Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG-13 (7/17)
I'M SO SORRY IT'S LAAAAATE. For me at least. I didn't get time to write this weekend. But here it is!
Title: Underland
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Hammersmith, Black Friars, the Gap, marquis de Carabas.
Word Count: ~ 1900
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: Minor character death. Not particularly graphic, they're not even named, but still.
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.
Floating Market! :D So I was looking around the internet for where Watson might have grown up - I know he's been thought of as Scottish, and attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, but if any one knows better please let me know. And a question for readers: how do you feel about something between Watson and the marquis? I think it fits naturally, but if you don't care for it I'll take that into consideration.
Underland - Part VII
"Mind the Gap," repeated Hammersmith, giving the space between the lip of the train car and the side of the platform exaggerated care in stepping around it. A line of the brightest cadmium yellow paint I had seen since my time in Middle East was thick and eye-catching on the floor of the station, carefully marking out the edge of the safe zone, out of the way of the passing cars.
I had heard before of dark things that live beneath the surface of the Earth, especially from my time in Afghanistan. Most of them were inconsequential, made up stories to keep the men occupied on a long night with nothing to distract from the smell of blood and the moans of pain from the medical cots. But some of them, as the tales that sailors tell - of a Jonah, cursed to spill the wind and heavy the air with heat and sun - are told with conviction, the type that comes not with entertainment in mind, but with a warning to take to heart, of demons and monsters that lurk in the shadows of the world.
What I saw then. It was one of those things in the stories.
One of the young black monks, skin the colour of rich mahogany wood, kinked hair shorn close to his shining brown scalp, took too long in passing over the yellow line, and paid for it.
It came without a sound save a whisper as of smoke over glass. Billowing up from the space between the train car and the ledge of the platform, it rose as a flock of Canada geese would take flight from a pond, in great waves of darkness. It was diaphanous and looked as if it were the shadow of silk through the mist of a dream.
The cloud of thing wrapped itself around the unfortunate young man's lower legs, clenching and clawing, though how it could do so without substance was more terrifying to me than the idea of a solid creature doing so. The young man cried out in some substantial agony and kicked as best he could at the lethal smog but to no avail.
I could see the warm black, impressed into the very fibres of his woollen garments, leach away, seeping down to the grip of the dark, massless thing. Sick, yellow-white tendrils of colourless space moved up higher upon his garments the longer the thing held on.
While he fought the thing from the gap, his companions were beside themselves with terror almost surpassing his own. They drew away in horror and fear, only to charge in with staffs to attempt to beat the thing off his legs, though they had little effect on the insubstantial form.
A high pitched whistle, almost a wail, rose from the din of shouting, barely a hiss and increasing to a piercing shriek, until the cloud gave a triumphant surge and consumed the man's writhing figure, wrestling him down and over the edge of the platform to disappear beneath the carriage of the underground train.
There was silence in the tiled station, the echo of the thing's parting screech ringing in our ears.
I was brought back to my self by Hammersmith's insistent tugging on my shoulder, his hand large enough to span my upper back. I had not noticed, but while I was enthralled in the horrific scene, he had pulled us as far away from edge as possible, using his broad arm to shield my body from any sort of attack.
The other people, spectators to an appalling event, were also withdrawing from the platform, eyes averted from where the remaining monks had drawn together into a tight knot, pressed against the furthest wall.
I wished to help, to be of some assistance in some way, but not only could I not think of any way that I of all people could possibly help their plight, Hammersmith would not let me. He all but dragged me up the stairs until the wretched friars were no longer within my sight.
"What was that?" I could barely hear my own words, wrecked as my voice was through grief for that poor young man.
Hammersmith did not look at me.
"I don't know if they have names. They came when the trains came, living between the spaces of darkness. It hasn't been too long, but most everyone knows about them. So remember Doctor, mind the Gap."
We ascended the stairs and exited into the open square of Oxford Circus.
The high, tinkling sound of a toy piano was the first thing that registered in my mind, over even the bright flare of coloured lights - different gasses burning at different positions on the light spectrum.
Holmes would have been fascinated.
Other noises filtered in to my attention through the haze of what must have been hundreds of people - thousands all packed together in an open market. Raucous laughter, a pipe organ or twelve, cymbals and drums, rolling out a procession, and the trumpet of an elephant.
I have no other word for my reaction but sheer and absolute awe.
There, precisely in the centre of the intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street, was a full fledged circus.
