Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG (6/17)
WHEE IT'S THE WEEKEND. :D I might go to the pride parade today if I'm awake enough later.
Title: Underland
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Hammersmith, another rat
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: 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.
I'm just making shit up now. MAGIC is my explanation. I took part in my very first write-over last night, and sprinted my way through the next chapter in less than three hours. It may or may not be total crap because of that, but it's done! :D
Underland - Part VI
The tunnels seemed to continue on to the Americas, so vast and infinite they were. Constantly expanding under the light of the great man's lantern, branching and twisting around each other until I felt like a rat in a maze.
A smell of dank, mildewed, darkness filled my nostrils, cold and moist, clinging to the inside of my nose in a cloying manner. The walls seemed endless and unchanging, and it was perfectly inconceivable that someone could navigate through the tunnels without some guide, though had Holmes found his way down there I was sure he would have figured out the differences between this type of mould on the wall and that, or this pattern of cracks in the stone.
Finally, after what might have been minutes or hours or days, the tunnel widened, until it less resembled the dark passage and more the wide open sewer access tunnels I had spent some time in with Holmes. We turned soon after, and my strange companion, whose name I still did not know, led me down a gentle slope to a grated opening in the floor.
"We're just stopping here before the Market. I need to get my things 'fore we head off, or I'd be the laughing-stock without any things to barter, see." He lifted the grate, and the screech of metal on metal pierced through the tunnels, echoing off the stone walls for what seemed like miles.
He lowered himself into the hole, apparently wider than it appeared in the semi-darkness to fit his bulk, though his shoulders stuck out of the opening like bulges of rock. He reached for me, hands the size of carriage wheels wrapped themselves around my waist, hoisting me up as easily as if I were a doll. My inevitable floundering in mid-air did nothing to throw off his grip, and he shuffled and squirmed and managed to let me down without jarring my leg in the slightest before he crouched beside me and dropped the grating over our heads.
I peered at him in the darkness, worried for the health of his back and head, hunched as he was. He gave me a rueful grin, teeth flashing sharply in the weak light.
"It's only for a little while. This is the easiest way of getting there, I promise. Plus we're more unlikely to run across any of them other folks, could find their company less than pleasing."
"Is it dangerous? What about at the market?"
He scoffed, and likely would have thrown his head back in guffaws had it not been pressed against the rough ceiling so firmly as it was. "All folks are dangerous, Doctor, you must know that, yeah? But no, not at the Market. There's a truce there, see, and anyone gets it in his head to fight another without set rules - competitions and the like - will get all of London Below on their tail."
London Below. That was where I was. It was not simply below London, but an entirely different plane of existence, where rats were to be obeyed and people avoided, low and deep in the darkness.
This time we walked no more than a quarter of an hour before we came to a solid iron door firmly set into the rock. My companion unlocked it with a queerly small key on a deceptively delicate chain, and opened it. The top of the door scraped harshly against the low ceiling, and the red glow of a furnace fire greeted us.
I was grateful to exit the dark and damp, for as we walked, the floor of the tunnel had steadily filled with water until we were sloshing through what must have been three or four inches of god knows how filthy water.
The room we entered was inconceivably large, though I suppose it suited my enormous guide well enough. A forge roared at one end, and the rest of the room was fitted as a blacksmiths, with iron tools, larger and more massive than any others I've seen before, and probably made to be wielded solely by my companion. An anvil roughly the size my self from the knees up was positioned in the centre of the room, and various kinds of sheet metal, and lumps of the same, were scattered in the same kind of organised chaos I was used to.
Obviously my companion knew without a doubt where everything was, but the orderly mind in me itched to tidy up the clutter as I so often had done with Holmes' messes.
"Excuse me, sir," I called out, as the man started puttering about, picking up hunks of iron and coal as if they were loaves of bread. "What should I call you?"
He dropped what looked like a broadsword - so huge it looked like it could cleave me in half if I even went near it - with a horrid clang and whirled about to stare at me in disbelief.
I felt horribly as though I had offered some grievous insult, until he came thundering over and snatched up my hand in his, bellowing, "Of course, Doctor, I'm terribly sorry! I go by Hammersmith, and I do beg your pardon sir, for not telling you of it right away, you must think me awfully rude!"
