tilt your head back and don't choke under the glass of the microscope [closed]

[could_be_dangerous]

WHO: Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper
WHERE: Wherever the hell it is that the forensics folks work.
WHEN: Uhhhhhhhhh... gonna backdate this to a few days after Sherlock's arrival, I guess.
WHAT: You're less alone than you know. Unfortunately.
WARNINGS: Sherlock's stupid face.

[Circumstances in general have turned out to be troubling at best. It isn't merely that Sherlock finds himself a fish out of water, though that's the depth and breadth of it, but also that he finds himself restless, unsettled in a way he associates with a growing boredom, dark clouds on the horizon of his mind, as it were (now made startlingly literal, and to be ignored as thoroughly as it's possible to ignore his new abilities). In need of a destination, he takes to wandering. In need of a purpose, he takes to searching. Today's aim is to determine the accessibility of local resources. Set up, to the extent that it's possible, a base of operations, a means to work -- he is, of course, going to work, the job he's been so generously gifted being so thoroughly laughable and so startlingly puerile that he doubts it'll occupy him with the desired thoroughness.

The alternative, of course, and he muses on the subject as he walks, coat collar drawn up to counter the itchy discomfiture of having been (still being) caught off guard, would be to withdraw entirely. To let that place growing within the confines of his mind and somehow outside of it too to swallow him up. To wander the halls of his self, searching for whatever might be worth finding. There is, he knows, little enough. No novelty to be had, and that's a perfect dissuasion. Still. Still. Could he build himself a city of memory, populated with people-constructs, live out the rest of his life running up against the walls of his own person, dashing himself on rocks of his own creation, and would it be an appropriate end if he did?

These halls are enough to hold him for now. He'd reached his destination and pushed through the doors without hesitancy -- the best disguise, the best way to look as though one thoroughly belongs in any location in which one might happen to be, is to behave as though one believes it, which in this case is easy -- this, Sherlock has opted to make his lifeblood, he is a creature of precisely this sort of milieu, if not this one exactly, if perhaps the smell of the place is slightly off, a different balance of chemicals, a different set of people, if perhaps it does not look as though it ought to do, even if it is further from home than he might ever have imagined himself being. Sufficient. In so many regards, for the time being, he's going to have to settle for sufficient.

But then, and under the circumstances this is quite enough to send him into a spiral of solipsism, vague doubts as to the reality of all of this once again growing at the edge of his consciousness -- but then, maybe some things haven't changed at all. There remain, perhaps, familiar faces. Sherlock's brow furrows and his step slows, and just like that, just so, makes himself obvious.]

Comments

[ecphrasis]

[Mass spectrometers have yet to function faster, even in a world with slightly advanced technology. This fact, though disappointing, has given Molly the time to sit back in her lab and work on her crossword. It's an old one that she's only now started (just a few days), but that doesn't make it less fun. As she leans back in her chair to consider what an eight letter word for the bit of armor a knight would wear on his arm, she casually glances over at the camera in the corner of the room.

Molly Hooper could never really be described as "distrustful" before coming to Heropa.

Ever since she and the other imports had first arrived nearly a year ago, the entire concept of registering with the government had not sat well with her. To a certain extent she understands the purpose--it was dangerous to have superpowered people wandering around unchecked. The City had proved that time and again. But the level of involvement the government had (or wanted to have) in import life, from assigning jobs to homes, made her more than slightly uncomfortable. Registering had been the only option she'd seen at first, but at times she wished she hadn't.

Molly sighs before puffing up her cheeks with air, releasing it in a steady stream that makes the paper in her hands flutter. The frustration in her voice is nearly palpable as she says to no one:]

Well, what do I know about armor?

[At least, she thought it would be to no one. Just when the slight echo of her voice dies from the otherwise empty lab, she hears the footsteps. At first, they don't even have an effect on her. It wasn't strange for an assistant or another analyst to be around at this time of night. It's only when the steps slow, become deliberate, that she takes true notice of them. Someone wanting to get her attention would have spoken by now, or at least called beforehand to say they were coming. This person does not want to be noticed--or maybe he does. Her heart speeds up, her fingers grip the paper a little tighter. The mass spectrometer hums steadily off to her left and her cell phone sits on a stack of file folders all the way across the lab. The element of surprise is all she has to hold, even if she doesn't really know what it will do for her yet.

In a single move that's really a bodily jerk as opposed to a fluid shift, she turns her upper body in her chair to face--]

--Sherlock?

