The Inevitable [closed to Kerrigan]

[on_your_nerves]

Good God, he needed a cigarette. Between the world being destroyed and all his friends besides John possibly dying along with it (or the entire thing being a total lie), John punching him and storming off, the talking ponies, the random superhero bringing up his cocaine addiction, and arguing with a space elf over (ugh!) politics and clandestine rebellions...actually, forget one cigarette. He needed a whole carton. Strike that, maybe a truck full.

Reaching into his many coat pockets on an instinctual search for cigarettes he knew weren't there, he found that a pack actually was there. And so was his lighter.

Maybe there was a God. Maybe there was a merciful God, or at the very least, maybe the ship really was as benevolent and merciful as she tried to make herself out to be and decided to smile upon him by snatching up a box of cigarettes with his belongings.

...Probably not, but this at least still was a fine bit of serendipity. Sherlock would take it.

Leaning into the doorway of a building in what he didn't realize was another blind spot in the city, he lit up his first post-end-of-the-universe cigarette and took a long drag from it. To be honest, it wasn't really enough, and like it always did when he least wanted it to, old cravings crawled up in the back of his skull and demanded something stronger.

"Not now."

No, not now, though the way he closed his eyes as he leaned against the door of the building and let out a lungful of smoke, would have made it clear to anyone looking that he was a fair bit more overwhelmed than he could even admit to himself.

It seemed that for now, however, he could be content with causing himself harm with only one cigarette at a time.

Comments

[couldputitback]

She winced. "Try not to do that," she replied, then started pushing up her sleeves, only to her elbows. "You won't feel anything," she added, just as the power aura came up around her hands. The energy stretched from her hands to the injuries in his chest. At which point, everything started to basically...pull apart.

With Sherlock completely awake, the pain from the stab wounds numbed by the energy basically cutting off the nerves involved.

[on_your_nerves]

His skin slithered off, his eyes drifted out of their sockets, tissue drifted apart in ribbons, organs unwound from around each other. Sherlock watched with eyes that shouldn't actually still be working as his body unraveled.

It was absolutely disgusting, macabre, and for some people, it probably would have been traumatic.

Sherlock Holmes was not some people.

"This is the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen," he said with a mouth that technically shouldn't have been able to move and vocal cords that shouldn't have been able to make a sound.

He was actually impressed, but then this was the sort of man that had always wished he could look at his own organs.

[couldputitback]

"It's useful," Faiza agreed, distracted. There was a lot of damage to deal with, after all. Kaya had done a good job, but they'd had to leave the knife in to stop the bleeding. She did reach out, picking the knife out of the energy field. "Sorry. Usually, I'm able to keep the field narrower, but there's a lot of work here."

[on_your_nerves]

"No no, by all means."

She could go right ahead with the vivisection. It was incredibly interesting in the way that very few things were to him.

[couldputitback]

"Most people find this disturbing." Not that Faiza had an issue with somebody who wasn't fainting over the fact that he was being pulled apart. "Right. Just another moment...there."

It only took a moment for Sherlock to pull back together, the knife wounds all fixed without even scars to note that they were there. "Good as new. Well. At least the stab wounds. You should probably consider giving up the fags, you know."

[on_your_nerves]

He ignored the bit about quitting.

"I'm not most people."

Understatement of the century there.

Now that Humpty Dumpty was put back together again he reached his hands down to his abdomen, which was healed, though still soaked in blood. Not even a scar in sight.

[couldputitback]

"I had noticed." She pulled up a holographic file, putting the information on the injuries in. As well as the fact that he smoked. "I'm sorry, I never caught your name."

[on_your_nerves]

He was still poking and prodding at his own stomach.

"Sherlock Holmes."

How in the world had she done that? Was human biology even capable of supporting a power like it?

[couldputitback]

Her hands paused, the name filling itself in without her input. Then she turned, looking at him with wide eyes. "I'm...sorry. Did you say...Sherlock Holmes?"

Why was she even surprised about these things anymore? If the ship was going about, picking up people whose stories were spread across the worlds, of COURSE Stacy would pick up Sherlock Holmes!

[on_your_nerves]

"Yes."

Ooh ooh.

"Are you another one that recognizes me? I was recently informed that I'm one of the most recognizable characters in western literature."

By the time John met up with him again, he wouldn't be able to fit through doors, his head would be so big.

[couldputitback]

She grinned at that. "Oh yes. I'd say that you probably are. I mean, the stories were written in Victorian times, but they still capture the imagination in modern times. 2011 for me," she admitted. "And one of the most filmed characters."

She turned back to the chart. "But. My parents are both doctors. So I actually always preferred Watson."

[on_your_nerves]

That almost got a frown. There was a moment where two parts of his brain--the part that did things like make him storm out of the room when John brought up his blog being more popular, and the other part that thought John was pretty amazing--were locked in deadly combat with each other.

The latter actually won out.

"Understandable. I find him indispensable myself."

[couldputitback]

"I think it was part of my love of...well, superheroes. But the people who were larger than life, somehow. And a doctor, going out on such grand adventures." Faiza shook her head. "Watson always made it sound so much more accessible. Something I could actually do, that the extraordinary could happen to a normal person."

