So sorry for the massive delay, y'all. And for the much-needed kick in the ass to get going again. I'm afraid my muse packed up and left me. I patiently awaited her return, but it seems that she's gone for good. I'll just have to muddle through on my own.
As always, comments and thoughts are much appreciated!
Kit came back to herself in a place of utter darkness. There was nothing to see, and nothing at all to breathe. There was something gritty on her tongue, and all down her throat. A fit of coughing took over, and then panic, pure unstoppable panic.
She was on her stomach. The floor beneath her was hard metal, covered in some kind of dirt or sandy substance. She pushed herself to her knees, chunks of something hard and sharp pushing painfully into her legs. Her hands flailed out in front of her, her wrist striking something hard and hollow-sounding. She cried out in pain, and the sound seemed to echo back at her, mocking and over-loud. She realized that she must be in a confined space. It felt hidden and pit-like, the black suddenly a living thing that could seep into her nose and mouth. There was no air. Her hand swept out in front of her again, the only sound now her own frightened sobs.
She touched something soft, fabric, and then a hand clamped her wrist in a vice-grip. She tried to shake free, her movements now frantic and uncoordinated. Another sound reached her, low at first, but then louder, closer to her ear.
"Katherine! Stop. Kit. KIT, it's Sherlock, calm down, CALM DOWN!"
She realized that she was striking out blindly, unable to stop herself, and in the next instant she was crushed against something warm and damp, and she realized that she was bound up almost infant-like against Holmes' chest, his hands pressing her back and neck, still speaking into her ear, doing his best to break in on her hysteria.
"Stop," he said.
She pushed against him, heard the rip of fabric somewhere close, but whether from him or her, she didn't know.
"Stop." He said in the same low voice. Her forehead butted against his shoulder, and it stung. The pain seemed to help. His hands were moving, drawing a circle over her lower back. His other hand twisted through her loose hair.
"Stop." He was crooning now. "I'm here. You must try to calm yourself. I'm here, dearest."
It was the endearment more than anything that brought her out of herself. Sherlock Holmes never used endearments. They must be close to death.
Kit pressed her closed eyes into the sharp hard bones of his shoulder, almost to the point where it hurt. He smelled of sweat and aftershave. She turned her face into the column of his throat, felling the movement of his adam's apple, the hitch up and down of his collarbones as he breathed.
Her own breathing steadied, and she realized that although drawing a breath was difficult, it was not impossible. She stayed still then, letting the sound of her thundering heart grow less in her ears.
"Where are we?" She finally whispered.
"I believe we are in one of the coal storage bunkers on the lower deck. Beyond that, I'm afraid I have no information."
"Who…?"
He shook his head. A movement she could feel as his chin grazed over her forehead. "Norton perhaps. I didn't get a look at our attacker. I woke only a few minutes ago. When you didn't answer…"
He squeezed tighter, until she felt that her ribs would crack.
It was not nearly tight enough.
She lifted her head and managed to find his face with her hands.
"I'm all right," she assured him. "I'm…I'm sorry for my outburst, I…"
"Shhh." He ran a hand across her now upturned forehead, smoothing her hair back and away from her face. "There is nothing to apologize for. My own reaction upon regaining consciousness was not precisely…intellectual."
She found the corner of his mouth with her fingers, and felt the slight up-turn of a smile. "What shall we do?" She asked.
"To start with, keep your movements slow. It's the dust that is making it hard to breathe. I don't think these bunkers are built to be air-tight, but they are certainly not built for air exchange, otherwise a single spark could turn the whole thing into one smoldering hole in the bottom of the boat. The more we move, the more coal dust will be kicked into the air. It is very thick already. We must not have been here very long, or it would have settled."
Kit could not keep herself from coughing, and Holmes held her tightly through it. Her trembling distressed him to the point of distraction. When she was finished he stood, pulling her with him. The air was a little easier now, even this small distance above the floor. She could feel the dust clinging to the insides of her cheeks, making every breath rasp and hurt.
One of Holmes' arms loosened, and she heard fabric ripping again, and then fingers found her forehead, worked their way down past her nose and pressed something soft over her mouth.
"Breath through this. It might help."
"Do you have one?"
"I have two sleeves. "
She heard the tearing sound again. She tied the sleeve behind her neck, and then reached out until her hand encountered Holmes again. She had found the center of his chest, shirt clinging damply to his thin frame. Walking her fingers up the path of his buttons, she found the top two undone, and a wet length of neck beyond. His clothing was drenched in sweat. As was hers, now that she came to notice. The air in the small space seemed unbearably hot.
"We must be near the boilers."
He gave her shoulder a proud squeeze. "Indeed. That puts us roughly center ship. I deduced the same."
"Can we get someone's attention from the outside to come let us out?" She said, trying to keep her voice reasonable. Panic still lurked very close to the surface. "There might be stokers about?"
