Sherlock's Adventures in Wonderland, 4/6
Dec. 18th, 2010 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofknavesTitle: Sherlock's Adventures in Wonderland
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tripatch
Rating: R
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Kinkmeme prompt, Sherlock Through the Looking Glass. It can be literal, with Sherlock ending up in Wonderland and utterly annoyed by the fact that nothing makes sense, or you could take it in some creepy abstract philosophical sense, like he takes drugs and hallucinates.
Prologue
Chapter 1/6
Chapter 2/6
Chapter 3/6
Sherlock wandered around aimlessly, realising too late that he should have asked where precisely the Hatter lived, but the skull probably wouldn’t have told him anyway. Besides, he reasoned, things seemed to just happen here. He felt as if he were trapped in a very complicated, ridiculous dream. A pinch on his forearm made him wince; not a dream, then, but this grittier London seemed to function very much like one. Abruptly he found himself in front of the building where Carl Powers had met his end. He opened the door, unsurprised to find it unlocked, and went inside.
The pool lapped gently at the sides, sloshing upward and leaving wet stains behind. The fluorescent lighting sent diamonds of light echoing back onto the ceiling, constantly moving and drifting downward without ever reaching the bottom. By the lockers stood an enormous table, absurdly long and ornate, with a tea set to one side. Mrs Hudson sat with a cup in one hand, chatting comfortably with Moriarty, who held his cup with pinky in the air and sported a ridiculous looking top hat on his head. Its brim had a faint silver lustre to it. Strapped to her body were several bombs to which she paid no attention. Their elbows rested on a person sitting between them, face buried in his arms, apparently asleep. The air was crisp with a chemical smell, a faint reek underlying it and tickling Sherlock’s nostrils. He gagged in his mouth, fighting back a wave of nausea.
“Mrs Hudson?”
“Oh, there you are, love,” Mrs Hudson smiled invitingly at him. “Do pull up a chair, Sherlock.”
Without looking, Sherlock grabbed an oversized chair and dragged it to the corner where the small gathering took place.
“Have some tea,” Mrs Hudson gestured to the mismatched sets of delicate china littering the table. Sherlock reached for one and took a sip before spitting it out to the side. He wiped his chin off with his sleeve and looked inside. Instead of the warm brown liquid he had expected, there was tepid pool water. The sharp taste of chlorine lingered in his mouth unappealingly. Dumping the rest of the water back into the pool, he reached for a server, pouring it out and finding it was filled with the same.
“Your hair wants cutting,” Mrs Hudson admonished him, seemingly finding the water in place of tea completely normal. She took a demure sip from her own cup.
He dragged his fingers through the mess of curls atop his head. “I had it cut last week,” he said.
Mrs Hudson ignored the comment, leaning forward and looking at him eagerly. “Why is a Poe like a raven?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sherlock said nonplussed. “That’s not the original riddle.”
“What do you mean the original? I have just now said it.”
“But that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” Moriarty trilled. “You should say what you mean, you know.”
Mrs Hudson nodded in agreement. “Yes, be more specific.”
“I did say what I meant,” Sherlock protested. He threw himself back into the chair. “It’s all the same anyhow.”
“No, no, not at all,” Mrs Hudson admonished him. “That would be like saying that ‘I mean what I say’ rather than ‘I say what I mean’. “
“Or ‘I breathe when I sleep’ rather than ‘I sleep when I breathe’,” Moriarty added with a long giggle. Mrs Hudson joined him with her own tittering laugh. On the table, Sherlock watched with a dim sense of dread as several red dots danced across the surface. They seemed to be chasing each other, this one stopping and turning, then the other fleeing before it. A third joined, and he watched enraptured as it joined the others, sending them both cowering into a corner.
“It’s the very best, you know,” Moriarty remarked.
“Very best what?” Sherlock asked.
“Yes, precisely,” Moriarty nodded, smiling as if Sherlock had just said something very clever indeed. “The very best what you can buy.”
