Sherlock100 44/100 #18 Black
Title: Shadow
Characters: Sherlock/John
Prompt: We've had John as an army bomb dog turned human, so let's go for a similar situation for Sherlock.
He was some scrappy alley cat before some unknown force turned him human. He knows all the ins and outs and funny little back routes because that's where he grew up.
Do other people find out? How does Mycroft fit in with all this? Run with it, author anons!
Word Count (if fiction): 3300
Rating: R
Summary: I got pretty close to the prompt here, but there was a little deviation towards the end. XD Couldn't help it. The muse wants what he wants.
Spoilers: First season
Warnings: Sad things concerning cats. OC death, glossed over medical experimentation and non-graphic cat-on-cat fighting.
Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock or John
My table: http://marill-chan.livejournal.com/4488.html
Special thank you to my beta, red_chapel
Shadow was born in damp box behind an Indian restaurant in London. His fur was black with a little white spot on his chest. He had four brothers and sisters who mewled and nudged up against him and their mother for warmth. He was too small and too cold and too scared to be annoyed by his nuzzling siblings, so he shoved himself against them as well, seeking as much contact as possible. He sought his mother’s belly whenever he was hungry, or anytime he could hear the other kittens suckling on her. Life was uncomplicated and slow, but Shadow had his mother and he had warm and safe and full.
In a few weeks, the litter had gone from meowing to hissing at each other. Instead of needing to be constantly curled up together, they were starting to move about and distance themselves. When Shadow hissed at his brother a little too viciously, Mother Cat picked him up by his scruff and set him down in the corner of the box. Shadow was perfectly happy with that. He laid in his own little corner and rested, gathering up strength that he would need someday soon.
Before Shadow had grown strong enough to venture far on his own, Mother Cat decided to move her children to a new place. Shadow was all the way in the corner of the box, so Mother Cat moved all his brothers and sisters across the street to an abandoned wooden crate one at a time before returning for him. Normally, it was a busy road, but it was very early in the morning that Mother Cat was moving her family, so cars were infrequent. Or, at least they had been when she had begun moving her children.
Shadow curled his tail around his feet and waited, missing his mother, shivering for want of his siblings and the warmth they had brought to the box. He began to feel like it had been too long, that Mother Cat wasn’t coming back for him. But, that was impossible! He was Shadow and she was Mother Cat and she was never gone forever…
Only this time, she was.
…
Mother Cat had been gone some time when Shadow began to make noises that even he knew sounded pitiful. But he didn’t care. He was hungry and he was afraid and his tiny body didn’t have thick enough fur to keep him from shivering in the cold, rainy morning. Rainwater leaked through the sides of the box and he licked it wishing it were Mother Cat‘s milk. He kneaded his claws on the cardboard box, seeking milk, seeking his mother’s stomach for food, but nothing happened. With a rumbling belly, Shadow fell asleep.
…
Hours passed by and Shadow could tell that he was going to have to get up, to find something to eat or he would perish. He had been trying to walk ever since he first opened his bright little eyes. Crawling toward and away from Mother Cat had come fairly naturally, but getting up and leaving the box on his own was discouraged by her nudging him back to the corner. Eventually he stuck his head out of the box, the only place he’d known outside of his mother’s womb.
It was too bright and too noisy outside the box, but his hunger made him keep going. The smells were disorienting. He thought he smelled milk, but he also smelled many other things from all directions. A loud noise from the street startled him and he moved quickly on fumbling legs back into his box. Trembling and starving, Shadow laid back down in his corner and slept.
…
A rustling woke him. Shadow’s ears laid back flat against his skull and he tried to make himself small as his box started to rattle. There were strange sounds making his box vibrate. When something lowered into the box, Shadow hissed, trying to make himself look larger, trying to frighten the thing away. More noises rattled his box and the first something laid a second something down in the middle of the box. It was cup that smelled like milk. The first something retreated and the noises and the rattling went away.
