lostcarnival | In a new light

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In a new light

Who: Sherlock and OPEN
What: New changes and video game munchies
When: Very late Day 97
Where: Cookhouse
Warnings: Mentions of drugs, suicide.

Dying made one hungry.

Sherlock was prone to being over dramatic, and would gladly tell anyone who inquired that yes, he was killed three times in the game and yes, for a second there he really thought he was going to end up nullified or actually dead. Being quite pleased that he wasn't a digital slug or dead, he found himself famished and in the mood for something dreadfully unhealthy and/or sweet.

Toby was exhausted and fell asleep back at the trailer (or was mad at him for thinking he really did die), so Sherlock was alone when he went to the Cookhouse.

He went to grab a basket of chips (fries) and a milkshake when it hit him. He'd noticed something strange with his vision when he came back, seeing faint blotches like if he'd looked in the sun for too long or something, but he assumed it had something to do with being in the game, some lingering side effect. He would only be worried if it remained for any length of time. What he didn't expect was a blast of orange and red when he looked into the kitchen.

He shut his eyes immediately, confused, and was shocked that he could still see it. He could see shapes of people, registering as different shades of red and orange, fading to yellow and green. The walls only mitigated some of it, he could see through them, too. It extended nearly as far as his natural vision, but faded into blank nothingness further on. It was heat. Obviously. He couldn't exactly see objects that didn't give off heat. But any heat residue left, was visible, like quickly fading handprints.

"Fascinating," he muttered, opening his eyes again. The effect was fainter coupled with his ordinary vision, giving a slight glow to anything that gave off heat. It was disorienting and off-putting and, quite frankly, neat.

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"There's no such thing as ridiculously nostalgic," she said after a very, very long pause. "I should think I'm the expert on that one." Helen's eyes and the slight shift in her expression, the way her cup came up, and perhaps the slight tightening of her fingers around the cup said that sometimes, possibly too often, there was something beyond that.

"Not when you can remember the sights and sounds and tastes of things you haven't had for years already. In the end, it's not the tea that really matters," Helen said and if a voice could be bittersweet, hers was, "it is who you're sitting with."

Her sip of tea was a little longer this time but still not hurried.

"I'll make a pot as we've two wholly different Londons to discuss."

"Well, if you're the expert," his teasing was good-natured, and the smile in his eyes was reminiscent of what he used to look like. "I shall have to take your word for it then."

He looked down at his own cup when she said that, suddenly quite missing John, and even Mrs. Hudson. Molly Hooper, Lestrade... Even Mycroft's annoying voice would have been quite welcome. He had built his own little family...somehow, and even though it certainly didn't compare to the pain of hundred-year-old memories, he still missed them.

"Indeed," his baritone voice said, more sympathetic than he'd expected it to sound.

He raised the cup a little in acknowledgment. "London. Have you been there recently?"

"Everyone misses home," Helen said quietly, "and the people they have become attached to in their lives, no matter how long it has been. They are as much a part of who you as your founding experiences, after all. Without them, I find that life itself has an entirely different melody. I miss them all in their many absences."

Perhaps she should have made another pot. She shook her head a little at how quickly time could pass. All those proteges, all of her friends, the people who had come and gone in her life, so many of them. But enough of that, Sherlock had a question.

"I have been to London on and off throughout the years but not as recently as I now wish I had. I am not entirely sure when I'll get back there as events have rather pushed me in a new direction," she said, her tone thoughtful.

There's a nod, it's slightly uncomfortable. Even if he accepts sentiment a lot more readily now, he's not that good at talking about it.

"Your longevity," he murmurs quietly, his brows furrowing in sympathy. "How do you even let yourself make friends, when you'll just leave them behind?" He was curious, because if he was in her place, he wasn't sure that he ever could. It would hurt too much, and lonliness was a much more familiar, duller pain than the cost of watching a friend die. He ought to know, he'd seen it happen first hand.

"Well, I'm not so sure how similar our worlds are, but I suspect they aren't too different," he said over a sip, equally thoughtful.

"I have found that I must make friends," Helen said in a soft voice, "that I must continue to be social, to reach out because if I don't, Sherlock, if I isolate myself from the world, I may become cold and unfeeling, out of touch with humanity. I have buried so many but each of has given me something vital in my life, something no one but they could have given me."

