for lindentreeisle: "Expectation (The Mosaic Remix)"
Original Author: lindentreeisle
Original Story Title: Expectation
Original Story Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/213541
Original Story Pairings: John Watson, Sebastian Moran (No pairings)
Original Story Rating: G
Original Story Warnings: None
Remix Author: nox_candida
Remix Story Title: Expectation (The Mosaic Remix)
Remix Story Pairings: John Watson, Sebastian Moran (No pairings)
Remix Story Rating: PG
Remix Story Warnings: None
Remix Story Beta: ellieet
Remix Story Britpicker: ellieet
Summary: The universe is a mosaic, a new creation of the remnants of what came before, crafted in heat, tempered by pressure, molded by gravity and mass, by positive and negative charges and quantum particles and dark matter. It reflects and refracts light, bends it and scatters it, and holds solid until it begins to crack, made brittle by cold, until eventually it shatters into ragged pieces, the building blocks which will form something new.
Author’s Note: This is not, strictly speaking, a gift exchange, but you can say it’s something of an homage to lindentreeisle. It will help to be familiar with their work-beyond just the remixed fic-but especially the Push!verse, One in Twenty, and Triune. This story is an experiment, the result of a desire to push my boundaries a bit, but I can’t speak to the result. I hope, at least, that it’s interesting. Many, many thanks to my beta/Britpicker, who was wonderful and gracious in looking this over so quickly.
"Expectation (The Mosaic Remix)"
The universe, they say, begins with a bang.
From a small singularity infinitely dense and hot, the early universe expands rapidly, blowing outward at an inconceivable speed, rushing out into the void with light, heat, pressure, and energy.
There are alternate theories. Some say that the universe is made of strings and other dimensions, and some posit that the universe is in fact, a multiverse--where every single decision causes a split, a new universe for every path not taken.
Other theories--older ones--describe the universe as coming from nothing, willed into existence by a god or being birthed from chaos. Some say that the universe rides through the void on the backs of four elephants, who in turn perch precariously on the back of a giant turtle, and yet others assert that moving from one universe to the next is as simple and commonplace as boarding an aeroplane.
There are an infinite variety of stories, theories, myths, and legends, but they all have two things in common.
All of them are right, and all of them are wrong.
The universe, as they say, begins with a bang, born of instability and chaos, expanding rapidly to fill the void with light, heat, pressure and energy. But it is not exactly an aeroplane or a gem on the backs of elephants and it is not only composed of strings.
The universe is a mosaic, a new creation of the remnants of what came before, crafted in heat, tempered by pressure, molded by gravity and mass, by positive and negative charges and quantum particles and dark matter. It reflects and refracts light, bends it and scatters it, and holds solid until it begins to crack, made brittle by cold, until eventually it shatters into ragged pieces, the building blocks which will form something new.
And so it goes.
The universe explodes, has exploded, and will explode again.
***
The rain is falling heavily, as it has since he arrived in this godforsaken village two days ago. He’s here to do a job, but his fingers slip on the butt of his rifle and his breath is visible in the chill--a steamy white cloud that dissipates into nothing.
It’s no more uncomfortable than any other job he’s done, but there’s something in the air, some sort of electricity that makes his hair stand on end, the skin at the back of his neck prickling because someone is watching.
Someone is coming.
Moran stares through his sight, lines up his target, and he jerks back, hesitates. For a second, for a moment, his vision blurs, as though he’s viewing the scene through a cracked mirror, as though there’s something else there, a shadow or a ghost.
He leans forward and lines up his shot once again.
Breathes in.
Feels the trigger against the pad of his finger...
Breathes out.
And blinks--
***
Between one moment and the next, the scene breaks apart--shattered glass upon stone--and he’s falling, flailing, overtaken by failed masonry, dust, water.
Moran’s drowning, choking, scrambling, gritting his teeth through the throbbing pain of his back, the world upon his shoulders--
And then it stops.
It’s the pain he notices first once the world has been pieced back together, from fragments to a recognisable whole. His entire body aches, but the pain radiating out from his shoulder blades is piercing and sharp, enough to cause him to stumble and clutch at whatever is at hand.
In this case, it's the ruined remains of the stone bridge that has just collapsed on himself and one other.
Moran inhales deeply--trying to hold in his groans and whimpers--and gags in the next moment when he's inadvertently inhaled the dust from concrete, stone, and the spray from the rushing water. He coughs deeply, exacerbating all of his injuries, but especially the one he most fears, the one he can't see.
The other person fumbles around, splashes in the water, breathes hard and heavily from exertion.
One glance up tells him what he already knows: John Watson is still alive and the man's got his gun pointed directly at Moran. He almost approves in a detached way; it’s what he would do, were their roles reversed.
“Gonna shoot me, Watson?”
The man's crest bristles in anger, brown feathers standing erect and puffed out in aggression and fear; his hand, though, remains steady. Moran would be impressed if he weren't cursing himself for how badly this whole job has gone.
“I'm not much for cold-blooded murder, Moran."
He can't help laughing, coughing once again as he does so. He knows all about Watson, of course--the ex-soldier, the ex-flier. Which is to say nothing of the night they first met, at the pool, when his only contact with the other man had been to wrap him up in a bomb.
Oh, but he'd been above the pool, watching and waiting; had he been a lesser man, perhaps he'd have pulled the trigger when the man had flown at Moriarty and wrapped him in a headlock.
But he was not a lesser man, he was damn good at his job, and he'd always had an abundance of patience.
“Besides, I won't be able to get out of here without help.”
Watson grimaces and glances down at his leg, which Moran can see is in a bad way.
It's funny, it really is. "Can't fly and now you can't walk?" Moran laughs, laughs so hard he coughs and chokes, doubles over once more. He takes the opportunity to reach into his boot and retrieve his gun. It's a good job he keeps it there, just for situations like this.