It was no travelling side show, come from out the rain, but a masterfully grand thing that expanded from the pavement of Oxford Street like the pop-up in a music box.
I had not seen the like since my mother had taken my brother and I to see the nomadic performers when they had passed through Northumberland, where I spent my childhood. I had forgotten much of the presentations and performances, but with the influx of lights and sounds I could clearly recall the total wonderment that had encompassed me at such a young age.
The lights flickered and flared in time with the music, and dancers upon horseback paraded around the edges of the intersection. The horses, decked out in dressage accoutrements, tossed their heads, their magnificent manes gleaming with oil and sweat, and bells chimed on their tack. The dancers, slim and lithe, acrobats in every way, stood upon the saddles of the moving horses, waving ribbons and wands, trailing light and colour behind them as well as the remnants of fresh, girlish laughter.
Across the square there had been erected a circus tent, sporting broad and sweeping red and white stripes. The notes of a harpsichord and the cheer of a crowd exploded from the open curtains, and I longed to go and see the show, until a hand on my arm reminded me that this was not what I wanted.
I wanted to be away. Away from the caustic glare of the gas lights and the incessant noise of angry jostling people and the neigh and whinny of horses combined with the roar and snarl of trapped lions.
This magical land, of ravens and giants and intangible monsters lurking just beyond my vision was no dream, but a living, breathing nightmare.
What I truly wanted was to go home.
And to do that I needed to find the marquis. I turned to Hammersmith and met his forged metal eyes, nodding with renewed conviction and a stricter control on my focus.
"We're late," said Hammersmith, and he looked apologetic. Nodding towards the series of stalls and covered tables that checker-boarded the cobblestones, he continued. "I need to set up my stand, or I won't have any business."
Sadness tinged his large, laugh-hewn features, and it was with a jolt that I realised that he meant to leave me. I knew instinctively that we would not continue our association beyond that night, and I too felt tragedy strike my chest.
I could not lose the one man I knew in this world. And though I had known him but a matter of hours, my reliance on his compassion made me more attached to his great heart, and willing enough to call him the only friend I had.
I nodded in understanding of our circumstances, and with a rueful smile I stuck out my hand for him to shake.
A grin split his blackened cheeks and he met me with a cautious, but reasonable, type of handshake, slightly on the weak side for the lack of conviction driving the farewell.
"Remember to practice," I said.
And then I turned away, because I could not bear to see another friend walk out of my life so soon after my recent deprivations.
It was with a heavy heart that I patrolled the stalls. I took out the marquis' calling card, showing it to people as I went and asking them for information.
Several would not speak to me, but a tall woman, wasp-waisted and severe faced offered me the information I sought in exchange for my waistcoat. The barter system threw me off slightly, but since Holmes had been stealing my clothes for so many years I did not feel any significant attachment to any single garment I had on.
With a cool voice as low and soft as velvet the woman directed me around the corner to the front of a shoemaker's store, windows dark and abandoned at that hour of night.
Standing, cocky and arrogant as only he could, with the grace and the lingering air of danger of a panther, was the marquis de Carabas, casually inspecting a small animal figurine from a shabby old man with an eye patch and several missing teeth, who huddled under a rose-coloured ladies parasol adorned with shards of broken glass on strings.
The marquis seemed to notice my presence before I even made a move towards him, for his back stiffened and his long braids rattled against his remarkable coat, and he put down the figurine without a word.
He turned towards me in a jerky, aborted motion, plaits flying about his African face and liquid black eyes.
His breath seemed to stutter, before he took on a casual air, leaning one hip on the old man's table with his legs crossed before him, as if seeing the man he condemned to live hell's torment was an every day occurrence.
For all I knew at the time, it might well have been.
And to think that I had trusted him.
"Hello, Doctor," he said, in his richly deep voice and polished London accent. It infuriated me that even while under his curse I would find him to intriguing.
"You son of a whore."
I took two steps and raised my fist to strike him soundly across the jaw.
Before I could make contact though, one smooth hand caught my wrist as easily as if he were swatting a fly.
"Ah, ah, ah, Doctor. The Floating Market operates under a truce. If you instigate violence, there will be hell to pay," he said. It was meant to be taken lightly, I could tell, for the lilt in his voice implied a joke, but the steel underneath and the waver beneath that told me that it was a sincere warning, and that he was not so apathetic as he affected to be.
I pulled my fist from his grip and straightened my jacket over my shirt, finally feeling vulnerable without the extra layer of my thick tweed waistcoat.
I would instigate no violence then.