[could_be_dangerous]

[On the one hand, it should be flatly impossible. The timeframe, the precise collection of people, selected as though along the scale of his own personal meaning – it's beyond conception, and therefore must be true. This must be happening. It makes too little sense. For a long moment, Sherlock stares. Then his eyes narrow.]

Why you?

[A genuine question, if startlingly ill-delivered.]

Why you; convenient, too convenient. I'm inclined to egomania but this would make anyone wonder; Molly Hooper, you've saved me again.

[And there one of those smiles, the even ones that don't quite reach his eyes, though it's true, and she has, only he doubts that she intended to this time. It isn't quite a slap across the face. Something less clear, but it is in a way equally grounding, even if he is reeling, even if her mere presence inspires in him a dangerous sort of questioning, vague, half-formed delusions – they must be delusions – to grandeur. It's all been constructed for him, the things he needs delivered to him entirely too easily to be perfectly coincidental and yet to assume intent in whatever intelligence has driven their independent arrivals intended for these series of coincidences to be less than coincidental is to assume a self-importance which has on previous occasions gotten Sherlock into a fair bit of trouble. One assumes the potential for importance, not its possession by default. Let it never be said he can't learn.]

I'm going to have to work somewhere; this will have to do.

[A 'hello' would probably have been too much to ask under any circumstances, but these are even stranger than most.]

[ecphrasis]

[Given time to actually process the situation, that is not exactly the greeting she would have expected. So, Molly can't help it--she's hurt, and she can't keep it from showing. Why you? The legitimacy of the question, the actual inquiry she knows is behind it is a blow. Yes, why her? She's asked herself that question many times since she had left home. What was so special about Miss Molly Hooper that made two dimension-hopping A.I.s want her in their worlds? She still hasn't been able to come up with an answer.

At least he sort of makes up for it the second time around.

The smile she flashes is very brief and even more uncertain. She's saved him--how? Ah, right. Workspace. Convenience, as he's said. That's what she is, and even though she knows he doesn't mean to, he can't help but remind her of it. The part of her heart that still clings to the slightest hope for what-could-be's aches. But after a psychopath and a neonazi (a long story she'll have to go over again, fantastic), she's starting to believe that he was right; she should probably give up on relationships altogether. Nothing ever seems to work out as planned.

Molly sucks in a breath, folds her paper as deliberately and pointedly as she can, and stands. She holds the paper in both hands in front of her, almost like a shield, a buffer against the strange magnetic force emanating from Sherlock Holmes, one she sometimes thinks only she feels. Her question, when it comes, holds no accusation, no stutter, just a sort of hesitant wondering.]

How long have you been back?

[It might not be the same Sherlock is a thought that comes too little too late.]

[could_be_dangerous]

Back?

[Again the sharp look, the narrowing of the eyes before he connects what dots may be connected and his expression smooths out again, though his gaze is no less searching. That, at least, isn't much of a tell -- it frequently is no less than intent.]

Not long.

[It also won't be long before it becomes entirely apparent that any attempt to claim experience with this place beyond the few days he's been here will fall flat, but perhaps something of value could be learned in the mean time. Thus the watching, though inadvertently he gleans something else. Something in the set of her mouth, a familiar grimness, something which might, a handful of years ago, utterly escaped him but now... Sherlock is not given to sentimentality but he's coming to understand the value in giving those he gathers to himself the benefit of higher regard. Kindness is too much to ask; Sherlock is not inclined to generosity, incapable perhaps of sustaining gentler emotions for any length of time, prone as they are to getting lost in the grander machinations of a mind never silent, the static that builds the longer he goes without a focus, a touchstone, something to which to anchor his thoughts. No, kindness remains out of reach, but he's learning the value of care.]

I've said something wrong.

[It comes after a pause, a stillness, and it's said with something that isn't quite regret, but might be apology.]

What is impossible; the language is... fundamentally inadequate; language is a series of generally convenient misunderstandings but I admit to perhaps garnering a greater number of them than the average man which could be a matter of volume; I haven't run the numbers--

[It isn't at all a matter of volume. Sherlock knows why he tends to say entirely the wrong thing, and it can't be written up to misunderstanding, either. Not anyone else's, anyway. Only his own, his own incapacity to understand other people. Sherlock's gaze drops, and he adopts a thoughtful frown before glancing back up, and around at the room. There's an element of disorientation in it. Sherlock is adrift; he has to anchor himself to something and for that he has to know where it's safest to do so. There is a lot, he has a feeling, to catch up on.]

... Coffee?