Carefully, he straightens once again, ignores the protest in his back and his shoulder blades as he tries to gingerly shake his feathers out, rid himself of the grit stuck between them. When he’s standing again, he’s got his weapon pointed at Watson, their positions reminiscent of their confrontation minutes earlier, before the entire world had gone to hell around them.
"Should just shoot you," he says casually, still grinning, amused beyond measure at the man’s ruffled feathers. "Like putting a lame dog down."
But Watson holds steady, doesn’t even flinch, and his expressive face turns cold and hard as a frozen sheet of ice. "You'd have to turn the gun on yourself in that case."
The amusement slides off Moran slowly, water off a duck’s feathers.
"How are your wings?" Watson asks quietly.
The implication in those words is sharp, cuts deep. Being a flier has always defined him--it's what made him choose the army, why he was recruited for the SIS, why he excelled at being a sniper, but to have that taken away, to become something less...
It's only through sheer force of will and experience that he hasn't dropped the gun. He holds it steady; he is a soldier, after all.
"You won't be able to tend to them on your own," Watson goes on inexorably, his voice quiet and pitying. It's almost as painful as his back. "And even though I'm no doctor," Watson continues, an unhappy look on his face, "you'll need help tending them."
Moran's eyes are drawn to Watson's shoulders, to the man’s brown and copper wings-though they hardly deserve the term. They droop, feathers sticking out at odd angels where Watson can’t reach them himself. He has to wear a harness--repulsive and unbecoming for a real flier.
Looking at Watson reminds him of the horrified fascination he felt the first time he looked upon a dead bird--one he'd shot down as a young man. He's not able to look away--couldn’t then, either--because the broken wings and broken neck fascinated him while being simultaneously repulsive.
Men like Watson are fascinating and repulsive, men scorned for their wings and then pitied and shunned when even those fail them. He is not like that, will not be like that--
A feeling comes over him for a moment, like being dizzy, like looking into a mirror and seeing two images instead of one.
He wills the vertigo away, lowers his gun but keeps it help loosely in his hand.
Foolishly, Watson does the same, his cold and hard face thawing in relief. This man, this half-man, is no threat. Moran turns his back pointedly, exposes his injuries and inspects their prospects.
Were he uninjured, it would be child's play to reach the small opening, shift some of the rock and concrete, and escape into the open air, but that is not an option. With a deep breath, he carefully climbs up to the opening--ignoring the pain, ignoring the fire along his back and how his wings suddenly hang around him, heavy and awkward. Methodically, silently, he sets to work creating an escape hatch.
The physical work is painful--fuck fuck fuck it hurts it fucking hurts--and slow, but the pain grounds him in his body, wipes his mind of thought, and before long he's created a hole large enough for a single man to climb through.
And he wastes no time in doing so.
“Leaving me to starve to death? Classy."
Moran considers ignoring the other man--the ex-flier, the one whose wings have been clipped--as he has everything else, including the pain, but his own wings feel as heavy as the world, useless and flopping. His back is on fire, probably bleeding, which is yet another thing to consider.
There are no people, the only sound is the rushing water. The moon is high in the sky, peeking out from a cloud bank and casting a sickly, pale light on the flooded landscape. It's impossible to make anything out in the dark and he's too exhausted and too wounded to simply leave.
“Getting some sleep,” he calls down, wincing as he tries to stretch his wings. Unsurprisingly, it’s painful and he instinctively hisses at the burning sensation. “If I like what I see up here come morning, I've got a bullet for you.”
He doesn't go far from the river--there's not much else in this area--but he's able to crouch against a stone a few feet from most of the rubble, one large and heavy enough to not have been carried away by the rush of water.
He closes his eyes, tries to sleep, but all he dreams of is a cracked mirror, and two reflections--two clipped reflections--staring back.
***
”Moran!” a voice calls out angrily, over the noise of the rain, the rush of water.
He blinks, ignores the momentary vertigo, and pulls away from his scope to turn around slowly.
It’s Watson. Not unexpected, but the former army doctor is early. He’s clearly run all the way here, he’s out of breath, lungs heaving, and soaked through his clothes. His short hair is dark, plastered to his head.
Between the torrential downpour, and the raindrops that rebound after hitting the stone bridge, it’s almost like looking at a blurry image, smudged and murky at the edges. It reminds him of the desert, of heat shimmer and mirages.
They stand at opposite ends of the bridge; it’s not a particularly long bridge, but it’s all he can do to hear anything over the sound of water.
Watson isn’t speaking; instead, he’s reaching into his pocket, slipping out his gun.
Points it at Moran.
Should be careful with that, he thinks. All this water will jam it, make it useless.
“Let’s go,” Watson yells at him, gestures with the gun, as though he expects Moran to come quietly. He’d laugh in the man’s face if he were any closer.
Watson steps closer, drifts towards the middle of the bridge, his image wavering out of focus from the rain, and because Moran is breathing faster, his breathing puffing in front of his face and obscuring anything he glances at.
He steps closer, towards the middle and soon they’re close, guns drawn, the heavy silence stifled by all of the noise.
Watson is huffing, still trying to catch his breath. “It’s over, Moran.”
Moran laughs, the crack of it so sharp it pierces the waves of sound around them. He steps closer, draws himself up, holds himself steady.
He breathes, and the steam floats before his eyes like tiny puffs of--
***
“Smoke?” Moran offers, holding out a carton of cigarettes that has seen better days. It’s all he has left; the flood has taken everything else.
Watson demurs in what he probably thinks is a polite way, but Moran reads the unspoken disgust in his eyes and the line of his jaw. Well, no matter. Leaves more for him.
He fishes his lucky lighter out from his pocket, clicks it three times--damn all this fucking water--before it finally spits into life and catches on an only slightly crumpled cig.
He makes sure to blow the smoke towards Watson, amused at the way the doctor’s face twists in irritation and revulsion.
