I just wanted to say thank you for my loyal reviewers! Your comments are really, really appreciated. I'm so sorry for making you wait! Next part out probably this weekend :) This story is actually finished - so it won't be abandoned, I promise!
When John woke up, lying spread eagle on his back, he felt completely wrecked.
His head was killing him, and his joints ached like he'd come down with flu. There was an itchy line from behind his ear to his collarbone, and he would swear he could feel every single muscle in his body throbbing in time with his heart.
Except for his left hand—that had gone dead, because Sherlock was asleep with John's wrist tucked up between his cheek and his shoulder, gripping John's forearm hard enough to cut off the circulation. He was curled into a tight ball at John's side, and his knees were digging into John's left hip. There was no wriggling out of that grasp, so John accepted it. The rest of him felt like hell, so what difference did one hand make? Sherlock probably needed the sleep anyway.
John closed his eyes again. Why did he hurt so much? Where the hell were they, anyway? Not drugged. He didn't feel drugged.
The memories came crashing back all at once, but John didn't do anything more than sigh. Ah. Right. They were in the House without Doors, which was kind of an ironic name, he pondered idly, when the lady of the house was, in fact, named Door.
Well, it was a House with Door, not Doors. There was only one here, after all.
His head probably hurt from the Baker, knocking them out. Minor concussion—god, that really wasn't good, was it? Who knew how long ago that had been. The itch from his ear to his collar bone was the cut she's given him with her knife, too. He hoped it wasn't infected. God, he did not have time for a concussion, either. His wrists stung for the same reason—chafing, from that chicken twine. But the rest of him? Why did his joints feel horrible?
Carefully, he moved his other hand to scratch. The skin of his neck wasn't warm, which was a relief, though flakes of the scab came off in his hand. Oops.
And now he needed the toilet.
Carefully, he flexed his fingers, trapped between Sherlock's shoulder and face. They were tingly and thick. Sherlock grumbled. John petted his cheek fondly with a thumb. "Need my hand back," he whispered. "Have to use the loo."
"Mphl," said Sherlock.
"You are a faker," John told him solemnly.
Sherlock opened one eye blearily. "Am not," he rasped.
"Are too. How do you feel?"
"Appalling," Sherlock mumbled. That eye sank closed sleepily. "Sore."
"Yeah, me too. Why is that?"
"Arbiter," Sherlock growled. "Took your life. Hurts. Screaming—" he swallowed.
John did not remember that at all, probably a blessing. "Then why are you sore?"
Sherlock blinked, waking up for real. "How long have we been asleep?" he asked. He had yet to release John's hand. John wriggled it, and Sherlock let it go.
"No idea." John heaved himself upright. All of his muscles complained, and he groaned. "Urgh. Hang on." He looked around. "There's no doors in here. Is there a loo at all?"
Sherlock yawned. "Chamber pot. Under the bed."
"Wonderful." John wrinkled his nose, but he pulled it out. He glared at Sherlock til his friend rolled his eyes and twisted on the bed, arm over his face in a dramatic "not looking" gesture. "How do you think we get out of here?" he asked once he was done using the pot. "There's no doors. And you never answered my question. Why are you sore?"
Sherlock heaved himself up and wandered to John's pack. Their clothes had been cleaned and dried, including the jumpers inside. "Put your clothes on. I imagine we just call for the Lady Door." He started to dress himself.
"It's because of whatever happened with the Arbiter, isn't it?" John asked him gently. "While I was out?"
Sherlock gritted his teeth. "Leave it, John."
John touched his shoulder. "Alright." He started dressing, too. Pawing through the pack, he found nothing had been stolen, which was a relief. He jammed his gun, which he'd stored for the night in the pack, in the small of his back. It was sodding London Below—it would most certainly come in handy.
John uncapped a juice and started drinking. It wasn't tea or coffee—technically, they did have Starbucks coffee in a few glass bottles—but he figured it at least had sugar, and maybe a few vitamins. Besides, the coffee could probably be bartered for more than the juice.
Sherlock stole glances at him, and finally said stiffly, "The Arbiter. It was—bad." That was all he could seem to manage, but John nodded, and changed the subject.
"Do you have any theories? About Sortie?" He offered Sherlock the juice and unwrapped a protein bar for him.