She felt him give another nod. "We can certainly try."
They banged against the side of the metal bunker, thumping and yelling until their voices were raw and their hands red and throbbing. Kit could have cried. The dust had settled a little, but the air stayed hot and stuffy. She realized that she was gasping most of the time, hyperventilating no doubt, as she was dizzy and disoriented.
She leaned back against the wall, and a moment later Holmes leaned beside her. "You rest. I'll check the rest of the room," he said, his breath fanning out over her face. She nodded, but didn't know if he could tell. "Yes, all right."
He moved away, his shoes scrapping against the floor as he moved with caution, aware of the cloud of choking dust that would be sent up if he fell. Kit splayed her hands out in front of her. Now that he was out of touching range she felt lost, and very alone. She pressed her palms against the metal supporting her instead, grounding herself with its physical presence. She had never realized how utterly disorienting the world became without the faintest hint of light. She bit the side of her cheek just to feel the pain, and remind herself that she was still there.
"Talk to me?" She said, although she wished she hadn't.
His footsteps paused. "What shall I say?"
"I care very little. I'm sorry, but, I can't see you..." Kit could have hit herself for the stupidity of that obvious statement, but Holmes didn't seem to mind. His shuffling began again, and a moment later was accompanied by his voice. "When I was fourteen I went with my mother and father on a trip to St. Malo. From there we went on to Pau. A quaint place, though I saw very little of it. I spent most of my time in the Salon of Maitre Alphonse Bencin. A fencing master, you understand?"
"I do. Pau seems an odd name for a place."
"Hmmm. In the Bible it is the name of an Edomite city, capital of the King Hadar. Genesis I believe." Holmes made a close circle of the room, taping the walls, looking for any small sign of weakness, anything that felt different than the rest. He longed for a ladder, a hatch, anything at all but the hot smooth metal and occasional interruption of rivets. The sharp hunks of coal had sliced repeatedly through his shoes, cutting into the soft flesh of his feet. "There I studied all eight of the established strike zones of the sword on the human body, Tierce, Sixte, Seconde, Octave, Quinte, Quarte, Prime, and Septime, as well as their corresponding parries."
The pile of coal seemed to ascend towards the back of the bunker, leaving them only a few feet to stand near the door. He could hear Kit's lungs laboring. His own hurt, feeling a strange mixture of clogged and empty at the same time.
"There is of course a ninth parry, but it is rarely used. In saber on the other hand, it is an essential movement." He knocked his knee against an upright metal bar, one he assumed was structural, and bit down on a loud curse. He hadn't realized until right now how frustrated he was. He swallowed around the dry lump in his throat. Concerned, tired, annoyed at his own stupidity, but now, now he was becoming well and truly angry. When he discovered who it was who had done this to them…
"Are you all right?"
He nearly fell back in surprise. Kit was directly in front of him, not a hands-breath away. He reached out and found her as he had left her, leaned against the door. He wrapped his hand around her upper arm, chiding himself as he did for such a useless gesture of protection.
"You're upset with me?" She asked. There was no hesitancy in her voice. Rather, he realized that she knew him well enough to gauge his moods, even blind. He found a strange exhilaration in that, as well as an acute discomfort.
"Not with you, no. But I am upset. This is all due to an inexcusable lapse in judgement on my part."
"I asked to help you."
"And I should have refused." He brushed his hands roughly over his forehead, trying to dash away the sweat that was stinging his eyes.
"Tell me." She said quietly.
"What is there to tell?"
"Sherlock," her voice held the amusement that often accompanies utter exhaustion. "Your silences are starting to sound like most men's shouting to me. What are you thinking?"
He considered lying to her, but knew he couldn't. Kit was her own kind of inviolate in his mind. "I don't think there is enough air getting in to supply us both at the rate we are burning through it."
"All right." She tried to keep her voice steady. "What do you suggest?"
No answer broke the hot silence. A moment later she heard a soft shushing sound, and knew he had slid down the wall to sit on the floor, leaning his back against the door. A moment later followed the repeated sound of a sharp and hollow bang. Realization hit her that he was slamming his fist against the wall behind him.
"Sherlock!" It came tumbling out, drawn up from somewhere deep inside her stomach.
She slid to the ground and arrested his arm, finding it in the dark after a few seconds to locate it by the sound. "Stop." She soothed, rubbing her thumb over his dirty knuckles. He yanked his hand away, his voice a snarl and too close in the void around them.
"Damn it! I can't think! I need my pipe!" He snapped his hands through his hair again in aggravation, pressing his fingers into his eyes.
"You'll think of something; I know it…" She soothed.
"You know nothing of the sort!" He almost yelled.
"Sherlock?"
"What?!" He caught himself. She was not the person he was angry at. "I'm sorry." He swallowed again, the action causing a great deal of pain to his dry and swollen throat. "Yes?"
