The Other Half of Me
Created on 9/5/13, 10:36PM
Yet another story inspired by a picture posted on Facebook by the page "Shooting a wall when you're bored because you're Sherlock Freaking Holmes"
John, shivered as the searingly cold wind tore straight through the thick coat he wore to send goosebumps racing up and down his bare arms, his fingers and toes already numb from the dead chill that seemed to fill the world.
He blinked rapidly, his heart pounding in his chest with dread and anxiety when the action did nothing to rid his vision of the darkness that seemed to have soaked into every surface. Just a few moments ago, he'd been standing on the moor in the starlit darkness of the night, his mind turning through all the possibilities he could imagine that would explain the monstrous "Hound" everyone in the village insisted was real. Sherlock and Henry were infront of him, the two of them very obviously filled with too much nervous energy to walk at a normal pace, Henry, because he was absolutely terrified they would find the hound, and Sherlock because he was always like that during a case.
He'd actually started to enjoy himself, if he was telling the truth. It wasn't that often he had the opportunity to just take a stroll under the stars when they weren't clogged with the constant smoke and pollution that was the price for the luxury of city life. You traded natural beauty for man-made, and usually, he didn't mind. He loved the wonder of architecture, marveling in awe of the swooping ceilings of cathedrals and the streamlined efficiency of newer buildings. But when it came to the stars, there was no competition.
He'd been staring up at them as he walked, those tiny pinnacles of light in the darkness, tracing out the shapes of the constellations he'd made up as a kid with his eyes, when the sound of, well, something, drew his attention back to Sherlock and Henry.
Or, at least, it drew his attention back to where they had been.
Because they were gone.
For a moment, his brow just creased in a little worry, afraid that he'd managed to lose them with his stargazing, and that they'd gone on ahead. It wouldn't have surprised him, Sherlock apparently didn't even notice when he left the flat for hours at a time. He'd just go on talking, just assuming that John was there.
His eyes immediately fixed on the strand of trees just a few feet ahead, and his gaze raked across them, searching for any sign of moment that would help him locate his flatmate and their newest client. They couldn't have gone that far ahead, after all.
But the forest was still.
Not even the wind moved to disturb the deathly still branches that reached upward like skeletal fingers. Not a bird among the shadowed trees raised its voice in cry, when just minutes ago the night had been filled with the sounds of its nocturnal inhabitants.
A wariness settled in the back of his mind. Unconsciously, his body fell into the stance that had been burned into his memory from his days as a soldier. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his heart began to pound harder than before, a chill rolling down his spine as adrenaline spiked in his blood.
Raising his voice only as loud as he dared, he called out softly, "Sherlock?"
No answer. Tensing further, his eyes scanning the trees ahead for any sign of danger, he took an unconscious step backward, getting ready to run at a moment's notice. He wasn't usually one to be afraid of the dark—in his life he'd seen enough nightmare-inducing horrors to be afraid of something as trivial as the dark—but something about this situation just seemed wrong to him.
He swallowed nervously as the sudden thought struck him that the Hound could actually be real hit him, and spun around in a quick circle to check all directions, his hands coming up in a defensive pose infront of him as he stared out across the rolling and empty moor.
"Sherlock?" He called, now starting to lose the edge of assurance that he usually clung to. "Henry?"
Again no answer. No movement across the plains infront of him. At least, none that he could see. He turned back to the forest, his every nerve tingling, waiting for something to leap out at him from out of the darkness.
His breath caught in his throat, and his heart seemed to freeze in his chest.
The forest was gone.
He spun around, his fear and confusion only growing when he realized with absolute horror that everything was gone.
Gone were the rolling hills of the moor, as dark as they had been, they'd still been visible. Now nothing but blackness hung where they'd once painted a grey-scale scene across the landscape. Gone were the stars that had so entranced him before, now when he dared look up at the sky, it was only to stare into an ink blackness that seemed to go on forever.
Even the ground beneath his feet was gone, replaced with a blank nothingness that made him almost fall over with shock and the fear that he would suddenly plunge down into that nothingness, because if he wasn't standing on anything, then how was he standing?
Just as panic was about to set in, the first gust of wind slammed past him, chilling him to the bone with its icy touch that seemed to disregard entirely the clothes he wore to ward off the cold, and causing his breath to billow out in a cloud of white as the water droplets froze in the air.
He folded his arms across his chest, hugging himself in a desperate attempt to stay warm, fighting to keep from 'flipping out' as Harry would have called it, and struggling to come up with a logical explanation for what was happening.
Obviously he wasn't dreaming. Somehow, he just knew he wasn't dreaming. Besides, this was unlike any dream he'd ever had before. Most of his dreams, the normal ones, at least, were filled with vague images and feelings. The wind tore past him again, and he knew that his mind would never be able to come up with the way it felt when it touched his skin. So cold it seemed to burn him, sapping the life from his body with each pass.
Panic welled up within him, and he staggered backwards, as if that would shock him back into reality. It didn't. Hardly able to breathe from the cold, his voice rose in a fearful shout, desperate for his flatmate to appear and shake him out of whatever was happening, "Sherlock! Sherlock!"
No reply but for the howling of the wind.
He stumbled backwards again, his entire body shaking, and not just from the cold.
He bumped into something.
His stomach dropped to his feet.
With a yell that was echoed by a voice that wasn't his own, he spun around and leapt away from whatever it was that he'd hit, adrenaline rushing through his veins and flashes of gunfire ringing in his ears as his instincts fought to take over.
