Re: Merlin!Sherlock 1/?
anonymous
May 1 2011, 03:40:37 UTC
For the most part, Sherlock could tolerate the twenty-first century. Of course, people didn’t change that much, even over centuries, but there were always *things* going on now, and he was entirely fond of cell phones and the internet. They certainly would have improved the eighteenth century, which he’d found to be essentially a write-off.
Now if Arthur would get off his metaphysical arse and finally come back.... the waiting was hard, and had only gotten the slightest bit easier by sheer dint of practice. He’d given up watching the royal family back in the nineteenth century.... kings no longer needed to be all that Arthur had been, and he’d have been bored to tears being just a figurehead. That just left the rest of the kingdom... because whatever else Arthur was, he was *British* down to the marrow of his being, and so that was unlikely to change. That left him with several hundred thousand babies being born each year (790,200 in 2009 alone), and not even he could track that many. Besides, all those babies... enough to make you shudder, and though Arthur as a baby... well, Arthur would probably find a way to be impressive even then, but the rest didn’t interest him for even a second and he’d decided he just couldn’t be bothered.
Which meant that for the most part, he’d have to rely on Arthur finding him, or in Arthur doing something so obvious Sherlock would finally be able to locate him. And he had to believe that would work, Arthur was... Arthur, and they were tied together, and when he came back there was simply no way they wouldn’t find each other again. Even if Arthur couldn’t remember him, or his past, or... well, anything else. He’d still be Arthur, and it would all work out somehow. If only Arthur would bloody well *return.*
Re: Merlin!Sherlock 2/?
anonymous
May 1 2011, 05:38:02 UTC
Bedivere worked for New Scotland Yard now, in line to be a DI, which made sense, he’d always been at least marginally sensible with a dedication to keeping the peace, not just going off on half-bollocksed quests every time you turned around. (Most of them, if you so much as hinted there was a strange castle or, in Gawain’s case, an attractive woman in a strange castle, they were off like hounds after hares.) When Sherlock had first discovered him there’d been an odd sensation in his chest it had taken him a bit to characterize as hope. It had to be a good sign, hadn’t it, to find one of the knights again, and in London no less.
He’d gotten excited enough to rush home and check the prophecies afterwards, which he never did if he could help it. Useless, dusty things that sounded like complete twaddle to anyone until it was too late to do any good, even when he was the one reciting them he usually couldn’t make sense of them.
“You looking at those again? You’ve not touched them since the Blitz.”
“Sod off.”
The skull, not used to getting reactions out of Sherlock, was not about to be stopped. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Or someone?” Unfortunately, it had been around Sherlock long enough to have picked up a bit of his methods. “Someone, and not you-know-who, or you wouldn’t care.”
Sherlock didn’t bother answering it, though the glare he sent was probably answer enough. Unfortunately, he’d quickly found that having a talking skull was a great deal less of a good idea than it had sounded at the time, which should teach him to get drunk after seeing the first performance of Hamlet.
“Try the brown one, under the red, page 732, next to last chapter.”
The one up side to having a bored semi-incarnate entity with a great deal of free time was its tendency to read and reread anything left within a certain radius. The down side was when said entity developed a fondness for Mills and Boon. If he ever bothered with a television, Sherlock had no doubt the skull would immediately become an EastEnders addict. In fact, that was a great deal of the reason he hadn’t bothered with a television.
Ah, yes, brown book, there it was...
And two minutes later Sherlock had remembered why he didn’t bother with them in the first place, because it was all stupid poetic rubbish about wounds and horses and battlefields and it was all he could do to not toss the ancient leather and gilded parchment in the rubbish bin because how was that supposed to help him right now?
The skull must have sensed his mood, because the light in its eye sockets dimmed briefly before it offered a hesitant “Cheer up, you’ll find him in time.”
Sherlock laughed, a frustrated painful little burst rather like he’d just been kicked, because of course he had time, he had all the time in the whole damned world, that was the ruddy problem, sometimes he felt all the years wrapped around him like a bloody fucking straightjacket, and what good was being him and immortal and ridiculously idiotically powerful even if he rarely used it if all it meant was waiting around forever for the one man that had actually made any of it mean anything?
Merlin!Sherlock 3/?
anonymous
May 1 2011, 19:05:41 UTC
When John was nine, his entire class had been dragged on a field trip to Stonehenge. The bus trip had been long and boring, the site only an improvement because it meant no longer being cooped up. By the time they’d walked across the sheep field to the orange plastic guard fence, there was already muttering about how it looked better in pictures (and bigger! loads bigger!) and why were they out here in the cold looking at a stupid pile of rocks anyway.