His handshake almost took my arm off, and it was only through the luck of propriety that it was my right, and therefore good arm, or I might have been in some considerable pain. I admit that I made some noise of protest as his enthusiastic vigour, so different from his initial greeting up on the streets, shook me until my teeth rattled.
Hammersmith gave a start, and gentled his grip hesitantly. He was obviously a kind-hearted fellow with very little opportunity to practice social norms like the shaking of a hand. I lowered my bag, placed my other hand atop his, and tried as understandingly as possible to pry his crushing hold from my numb fingers.
I attempted to smile, and relaxed as soon as his grasp slackened. Then, putting on my best professional face, I looked him straight in the eye - several feet above my head - and said, "Do not grip so tightly next time, yes?"
He looked enthralled, and nodded avidly. When I did not continue, his eyes turned pleading, though I could see he would not voice his request for the sake of his dignity.
"Ah - the best handshake is a firm one," I said, trying to remember the specifics that I had been taught in primary school. It was more difficult than I remembered, describing something now so intuitive. "However, since many of the people you greet might prove less - enthusiastic, the proper way to compensate for that is to return the grip with as much force as you receive."
Hammersmith nodded, and I withdrew my hands, shaking them out slightly, before presenting him with the limpest handshake I could possibly manage while still being conscious. He extended his hand towards mine uncertainly, seeing the lax hang of my wrist, and pinched my fingers between his own as though he were attempting to catch a butterfly on the wing.
I refrained from a verbal outburst, but my shoulders shook with silent chortles and a grin stretched across my cheeks. Hammersmith looked at his own hand, and shook his head, breaking out into a grin to match my own.
I stiffened my hand, holding it as I would normally. Hammersmith shook himself out, a look of great determination on his face and laughter shining in his fire-lit eyes.
He placed his hand in mine gently, as limp as mine had been, and slowly firmed his grip until I could feel the tension in my fingers. I nodded to him and he stopped squeezing, eyeing me closely.
"Feel that? That's a good handshake."
I pumped his hand hard three times, looking him in the eye as I was taught, and ended with a grin and a nod.
It was a ridiculous exchange and we both knew it.
"It's good to meet you Mr. Hammersmith. I cannot express my gratitude for your guidance down here."
His smile softened and a look of sadness entered his expressive eyes, the kind of pitiable mien given to derelict transients on the street. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a sudden chitter of noise from the far corner of the room.
Hammersmith's face lit up and he barrelled away to crouch down in the corner and hold out his hand as he had done with me - the second time. A rat, a large rat by London's standards, even so I have seen larger - the giant rat of Sumatra comes to mind, though now that I consider it I wonder if there were more connotations to that story than there first appeared - stepped out from a nook between stones and onto Hammersmith's great palm.
My massive new acquaintance stood, holding the rat reverently, and walked carefully over, making sure not to jostle the rodent. When he reached me, the rat chittered again, completing its statement with an emphatic squeak, and ventured out to the very tips of Hammersmith's fingers, standing on its hind paws to move itself even closer to me.
Hammersmith made an encouraging motion with the rat, causing it to sway slightly and cast what might have been an irritated glance over its shoulder, if a rat could possibly look irritated. "Hold out your hand. Master Furredears wishes to know you better." I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. "Rat doesn't always translate well," he said.
I looked at the rat again. It did have remarkably furry ears. They stuck out large and tufted from its narrow, pointed head.
I raised my hands to let the rat scramble across the gap. Its claws were sharp, and felt like tiny pinpricks on the skin of my palms, reminding me quite savagely of my close encounter with the carriage wheels the day before. The gashes in the heels of my hands had scabbed over, but were tight and sore, as I had forgotten to see to them in the midst of my angst.
The rat, seeming to notice my discomfort, stepped more carefully around the cuts to a more convenient position, and then peered up at me keenly. It was a warm and solid weight in my hands, substantial enough that it was some effort to hold it up in that manner.
Its mottled fur struck something in my memory, and when it blinked clear black eyes and cocked its head to the side I felt the wave of recognition. This was the same poor rodent I had abused the other day in my fit of rage.
