Callings
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC 2010)
Rating: Gen
Characters: Mycroft Holmes, the City of London
Pairing: Mycroft/City (of a sort)
Warning: None, that I know of.
Prompted by: my_croft
A/N This came about because of a conversation had between me and (The Theory of Blogging Causation RP) my_croft 's mun. It was just too good for me to pass up. M, I'd said I wasn't writing fic tonight. Here's what you've done.
Ever since youth, Mycroft had felt a pull, an urge, an irresistible call towards London. He did not know why, but every step he took led him on the path towards the City, the stones that called his very name.
It wasn’t until he had occupied his “minor governmental position” that he understood. He woke up with voices in his head, voices telling him things that he only half-remembered. The gist of it, however, seemed to be that he was wanted, he was needed, the City was awake and alive and wanted him. Wanted him for what, it seemed, it did not even know. But he needed the City and the City needed him and if it had pushed and prodded a little, warped the rules of what-was and what-was-not in order to give him power and a place, well, then, the City was the City, and normal laws of physics and politics could go hang.
It wasn’t only need, though it was just that (and a jealous childish nature of the newer part of the City, the part with fewer Names of old). It was want. Mycroft wanted what the City offered and the City wanted him to call its own.
The City had always had those few it could call its own. They were mostly of Legend, of Myth, names that held power, names that held Time down into rings. But there were few names that both held and meant power. Mycroft Holmes was one of those names, and as it spun around the dancing circles of time, the City reached out to claim one of its own as its very own.
As is well known by other Cities (Boston, jealous young Boston had the audacity to try to claim a Name for itself, and London had stopped that) London is a jealous town, and holds onto what it marks with an iron grasp, and Mycroft was definitely London’s. He was theirs, whispered the streets as he entered for the first time, not yet the proud man with an umbrella and the true names in his head, entered a student in love with the ideas of a city and of information and of power and even with love. It slowly wound its way around his feet like a cat, sending the mist, the mythical mist, as its hands to touch his ankles and begin changing him, creating the Mycroft out of the mycroft, out of the eager boy to the ever watchful centre it needed (London couldn’t even say when it lost its last true centre. The last one it really remembered was Richard, dear Whittington, dearest of its eyes, and to the City he’d been both a day and so very long ago.).
Mycroft woke with the City in his eyes, and never thought to say no to it. It was natural, really, that he should be this, that he should be in the centre of the City, closest to its primal, instinctual, many networked and layered and timed and mythed and birthed thoughts, the streets with which it quarreled, the eyes with which it saw, who was closest to the thoughts and all who were totally numb. The others in the office called him creepy, or weird, or amazing, but none of them ever questioned his information. What he didn’t know, the City did, and what it didn’t know he found out.
When he found out that it had called his brother, too, they didn’t speak for a week. He was the grumpiest he’d ever been and potholes opened all over the streets and the City decided that the Universe was right in getting drunk and caused a minor flood that it found hurt it more than it hurt him. So they got over it, and led John Watson to him, and by that time the City was right back with him, muttering to him in his dreams (they rarely spoke by waking, for dreams were closest to the oldest stones.) He worried constantly, and the City tried to repay him by giving his brother its upper network, its lost, to find his way.
Now they were both hovering on the edge of a pin, held back by the enormous darkness that hovered over a pool the City had forgotten existed. The City and the Centre and its guardian (though that’s another tale) all caught and held frozen in time and space, locked into one terrible moment. The streets rumbled and whispered, and through the bubble of sound, for the first time in ever, the Centre heard only silence.
Rating: Gen
Characters: Mycroft Holmes, the City of London
Pairing: Mycroft/City (of a sort)
Warning: None, that I know of.
Prompted by: my_croft
A/N This came about because of a conversation had between me and (The Theory of Blogging Causation RP) my_croft 's mun. It was just too good for me to pass up. M, I'd said I wasn't writing fic tonight. Here's what you've done.
Ever since youth, Mycroft had felt a pull, an urge, an irresistible call towards London. He did not know why, but every step he took led him on the path towards the City, the stones that called his very name.
It wasn’t until he had occupied his “minor governmental position” that he understood. He woke up with voices in his head, voices telling him things that he only half-remembered. The gist of it, however, seemed to be that he was wanted, he was needed, the City was awake and alive and wanted him. Wanted him for what, it seemed, it did not even know. But he needed the City and the City needed him and if it had pushed and prodded a little, warped the rules of what-was and what-was-not in order to give him power and a place, well, then, the City was the City, and normal laws of physics and politics could go hang.
It wasn’t only need, though it was just that (and a jealous childish nature of the newer part of the City, the part with fewer Names of old). It was want. Mycroft wanted what the City offered and the City wanted him to call its own.
The City had always had those few it could call its own. They were mostly of Legend, of Myth, names that held power, names that held Time down into rings. But there were few names that both held and meant power. Mycroft Holmes was one of those names, and as it spun around the dancing circles of time, the City reached out to claim one of its own as its very own.
As is well known by other Cities (Boston, jealous young Boston had the audacity to try to claim a Name for itself, and London had stopped that) London is a jealous town, and holds onto what it marks with an iron grasp, and Mycroft was definitely London’s. He was theirs, whispered the streets as he entered for the first time, not yet the proud man with an umbrella and the true names in his head, entered a student in love with the ideas of a city and of information and of power and even with love. It slowly wound its way around his feet like a cat, sending the mist, the mythical mist, as its hands to touch his ankles and begin changing him, creating the Mycroft out of the mycroft, out of the eager boy to the ever watchful centre it needed (London couldn’t even say when it lost its last true centre. The last one it really remembered was Richard, dear Whittington, dearest of its eyes, and to the City he’d been both a day and so very long ago.).
Mycroft woke with the City in his eyes, and never thought to say no to it. It was natural, really, that he should be this, that he should be in the centre of the City, closest to its primal, instinctual, many networked and layered and timed and mythed and birthed thoughts, the streets with which it quarreled, the eyes with which it saw, who was closest to the thoughts and all who were totally numb. The others in the office called him creepy, or weird, or amazing, but none of them ever questioned his information. What he didn’t know, the City did, and what it didn’t know he found out.
When he found out that it had called his brother, too, they didn’t speak for a week. He was the grumpiest he’d ever been and potholes opened all over the streets and the City decided that the Universe was right in getting drunk and caused a minor flood that it found hurt it more than it hurt him. So they got over it, and led John Watson to him, and by that time the City was right back with him, muttering to him in his dreams (they rarely spoke by waking, for dreams were closest to the oldest stones.) He worried constantly, and the City tried to repay him by giving his brother its upper network, its lost, to find his way.
Now they were both hovering on the edge of a pin, held back by the enormous darkness that hovered over a pool the City had forgotten existed. The City and the Centre and its guardian (though that’s another tale) all caught and held frozen in time and space, locked into one terrible moment. The streets rumbled and whispered, and through the bubble of sound, for the first time in ever, the Centre heard only silence.