But John wasn’t listening to that, because he’d seen the standing stones, and they were marvellous. He tuned out the other students, and the teacher’s attempt to explain to a group of bored nine and ten year olds how primitive Britons must have used logs and waterways to move the stones from their quarrying site, in favour of pressing his body against the fence in an effort to get closer that would have probably torn the plastic if he’d been any older or bigger. He wanted to close his eyes and see them fixed and whole in their circle, but that would have meant not looking at them now, so that was out.
At the gift shop, before they left, he’d bought a postcard and told his classmates it was for his mum, so he wouldn’t get teased.
***
John considered himself a decent rugby player and no slouch at football, but when it came to teams for Capture the Flag, he was always picked first. Because he was ruddy brilliant at tactics.
***
He’d have done well on the debate team, the advisor knew, except that he was complete rubbish at arguing anything other than the side he agreed with. The first time he’d tried, he’d ended up looking sheepish and downcast after his opponent had laid out her case. His expression had as much said “yeah, that sounds about right,” and he hadn’t managed to get out a word of the rebuttal and facts he’d carefully researched and written down earlier. It was a shame, really, because he was bright enough and charismatic enough to have done well in the law, or even politics, if he’d only not been quite as honest as he looked.
***
When he’d told his family he planned to become a doctor, they’d been pleased. That had lasted just as long as it had taken him to explain that he planned to use the military to pay for it, because he was going to be a doctor in the RAMF. That’s when the yelling had started, Harry asking why he always had to be such a bloody Boy Scout, his mother crying that her baby boy was going to get killed, to go off and leave them (still a very sensitive subject after his father’s abandonment of them over a decade ago). John had stood his ground with feet apart and shoulders square, already looking more than a bit like the soldier he’d just signed up to be.
He moved out a few weeks after, sick of his mum’s silent treatment and not even answering the phone when Harry called from uni. All of the possessions going with him could fit in his knapsack, his family had never had much and now most of it felt more like millstones than mementos.
John did take the dog-eared postcard of Stonehenge, though.
Here Be Dragons 4/?
anonymous
May 2 2011, 16:52:53 UTC
“This again, Sherlock?”
“Mind your own ruddy business, Mycroft.” One of these incarnations Sherlock was going to make sure he was listed as the older brother for a change, though it probably wouldn’t affect Mycroft’s ability to look disapproving. He’d despaired in any time period of finding a way of keeping Mycroft out of his flat if he got it in his head to visit.
“Cocaine now? What was it the last time? Absinthe and morphine?” Mycroft knew very well what it had been, just as he knew the exact date Sherlock had quit those, or the times before that he’d just tried to drink himself into hibernation, before humans had gotten as creative about methods of manufacturing oblivion.
“That was over a century ago, Mycroft, as you well know.”
“Yes, I think we were Mycroft and Sherlock then as well.” Mycroft sighed. “Must be something in the names. Perhaps we should consider removing them from the rotation?”
“I like Sherlock,” he replied with just a hint of petulance.
“If you respond this way to finding Bedivere it’s just as well I hadn’t yet told you about the white hart sightings.”
“You knew?” Sherlock pulled himself up to what was almost a sitting position on the couch.
“Of course I knew, I recommended him for promotion to DI.” Mycroft made a small motion with his hand. “We both know he’ll do a more than competent job.“
He couldn’t stop himself from sitting up all the way, even if the sudden movement did horrible things to the chemical cocktail currently passing as his brain. “Then...”
“No, Sherlock, still nothing, and I’d not have kept that from you.” And he knew, much though he’d hate to admit it, that he could trust Mycroft in that at least.
“Why isn’t he back yet?”
He avoided looking at Mycroft then, not wanting to see anything that could be construed as sympathy in his eyes.
“My offer to join the government remains open...”
“No.” Government, anything to do with ruling, wasn’t at all interesting if Arthur wasn’t involved, and Mycroft was perfectly capable of handling it all himself anyway like he’d been doing for centuries, the smug git.
“Of course.” Mycroft sighed again, then stared directly at Sherlock, not bothering to hide the flash of red behind his eyes. “But you should consider this... a white hart has been spotted near Salisbury. Bedivere, at least, is back. The signs point to him arriving shortly, and should that be the case, do you really want him to see you as a drug addict?”
Sherlock pulled a cushion over his face and held it there until he’d heard Mycroft leave the flat.
He waited another hour and a half before making a call to the small, discreet clinic whose business card Mycroft had left on the table.
