an imposing figure in the half-light. If I had gotten close enough to measure I am sure I would not have reached his shoulder even with my hat. "Wat's your name, then, sir?" he asked, suddenly much more amiable.
I spoke before I thought.
"I'm Dr. -"
And remembered the marquis' warning. Names have power.
Before I could retract the statement, the man made a hmming noise, and scratched his mangy beard.
"Doctor! Fine name, Doctor. Never heard the like. Well, Doctor, you'll be needing to go to the Circus. On Oxford Street. That's where the Market's at tonight."
"Market? The - the Floating Market? And do you mean Oxford Circus?" That was the rest of the marquis' note. Ask for the Market, ask for him, and I would find him soon enough.
"Aye, that's the one. With all them clowns and fancy ladies. I seen a strong man last time I was there, figure I could probably beat him if I needs to. Well, come on, Doctor."
"There is no circus at Oxford Circus," I said, quite bewildered. "I've been there before, circus comes from the Latin for 'circle', it's merely a convergence of streets -" I had to jog to catch up at that point, for the man was moving steadily away from me, apparently unconcerned about whether or not I was planning to go with him.
He headed back to the entrance of the Underground, and lumbered down onto the gas-lit platform beneath the city.
"Wait, weren't you headed somewhere else?" I asked, trailing after him. He led me towards a large door set into the wall of the platform, presumably for maintenance of some sort, and opened it into the darkness beyond. Pulling a lantern out of somewhere, he lit it, and held it high enough to see that the walls of the passage were damp and rough, not the polished masonry of the city works system. He moved in, motioning me to follow, and walked as silently as a man of his size possibly could, which was apparently rather so, and my cane clacked loudly on the stonework.
"Nah," he said finally, with a hearty chuckle as the door closed behind us with a whisper and a click. "Was the rat-speakers that told me to go up. 'Look for the man with the mark of the Marquis,' they said, on order of the Golden no less, so I did, and found you." He twisted his head around to give me a sideways grin, and added "Hope you weren't offended by my questions, sir. We don't much like outsiders, but I can tell you'se a good type."
I thought he was referring to the card the marquis had left me, which now sat in my jacket pocket, but he was pointing instead to my right elbow.
It was too much to process, and I was already too overwhelmed to even think of debating the reason or sanity of his words. This world was not made for sanity. I instead focused on the other part of his statement.
"Rat speakers? What are those?"
"Who, you mean. They're the ones who speak for the rats. 'Course there's more can speak to rats, but the rat-speakers do more, complete tasks for them. Fancy themselves above the rest of us, 'cause they got the direct connection, but they're just tools. The Lord Rat-speaker is growing old though, see, and his apprentice is young and headstrong, thinks he's got more influence than he really does, but the other rat-speakers, they can't speak up, see, or the Lord Rat-speaker will kill 'em - he holds his apprentice in high regard, see."
The man continued dispensing on the politics of rats, a concept I was beginning to accept with little else to do, and walked forward with no hesitation, twisting and turning through forks and hidden entrances, never once losing pace.
And all I could do was follow.
-
| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV || Part V || Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X |
| Part XI | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV | Part XVI | Part XVII |