Moran leans back to make himself slightly more comfortable, his head resting against the cool glass of the third-story window in the ancient stone building they’ve taken refuge in. They’d only had a brief respite, a small window of opportunity to look for high ground among the washed out roads and destroyed village, and they’d chosen this--a homely bed and breakfast which also happened to be the tallest building they could find.
It’s where they’ve remained--where they’ve been held hostage--for over twenty four hours.
But the trap, the constant rain, has some silver linings. The big one being that--for all they’re stuck here--they’re in no danger from other psychics, or from being hauled in by Division.
“What?” Watson snaps, scowling at the constant tap tap tapping from the other side of the window.
"Did you hate all the insurgents you fought in Afghanistan the way you hate me?" he asks, exhaling more smoke and feeling a vague satisfaction when Watson’s nose twitches. "That must have been fucking exhausting."
“They were different,” Watson replies automatically, brows drawing together in annoyance as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
Moran chuckles, taking another drag. “How about Division? That different?”
Watson is stubbornly silent, his teeth near to grinding together.
“No answer? Let me tell you why: it’s because you know they’re not different.” Moran pauses and savours the hit of nicotine in the cramped, stuffy room. In the silence, the rain picks up speed, the sound growing louder until the pinging of each individual drop is lost in a torrent of sound, a rush of water, pounding mercilessly down until it finds cracks, until it wears away the foundations, until it shatters and destroys everything in its path.
Watson lifts his head, peering up at the ceiling, his stubborn annoyance melting into a brief moment of concern. No surprise there.
“You know what your problem is, Watson?” Moran asks, breaking the brittle silence and inspecting the pieces. Watson holds his tongue, so Moran answers his own question. “It’s just a job.”
Watson barks out a laugh at this, contemptuous. “Just a job?”
“Of course. And I’m damn good at it, which is why I love doing it. It’s not personal.”
“You’re just following orders,” Watson sneers, his lips twitching, eyes mocking.
“We all do it. You, me, the Taliban.” He pauses, adds, “Division,” with something that is part relish and part derision.
“I don’t murder people,” Watson snaps defensively, glaring directly at him for the first time in hours.
“You’ve said that before. What’s the saying? ‘Methinks he doth protest much?’” Moran asks dryly.
Watson is silent, which doesn’t surprise him. He’s read the file on Watson, after all. “What do you call what happened in Djibouti?” he continues, his voice casual, but his eyes intent on Watson’s face. He’s rewarded a moment later when the man’s face goes white and then flushes back to pink. “Or the serial killer cabbie?”
Watson’s eyes shift away and his head turns a moment later. Then, and only then, does Moran allow himself a smirk. “You follow Vernet around like a dog and injure people when he tells you they deserve it and Stitch them back up when he tells you to.” He shrugs and leans his head back against the window. “We’ve got the same fucking job.”
“And is that all you are to Moriarty? A dog? Make people Bleed when he sics you on them?” Watson fires back, whip quick and sharp, aiming for the chinks in Moran’s armour.
Moran clenches his jaw reflexively, almost says, It’s not like that--, forces himself to hold still. Shrugs. “He has the plan, I make it happen. Like I said, I love my job.”
He spots the glint in the other man’s eye; what little light there is in the room flashes through those dark irises, bending as though in the presence of gravity. “My gran bred border collies when I was a kid.” A short pause, weighty. “That was basically their view of the world, too.”
Moran glares, narrows his eyes. He can feel his blood pounding through his veins, can feel the itch, the tingle at the back of his neck. His ability, a song in his blood, a forest fire raging through his body, calls to him, it would be so easy--
The soft voice whispers in his ear, Do it do it do it, make them Bleed, make them all--
The feeling of a small, cool hand wrapping itself around his wrist wrenches the voice away, like being dragged from a warm pool of water into the freezing cold. He gasps and pulls away, but the grip holds fast.
Watson faces him, serious and grim, something knowing in his dark eyes. “He’s still Pushing you,” he says, “and he’s not even here.”
Moran snarls and jerks his arm free, the song reaching a crescendo in his blood, in his lungs, his eyes narrowing in preparation.
The grip tightens, just a bit, twists. “You can make me Bleed,” John Watson tells him, promises him, “but I can make you bleed, too.”
The statement, the truth of it, drops into his brain like rain, water dousing fire.
Moran breaks the hold and stands abruptly, glaring down at this tiny ex-army doctor, this Stitch. “Fuck you,” he growls and stomps his way down the stairs, ignoring the man he’s left behind, ignoring the song that’s ebbing away from him, ignoring the soft whispers that echo in his head, make his hair stand on end and cause his neck to itch.
He holds perfectly still and empties himself of any thought.
He listens to the rain and lets the water drown out everything else.
***
Watson holds steady before him, the water breaking around him--around them, held above the torrent below by solid stone.
Moran’s target has probably moved on, but he has a new one, conveniently located right in front of him.
He grins, shows his teeth, and steadies his rifle. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he comments, his gaze narrowing in on Watson, on his chest. The right side. A matching set.
“Only if the fish had a gun, too,” Watson responds, his hands steady, gaze dark. “More of a Mexican standoff, really.”
They hold, still as statues, as stone among the movement, the chaos that surrounds them. And then there’s a distant roll, like thunder, rumbling continuously, growing louder.
The cracking sound is sharp, puts him in mind of the report of a gun, thinks for a moment that one of them has, in fact, pulled the trigger.
But Watson’s face flinches and he begins to look uncomfortable, and Moran knows he hasn’t fired--
Crack!
He doesn’t know what the sound is, but the thunder has gone from rumbling to roaring, never stopping, drawing nearer, and he sees something like fear on Watson’s face.
They hold their positions, a game of chicken, a cold war in freezing rain. Two sides, waiting to see who will crack, who will break first.
Snap--
***
The fire in the grate snaps and pops, loud in a silence that looms heavy in the room.
There’s little food, no amenities, and precious little warmth in the house, but at least--after four full days of rain--its mostly let up.
