Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG-13 (12/17)
So my job was an unending time-suck, apparently. :D It was fun! But exhausting. Which is why I suck at writing currently. It took soooooo long to write this chapter, and also is kind of fucking ridiculous, so it's a damn good thing that I am DONE. AND FREE TO WRITE AS MUCH AS I WANT.
I would have posted earlier, but I'm just a hoar, so. Meh. I'll hopefully get back into my usual posting schedule with a chapter up every other day. I think this might end up 15 parts in all, maybe 17. Either way, we're coming 'round the home stretch! :D Which is probably why I'm so bad at writing it.
Title: Underland
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Holmes, Hunter
Word Count: ~ 1800
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: 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.
So, I have no idea what this is. It took so long to write, that I'm sort of afraid it just started to be word vomit in the hopes that I'd finish in a reasonable amount of time. I didn't, but whatever. >> Also, jellyfish make no sense to me, but I sort of figure you might be able to kill them by stabbing -- they don't have a heart, or like, blood, so I just decided a giant hole in the middle might do the trick. Correct me if I'm wrong, wikipedia only gets me so far. :D
Underland - Part XII
Holmes led me off the platform by way of a small door and down a short flight of unsteady stairs which opened into a cavernous tunnel of a similar sort to the one that I had travelled with Hammersmith. He had picked up a lantern a some point - I had not noticed when - and its sudden flare illuminated the shaped walls an long rails and tracks heading off into infinity.
"Is this abandoned?" I asked, my voice echoing off the walls with a hollow reverberation.
Holmes nodded. "As much as anything ever is," he said, raising his lantern high. "In a matter of fact, we are currently beneath Baker Street Station - it was closed in '69 due to structural instability." He said it in such an off-hand manner that it took him several moments to notice I had stopped following. He turned, a little bemusedly. "Oh, it's perfectly all right, old boy - here at least, just don't go wandering down any side tunnels or you might be in danger of encountering some of the Deeper. They've already begun repairs in London Above, though I predict it will not be opened again for almost twenty years."
"How on Earth did we get from Earl's Court to here? I was under the impression that they were on completely different tracks, being on opposite ends of the city."
Although I could not see his face, I heard Holmes make a stifled, long-suffering noise high in his aquiline nose, the very same noise he tends to make whenever I am being particularly slow-witted.
"He is the earl, Watson - he can go wherever he pleases, provided it is part of the underground railway." He paused for a beat, and said in a tone of voice that would seem mildly irritated to the casual observer, but his what I knows to be some considerable contrition, "All these years acquaintance, and so quickly do I forget that you are new to this world."
Then, because he is an irritating, stubborn soul, he continued, "Hopefully you will learn quicker than your meagre deductive skills and unique grasp of the concept of misinformation."
I must add that I felt absolutely dreadful when I accidentally crushed his foot beneath my cane. It was really quite dark in that tunnel.
-
Holmes and I did not speak much in the following excursions under the city, not did he tell me our purposes for such an aimless walk, save a vague comment about Bayswater. The silence was not an ill one, however, nor was it uncomfortable. With Holmes' great mind brooding over vaster concept that I am privy to, it gave me time to think over what was happening, and perhaps afforded me a greater comprehension of where I had come from, and where I was heading.
To this day, even as I write this, it seemed at times an elaborate dream, a nightmarish fancy concocted by a drink-sodden mind after a singular, but unremarkable, encounter with a remarkable stranger.
More than that, it was a wonder it all happened in such a short time span, yet it feels - felt even then - as though I have already lived two lives or more, in this world, the next, and all the ones between.
I thought of the marquis, and his self-congratulatory grin, the sharply dangerous twinkle in his black eyes, and the way his dark skin had gleamed in the moonlight the night before. I thought of his wit and his wisdom, and his apparent lack of regard for those people who did not owe him favours. People, it seemed, other than my self.
Bayswater Station was not a short distance from Baker Street, but the walk was easy enough, until the tunnel seemed to slant deeper into the earth and I began to hear the soft sounds of water trickling from the ceiling. In less than a quarter of an hour, we were sloshing through several inches of freezing cold water, and Holmes began to hum, a deep and sonorous sound more like the vibrations of a violin's strings than those of human vocal chords. It was a haunting tune that seemed to grow and magnify in the dark of the underground, as if low in the centre of the Earth a chorus of preternatural beings had joined in the hymn to summon the gods from their sleep. The notes rose and fell as the ebb and flow of the tide, and a shiver traced tingling fingers up my spine as our feet led us inexorably further into the depths of darkness.