“I don’t understand,” Sherlock said in frustration. He stood to leave, but Mrs Hudson tugged his sleeve.
“No, no, you must answer the riddle before you can go, Sherlock,” she told him.
“I don’t know the answer because there isn’t an answer,” he declared. He crossed his arms in front of him.
“There’s always an answer,” Moriarty told him. “Perhaps not the one you’d like, though.”
He seemed to lose interest, pulling out a mobile from his suit pocket. “Oh, would you look at that?”
“What?” Mrs Hudson asked placidly. She adjusted her elbow on the sleeping fellow, who paid her no mind.
“My phone has died.”
“That’s really very sad,” Mrs Hudson commented. “Perhaps we should hold a service for it?”
“A mobile service? No, not at all,” Moriarty shook his head. “It will wake up soon enough.”
Sherlock lunged for the phone, pulling it out of Moriarty’s hands and staring at it. The numbers had been replaced with tiny little icons that Sherlock couldn’t quite make out, but the screen was still quite functional. He called John’s number, but the line went dead as soon as it connected. He tried again, despairing when it happened again.
“It’s not dead,” Sherlock said. “It’s just not working.”
“Doesn’t that make it dead? What about unemployables? Are they dead, too?”
“This conversation doesn’t make any sense!” Sherlock shouted. He threw the phone back onto the table, listening to the plastic case clatter against the wood. It skittered to a stop by one of the cups. “None of this does! What do dead phones and unemployables have to do with anything?”
“We sleep like the dead,” Moriarty mused aloud. “Do we die when we sleep? Or sleep when we die?”
“I’m leaving,” Sherlock announced.
“But you haven’t heard our song!” Mrs Hudson cried. “I had to sing in front of the Queen, once.”
Moriarty nodded. “It was quite the show,” he told Sherlock. “If I recall, it went something very much like this:
Round and round the stump,
Like a little hare,
One jump, two jump,
Leave you dying there.”
Sherlock stared, gaping, then shook himself. “That’s absolutely horrid,” he said.
Moriarty beamed, quite pleased with himself. “Do you think so? Do you think so really? The Queen thought it was dreadful. Declared that Mrs Hare was to be executed on the spot.” He sighed dreamily. “It was wonderful.”
“Mrs Hare? Mrs Hudson, you mean,” Sherlock corrected him.
“Oh, no, love,” Mrs Hudson said. “Mrs Hare. Mrs October Hare, if you must.”
“I don’t—what?”
“No, no, it’s the very best what, not I don’t what.”
Moriarty leapt from his seat, clapping his hands childishly. “I vote that Sherlock tell us a story. A wonderful one, with explosions and ringing and all sorts of nasty things.”
“I don’t know any,” said Sherlock stiffly.
“Then he will,” Moriarty pointed to the sleeping man. “Wake him, if you would, Mrs Hare.”
“Certainly,” Mrs Hudson said, pinching the man, who did not stir under the abuse. She put a hand on his shoulder and shook him roughly, but the man’s arms slid off the table and he hit the ground, wide eyes open and staring into nothingness. His skin was pale and tinged blue, flaking off in places, and Sherlock realised that the awful smell he noticed when he first arrived had been emanating from his decaying corpse. His body was swollen. Sherlock looked at his feet, an old pair of trainers cutting into the bloated skin of his ankles.
Mrs Hudson frowned. “He’s not waking up, Hatter, dear.”
“Shame,” Moriarty said with a disappointed sigh. “He would have told us a lovely story, but he’s dead to the world.”
“He’s more than that,” Sherlock said, pointing to the body’s vacant expression. “He’s dead, period. I’m leaving.”
He jumped up and ran away. Normally the prospect of a murder would thrill him, but the man had clearly been dead for ages and no one here would help him at all. He had a headache from the pool water and the smell of rotting flesh. Shoving the door open, he ran out onto the street once more, running to the park in hopes of cleansing the terrible stench from his memory.