The dark clouds that roll overhead are interspersed with patches of pale blue sky, and the precipitation that does fall is soft, almost suspended in the chilly air.
All in all, it would be an encouraging sign, if either of them were in any state to appreciate it.
Watson sits slumped near the fireplace, his limbs trembling. Moran has seen, over the last few days, his eyes go glassy, the way that Watson curls into a ball directly in front of the fire, as if proximity to warmth is a shield against chill, against fever, and a body that is spiraling out of his control.
It’d be amusing to watch the symptoms progress, to watch Watson suffer without even having to lift a finger himself, but he can’t really enjoy it when he’s experiencing the exact same thing.
His entire body is shuddering with cold and his skin feels clammy; he’s taken paracetamol--they both have--but the medicine is weak in the face of such strong withdrawal. His fingers itch, and his skin crawls, because he wants, he needs--
“Fuck,” Watson groans, the sound of his voice cracked and wrecked, something needy and dark lurking underneath the pain.
Moran isn’t able to bite back the groan that escapes him. Watson has perfectly described his entire worldview, loathe as he is to admit it.
“Food,” the other mumbles, but makes no effort to get up.
“What of it?”
“Can’t decide if we need to eat it, or be it,” Watson huffs, almost too far gone to care that he’s relaxed his guard for just a moment.
“Be it.”
Watson sends him a dark look, visibly pulling himself back in, raising his defences. “And if they were here, the Cold War would end.”
Moran grunts but doesn’t respond. He can’t bring himself to tell the little doctor that he’s right about something.
But Watson’s body turns towards him, curiosity sparking a little life back into his face, a more human expression than either of them has managed in a few hours. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?” He pauses, gathers his strength, cracks visible in his armour. “Anyone would expect you to.”
Moran hunches into himself further, buys himself time. How to explain that were he to sit up, were hold himself ready and steady his breathing--his precious gun in his hands--that he would literally fall to pieces, that he would break apart and no one would be able to fit him back together again. Which is to say nothing of what the recoil would do to him.
He knows he’s further along than the other man, that he’s been without his Ina for far longer, that he was already starting to show the signs of withdrawal during the confrontation on the bridge four days ago.
Finally, he simply shrugs, stares into the fire and lets Watson draw his own conclusions.
“Is it harder,” Watson says slowly, musingly, voice a bit slurred, “to kill someone when you’ve met and lived with them?”
Of course, trust the naive moron to draw exactly the wrong ones.
If he were feeling himself, if he weren’t currently suffering from the effects of an elevated red blood cell count--
If he weren’t, in fact, desperate for his Ina--
Then perhaps he’d scoff, or ridicule the other man. Of course the good doctor goes straight to his worst fear--platonic bonding with his enemy-when he should be worried about much more important things, like surviving their hellish symptoms in peace with as little interaction as possible.
But he doesn’t have the energy to ridicule. “Is it harder to hate me having met and lived with me?”
The pause that follows is perhaps longer than Watson realises. He makes up for it with vehemence. “No.”
Moran manages a smirk and tilts his head to stare over at Watson. It’s a surprise to realise how close they are, how they’ve both taken to leaning towards the warmth of the fire, how they’re both curled in tight to their own bodies as if to conserve any heat they can.
As if to ward off the sickness that is creeping upon--preying upon--both of them.
It’s like looking into dark glass--watching Watson’s face, his brows knit, the light catching perspiration by his hairline, the unhealthy flush colouring his cheeks. It’s like seeing an unrecognisable reflection staring back at him, mimicking him, an unsettling parody of looking into a mirror.
His eyes slide away from the sight and his fingers itch for a smoke, for something to obscure the image seared by fire into his brain, something he can’t escape even by closing his eyes. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to,” he says, fine lines appearing in the silence that hovers over them, cocoons them in this abandoned village. His words settle about him like a blanket, warm and safe as Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny to a child.
He doesn’t think of a younger man, fresh out of the army, of another young man with dark eyes that sparkle, that coruscate like diamonds, hard and unyielding and ever so tempting.
Instead he opens his mouth, intending to say more, but a wave of weariness breaks over him, submerges him. He closes his mouth.
Watson hums and doesn’t move and they stay there, suspended in place, held frozen in front of the fire.
Time stops, or perhaps it only feels that way, the hush a harbinger of something different. The mist hangs suspended in the air outside, visible through the window, while Watson holds himself still with nary a muscle twitch and Moran feels his body slow, rest, as though his sympathetic nervous system is tied into the very air around him.
His tongue itches in his mouth, words building on the back of it tasting bitter, the others crowded to the side sour, forced aside by some unfamiliar flavour right near his lips, right on the tip--
But it’s washed away, broken apart and swept under a rug at the sound of rotors outside.
***
Hold position, don’t move a muscle despite the water that is roaring, thundering down the hillside and straight for the bridge. They are hardly two feet from each other, muscles tense, jaws tight, arms steady--
The water crescendos around them--loud and chaotic--
Watson’s eyes widen, for a moment, and he feels dizzy as he stares into their depths, no longer seeing the gun--
An almighty crack!
Fine lines around them, markers of his age, of his experience, not unlike the ones he stares into in hotel en suites while washing his hands--
Centuries old masonry, weakened by centuries of water and ivy and erosion--gives way--
He breathes, blinks--
The world fractures into pieces.
He’s falling.
***
The work is nearly finished now, fine cracks and imperfections beginning to show, to widen, the whole worn down by time, gravity weaker than it once was as everything continues to expand and move away.
Until one moment, it’s smashed, scattered. Already, new fragments of glass catch and reflect the light, fuse together under pressure and heat. Once again, something entirely new is created from something old.
The look of it will change, the rules will be different, but the building blocks--their essentials, their component pieces-those things will remain the same. The universe has its own rules and expectations, favours some combinations of elements and never uses others.