She smiles and it is with no small touch of sorrow.

"I am richer and fuller for what they have given me be it knowledge or their compassion, their drive. My friends, some my lovers, some I have yet to lay to rest in the proper way, and some I have yet to begin to mourn. But they matter, each and every one of them and I would not be myself without them in my life."

Her fingers around her cup tightened slightly as she took a breath and set the cup down.

"It is difficult," she said, "to have a great deal of emotion and to have to put that away when you must. Taking it out again is as equally difficult but you must because without it, you deny yourself a critical element of life and of living."

Cold and unfeeling. Out of touch with humanity.

There was a point in his life where he would have considered that a pinnacle of achievement. That it was something to hope for, to strive for. People--John, really--called him a machine.

And he pretended he didn't care. Because what was more important was the Work. Stopping Moriarty. If he had to field a few hurt feelings, it was an acceptable loss. He completely failed to take into consideration how devastated John became because of his actions, and he'd spent...oh, ever since, really, atoning for it. And after Eurus, after seeing what he could have been...

Maybe emotion really did mess with his reasoning process. Sentiment got in the way. It wasn't an advantage.

But Helen...she was right.

Blast, how could she do it? He was devastated when Mary died. But what Helen just said gave him an inordinate amount of hope that the healing that he was still doing would result in something positive. That the jagged scar her presence left behind would become a badge of honor, a memorial.

He just stared at Helen for a long moment, examining her words, viewing them from all angles, until it sank deep in his own heart.

"It is difficult to have a great deal of emotion and to have to put that away when you must. Taking it out again is as equally difficult but you must because without it, you deny yourself a critical element of life and of living."

That was it. Right there.

He had built his entire life around protecting his heart, trying to quell his enormous amount of emotion, to do anything to avoid feeling the hurt and pain that inevitably came with it. Helen embraced it, she seemed to know exactly the kind of pain that would inevitably come, and she went ahead and did it anyway.

"You're a braver person than I," he said quietly, with admiration.

Edited 2017-05-21 07:13 (UTC)

"No, Sherlock, I'm not," Helen said with a soft sigh. "I took so many steps back when my daughter died and every day I wear a path between what I must be and what I have been. I have seen and felt what I could be if I let myself shut everyone away. I don't think that's bravery, it's just--"

Her hand found his carefully, almost delicately, still warm from the tea as she cut herself off. What was it? Experience? Did it matter? In many ways, she was very much like Sherlock herself, like James and Nikola, too. But her compassion won in the end, only sometimes, she needed help.

"Have you met Will Zimmerman?" she asked quietly.

"But you did," he insisted. "That is bravery. My friend, John Watson, lost his wife recently and..." His voice hitched. "She was my dear friend too. It was my fault she died, no matter what he says...at least, she would still be alive if it wasn't for me. She saved my life."

He closed his eyes a moment, but the infrared did not disappear. The world turned strange, a glowing universe that he'd never expect to see. He opened his eyes again, his reptilian gaze surprisingly human.

"You're here, you've carried on. That is bravery."

A shake of his head. "Your colleague? He's here?"

There was a long, long pause, one where she had to close her eyes. Helen could have said the same about Ashley and had many times, reliving thousands of permutations of the timeline if she had done this, what about that, should she have, until she realised that it was over and she could change nothing. Her eyes opened with a half laugh that was no laugh at all.

"Ashley died for me," Helen said in the softest voice. "I watched her make that choice, I watched her break the conditioning the Cabal had given her, Sherlock, knowing I sent her there and that what she became was my fault. In the end, in that moment, she saved my life. Ashley chose her end but I couldn't accept it, not really. I tortured myself for weeks checking our systems, trying to find her, hoping she was out there somewhere, still alive. And in the end, I buried an empty coffin with the knowledge that if I had just said no--"

Helen shook her head.

"Your friend loved you," she said, her voice almost a whisper, "and my daughter loved me. We grieve and maybe we don't let go of it, Sherlock, but we must live for them because that's what they've asked us to do. So, maybe that means we have to be brave even if we take five steps back for every one forward."

