Fic: Underland (Sherlock Holmes / Neverwhere), PG-13 (14/17)
Title: Underland
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson; Watson, Holmes, the rat-speakers
Word Count: ~ 2100
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.
After much deliberation planning ahead, i'm doing it right!, I went back and edited them closer to the Thames, so the very beginning of this chapter could work. ><
Underland - Part XIV
-
We took immediate precautions to roll the bodies of Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar into the Thames. A mid-sized black rat with a tattered ear took several of her compatriots into the water as well, setting off with the current to follow the bodies down stream. The damp air off the river was pungent and cold, making my hip and leg ache all the more.
Several people, dressed little better than street urchins, emerged from a manhole, bowing deferentially to the rats that remained in the street. The three oldest, grey haired and thin-faced, gathered the dead rats in shaking hands, and created a slow, mournful procession down the cobbled road. Master Furredears sat on my shoulder, silent and warm against my neck, watching the march with his liquid black eyes.
One young woman, barely a girl, who might have been pretty underneath the layers and coatings of dirt and ragged curls, approached Holmes and me with a wary look in her enormous blue eyes.
"The Lord Rat-speaker has ordered us to bring you to him," she said in a high and piping voice, affecting a tone of authority that I could see did not extend to her narrow shoulders and thin shivering knees. She bowed respectfully and stretched out long white hands to Master Furredears, intending to take him from me, but he pulled back and squeaked out a sharp retort and sneaked beneath the collar of my jacket, tiny claws prickling against the back of my neck. I saw Holmes smile out of the corner of my eye, and was absolutely helpless to smile back like the hopeless romantic he has always accused me of being.
He cleared his throat and turned back to the girl. "Kindly lead the way, and we shall follow." One hand brushed against the small of my back, just the barest pressure.
-
The underground chamber that girl and her fellows ushered us into had a huge, vaulted ceiling and was lit by several fires giving off a reddish glow that leeched the colour from the rest of the world. Holmes in particular, with his pale skin and dark hair was a reduced to near monochrome, with harsh shadows and harsher light. The smoke from the fires was thick and burned my eyes and throat and my leg trembled beneath me.
It was more like a colony of people under there than anything I had yet seen in London Below. All dressed in rags and furs, they worked and lived as a unit together. Even the groups at the Floating Market had been small and disorganised compared to these - though there was obviously some conflicts between a few members, mostly revolving around, from what I could see, who got what part of the small animals roasting over the fires.
The man addressed as Lord Rat-speaker was old and feeble, but sat regally in an invalid's chair and exuded arrogance and hubris enough to anger the gods. He wore a long tattered robe trimmed in mottled orange-and-white-and-black fur, like the fur of a calico cat, and a sneer on his gaunt face.
Master Furredears, who had curled up just inside the collar of my coat, and had for all appearances fallen asleep whilst we walked, sat up with a yawn and a tiny rat-stretch. His bald tail twitched against my throat and his claws tickled my skin as he clambered out onto my shoulder again.
At once, the people all around us threw themselves to the ground kneeling. The Lord Rat-speaker gave an awkward jerk in his seat and crumpled forwards in as close to a kowtow as he was physically able.
The rat stood on up on his hind legs, one forepaw resting on my jaw for balance, and began a long order of squeaking and chittering that abruptly sent several people into fits of barely-restrained hysteria. One of the younger boys started to try and crawl away, still bowed before the rat, but was stopped by a small girl who jolted him down and shhed him loudly.
The Lord Rat-speaker responded in the same manner, teeth bared and nose twitching, hissing and squealing until some sort of conclusion was finally reached. As soon as Master Furredears finished with a decisive squeak, a young man in his early teens leapt up and scurried over to us, beckoning and pulling at my coat sleeve, guiding Holmes and my self over to a pair of low cots tucked into a nook and curtained off from the rest of the hall. He hovered and fretted for a moment, rearranging the layers of fur and cloths, and then dashed off again in twitchy bursts of movement, broken by moments of stillness.