But when the Market was over? Well, I would not be held responsible for my actions.
-
| 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-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Hammersmith, Black Friars, the Gap, marquis de Carabas.
Word Count: ~ 1900
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: Minor character death. Not particularly graphic, they're not even named, but still.
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.
Floating Market! :D So I was looking around the internet for where Watson might have grown up - I know he's been thought of as Scottish, and attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, but if any one knows better please let me know. And a question for readers: how do you feel about something between Watson and the marquis? I think it fits naturally, but if you don't care for it I'll take that into consideration.
Underland - Part VII
"Mind the Gap," repeated Hammersmith, giving the space between the lip of the train car and the side of the platform exaggerated care in stepping around it. A line of the brightest cadmium yellow paint I had seen since my time in Middle East was thick and eye-catching on the floor of the station, carefully marking out the edge of the safe zone, out of the way of the passing cars.
I had heard before of dark things that live beneath the surface of the Earth, especially from my time in Afghanistan. Most of them were inconsequential, made up stories to keep the men occupied on a long night with nothing to distract from the smell of blood and the moans of pain from the medical cots. But some of them, as the tales that sailors tell - of a Jonah, cursed to spill the wind and heavy the air with heat and sun - are told with conviction, the type that comes not with entertainment in mind, but with a warning to take to heart, of demons and monsters that lurk in the shadows of the world.
What I saw then. It was one of those things in the stories.
One of the young black monks, skin the colour of rich mahogany wood, kinked hair shorn close to his shining brown scalp, took too long in passing over the yellow line, and paid for it.
It came without a sound save a whisper as of smoke over glass. Billowing up from the space between the train car and the ledge of the platform, it rose as a flock of Canada geese would take flight from a pond, in great waves of darkness. It was diaphanous and looked as if it were the shadow of silk through the mist of a dream.
The cloud of thing wrapped itself around the unfortunate young man's lower legs, clenching and clawing, though how it could do so without substance was more terrifying to me than the idea of a solid creature doing so. The young man cried out in some substantial agony and kicked as best he could at the lethal smog but to no avail.
I could see the warm black, impressed into the very fibres of his woollen garments, leach away, seeping down to the grip of the dark, massless thing. Sick, yellow-white tendrils of colourless space moved up higher upon his garments the longer the thing held on.
While he fought the thing from the gap, his companions were beside themselves with terror almost surpassing his own. They drew away in horror and fear, only to charge in with staffs to attempt to beat the thing off his legs, though they had little effect on the insubstantial form.
A high pitched whistle, almost a wail, rose from the din of shouting, barely a hiss and increasing to a piercing shriek, until the cloud gave a triumphant surge and consumed the man's writhing figure, wrestling him down and over the edge of the platform to disappear beneath the carriage of the underground train.
There was silence in the tiled station, the echo of the thing's parting screech ringing in our ears.
I was brought back to my self by Hammersmith's insistent tugging on my shoulder, his hand large enough to span my upper back. I had not noticed, but while I was enthralled in the horrific scene, he had pulled us as far away from edge as possible, using his broad arm to shield my body from any sort of attack.
The other people, spectators to an appalling event, were also withdrawing from the platform, eyes averted from where the remaining monks had drawn together into a tight knot, pressed against the furthest wall.
I wished to help, to be of some assistance in some way, but not only could I not think of any way that I of all people could possibly help their plight, Hammersmith would not let me. He all but dragged me up the stairs until the wretched friars were no longer within my sight.
"What was that?" I could barely hear my own words, wrecked as my voice was through grief for that poor young man.
Hammersmith did not look at me.
"I don't know if they have names. They came when the trains came, living between the spaces of darkness. It hasn't been too long, but most everyone knows about them. So remember Doctor, mind the Gap."
We ascended the stairs and exited into the open square of Oxford Circus.
The high, tinkling sound of a toy piano was the first thing that registered in my mind, over even the bright flare of coloured lights - different gasses burning at different positions on the light spectrum.
Holmes would have been fascinated.
Other noises filtered in to my attention through the haze of what must have been hundreds of people - thousands all packed together in an open market. Raucous laughter, a pipe organ or twelve, cymbals and drums, rolling out a procession, and the trumpet of an elephant.
I have no other word for my reaction but sheer and absolute awe.
There, precisely in the centre of the intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street, was a full fledged circus.
It was no travelling side show, come from out the rain, but a masterfully grand thing that expanded from the pavement of Oxford Street like the pop-up in a music box.