Shadow waited and waited until he was sure that nothing else was going to happen. He moved over to the bowl and lapped up the milk hungrily. When his belly was full, Shadow wobbled back over to his corner to settle down. On a second thought, he went to the spot where Mother Cat once laid while her kittens fed. He curled up in the place that smelled most like her and went back to sleep.
…
Each day for many days, the cup of milk was replaced and Shadow drank and got stronger and began to chase little bugs that wandered into his box. He played with his tail and rolled around on his back, but always returned to Mother’s Cat’s spot whenever he slept.
One day, instead of the milk being placed inside of his box, the hand (for he had seen the rest of the something and saw that it was only a human paw) reached inside and picked him up under his belly, his long legs dangling about helplessly. He hissed at the hand and squirmed around, but the person brought him out into the sunlight and squeezed him against their chest. Shadow struggled and cried out against the intruder. There were high-pitched noises coming from the person that frightened him. They touched his head and his back and even his tail! Finally, he was able to wriggle into a position where he could scratch his claws against the person’s neck. Almost immediately there was a shriek and Shadow was thrown onto the hard ground, scraping the bottoms of his paws. He ignored the shouting and ran, his heart thumping loudly inside of him. He ran until he was in the darkest, most remote part of the alley, far away from the sounds of the street and the noises of people. Panting, he collapsed beside a rusty old skip.
When he caught his breath again, he licked his paws gently. What a horror it was to be grabbed like that and then thrown down on the concrete like a piece of trash! People were horrible. If they wanted to bring him milk, that was fine, but picking him up was definitely out of the question.
…
Meanwhile, in the human jungle, Sherlock Holmes was an up-and-comer in crime investigations. Meaning he randomly appeared at crime scenes and got arrested more often than he was listened to by the police. With a little harmless flirting and some impressive logic he was able to talk Sergeant Gregory Lestrade into letting him look over cold cases, and occasionally live evidence.
Lestrade’s only real issue with the gangly young man who had more brilliance than was deserved for someone of his age (of any age, really) was that Sherlock too often took off running after criminals without Lestrade looking after him. But Sherlock was helping to put some very nasty criminals in prison and Lestrade was finding out that it wasn’t possible to cut Sherlock off from crime scenes.
In criminal circles, Sherlock was gaining a reputation as something to be despised. Too many low-level criminals had seen relatives and friends go behind bars thanks to Sherlock, and they weren’t happy about it.
…
Shadow eventually settled on a dry piece of ground behind the skip to rest. He bundled himself into a small shape, his eyes adjusting well in the darkness as night fell. Almost immediately, he saw a little creature moving on the opposite side of the alley. Shadow stared intently at it, trying to decide if it was some kind of prey, something he could eat. Mother Cat had told stories of prey, how she hunted and how she would teach him to hunt one day. He hadn’t had any milk and was a bit hungry. He would try to hunt!
It was a rat. Shadow lowered his chest to the ground, his tail swishing with anticipation. The small animal didn’t see him. Shadow flew across the alley, prepared to attack the rat. When he got closer, he realized that it was as big as he was. Tentatively, Shadow tapped his paw on the creature’s furry back. The rat hissed at him and scurried off into a hole. Shadow decided he would keep practicing with insects, flies and such, until he was big enough to take on a rat.
…
A year passed. Shadow had grown large enough to take on the rats--and he was pouncing on them and having them for dinner twice a week. He moved around a lot in the nights, figuring out the maze that was London, often meeting other cats, sometimes fighting with them. He studied people whenever possible. They were very interesting to him, going into big buildings to hunt and coming out with so much more food than he could ever kill. They made noise constantly, so he had no idea how they could be such great hunters. For the most part they ignored him. Every once in a while, a dark man would come after him with a net, but Shadow always evaded the man by going into one of his many hideouts, which were always close by.
