Prompt: John isn't actually a person. He's the soul of London living in a human body.
...it's when I start working on London/Lestrade with yet another version of London that it gets a little ridiculous. Good thing someone's already prompted that.
London Incarnate
a ballad of bedlam, or, the origin(s) of London Incarnate
When London was very young, brick and mosaic (ave, domin(a/us) londinium), it used to start from the beginning, found itself brought forth in blood and squalling (fearpainanger everything new and big and threatening (deadly) and London so very small and helpless).
But London was young then, and bound by the Wall, and mortal shape fit it well. It was nothing like what it would be, brick/earth/stone/life all forced to fit into ten fingers, ten toes, one set genitalia, entirely the wrong sort of limbs and senses.
Londinium was not so many buildings, not so many people and pigeons and rats and foxes and flies, not so many streets and parts and legends. It was easier, then, for London to be summoned forth into human shape and seeming – it was possible for London to be called into human shape and seeming.
(a cautionary tale of childhood:
It happened, by the by, that Londinium – chief residence of merchants, mart of trade and commerce – was born a girl, daughter of legionary and a river woman.
It is unknown just how this came to pass – mortal magic is presumed to have forced the issue – but pass it did that the town unworthy to be called a colonia was the first child born to the new settlement.
Now, her people were the people of Rome, far from him though they had travelled and conquered, and so they recognised what she was and took her to the temple, to be consecrated, to be sheltered, to be taught to keep the Pax Romana.
She was well cared for, and attended at every moment, for the Romans were City-people (anno urbis conditae), not city people, and knew the power of Genii Locorum.
But in a.u.c. DCCCXIII, twenty years since its founding and her birth, Londinium burned and her guards could do nothing, for she was the City and the City was her and they burned for Boudicca's daughters. For three generations after, s/he left the womb scarred.
The moral of the story is this: humans are the city, but the City is not human.)
London hatedhatedhated being dependent. It could not stand that it needed to be guided to suitable flesh, that there were incantations and invocations, that he would spend a childhood being cared for by others, that she would grow so slowly, that s/he was known as what it was, London in a human shape.
To be so vulnerable, so dependent upon the caretakers of his/her mortal flesh – one or two terrible lifetimes, London couldn't even speak to itself, had no idea if a fire was burning, if the Stone was being touched, the bridge being crossed, if the sky was clear on the other side of the river.
A balance had to be struck, between human-shaped and human-formed.
(regarding the necessity of metaphysical safety valves:
There comes a time in every City's life when the magic is more about the City than the people in it.
In its youth, the assumption of mortal practitioners is that the power lies with them: in the magicians, the sorcerers, the witches, the wizards, the warlocks. They are the magic that flows where the green places are stymied, they have the power, the city bends to them.
However, when a City has reached a certain age, a certain amount of deep-rooted history, the power flows the other way, the magic lies in the City's streets and buildings. The magic can be borrowed by those with talent, but nobody doubts that the power is in the City.
Time, you see. Cities are made of lives and time. Magic worked under and over every stone in the City so many times, it sinks into the land and stays.
One thousand two hundred and four years after its original founding, the City of London acquired a priory, home to the sisters of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem. This was unimportant at the time.
Ninety years later, the priory had become a hospital, and twenty years from that it took in the first of the type of patients that would make its Name. This was still unimportant.
The important thing was this: that London's genius loci, to use the name by which it first knew itself, London's spirit – had in previous generations attempted to Incarnate itself at a stage in life preferable to it.
London was larger than Londinium, older and more settled, had been burned and abandoned and rebuilt and seen countless generations pass – it drove itself mad. It was not merely attempting to fit itself into a human – difficult enough as it aged – but attempting to create a human from nothing.
One moment it was
streets buildings rivers people, every part moving functioning working together, equilibrium, quintessence
and the next it was
so small so breakable so insignificant, one among thousands, among millions, what is that 'smell' what is that 'colour' what is that sensation what is that, why am I not (one-in-many/many-in-one) me why am I human, I am trapped I am so small I can't breathe (what is breath) how can I be City be human be both I am so much more than human, why am I trapped in this body with these eyes and thoughts and limbs and
Of course London went mad. And for London to go mad –
Everything of London is life; consequently everything of London's was touched by the madness. Something had to be done with the overflow while London struggled with Incarnation.
