010 - unreal city (wip)

[vvvvv]

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”


Sherlock Holmes has been a ghost for as long as he can remember. It isn't that he's circumstantially corporeal, at least not always; that would be normal, as ghosts go, and therefore bearable. It has, on the contrary, far more to do with the fact that people have the irritating tendency to look right through him. Things never start that way, he'd have plenty more to worry about if they did, but they tend to culminate there. It takes only a magic word, an utterance of variable morphology and semantics but one which ultimately effects a transformation, a sudden shift from worthwhile to absolute prat, which, eventually, when one has transformed enough people, is as good as being dead, because nobody listens to them either.

It happens, therefore, or it happened, for a very long time, that that other sort of ghosthood was the least surreal thing about his life. Even the first time, which stands out vividly in his memory: nursing a scraped knee on the sidewalk at age six, staring with intent curiosity at the little beads of blood welling up from the abraded flesh, picking with one dirty fingernail a tiny stone which had become embedded there. His brow had furrowed and his mouth screwed up at how it stung, but he'd been very brave, which had instilled in him a quiet satisfaction that left him content to sit, sun warming his dark, mussed curls, lost in whatever childish conceptions of blood and plasma and lymph which have themselves been lost to time and the necessity of cognitive efficiency. And then there had come a ruffling of his sun-warmed hair, a whuffling that couldn't possibly have been a breeze; breezes never smelled like that, not on that particular stretch of sidewalk, and they certainly weren't warm and wet and notably canine, and as the empty space sniffed curiously at a child which was not there, Sherlock himself had felt marginally less alone. It made him bold, which was even better than brave, and so he reached out to touch, to work his fingers into soft fur (he was imagining it long, and russet, and very, very warm). Perhaps it was true. Sherlock was never afforded the opportunity to find out: at that faint brush of his hand, something Else grabbed him, something notably Other, something as invisible as the ghost-dog sniffing (no doubt in puzzlement) at its ghost-boy, and though it had no texture or smell or taste and though he could not see it Sherlock had felt his heart begin to pound, and pulled away from the space between, which pulled at him. It vanished with the breaking of contact and then, only then, did he run home weeping. His head had never hurt so badly before.

Ultimately it had taken him years to come to terms with the Thing, that malevolent but unsentient monstrosity that lurked at the edges of his own ghosthood, crept in in the moments at which he'd catch a whiff of sweat and perfume on an empty sidewalk, the sensation of proximity to a body that couldn't possibly occupy the space it seemed half-inclined to do. At first he'd thought himself mad, then decided on it as a certainty, which had made the affair easier. Indulging his own madness harmed no one, himself least of all -- it gave him something to do, and God knows he'd grown bored young. Younger than most.

The rest of the memories are tied to snatches of realisation. The itchy sensation of grass against the back of his neck as he'd lay out in a field, avoiding home because home meant normalcy, and pretending to it. Above him, beyond even the handful of samaras, recently liberated from the boughs of trees to float luminescent up into the air, whales dive. The seeds will rise and then flutter back down to Earth, collecting in gutters, forming constellations on the streets, but hardly any of them taking root. The whales only fall when they die. One dives abruptly, down through the collecting clouds, the impending gloom split by the trails of condensation dragged along like its spread fins. That's the memory. The realisation followed: dog, perfume, the stray brush of some unintentionally wayward body part... perhaps they were dragged along by something larger than themselves, like the whales pulling above to below as they dive, dive to sing their exultant, barely-audible song, rattling in Sherlock's lungs like it rattles windowpanes on lazy mornings.

After a while he'd learned to sense it coming. It was no mystical thing; he'd learned to read people and he'd learned to read circumstances, a particular set of variables coming towards a ripeness, a waiting opportunity. At thirteen, considering himself sufficiently grown as to weather what might come, he'd seized the opportunity that had been buzzing at the back of his head. Deliberately reaching for the joining of things, that not-quite-vapour trail, was like biting on tinfoil. He'd pushed, he'd pulled, he'd found the space and into it he'd stepped.

At first he'd feared himself lost. A psychotic break, a fugue. All of him scrambled by that Thing, that Nothing; it pounded in his head and tore at scraps of him not, he sensed, out of any true malevolence but because that was what it was meant to do, the way running into a wall at full tilt is inevitably going to result in a sudden stop, an impossible inertia. But then he was through, standing dazed and lost on a street very much like the one he'd left, but not at all. The moment of opportunity had passed. His face was wet, upper lip tasted of iron. His nose was bleeding. Someone, he remembers, noticed. Someone to whom he couldn't explain whence he'd come, nor the origin of his nosebleed -- he'd made up a story which in retrospect probably wasn't a very good one at all and sped off, conscious of a growing ache in his head.

It had come fast, that time. So fast. The bleeding, the pain. With increasing desperation, an increasing certainty he was trespassing into a place he didn't belong, a bright and dizzying and beautiful world which nonetheless wanted none of him, he had sought a means to return. Luck let him find it, and he had returned home, bloodied and exultant, breathless. A psychotic break couldn't have hurt him like that... could it? Or was it the hurting that started it?