I opened my mouth to apologise - apologise, to a rat - when it leaned down and promptly bit me sharply on the proximal joint of my left middle finger. I cursed and yanked the hand away, managing to keep the rat balanced on my right, and shook out the pain.
"He bit me!" I exclaimed, doing, as Holmes would tell me, an excellent job of stating the obvious, much to my chagrin.
Hammersmith just laughed.
Then the rat chittered again, and for all that my ears perceived the sounds as typical rat snuffles and squeals, my brain understood quite clearly what it said.
"I - really?" I asked the rat. There was no more room in my body to even contemplate the insanity it must have indicated that I should begin talking directly to the rat.
The conversation, if it could be called that, ended quickly, and the rat scampered off as soon as I let my hand close enough to the ground. As Hammersmith had listened as well, there was no need to reiterate what the rat had told me, so in silence he packed what he needed for the market. I took the time to place a small sticking plaster on the small gouge the infernal rodent had left me - never repeat that phrase anywhere the presence of a rat - and we left his underground forge via a different route.
Our exit was through large iron sliding doors on the opposite side of the room. They opened onto a small platform, one very similar to the Underground station at Kings Cross. We waited not ten minutes before the clatter and clank of the underground train came careening towards us before we even saw the lights of the car itself. When it rattled itself to a stop before us the door opened outward, though there was no one there to open it, and we stepped into the car, my self at least filled with nerves.
Among the other passengers was a young man who looked like he was made of feathers from the neck down and shaped like a tent, and an assembly of black-skinned men wearing robes of heavy black wool, as of the Dominican monks. They looked at us as we entered with solemn faces, then away, as though they did not wish to observe our presence. The train shook and swayed on its tracks, and I relied heavily on my cane to stay upright. Hammersmith's enormous hand a steady presence at my back also helped.
It felt like an invasion of privacy, to occupy space in the small train, especially with my giant companion taking up more room than seemed possible given the dimensions of the car, but we rode in silence until we jostled to a shuddering stop and a disembodied voice declared:
"Oxford Circus: Floating Market. Floating Market, Oxford Circus. Mind The Gap."
-
| 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
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Hammersmith, another rat
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: 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.
I'm just making shit up now. MAGIC is my explanation. I took part in my very first write-over last night, and sprinted my way through the next chapter in less than three hours. It may or may not be total crap because of that, but it's done! :D
Underland - Part VI
The tunnels seemed to continue on to the Americas, so vast and infinite they were. Constantly expanding under the light of the great man's lantern, branching and twisting around each other until I felt like a rat in a maze.
A smell of dank, mildewed, darkness filled my nostrils, cold and moist, clinging to the inside of my nose in a cloying manner. The walls seemed endless and unchanging, and it was perfectly inconceivable that someone could navigate through the tunnels without some guide, though had Holmes found his way down there I was sure he would have figured out the differences between this type of mould on the wall and that, or this pattern of cracks in the stone.
Finally, after what might have been minutes or hours or days, the tunnel widened, until it less resembled the dark passage and more the wide open sewer access tunnels I had spent some time in with Holmes. We turned soon after, and my strange companion, whose name I still did not know, led me down a gentle slope to a grated opening in the floor.
"We're just stopping here before the Market. I need to get my things 'fore we head off, or I'd be the laughing-stock without any things to barter, see." He lifted the grate, and the screech of metal on metal pierced through the tunnels, echoing off the stone walls for what seemed like miles.
He lowered himself into the hole, apparently wider than it appeared in the semi-darkness to fit his bulk, though his shoulders stuck out of the opening like bulges of rock. He reached for me, hands the size of carriage wheels wrapped themselves around my waist, hoisting me up as easily as if I were a doll. My inevitable floundering in mid-air did nothing to throw off his grip, and he shuffled and squirmed and managed to let me down without jarring my leg in the slightest before he crouched beside me and dropped the grating over our heads.
I peered at him in the darkness, worried for the health of his back and head, hunched as he was. He gave me a rueful grin, teeth flashing sharply in the weak light.
"It's only for a little while. This is the easiest way of getting there, I promise. Plus we're more unlikely to run across any of them other folks, could find their company less than pleasing."