A young woman that looked just as terrified as he felt stared back at him, her eyes wide and her arms thrown in up infront of her to shield herself, her entire body perfectly still as she tensed, staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights.
Realizing with a jolt that she wasn't a threat and that she was afraid of him, John warily took a single step backwards, raising his hands infront of him slowly so that he could see he was unarmed, his breathing ragged as the sudden turn of events caused his head to spin.
Dizzy as the surge of adrenaline suddenly cut off, he took another step away from the girl, shaking his head. "You're not Sherlock." He said, taking another step backwards. Now that the initial shock was over, something seemed off about the girl. As though some presence hung in the air around her, threatening to overwhelm him with its immensity. A vision of blindingly golden light flashed behind his eyes, and he stumbled over his own feet in his haste, tripping so that he fell forward as he tried to spin around. His hands flew out to stop his fall, and impacted with the ground with all his body weight on top of them.
Jarring pain jolted up his arms from his hands and into his shoulders, causing another, sharper ache to blossom in his left, but even before the pain could register, he was back on his feet, and facing the girl again, prepared to defend against any threat she posed.
"What have you done with Sherlock?" He ground out, sending her his most dangerous glare, and only noticing after he had done so that she had frozen with one hand reached out to him, as though she'd wanted to help him to his feet.
"Who's Sherlock?" She asked, staring at him with wide, wary eyes as she mimed his actions from before, raising her hands out infront of her in a gesture that was probably meant to calm him.
"He's my friend!" He shouted, his anxiety ratcheting up a notch at her movement, even though he realized somewhere in the back of his mind that she meant no harm, "He's my friend and—and he's gone!" His lungs struggled to draw in air past the sudden lump that had formed in his throat.
The girl took a step forward, and when he couldn't find the will to move away, took another, and another, until she had reached his side. The aura around her was still there, looming like a dark sentinel at the edges of his awareness, and he felt another chill that had nothing to do with the cold run down his back.
Her voice, though, when she spoke, was soft, and full of reassurance as she set one hesitant hand on his shoulder, "What's your name?"
"J-John," He stuttered, trying not to flinch under her touch when he hand put weight on his bad shoulder. Somehow, she seemed to notice, and quickly drew her hand back.
"Alright then, John," She said, "Just, just try to calm down, okay? My name's Rose. I don't know what's happening, but I promise, we'll get out of this, okay?"
He nodded, letting out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and then had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. Here he was, returned war veteran, being comforted someone who was probably half his age.
"See, I've got this friend called the Doctor," the girl named Rose said, glancing around them as if hoping her friend would suddenly appear, and causing him to do the same before he even realized it, half hoping that Sherlock would step out of the darkness that surrounded them but couldn't seem to touch them, that smug grin on his face that meant he'd just thought of something clever, only for his gaze to be met instead with the never ending mass of shadows.
"And he's brilliant, really, a-and, he's missing too. We were just talking, and then—" she bit her lip, staring warily around at the darkness again as she nervously pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, "And then everything just sort of…stopped. I close my eyes, and the next thing I know, I'm here, and the Doctor's gone." She sounded so distressed he felt his own protective instincts rising up to fight against the nagging feeling that something about her wasn't right. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, though, she turned her eyes back to him, her gaze sharp and inquisitive in a way that made him think of Sherlock right before he started spouting off facts about whoever it was they'd just met.
"When did you last see Sherlock?" she asked, a look of concentration on her face.
"Just a few minutes ago," He said, clenching and unclenching his hands at his side as the fact that Sherlock was missing, and quite possibly in danger slammed into him full force, "I turned my back and he was gone. And then…then I was here." He drew in a shaky breath to ward off the panic that wanted to rise up in him again.
Rose's eyes flooded with comprehension, "That's when the Doctor disappeared too," she said, and he forced himself not to ask the obvious question of who this doctor of hers was. There were more important things going on to worry about something stupid like that. If she wanted to keep her friend's name from him, he really didn't care. Because Sherlock could be in danger. "And there's no way he just wandered off. All I did was blink and he was gone. Someone must have taken him…" Her last words were spoken in a mutter that was more to herself than anything.
"You think they've been kidnapped?" In his mind, a single gunshot followed by the sound of shattering glass rang out, and felt once more the kick of the air being torn from his lungs when he dropped to the ground to avoid being seen.
If Sherlock had been kidnapped…
"Well, since we're both here, that means they were both probably taken by the same person…" Rose said, crossing her arms over her chest. He noticed for the first time that all she wore was a purple shirt under a pair of denim overalls that ended in a short skirt and black stockings. Even in his best coat, he was still freezing. She seemed not to notice the could though, as she stared off to the distance in deep contemplation, "Two of the greatest minds in the universe, and we've lost them…" She said slowly.
"H-how do you know that?" He couldn't help but ask warily, realizing with a jolt of fear in his stomach that he hadn't told her anything about Sherlock.
Her gaze dropped back to his, and she seemed confused for a moment. "I…I don't know," She said, frowning, "It's funny, I, I almost feel like I know him…" She trailed off.
Feeling a sudden need to fill the silence, "Well," He said, trying to drum up as much of his usual self-assurance as he could, "Good luck to whoever took them, they won't be able to get a word in edgewi—" he stopped suddenly in confusion.
How did he know that this doctor of hers wouldn't let anyone else get in the last word?
Why did he feel like he'd known the man for his entire life?
How did he know that he would never give up on saving Rose, just as John knew Sherlock would never give up on him?
His eyes locked with Rose's, and hers with his.
"Okay," She said, "This…"
"Is weird." He finished.
Finished at 12:33AM