Chapter 5/6
Chapter 6/6
Author:
tripatchRating: R
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Kinkmeme prompt, Sherlock Through the Looking Glass. It can be literal, with Sherlock ending up in Wonderland and utterly annoyed by the fact that nothing makes sense, or you could take it in some creepy abstract philosophical sense, like he takes drugs and hallucinates.
Prologue
Chapter 1/6
Chapter 2/6
Chapter 3/6
Sherlock wandered around aimlessly, realising too late that he should have asked where precisely the Hatter lived, but the skull probably wouldn’t have told him anyway. Besides, he reasoned, things seemed to just happen here. He felt as if he were trapped in a very complicated, ridiculous dream. A pinch on his forearm made him wince; not a dream, then, but this grittier London seemed to function very much like one. Abruptly he found himself in front of the building where Carl Powers had met his end. He opened the door, unsurprised to find it unlocked, and went inside.
The pool lapped gently at the sides, sloshing upward and leaving wet stains behind. The fluorescent lighting sent diamonds of light echoing back onto the ceiling, constantly moving and drifting downward without ever reaching the bottom. By the lockers stood an enormous table, absurdly long and ornate, with a tea set to one side. Mrs Hudson sat with a cup in one hand, chatting comfortably with Moriarty, who held his cup with pinky in the air and sported a ridiculous looking top hat on his head. Its brim had a faint silver lustre to it. Strapped to her body were several bombs to which she paid no attention. Their elbows rested on a person sitting between them, face buried in his arms, apparently asleep. The air was crisp with a chemical smell, a faint reek underlying it and tickling Sherlock’s nostrils. He gagged in his mouth, fighting back a wave of nausea.
“Mrs Hudson?”
“Oh, there you are, love,” Mrs Hudson smiled invitingly at him. “Do pull up a chair, Sherlock.”
Without looking, Sherlock grabbed an oversized chair and dragged it to the corner where the small gathering took place.
“Have some tea,” Mrs Hudson gestured to the mismatched sets of delicate china littering the table. Sherlock reached for one and took a sip before spitting it out to the side. He wiped his chin off with his sleeve and looked inside. Instead of the warm brown liquid he had expected, there was tepid pool water. The sharp taste of chlorine lingered in his mouth unappealingly. Dumping the rest of the water back into the pool, he reached for a server, pouring it out and finding it was filled with the same.
“Your hair wants cutting,” Mrs Hudson admonished him, seemingly finding the water in place of tea completely normal. She took a demure sip from her own cup.
He dragged his fingers through the mess of curls atop his head. “I had it cut last week,” he said.
Mrs Hudson ignored the comment, leaning forward and looking at him eagerly. “Why is a Poe like a raven?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sherlock said nonplussed. “That’s not the original riddle.”
“What do you mean the original? I have just now said it.”
“But that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” Moriarty trilled. “You should say what you mean, you know.”
Mrs Hudson nodded in agreement. “Yes, be more specific.”
“I did say what I meant,” Sherlock protested. He threw himself back into the chair. “It’s all the same anyhow.”
“No, no, not at all,” Mrs Hudson admonished him. “That would be like saying that ‘I mean what I say’ rather than ‘I say what I mean’. “
“Or ‘I breathe when I sleep’ rather than ‘I sleep when I breathe’,” Moriarty added with a long giggle. Mrs Hudson joined him with her own tittering laugh. On the table, Sherlock watched with a dim sense of dread as several red dots danced across the surface. They seemed to be chasing each other, this one stopping and turning, then the other fleeing before it. A third joined, and he watched enraptured as it joined the others, sending them both cowering into a corner.
“It’s the very best, you know,” Moriarty remarked.
“Very best what?” Sherlock asked.
“Yes, precisely,” Moriarty nodded, smiling as if Sherlock had just said something very clever indeed. “The very best what you can buy.”
“I don’t understand,” Sherlock said in frustration. He stood to leave, but Mrs Hudson tugged his sleeve.
