Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG (4/17)
I'm making brownies! :D They muh-muh-muh-make me happeh.
Title: Underland
Authors: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, OCs, rats. Well, one rat.
Word Count: ~ 1700
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: ANGST. WOE. In this chapter. Watson's slipping through the cracks, here people, and it's not exactly pleasant. *pets him*
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.
I don't know if anyone else gets my humour, but if you Google Maps 26 Farringdon Road...well I think it's hilarious. Maturity, what? When researching telegrams I came across this website, which details that "Please" is one of the most unnecessary words used, so I thought it fitting. Also I played a little fast and lose with the ACD timeline, specifically The Devil's Foot, but it's nothing vital. >>
Also, I think if I were ever to pick a themesong for this story (self-involved what?) it would be The Humming Waltz, by ellen cherry. I can't find it online, but it's haunting and beautifully simple.
Question for later chapters: Measurements? I feel like I should be typing metres and kilometres instead of feet or miles, but I remember Holmes referring to himself as six feet tall in one of the stories, so I wanna know what you think?
Underland - Part IV
I was nearly sweating through my jacket by the time I reached my patient's house nearly a half an hour later than I had promised to arrive. The day was not hot, but a close film of humidity was layered over the city, making the trip decidedly uncomfortable to say the least. Added to that the incredible rudeness of my fellow pedestrians, pushing and jostling me as though I were not there, and I was not exactly in the best of moods.
I stopped outside Twenty-Six Farringdon Road and took a moment to catch my breath and compose my self, before heading up the steps. I straightened my back, and affected to look as professional as I could given the circumstances, and rapped smartly on the door knocker.
There was no answer, so I shifted my weight to my good leg, and straightened my waistcoat front.
When there continued to be no response, I knocked again, then gave an experimental tug on the bell pull. The clang was remarkably loud from outside - I had no idea it was so obnoxiously loud, and I made a note to speak with Mrs. Hudson about our bell once I returned to Baker Street - and a maid opened the door.
A small smile twitched her lips, her eyes wandering over me quizzically.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"Yes, I am Doctor Watson, I'm here to see Miss Veronica for her stomach illness. If you'd be so kind as to alert your mistress to my arrival?"
She blinked slowly.
"Hello?"
I blinked back.
"Ah - might I come in? I'm supposed to see Miss Veronica Webley? I told Mr. Webley I would come by today and check on her progress."
She moved back and I stepped forward quickly, dodging past the closing door with a grunt of irritation. I gave her a short nod and proceeded on to the downstairs sitting room where I had seen Miss Veronica just three days before. The door slid open immediately, much to my astonishment, before I had even knocked, and Mrs. Webley's voice rang out clearly, relief apparent in her tone.
"Oh I'm so glad you could make it doctor!"
I was about to begin a modest self-recrimination on my tardiness, when another voice answered.
"Not at all, not at all! I'm just glad you contacted me today, or little Miss Veronica might not be so well off."
Beneath my confusion, I recognised that statement as a blatant lie. The girl was sick, to be sure, but it was barely a stomach bug, and I knew Mr. Webley had asked me in more to assuage his wife's fears than to save his daughter from an untimely death.
I walked in, feeling no little trepidation, and was disturbed to see Wilhelm Scott, a general practitioner and a fraud standing beside the settee where the little girl lay, sleeping soundly. Not two years ago Holmes and I had defamed him as a fear monger, scamming extra money out of desperate patients and families with no thought to their livelihood.
But Mrs. Webley was continuing her laudatory exaltation. "I was so worried when James told me he hadn't remembered to call a doctor in. Your so good to us to drop everything and come at such short notice."
At that I could stand no more. I moved between them and faced Mrs. Webley.
"Good day, ma'am. If you'll remember I was here just the other day to see your daughter, and I found her to be at no such great risk. This man is a menace to society, and I will not see you endanger yourself following his poor instructions. Please, madam, I beg of you."
She paused and then clasped her hands together in front of her, and smiled warmly, ever the welcoming hostess.
"Oh! Good day. Did Mary let you in? How can I help you?" There was not a single spark of recognition in her face. Scott did not even register my presence, as Mrs. Hudson and the stranger had not that morning. She continued to smile, and continued to tear my world in shreds. "I'm dreadfully sorry, I have a terrible head for names. I'll get it in a moment, I promise."