Helen doesn't notice thew few scattered tears or if she does, she pretends they aren't there. It's a long while after that she find words, a long while to reorient herself.

"He's here," she said, "and he is my moral compass. He's why I'm still here. You have John and I have Will. They keep us human, they keep us moving toward the future whatever that may be."

Edited 2017-05-21 11:57 (UTC)

...this was why he cut himself off from empathy all those years, it was why he remained as cold as possible when clients came to him. Because when he was open, his empathy, though ill-used, came roaring back with a vengeance. He felt it, only a bare semblance of the pain Helen must have went through but he felt the pain she was giving off all the same, he couldn't stop his deductions, couldn't turn them off, couldn't stop himself from reading the hurt in her tone and in her eyes--it was almost too much.

He probably would have completely lost the plot if he had been in her shoes. His hand gripped hers tightly, wishing he could do something, say something, that would change things. He was powerless to do anything except listen. But maybe that was the important thing he could do right now.

Mary's loss roared in his heart again, and he felt that old sorrow make its way home. Her sacrifice, he once said, had conferred a value on his life. It is a currency I do not know how to spend, he told John. Mary's death constantly reminded him to refrain from being so reckless (even though sometimes he ignored this. Okay, a lot of times.)

"You are incredibly wise," he found himself saying. "I can't begin to imagine the pain you must have felt, but the fact that you're still here...I am glad." He really was. It had been fortuitous to meet her, because maybe he needed someone to tell him all of this.

"John wouldn't call himself my moral compass," he said with a slight, sad smirk. "But he doesn't realize how he makes me want to be a better person."

His hand around hers gave her focus, kept her in the now because it was so very easy to fall into that yawning chasm that would begin any moment she gave in to James's connection to Sherlock Holmes in her own world. She was afraid of it, not because of the pieces of James she saw in him, nor those bits of Nikola that were there as well, not because of any of that.

She was afraid because, in his own world, Sherlock was himself. Wholly and without question, alive. Who was she to tell him that in her universe, the man she had loved, her dearest friend, was the basis for their own Sherlock Holmes? There were differences, of course, the fact that the Sherlock she sat with now was not and never had been from the Victorian age but he was still Sherlock. And sometimes, her heart ached more than a little when they spoke.

Her head fell companionably against his shoulder while she sorted herself out. Wise? Helen smiled and almost told him to take that back. She was too frightened of losing people to be wise, even if she kept lurching on into infinity like this. Her fingers pressed back and she could feel them creak under the strain until she consciously relaxed them.

"You are, too," she reminded him in a slightly strained voice, "and I find myself in your friend's debt as well." Her eyebrows arched and she let out a soft laugh. "Will wouldn't call himself that, either, but I asked him to be." Helen's voice was wry at best. "The value of our closest friends is that they do make us want to be better people even when we believe we are anything but deserving of it."

Edited 2017-05-21 15:51 (UTC)

Psh. He'd been called that before, by John and Mary, but he couldn't quite let himself believe it. But it seemed they were at least similar in the regard that they did need someone to keep them grounded to humanity. Him, for all of his intellect and out-of-control thinking, her, surely her longevity and all that she'd lost could have easily separated her from humanity as much as anything. He remembered what his sister said--she was trapped on a plane, high in the sky, unable to land. Was that what they both would have been, without someone to help them land? Forever above everyone, unable to ever relate, with their abilities?

He found that Helen herself had succeeded in grounding himself, as well. He needed that more than ever here, especially with how easily humanity could get twisted and lost in a Fae Carnival, where one's very self was unrecognizable. He feared he would become as cold hearted as what was suggested by what he looked like.

He froze slightly, when she leaned against him, unused to close contact with pretty much anyone. Not that he drew away, in fact, despite what people assumed by his abrasive personality, he wasn't put off by such things. People just tended to stay away from him. It only served to remind him that yes, he'd actually managed not to scare off somebody else. That he actually managed to make a friend.

"What will you do, when you've moved on? Time wise, I mean," he said thoughtfully. He was genuinely curious, he'd never been able to have a conversation about an immortal's habits before. His manner may have been a bit blunt, however, not taking into consideration the emotions involved in such a question.