"Is there a pressure point for relieving anger?"
"A..?"
"Is that not what you called it in the lounge? After we met Austin for the first time? 'The body has hundreds of them, some for harm, some for healing'."
"Indeed."
"Is there one for revealing stress and anger?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"But..."
"It's in a rather personal area."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
He felt her pull away before he heard the rustle of her clothing, and reached out instinctively to stop her. His hand grazed her chest, and he lifted it quickly to her shoulder. "No, no. I'm sorry. I didn't mean...wait. Give me your hands."
He felt down her shoulders, past elbows and wrists, and ended lightly clasping her forefingers. He raised then both carefully, either side of his neck, and placed the two index fingers of each hand softly behind his ears, where the jaw and skull connected. A strange sensation suffused him. This was certainly not the first time Kit had touched his face. Not even the first time this evening, but he had never invited her so directly before, and he felt her light touch on this most vulnerable of places with a certain reckless pleasure, as though some wire in his blood had suddenly hummed to life. "Trace circles here, gently. it is called the Dokko." She did. Her touch was soft and delicate, as if afraid to leave a visible mark of her actions.
Holmes noted that his anger was abating, but was not sure if it was due to the stimulation, or her proximity. "May I..?"
He lifted his own hands.
"Of course."
Of course. She knew what he was asking, sightless, and made it sound as if it was his right. He found her cheeks, and then her earlobes, pressed into the indentation at the outside of the jawbone, rubbing rhythmically. Most interesting. If her touch was stimulating, this action of touching in return was more stimulating still. He knew what it was to kiss her, but nothing until now could have really been classified as deliberate. Even Sherlock Holmes knew better than to assign too much meaning to an intimacy that had happened directly after they had both escaped from a burning building.
He felt his trusting mood diminish. Was death by asphyxiation that much more routine? He swore to himself that if they made it out of this, he would strive to initiate such pleasurable feelings when their lives were not in imminent danger. Would a setting of tea and toast produce such addictive stirrings? Or was that too much to hope for?
"There is another point in the webbing of the hand that is thought to assist in the relief of head-aches," he said, letting his blathering fill up the suddenly very quiet space between them. "And one where the chest meets the throat that unlocks energy..."
"Here?"
She moved her hand to his open shirt-front, her finger brushing in a long glorious trail across his damp skin. "Higher. Under the adam's apple." Her finger re-traced it's path upwards. "Here?"
"Oh. Yes. This is also one of the most devastating places to inflict pain and damage. If you were to press too hard..."
"I could hurt you."
He felt a tremor start in his legs. "Just so."
She shifted closer to him, his solid warmth in the dark. Moisture from her breath had wet the sleeve in front of her face, making it harder to breath, and she pulled it down around her neck, before resuming her explorations. "Where else?"
His breath caught. "Kit, I...perhaps we should stop."
"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"I am not uncomfortable, I am simply...gathering my thoughts."
"And this is making it difficult?"
"You are making it impossible."
There was a smile in her voice when she responded. "Men say the most delightful things when they're in love."
He snapped back against the wall behind them, yanking himself out of her hands. The silence was ominous. Kit could have hit herself. She could have screamed, or pummeled him in frustration. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. Please, I didn't mean-" She covered her face with her hands, biting her lip to stop her own litany of unladylike language. "I spoke thoughtlessly. I should have known better."
He did not move towards her, but his voice was a comfort at least. "How could you know better, if I refuse to confide in you?"
She waited tensely, trying, but not succeeding to slow her breathing. Perhaps this entire situation could be attributed to hypoxia.
"You've never been in love?" She asked finally.
"Oh yes. I'm afraid so." There was another long pause.
Damn it, if she was going to die, then she was going to get this out in the open before she did. She refused to die with a man who didn't trust her. "Tell me about her."
"Who?"
"The one you were going to tell me about in the park before we left."
"Ah." She wasn't sure, but that dry rattle she heard may have been laughter. "You are not easily put off, I see."
"I'm here, aren't I?"
His shoulder rose and fell rhythmically, back against her side, and after a prolonged silence, she let her head fall onto his shoulder.
She may have drifted into sleep eventually, or simply let her mind wander. There was no time here, and no movement.
After what could have been hours, she heard his voice again, very soft, and held herself still, frightened to break in on his train of thought.
"She was a girl who worked for us, on the family estate of Mycroft. It's where I was born. She was nice enough, looking back. At the time of course I thought she was an unequal-able creature. At the time I was also about 18."
She sighed beside him. He drew himself up slightly. "Please remember, I was a very advanced 18."
"Of course you were, Sherlock."
"I thought...well, it doesn't matter what I thought," he said, as though addressing someone else. "I certainly know I did nothing that would have been considered inappropriate. I was far too busy with my studies for that. I was about to leave for Oxford. She was kind to me. She told me she loved me. I told her...things in return. She was my first attempt to be…the same, I suppose, as everyone else."