The water was swirling around our knees, bone-chillingly cold and nearly dragging my shoes from my feet with the undertow. My trousers clung heavy against my thighs, pulled down by the weight and though I was beginning to lose feeling in my legs below the knee, my hip ached with my old wound, aggravated by the tiring slog and additional resistance on my movement.
I was surprised to note, however, that the water smelled not of salt as from the sea, nor of gag-inducing waste as from the Thames, but sweetly clean and fresh beneath the scent of damp earth and silt.
And then suddenly, entirely without warning, the tunnel opened up before the shine of the lantern into a great and echoing cave, the walls rising inexplicably high and expanding far beyond my available vision.
Holmes' lantern paled in comparison to the eerie blue glow that appeared to emanate from beneath the surface of the water. I could not see how deep it went, but there was a distinct line of darkness that illustrated a sharp drop off from where we stood, and the light came from beyond the lip to radiate up and cast gleaming, shimmering shapes upon the arching roof of the cave.
The humming rose to a crescendo and just before it reached its peak, bordering on unbearable, it cut off and silence rang through the cavern in its place.
"What are we doing here?" I asked, and though my voice rose no higher than a whisper, it rustled across the waves of the underground sea, filling the cave with a low, reverberating hiss.
"Waiting," replied my companion. He appeared pale and ghostly in the not-quite blue light, highlighting the damp collected on his sable hair. His grey eyes shone glassy and he gave me a small, secretive smile not unlike that of the marquis.
I was about to question him further, when a shadow seemed to pass over the source of the light, immense and forbidding. Holmes' eyes twinkled with mischief.
I almost dared not ask.
"What is that?"
"Bait."
I could see something more substantial moving beneath the surface of the water, something pulsing and writhing and moving up higher and higher from the depths of the underground sea.
"Do you mean to catch that?" I was incredulous.
"Don't be foolish, Watson. We are here to entice a being of an entirely different nature out into the open. No less deadly, to be sure, but potentially far more helpful, provided we can convince her to aid us in our cause."
The thing that came into sight at Holmes' words was an enormous medusa, with a pulsing gelatinous body and a shimmering web of silver spider-silk thin tentacles, the shortest of which must have reached thirty feet in length. From beneath its umbrella-shaped body emerged a filmy curtain of older tentacles, translucent colours ranging from tawny to dark red.
"A lion's mane," I said, in awe. I had never seen one in person before, but as far as I knew they were less than a third the size of the one that presented itself to us.
"Exactly so," Holmes crowed in praise, his eyes never leaving the jellyfish.
All of a sudden there was an abrupt movement from the far side of the cavern and a figure leapt from behind a cropping of rock to perch like a jungle cat. It looked like a woman, but also like a beast, so primal and predatory were its movements.
The woman was dressed in skins, like an African native, and carried a spear with a tip so sharp that I could hear the whip of it slicing through the air even from a distance. She spared us no attention, her gaze fixed on the jellyfish with eyes as sharp as a bird of prey. Silent and deadly, she reared back and launched her spear at the monstrous lion's mane. The weapon entered the water with nothing even resembling a splash, and struck true into the heart of the creature's bell-like body. I do not know much of the anatomy of cnidarians, but the unnatural eerie wailing that erupted from beneath the water was positively unique to this underworld creature.
When the howl died down and the jelly floated bulbously to the very surface, its heavy mass buoyant in the rippling water, the woman across the inlet straightened to her full height, and gazed at us with stoic, amber eyes. Her hair bore the same resemblance to the ruff on a lion's neck, thick and curled and framing her cat-like features with a wild beauty uncommon on the streets of London.
"Greetings, Hunter."
"I do not know you," she called back to my companion, and sounded very much like she did not care to.
"I did not presume to think you would," Holmes replied, but there was a note of reverence in his tone of voice that made it not seem derogatory as it would have, had the woman been a petty client missing her pearl jewellery and her new chamber maid. Instead it implied that he was not worthy in her presence and was properly humbled by it. "I have brought you this offering as an opening bargain. The Medusa would not have come for you, you know that, and yet you waited in futile persistence." I would have stopped him from continuing if I had the voice to, but when her eyes narrowed, Holmes luckily seemed to recognise his own train of thought enough to smother it.
"What do you want of me?" Her voice was like the deep purr of a cat, dark and smooth as melted chocolate.
"I wish to ask for your aid - I am about to start a war in the Underground against the Professor. Whether you have heard of him or not, all of London Below knows your name and it would be incalculably beneficial to my cause if you were to lend your fist in assistance."
Hunter blinked her eyes at us slowly, yellow orbs assessing us with a predator's gaze. I saw rejection in her face before she even deigned to talk.