Holmes let out a breath of air and set my bag on the ground, before arching his back in a long and bone-cracking stretch, not unlike that of a cat just waking. He turned his keen grey eyes to me and offered me a small smile, the corners of his thin lips just barely turned up. "Not quite the usual adventure, eh Watson?"
I laughed, because there was nothing else to do, and we sat together on the soft bed side by side. As soon as I was seated, Master Furredears leapt from my shoulder to the pillow and nuzzled into a tight ball of fur, his sides rising and falling. Holmes took my cane and propped it in the corner, and manoeuvred me around so that I was leaning against the wall with my bad leg in his lap.
This type of exchange was not entirely new - once or twice during the colder winters, on the worst days, and I suffered poorly from my old war injury, Holmes had worked the muscles in a deep-tissue massage to alleviate the worst of the cramps. Our recent intimacy however, meant that my face heated when he began the simplest of endeavours to remove my shoe and sock, paying no heed to the fact that they were still unpleasantly damp.
"What are we to do now?" I asked as Holmes' thin hands smoothed up over my knee, heat searing through the fabric of my trousers.
"Well, it appears as if your arrival in London Below has set off a series of events, my boy," said Holmes, his voice low and contemplative. "The Professor - Moriarty - is taking steps to eliminate the threat against his empire, as you've no doubt noticed. I conjecture this is because he feels I have gained an advantage he wishes to terminate at the soonest possibility." He looked pointedly at me, fingers digging into a knot of muscle, and it took a moment of breathing through the pain to comprehend what he was indicating.
"Me? He thinks that I am an advantage?"
"Do you understand what happened up on the street? With your rat friend?"
"I - I believe he -" I could not continue, for I could not think of an explanation. Holmes kneaded his thumbs higher into my thigh, the tension releasing slowly to leave behind a low burn.
"That was you. Your being a doctor is not a mistake, nor is it family tradition, Watson, no matter what erroneous Upside preconceptions you might have believed. It is in your very nature, as I have come to understand it."
After a moment of my blank staring, he relented, and clarified his cryptic statement for my tired brain.
"For those of us born into London Below, magic is inherent in our makeup. All around us the impossible exists - anything you or anyone could conceivably imagine, all of it is not only possible, but probable. Legends and myths are as common beneath the city as drops of water in the Thames. Those who fall through the cracks - who come from London Above and slip out of ordinary human perception, they generally remain as they were. Some of them though are receptive to the magic that this world is built on, they not only adapt to it, but they absorb it, until it rests within their very soul. Many of these people move past humanity to something greater, depending on the shape of their spirit. People like you."
I closed my eyes. I could barely breathe, my mind running so fast that I could not even keep up with my own thoughts. Holmes' fingers stopped kneading for a moment and then squeezed tight when I did not respond. I blinked my eyes back open, and again to wipe away the fog that was encroaching, and Holmes' face was stiff and shuttered.
He was afraid for me, afraid that what he had said would be too much.
"So, what am I?"
It was so soft I was almost surprised Holmes heard it. To my astonishment, he gave a soft, sad smile, and reached out to cup my face.
"You are my Boswell, my boy - my dear, dear Watson. As you ever were, you will always be. This is not a curse, it is a gift, one that you have gained merely by being the man you are. Do not fear it, Watson. I know you, indeed perhaps better than you know yourself, and I know that it will bring no harm."
And he kissed me again.
Warm and wet, his lips against mine was much like any other kiss I had received, but also so much more. He smelled thick and heady, like his tobacco and the sandalwood scent of the gel he used to slick his hair back. As much as I wished to taste his tongue and run my fingers through his hair to break up that perfectly coifed exterior, I would not let my self until I knew more of what was to come.
I pulled back with my lower lip between my teeth to see Holmes's pale grey eyes grow dark and endless. We breathed together, bare inches apart, and I curled my fingers into his tweed lapel.
