Hey. Look I'm sorry this took so long but I didn't have time. I was looking for a job, which I might have soon (yay!) and before that I had exams. Point being I've been busy. Thanks for sticking with the story people.
Previously:
"HA!" Jamie yells, surprising everyone. "You failed the dare!"
"Crap! I forgot about that." Watson huffs.
"And to think, you only had to wait three more minutes."
"What do you mean incapable?" Cam asks sounding serious.
"I'm not sure, she just never does. And believe me, we've been in some embarrassing situations." Lestrade explains with a slight grimace, no doubt remembering said situations.
At that point we just started talking about some of our cases, entertaining the group. There wasn't a lull in the conversation, even when we cleaned up and went into another room. We all talked well into the night. Once we were done the last tale, we went our separate ways. As soon as my head hit the pillow I fell into a peaceful sleep with a small, content smile on my face.
Watson's POV
I wake up at six, as is usual. I need to keep my routine. I don't know when Holmes will figure this out, but when she does, I'll be ready to start my days as usual. However, there are a few things I will miss about this time. I'm going to miss the advanced technology, the advanced medicine, the games, the friends, Holmes not being too obsessed with a case, Jenifer. I think when the time comes, I'm going to have a hard choice. Stay, or go home. I dress for the day then leave my room. I told Jen I'd meet her in the med lab so we could go over some formulas and try to make one that could save someone when they're on the door of death. Something like what Mr. Holmes gave to my father for a wedding gift.
However, on my way down to the lab, I couldn't stop thinking about a dream I had last night. In my dream, I was standing in a dimly lit alleyway. I started walking towards one end but a shadowed figure stepped in my path. They just stood there starring at me, while I stared at them. After some time, they started walking towards me, and I matched them step-for-step but in the reverse direction. Suddenly, I'm in the middle of the street with cars zooming past on either side of me. The shadowed figure appears behind me, all I can do is run forward and hope for a break in traffic. Finally I see a break and run through. The shadow follows me, which I was hopping for. They get struck by a truck but appear behind me again. Next we're standing over a bridge overseeing more roads busy with cars. I'm pushed off. Before I hit the ground and then by a car, I woke up.
I reach the lab that she said to meet in to find her already there, head bent over a microscope. Seeing her draws me out of my musings. She looks up then turns to look at me with a big smile on her face. My heart melts a little. I think when the time comes I might just stay.
"Hey sleepy head."
"Sleepy head? Is this not early?" I ask her.
"Relax, I'm only teasing you. I just down here as well. About five minutes ago." She says as her smile starts to falter.
All I can think is I did that. I made her upset. I really don't know how to act around a girl.
"Sorry, I was simply curious. I still don't know your times terminology very well." I rush to say to make her smile again.
"No biggie. So, you said last night that what I've been trying to do, since I was a kid, was accomplished already?"
"Yes. Holmes's father had invented it, actually he gave it as a wedding gift to my father who later used it on Mr. Holmes."
"So I've most likely been overlooking the obvious the whole time? Do you know what the ingredients were?"
"No, but I'm pretty sure Holmes does. She, like her father, when not busy on a case will invent useful contraptions, most of the time. Her father may have told her."
"I'll have to ask her later on today then."
We sat there for a good portion of the morning talking about various medicines and other stuff before we headed up to get something to eat. As we get closer to the kitchen we hear a conversation. I can hear Holmes and not help but want to know what she's talking about. Jenifer grabs my arm, halting me in my steps, and gestures to keep quiet. We walk silently down the hall and sand by the entry way to the kitchen, just out of sight but able to see a good portion. I see Holmes talking with Cam.
"What're you talking about?" He asks her, his brows furrowed.
"I mean, what if we were meant to be here? What if Watson, Lestrade and I are here for a reason? Besides. Lord Ikrum, he looks just like the lawyer you've pointed out. Why is he so successful here in this time if Jaccob Viron and Lord Ikrum are not the same person?" Holmes rants. Who's Jaccob Viron?
"Explain how he, if they are the same person, is that successful in your time then." Cam says calmly.
"My time is simpler. A little amount of money here, in this time, is lots back then. He would just have to bring some back to the past to be as rich as he is!" Holmes exclaims. It's true though.
"Listen to yourself Holmes. You're trying to make the evidence fit the man." Cam sighs. "Besides, if he was the same man, you could easily get home, to your time."
"What if 1914 doesn't feel like home anymore?" Holmes says quietly, looking up to meet Cam's eyes. "What if I like it here?"
"You wouldn't belong here, it would be nice to have you stay, but you three deserve to be in your own time." Cam says just as softly.
Holmes is silent as she looks away. I can tell she knows he is right. Does she really want to stay here though? Why?
"Hey. You got some motor oil on your face." Cam says trying to change the topic.
"Huh? Where?" She says swiping at her face, making it worse with her oil covered hands.
"Here." Cam says.
He brings a cloth up to her face and gently wipes it for her. About a minute later, her face was as clean as he could get it.