Then came the day that would change all that Shadow had known until then. Shadow was waiting behind a fish market for scraps to be thrown out. There were a few other cats milling and hiding around there, but Shadow was fairly certain that he could get a good portion for himself, maybe enough to hide some for later. When a few fish heads and bouillabaisse were tossed out into the alley, a swarm of cats descended on the spoils. A big gray and black cat that was new to Shadow growled and hissed at all the other cats. A few timid ones ran away, but Shadow and two of the more fearsome cats stood their ground.
A fight broke out between the four of them and Shadow wound up walking away, but hungry and limping. He tucked himself into an overturned bin to lick his wounds. He eventually fell into a restful sleep.
When it was darkening out, he woke up to the sound of a bin nearby being turned over. There were people talking quietly. Terrible hunters. He backed up into the bottom of the bin so maybe they wouldn’t see him. Moments later, his world (and the bin) got turned upside-down. He flipped and fell on the ground, hurting his already sore leg. The bin was thrown against the brick wall of the fish market and Shadow could see three big men standing around him. He tried to back up and hiss at them, but one of them grabbed him by his scruff and wrenched him high up into the air. Shadow yowled and tried to shake free, but he couldn’t. He was thrown into a cage in a people carrier and driven away.
…
Sherlock was leaving a pub, gathering information from some of the regulars there. He never had to talk to anyone; observing gave him everything he needed to know. He felt a little light-headed, even though the only thing he’d had to drink was a single pint. Sherlock could usually hold his liquor, unlike some of the fall-down drunks in the establishment that evening.
He began to stumble in the darkness and he grasped at his coat pocket for his mobile, which ended up clattering to the ground thanks to Sherlock‘s fumbling fingers. A black car pulled up to the kerb in front of him and a suited man stepped out of the front passenger door and opened the rear door, gesturing for Sherlock to get in. Sherlock squeezed his eyes against the fuzziness growing in his vision. Mycroft’s car, he thought, a little annoyed, a little relieved. He decided to climb into the back. Nothing good would come from trying to walk home in the state he was in.
…
Shadow had never been more scared in his life when someone wearing thick gloves reached into the cage to grab him. He tried batting the hand away and clawing at the person, but it didn’t help. They grabbed him and yanked him out and set him on a table. He didn’t see what happened next, but it felt like an insect bite between his shoulder blades. He heard shouting in the next room and it frightened him even more to hear a person making scared noises in this place. The shouting stopped around the same time that he got very tired. The hands left him alone and he fell onto his side and slept.
…
When Sherlock woke up, he was being dragged past ominous-looking medical equipment in some sort of lab. His immediate instinct was to struggle and fight against the two sets of hands that had a hold on him. “Get off!” he cried, disappointed when his voice cracked in fright.
He managed to calm himself enough to look into the faces of his assailants. He recognised only one of them; instantly a cold hand grabbed his insides. Not Mycroft’s car. Obvious. Dr. Cire’s laboratory. Medical experimentation, eugenics, genetic manipulation.
The emergency restraint chair in the corner was all Sherlock could see as he was pulled and seized roughly towards it. He didn’t even notice the skinny black cat lying on a prep table against the wall.
…
Shadow could remember very brief, strange things after from short times he was aware. He saw a person sleeping in a chair. He saw tubes and metal instruments. He saw a razor taking fur from his leg. He never fought the people who were doing these things to him. He only watched from the vantage point of his detached, uncaring mind. Eventually he fell asleep for a long, long time and he couldn’t remember anything at all from that period of time.
…
When Shadow woke up for good, he was disoriented. He limbs and neck were sore and stiff. He tried stretching, but his body was dead weight and refusing to obey him. He whimpered inside of his mind.
You don’t belong here.
A human voice and human sounds that made sense, that made words. He suddenly knew about words and what they were and their meanings. He must have been dreaming, but oh! To know what dreaming was…not possible.
You are no part of me. I will not have it.
The voice was angry and scared. Shadow was scared, too.
His eyes opened and his head moved. But it was all so strange. His vision was bad and why was he still indoors? He was lying in a bed, of all things and…and those weren’t his paws.