Ultimately it hadn't mattered. He'd wanted more.

Sherlock, not being an idiot -- being, in fact, at least in his own conception, the precise antithesis of an idiot -- opted to speak of this to no one, least of all the most meddlesome among his small collection of associates (his mother, his father, and most of all Mycroft, who could never be trusted with anything). Part of the concern was proprietary: it was his secret, just as the things he was beginning to discover about people, to see in people, were secrets, and intended to stay that way. After a point he couldn't help seeing them, but he'd certainly dragged himself there, to that point, and was therefore at least in some small way to blame, which made the whole thing easier. If they really wanted to know where he began to disappear to as he began to grow older and more unruly, they could work as he had, and discern it for themselves. They hadn't much to suspect, anyhow. He was moving into his teens, and had never been one to listen, least of all to permit direct supervision when he could avoid it. It hardly mattered -- his jaunts never lasted long. Eventually, though the interval slowly, achingly increased, would come the blood and the blinding pain and the knowledge of the necessity of returning to a place of belonging.

Some winter evening of his sixteenth year, snowfall thick on the ground of the London that wasn't his, an idea occurred to him. An experiment to be made: what might happen to some object, taken from one world and kept in another? The snow on his boots would follow him back, surely, and melt on the mat in his parents' foyer, an improbability kept in a world not its own -- what would happen to it? Would it simply remain, molecular traces slowly dissipating but remaining, somehow fundamentally, there? The laws of conservation of mass and energy should have prevented even Sherlock's jaunts from one reality to another -- and it occurred to him, then and suddenly, that that must be the source of his headaches, and of the bleeding, and that perhaps, the more of this world he absorbed into himself physically, the longer he would be able to tolerate being within it.

The shattered edge of a loose brick still sits on the coffee table of his modest little flat, the first souvenir consciously kept of that world not his own. It had brought with it another discovery: so long as he had it near him, the transition was much easier to make, there at the street corner from which he'd stolen it, as though some sort of locational entanglement still kept it bound to a particular point.

That, really, had been the beginning of it. The ability to travel at his own convenience rather than by happy circumstance had changed everything. Much, he reflects, as this is now perhaps changing everything.

Someone, for the first time in a very long time, is not looking straight through him.

No doubt it has to do with the fact that he has just appeared out of thin air. Perhaps, indeed, that's all of it, part and parcel, pieces and whole, but then there's something in this fellow's eyes which speaks to more than just surprise. Plenty of that, certainly. A certain amount of restraint nonetheless, a watchfulness that's blissfully untempered, a manifest eagerness which isn't wholly eaten up by the sharp disbelief. Sherlock straightens up. He's every right to be here, surely, laws of nature notwithstanding. They watch one another. Sherlock, chemistry student, recognises a fellow traveller of a sort – if the weight of his backpack and the unseasonable lightness of his coat is any indication, a medical student, which means they move in more or less the same circles, if worlds apart, which seems at the moment a small enough thing next to the possibility of exposure. Then again, what is there to expose? That a ghost, a man who can appear out of nothingness, haunts the alleyway behind the Tesco. He may as well have popped out of a skip; they could be ships passing in the night, as it were.

He thinks, in fact, to say as much — I have every right to be here — but maybe it's that the in-between that's still in him or maybe it's just that it doesn't ultimately matter; regardless, what comes out instead is something entirely different.

"A new coat would've been warmer than new shoes though maybe you're relying on your sister to give you another — bit of a risk, given how little you care for this one, but I suppose that's your prerogative." The words buzz as his head buzzes. Sherlock notes with some interest that his lips have gone numb, which isn't wholly surprising. The passing had been a difficult one. His vision swims, lights of cars passing at the end of the road leaving peculiar streaks to dizzying effect, and so he fixes his eyes on the mostly solid form before him. There are plenty of questions. Why here? Why now? But the answer is there in the brightness of this fellow's eyes. Very bright, whites showing, not quite fear, maybe anticipation.

"How d—"

"I'd also advise taking a different shortcut, if expediency is your aim, though I'll own that it probably isn't and I agree that this way is much more interesting; never know who you might—" Sherlock's eyes roll back in his head as the remainder of his vision finally fails, and by the time he's hit the pavement he's already unconscious.

This presents a number of problems. Sherlock is unable to process them at the moment, but if he were, he'd find himself most perturbed. Being seen in the first place was bad, his attempt to get out of the situation vastly worse, and now, worse still, he is entirely at the mercy of the stranger in the dark, and the worse things that lurk between him and home. The very worst thing of all, as it happens, is that John Watson (not that Sherlock knows his name) is a medical student, and there happens to be a hospital very nearby, and so, instilled with the sense of purpose and possibly skewed morality instilled in those who haven't yet got their license but very badly want one, he does his civic duty and, once it becomes apparent that Sherlock can't be woken by the conventional means and therefore won't be answering any of John's numerous questions without the aid of medical intervention, the interloper is checked in.

The first thing Sherlock notices upon awakening is that it is vastly lighter than when he was last conscious. That in and of itself is worrying — reflexively, he dabs at his nose with the back of his hand, checking for blood with a bleary squint. The bracelet on his wrist clarifies things. The hospital gown still more so and he sits up sharply, the motion catching the attention of the stewing fellow at his bedside, whose movement in turn catches Sherlock's.

