Sherlock Holmes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
punchmeitssubtext) wrote2017-02-21 03:34 pm
punchmeitssubtext) wrote2017-02-21 03:34 pm
fantasticverse: a meeting with the queen
"Can I help you?"
The question had long since stopped making Sherlock smile. He stood on the front step, one hand in his coat pocket and the other clutching his violin case, staring down a pleasant American expat he'd never met.
"Summer's Grace Warner?"
The young woman's face quickly attempted to smooth itself over, hiding the pinched look of a stress that made her look old beyond her years. "That'd be me. What can I do for you, sir?"
"Just Sherlock, please." He fixed her with a firm stare, and then said quietly, "I need to speak to Mam'zelle Laveau."
The woman's jaw went slack.
"I'm--I'm sorry, I do Tarot readings and--"
"--and you're the most legitimately talented voodoo practitioner within city limits. You've channeled spirits of similar importance. I need you to do it for me."
Her soft face began to harden against him. "You can't afford that."
"Money is no object."
"It's not just the money--"
"Your mother has small cell lung cancer. Doctors have given her between four and six months to live, but you're not optimistic. Palliative care is expensive and treatment by conventional means impossible, but if you summon Mam'zelle for me you won't need either."
He tipped his head down, slightly, watched Summer's Grace's dark eyes grow enormous as they took in the white mark on his forehead.
She stepped back to let him in.
As most legitimate practitioners did, she had a front room for pure business transactions--just gaudy enough to reassure a nervous, half-skeptical customer who'd decided to blow twenty quid on fortunetelling for whatever reason--and a room for the true magic. Nothing in this room was there to impress anyone except its owner. Everything had a function, a piece of concealed truth ready to be combined with others like it, whether that truth hid in a battered plastic owl or a murky jar containing long-dead flesh.
He moved carefully, respectfully, around the places on the floorboards where he could feel the echoes of veves long since washed away.
There was a tidy little folding table near the door, almost nestled between two bookcases. Summer's Grace snagged a bottle of water from the mini-fridge just outside the door and brought it over with a silver bowl.
"Take off your coat and stay a while," she said, a weary attempt at wry humor. "I'll go get Grilled Cheese."
"Thanks, but I don't need lunch--"
"Oh, no, Grilled Cheese is my python. She'll keep us grounded during the session. Always knows just how hard to squeeze when it's getting to be too much."
"Ah," Sherlock said. He set his violin case on the table and began to peel off his gloves, but made no move to start on his coat.
"That's why I don't do this often. Hard to handle. Tough to feel like I can be sure I'm getting back in one piece." She set the bowl down on the table. "Sit. Please."
He pulled a rickety chair out from its place in front of one of the bookshelves and sat.
"I'll go get you a knife," Summer's Grace said. "And some chalk."
*
Ten minutes later Sherlock sat, with a very friendly and respectful python wrapped gently around his ankles and three drops of blood missing from his right forefinger, across the table from the long-dead and highly-respected Marie Laveau. She hadn't changed the face she currently borrowed, except for the eyes--which were now hazel, with a fine ring of blue at the center of the iris.
"Sweet William," Mam'zelle said, giving him a very thorough once-over. "We meet again. I'm still waiting for that song you promised me."
By way of reply he opened the violin case, turned it to show her the Stradivarius with its single golden string.
"It's coming undone. I have to know why."
Mam'zelle Laveau cocked one of her host's eyebrows, smiled with the strange confidence of the long-dead.
"Told you it couldn't be undone by magic."
"Then what happened?"
"You know what happened," she said, almost fondly.
And he did know. Somehow showing John what he really was had given him enough of himself back to heal the tremor in John's hand, to sense the magic part of the world around him more strongly.
"Why?" he asked.
She sighed, a sigh a hundred years too old and knowing for Summer's Grace Warner.
"They gave you a puzzle you can solve. Except the puzzle's how to use the heart you've got. Humans love like nothing else in creation, sweet William, and whoever put this spell on you knows that. The more human you are, the more yourself you are. Lighting that thing up means getting your own light back."
Something in his empty chest gnawed and whispered.
"Then the other three strings?"
"Three hearts like yours." She glanced down at the bowl. Shadows moved inside it. "You found one. You trust somebody, as much as you trust what you are. That's enough. Give deeply and you get back forever."