That is the story of how Bedlam came to be.)
London learned quickly, for a given value of quick – perhaps six generations and he could die and find herself standing by the Stone in the next breath, and from then on London had the art of it. It forgot there was ever a time before, it began to believe that it had always Incarnated as it had, and if it ever remembered otherwise, such memories were only the muddled confusion of the world's oldest mental institution.
(the truth of the matter:
There is London the City and there is London Incarnate. Everything else is a matter of conjecture.
What does Bedlam know, after all? It is only seven hundred and sixty-three.)
.
john h watson
When London Incarnates, there is always a moment of disorientation – male/female, what's the difference/why so soft so fragile so small/what is that, what is that, smell, touch and taste and sound, oh, everything is new/different from last time, time before, me– followed by a name, a date of birth, a childhood, an adolescence, an occupation, a personality...
It lasts less than a millisecond and longer than a lifetime.
John Watson curls his shaking fingers around the iron grille covering the London Stone and gasps like a man pulled from the Thames.
He is average height, average looks, brown hair, blue eyes, nondescript in every way – the idea is never to bring (the wrong sort of) attention to himself.
Upon his body, marks of experience, of a life well lived – he has learned from experience that their absence unnerves others, makes people look at him with puzzled suspicion, unable to pinpoint what unnerves them but uneasy nonetheless.
Laugh lines, frown lines, a burn from childhood (he just never mentions that childhood was two thousand years ago), calluses from frequent handling of a gun (ever since the gun was invented, in fact), ugly new scarring on his shoulder a memento of war (Afghanistan or Iraq? but John is thinking of bombs on the Tube and quiet defiance, London drinks tea in your general direction), shaking hands and psychosomatic limp the easiest symptoms to spot on home-returned soldiers.
Every mark is a quick means of establishing the type of man he is in this Incarnation: gun calluses rather than sword, war wounds rather than work accidents, a surgeon with shaking hands rather than a butcher with steady ones, a military posture, a steady gaze, a limp that worsens when things about him are quiet and calm.
He closes his eyes, searches – yes, there are the necessary records, birth certificate, medical history, GCSEs, A Levels, Intercalated BSc, Medical Sciences, MBBS, General Medical Council registration...
No one can appear of nothing these days.
He becomes more sure of himself, enough to reach out and test – friendly, forgettable John Watson? You remember him, yes? He attended your school, your university, he was your friend, he was your acquaintance, your student, your enemy, your ally. He was in your regiment, your battalion, he saved your life, he failed to save your friend, he took a bullet for you, far from home. You know John Watson, don't you?
They always do. Their memories are London's memories are John Watson's memories, and everything is true because they believe it.
(The distinction between City and Incarnate is a blur of wet ink, never a line.)
Anyone could tell you: John Watson is an ordinary, unremarkable man.
(He knows London, every building, every cobble, every side street, every traffic light pattern, every type of earth on which London is built. He knows where the pigeons roost and the foxes den and the rats feast. At rush hour his heart speeds up and he cannot keep still, has to move; on bank holidays he is lethargic and irritable. When he needs to be somewhere quickly the lights are green, when he wants to be alone his chosen spot is quietly ignored, when he is exceptionally happy the skies are clear and blue.
When he wants a flatmate, an old friend happens to be sitting on a park bench as he limps by.)
.
the striking of the stone
Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command
Sometimes London lives out entire lives in quiet anonymity, and only the archives will know the name of that Incarnation fifty years later – just one of millions history will forget.
But sometimes London's Incarnations are the ones to make history (that brief and brutal life in the late nineteenth century, that long legend-lost one in the fourteenth), because there is something London needs and would not otherwise receive.
John Watson knows which one his life will be the moment Sherlock Holmes says "Afghanistan or Iraq?"