She paused, looking up. Or, more importantly, looking at the ship. "Though, I suppose this proves that, too."

[on_your_nerves]

"Do you consider yourself normal? When you can do what you can do?"

He slowly and gingerly sat up, as if feeling himself out and making sure everything still worked the way it should.

"Then again, the power's a recent addition, isn't it. You seemed concerned about your control of it and the sword calluses on your hands are new, suggesting you've taken up swordfighting recently and trained rather aggressively--most likely with a broad sword. You've had some sort of abrupt change in your life situation, possibly a direct need to fight. Why with a sword, I haven't the faintest, but this ship seems to have pulled all the people in it from a variety of worlds and life situations. It's possible where you're from one where swordfighting is appropriate, despite being a modern medical professional."

[couldputitback]

She looked down at her hands, rubbing her thumbs over the callouses on her fingers for a moment. Then looked up at him, jaw a little slack before she broke out in a wide smile. "That? Was amazing!"

Of course he'd pegged her so well. She tilted her head. "Oh. It may not have been a control issue after all. You got chinned by someone, didn't you? Or smacked your face into something." She motioned to his face. "The bruise is gone."

Still, she nodded. "It's really recent. Only a few months before I found myself here. And the sword...well, Dane figured that if a sword chooses you, you better know how to use it."

[on_your_nerves]

Sherlock ignored the subject of getting punched in the face in a way that made it overt and rather obvious that he was doing so, his expression rather furtive as she asked the question about how it'd happened.

"'If a sword chooses you'?"

[couldputitback]

She sort of waved her hand. "It's...well, it wasn't exactly the sword's choice, I don't think. Brian said that Excalibur should go to someone who wouldn't use it to kill. And then he sort of stuck it in the middle of the bridge and...well, when I pulled it, thinking that they--the various superheroes of Britain, I mean--might need it, it just...sort of came out in my hand."

She took a moment and blushed. "Sorry. I suppose I'm babbling a bit."

[on_your_nerves]

"Excalibur? Where have I heard that name?"

It was familiar. Probably something he'd seen or heard somewhere that he'd relegated as unimportant and deleted.

[couldputitback]

That got a stare. "You...don't recognize Excalibur?"

It took a moment before Faiza shook her head. "Of course not. You ignored astronomy as not important. Arthurian legend probably ranked even lower."

[on_your_nerves]

Sherlock got huffy, though his irritation was more the kind that John would have found amusing if he were around than actually hostile.

"Is it really that important to know the Earth goes 'round the sun? Absolutely essential for the average individual?"

[couldputitback]

"It was important at one point. Before maps and GPS. I suppose it's not terribly useful in London these days, what with the light pollution. And the Tube." Faiza shrugged. "Though I have seen mysteries solved by the length of a shadow in an alibi picture, so knowing something about it can help."

[on_your_nerves]

"You...may have a point."

In one sentence, she actually had him considering how knowledge about the solar system might actually be useful to know, or at least how knowledge about the sun in particular could be.

Impressing him and making him rethink his position on something, all within the space of a few minutes? In a very vast multiverse, Faiza was quite possibly one of a kind.

[couldputitback]

Faiza smiled at him brightly. "So. How are you feeling? Everything should have ended up back in the right places. That's generally how my powers work."

[nerves_of_steel]

Whatever Sherlock may have been planning to say was interrupted by the Medbay door sliding open to the approaching sound of running footsteps.

John burst into the Medbay, short coat zipped halfway up over his plantsuit, not even halting as he looked around frantically for Sherlock. If he was dead again, for real, and the last thing John had done was punch him, he'd never forgive himself. Clapping eyes on the taller man sitting on one of the cot-slash-tables that filled this room, he only just barely restrained himself from shouting Sherlock's name.

Halfway to the table-cot, he skidded to a halt, the worry and fear on his face suddenly morphing into thoughtfully-narrowed eyes. For someone who'd been stabbed, Sherlock was looking awfully upright and uninjured. Covered in blood yes, but John thought he could still tell the difference between that and "actively bleeding".

"I really, really hope that you did not just fake being stabbed to get my attention" he said as evenly as he could when panting heavily from running all the way here from the upper levels. He moved forward again anyway, at a slower pace this time, with a professional nod for the (quite attractive, part of his brain noted) woman standing nearby.

[on_your_nerves]

John was concerned and he'd come running. That was...promising. If he was that angry, he would have started to emotionally distance himself.

Sherlock gestured vaguely at his chin--which John would have almost certainly remembered punching--and it was now completely healed as if he'd never punched him at all.

"There are apparently some individuals on the ship with preternatural abilities like healing, John." Sherlock cocked his head, a strange look on his face, as if he'd only just considered how close he'd come to dying and what had just happened to him. "A very fortunate occurrence in my case."

Given the amount of blood he was covered in, and how much his poor coat was also soaked in it where it lay on a little table, John could probably see just how fortunate it was.

It was catching up to him now, what had just happened, and his momentary fascination with Faiza's abilities had finally stopped distracting him. He'd just had his mind violated and had been stabbed over ten times--the former, in particular, had disturbed him greatly, and it was as if he was starting to realize it now that John had showed up.