[ecphrasis]

[She knows, then. He doesn't remember anything. The response would have been quicker, more detailed, if he'd actually remembered. To be honest, there isn't much to remember (regarding her, at least), but she knows he's going to want her to tell him everything. Already, she's categorizing and calculating what he'll need to know based on relevance. He'll want to know everything, she's sure, but some events need to be mentioned before others.

The admission of wrongness catches her by surprise. And even though she's seen this card played insincerely so many times, a part of her still softens, a portion of her hurt heart becomes tender. Yes, he's said something wrong. No, she never could have expected him to realize it before it left his mouth. It stings, but not so much as it might have.

After the briefest pause, Molly reaches to the nearest shelf where empty coffee cups are kept. Before it's even set on the counter, it's filled with coffee the way he takes it: black, two sugars.]

Coffee.

[Never before has Molly been thankful for her seemingly useless power.]

[could_be_dangerous]

[Sherlock hesitates a moment before taking the proffered cup with a faint huff of amusement. His fingers curl around it and he regards the thing thoughtfully. It's all mad. Not impossible, clearly not, but mad, or he is, or both. That's the problem with containing worlds -- it can be difficult to discern which one one is in at any given moment. That's going to have to change. Things will need reshaping, ideas tied elsewhere, but then, who's going to keep him steady next time the guns come out? Finally, finally he looks up.]

You could tell me what.

[What he's said wrong, and ideally why; understanding is the first step towards rhetoric. More importantly it's going to take that if he's going to learn to tread lightly, which he supposes he ought, supposes he's going to have to with the lot of them here, Molly and John and Mary, gathered not quite about him but gathered in some configuration all the same. The portion of him accustomed to their regard opines that it requires rearranging. The portion of him which fears this place and his own potential within it considers it best they all of them turn their attention elsewhere.]

And then everything else. What I've missed while I was away; John was less than forthcoming, at least on the topic of anything important. I trust you've a more careful eye.

[Even if he doesn't trust it to have been turned outwards, or at least towards anything he himself would prefer to focus on, the statement is an honest one. He trusts in the validity of her work, regardless of how infrequently he says it, itself the inevitable result of his belief that it doesn't have to be said because she quite frankly ought to know, simply by virtue of the fact that he keeps coming back. Convenience is a wonderful motivator and she is appropriately pliable but there are always others and none he would trust with the knowledge he carries, case to case. Where he goes wrong, perhaps, is in trusting her to understand the first thing about him. Regardless of how he feels on the subject, that isn't even really a failing, and he knows it. It isn't as though he understands the first thing about her either, never mind what he can see. Knowledge and understanding are independent creatures, the latter vastly more fickle than the former. He sips at his coffee, eyes falling briefly shut, a weariness creeping up on his expression as he leaves it unguarded in the wake of the sense-memory blossoming behind his eyelids. Microcosmic universes grow and die in the flickering of his neurons, and Sherlock wonders if he'll ever grow accustomed to it.]

[ecphrasis]

[He's going to think it's stupid, she knows. But Molly has been away from London, her London, for too long. She's homesick and growing tired of this place. It isn't that her job or everyday life were more exciting or better back home--in fact, she might say they were entirely ordinary. But ordinary is what she misses now, more often than not. Between the government and superpowered mishaps, she wishes there was just a button she could push or a form she could sign to go home.

Sadly, she's been through enough dimensions against her will to know it isn't possible. So when she answers, she's as honest as she's ever been.]

A hello. It would have been--appropriate. "Why you" isn't exactly what someone wants to hear when they see a. A friend. Someone from home, you know. After being away so long.

[She's kept her voice mostly steady and her face its normal shade instead of several darker. She also knows that he didn't mean it the way it came out, but pointing it out seems like it might help in the future. She can always hope, at least.

The second part requires a more difficult answer, and the shock of him just showing up at her workplace is starting to set in. Molly flops down into her chair and runs a hand through her hair. Deep breaths that's all you need. It wasn't, but it's what she tells herself.]

Why? I mean, why wasn't he forthcoming?

[could_be_dangerous]

Hello.

[It comes after a pause, and another pause follows it. Sherlock doesn't smile, though he thinks he probably should. He's watched people long enough to know that humour covers a multitude of sins but at the moment he can't quite find his. Still, he manages a marked gentleness. He tries. It dissipates with a sigh.]

You know John; he has his particular... focus.

[Another pause.]

Mary. Mary Morstan arrived shortly before I did.

[Morstan, not Watson, and that says enough, doesn't it?]