Amongst the new, some string of itself remains recognisable-as it always does--regardless of the form it takes.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Remember to leave feedback for both authors!
Original Story Title: Expectation
Original Story Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/213541
Original Story Pairings: John Watson, Sebastian Moran (No pairings)
Original Story Rating: G
Original Story Warnings: None
Remix Author: nox_candida
Remix Story Title: Expectation (The Mosaic Remix)
Remix Story Pairings: John Watson, Sebastian Moran (No pairings)
Remix Story Rating: PG
Remix Story Warnings: None
Remix Story Beta: ellieet
Remix Story Britpicker: ellieet
Summary: The universe is a mosaic, a new creation of the remnants of what came before, crafted in heat, tempered by pressure, molded by gravity and mass, by positive and negative charges and quantum particles and dark matter. It reflects and refracts light, bends it and scatters it, and holds solid until it begins to crack, made brittle by cold, until eventually it shatters into ragged pieces, the building blocks which will form something new.
Author’s Note: This is not, strictly speaking, a gift exchange, but you can say it’s something of an homage to lindentreeisle. It will help to be familiar with their work-beyond just the remixed fic-but especially the Push!verse, One in Twenty, and Triune. This story is an experiment, the result of a desire to push my boundaries a bit, but I can’t speak to the result. I hope, at least, that it’s interesting. Many, many thanks to my beta/Britpicker, who was wonderful and gracious in looking this over so quickly.
"Expectation (The Mosaic Remix)"
The universe, they say, begins with a bang.
From a small singularity infinitely dense and hot, the early universe expands rapidly, blowing outward at an inconceivable speed, rushing out into the void with light, heat, pressure, and energy.
There are alternate theories. Some say that the universe is made of strings and other dimensions, and some posit that the universe is in fact, a multiverse--where every single decision causes a split, a new universe for every path not taken.
Other theories--older ones--describe the universe as coming from nothing, willed into existence by a god or being birthed from chaos. Some say that the universe rides through the void on the backs of four elephants, who in turn perch precariously on the back of a giant turtle, and yet others assert that moving from one universe to the next is as simple and commonplace as boarding an aeroplane.
There are an infinite variety of stories, theories, myths, and legends, but they all have two things in common.
All of them are right, and all of them are wrong.
The universe, as they say, begins with a bang, born of instability and chaos, expanding rapidly to fill the void with light, heat, pressure and energy. But it is not exactly an aeroplane or a gem on the backs of elephants and it is not only composed of strings.
The universe is a mosaic, a new creation of the remnants of what came before, crafted in heat, tempered by pressure, molded by gravity and mass, by positive and negative charges and quantum particles and dark matter. It reflects and refracts light, bends it and scatters it, and holds solid until it begins to crack, made brittle by cold, until eventually it shatters into ragged pieces, the building blocks which will form something new.
And so it goes.
The universe explodes, has exploded, and will explode again.
***
The rain is falling heavily, as it has since he arrived in this godforsaken village two days ago. He’s here to do a job, but his fingers slip on the butt of his rifle and his breath is visible in the chill--a steamy white cloud that dissipates into nothing.
It’s no more uncomfortable than any other job he’s done, but there’s something in the air, some sort of electricity that makes his hair stand on end, the skin at the back of his neck prickling because someone is watching.
Someone is coming.
Moran stares through his sight, lines up his target, and he jerks back, hesitates. For a second, for a moment, his vision blurs, as though he’s viewing the scene through a cracked mirror, as though there’s something else there, a shadow or a ghost.
He leans forward and lines up his shot once again.
Breathes in.
Feels the trigger against the pad of his finger...
Breathes out.
And blinks--
***
Between one moment and the next, the scene breaks apart--shattered glass upon stone--and he’s falling, flailing, overtaken by failed masonry, dust, water.
Moran’s drowning, choking, scrambling, gritting his teeth through the throbbing pain of his back, the world upon his shoulders--
And then it stops.
It’s the pain he notices first once the world has been pieced back together, from fragments to a recognisable whole. His entire body aches, but the pain radiating out from his shoulder blades is piercing and sharp, enough to cause him to stumble and clutch at whatever is at hand.
In this case, it's the ruined remains of the stone bridge that has just collapsed on himself and one other.
Moran inhales deeply--trying to hold in his groans and whimpers--and gags in the next moment when he's inadvertently inhaled the dust from concrete, stone, and the spray from the rushing water. He coughs deeply, exacerbating all of his injuries, but especially the one he most fears, the one he can't see.
The other person fumbles around, splashes in the water, breathes hard and heavily from exertion.
One glance up tells him what he already knows: John Watson is still alive and the man's got his gun pointed directly at Moran. He almost approves in a detached way; it’s what he would do, were their roles reversed.
“Gonna shoot me, Watson?”
The man's crest bristles in anger, brown feathers standing erect and puffed out in aggression and fear; his hand, though, remains steady. Moran would be impressed if he weren't cursing himself for how badly this whole job has gone.
“I'm not much for cold-blooded murder, Moran."
He can't help laughing, coughing once again as he does so. He knows all about Watson, of course--the ex-soldier, the ex-flier. Which is to say nothing of the night they first met, at the pool, when his only contact with the other man had been to wrap him up in a bomb.
Oh, but he'd been above the pool, watching and waiting; had he been a lesser man, perhaps he'd have pulled the trigger when the man had flown at Moriarty and wrapped him in a headlock.
But he was not a lesser man, he was damn good at his job, and he'd always had an abundance of patience.
“Besides, I won't be able to get out of here without help.”
Watson grimaces and glances down at his leg, which Moran can see is in a bad way.
It's funny, it really is. "Can't fly and now you can't walk?" Moran laughs, laughs so hard he coughs and chokes, doubles over once more. He takes the opportunity to reach into his boot and retrieve his gun. It's a good job he keeps it there, just for situations like this.