"I have no interest in your petty wars. I thank you for your oblation, and will add the stinging tentacles of the Medusa to my trophies, but you are done here. Leave."
And we left.
-
| 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 |
I would have posted earlier, but I'm just a hoar, so. Meh. I'll hopefully get back into my usual posting schedule with a chapter up every other day. I think this might end up 15 parts in all, maybe 17. Either way, we're coming 'round the home stretch! :D Which is probably why I'm so bad at writing it.
Title: Underland
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson (eventually); Watson, Holmes, Hunter
Word Count: ~ 1800
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: 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.
So, I have no idea what this is. It took so long to write, that I'm sort of afraid it just started to be word vomit in the hopes that I'd finish in a reasonable amount of time. I didn't, but whatever. >> Also, jellyfish make no sense to me, but I sort of figure you might be able to kill them by stabbing -- they don't have a heart, or like, blood, so I just decided a giant hole in the middle might do the trick. Correct me if I'm wrong, wikipedia only gets me so far. :D
Underland - Part XII
Holmes led me off the platform by way of a small door and down a short flight of unsteady stairs which opened into a cavernous tunnel of a similar sort to the one that I had travelled with Hammersmith. He had picked up a lantern a some point - I had not noticed when - and its sudden flare illuminated the shaped walls an long rails and tracks heading off into infinity.
"Is this abandoned?" I asked, my voice echoing off the walls with a hollow reverberation.
Holmes nodded. "As much as anything ever is," he said, raising his lantern high. "In a matter of fact, we are currently beneath Baker Street Station - it was closed in '69 due to structural instability." He said it in such an off-hand manner that it took him several moments to notice I had stopped following. He turned, a little bemusedly. "Oh, it's perfectly all right, old boy - here at least, just don't go wandering down any side tunnels or you might be in danger of encountering some of the Deeper. They've already begun repairs in London Above, though I predict it will not be opened again for almost twenty years."
"How on Earth did we get from Earl's Court to here? I was under the impression that they were on completely different tracks, being on opposite ends of the city."
Although I could not see his face, I heard Holmes make a stifled, long-suffering noise high in his aquiline nose, the very same noise he tends to make whenever I am being particularly slow-witted.
"He is the earl, Watson - he can go wherever he pleases, provided it is part of the underground railway." He paused for a beat, and said in a tone of voice that would seem mildly irritated to the casual observer, but his what I knows to be some considerable contrition, "All these years acquaintance, and so quickly do I forget that you are new to this world."
Then, because he is an irritating, stubborn soul, he continued, "Hopefully you will learn quicker than your meagre deductive skills and unique grasp of the concept of misinformation."
I must add that I felt absolutely dreadful when I accidentally crushed his foot beneath my cane. It was really quite dark in that tunnel.
-
Holmes and I did not speak much in the following excursions under the city, not did he tell me our purposes for such an aimless walk, save a vague comment about Bayswater. The silence was not an ill one, however, nor was it uncomfortable. With Holmes' great mind brooding over vaster concept that I am privy to, it gave me time to think over what was happening, and perhaps afforded me a greater comprehension of where I had come from, and where I was heading.
To this day, even as I write this, it seemed at times an elaborate dream, a nightmarish fancy concocted by a drink-sodden mind after a singular, but unremarkable, encounter with a remarkable stranger.
More than that, it was a wonder it all happened in such a short time span, yet it feels - felt even then - as though I have already lived two lives or more, in this world, the next, and all the ones between.
I thought of the marquis, and his self-congratulatory grin, the sharply dangerous twinkle in his black eyes, and the way his dark skin had gleamed in the moonlight the night before. I thought of his wit and his wisdom, and his apparent lack of regard for those people who did not owe him favours. People, it seemed, other than my self.
Bayswater Station was not a short distance from Baker Street, but the walk was easy enough, until the tunnel seemed to slant deeper into the earth and I began to hear the soft sounds of water trickling from the ceiling. In less than a quarter of an hour, we were sloshing through several inches of freezing cold water, and Holmes began to hum, a deep and sonorous sound more like the vibrations of a violin's strings than those of human vocal chords. It was a haunting tune that seemed to grow and magnify in the dark of the underground, as if low in the centre of the Earth a chorus of preternatural beings had joined in the hymn to summon the gods from their sleep. The notes rose and fell as the ebb and flow of the tide, and a shiver traced tingling fingers up my spine as our feet led us inexorably further into the depths of darkness.
The water was swirling around our knees, bone-chillingly cold and nearly dragging my shoes from my feet with the undertow. My trousers clung heavy against my thighs, pulled down by the weight and though I was beginning to lose feeling in my legs below the knee, my hip ached with my old wound, aggravated by the tiring slog and additional resistance on my movement.