Besides, he isn't exactly watchful on the best of days; that isn't quite why I keep him in retainer, as it were.

[Sherlock's gaze drops to his coffee, and he frowns down into it thoughtfully before taking another sip. Molly remembers, remembers how he takes his coffee, can apparently manifest it for him as though by an extension of his own will, and it isn't as though he hadn't noticed, it isn't even that he doesn't care, but frankly he doesn't for a moment understand why she keeps trying. Why she's even willing to remember anymore, when she knows as well as he does that all he's going to do is use that when it occurs to him to do so, with only as much regard for the consequences as the eternally self-absorbed can muster. Not much. Never much. He plays a larger game, or pretends he does when otherwise his only choice would be to prove that he doesn't know how to play the smaller one.]

[ecphrasis]

[And him trying is all she can really hope for. With the porter dragging him back and forth through dimensions, she can still forget how he can be. But then there are moments like this, when he so obviously doesn't understand what he's done incorrectly, when the effort is all that really matters to her. Molly feels her heart warm a bit and drops her gaze to the floor for a split second.

Molly's brow furrows at the name. Mary Morstan. She has a vague inkling of who that is--a woman John had been talking to back before she'd left London, after Sherlock had "died." If any of the previous Johns or Sherlocks transported to this world had known anything about her, they'd kept tight-lipped about it. And so, in the dark as she is, Molly can't help but ask--]

Who's that?

[He must know something about her, to have so pointedly said her name. And if John is focused on her, well. Maybe things had gotten more serious than her being just a woman he'd had coffee with a few times. And she can't hep but think about how funny it is that Sherlock might know more about John's current love life than she does--but then, of course he would. He's always keeping his tabs, with his network and such.]

[could_be_dangerous]

[The question earns a squint, suspicious, assessing; Sherlock is, that is to say, entirely transparent about the fact that she's said something incongruous. It must be true, then; Molly is nearly as poor a liar as John is, on the one hand, and favours honesty anyhow on the other. That's part of her value: she's relentlessly trustworthy, especially when she oughtn't be -- as now.]

His fiancée.

[His wife, but one of them apparently doesn't remember that and he's not going to put it out until that mess is equally well-sorted.]

It doesn't matter; the point is, he's busy and he's John; you've at least some experience with the investigative process, surely you've managed to discern something of some value about this place that he's missed.

[It's almost like a compliment... maybe. From his perspective fairly high praise, even if it is given with the implicit caveat that Sherlock is well aware that he himself is matchless in this particular realm, and therefore everybody else's observations are shoddy at best. Molly's no less than anyone else's, really, even if he's honest about trusting her vastly more than most. He pauses, mug halfway to his lips, before it drops fractionally again.]

You really don't remember?

sorry about the delay--post-con exhaustion hit me hard

[ecphrasis]

[She can't help it: her eyes widen and her jaw drops half an inch.]

Fiancée?

[It's downright ridiculous. The last she'd heard, they hadn't really been anything serious. But then, she has to remember--people come from different times. Sherlock is clearly from ahead of her, as might John be. And this Mary person, she's likely ahead of Molly's time as well. The realization... stings. She doesn't know why. It makes sense, after all. Not everyone can be from exactly the same point in time.

Molly worries her bottom lip and shakes her head. His "compliment" is glossed over.]

No. He--he was seeing a woman named Mary, but. He didn't seem anywhere near ready for a fiancée.

[She wonders exactly how far into the future Sherlock is from, then. She wonders if he knows anything about her, and if she really wants to know if he does. She has to bite her lip again to keep from asking the question right on the tip of her tongue.]

same about the delay, no excuse though :') no worries

[could_be_dangerous]

[Sherlock hums, a soft, dubious sound, which indicates neatly enough what he thinks of that. Ready, he thinks, had little enough to do with it. Ready is relative, messy, difficult to assess on the best of days and anyway not ultimately his area. More interesting right now is Molly, and that she has his attention is plain: his gaze doesn't waver.]

She doesn't remember either. Bit insulting; I gave a very good speech.

[It's offhand, almost muttered. For the moment he seems more interested in watching her than speaking. There was a hesitancy and he caught it, the sense of something withheld, and he doesn't think it's a lie. She doesn't tend to lie, and when she does, it isn't like this. No, not that, but Sherlock Holmes of all people is well equipped to recognise a cautious curiosity.

Unfortunately, perhaps, for all involved, he's also equipped to satisfy this one.]

You've got questions.

[Fact; no room for argument because there doesn't need to be.]

Probable I have answers; that's convenient.