Carefully, he straightens once again, ignores the protest in his back and his shoulder blades as he tries to gingerly shake his feathers out, rid himself of the grit stuck between them. When he’s standing again, he’s got his weapon pointed at Watson, their positions reminiscent of their confrontation minutes earlier, before the entire world had gone to hell around them.
"Should just shoot you," he says casually, still grinning, amused beyond measure at the man’s ruffled feathers. "Like putting a lame dog down."
But Watson holds steady, doesn’t even flinch, and his expressive face turns cold and hard as a frozen sheet of ice. "You'd have to turn the gun on yourself in that case."
The amusement slides off Moran slowly, water off a duck’s feathers.
"How are your wings?" Watson asks quietly.
The implication in those words is sharp, cuts deep. Being a flier has always defined him--it's what made him choose the army, why he was recruited for the SIS, why he excelled at being a sniper, but to have that taken away, to become something less...
It's only through sheer force of will and experience that he hasn't dropped the gun. He holds it steady; he is a soldier, after all.
"You won't be able to tend to them on your own," Watson goes on inexorably, his voice quiet and pitying. It's almost as painful as his back. "And even though I'm no doctor," Watson continues, an unhappy look on his face, "you'll need help tending them."
Moran's eyes are drawn to Watson's shoulders, to the man’s brown and copper wings-though they hardly deserve the term. They droop, feathers sticking out at odd angels where Watson can’t reach them himself. He has to wear a harness--repulsive and unbecoming for a real flier.
Looking at Watson reminds him of the horrified fascination he felt the first time he looked upon a dead bird--one he'd shot down as a young man. He's not able to look away--couldn’t then, either--because the broken wings and broken neck fascinated him while being simultaneously repulsive.
Men like Watson are fascinating and repulsive, men scorned for their wings and then pitied and shunned when even those fail them. He is not like that, will not be like that--
A feeling comes over him for a moment, like being dizzy, like looking into a mirror and seeing two images instead of one.
He wills the vertigo away, lowers his gun but keeps it help loosely in his hand.
Foolishly, Watson does the same, his cold and hard face thawing in relief. This man, this half-man, is no threat. Moran turns his back pointedly, exposes his injuries and inspects their prospects.
Were he uninjured, it would be child's play to reach the small opening, shift some of the rock and concrete, and escape into the open air, but that is not an option. With a deep breath, he carefully climbs up to the opening--ignoring the pain, ignoring the fire along his back and how his wings suddenly hang around him, heavy and awkward. Methodically, silently, he sets to work creating an escape hatch.
The physical work is painful--fuck fuck fuck it hurts it fucking hurts--and slow, but the pain grounds him in his body, wipes his mind of thought, and before long he's created a hole large enough for a single man to climb through.
And he wastes no time in doing so.
“Leaving me to starve to death? Classy."
Moran considers ignoring the other man--the ex-flier, the one whose wings have been clipped--as he has everything else, including the pain, but his own wings feel as heavy as the world, useless and flopping. His back is on fire, probably bleeding, which is yet another thing to consider.
There are no people, the only sound is the rushing water. The moon is high in the sky, peeking out from a cloud bank and casting a sickly, pale light on the flooded landscape. It's impossible to make anything out in the dark and he's too exhausted and too wounded to simply leave.
“Getting some sleep,” he calls down, wincing as he tries to stretch his wings. Unsurprisingly, it’s painful and he instinctively hisses at the burning sensation. “If I like what I see up here come morning, I've got a bullet for you.”
He doesn't go far from the river--there's not much else in this area--but he's able to crouch against a stone a few feet from most of the rubble, one large and heavy enough to not have been carried away by the rush of water.
He closes his eyes, tries to sleep, but all he dreams of is a cracked mirror, and two reflections--two clipped reflections--staring back.
***
”Moran!” a voice calls out angrily, over the noise of the rain, the rush of water.
He blinks, ignores the momentary vertigo, and pulls away from his scope to turn around slowly.
It’s Watson. Not unexpected, but the former army doctor is early. He’s clearly run all the way here, he’s out of breath, lungs heaving, and soaked through his clothes. His short hair is dark, plastered to his head.
Between the torrential downpour, and the raindrops that rebound after hitting the stone bridge, it’s almost like looking at a blurry image, smudged and murky at the edges. It reminds him of the desert, of heat shimmer and mirages.
They stand at opposite ends of the bridge; it’s not a particularly long bridge, but it’s all he can do to hear anything over the sound of water.
Watson isn’t speaking; instead, he’s reaching into his pocket, slipping out his gun.
Points it at Moran.
Should be careful with that, he thinks. All this water will jam it, make it useless.
“Let’s go,” Watson yells at him, gestures with the gun, as though he expects Moran to come quietly. He’d laugh in the man’s face if he were any closer.
Watson steps closer, drifts towards the middle of the bridge, his image wavering out of focus from the rain, and because Moran is breathing faster, his breathing puffing in front of his face and obscuring anything he glances at.
He steps closer, towards the middle and soon they’re close, guns drawn, the heavy silence stifled by all of the noise.
Watson is huffing, still trying to catch his breath. “It’s over, Moran.”
Moran laughs, the crack of it so sharp it pierces the waves of sound around them. He steps closer, draws himself up, holds himself steady.
He breathes, and the steam floats before his eyes like tiny puffs of--
***
“Smoke?” Moran offers, holding out a carton of cigarettes that has seen better days. It’s all he has left; the flood has taken everything else.
Watson demurs in what he probably thinks is a polite way, but Moran reads the unspoken disgust in his eyes and the line of his jaw. Well, no matter. Leaves more for him.
He fishes his lucky lighter out from his pocket, clicks it three times--damn all this fucking water--before it finally spits into life and catches on an only slightly crumpled cig.
He makes sure to blow the smoke towards Watson, amused at the way the doctor’s face twists in irritation and revulsion.