Edited 2017-05-22 05:36 (UTC)

"In practice," Helen said, letting a breath out, "I find another protege, another team, I keep the world safe from itself, I occupy myself in the manner I am best at doing. But one day, I will cease, I must. Everything dies and I should be one of those things. The Sanctuary Network, the fragile peace we keep will remain, trusted to those who come after me. I am sure Nikola will be ill-equipped to deal with that when it comes. I suppose I shall have to deal with that in time as well. He is the last of us besides myself, now, and when I am gone--"

She sagged a little.

"I will have a long time," she said, her voice suddenly weighed and weary, "to think about that. A very long time and a great many pots of tea. I wonder if he will let go when it is time but too, I wonder if I will."

He was quiet when she spoke of her plan, as practical as he was, he found it sound and logical. If he was in her position, he likely do the same. Plan, secure your legacy, and entrust it to those who came after. It stood to reason that the human brain wasn't meant to linger that long, that one's memories would get full, that soon all attachments would fade as the raw pain of loss faded to a dull sting, then nothing. Humanity could cease to have meaning to someone that long-lived. And what was humanity if not based on mortality?

And yet, part of him balked. Irrationally, he found he resisted to the logic, his heart was furiously against such a loss. Though he was unsure if it was because he was against her loss, or the loss of someone who had seen that much.

"You should stay as long as you can," Sherlock said quietly. "It's such a rare gift, and you'll get the chance to experience things no one else can, or will. The idea of all those years ending is just..." He shook his head. "Yes, all things die, but you would be missed. Not only by whoever your current companions are, but by history itself. You should stay, for them, for everyone who wanted to see more, to look past the length of their years."

Edited 2017-05-22 07:57 (UTC)

"Shall I stay then," she murmured, "until time immemorial, an ageless guardian until the human race itself passes on, further that perhaps? I suppose that gets a bit maudlin if I keep going down that route." Helen gave his hand a gentle squeeze as if to tell him to pay her no mind.

"I'm sure I will stay as long as possible, Sherlock. Even now, I find myself curious about the future and where Humanity itself, not to mention Abnormals, will go. I suppose, in my case, our dear friend said it best. Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem." Remember when life’s path is steep to keep your mind even. Horace did have a point. And this path would be incredibly steep. Keeping herself even, well, that would be a challenge.

"I suppose I have been down stranger paths," she said wryly. "And I have been at many a precipice at so many points in my life that I cannot see much of an alternative than to keep time's beat."

Edited 2017-05-22 08:49 (UTC)

A grin anyway, he'd probably find that boring. Or exciting.

A slight sigh of relief escaped him. He returned the gentle squeeze, actually quite unused to this method of communication, but it seemed to be highly effective in non-verbally communicating ones' feelings.

"You are very lucky, Helen Magnus," he said honestly. "If I were in your shoes, I would certainly look forward to the adventure. As challenging as it may be, the reward is there in every day of the future."

Though he wasn't sure how'd he deal with leaving John behind. No matter, he'd figure it a way to being him along, somehow.

Sherlock had lived most of his adult life without thought to the future, he'd expected the drugs or his general recklessness to take him. He doubted he'd be much long for this world without John Watson. After Mary died, however, he learned just how valuable his life truly was. And how he should not treat it with such carelessness. He wondered though, would he get tired? Would the adventure finally dull, until he'd seen all that there was to see? He doubted that would be for a long time, if he had such an opportunity.

Edited 2017-05-22 09:59 (UTC)

"Once more into the breach, dear friends," Helen quoted with a soft laugh. What was life but a struggle to survive each and every new day? "If you, my dear Sherlock, were in my shoes, I dare say you'd drive the whole of England mad with your adventures. Much as you do now, I suppose?" She turned her head with a slight quirk of her eyebrow.

Her fingers were careful against the curve of his hand, her thumb an absent brush against his knuckle as if she was still attempting to keep herself present. Or him. Or perhaps the both of them. It was a strange thing being so close to the past and yet still in an ever distant present.

"I can't say I see you in any hurry to retire to some country estate with your books and academia," she murmured. "Nor will I, for that matter." Her eyes lit with a soft but contained excitement. "I only wish I could show you my own world. I should think it would be quite the wonder to you, especially Hollow Earth."