“No, no, you must answer the riddle before you can go, Sherlock,” she told him.
“I don’t know the answer because there isn’t an answer,” he declared. He crossed his arms in front of him.
“There’s always an answer,” Moriarty told him. “Perhaps not the one you’d like, though.”
He seemed to lose interest, pulling out a mobile from his suit pocket. “Oh, would you look at that?”
“What?” Mrs Hudson asked placidly. She adjusted her elbow on the sleeping fellow, who paid her no mind.
“My phone has died.”
“That’s really very sad,” Mrs Hudson commented. “Perhaps we should hold a service for it?”
“A mobile service? No, not at all,” Moriarty shook his head. “It will wake up soon enough.”
Sherlock lunged for the phone, pulling it out of Moriarty’s hands and staring at it. The numbers had been replaced with tiny little icons that Sherlock couldn’t quite make out, but the screen was still quite functional. He called John’s number, but the line went dead as soon as it connected. He tried again, despairing when it happened again.
“It’s not dead,” Sherlock said. “It’s just not working.”
“Doesn’t that make it dead? What about unemployables? Are they dead, too?”
“This conversation doesn’t make any sense!” Sherlock shouted. He threw the phone back onto the table, listening to the plastic case clatter against the wood. It skittered to a stop by one of the cups. “None of this does! What do dead phones and unemployables have to do with anything?”
“We sleep like the dead,” Moriarty mused aloud. “Do we die when we sleep? Or sleep when we die?”
“I’m leaving,” Sherlock announced.
“But you haven’t heard our song!” Mrs Hudson cried. “I had to sing in front of the Queen, once.”
Moriarty nodded. “It was quite the show,” he told Sherlock. “If I recall, it went something very much like this:
Round and round the stump,
Like a little hare,
One jump, two jump,
Leave you dying there.”
Sherlock stared, gaping, then shook himself. “That’s absolutely horrid,” he said.
Moriarty beamed, quite pleased with himself. “Do you think so? Do you think so really? The Queen thought it was dreadful. Declared that Mrs Hare was to be executed on the spot.” He sighed dreamily. “It was wonderful.”
“Mrs Hare? Mrs Hudson, you mean,” Sherlock corrected him.
“Oh, no, love,” Mrs Hudson said. “Mrs Hare. Mrs October Hare, if you must.”
“I don’t—what?”
“No, no, it’s the very best what, not I don’t what.”
Moriarty leapt from his seat, clapping his hands childishly. “I vote that Sherlock tell us a story. A wonderful one, with explosions and ringing and all sorts of nasty things.”
“I don’t know any,” said Sherlock stiffly.
“Then he will,” Moriarty pointed to the sleeping man. “Wake him, if you would, Mrs Hare.”
“Certainly,” Mrs Hudson said, pinching the man, who did not stir under the abuse. She put a hand on his shoulder and shook him roughly, but the man’s arms slid off the table and he hit the ground, wide eyes open and staring into nothingness. His skin was pale and tinged blue, flaking off in places, and Sherlock realised that the awful smell he noticed when he first arrived had been emanating from his decaying corpse. His body was swollen. Sherlock looked at his feet, an old pair of trainers cutting into the bloated skin of his ankles.
Mrs Hudson frowned. “He’s not waking up, Hatter, dear.”
“Shame,” Moriarty said with a disappointed sigh. “He would have told us a lovely story, but he’s dead to the world.”
“He’s more than that,” Sherlock said, pointing to the body’s vacant expression. “He’s dead, period. I’m leaving.”
He jumped up and ran away. Normally the prospect of a murder would thrill him, but the man had clearly been dead for ages and no one here would help him at all. He had a headache from the pool water and the smell of rotting flesh. Shoving the door open, he ran out onto the street once more, running to the park in hopes of cleansing the terrible stench from his memory.
Chapter 5/6
Chapter 6/6
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-20 05:58 am (UTC)And the rest will be up soon, I promise, just had real life intrude, as it so often does.
Thanks again!