Sherlock seemed grateful for the change, though he scowled haughtily at the food. "Several."
"Talk me through it?" Despite the friendly tone, John glared until Sherlock took the food and the bottle.
Sherlock huffed as he crunched on the bar. "Not here. I doubt this place is secure." He sipped the juice.
John nodded, eating a bar himself. The Lady Door seemed trustworthy, but so had lots of suspects in the past. Dressed at last, John swung their pack onto his back. Sherlock took that as his cue.
He strolled over to the nearest wall and knocked. "Lady Door?"
Almost as soon as he said it, the wall swung open.
The Lady Door was standing alone on the other side of the threshold, the great white room behind her. She eyed them both critically and then nodded. "Yes, much better." She stood to one side.
Sherlock walked out, and the door closed behind John as he followed. That was actually pretty bloody creepy.
"No Richard?" John asked curiously.
"He's out buying more time," Door shrugged. It took John a minute to parse that she meant literally.
"So," Door continued, all business. "I can get you into the Angel's Cage, since it's open. Do not close the front door. It will lock you in, and you won't get out. When you're finished, you'll have to find your way out through the Labyrinth, I'm afraid. I can't really help you with that: there are talismans that will lead you to the center, but not back out, so you're on your own. Luckily, there's no beast there anymore. The Labyrinth leads out to Down Street. Usually."
"Usually," John echoed doubtfully.
"How shall I contact you?" Sherlock asked, "If I should find any information about your sister."
Door hummed. "The rats can find me. Or, if you're near a tube station, ask the Earl. He'll know. Failing that, I'll be at the next Floating Market. It's in Westminster Cathedral, in two weeks' time. Ready?"
John squared his shoulders. Sherlock glanced at him and he nodded. "Yes," Sherlock said.
Door touched the white, white wall of the white foyer room. It swung inwards. "Good luck," she said gravely. Inside, it was darkness.
John turned around without a word. Sherlock rummaged inside the pack and brought up both lanterns, candles, and a match. He lit one, handed it to John, and then lit the other.
"Thank you," John told Door.
She smiled back, and her strange eyes gleamed orange. "Don't thank me. Find my sister."
John nodded. "We will." Sherlock zipped up the pack. John turned and met his eyes. Together, they strode through the door.
As soon as they were through, into the dark echoing space, John looked back. There was no light. When he went to investigate, he found a great, wooden and mirrored door flung outward. Holding his lantern high, he saw that there was a swamp beyond it. Door's house was gone.
"The Labyrinth, I presume," Sherlock said at John's back. "And that's the door we mustn't close."
"I wouldn't even know how to close it," John murmured, "It's huge."
"I imagine it's easier than you think. Come, John." Sherlock turned his back on the gloomy Labyrinth and walked into the stone hall. His footsteps echoed. John followed him.
The space was vast and hollow, and the ceiling, when John held up his lantern, was only darkness. They walked on and on. Sherlock stopped to investigate something on the floor, which he showed John: two long rows of candle wax, but no candles. They walked between them, down a long hallway until it opened up in a great cavern. Eight iron pillars stood in a rough octagon at its center, and they stretched up and up as if forever, eventually disappearing from view. From somewhere, there was the sound of water.
Sherlock went straight to the far wall. When he held up his lantern, John saw another door. This one was black. Sherlock touched it carefully. He rubbed his fingers together.
"Flint and tarnished silver," he said thoughtfully. "And scuff marks…John, I need my magnifier."
John meandered over and took off the pack. Sherlock rummaged through it. "Where do you think this one goes?" John asked him.
"Elsewhere," Sherlock said flatly. John shivered.
"Oh."
"Here: look," Sherlock had retrieved his magnifier and stood up. "Scuff marks: leather, from shoes. And…" he hummed. "What do you see here, John?"
John stood beside him. Through the magnifier, there was something glowing, snagged on an outcropping of rock. "Glow worm?" he asked, tentatively. He knew it was most definitely not.
"Fabric," murmured Sherlock. "It's a fiber. Fabric that glows?"
"Angel," John whispered. He was standing close enough to feel Sherlock tense.
