Title: Prelude
Fandom: Sherlock, Doctor Who. (Wholock.)
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes (as The Doctor).
Rating: G? (I am crap at ratings.)
Genre: AU, crossover, gen.
Word Count: 600
Summary: AU. The moments just before, during, and after the Doctor regenerates into someone a little... different.
Notes: If all goes well, this will turn into a multi-chaptered fic with Sherlock!Doctor and Amy and John flying around in the TARDIS on mad adventures. But for now, just have a prologue-y-type thing. A warm-up exercise.
There is a moment.
A moment, barely born before it passes, that spans lifetimes. A moment between this and that, when this becomes that and that becomes this. When everything dies in a symphonic explosion of the most profound silence in all the worldsgalaxiesdimensions. Complete silence, pure and empty, untainted even by that awful ringing that silence usually brings, and then -
And then the neurons re-form, the sparking synapses abruptly cutting off the silence in a rush of thought that returns with a vengeance, tearing his (because he is a he again, probably - well, maybe a she, definitely an it at the very least) attention in five thousand and four directions at once, with the most pressing direction being the discovery that he will spend the rest of his life (Lives? No, probably just this one.) searching for that blissful silence again.
But then the ground beneath his feet (Ah, feet - large, quite large, so either he's a man or an Amazonian woman, not enough data, but he's used to the masculine pronoun, so he'll stick with it for now.) heaves, sending him hurtling across the space, his hands (Oh, well done, hands! And with elev - no, hang on, that can't - oh, miscounted, ten, he's still got ten fingers, which is very nearly as brilliant as an exploding sun.) automatically windmilling out for balance, slamming down onto one of the control panels, those gloriously long fingers accidentally splaying over a button that he's never been too sure of in any of his incarnations, and rightly so because it makes the heaving even worse.
Not that it much matters right now, when he's got more important things at stake, such as -
"Ginger? Tell me I'm ginger this ti - Damn," he croaks, glaring at the dark, dark hank of hair hanging over his forehead, flopping neatly just above his eye line. "I wanted to be ginger for once." It's wavy, though, and - well, curly on the sides, making loose rings around his fingers as he runs them over his head, which makes it an improvement over the last one (all brown and spiky and easy to deal with but so boring) - oh, opinions, he's got opinons! Strong ones, too. Opinionated this time, that's fun. Or is it?
He's very tall, maybe an inch or three too long for these clothes, and still male, though he has the fleeting thought that it might've been interesting to be a girl, maybe. No, probably not. Girls. Not his area, really. Which is different, quite... different. He remembers loving a girl once, back when he was him about a million years ago yesterday, loved her so much it broke his hearts to leave her with a man who was and wasn't him in a place where he couldn't ever return. Only now he's all new and when he thinks of that girl, all that he associates with her is a certain amount of detached almost-affection.
Hmm.
- Oh.
Oh. So does this mean he's - Well.
Well.
"Huh," he grunts, just to hear his voice again, dry throat working. (Deep voice, nice, probably very persuasive once he gets the hang of it. That'll come in handy.)
Except no, that doesn't feel right, either. Interesting. So maybe he's not into - ?
And then the thought promptly falls out of his head because that's when the TARDIS chooses to reapply herself to the task of knocking him off his feet. One, two, three tremors, and she gives an especially violent shudder that turns the entire room nearly horizontal and sends him smashing into the front doors.
"Oh, that's right," the Doctor says aloud, sounding (even to himself) inordinately pleased. "We're crashing!"