Moran leans back to make himself slightly more comfortable, his head resting against the cool glass of the third-story window in the ancient stone building they’ve taken refuge in. They’d only had a brief respite, a small window of opportunity to look for high ground among the washed out roads and destroyed village, and they’d chosen this--a homely bed and breakfast which also happened to be the tallest building they could find.
It’s where they’ve remained--where they’ve been held hostage--for over twenty four hours.
But the trap, the constant rain, has some silver linings. The big one being that--for all they’re stuck here--they’re in no danger from other psychics, or from being hauled in by Division.
“What?” Watson snaps, scowling at the constant tap tap tapping from the other side of the window.
"Did you hate all the insurgents you fought in Afghanistan the way you hate me?" he asks, exhaling more smoke and feeling a vague satisfaction when Watson’s nose twitches. "That must have been fucking exhausting."
“They were different,” Watson replies automatically, brows drawing together in annoyance as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
Moran chuckles, taking another drag. “How about Division? That different?”
Watson is stubbornly silent, his teeth near to grinding together.
“No answer? Let me tell you why: it’s because you know they’re not different.” Moran pauses and savours the hit of nicotine in the cramped, stuffy room. In the silence, the rain picks up speed, the sound growing louder until the pinging of each individual drop is lost in a torrent of sound, a rush of water, pounding mercilessly down until it finds cracks, until it wears away the foundations, until it shatters and destroys everything in its path.
Watson lifts his head, peering up at the ceiling, his stubborn annoyance melting into a brief moment of concern. No surprise there.
“You know what your problem is, Watson?” Moran asks, breaking the brittle silence and inspecting the pieces. Watson holds his tongue, so Moran answers his own question. “It’s just a job.”
Watson barks out a laugh at this, contemptuous. “Just a job?”
“Of course. And I’m damn good at it, which is why I love doing it. It’s not personal.”
“You’re just following orders,” Watson sneers, his lips twitching, eyes mocking.
“We all do it. You, me, the Taliban.” He pauses, adds, “Division,” with something that is part relish and part derision.
“I don’t murder people,” Watson snaps defensively, glaring directly at him for the first time in hours.
“You’ve said that before. What’s the saying? ‘Methinks he doth protest much?’” Moran asks dryly.
Watson is silent, which doesn’t surprise him. He’s read the file on Watson, after all. “What do you call what happened in Djibouti?” he continues, his voice casual, but his eyes intent on Watson’s face. He’s rewarded a moment later when the man’s face goes white and then flushes back to pink. “Or the serial killer cabbie?”
Watson’s eyes shift away and his head turns a moment later. Then, and only then, does Moran allow himself a smirk. “You follow Vernet around like a dog and injure people when he tells you they deserve it and Stitch them back up when he tells you to.” He shrugs and leans his head back against the window. “We’ve got the same fucking job.”
“And is that all you are to Moriarty? A dog? Make people Bleed when he sics you on them?” Watson fires back, whip quick and sharp, aiming for the chinks in Moran’s armour.
Moran clenches his jaw reflexively, almost says, It’s not like that--, forces himself to hold still. Shrugs. “He has the plan, I make it happen. Like I said, I love my job.”
He spots the glint in the other man’s eye; what little light there is in the room flashes through those dark irises, bending as though in the presence of gravity. “My gran bred border collies when I was a kid.” A short pause, weighty. “That was basically their view of the world, too.”
Moran glares, narrows his eyes. He can feel his blood pounding through his veins, can feel the itch, the tingle at the back of his neck. His ability, a song in his blood, a forest fire raging through his body, calls to him, it would be so easy--
The soft voice whispers in his ear, Do it do it do it, make them Bleed, make them all--
The feeling of a small, cool hand wrapping itself around his wrist wrenches the voice away, like being dragged from a warm pool of water into the freezing cold. He gasps and pulls away, but the grip holds fast.
Watson faces him, serious and grim, something knowing in his dark eyes. “He’s still Pushing you,” he says, “and he’s not even here.”
Moran snarls and jerks his arm free, the song reaching a crescendo in his blood, in his lungs, his eyes narrowing in preparation.
The grip tightens, just a bit, twists. “You can make me Bleed,” John Watson tells him, promises him, “but I can make you bleed, too.”
The statement, the truth of it, drops into his brain like rain, water dousing fire.
Moran breaks the hold and stands abruptly, glaring down at this tiny ex-army doctor, this Stitch. “Fuck you,” he growls and stomps his way down the stairs, ignoring the man he’s left behind, ignoring the song that’s ebbing away from him, ignoring the soft whispers that echo in his head, make his hair stand on end and cause his neck to itch.
He holds perfectly still and empties himself of any thought.
He listens to the rain and lets the water drown out everything else.
***
Watson holds steady before him, the water breaking around him--around them, held above the torrent below by solid stone.
Moran’s target has probably moved on, but he has a new one, conveniently located right in front of him.
He grins, shows his teeth, and steadies his rifle. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he comments, his gaze narrowing in on Watson, on his chest. The right side. A matching set.
“Only if the fish had a gun, too,” Watson responds, his hands steady, gaze dark. “More of a Mexican standoff, really.”
They hold, still as statues, as stone among the movement, the chaos that surrounds them. And then there’s a distant roll, like thunder, rumbling continuously, growing louder.
The cracking sound is sharp, puts him in mind of the report of a gun, thinks for a moment that one of them has, in fact, pulled the trigger.
But Watson’s face flinches and he begins to look uncomfortable, and Moran knows he hasn’t fired--
Crack!
He doesn’t know what the sound is, but the thunder has gone from rumbling to roaring, never stopping, drawing nearer, and he sees something like fear on Watson’s face.
They hold their positions, a game of chicken, a cold war in freezing rain. Two sides, waiting to see who will crack, who will break first.
Snap--
***
The fire in the grate snaps and pops, loud in a silence that looms heavy in the room.
There’s little food, no amenities, and precious little warmth in the house, but at least--after four full days of rain--its mostly let up.