Get out of my head, said the voice and Shadow felt himself being pushed. He was pushed to a corner of his own mind, or was it his at all? It didn’t feel like his anymore if this voice could just push him away. He found it harder to concentrate, to worry about what might be going on.
“Sherlock!” said a very loud voice. “Sherlock, my god!” His eyes (not his eyes) focused on a tall man in a suit who was entering the room.
“Mycroft,” the voice from his head muttered. But somehow it had gotten louder and closer.
“Come on. I’ll get you to my Compound,” said the tall man.
Shadow’s body (not his body) struggled to sit up. The tall man came over and helped him to stand and walk out of the room. Shadow trembled inwardly.
Stop it. Stupid, stupid animal. Stop it. …Please.
…
Over the next few weeks, Shadow learned that he could access the man’s, Sherlock’s, memories and knowledge. It amazed him, the things that he now knew by association with this man. Sherlock knew he was doing it, knew that he was perusing all of the Information that he had.
Stop looking into my brain! That’s personal, it’s private, do you understand???
Shadow understood, but he didn’t know how to respond and his interest was too great to stop seeing what Sherlock knew. He had read books, this man. He had seen the world in pictures. He had met many people and knew a lot about them.
Eventually, the man stopped trying to talk to him, no longer ordered him or even asked him to stop looking at the Information. Shadow sometimes felt lonely, other times he just slept when the man was doing something that didn’t interest him. Often the man would shake his head violently whenever Shadow was trying to sleep. Sometimes he would lie down and sleep as well.
Shadow learned about all of Sherlock’s acquaintances. He learned that he was a detective. He learned that he was rude and intolerable, but that he had a deep caring for all people, despite what they did to him. If Shadow were still a cat, he would have rubbed up against Sherlock’s leg and pressed his face into Sherlock’s hand to show him that he was loved.
And then there was the running and jumping. He remembered (he saw the memories of) Sherlock before Shadow was with him, running and tripping, or even just walking and tripping. Sherlock had been very clumsy, had grown into his long limbs too fast without getting used to them. But with Shadow’s instincts, his innate grace and endurance and speed, Sherlock’s abilities improved.
The first time they ran together, Sherlock was chasing after a jewel thief through back alleys. This was Shadow’s natural environment and he saw things with Sherlock’s eyes, making their body faster, more agile and more focused. The thief was very fast, but he wasn’t running for endurance. They lost him for a second, but Shadow knew all about these alleys. Sherlock could see Shadow’s memories now, tried to see them even. He combined the visual-spatial knowledge of the alleys with his own logic about which way the thief had most likely taken. They overcome the petty criminal with ease, pouncing on him just as he was about to slip away into a taxi. Shadow had never felt so excited, as he shared in Sherlock’s adrenaline. Even Sherlock noticed the improvements and remarked out loud to himself that he was, “so fast now.”
Even after that Sherlock never talked to Shadow. Shadow assumed that he didn’t know Shadow wanted to talk back, that the voice inside their head, while abrasive, was always welcome.
More than anything, though, Shadow wished he could talk to Sherlock’s acquaintances, and especially John Watson, once they met him…once Sherlock met him. John was Sherlock’s only friend, and the first friend he’d had for many years. John was nice to Sherlock, but it was much more than that. John challenged Sherlock when he thought he was doing something bad, “not good,” as he had said a few times. Sherlock tried his damndest to keep his feelings about John away from Shadow, but it was no use. Shadow knew as soon as Sherlock did that John was special to them.
John was Shadow’s only friend too. The often warm and fuzzy-feeling man made Shadow feel like he had when he was touching his brothers and sisters, or brushing his face against Mother Cat’s belly. Sometimes, Sherlock would lay his head on John’s lap and let John stroke their hair. Shadow liked to think that Sherlock did this for him, but he probably did it for John, if John’s happy sighs were any indication.
But even if Sherlock never spoke to him, and the hair-stroking was all for John, Shadow was happy in his tiny role in their lives, content to curl up in the corner of Sherlock’s mind and watch their story unfold before him.