"But what are we to do about Moriarty? What are we doing here?"
"Master Furredears has volunteered the services of the rat-speakers in our coming war. I had wished to recruit Hunter, who is of yet the greatest warrior in the Underworld, but even with the offering of the Great Medusa it was a long shot. This fight is being brought to inception faster than I had anticipated, again I believe your entrance onto the playing field has something to do with that - though I have been weaving my net around him for the past several months, and was near concluding my trap." With a sudden fervour to his voice, he gripped my thigh tightly and continued, "I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, if I could beat that man, my career would have reached its pinnacle point. Why I might even consider retiring, or at the very least a less excitable line of work."
What he said next, with his eyes focused off into the distance as if watching some far off ideal - or gazing through the eyes of his birds, I remembered - was so matter of fact that it turned me cold and sick.
"Indeed, should it be necessary, I would give my life to take down such a dangerous and powerful criminal."
"Holmes!" I cried, horrified. He jerked his head back to look at me, and the cold ardor sparking in his eyes unnerved me. "Surely you cannot mean to attempt such a thing? At such a cost!"
It appeared as though he had forgotten entirely my devotion to him - did he not realise how very much my existence, especially since my arrival in London Below, relied on him? I was as devastated as if he had already gone through with the act of self-sacrifice.
"It is my greatest hope that I should not have to resort to such drastic measures, because I know how it would give pain to my friends, especially, my dear Watson, to you." He grasped my fingers, the chilling look gone from his face. "But this is an ugly business, far uglier than any other case we have taken on together before. And if I need to, I will do anything I can to bring him down. I need you to know this, Watson, I need you to understand, and understand that I will not go into this fight intending to die, but if I do in the course of events, it should not be in vain."
I looked down at our clasped hands, and swallowed the thickness lodged in my throat.
"I will make sure of it," I assured him, pulling his white knuckles to my lips.
Then I took him in my arms and we slept as the dead sleep, wrapped around each other.
-
| 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 |
Author: crimson_adder
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) / Neverwhere (Gaiman!verse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing / Characters: Holmes/Watson; Watson, Holmes, the rat-speakers
Word Count: ~ 2100
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.
After much deliberation planning ahead, i'm doing it right!, I went back and edited them closer to the Thames, so the very beginning of this chapter could work. ><
Underland - Part XIV
-
We took immediate precautions to roll the bodies of Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar into the Thames. A mid-sized black rat with a tattered ear took several of her compatriots into the water as well, setting off with the current to follow the bodies down stream. The damp air off the river was pungent and cold, making my hip and leg ache all the more.
Several people, dressed little better than street urchins, emerged from a manhole, bowing deferentially to the rats that remained in the street. The three oldest, grey haired and thin-faced, gathered the dead rats in shaking hands, and created a slow, mournful procession down the cobbled road. Master Furredears sat on my shoulder, silent and warm against my neck, watching the march with his liquid black eyes.
One young woman, barely a girl, who might have been pretty underneath the layers and coatings of dirt and ragged curls, approached Holmes and me with a wary look in her enormous blue eyes.
"The Lord Rat-speaker has ordered us to bring you to him," she said in a high and piping voice, affecting a tone of authority that I could see did not extend to her narrow shoulders and thin shivering knees. She bowed respectfully and stretched out long white hands to Master Furredears, intending to take him from me, but he pulled back and squeaked out a sharp retort and sneaked beneath the collar of my jacket, tiny claws prickling against the back of my neck. I saw Holmes smile out of the corner of my eye, and was absolutely helpless to smile back like the hopeless romantic he has always accused me of being.
He cleared his throat and turned back to the girl. "Kindly lead the way, and we shall follow." One hand brushed against the small of my back, just the barest pressure.
-
The underground chamber that girl and her fellows ushered us into had a huge, vaulted ceiling and was lit by several fires giving off a reddish glow that leeched the colour from the rest of the world. Holmes in particular, with his pale skin and dark hair was a reduced to near monochrome, with harsh shadows and harsher light. The smoke from the fires was thick and burned my eyes and throat and my leg trembled beneath me.