"Thanks."
Lestrade walks past us into the kitchen.
"Do I want to know?" He says looking at the cloth in Cam's hand and a still slightly oily Holmes.
"It was nothing." Cam says.
"If you must know, he was helping clean my face. I imagine there's still oil on it though."
"Yes. You might want to have a shower."
Jenifer pushes me into the opening of the door way and I try to play it off in front of the three. I'm not too sure it worked. Jenifer walks in behind me as Holmes leaves to take a shower.
"What'd we miss?" She asks.
Lestrade give us a look from behind Cam. Looks is if he doesn't believe us.
"Something about oil and a shower?" I try.
"Uh, yeah. Holmes just left to wash up. She was covered in motor oil from her projects." Cam answers us.
"Alright. So what're we doing?" Jen asks.
"Lestrade, you feel like making something?" I ask.
"Sure."
Holmes's POV
My shower had to have been at least half an hour because of the oil. Next time Tony tries to fix a leak in any of the vehicles, I'm not going to be near him. Finally I scrub the rest of the oil off my neck and leave to grab the change of clothes I had set on the vanity before I stated my shower, but after I scrubbed my hands clean for seven minutes. I change into the clothes I bought yesterday. I put on the jeans, then my dark grey hip-hop shirt. I head back into my room to put on the converse I bought. I head back down to the kitchen where I left Cam, Lestrade, Watson, and Jenifer.
As I approach I can smell Shepard's pie. Lestrade like to make just about anything, but mainly Shepard's pie. I think back to when we were all younger, about 5 years ago. We were nine. Watson, with his mother and father, and my father and myself were gathered at Lestrade's house. His father was entertaining us while his mother cooked a Shepard's pie. I excused myself to use the washroom and on my way back I stopped by the kitchen. I saw Mrs. Lestrade and Lestrade himself working on the pie together. I've never told him about that day, what I saw. He truly has loved cooking from a young age. I guess this is him bringing a part of his home here to this time.
I walk into the kitchen to see lestrade cutting a cooling Shepard's pie and Watson passing it out. When my eyes land on Cam, I see him still playing with the cloth he used to, attempted to, clean my face.
"Can I ask why you still have that dirty cloth in your hands?" I inquire as I get closer to him.
"Huh? Oh! I'm not sure really. I kinda zoned out." He replied.
"Oh! What were you thinking of Cam?" Jamie teases him, though I'm not sure why.
"Don't you want to make googlie eyes at Lestrade?" Jamie's smile drops, as does her face with a mighty blush.
"Jamie, I think you could put a fire truck to shame." I say.
Everyone looks at me as if they didn't expect me to say it. Then, they laugh while Jamie looks at me with wide eyes and a surprised look. That accompanying the blush makes me double over in laughter and fall off my seat. While falling, I grab the first thing I can. It happens to be Cam. He comes toppling to the floor as well. I stop laughing for a minute and look at him. Then I fall into laughter all over again. Wheezing, I tried to apologize to him, but he was laughing to hard to hear me.
Once we all sobered up, Luca came in and saw us on the floor. He walked over to Cam and I and offered me a hand. I took it and he helped me up. He then did the same to Cam.
"Wanna tell me why the both of you were on the floor?" He asks as he grabs some Shepard's pie.
"Jaime blushed, I made a comment and everyone laughed. I fell off my chair and grabbed the first thing I could, then it also fell." I say with a straight face.
"And I just so happened to be that first thing." Cam adds.
"Right. Well, continue." Luca says as we grab our pie.
"Continue what?" I ask, for once I'm confused.
"Luca. It was nothing like that." Cam is quick to assure. I still feel clueless, I don't like it.
"Whatever you say, Cam." Luca says with a smirk.
"Alright. What are we doing later?" I ask trying to change the topic.
"Well-"
Cam cuts Luca off by saying, "Laser tag. I was thinking, floor 47?"
"Dude that's like suicide." Damion says.
"How so?" Cam asks smirking. "We're all dancers here."
"My colleagues are not dancers." I say.
"Are they nimble?" Cam asks.
"They can move and shoot, yes." Still not fully understanding the situation.
"Then they will be fine. Eat up, we head down in an hour." Cam says with a smile as he starts to eat.
"No dance practice?" I ask once I sit down again.
"Not today. In order to improve, we can't just keep practicing. We do need to take some breaks." He explains.
"Right. Will we be practicing tomorrow then?" I ask.
"Yeah." He says.
I smile to myself as I eat. I decide not to eat all that much, based on the fact that Damion says its suicide for laser tag. I guess as long as we are flexible we will be fine by the sounds of it. I finish eating then decide to just relax for the last 50 minutes. Lestrade pulled out his phone and started to play a game, I can't see the screen so I'm not sure what. Watson and Jennifer are sitting on the couch talking, I wonder when it will happen, it'll suck though when we go back to 1914. Jamie just leaned over Lestrade's shoulder pointing out some guy he missed, their faces are pretty close. Sàràh, Tànne, Ethan, and Damion all go over one of the dance moves they've been having trouble with. Luca and Cam are in a heated, whisper-conversation. Meanwhile I'm on the tablet Tony gave to me. Unfortunately, I still have a case to solve, but I'm finding the longer I stay, the more I want to forget about the case. If we were to stay, what would that impact from the past? How would it effect the future, now? There has to be repercussions. I just don't know what. I can't change the future for my own selfish wants. With this resolve I decide to get back to work to get us home.