Kit held her breath. There was a long silence, as if he was reconsidering the wisdom of continuing, but eventually he spoke again, again to himself, as if he was already wholly defeated.
"There is very little else to tell, and most of it ugly. She became pregnant. She informed my father that it was mine. There were demands, as I recall, some threats, but I was kept mostly out of it."
On a whim, she brushed her fingers through his tangled hair, loving the feel of the prickle against her fingers where it was shortest, around his ears and at his nape.
"It wasn't yours of course."
She sensed a wane smile from beside her. "Good girl. Of course it wasn't mine. As a consequence of my class I am not…innocent, but at that time I was, and had no interest in such complications. I assumed a certain purity on her part. I was very much mistaken." He sighed."Suddenly in the court of opinion I was required to do the right thing, as if the masses have ever had the most fleeting notion of what that means. I had been seen with her. I had not kept my emotions as secreted as I should have." He shrugged. "I don't think she was particularly evil. Just making the best of a bad situation. I learned later that she had tried it on with my brother Mycroft the summer before, but he paid her no attention."
"You sound almost forgiving."
"I think non-committal would be more apt. I no longer allow her a place of importance in my memory."
Kit wondered if he knew how much of a lie that was. He went on without further prodding though, obviously ready to have it out and done with.
"Her father became livid. He claimed that it was another example of the lord of the manner covering up bad behavior while the lower classes suffered. He threatened me with a great many things, the least of which was marriage. I have a distaste of the institution to this day as a result."
"What happened?"
"Perhaps I have mentioned that I am not the most astute one in my family. My father had the real culprit hanging from our gate-post inside half a day. It was a local man. No one of any importance. The girl admitted to it, but the village had all heard the gossip of course, and my family hates nothing so much as aspersions. I was packed off to Oxford rather early, where I proceeded to be attacked by a dog and wrapped up in all sorts of misadventures that did not become one in my position, according to my parents, and the girl was sent to live with some relatives, as I believe is standard in such cases."
"And from this stems your insistence that all women are not to be trusted?"
"Not entirely, but it certainly didn't help. I'm told she named her son after me. A parting barb, no doubt."
"The poor thing was named Sherlock?"
"Ha. No. I have several more socially acceptable names that surround my chosen moniker."
Kit clutched his hand. Her lungs were burning, her head light. She knew he would not weep, or become violent, but his hand was a fist in her own now, and his shoulders were ridged. She could feel him slipping away, and brushed a hand over his sweaty cheek.
"Was she very beautiful?"
He started. "What?"
"She must have been very beautiful."
There was a long pause, as if he was deciding her fate, but then he huffed a dry laugh, his breath caressing her cheek. "Yes, she was. But not like you."
"How so?"
"Your face is…more pleasing I think." A rustle of fabric, and them a warm finger lightly on the bridge of her nose. "Straight nose." His finger slid lower, coming to rest on her mouth. "Lips with the sharpest upturned bow I have ever seen. And very soft. Beautiful eyes, often full of recrimination…"
She laughed.
"A warming laugh, soothing voice. And a mind. Oh, Kit, how I do adore your mind…"
She found her own hands sneaking out until she found his jaw again, then ran a single finger up to the indent between lip and chin, like a valley, warm and soft beneath the scratch of short whiskers. That dear, narrow, hawk-like face. Her lips drifted closer, fingers tracing down the open V in his shirt.
The door swung open behind them, tumbling them both with an inglorious yelp out onto the cold hard floor of the lower deck.
A gangly figure stared down at them, both dust-black from head to toe.
"Sherls? Miss Rushford?" It was Langdale Pike.
Kit could have cried for happiness.
"Langdale!" Holmes growled, flapping around on the floor to get his baring.
"Yes, old man?"
"Thank you!" Sherlock was on his feet now, assisting Kit to hers, and taking Pike firmly by the shoulders, giving him a shake and leaving deep black smears all over his shirt. "How in the name of God did you find us?"
"Oh, I've been following you ever since you left rehearsal today."
"What?" Kit said, drawing in huge gulps of the cooler, cleaner air.
"Who hit us?" Holmes interrupted. "Who brought us here?"
"I don't know. I didn't actually see anyone. You two were just there one minute, gone the next. I wasn't exactly right behind you. But I did see someone come down this way, and when I came through I heard voices, and well…my, I hope I didn't interrupt anything important, did I?"
"So it wasn't Lord Norton?" Sherlock near shouted, trying to keep the actor on track.
"Lord Norton? I shouldn't think so. In fact, old boy, the Captain's looking for you, he's put out a ship-wide announcement. He wants to talk to you in connection with that Norton chap."
"Has he hurt someone else?"
"Hurt someone? Oh, no. He's gone and gotten himself killed."