The dark clouds that roll overhead are interspersed with patches of pale blue sky, and the precipitation that does fall is soft, almost suspended in the chilly air.
All in all, it would be an encouraging sign, if either of them were in any state to appreciate it.
Watson sits slumped near the fireplace, his limbs trembling. Moran has seen, over the last few days, his eyes go glassy, the way that Watson curls into a ball directly in front of the fire, as if proximity to warmth is a shield against chill, against fever, and a body that is spiraling out of his control.
It’d be amusing to watch the symptoms progress, to watch Watson suffer without even having to lift a finger himself, but he can’t really enjoy it when he’s experiencing the exact same thing.
His entire body is shuddering with cold and his skin feels clammy; he’s taken paracetamol--they both have--but the medicine is weak in the face of such strong withdrawal. His fingers itch, and his skin crawls, because he wants, he needs--
“Fuck,” Watson groans, the sound of his voice cracked and wrecked, something needy and dark lurking underneath the pain.
Moran isn’t able to bite back the groan that escapes him. Watson has perfectly described his entire worldview, loathe as he is to admit it.
“Food,” the other mumbles, but makes no effort to get up.
“What of it?”
“Can’t decide if we need to eat it, or be it,” Watson huffs, almost too far gone to care that he’s relaxed his guard for just a moment.
“Be it.”
Watson sends him a dark look, visibly pulling himself back in, raising his defences. “And if they were here, the Cold War would end.”
Moran grunts but doesn’t respond. He can’t bring himself to tell the little doctor that he’s right about something.
But Watson’s body turns towards him, curiosity sparking a little life back into his face, a more human expression than either of them has managed in a few hours. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?” He pauses, gathers his strength, cracks visible in his armour. “Anyone would expect you to.”
Moran hunches into himself further, buys himself time. How to explain that were he to sit up, were hold himself ready and steady his breathing--his precious gun in his hands--that he would literally fall to pieces, that he would break apart and no one would be able to fit him back together again. Which is to say nothing of what the recoil would do to him.
He knows he’s further along than the other man, that he’s been without his Ina for far longer, that he was already starting to show the signs of withdrawal during the confrontation on the bridge four days ago.
Finally, he simply shrugs, stares into the fire and lets Watson draw his own conclusions.
“Is it harder,” Watson says slowly, musingly, voice a bit slurred, “to kill someone when you’ve met and lived with them?”
Of course, trust the naive moron to draw exactly the wrong ones.
If he were feeling himself, if he weren’t currently suffering from the effects of an elevated red blood cell count--
If he weren’t, in fact, desperate for his Ina--
Then perhaps he’d scoff, or ridicule the other man. Of course the good doctor goes straight to his worst fear--platonic bonding with his enemy-when he should be worried about much more important things, like surviving their hellish symptoms in peace with as little interaction as possible.
But he doesn’t have the energy to ridicule. “Is it harder to hate me having met and lived with me?”
The pause that follows is perhaps longer than Watson realises. He makes up for it with vehemence. “No.”
Moran manages a smirk and tilts his head to stare over at Watson. It’s a surprise to realise how close they are, how they’ve both taken to leaning towards the warmth of the fire, how they’re both curled in tight to their own bodies as if to conserve any heat they can.
As if to ward off the sickness that is creeping upon--preying upon--both of them.
It’s like looking into dark glass--watching Watson’s face, his brows knit, the light catching perspiration by his hairline, the unhealthy flush colouring his cheeks. It’s like seeing an unrecognisable reflection staring back at him, mimicking him, an unsettling parody of looking into a mirror.
His eyes slide away from the sight and his fingers itch for a smoke, for something to obscure the image seared by fire into his brain, something he can’t escape even by closing his eyes. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to,” he says, fine lines appearing in the silence that hovers over them, cocoons them in this abandoned village. His words settle about him like a blanket, warm and safe as Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny to a child.
He doesn’t think of a younger man, fresh out of the army, of another young man with dark eyes that sparkle, that coruscate like diamonds, hard and unyielding and ever so tempting.
Instead he opens his mouth, intending to say more, but a wave of weariness breaks over him, submerges him. He closes his mouth.
Watson hums and doesn’t move and they stay there, suspended in place, held frozen in front of the fire.
Time stops, or perhaps it only feels that way, the hush a harbinger of something different. The mist hangs suspended in the air outside, visible through the window, while Watson holds himself still with nary a muscle twitch and Moran feels his body slow, rest, as though his sympathetic nervous system is tied into the very air around him.
His tongue itches in his mouth, words building on the back of it tasting bitter, the others crowded to the side sour, forced aside by some unfamiliar flavour right near his lips, right on the tip--
But it’s washed away, broken apart and swept under a rug at the sound of rotors outside.
***
Hold position, don’t move a muscle despite the water that is roaring, thundering down the hillside and straight for the bridge. They are hardly two feet from each other, muscles tense, jaws tight, arms steady--
The water crescendos around them--loud and chaotic--
Watson’s eyes widen, for a moment, and he feels dizzy as he stares into their depths, no longer seeing the gun--
An almighty crack!
Fine lines around them, markers of his age, of his experience, not unlike the ones he stares into in hotel en suites while washing his hands--
Centuries old masonry, weakened by centuries of water and ivy and erosion--gives way--
He breathes, blinks--
The world fractures into pieces.
He’s falling.
***
The work is nearly finished now, fine cracks and imperfections beginning to show, to widen, the whole worn down by time, gravity weaker than it once was as everything continues to expand and move away.
Until one moment, it’s smashed, scattered. Already, new fragments of glass catch and reflect the light, fuse together under pressure and heat. Once again, something entirely new is created from something old.
The look of it will change, the rules will be different, but the building blocks--their essentials, their component pieces-those things will remain the same. The universe has its own rules and expectations, favours some combinations of elements and never uses others.
Amongst the new, some string of itself remains recognisable-as it always does--regardless of the form it takes.
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