Here Be Dragons 5/?
anonymous
May 5 2011, 17:54:11 UTC
Sometimes, in the desert, John dreams. He dreams of fields, and great forests with oaks, their trunks wider than he is tall. He dreams of people he’s never met and places he’s sure he hasn’t been. (And Stonehenge. Still Stonehenge.) He dreams of a dark-haired man who can perform miracles. And he dreams of battles, which is stupid, because surely he’s seeing enough battles here to keep his subconscious happy. But these battles are full of mud and steel and colour instead of dust and explosions, and he’s not in the background fixing people, but is instead out there in the thick of it trying to get the other poor bastards before they can get him.
He dreams of a wound in his leg that won’t heal, and when he wakes up sometimes he almost limps before he reminds himself that it was just a dream.
***
“The killer had a dog, long-haired, likely an Irish setter mix...” Sherlock stood from his crouch, still staring at the corpse. “One of her neighbors has a dog in the flat illegally, she was going to report them, they argued, pushed her, she hit her head, the neighbor panicked and tried to make it look like a break-in. But you hardly have tea with a burglar, do you?” he gestured to the sink, where two empty mugs sat forlornly on an empty counter. “She was tidy, yet the mugs aren’t washed, still residue from the leaves and sugar... careless of them not to clean up. Boring.”
He glanced at the police in the room with him. “The neighbor’s dog will be staying with the boyfriend for a few days, but the hairs will still be around if you look when you interview. She’s kept the victim’s jewelry, because she’s been too nervous to pawn it or throw it out, that should be more than enough evidence. Mention that the fish have died and she’ll likely confess anyway.”
Bedivere (as was, Lestrade now, must remember) waved his officers out of the room. As soon as they’d left, Sherlock added, “Of course you know that because she’s already confessed, and this was all a test.”
Lestrade is too much an officer to look sheepish, but it’s close. “I can’t expect my superiors to take your... theories seriously unless I can show them you’re good on the crimes we already have answers to.”
“Well, at least make sure they arrest the boyfriend, he’s an accessory to the killing even if she’s trying to cover for him, and you’ll find he’s wanted under another name for embezzlement in Leith.” He pulled the latex gloves off with a snap and shoved them in one of his pockets. “And maybe now that I’ve passed you can let me in on some of the actually interesting cases. I know there’s a string of so-called mercy killings you lot aren’t having any luck on, and the bank robbery a fortnight ago practically has dust on it.”
Sherlock had been clean for weeks now, and felt certain his idea of helping the police solve crimes might be his best since the time he’d decided to teach John Harrison clockmaking. To keep things vaguely challenging, he refused to use anything more than mundane senses and facts. He’d already been called a freak by one of Lestrade’s minions, which was almost amusing in its wrongheadedness. If he’d summoned fire or caused plants to bloom out of season, certainly, he’d have at least understood it, goodness knows he’d seen that reaction before, but being called names for bothering to actually use the five senses all normal humans had was laughable.
Lestrade, at least, didn’t call him names, and while Sherlock could tell he irritated the man on a semi-constant basis, the policeman was too intelligent to let annoyance get in the way of solving crimes and generally helping people like he’d signed on to do.
In a slightly manic mood, Sherlock put his hand on Lestrade’s shoulder for just a moment, said fondly, “You always were one of my favourite knights” and then dashed out the door and down the front steps, already calling for a cab.
Lestrade decided it was just as well no one else had heard that, he had a hard enough time getting his squad to work with the volatile ‘consulting detective’ without Holmes getting any odder than he already is.
Now if Arthur would get off his metaphysical arse and finally come back.... the waiting was hard, and had only gotten the slightest bit easier by sheer dint of practice. He’d given up watching the royal family back in the nineteenth century.... kings no longer needed to be all that Arthur had been, and he’d have been bored to tears being just a figurehead. That just left the rest of the kingdom... because whatever else Arthur was, he was *British* down to the marrow of his being, and so that was unlikely to change. That left him with several hundred thousand babies being born each year (790,200 in 2009 alone), and not even he could track that many. Besides, all those babies... enough to make you shudder, and though Arthur as a baby... well, Arthur would probably find a way to be impressive even then, but the rest didn’t interest him for even a second and he’d decided he just couldn’t be bothered.
Which meant that for the most part, he’d have to rely on Arthur finding him, or in Arthur doing something so obvious Sherlock would finally be able to locate him. And he had to believe that would work, Arthur was... Arthur, and they were tied together, and when he came back there was simply no way they wouldn’t find each other again. Even if Arthur couldn’t remember him, or his past, or... well, anything else. He’d still be Arthur, and it would all work out somehow. If only Arthur would bloody well *return.*
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He’d gotten excited enough to rush home and check the prophecies afterwards, which he never did if he could help it. Useless, dusty things that sounded like complete twaddle to anyone until it was too late to do any good, even when he was the one reciting them he usually couldn’t make sense of them.