"Angel," he agreed, a little scornfully. "And two men, both wearing leather shoes of slightly different make. One fell, flailing. Here." He pointed a higher on the door's edge, showing a scuff mark that could only come from a shoe, apparently, "And the other fell—no footprints, you see, but fabric on the edge, here; he miscalculated a little. His side brushed the doorframe but otherwise it was a controlled fall, after the first."
"The assassins," John suggested.
Sherlock nodded. "And here?" Now he smiled, a little triumphantly. There was a footprint in the dust. "This is Sortie."
John blinked. "How do you know it's not one of the assassins?"
Sherlock grinned. "It has a heel," he said, "In the style of an eighteenth century man's dress shoe. Terribly impractical for an assassin, but not a French aristocrat—there are impressions of lace around it in the dust, do you see?"
"Brilliant," John said, and Sherlock preened.
"Both assassins fell through the door," he continued. "Not as if pushed: they fell as if down a hole. See the angle of where his foot would have to be to scrape it there. He would be nearly upside down. And the second was diving, not stumbling, or there would be footprints. Imagine: a great pull on the other side of the door. This becomes down." He pointed to it. "The assassins, the angel, fall. The others—" he held up his lantern in the direction of the pillars, and John squinted away from the wall. There were three sets of manacles. "Chained. See the marks in the dust, leading to the door: rivets in the ground like a great wind, or a mudslide. They fell, or were pulled."
"So," John said, grinning with delight, "A footprint in the dust had to have happened after the door was closed again, or it would have got swept away."
"Precisely. This is the print of a fairly young man, going by the size and shape of the mark, yet it is too wide to be a woman's, statistically. He faced the door, felt for hinges—here." Sherlock reached to the far corner of the door and, with an evidence bag turned inside-out, pulled out a few fibers. "Torn from his cuff. Black jacket, Victorian, judging by the fibers."
He stood, and regarded the front edge of the door before whirling away.
"Watch where you step, John! You'll disturb the dust. Ah! Here is our kidnapper!"
John hurried over, careful to step in Sherlock's tracks. "What can you tell me about him?"
"Modern-day hunting shoes," Sherlock said immediately, "Steel toed. Likely stolen—they're very new. Unusual for a man in London Below—resourceful, impatient: denizens of the Below like to have their shoes made by cobblers or foraged from garbage, but our kidnapper went out and stole them from Above instead. They are new, as well. The tread is very deep—a tall man, unlikely to be large because his shoes are not large, yet he must be somewhat heavy to press such a clean mark. He paced—" Sherlock paced too, following the foot prints, "and waited for Sortie to open the door. Sortie couldn't, or didn't. He stormed up to Sortie—see the spacing of the tracks!—and struck him. There, look, blood. And—ah!"
John passed him another evidence bag, and Sherlock lifted something from the ground—it was a feather, shining glossy black and orange.
"The dinosaur," John breathed. "Here?"
"No," Sherlock said. "This is a keepsake—look." He showed John the back of it. There was a pin, and some fibers clear through the plastic of the bag Sherlock had put it in, as though it had been torn out of a shirt.
"So it came out when he was struck," John said, and Sherlock beamed at him.
"And here! More footprints. Shoes a size too small; the tread is smaller than the print; the leather has stretched. A third person."
"Two kidnappers?" John asked with a frown.
"No. Look how he—no, no, look how she stands, and then crouches. She rocks, afraid. Her dress makes marks in the dust. Another victim."
"Another?" John asked. He walked over, and sure enough, there were footprints that smeared, as though the wearer had been rocking back and forth. Around the footprints, there are smears and scuffs in the dust, apparently her dress.
"Exactly," Sherlock was saying, "We can now place Sortie, another victim, and his kidnapper here roughly… oh, maybe a day or two ago, judging by the dust."
"Fantastic," John grinned. "Any theories?"
Sherlock paced and hummed. "Only two people had easy access to Sortie: the Fireman, and the Arbiter, and both need him to run the train, if I understand the Underside line correctly. Had one of them taken him, the dinosaur would have mauled them. Had the dinosaur been drugged, its feathers, assuming it has a similar metabolism to birds, would have lost their gloss, and its feathers had not. Neither man kidnapped him. It had to be someone else.