A kind of cold that was both dread and anger started to uncoil at the base of his spine.
"The others?"
Mam'zelle's gaze flicked down to the water. He could barely make out the shadow of something flying, like a bird passing over them, and a distant slim figure that looked like--
"That's not right," Sherlock said, sharply.
Again that sigh, a breath that carried the whispers of the long-dead like a chord of quiet laments.
"No kind of magic can make a thing happen before its time is right," she said. "Or after its time has passed."
In his mind, a cloud covered the moon, put itself between him and clear light.
His whole life he had been a freak, caught between two worlds, with a power he'd been told could bring people joy but that never seemed to make anyone close to him happy. Ten like him in the world, and he'd never met a single one of them; nearly thirty years of mortal life, and only now did someone look at him as a friend before he saw the detective or the chemist or the healing horn. And there was an old panic in him somewhere deep, the shape of a cycle that haunted him: no one stays for long.
Sherlock had brilliance and a mark on his forehead and a heart that lived outside of his chest. He had not pursued power, which might attract at least some sorts of mutual understanding. He had not cultivated charm, wounded and half-numb as he was.
And though his touch could heal it could not bring the easy rush of dizzy, earthly pleasure. It could not lift or arouse or send human bliss firing through the veins.
Too soon for me, too late for her.
The red-gold varnish on the violin dimmed, just a little, though the gold string continued to shine.
"There has to be another way."
"The only way out is through," Mam'zelle said. "Experiment all you like. The only way to get that thing back where it belongs is to open it up."
Open it up to the taste of iron, the stink of fire in the air, a rope around his neck. Open it up to that word freak, to a thousand disappointed glances, to a resounding tide of emptiness and embarrassment.
Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock, his brother's voice whispered, somewhere far away. His brother, sleek and glittering, invincible, forever informing him in that cool clipped tone that whatever I'm doing, Sherlock, it's for your own good.
Even a suspended heart can remember its own scars.
The sunlit wood of his thoughts began to turn towards winter. If that was what it took, if making himself humiliatingly vulnerable and exposing all the strange and uncomfortable things inside him that coexisted with the brilliance was what it would take to release the full measure of his power--
Then he would live and die mortal, limited but steadfast.
If no unicorn had ever known itself to be under an enchantment and chosen to remain that way before him, then he would be a world's only. John he could not cut out or give up--both halves of him craved the simple pleasure of friendship, the strength he drew from being able to trust that one soul in this world had his back. But he could survive, could even flourish, with only a single friend. After all, he had done a lot with far less up until now.
Mam'zelle's strange eyes turned disapproving. She tipped her head slightly, studying him.
"This was never going to be an easy journey for you, sweet William. It'll be a long one whatever you choose, and there are still so many ways it can end--and let me remind you, even I can't see which ones you're headed for."
"I like a challenge," Sherlock said, and he could see another fragment of advice begin to take form in her mouth before she let it dissolve into a small, tired laugh.
"Then I'll see you when you've finished that song for me." She leaned back in her chair with casual, regal ease. "Your good deed today pays back both me and my host. But kindly tell her about that salt and chalk thing you do, she had a bad session a while back and she could use some more insurance."
And, because mixed up in the chained unicorn and the wounded human there was an Englishman, Sherlock bowed a little in his seat. He had not yet been rude to outright royalty, and if he was going to start it wouldn't be with the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
"Thank you, Mam'zelle."
*
Violet Warner was not yet forty-five, and though her face was still young, the cancer was already taking its toll on her body. She was nearly twenty pounds underweight, and there was a wheeze at the end of every breath. Even in sleep she looked exhausted, as if unconsciousness allowed her no escape from the losing battle against her disease.
"Do you need anything?" Summer's Grace whispered, and he could hear her trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.
Sherlock shook his head. As quietly as he could, he settled in the chair at Violet's bedside, his long pale fingers settling over her slim brown hand.
The touch allowed him to feel the progress of the disease, to see how it attacked the structure of her body from within. And it allowed him to see, somewhere in the miasma between organ and bone, a Violet Warner who struggled to hold her light up against the encroaching sickness.
Violet, he said softly. He knew from the way her heartbeat altered slightly that she had heard him. Violet. I'm a friend of your daughter's. She's asked me to help you get well. Would you like that?