"The game's afoot," he said with a grin. "That's one of my, if not my favorite Shakespearian passage. And I would only hope to drive England mad."

What mad adventures indeed. Perhaps being bored would happen one day. But it would certainly be quite a ride to get there.

"And no, at least, not until I'm so old that I'm forced to sit down all day," he half-snorted. But his eyes lit up at what she had to say next. "I wish I could, too. It sounds fascinating. Wht is 'Hollow Earth,' besides well, the obvious?"

Edited 2017-05-22 14:48 (UTC)

"Hollow Earth is filled with some of the most incredible Abnormals I have ever seen divergent offshoots of so many of the surface dwelling Abnormals that it's incredibly difficult to catalogue all of them. Massive fields of mushrooms with curative properties that we have yet to puzzle out. But really, it's the civilisation that's been built that's of interest. Imagine a world where there was no dark age, where progress continued unhindered while the surface floundered. There is a whole ecosystem down there rife for exploration, new species that could very well change the face of modern medicine as we know it. For Science itself, the benefit would be immeasurable," Helen said and her words carried her excitement.

"It took me one hundred and thirteen years to aid the construction of facilities worldwide, to provide a place of safety for all Abnormal life, to direct funding and support of a facility that combined the technology of the Praxian civilisation that inhabited Hollow Earth in a capacity much like my own to that of the modern era above. Building these ports of safety, these new Hollow Earth Sanctuaries, is quite possibly the best thing to have come out of my life."

She smiled at the Shakespeare and her laugh was a silent one.

"I cannot think of you as old," she said, her cheek pressing a little against his shoulder. Her voice felt as if it came from far away, from some other Helen. "It seems almost a ridiculous notion and yet--"

It made her feel ill in spirit thinking about it, that Sherlock Holmes himself would, too, age into an elderly man. It brought back immediate and painful images of James in his last moments. It still took her breath away and made her falter like a blow to her solar plexus. His was an absence she would grieve for the rest of her life and she thought of him more than she didn't.

"That is not now," she finished. "And you have a good many years ahead of you, I should hope."

He listened in wonder, from his world it would be only in the realm of fiction, something you'd see in a movie. But it was very real, and Helen had apparently spent a century aiding this place.

"Faacinating. I really would like to see it, if that were in the realm of possibility." He doubted he'd ever be able to, but it was a nice thought.

He smirked, despite it all. "To be fair, I couldn't really imagine myself as old, either. It's only now I've really started to think I might actually end up old." There's a twinge of shame and awkwardness. Most addicts didn't make it very far. And those that did often had a bad relapse, even twenty years hence, and overdosed. Plus, not to mention the effects all that abuse must have had on his body.

"One should hope," he said quietly.

"Who knows," she said with a soft smile, "we're in a magic carnival. There are all sorts of possibilities." Helen was quiet for a long while, her touch and the way she'd leant against him almost conversation enough.

"Always hope," she finally murmured.

Always hope until the bitter end and fight and fight and fight.

He really was unused to the communication of simple touch, and certainly not the subtleties, but he understood, it seemed, it was quite universal even without knowing much about it.

"Well, if you insist," he said, with a sad sort of smirk. But it was true. John and Mary were why he was still around. (Mary, to be granted, was a bit complicated in that matter, but her death ensured that he would at least think twice before doing something particularly reckless.) Mycroft was both wrong and right in a way. Sentiment was dangerous, he'd nearly died for them multiple times. But he'd also lived because of them. At least on average, the living won out over the nearly-dying bits.

"I'm not sure if you'd find my world interesting, after all," all this experience with magic and the fantastic, despite his initial hatred of it, was starting to make his world seem a bit boring by comparison. "There's nothing odd about it except the odd interesting case and weird crime. The one person I found wonderfully challenging is dead."

"I generally do and often," Helen said quietly and then laughed just as quietly. "It's not so much your world that's the interesting part. It's how you relate to it, how you solve crimes and cases the way you do. I would be fascinated by you and by those who come into and out of your life in any world."

She closed her eyes.

"Just the one?" she asked softly. "That's a shame."

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