Why kidnap Sortie, specifically? If not to open something, perhaps it is for revenge—against the Underside line, his family, himself. Love, maybe—there is any number of reasons to kidnap the boy. We need more data, if this is the case.
Let's assume our kidnapper does want something opened. Why not ask the Lady Door? You could trade for it, easily. Find the Lady Ingress, or her remains, or otherwise barter for it. It would be simple. They could kidnap her, blackmail her with someone she cared about and she might do it—unless she wouldn't. So what is that distasteful? Not killing. Everyone kills in London Below, it seems; death is cheap. Yet our culprit would prefer to risk the Underside line to fetch the other Opener in London Below rather than capture Door, if they couldn't find Ingress, or she was dead. It is clearly something she would object to, even at the cost of her life." He paced faster. "So what would the Lady Door refuse to open?"
"That," John said, pointing to the silver and flint monolith, "the door that leads Elsewhere."
"So far, so obvious. Now, why would you want it opened?"
"The angel?" John asked, doubtfully.
"Unlikely," Sherlock said. "The angel is at best an unknown and at worst an uncontrollable force. Only an idiot unleashes a cyclone. The assassins, on the other hand, can be paid, or otherwise controlled. It must be the assassins."
"But you said death is cheap in London Bellow," John said, "There must be a thousand assassins down here. Why them?"
"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" Sherlock cried gleefully. "Come, John. We have everything we need from here. We must find evidence of friends and acquaintances of Sortie – his social circle, if any— and evidence of what exactly made Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar so unique."
John smiled at his companion and followed him away from the octagon of iron pillars. They walked through the two rows of candle wax. "So," John murmured, "What's with the—?" He gestured to the wax.
"Lighting," Sherlock shrugged. "See the smears? The candles were mostly sucked away when the door was opened. There are still some by the wall, though." He wandered over and scooped up a small pile of them. "Might come in handy."
"Angel candles," John joked wryly. Sherlock scoffed.
They reached the great, wooden doors, flung open onto a swamp. John held up his lantern, looking out.
It looked decidedly unfriendly. The doors—actually a cliff face, John noticed as they walked out onto the grass—sat in a very small clearing. Beyond it, there were three alleyways, their sides bricked but crumbling. The ground in all three was sloppy and loose, with marsh grasses growing on either side. It was quite dark. John looked up: a hundred thousand stars shown above them.
"Where the hell are we?" he mumbled to no one in particular. "This isn't London."
"Oh, but it is," Sherlock practically crooned. He walked up to one of the stone walls and laid a hand on one of the bricks, holding up his lantern to see. "This is Anglo-Saxon construction," he said. "From when London was little more than a town on the backs of the Thames." He rubbed gently at the stone. "Someone was murdered here," he added, dreamily.
"What?" John spluttered. "How can you tell?" he walked to join Sherlock, but when he looked around he only saw the cliff face and the doors behind him, the stone wall and the grass and the muck.
"Arrow." Sherlock gestured downwards. John looked down: there was an arrow shaft dug in hard amongst the marsh grass, which had grown over in a lump. John was certain there would be a body there, if he dug.
"Christ," John said. An uneasy feeling rose in his gut. It was childish, but he suddenly needed the reassurance: John reached for Sherlock's hand, which had dropped from the wall. "Come on, Sherlock," he said, tugging him away. "We already have a case."
Sherlock sighed. "It was a familial feud anyway," he said, following John easily down the alley, away from the angel's cage. "Dull."
John held up his lantern, lighting the way.
They squelched through the marshy alley, which John had picked at random. Down and down they went, and it got marshier, and wetter. Soon they were walking ankle deep in water, much to both of their displeasure.
"Here," Sherlock said, at last.
"Here what?" John asked, letting Sherlock pull him to a stop. The water was cold in his shoes, and he could swear something slimy and fishlike had brushed one of his ankles.
"There's a door."
"No there's not," John said. The wall looked solid: old gray brick layered with grime and moss.
Sherlock handed John his lantern and touched the wall lightly—
—and the world went sideways. John's shoes were dry, and he gasped in air: not sulfurous and swampy, but absolutely foul. It smelled like horseshit, urine, garbage and low tide, and the ground beneath his feet was cobbled. It was lighter now: dawn light. He gripped Sherlock's hand tightly, disconcerted. The lanterns in his other hand clanked together.