He felt her heart sing her child's name, and then, as clear as a bell cutting through silence, Yes.
The question had long since stopped making Sherlock smile. He stood on the front step, one hand in his coat pocket and the other clutching his violin case, staring down a pleasant American expat he'd never met.
"Summer's Grace Warner?"
The young woman's face quickly attempted to smooth itself over, hiding the pinched look of a stress that made her look old beyond her years. "That'd be me. What can I do for you, sir?"
"Just Sherlock, please." He fixed her with a firm stare, and then said quietly, "I need to speak to Mam'zelle Laveau."
The woman's jaw went slack.
"I'm--I'm sorry, I do Tarot readings and--"
"--and you're the most legitimately talented voodoo practitioner within city limits. You've channeled spirits of similar importance. I need you to do it for me."
Her soft face began to harden against him. "You can't afford that."
"Money is no object."
"It's not just the money--"
"Your mother has small cell lung cancer. Doctors have given her between four and six months to live, but you're not optimistic. Palliative care is expensive and treatment by conventional means impossible, but if you summon Mam'zelle for me you won't need either."
He tipped his head down, slightly, watched Summer's Grace's dark eyes grow enormous as they took in the white mark on his forehead.
She stepped back to let him in.
As most legitimate practitioners did, she had a front room for pure business transactions--just gaudy enough to reassure a nervous, half-skeptical customer who'd decided to blow twenty quid on fortunetelling for whatever reason--and a room for the true magic. Nothing in this room was there to impress anyone except its owner. Everything had a function, a piece of concealed truth ready to be combined with others like it, whether that truth hid in a battered plastic owl or a murky jar containing long-dead flesh.
He moved carefully, respectfully, around the places on the floorboards where he could feel the echoes of veves long since washed away.
There was a tidy little folding table near the door, almost nestled between two bookcases. Summer's Grace snagged a bottle of water from the mini-fridge just outside the door and brought it over with a silver bowl.
"Take off your coat and stay a while," she said, a weary attempt at wry humor. "I'll go get Grilled Cheese."
"Thanks, but I don't need lunch--"
"Oh, no, Grilled Cheese is my python. She'll keep us grounded during the session. Always knows just how hard to squeeze when it's getting to be too much."
"Ah," Sherlock said. He set his violin case on the table and began to peel off his gloves, but made no move to start on his coat.
"That's why I don't do this often. Hard to handle. Tough to feel like I can be sure I'm getting back in one piece." She set the bowl down on the table. "Sit. Please."
He pulled a rickety chair out from its place in front of one of the bookshelves and sat.
"I'll go get you a knife," Summer's Grace said. "And some chalk."
*
Ten minutes later Sherlock sat, with a very friendly and respectful python wrapped gently around his ankles and three drops of blood missing from his right forefinger, across the table from the long-dead and highly-respected Marie Laveau. She hadn't changed the face she currently borrowed, except for the eyes--which were now hazel, with a fine ring of blue at the center of the iris.
"Sweet William," Mam'zelle said, giving him a very thorough once-over. "We meet again. I'm still waiting for that song you promised me."
By way of reply he opened the violin case, turned it to show her the Stradivarius with its single golden string.
"It's coming undone. I have to know why."
Mam'zelle Laveau cocked one of her host's eyebrows, smiled with the strange confidence of the long-dead.
"Told you it couldn't be undone by magic."
"Then what happened?"
"You know what happened," she said, almost fondly.
And he did know. Somehow showing John what he really was had given him enough of himself back to heal the tremor in John's hand, to sense the magic part of the world around him more strongly.
"Why?" he asked.
She sighed, a sigh a hundred years too old and knowing for Summer's Grace Warner.
"They gave you a puzzle you can solve. Except the puzzle's how to use the heart you've got. Humans love like nothing else in creation, sweet William, and whoever put this spell on you knows that. The more human you are, the more yourself you are. Lighting that thing up means getting your own light back."
Something in his empty chest gnawed and whispered.
"Then the other three strings?"
"Three hearts like yours." She glanced down at the bowl. Shadows moved inside it. "You found one. You trust somebody, as much as you trust what you are. That's enough. Give deeply and you get back forever."
A kind of cold that was both dread and anger started to uncoil at the base of his spine.
"The others?"