I shook my head, disbelief sinking my heart and bones, making me feel a hundred times heavier.
Her eyes slid off my face a moment later, and she lost all interest in me. Her smile shifted from pleasantly bemused to reverent as she focused her attention back on Scott and her daughter.
It was as though I was not even there. On a separate plane of existence, not worthy of recognition or the acknowledgement of life that all humans deserve.
I wrote briefly earlier of my time just back from Afghanistan. How in attempting to escape from the trials of the real world I drowned my self in vice.
But there was more to that time than avoiding responsibilities, for between remembrances of blood-stained battle fields and the screams of soldiers as I attempted to keep them on this side of the veil there was the constant fear that I too would slip from the mortal coil. Sad and broken, the worst fear in my mind was to end up as the beggars on the street, abandoned by friends and family, left to suffer through the rest of time just below the sight line of everyday, happy, common folk. A non-person.
And then I had met Holmes.
None of them twitched when I backed out of the room, taking my medical bag and my tattered self-worth with me. The maid had disappeared off some where so I let my self out into the street once more.
This was where I floundered. Holmes, the only person I could think to turn to in my plight, would not return for two days at least.
If he even recognised me.
My chest grew tight and I forced the panic rising in my throat down under a veneer of stoicism, trying to keep my head in this cruel joke. Holmes knew me better than anyone else in this world or the next. Of course he would recognise me. No doubt he would come to my aid at the earliest convenience.
All I had to do was get in contact with him.
I took a deep, calming breath, and turned my eyes upward in a mindless entreaty, then brought my head back down to Earth and reality.
There was a telegram office a block north, upon which I set my sights and hopes.
I retrieved a telegram form and a pencil to jot down my message with no difficulties. The message was simple:
S.H -
SOMETHINGS HAPPENED COME QUICKLY NEED HELP
PLEASE
J.W.
I feel it accurately represented my feelings. I did not wish to cause Holmes any undue stress, especially while on a case, but I could not handle what was happening on my own.
Try as I might though I could not catch the attention of the desk clerk at the office for long enough to send my message. If I knew more about the function of telegraph machines I surely would have vaulted the desk to send it my self. Instead I could only sink deeper into desperation, fighting my way out of the office through incomers who took no notice of me.
Back on the street my legs would no longer hold me, and I collapsed to the curb, numb to my very soul and lost in a city I thought I knew. I was far enough to the side to not hinder people entering the office, but a few stray boots found themselves impacting with my medical bag or my feet, stuck out in front of me. One man kicked me soundly in the side, causing me to gasp and clutch at my abdomen for a painful long moment.
A rat scurried out from a storm gutter just to my right. It turned to and fro, sniffing the air, long whiskers twitching, before settling on me.
"Hello, there," I said, feeling as though I was losing my mind more assuredly than the incident of the Devil's Foot root and its horrific mind-bending effects. "And how are you today, my good rat?"
It crept closer, its nose twitching and piebald fir shivering over lithe rodent muscles. Beady eyes, liquid black and ever so reminiscent of the marquis own pearly black eyes, stared at me unblinkingly, and a bitter resentment rose in my gut that the only creature to pay me any heed was a sewer-dweller.
I still clutched the telegram form in my hand, and in a fit of fury I scrunched it in a ball and hurled it at the rat. It hit the pavement close by, startling the rat, but not enough to send it fleeing.
Shaking my head at my pathetic attempts to take out my anger on an innocent rat, I took my medical bag in hand and stood.
The rat sniffed at the paper form and waddled closer to grasp at it with tiny pink claws. It stared up at me, looking almost sympathetic, before snatching up the balled paper and scampering back to the grate to the underside of the city.
How long I wandered after that I have no idea, for I was tired and cold and scared and could not bear thinking any more.
Eventually, as dusk swarmed up from the east and the sun disappeared, the velvet blue sky deepening with a haze of plum, I found my self in Hyde Park, near the Serpentine. I could not bring my self to return to Baker Street at that time, not to face Mrs. Hudson's blank stare.
Sturdy metal benches with swollen wood slats lined the banks, and it was onto one of these that I collapsed that night, feeling a chill settle into the air. I bundled my wool coat closer about my self, and laid my medical bag to one end, propping my spare shirt over it as some minor padding against the stick of cold leather.
Laying my head down, I watched the push and pull of the wind across the water, casting ripples over the last vestiges of reflected light before the night swallowed us whole.