"What the hell?" John squawked.
"Oh," Sherlock said, small-voiced. He held John's hand just as hard. "I—Sixteenth century," he blurted, staring at the brickwork. They were still standing between two walls, only this was an actual alleyway, rather than a swamp enclosed by bricks.
And suddenly, it was comical. "I have no idea why I thought the Labyrinth would be logical," John remarked wryly.
Sherlock gave a bark of laughter. The set of his shoulders relaxed. "Honestly, John, nothing about London Below is logical," he replied. He reached for his lantern and blew it out, before tucking it back into the pack. "Best if one of us has a free hand," he said as an explanation, as he still gripped John's. He tugged lightly, and they started forward.
"It's just," John said, mock-doleful as he let the lantern clank at his side, "The name 'Labyrinth' got me all hopeful, you know? Structures are structures and not insane." The dawn light was enough to see by, but he had a feeling they'd be plunged back into darkness soon enough, so he didn't blow out the lantern.
"London is a structure." Sherlock said. "And London is mad. I have no idea what gave you that—Oh. Oh, of course!"
"What?" John asked.
"It's a microcosm, John!" Sherlock said excitedly. "It's London! I know London," Sherlock added, as if London were an easy question on an exam.
"Well, yeah, but not when it looks like this," John said doubtfully.
"I'd know London anywhere." Sherlock turned around, purpose in his stride. He pulled John the other way. "It lets out on Down Street," Sherlock said. "We just have to find Down Street."
"And where are we, exactly?" John asked.
"Wapping," Sherlock said.
"What?"
"Before the docks, John. Before the Blitz. Look at the mud! Can't you smell the Thames? It's Wapping. Once upon a time," Sherlock said, almost lovingly, "All of London was a back alley. Don't you see, John?"
"I don't smell anything but horseshit," John said. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"It isn't only people who can get pulled down into London Below," Sherlock told him. "It's places, too. This is an alley in Wapping that was forgotten, and became part of London Below. Sixteenth century Wapping: never demolished for the docks, never bombed during the Blitz, never rebuilt."
John understood now. "And it just stayed here. Forever."
Sherlock nodded.
"So why did we shift from the swamp to here when you touched the wall?"
"Nothing is logical," Sherlock grumbled like it was a personal offense. "But I imagine the swamps before were the banks of the Thames. It was just a different street. This way." He tugged John sharply to the right.
The cobbled street was brightly lit, suddenly: noon light. They were walking down another, curved alleyway with a modern-day dumpster buzzing with flies, which morphed into a swamp, murky and dark and wet. The swamp became concrete again: sodium lights flickered and buzzed. Somewhere, someone laughed, low and dirty, and as they walked down a deserted, misty street at night, John heard horses whinnying in the distance, the sound of old hansom wheels on cobblestone. They walked through mud, swamp muck, industrial sludge, horse shit, dog shit, human shit and trash. A yellow daytime fog set John coughing and his lantern sputtering and sparking, and Sherlock pulled him swiftly down a backstreet.
Now the walls were painted, covered with what looked like gaudy graffiti. It was all reds and yellows and blues, in great splashes of color. The cobbles beneath John's feet changed too—they were white marble, now. Before them was a series of ionic columns, and sun streamed clear through the openings between them, not a mist or a fog in sight. Sherlock gave a delighted laugh.
"Of course!" he said gleefully, and tugged John onwards.
They emerged through the space left by the columns, and into a sunlit square. The building they came from was huge. It was a basilica, John realized, with a bright red roof and painted ionic columns. Inside, there was a squat, rectangular stone building that looked like a temple, several deserted vendors, and statues painted in the brightest of colors. The basilica wrapped around the edges of it, enclosing the buildings. It looked like a great deserted town square and John felt a smile of wonder touch his lips.
"It's a Roman forum," John breathed. "I mean, it's an actual Roman forum."
"London's Forum," Sherlock grinned. "Look—there's a cornerstone missing. It's in London Above." He pulled at John's hand.
John let out a delighted breath, because it was true—there was a cornerstone in of the Roman Forum in London Above. Naturally, it would thus be missing in London Below.