"You!" He might be able to manage more vehemence were he not still disoriented.

"Me." Indignation. Anger, even. "What I want to know is who the Hell you are and how you knew all that stuff. About me."

Sherlock gives a lazy, sullen shrug, eyes searching the room for a clock. "Facile."

"Been following me? Eh? Talking to my mates?"

That inspires a snort of indignation, a denial on grounds of pride. "Puerile."

"How else could you possibly know?" The stranger's voice has risen in volume, catching Sherlock's attention certainly and one of the attending nurses' most probably. He narrows his eyes.

"Where are my clothes?"

"Nurses have them somewhere. They couldn't figure out what was wrong with you so they put you in a bed." It seems almost reflexive, as though something in Sherlock's tone were sufficient in and of itself to quell some of that quick (or perhaps not so quick; how long has Sherlock been here?) anger.

"Of course they couldn't," he offers dismissively, waving a hand spotted with chemical stains, some of the long fingers striped with bandages.

"I suppose that's something else you know all about, hm?" Ah, there it is, that sullenness. In spite of himself, one corner of Sherlock's mouth creeps upwards.

"Yes." And who'd have expected he'd get a smile in return? It isn't happy, but it is a smile.

"Quantum entanglement," he offers further, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and pushing himself to a stand with an uncomfortable expression which has more to do with the draftiness of the gown than any lingering discomfort. The stranger stands with him, and the aim of the challenging look in his eye is obvious. Sherlock's most disappointed, disbelieving gaze doesn't cow him in the slightest. He makes for the door, and the stranger moves to block him, bracing one hand against the doorjamb and staring up at Sherlock, who stares back, unmoved.

Mostly unmoved. A few more seconds pass and he sighs, pressing his lips together.

"Your coat is old but your shoes are new, suggestive in and of itself but the coat is also too light for the weather, suggesting either that you can't afford a new one or you can't be bothered. As shoes are the more expensive purchase, if you couldn't afford both, you'd be better suited opting for the coat, but you didn't, which implies that you had some alternative method of acquiring one in mind -- or that you didn't care, but if you didn't, then the trousers would be puzzling. Clean, neat, but the coat hasn't been kept in good nick though the wear on the knees and the cut suggest they're of roughly the same generation. Between that and the style it's reasonable to assume you're not particularly fond of it, which suggests that it isn't something you'd have purchased for yourself. It isn't old enough to be secondhand but the fashion is still older than the coat, nostalgia, dangerous thing, indulged in particularly by mothers and siblings. Timeframe is wrong for the former, and in the latter case a sister is more likely. Brothers don't." Don't what? Don't anything. Don't ask.

"As to the route, I know where the student housing is collected and I know where the main road is and I know the routes between the two; given your reaction to me it was reasonable to draw the conclusion I did." Sherlock glances back at the young man blocking the door and raises his eyebrows. "Sherlock Holmes. If you would do me the good service of bringing my things and leaving them behind the skip where you found me I'll consider your debt repaid... whoever you are."

A little wave of the fingers, as though he thinks it's really of no consequence, and it isn't. Not compared to the night ahead, anyway. Sherlock sticks his head through the door and glances around. "Loo."

He looks at the fellow expectantly.

"John Watson." It isn't quite the answer he'd expected to receive and for a moment it gives him pause, bringing to his face an expression of concern, inspired by his growing uncertainty that they're communicating any sort of properly at all (for which, it should be noted, they likely share equal blame, but it isn't Sherlock who's mistaken an order to go away as an attempt at his name).

"No," it's slow, careful, "I mean go, now."

"Why?"

"Because they're going to come in here and they're going to ask you where I've gone."

"And I will tell them. Where are you going?" In spite of himself Sherlock finds a faint pleasure in the challenge inherent in that, and more still in the way it's delivered, the almost cheery matter-of-factness which sounds more dangerous than genuinely cheerful.

"Out the window, and no you won't." He sticks his head out the door, leaning over the arm blocking him from passing through it. No doubt he could break past if he really wanted to, but a scuffle would attract entirely too much attention.

"Why won't I?" Pleasant, accompanied by a little smile and a few sequential blinks, a lick of the lips. Sherlock turns his head just ever so faintly to one side.

"Because then you won't know how I did it. Equally true if you restrain me, incidentally; it'll only get worse." He pushes away from the doorjamb. Pleasant though this conversation is, he has places to be. The aforementioned window, for instance, to which he strides, one hand maintaining the integrity of the hospital gown. He'd like to be remembered with some dignity in spite of the fact that they're never going to see one another again, which is oddly sentimental. Sherlock isn't certain he cares for it. There will be time, though, to consider the problem later, once he's made his getaway, and so he fusses with the locking mechanism, wrestling the aperture open and letting the cold night air in through the screen.

"I really would recommend you go. Have a chat with the nurses about my effects, perhaps; that should be a suitable alibi." His fingers worry at the edge of the screen, but there seems to be no way of detaching it, at which he sighs.