“You looking at those again? You’ve not touched them since the Blitz.”
“Sod off.”
The skull, not used to getting reactions out of Sherlock, was not about to be stopped. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Or someone?” Unfortunately, it had been around Sherlock long enough to have picked up a bit of his methods. “Someone, and not you-know-who, or you wouldn’t care.”
Sherlock didn’t bother answering it, though the glare he sent was probably answer enough. Unfortunately, he’d quickly found that having a talking skull was a great deal less of a good idea than it had sounded at the time, which should teach him to get drunk after seeing the first performance of Hamlet.
“Try the brown one, under the red, page 732, next to last chapter.”
The one up side to having a bored semi-incarnate entity with a great deal of free time was its tendency to read and reread anything left within a certain radius. The down side was when said entity developed a fondness for Mills and Boon. If he ever bothered with a television, Sherlock had no doubt the skull would immediately become an EastEnders addict. In fact, that was a great deal of the reason he hadn’t bothered with a television.
Ah, yes, brown book, there it was...
And two minutes later Sherlock had remembered why he didn’t bother with them in the first place, because it was all stupid poetic rubbish about wounds and horses and battlefields and it was all he could do to not toss the ancient leather and gilded parchment in the rubbish bin because how was that supposed to help him right now?
The skull must have sensed his mood, because the light in its eye sockets dimmed briefly before it offered a hesitant “Cheer up, you’ll find him in time.”
Sherlock laughed, a frustrated painful little burst rather like he’d just been kicked, because of course he had time, he had all the time in the whole damned world, that was the ruddy problem, sometimes he felt all the years wrapped around him like a bloody fucking straightjacket, and what good was being him and immortal and ridiculously idiotically powerful even if he rarely used it if all it meant was waiting around forever for the one man that had actually made any of it mean anything?
He started on cocaine the day after.
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But John wasn’t listening to that, because he’d seen the standing stones, and they were marvellous. He tuned out the other students, and the teacher’s attempt to explain to a group of bored nine and ten year olds how primitive Britons must have used logs and waterways to move the stones from their quarrying site, in favour of pressing his body against the fence in an effort to get closer that would have probably torn the plastic if he’d been any older or bigger. He wanted to close his eyes and see them fixed and whole in their circle, but that would have meant not looking at them now, so that was out.
At the gift shop, before they left, he’d bought a postcard and told his classmates it was for his mum, so he wouldn’t get teased.
***
John considered himself a decent rugby player and no slouch at football, but when it came to teams for Capture the Flag, he was always picked first. Because he was ruddy brilliant at tactics.
***
He’d have done well on the debate team, the advisor knew, except that he was complete rubbish at arguing anything other than the side he agreed with. The first time he’d tried, he’d ended up looking sheepish and downcast after his opponent had laid out her case. His expression had as much said “yeah, that sounds about right,” and he hadn’t managed to get out a word of the rebuttal and facts he’d carefully researched and written down earlier. It was a shame, really, because he was bright enough and charismatic enough to have done well in the law, or even politics, if he’d only not been quite as honest as he looked.
***
When he’d told his family he planned to become a doctor, they’d been pleased. That had lasted just as long as it had taken him to explain that he planned to use the military to pay for it, because he was going to be a doctor in the RAMF. That’s when the yelling had started, Harry asking why he always had to be such a bloody Boy Scout, his mother crying that her baby boy was going to get killed, to go off and leave them (still a very sensitive subject after his father’s abandonment of them over a decade ago). John had stood his ground with feet apart and shoulders square, already looking more than a bit like the soldier he’d just signed up to be.
He moved out a few weeks after, sick of his mum’s silent treatment and not even answering the phone when Harry called from uni. All of the possessions going with him could fit in his knapsack, his family had never had much and now most of it felt more like millstones than mementos.
John did take the dog-eared postcard of Stonehenge, though.
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“Mind your own ruddy business, Mycroft.” One of these incarnations Sherlock was going to make sure he was listed as the older brother for a change, though it probably wouldn’t affect Mycroft’s ability to look disapproving. He’d despaired in any time period of finding a way of keeping Mycroft out of his flat if he got it in his head to visit.
“Cocaine now? What was it the last time? Absinthe and morphine?” Mycroft knew very well what it had been, just as he knew the exact date Sherlock had quit those, or the times before that he’d just tried to drink himself into hibernation, before humans had gotten as creative about methods of manufacturing oblivion.
“That was over a century ago, Mycroft, as you well know.”