Mam'zelle's gaze flicked down to the water. He could barely make out the shadow of something flying, like a bird passing over them, and a distant slim figure that looked like--
"That's not right," Sherlock said, sharply.
Again that sigh, a breath that carried the whispers of the long-dead like a chord of quiet laments.
"No kind of magic can make a thing happen before its time is right," she said. "Or after its time has passed."
In his mind, a cloud covered the moon, put itself between him and clear light.
His whole life he had been a freak, caught between two worlds, with a power he'd been told could bring people joy but that never seemed to make anyone close to him happy. Ten like him in the world, and he'd never met a single one of them; nearly thirty years of mortal life, and only now did someone look at him as a friend before he saw the detective or the chemist or the healing horn. And there was an old panic in him somewhere deep, the shape of a cycle that haunted him: no one stays for long.
Sherlock had brilliance and a mark on his forehead and a heart that lived outside of his chest. He had not pursued power, which might attract at least some sorts of mutual understanding. He had not cultivated charm, wounded and half-numb as he was.
And though his touch could heal it could not bring the easy rush of dizzy, earthly pleasure. It could not lift or arouse or send human bliss firing through the veins.
Too soon for me, too late for her.
The red-gold varnish on the violin dimmed, just a little, though the gold string continued to shine.
"There has to be another way."
"The only way out is through," Mam'zelle said. "Experiment all you like. The only way to get that thing back where it belongs is to open it up."
Open it up to the taste of iron, the stink of fire in the air, a rope around his neck. Open it up to that word freak, to a thousand disappointed glances, to a resounding tide of emptiness and embarrassment.
Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock, his brother's voice whispered, somewhere far away. His brother, sleek and glittering, invincible, forever informing him in that cool clipped tone that whatever I'm doing, Sherlock, it's for your own good.
Even a suspended heart can remember its own scars.
The sunlit wood of his thoughts began to turn towards winter. If that was what it took, if making himself humiliatingly vulnerable and exposing all the strange and uncomfortable things inside him that coexisted with the brilliance was what it would take to release the full measure of his power--
Then he would live and die mortal, limited but steadfast.
If no unicorn had ever known itself to be under an enchantment and chosen to remain that way before him, then he would be a world's only. John he could not cut out or give up--both halves of him craved the simple pleasure of friendship, the strength he drew from being able to trust that one soul in this world had his back. But he could survive, could even flourish, with only a single friend. After all, he had done a lot with far less up until now.
Mam'zelle's strange eyes turned disapproving. She tipped her head slightly, studying him.
"This was never going to be an easy journey for you, sweet William. It'll be a long one whatever you choose, and there are still so many ways it can end--and let me remind you, even I can't see which ones you're headed for."
"I like a challenge," Sherlock said, and he could see another fragment of advice begin to take form in her mouth before she let it dissolve into a small, tired laugh.
"Then I'll see you when you've finished that song for me." She leaned back in her chair with casual, regal ease. "Your good deed today pays back both me and my host. But kindly tell her about that salt and chalk thing you do, she had a bad session a while back and she could use some more insurance."
And, because mixed up in the chained unicorn and the wounded human there was an Englishman, Sherlock bowed a little in his seat. He had not yet been rude to outright royalty, and if he was going to start it wouldn't be with the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
"Thank you, Mam'zelle."
*
Violet Warner was not yet forty-five, and though her face was still young, the cancer was already taking its toll on her body. She was nearly twenty pounds underweight, and there was a wheeze at the end of every breath. Even in sleep she looked exhausted, as if unconsciousness allowed her no escape from the losing battle against her disease.
"Do you need anything?" Summer's Grace whispered, and he could hear her trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.
Sherlock shook his head. As quietly as he could, he settled in the chair at Violet's bedside, his long pale fingers settling over her slim brown hand.
The touch allowed him to feel the progress of the disease, to see how it attacked the structure of her body from within. And it allowed him to see, somewhere in the miasma between organ and bone, a Violet Warner who struggled to hold her light up against the encroaching sickness.
Violet, he said softly. He knew from the way her heartbeat altered slightly that she had heard him. Violet. I'm a friend of your daughter's. She's asked me to help you get well. Would you like that?
He felt her heart sing her child's name, and then, as clear as a bell cutting through silence, Yes.