"Wait," John said, "Just—just hang on." He didn't let go of Sherlock's hand, because he had a feeling it would be easy to get separated in this place, and he didn't fancy wandering here alone forever. But he did tug toward the marble statue standing majestically in a red and white painted robe.
"We really shouldn't linger," Sherlock said, a little uneasily.
"I just want to look, Sherlock. How often do you see a pristine Roman forum?" John asked.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Not pristine. Look." He pointed, and John saw a huge hole torn into the basilica. His eyes widened.
"What did that?" he asked.
Sherlock led him over. "Something with hooves," he said, gesturing to great tracks torn into the muck between the huge paving stones. "I imagine it was the beast Door spoke of."
"Door talked about a beast?" John asked, wracking his brain. He couldn't remember anything about a beast.
"She mentioned it. The junk man did too. A beast of London. Richard apparently killed it."
John had completely forgotten. He looked back at the size of the hoof marks, the huge chucks of marble torn from the gorgeous Roman building. "What was it, a rhinoceros?" He didn't think rhinoceroses had hooves.
Sherlock shrugged. "A boar, maybe, if those are tusk marks."
"Christ."
"Quite. Shall we?"
"I wish I had a camera. This place is amazing."
Sherlock smiled at John indulgently. He pulled John to one of the many toppled ionic columns and picked up the smallest shard of one of the scrolls: it had cracked into nearly quarters. He offered it to John.
"What, you're going to add stealing from an archeologic site to our various crimes?" John grinned, but he set down his lantern, took the shard and pocketed it. When he looked back, his lantern was gone. John felt his blood run cold.
"It's not an archeologic site," Sherlock was rolling his eyes. "It's the Labyrinth. It's frozen in time. Besides, there's no archeologist to study it. It's only accessible to the denizens of London Below, and even then, they have to find it in the Labyrinth. I'm sure it doesn't reveal its Forum to just—."
"Sherlock," John whispered.
"Oh," Sherlock said, following John's eyes. He gripped John's hand hard.
John stared at the empty space where his lantern had been. "You think it's—alive?"
"Who knows?" Sherlock said uneasily. "It wouldn't surprise me, though." He took the second lantern out of the pack and lit it before handing it to John. "Don't—don't set this one down. Come on. We should go."
John looked around nervously. "Yeah, alright," he said.
Sherlock pulled him toward the far right corner of the Forum. Before they reached the edge, John looked back once, and before his eyes it dissolved. He shivered, thinking it was probably good that they were holding hands, for all its absurdity. John had a feeling that the Forum was deceptive in its brightness, that if John had gone to explore its wonder, he would turn around and find himself utterly lost in the web of the Labyrinth, vanished as completely as the first lantern had. The stone scroll weighed heavy in his pocket.
Day had become night. John blinked to adjust his eyes. There were fires in the distance. Marsh rushes were burning, somewhere. He could smell the smoke. Sherlock took a hesitant step back, into John's shoulder.
"Alright?" John asked him, uncertain.
"Don't let go of my hand," Sherlock said. "And stay on the path. I have a bad feeling about those lights."
John squeezed his hand gently. "Alright." Sherlock squeezed back. He took a deep breath. John could feel him lean on him for just a moment, gathering strength, before forging forward. John held the lantern high, because the marsh lights and the distant fires weren't quite enough.
Sherlock paused after a few steps. "Sherlock?" John asked. He came around and held up the light.
"Stabbed to death," Sherlock mumbled, looking down. John followed his gaze.
There were bodies in the marsh. His breath got stuck in his chest, because there must have been hundreds of them. Some were beneath the water, some half way: all were old. Some were desiccated and dry, others bloated and wet and stinking. "Sherlock?" John asked again. There was a buzzing in his ear. He ignored it.
"There was a battle here," Sherlock said dreamily. "This must be before the Romans: before London was a city, when it was only the river and the rushes. Look at their clothes, their wounds. They aren't long out of the ice age."
John shivered. "Why are there so many of them?" His left shoulder had started to itch, so he rolled it uncomfortably.
"Different times, perhaps. Maybe generations came and went and fought over this spot. Their clothes are all different. Who knows?"
John pulled on Sherlock's hand. "Come on. We shouldn't linger."