-
| 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
Authors: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, OCs, rats. Well, one rat.
Word Count: ~ 1700
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: ANGST. WOE. In this chapter. Watson's slipping through the cracks, here people, and it's not exactly pleasant. *pets him*
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.
I don't know if anyone else gets my humour, but if you Google Maps 26 Farringdon Road...well I think it's hilarious. Maturity, what? When researching telegrams I came across this website, which details that "Please" is one of the most unnecessary words used, so I thought it fitting. Also I played a little fast and lose with the ACD timeline, specifically The Devil's Foot, but it's nothing vital. >>
Also, I think if I were ever to pick a themesong for this story (self-involved what?) it would be The Humming Waltz, by ellen cherry. I can't find it online, but it's haunting and beautifully simple.
Question for later chapters: Measurements? I feel like I should be typing metres and kilometres instead of feet or miles, but I remember Holmes referring to himself as six feet tall in one of the stories, so I wanna know what you think?
Underland - Part IV
I was nearly sweating through my jacket by the time I reached my patient's house nearly a half an hour later than I had promised to arrive. The day was not hot, but a close film of humidity was layered over the city, making the trip decidedly uncomfortable to say the least. Added to that the incredible rudeness of my fellow pedestrians, pushing and jostling me as though I were not there, and I was not exactly in the best of moods.
I stopped outside Twenty-Six Farringdon Road and took a moment to catch my breath and compose my self, before heading up the steps. I straightened my back, and affected to look as professional as I could given the circumstances, and rapped smartly on the door knocker.
There was no answer, so I shifted my weight to my good leg, and straightened my waistcoat front.
When there continued to be no response, I knocked again, then gave an experimental tug on the bell pull. The clang was remarkably loud from outside - I had no idea it was so obnoxiously loud, and I made a note to speak with Mrs. Hudson about our bell once I returned to Baker Street - and a maid opened the door.
A small smile twitched her lips, her eyes wandering over me quizzically.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"Yes, I am Doctor Watson, I'm here to see Miss Veronica for her stomach illness. If you'd be so kind as to alert your mistress to my arrival?"
She blinked slowly.
"Hello?"
I blinked back.
"Ah - might I come in? I'm supposed to see Miss Veronica Webley? I told Mr. Webley I would come by today and check on her progress."
She moved back and I stepped forward quickly, dodging past the closing door with a grunt of irritation. I gave her a short nod and proceeded on to the downstairs sitting room where I had seen Miss Veronica just three days before. The door slid open immediately, much to my astonishment, before I had even knocked, and Mrs. Webley's voice rang out clearly, relief apparent in her tone.
"Oh I'm so glad you could make it doctor!"
I was about to begin a modest self-recrimination on my tardiness, when another voice answered.
"Not at all, not at all! I'm just glad you contacted me today, or little Miss Veronica might not be so well off."
Beneath my confusion, I recognised that statement as a blatant lie. The girl was sick, to be sure, but it was barely a stomach bug, and I knew Mr. Webley had asked me in more to assuage his wife's fears than to save his daughter from an untimely death.
I walked in, feeling no little trepidation, and was disturbed to see Wilhelm Scott, a general practitioner and a fraud standing beside the settee where the little girl lay, sleeping soundly. Not two years ago Holmes and I had defamed him as a fear monger, scamming extra money out of desperate patients and families with no thought to their livelihood.
But Mrs. Webley was continuing her laudatory exaltation. "I was so worried when James told me he hadn't remembered to call a doctor in. Your so good to us to drop everything and come at such short notice."
At that I could stand no more. I moved between them and faced Mrs. Webley.
"Good day, ma'am. If you'll remember I was here just the other day to see your daughter, and I found her to be at no such great risk. This man is a menace to society, and I will not see you endanger yourself following his poor instructions. Please, madam, I beg of you."
She paused and then clasped her hands together in front of her, and smiled warmly, ever the welcoming hostess.
"Oh! Good day. Did Mary let you in? How can I help you?" There was not a single spark of recognition in her face. Scott did not even register my presence, as Mrs. Hudson and the stranger had not that morning. She continued to smile, and continued to tear my world in shreds. "I'm dreadfully sorry, I have a terrible head for names. I'll get it in a moment, I promise."
I shook my head, disbelief sinking my heart and bones, making me feel a hundred times heavier.