"Is it dangerous? What about at the market?"
He scoffed, and likely would have thrown his head back in guffaws had it not been pressed against the rough ceiling so firmly as it was. "All folks are dangerous, Doctor, you must know that, yeah? But no, not at the Market. There's a truce there, see, and anyone gets it in his head to fight another without set rules - competitions and the like - will get all of London Below on their tail."
London Below. That was where I was. It was not simply below London, but an entirely different plane of existence, where rats were to be obeyed and people avoided, low and deep in the darkness.
This time we walked no more than a quarter of an hour before we came to a solid iron door firmly set into the rock. My companion unlocked it with a queerly small key on a deceptively delicate chain, and opened it. The top of the door scraped harshly against the low ceiling, and the red glow of a furnace fire greeted us.
I was grateful to exit the dark and damp, for as we walked, the floor of the tunnel had steadily filled with water until we were sloshing through what must have been three or four inches of god knows how filthy water.
The room we entered was inconceivably large, though I suppose it suited my enormous guide well enough. A forge roared at one end, and the rest of the room was fitted as a blacksmiths, with iron tools, larger and more massive than any others I've seen before, and probably made to be wielded solely by my companion. An anvil roughly the size my self from the knees up was positioned in the centre of the room, and various kinds of sheet metal, and lumps of the same, were scattered in the same kind of organised chaos I was used to.
Obviously my companion knew without a doubt where everything was, but the orderly mind in me itched to tidy up the clutter as I so often had done with Holmes' messes.
"Excuse me, sir," I called out, as the man started puttering about, picking up hunks of iron and coal as if they were loaves of bread. "What should I call you?"
He dropped what looked like a broadsword - so huge it looked like it could cleave me in half if I even went near it - with a horrid clang and whirled about to stare at me in disbelief.
I felt horribly as though I had offered some grievous insult, until he came thundering over and snatched up my hand in his, bellowing, "Of course, Doctor, I'm terribly sorry! I go by Hammersmith, and I do beg your pardon sir, for not telling you of it right away, you must think me awfully rude!"
His handshake almost took my arm off, and it was only through the luck of propriety that it was my right, and therefore good arm, or I might have been in some considerable pain. I admit that I made some noise of protest as his enthusiastic vigour, so different from his initial greeting up on the streets, shook me until my teeth rattled.
Hammersmith gave a start, and gentled his grip hesitantly. He was obviously a kind-hearted fellow with very little opportunity to practice social norms like the shaking of a hand. I lowered my bag, placed my other hand atop his, and tried as understandingly as possible to pry his crushing hold from my numb fingers.
I attempted to smile, and relaxed as soon as his grasp slackened. Then, putting on my best professional face, I looked him straight in the eye - several feet above my head - and said, "Do not grip so tightly next time, yes?"
He looked enthralled, and nodded avidly. When I did not continue, his eyes turned pleading, though I could see he would not voice his request for the sake of his dignity.
"Ah - the best handshake is a firm one," I said, trying to remember the specifics that I had been taught in primary school. It was more difficult than I remembered, describing something now so intuitive. "However, since many of the people you greet might prove less - enthusiastic, the proper way to compensate for that is to return the grip with as much force as you receive."
Hammersmith nodded, and I withdrew my hands, shaking them out slightly, before presenting him with the limpest handshake I could possibly manage while still being conscious. He extended his hand towards mine uncertainly, seeing the lax hang of my wrist, and pinched my fingers between his own as though he were attempting to catch a butterfly on the wing.
I refrained from a verbal outburst, but my shoulders shook with silent chortles and a grin stretched across my cheeks. Hammersmith looked at his own hand, and shook his head, breaking out into a grin to match my own.
I stiffened my hand, holding it as I would normally. Hammersmith shook himself out, a look of great determination on his face and laughter shining in his fire-lit eyes.
He placed his hand in mine gently, as limp as mine had been, and slowly firmed his grip until I could feel the tension in my fingers. I nodded to him and he stopped squeezing, eyeing me closely.
"Feel that? That's a good handshake."
I pumped his hand hard three times, looking him in the eye as I was taught, and ended with a grin and a nod.