Sherlock allowed himself to be pulled. More buzzing; John realized too late that the itching on his right arm was, in fact, a mosquito biting him. "Oh, hell," he mumbled. He let go of Sherlock's hand for a moment, slapping at it. His shoulder started it itch something fierce, too. God, the mosquitoes were huge.
Sherlock had paused uncertainly. John took his hand again, squeezed, and Sherlock nodded. They moved forward.
The wide open marshland soon became enclosed marshland. Thick stone walls stood on either side of them, and the small strip of land they were walking through dipped and became soggy. Soggy became wet, and then they were wading again. The mosquitoes buzzed harshly, and the marsh stank of sulfur and decay.
The stinking marsh melted into another cobbled alleyway, and there was a gas lamp in a far corner. The light it cast was quite poor, though that didn't matter much, as they had the lantern. Although—
"Hang on," John murmured. "I think the candle is guttering."
Sherlock paused, but he took a new candle from John's bag obligingly. He handed John a protein bar and a juice, too.
"Thanks. Take one for yourself, too. Should we have a rest, since it's not so damp, here?"
"Hmm." Sherlock reached back inside the pack and pulled out a sandwich. "I never ate mine; you gave me half of yours," he said, smiling faintly.
"Oh, brilliant," John said, and meant it.
They leaned against the filthy wall and split the sandwich, which turned out to be roast beef. John made Sherlock eat a peanut bar as well, and he had one for himself. They each got a bottle of juice.
Compatible silence fell as they ate their respective halves. The gas light was pretty shoddy, John thought. What was that, twenty feet of light? He was grateful for the remaining lantern, even if it was only a candle. He mourned the loss of the other, but he didn't want to think about it. The Labyrinth had taken it, which would terrify him if he let himself ponder it too hard.
John gestured to the gas light. "What's the year on this?" he asked Sherlock idly, sipping on his juice. It was some kind of weird raspberry thing, but it was refreshing, and he was quite thirsty. He was sure they needed the sugar.
"Late nineteenth century, early twentieth," Sherlock replied, just as idly.
When they finished, Sherlock stuffed the garbage in John's pack. "The bottles might still come in handy," he said. "People might trade for them. Or—" He grinned, suddenly.
"Yours is glass. Give it to me?"
John handed it over, curious. Sherlock reached into the pack and brought out a candle and John's pocket knife. Using the knife, he gouged two holes on the sides of the cap, and with the lit candle in John's lantern, he melted the wax at the bottom of the second candle, and then stuck it onto the bottle cap.
"Second lantern," he said. "Just in case." He didn't light the second candle, though, instead shoving it back into the pack.
"Brilliant," John beamed at him, and Sherlock grinned.
"This way." He took John's hand again.
Down the cobbled alleyway they went, and they were suddenly plunged into total darkness, aside from John's lantern. Somewhere, something was dripping, and it smelled foul. The walls were red brick, instead of gray, and the ground was soggy again.
"Sewer," John said, wrinkling his nose.
"Obviously." Now Sherlock was hesitating. "But which sewer?"
"No idea. What's the year on it, you know?"
"Nineteenth century. One of the older underground sewers in London—look at the brickwork. Could be anywhere."
"Well," John shrugged. "Why don't we just go straight and then turn out of it as soon as we can, so we're above ground and somewhere you know? How do you know where everything is, anyway?"
"Dirt," Sherlock said, "Sometimes distinctive brickwork, or the shape of the walls, if I can place it. Sounds, smells." He started to walk, gripping John's hand tightly, nervously.
"That's fantastic," John told him, and he smiled.
Through the sewer, and then it was bright, harsh day: modern day, actually. John knew because he could hear a car horn in the distance, and the alley was paved.
"Huh," he said.
"This way." Sherlock perked up. He turned them around and led them the other way down the street, and thankfully it didn't turn back into a sewer. Instead, it became cobbled again, and grew narrow and winding and stinking of refuse and body odor and distantly of barnyard animals.
"Victorian rookery," Sherlock said. "St. Giles."
"It's awful." John wrinkled his nose. Sherlock pulled him along.
"Come on," he said.