It was more like a colony of people under there than anything I had yet seen in London Below. All dressed in rags and furs, they worked and lived as a unit together. Even the groups at the Floating Market had been small and disorganised compared to these - though there was obviously some conflicts between a few members, mostly revolving around, from what I could see, who got what part of the small animals roasting over the fires.
The man addressed as Lord Rat-speaker was old and feeble, but sat regally in an invalid's chair and exuded arrogance and hubris enough to anger the gods. He wore a long tattered robe trimmed in mottled orange-and-white-and-black fur, like the fur of a calico cat, and a sneer on his gaunt face.
Master Furredears, who had curled up just inside the collar of my coat, and had for all appearances fallen asleep whilst we walked, sat up with a yawn and a tiny rat-stretch. His bald tail twitched against my throat and his claws tickled my skin as he clambered out onto my shoulder again.
At once, the people all around us threw themselves to the ground kneeling. The Lord Rat-speaker gave an awkward jerk in his seat and crumpled forwards in as close to a kowtow as he was physically able.
The rat stood on up on his hind legs, one forepaw resting on my jaw for balance, and began a long order of squeaking and chittering that abruptly sent several people into fits of barely-restrained hysteria. One of the younger boys started to try and crawl away, still bowed before the rat, but was stopped by a small girl who jolted him down and shhed him loudly.
The Lord Rat-speaker responded in the same manner, teeth bared and nose twitching, hissing and squealing until some sort of conclusion was finally reached. As soon as Master Furredears finished with a decisive squeak, a young man in his early teens leapt up and scurried over to us, beckoning and pulling at my coat sleeve, guiding Holmes and my self over to a pair of low cots tucked into a nook and curtained off from the rest of the hall. He hovered and fretted for a moment, rearranging the layers of fur and cloths, and then dashed off again in twitchy bursts of movement, broken by moments of stillness.
Holmes let out a breath of air and set my bag on the ground, before arching his back in a long and bone-cracking stretch, not unlike that of a cat just waking. He turned his keen grey eyes to me and offered me a small smile, the corners of his thin lips just barely turned up. "Not quite the usual adventure, eh Watson?"
I laughed, because there was nothing else to do, and we sat together on the soft bed side by side. As soon as I was seated, Master Furredears leapt from my shoulder to the pillow and nuzzled into a tight ball of fur, his sides rising and falling. Holmes took my cane and propped it in the corner, and manoeuvred me around so that I was leaning against the wall with my bad leg in his lap.
This type of exchange was not entirely new - once or twice during the colder winters, on the worst days, and I suffered poorly from my old war injury, Holmes had worked the muscles in a deep-tissue massage to alleviate the worst of the cramps. Our recent intimacy however, meant that my face heated when he began the simplest of endeavours to remove my shoe and sock, paying no heed to the fact that they were still unpleasantly damp.
"What are we to do now?" I asked as Holmes' thin hands smoothed up over my knee, heat searing through the fabric of my trousers.
"Well, it appears as if your arrival in London Below has set off a series of events, my boy," said Holmes, his voice low and contemplative. "The Professor - Moriarty - is taking steps to eliminate the threat against his empire, as you've no doubt noticed. I conjecture this is because he feels I have gained an advantage he wishes to terminate at the soonest possibility." He looked pointedly at me, fingers digging into a knot of muscle, and it took a moment of breathing through the pain to comprehend what he was indicating.
"Me? He thinks that I am an advantage?"
"Do you understand what happened up on the street? With your rat friend?"
"I - I believe he -" I could not continue, for I could not think of an explanation. Holmes kneaded his thumbs higher into my thigh, the tension releasing slowly to leave behind a low burn.
"That was you. Your being a doctor is not a mistake, nor is it family tradition, Watson, no matter what erroneous Upside preconceptions you might have believed. It is in your very nature, as I have come to understand it."