The London Stone sits safe behind glass and iron and still he feels the words like the blow of a sword upon it –
(Now is Sherlock Holmes lord of John Watson.)
He hated that sensation of claiming once.
This time he leans on his cane, thinks of how he woke up desolate, shaking with pain and nightmarish echoes, and decides he'll do anything to keep this.
.
beating the bounds
blessing:
"Isn't it amazing?" Harry says, bright-eyed. "How little things can change your life? There's me, cursing taxis to hell and back because they never bloody stop for me, ever, the bastards, and fuck it, Tube it is, and then it turns out the love of my life's sitting opposite, and we'd never have met if it wasn't for that sodding cabbie!"
"Oh my God," John says helplessly. "Harry, please tell me you aren't going to use that as your toast on your wedding day."
"Someone up there likes me, John," Harry says blissfully. "I've never been happier in my life, seriously."
"Good," John says simply. "I know we don't get on sometimes, but I like it when you're happy, Harry, I really do. So, try not to mess this up?"
"Fuck you," Harry says, laughing, head titled back. "Be my chief bridesmaid?"
"I think you mean 'best man'," John says.
"No, I mean bridesmaid," Harry insists. "You can have a top hat, but you've got to wear a dress with it."
John shakes his head and sighs a long-suffering sigh. Harry's mouth twitches unrepentantly.
("Things this good don't happen to me," she admits quietly when John is about to leave.
"Sure they do," John says brightly, cajoling. "London moves in mysterious ways for your happiness, Harry, ~mysterious~ ways!" He wiggles his fingers at her, grinning.
"Oh, you prick," Harry says, slapping at him with her bag. "For that, you're wearing a corset.")
protection:
"You've got the luck of the bloody devil," Lestrade says, shaking his head. "God's sake, Sherlock, could you try not to be so bloody stupid? Wait for someone to accompany you? Not run after murderers into dark alleys?"
"I've got someone looking out for me," Sherlock rasps, with an irritable glance at the nearest CCTV camera.
The fox that screamed, attracting the attention of passers-by and bringing help when Sherlock needed it, slips back into the alley shadows and trots off to a restaurant John knows, not usually as careless with its leavings as it will be tonight.
limits:
"Harry and me don't get on. Never have."
Sometimes she looks at John, bleary-eyed, breath stinking of alcohol and says, "Who are you?"
"John," he tells her, "You know, your brother?"
"I'm an only child," Harry Watson says. "I – Johnny?"
"Yeah," John says, relieved enough that he doesn't even care she calls him Johnny, like he's still a child. "Yeah, Harry."
"Why don't I believe you?" She says quietly, voice shaking. "John – why don't I remember you?"
"But you do," John says, puzzled, spreads his hands. "Harry, if you'd stop drinking so much-"
"I don't remember you," she says. "I – John, sometimes I think you just appeared one day. But that's crazy, right? I – you know, I have memories, lots of them, I was there when you were born, I gave you your favourite teddy bear – I'm never letting you live that down, by the way. I mean, Mister Luffalot? I remember – I remember – but sometimes I don't, and John – John, you are my brother, right?"
"Of course I am," John says gently, kisses her cheek and bids her goodnight and takes her hangover with him when he goes, poison in the palm of his hand.
"Want to see some more?"
The first time Sherlock asks John to accompany him to a case outside of London, John pauses, fear clutching at his heart at the very idea: leave London?
John has memories of a desert war, half a world away, but as London Incarnate –
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
He's not sure any Incarnate has ever left London, for any reason. Plague, fire, flood, bombing – nothing has ever driven him/her/them away. Perhaps he will cease to exist if he crosses the City limits. Perhaps he's just never had a compelling reason.
(John always wanted to visit Rome.)
"Sure," he says, swallows hard.
The City hums in the back of his head, whispers of need and service, necessity, and lets him go.
.
a spider in the centre of its web
London likes Jim Moriarty. He is a worthy foil for Sherlock Holmes, challenges him to newer and greater heights, turns mere story into enduring legend.
John hates Moriarty, what he goads Sherlock into being, the lives he threatens for fun.