I was surprised to note, however, that the water smelled not of salt as from the sea, nor of gag-inducing waste as from the Thames, but sweetly clean and fresh beneath the scent of damp earth and silt.
And then suddenly, entirely without warning, the tunnel opened up before the shine of the lantern into a great and echoing cave, the walls rising inexplicably high and expanding far beyond my available vision.
Holmes' lantern paled in comparison to the eerie blue glow that appeared to emanate from beneath the surface of the water. I could not see how deep it went, but there was a distinct line of darkness that illustrated a sharp drop off from where we stood, and the light came from beyond the lip to radiate up and cast gleaming, shimmering shapes upon the arching roof of the cave.
The humming rose to a crescendo and just before it reached its peak, bordering on unbearable, it cut off and silence rang through the cavern in its place.
"What are we doing here?" I asked, and though my voice rose no higher than a whisper, it rustled across the waves of the underground sea, filling the cave with a low, reverberating hiss.
"Waiting," replied my companion. He appeared pale and ghostly in the not-quite blue light, highlighting the damp collected on his sable hair. His grey eyes shone glassy and he gave me a small, secretive smile not unlike that of the marquis.
I was about to question him further, when a shadow seemed to pass over the source of the light, immense and forbidding. Holmes' eyes twinkled with mischief.
I almost dared not ask.
"What is that?"
"Bait."
I could see something more substantial moving beneath the surface of the water, something pulsing and writhing and moving up higher and higher from the depths of the underground sea.
"Do you mean to catch that?" I was incredulous.
"Don't be foolish, Watson. We are here to entice a being of an entirely different nature out into the open. No less deadly, to be sure, but potentially far more helpful, provided we can convince her to aid us in our cause."
The thing that came into sight at Holmes' words was an enormous medusa, with a pulsing gelatinous body and a shimmering web of silver spider-silk thin tentacles, the shortest of which must have reached thirty feet in length. From beneath its umbrella-shaped body emerged a filmy curtain of older tentacles, translucent colours ranging from tawny to dark red.
"A lion's mane," I said, in awe. I had never seen one in person before, but as far as I knew they were less than a third the size of the one that presented itself to us.
"Exactly so," Holmes crowed in praise, his eyes never leaving the jellyfish.
All of a sudden there was an abrupt movement from the far side of the cavern and a figure leapt from behind a cropping of rock to perch like a jungle cat. It looked like a woman, but also like a beast, so primal and predatory were its movements.
The woman was dressed in skins, like an African native, and carried a spear with a tip so sharp that I could hear the whip of it slicing through the air even from a distance. She spared us no attention, her gaze fixed on the jellyfish with eyes as sharp as a bird of prey. Silent and deadly, she reared back and launched her spear at the monstrous lion's mane. The weapon entered the water with nothing even resembling a splash, and struck true into the heart of the creature's bell-like body. I do not know much of the anatomy of cnidarians, but the unnatural eerie wailing that erupted from beneath the water was positively unique to this underworld creature.
When the howl died down and the jelly floated bulbously to the very surface, its heavy mass buoyant in the rippling water, the woman across the inlet straightened to her full height, and gazed at us with stoic, amber eyes. Her hair bore the same resemblance to the ruff on a lion's neck, thick and curled and framing her cat-like features with a wild beauty uncommon on the streets of London.
"Greetings, Hunter."
"I do not know you," she called back to my companion, and sounded very much like she did not care to.
"I did not presume to think you would," Holmes replied, but there was a note of reverence in his tone of voice that made it not seem derogatory as it would have, had the woman been a petty client missing her pearl jewellery and her new chamber maid. Instead it implied that he was not worthy in her presence and was properly humbled by it. "I have brought you this offering as an opening bargain. The Medusa would not have come for you, you know that, and yet you waited in futile persistence." I would have stopped him from continuing if I had the voice to, but when her eyes narrowed, Holmes luckily seemed to recognise his own train of thought enough to smother it.
"What do you want of me?" Her voice was like the deep purr of a cat, dark and smooth as melted chocolate.
"I wish to ask for your aid - I am about to start a war in the Underground against the Professor. Whether you have heard of him or not, all of London Below knows your name and it would be incalculably beneficial to my cause if you were to lend your fist in assistance."
Hunter blinked her eyes at us slowly, yellow orbs assessing us with a predator's gaze. I saw rejection in her face before she even deigned to talk.
"I have no interest in your petty wars. I thank you for your oblation, and will add the stinging tentacles of the Medusa to my trophies, but you are done here. Leave."
And we left.
-
| 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 |