“Yes, I think we were Mycroft and Sherlock then as well.” Mycroft sighed. “Must be something in the names. Perhaps we should consider removing them from the rotation?”
“I like Sherlock,” he replied with just a hint of petulance.
“If you respond this way to finding Bedivere it’s just as well I hadn’t yet told you about the white hart sightings.”
“You knew?” Sherlock pulled himself up to what was almost a sitting position on the couch.
“Of course I knew, I recommended him for promotion to DI.” Mycroft made a small motion with his hand. “We both know he’ll do a more than competent job.“
He couldn’t stop himself from sitting up all the way, even if the sudden movement did horrible things to the chemical cocktail currently passing as his brain. “Then...”
“No, Sherlock, still nothing, and I’d not have kept that from you.” And he knew, much though he’d hate to admit it, that he could trust Mycroft in that at least.
“Why isn’t he back yet?”
He avoided looking at Mycroft then, not wanting to see anything that could be construed as sympathy in his eyes.
“My offer to join the government remains open...”
“No.” Government, anything to do with ruling, wasn’t at all interesting if Arthur wasn’t involved, and Mycroft was perfectly capable of handling it all himself anyway like he’d been doing for centuries, the smug git.
“Of course.” Mycroft sighed again, then stared directly at Sherlock, not bothering to hide the flash of red behind his eyes. “But you should consider this... a white hart has been spotted near Salisbury. Bedivere, at least, is back. The signs point to him arriving shortly, and should that be the case, do you really want him to see you as a drug addict?”
Sherlock pulled a cushion over his face and held it there until he’d heard Mycroft leave the flat.
He waited another hour and a half before making a call to the small, discreet clinic whose business card Mycroft had left on the table.
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He dreams of a wound in his leg that won’t heal, and when he wakes up sometimes he almost limps before he reminds himself that it was just a dream.
***
“The killer had a dog, long-haired, likely an Irish setter mix...” Sherlock stood from his crouch, still staring at the corpse. “One of her neighbors has a dog in the flat illegally, she was going to report them, they argued, pushed her, she hit her head, the neighbor panicked and tried to make it look like a break-in. But you hardly have tea with a burglar, do you?” he gestured to the sink, where two empty mugs sat forlornly on an empty counter. “She was tidy, yet the mugs aren’t washed, still residue from the leaves and sugar... careless of them not to clean up. Boring.”
He glanced at the police in the room with him. “The neighbor’s dog will be staying with the boyfriend for a few days, but the hairs will still be around if you look when you interview. She’s kept the victim’s jewelry, because she’s been too nervous to pawn it or throw it out, that should be more than enough evidence. Mention that the fish have died and she’ll likely confess anyway.”
Bedivere (as was, Lestrade now, must remember) waved his officers out of the room. As soon as they’d left, Sherlock added, “Of course you know that because she’s already confessed, and this was all a test.”
Lestrade is too much an officer to look sheepish, but it’s close. “I can’t expect my superiors to take your... theories seriously unless I can show them you’re good on the crimes we already have answers to.”
“Well, at least make sure they arrest the boyfriend, he’s an accessory to the killing even if she’s trying to cover for him, and you’ll find he’s wanted under another name for embezzlement in Leith.” He pulled the latex gloves off with a snap and shoved them in one of his pockets. “And maybe now that I’ve passed you can let me in on some of the actually interesting cases. I know there’s a string of so-called mercy killings you lot aren’t having any luck on, and the bank robbery a fortnight ago practically has dust on it.”
Sherlock had been clean for weeks now, and felt certain his idea of helping the police solve crimes might be his best since the time he’d decided to teach John Harrison clockmaking. To keep things vaguely challenging, he refused to use anything more than mundane senses and facts. He’d already been called a freak by one of Lestrade’s minions, which was almost amusing in its wrongheadedness. If he’d summoned fire or caused plants to bloom out of season, certainly, he’d have at least understood it, goodness knows he’d seen that reaction before, but being called names for bothering to actually use the five senses all normal humans had was laughable.
Lestrade, at least, didn’t call him names, and while Sherlock could tell he irritated the man on a semi-constant basis, the policeman was too intelligent to let annoyance get in the way of solving crimes and generally helping people like he’d signed on to do.
In a slightly manic mood, Sherlock put his hand on Lestrade’s shoulder for just a moment, said fondly, “You always were one of my favourite knights” and then dashed out the door and down the front steps, already calling for a cab.
Lestrade decided it was just as well no one else had heard that, he had a hard enough time getting his squad to work with the volatile ‘consulting detective’ without Holmes getting any odder than he already is.
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Can't wait to see what happens.
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