London is willing to sacrifice a few lives for a game that will go down in history.
John – it's not his place to interfere. Incarnate and City don't necessarily have to be in agreement. Not until certain lines are crossed.
.
the warning
Jim Moriarty wakes to John Watson standing at the foot of his bed. He doesn't ask how he found him, how he managed to get in without tripping any of his defensive measures.
Arrogance.
He laughs and says, "Sherlock's pet, come to visit little old me? Oh, I'm so pleased, self-kidnapping service!"
"Listen," John Watson says, and moonlight makes his eyes shine silver. "I love theatricality, love a chance to bemoan what the world is coming to, love to have an enemy to hate –"
"Getting a bit above your station, aren't you?" Jim says blandly. "What makes you think I want to hear anything you've got to say?"
"You're the one misjudging your importance," John says sharply, lip curling at the arrogance. "There is only one Sherlock Holmes. But there are countless criminals he can test himself against. Don't think you're essential, Moriarty."
"Of course you wouldn't understand," Jim sneers. "Boring, plodding little dog, trailing in Sherlock's wake, I don't know what he sees in you-"
"I'm warning you," John says, "because I like you, you've been a good foe for Sherlock, so you deserve a bit of grace, don't you think? I'm giving you a friendly warning, try and listen. It'll be worth your while."
Jim snorts. "Go on," he mocks. "Warn me."
John's voice is a multitude and his eyes the glittering of countless distant electric lights. "London rejects you," he says steadily, deadly intent, the words calm and touched by the sing-song recitation of oath. "The streets deny you. No ticket or card from your hand will let you pass the barrier of the Underground, no bus or cab will stop for you, no train will open its doors to you, no building will give you shelter.
"Your money is false in the shopkeeper's hand, no ATM will recognise your card, your account numbers no longer exist, are mere digit strings.
"Wherever you go, the cameras will follow you, the lights will show you, enemy of London.
"Leave or be destroyed. Return and be damned."
Jim Moriarty bursts out laughing. "I own this city!"
"No you don't," London says.
.
the invocation
Says Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty's hands at his throat, snipers at his back, feet teetering, "Domine – Domine Dirige Nos, Domine Dirige Nos-!"
His eyes meet John's
oh.
and John is far from his power, but he is the City and the City is him and he has been Called, Sherlock Calls and he reaches out/in/down/up and
.
domine dirige nos
London's magic is old magic, is City magic, is not human magic though it is human in origin. London is more than its generations of build and burn and renew, more than the countless lives made and given and lost and found and ended upon its earth, more than a human could contemplate.
London is life and power untameable.
(in the first quarter of the blood-red cross, the sword)
One of London's own asks for protection, one of London's calls it – one who has walked its streets, crossed its rivers and eaten its bread, spilt blood upon its stones and offered prayers to its sky, and London's shape is human only because it chooses to be.
(holding the shield, the dragon)
The dragon is everywhere in the heart of London: carved into arches, hidden among parapets, squeezed into entablature, standing upon pedestals, guarding the boundaries of the City, red-crossed wings spread wide.
But to call what London is a dragon –
If it were at all aware of something standing at its feet, it might be amused at the limited perception. 'Dragon' is too simple a way to look at it, and the only way to see it.
There is the suggestion of lashing tail and flared nostrils and darting arrow-headed tongue but at a size and form incomprehensible. Its scales are the silver-black-smog of shadow and gleam, the red markings on its wings indistinguishable from old brick, fine port or fresh blood. One fierce gold eye is the sunrise, the other the sunset. One gleaming claw pressed down could open an abyss in the earth. If its wings bothered to beat, it would take a century for them to unfold.
A billion lives in its eyes, a thousand million footsteps a year remembered on each scale, a billion billion little names and stories in its belly, of interest only to other little ghosts who thought (convinced themselves) they were more than ants to the City, and the very idea that a single human should be worth taking notice of is absurd.
"Domine," whispers one of the tiny living things.
London looks.
(Sherlock Holmes covers his eyes; Jim Moriarty's laughter is a scream)
.
sherlock
"...John?"