They walked along the winding cobbled street. Sheets hung in clusters outside of high windows, and they rippled sometimes in the foul wind. Someone had a pot of dying herbs out of a second story window. The walls, buildings all jammed haphazardly together, were filthy: they were covered in mud, and shit, and Sherlock paused briefly to examine a bloodstain before John pulled him on. At least, John thought, it was daylight.
Down they walked, and the rookery was a swamp again. Nighttime: a huge moon shone in the sky, blood-red and waxing, nearly full. It was very cold. John slipped a little on a patch of ice, and as they walked, the ice went thin until their feet pashed through into the freezing water beneath. Something under his heel crunched like bone when it hit the muddy bottom. John didn't think too hard about it.
"Ugh," John groaned, "My feet will never be dry again. Christ that's cold."
"I believe this is why you packed extra socks?" Sherlock asked wryly, but John smiled at him.
"Jumpers too, but let's keep moving. Maybe it'll pass in the next street."
They turned a corner and it did pass. Now they were walking down a street that wasn't paved at all, without even cobblestone. The dirt and mud clung to John's already damp shoes. It smelled strongly of horse manure, and though not as cold as the swamp had been, it was not warm either.
They walked down the muddy street with bricked up walls, until it became dusty, dry and hot. It felt bloody marvelous for all of two seconds, before the thick, stinking humidity made everything awful. At least it was night.
The loud honk of a distant car with an old fashioned horn made an absurd a-wooga sound. The alley was cobbled now, but the stones were cracking, twisted and old. Everything went misty and dank.
"How much farther?" John asked, a little worried. An overwhelmingly bad smell drifted toward them as they turned a corner and walked up a new cobbled lane. The sun beat down on their backs, which hardly dissipated it.
"Shouldn't be much," Sherlock murmured, wrinkling his nose.
They walked and they walked. Swamps became cobbles and cobbles became marshes. Day and night and mist and fog, and sometimes it even rained. The long corridors and streets divided and doubled back, and they hit a sewer again. John was nearly convinced Sherlock was lost. John was certainly lost. There was no way there could be any logic to this place—how could Sherlock think that? They were going to wander here until they died, John thought, half-way to panicking as they clomped over an absurd bridge of wooden planks. The bridge doubled back on itself, shaped like a weird V. John thought it was entirely pointless until Sherlock led him left, through more swampy reeds in summer, with burning buzzing howling mosquitoes, and then, at last, right down a cobbled road, and they came upon a huge rusted gate in a stone brick wall.
Sherlock stopped short. "Down Street," he said.
"Oh," John replied, shocked.
The wall was huge. Great stone blocks, each wider than John was tall, sat one on top of the other to form the gray, crumbling gateway. They were rough and misshapen and John thought they could only have been put there by giants.
"Cyclopean," he added faintly. "That's what they're called. Cyclopean walls. Right?"
"Something like that," Sherlock muttered. He tugged on John's hand. "Come on."
The gate itself was in utter, rusted disrepair. Big pieces of twisted iron lay scattered about the muddy ground, some sunk deep. As they passed, John noticed that the great corroded hinge was taller than either himself or Sherlock. There were other pieces handing precariously from that hinge, and they looked about three seconds away from collapsing entirely. John steered Sherlock away from them, lest they fall.
The air on the other side of the gateway was, somehow, clearer, and less claustrophobic. John breathed, and looked around.
"Down Street," Sherlock was sighing, as if deeply disappointed, "Of course."
John laughed incredulously. "Of course!" he agreed, grinning at his friend.
Down Street was stone, paved with rough blocks that wound forward, and then up, and then around in a great spiral. John looked up, and up, and it seemed to go on forever.
"We have to walk up Down Street," John said. "This is completely mad."
"London Below is terribly literal. On the bright side, I doubt we can get very lost here. It only goes one way." He released John's hand. "Shall we?"
John blew out the lantern, as he could see that there were wall sconces with actual flaming torches in the wall on the outer edge of the spiral. He pondered, briefly, that replacing those must be the worst job of all time.
"Let's," he agreed, and readily followed Sherlock up the street.
A/N: 'John Stow, the 16th century historian, described [Wapping] as a "continual street, or a filthy strait passage, with alleys of small tenements or cottages, built, inhabited by sailors' victuallers,"' according to Wikipedia. I'm taking that description and running with it! Modern day Wapping, from what I understand, is not like this at all.