Her eyes slid off my face a moment later, and she lost all interest in me. Her smile shifted from pleasantly bemused to reverent as she focused her attention back on Scott and her daughter.
It was as though I was not even there. On a separate plane of existence, not worthy of recognition or the acknowledgement of life that all humans deserve.
I wrote briefly earlier of my time just back from Afghanistan. How in attempting to escape from the trials of the real world I drowned my self in vice.
But there was more to that time than avoiding responsibilities, for between remembrances of blood-stained battle fields and the screams of soldiers as I attempted to keep them on this side of the veil there was the constant fear that I too would slip from the mortal coil. Sad and broken, the worst fear in my mind was to end up as the beggars on the street, abandoned by friends and family, left to suffer through the rest of time just below the sight line of everyday, happy, common folk. A non-person.
And then I had met Holmes.
None of them twitched when I backed out of the room, taking my medical bag and my tattered self-worth with me. The maid had disappeared off some where so I let my self out into the street once more.
This was where I floundered. Holmes, the only person I could think to turn to in my plight, would not return for two days at least.
If he even recognised me.
My chest grew tight and I forced the panic rising in my throat down under a veneer of stoicism, trying to keep my head in this cruel joke. Holmes knew me better than anyone else in this world or the next. Of course he would recognise me. No doubt he would come to my aid at the earliest convenience.
All I had to do was get in contact with him.
I took a deep, calming breath, and turned my eyes upward in a mindless entreaty, then brought my head back down to Earth and reality.
There was a telegram office a block north, upon which I set my sights and hopes.
I retrieved a telegram form and a pencil to jot down my message with no difficulties. The message was simple:
S.H -
SOMETHINGS HAPPENED COME QUICKLY NEED HELP
PLEASE
J.W.
I feel it accurately represented my feelings. I did not wish to cause Holmes any undue stress, especially while on a case, but I could not handle what was happening on my own.
Try as I might though I could not catch the attention of the desk clerk at the office for long enough to send my message. If I knew more about the function of telegraph machines I surely would have vaulted the desk to send it my self. Instead I could only sink deeper into desperation, fighting my way out of the office through incomers who took no notice of me.
Back on the street my legs would no longer hold me, and I collapsed to the curb, numb to my very soul and lost in a city I thought I knew. I was far enough to the side to not hinder people entering the office, but a few stray boots found themselves impacting with my medical bag or my feet, stuck out in front of me. One man kicked me soundly in the side, causing me to gasp and clutch at my abdomen for a painful long moment.
A rat scurried out from a storm gutter just to my right. It turned to and fro, sniffing the air, long whiskers twitching, before settling on me.
"Hello, there," I said, feeling as though I was losing my mind more assuredly than the incident of the Devil's Foot root and its horrific mind-bending effects. "And how are you today, my good rat?"
It crept closer, its nose twitching and piebald fir shivering over lithe rodent muscles. Beady eyes, liquid black and ever so reminiscent of the marquis own pearly black eyes, stared at me unblinkingly, and a bitter resentment rose in my gut that the only creature to pay me any heed was a sewer-dweller.
I still clutched the telegram form in my hand, and in a fit of fury I scrunched it in a ball and hurled it at the rat. It hit the pavement close by, startling the rat, but not enough to send it fleeing.
Shaking my head at my pathetic attempts to take out my anger on an innocent rat, I took my medical bag in hand and stood.
The rat sniffed at the paper form and waddled closer to grasp at it with tiny pink claws. It stared up at me, looking almost sympathetic, before snatching up the balled paper and scampering back to the grate to the underside of the city.
How long I wandered after that I have no idea, for I was tired and cold and scared and could not bear thinking any more.
Eventually, as dusk swarmed up from the east and the sun disappeared, the velvet blue sky deepening with a haze of plum, I found my self in Hyde Park, near the Serpentine. I could not bring my self to return to Baker Street at that time, not to face Mrs. Hudson's blank stare.
Sturdy metal benches with swollen wood slats lined the banks, and it was onto one of these that I collapsed that night, feeling a chill settle into the air. I bundled my wool coat closer about my self, and laid my medical bag to one end, propping my spare shirt over it as some minor padding against the stick of cold leather.
Laying my head down, I watched the push and pull of the wind across the water, casting ripples over the last vestiges of reflected light before the night swallowed us whole.
-
| 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 |