I had not seen the like since my mother had taken my brother and I to see the nomadic performers when they had passed through Northumberland, where I spent my childhood. I had forgotten much of the presentations and performances, but with the influx of lights and sounds I could clearly recall the total wonderment that had encompassed me at such a young age.
The lights flickered and flared in time with the music, and dancers upon horseback paraded around the edges of the intersection. The horses, decked out in dressage accoutrements, tossed their heads, their magnificent manes gleaming with oil and sweat, and bells chimed on their tack. The dancers, slim and lithe, acrobats in every way, stood upon the saddles of the moving horses, waving ribbons and wands, trailing light and colour behind them as well as the remnants of fresh, girlish laughter.
Across the square there had been erected a circus tent, sporting broad and sweeping red and white stripes. The notes of a harpsichord and the cheer of a crowd exploded from the open curtains, and I longed to go and see the show, until a hand on my arm reminded me that this was not what I wanted.
I wanted to be away. Away from the caustic glare of the gas lights and the incessant noise of angry jostling people and the neigh and whinny of horses combined with the roar and snarl of trapped lions.
This magical land, of ravens and giants and intangible monsters lurking just beyond my vision was no dream, but a living, breathing nightmare.
What I truly wanted was to go home.
And to do that I needed to find the marquis. I turned to Hammersmith and met his forged metal eyes, nodding with renewed conviction and a stricter control on my focus.
"We're late," said Hammersmith, and he looked apologetic. Nodding towards the series of stalls and covered tables that checker-boarded the cobblestones, he continued. "I need to set up my stand, or I won't have any business."
Sadness tinged his large, laugh-hewn features, and it was with a jolt that I realised that he meant to leave me. I knew instinctively that we would not continue our association beyond that night, and I too felt tragedy strike my chest.
I could not lose the one man I knew in this world. And though I had known him but a matter of hours, my reliance on his compassion made me more attached to his great heart, and willing enough to call him the only friend I had.
I nodded in understanding of our circumstances, and with a rueful smile I stuck out my hand for him to shake.
A grin split his blackened cheeks and he met me with a cautious, but reasonable, type of handshake, slightly on the weak side for the lack of conviction driving the farewell.
"Remember to practice," I said.
And then I turned away, because I could not bear to see another friend walk out of my life so soon after my recent deprivations.
It was with a heavy heart that I patrolled the stalls. I took out the marquis' calling card, showing it to people as I went and asking them for information.
Several would not speak to me, but a tall woman, wasp-waisted and severe faced offered me the information I sought in exchange for my waistcoat. The barter system threw me off slightly, but since Holmes had been stealing my clothes for so many years I did not feel any significant attachment to any single garment I had on.
With a cool voice as low and soft as velvet the woman directed me around the corner to the front of a shoemaker's store, windows dark and abandoned at that hour of night.
Standing, cocky and arrogant as only he could, with the grace and the lingering air of danger of a panther, was the marquis de Carabas, casually inspecting a small animal figurine from a shabby old man with an eye patch and several missing teeth, who huddled under a rose-coloured ladies parasol adorned with shards of broken glass on strings.
The marquis seemed to notice my presence before I even made a move towards him, for his back stiffened and his long braids rattled against his remarkable coat, and he put down the figurine without a word.
He turned towards me in a jerky, aborted motion, plaits flying about his African face and liquid black eyes.
His breath seemed to stutter, before he took on a casual air, leaning one hip on the old man's table with his legs crossed before him, as if seeing the man he condemned to live hell's torment was an every day occurrence.
For all I knew at the time, it might well have been.
And to think that I had trusted him.
"Hello, Doctor," he said, in his richly deep voice and polished London accent. It infuriated me that even while under his curse I would find him to intriguing.
"You son of a whore."
I took two steps and raised my fist to strike him soundly across the jaw.
Before I could make contact though, one smooth hand caught my wrist as easily as if he were swatting a fly.
"Ah, ah, ah, Doctor. The Floating Market operates under a truce. If you instigate violence, there will be hell to pay," he said. It was meant to be taken lightly, I could tell, for the lilt in his voice implied a joke, but the steel underneath and the waver beneath that told me that it was a sincere warning, and that he was not so apathetic as he affected to be.
I pulled my fist from his grip and straightened my jacket over my shirt, finally feeling vulnerable without the extra layer of my thick tweed waistcoat.
I would instigate no violence then.
But when the Market was over? Well, I would not be held responsible for my actions.
-
| 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 |