After a moment of my blank staring, he relented, and clarified his cryptic statement for my tired brain.
"For those of us born into London Below, magic is inherent in our makeup. All around us the impossible exists - anything you or anyone could conceivably imagine, all of it is not only possible, but probable. Legends and myths are as common beneath the city as drops of water in the Thames. Those who fall through the cracks - who come from London Above and slip out of ordinary human perception, they generally remain as they were. Some of them though are receptive to the magic that this world is built on, they not only adapt to it, but they absorb it, until it rests within their very soul. Many of these people move past humanity to something greater, depending on the shape of their spirit. People like you."
I closed my eyes. I could barely breathe, my mind running so fast that I could not even keep up with my own thoughts. Holmes' fingers stopped kneading for a moment and then squeezed tight when I did not respond. I blinked my eyes back open, and again to wipe away the fog that was encroaching, and Holmes' face was stiff and shuttered.
He was afraid for me, afraid that what he had said would be too much.
"So, what am I?"
It was so soft I was almost surprised Holmes heard it. To my astonishment, he gave a soft, sad smile, and reached out to cup my face.
"You are my Boswell, my boy - my dear, dear Watson. As you ever were, you will always be. This is not a curse, it is a gift, one that you have gained merely by being the man you are. Do not fear it, Watson. I know you, indeed perhaps better than you know yourself, and I know that it will bring no harm."
And he kissed me again.
Warm and wet, his lips against mine was much like any other kiss I had received, but also so much more. He smelled thick and heady, like his tobacco and the sandalwood scent of the gel he used to slick his hair back. As much as I wished to taste his tongue and run my fingers through his hair to break up that perfectly coifed exterior, I would not let my self until I knew more of what was to come.
I pulled back with my lower lip between my teeth to see Holmes's pale grey eyes grow dark and endless. We breathed together, bare inches apart, and I curled my fingers into his tweed lapel.
"But what are we to do about Moriarty? What are we doing here?"
"Master Furredears has volunteered the services of the rat-speakers in our coming war. I had wished to recruit Hunter, who is of yet the greatest warrior in the Underworld, but even with the offering of the Great Medusa it was a long shot. This fight is being brought to inception faster than I had anticipated, again I believe your entrance onto the playing field has something to do with that - though I have been weaving my net around him for the past several months, and was near concluding my trap." With a sudden fervour to his voice, he gripped my thigh tightly and continued, "I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, if I could beat that man, my career would have reached its pinnacle point. Why I might even consider retiring, or at the very least a less excitable line of work."
What he said next, with his eyes focused off into the distance as if watching some far off ideal - or gazing through the eyes of his birds, I remembered - was so matter of fact that it turned me cold and sick.
"Indeed, should it be necessary, I would give my life to take down such a dangerous and powerful criminal."
"Holmes!" I cried, horrified. He jerked his head back to look at me, and the cold ardor sparking in his eyes unnerved me. "Surely you cannot mean to attempt such a thing? At such a cost!"
It appeared as though he had forgotten entirely my devotion to him - did he not realise how very much my existence, especially since my arrival in London Below, relied on him? I was as devastated as if he had already gone through with the act of self-sacrifice.
"It is my greatest hope that I should not have to resort to such drastic measures, because I know how it would give pain to my friends, especially, my dear Watson, to you." He grasped my fingers, the chilling look gone from his face. "But this is an ugly business, far uglier than any other case we have taken on together before. And if I need to, I will do anything I can to bring him down. I need you to know this, Watson, I need you to understand, and understand that I will not go into this fight intending to die, but if I do in the course of events, it should not be in vain."
I looked down at our clasped hands, and swallowed the thickness lodged in my throat.
"I will make sure of it," I assured him, pulling his white knuckles to my lips.
Then I took him in my arms and we slept as the dead sleep, wrapped around each other.
-
| 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 |