It was a ridiculous exchange and we both knew it.
"It's good to meet you Mr. Hammersmith. I cannot express my gratitude for your guidance down here."
His smile softened and a look of sadness entered his expressive eyes, the kind of pitiable mien given to derelict transients on the street. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a sudden chitter of noise from the far corner of the room.
Hammersmith's face lit up and he barrelled away to crouch down in the corner and hold out his hand as he had done with me - the second time. A rat, a large rat by London's standards, even so I have seen larger - the giant rat of Sumatra comes to mind, though now that I consider it I wonder if there were more connotations to that story than there first appeared - stepped out from a nook between stones and onto Hammersmith's great palm.
My massive new acquaintance stood, holding the rat reverently, and walked carefully over, making sure not to jostle the rodent. When he reached me, the rat chittered again, completing its statement with an emphatic squeak, and ventured out to the very tips of Hammersmith's fingers, standing on its hind paws to move itself even closer to me.
Hammersmith made an encouraging motion with the rat, causing it to sway slightly and cast what might have been an irritated glance over its shoulder, if a rat could possibly look irritated. "Hold out your hand. Master Furredears wishes to know you better." I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. "Rat doesn't always translate well," he said.
I looked at the rat again. It did have remarkably furry ears. They stuck out large and tufted from its narrow, pointed head.
I raised my hands to let the rat scramble across the gap. Its claws were sharp, and felt like tiny pinpricks on the skin of my palms, reminding me quite savagely of my close encounter with the carriage wheels the day before. The gashes in the heels of my hands had scabbed over, but were tight and sore, as I had forgotten to see to them in the midst of my angst.
The rat, seeming to notice my discomfort, stepped more carefully around the cuts to a more convenient position, and then peered up at me keenly. It was a warm and solid weight in my hands, substantial enough that it was some effort to hold it up in that manner.
Its mottled fur struck something in my memory, and when it blinked clear black eyes and cocked its head to the side I felt the wave of recognition. This was the same poor rodent I had abused the other day in my fit of rage.
I opened my mouth to apologise - apologise, to a rat - when it leaned down and promptly bit me sharply on the proximal joint of my left middle finger. I cursed and yanked the hand away, managing to keep the rat balanced on my right, and shook out the pain.
"He bit me!" I exclaimed, doing, as Holmes would tell me, an excellent job of stating the obvious, much to my chagrin.
Hammersmith just laughed.
Then the rat chittered again, and for all that my ears perceived the sounds as typical rat snuffles and squeals, my brain understood quite clearly what it said.
"I - really?" I asked the rat. There was no more room in my body to even contemplate the insanity it must have indicated that I should begin talking directly to the rat.
The conversation, if it could be called that, ended quickly, and the rat scampered off as soon as I let my hand close enough to the ground. As Hammersmith had listened as well, there was no need to reiterate what the rat had told me, so in silence he packed what he needed for the market. I took the time to place a small sticking plaster on the small gouge the infernal rodent had left me - never repeat that phrase anywhere the presence of a rat - and we left his underground forge via a different route.
Our exit was through large iron sliding doors on the opposite side of the room. They opened onto a small platform, one very similar to the Underground station at Kings Cross. We waited not ten minutes before the clatter and clank of the underground train came careening towards us before we even saw the lights of the car itself. When it rattled itself to a stop before us the door opened outward, though there was no one there to open it, and we stepped into the car, my self at least filled with nerves.
Among the other passengers was a young man who looked like he was made of feathers from the neck down and shaped like a tent, and an assembly of black-skinned men wearing robes of heavy black wool, as of the Dominican monks. They looked at us as we entered with solemn faces, then away, as though they did not wish to observe our presence. The train shook and swayed on its tracks, and I relied heavily on my cane to stay upright. Hammersmith's enormous hand a steady presence at my back also helped.
It felt like an invasion of privacy, to occupy space in the small train, especially with my giant companion taking up more room than seemed possible given the dimensions of the car, but we rode in silence until we jostled to a shuddering stop and a disembodied voice declared:
"Oxford Circus: Floating Market. Floating Market, Oxford Circus. Mind The Gap."
-
| 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 |