As I'm about to start working again, Cam and Luca come over.
"So. I take it that I will not get any work done this morning." I say as they approach.
"That would probably be the best assumption." Luca says sitting next to me, taking my tablet.
"You've got to learn to work less, relax more." He finishes.
"Especially if you still want to practice dancing with us. I mean the way you're working on everything at once, you're gonna burn yourself out when you're doin' something important one day." Cam points out.
"I guess that's true." I sigh.
"Just like that? You agree?" Luca asks.
"Well, I've come to realize, everything is different in this time. Not all for the bad." I say.
"People relax more. Go to school, or home schooled. Get jobs when their older. This time, you have more free will. It's not as strict. I mean, we still had to go to school, but Lestrade, Watson and I all have jobs. Add on that I'm a mechanic, that they don't know is a girl, it's a little harder. I mean, I have to wear a dress!" I explain.
Cam and Luca look at me then chuckle.
"What?!" I exclaim.
"Nothing!" Cam says quickly.
"I can't imagine you in a dress." Luca responds.
"Gee, thanks. Unfortunately I can." I mutter.
We continue to joke around for the rest of the hour before we collect everyone else and head to the 47th floor. When we get off the elevator, we enter a small room with an array of guns and some weighted plastic knives. There are also some sleek vests with some sort of sensors. There are black lights that make the shirt Watson is wearing glow to make him a more prominent target. We all take a vest, they're really light and flexible, and a gun or two. I also decide to pick up some of the knives, Lestrade, Cam and Luca do the same.
"So the games pretty simple." Luca starts to explain. "You aim at anyone and fire for the vest or sensors on the guns. You only have 100 lives, so be careful. When you run out of lives, you can still run around and try to draw people's fire."
"Alright everyone has their colours from the last game. Holmes, Lestrade, and Watson, you three need to pick a colour." Cam instructs.
"Dark green!" I call before Watson or Lestrade have a chance to speak.
"Alright." Cam says as my vest, guns and knives all start to glow green.
"Silver." Lestrade said then all his equipment started to glow a fine silver.
"I don't know, yellow?" Watson asks.
His gear lights up yellow. I turn and look at everyone else. Cam has a darker blue, Luca has a darker shade of purple, Damion has gold, Jamie has red. Ethan has white, Jenifer has orange, Sàràh has pink, and Tànne has aqua. We all enter another room. My eyes widen at the sheer size of it and a wild explosion of colours. It seems you can climb over and under most of the objects.
"How big is this room?" I ask.
"The whole floor." Luca says.
"EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!" Damion yells and takes off as fast as he can, stumbling a few times until he has disappeared.
"Well. See ya!" Someone called as we all split up and ran in different directions.
I run and look behind me for a moment to be sure I'm not being followed. I face forwards again in just enough time to drop and slide under a small bridge. I roll then jump back up and continue. I come to see a ledge ten feet off the ground. I hold my guns tightly then run up the wall. Before I fall back down, I grab the ledge and hoist myself up. From here I have a pretty good view of at least half the floor. There's so much colour that it starts to hurt my eyes.
I look for any sign of Lestrade's silver. I figure if I can find him we can team up, they never said we had to be alone. It's just a saying, right? Finding him, maybe 50 feet north of my position on a catwalk above me, I look for the ladder. I locate it, surprisingly on the other side of the room. I start to climb down when I see both pink and red streaks of light hit where my centre mass just was. I scramble down the wall and, un-gracefully, make a mad dash to the ladder I saw not a minute ago. I quickly dash up the ladder and run as quietly as I can towards Lestrade.
"Whoa! I just wanna team up." I say as he turns to me, about to fire.
"I thought we had to be alone?" He asks, perplexed.
"Tell that to Sàràh and Jamie." I say looking down to them.
"I get pink. You got red?" He asks in a whisper as they pass below us.
"I'm game." I say with a smirk.
I lean over the rail and quickly fire off a shot at Jamie while Lestrade does the same to Sàràh.
"Awe, come on!" I hear them yell as we run off.
We reach the end of the catwalk and I see blue, orange, purple and aqua all flying about everywhere. I also see yellow trying to sneak up on the group around the corner.
"Huh. Where's Ethan and Damion? Think they teamed up?"
"Possibly. Ethan is under us and heading towards Sàràh and Jaime, while Damion is sneaking up behind them. They're cornered."
"We could help them. Move along the cat walk, give away our position, fire at the boys or we could fire at all four of them and still give away our position." I say throwing the choices out.
"I say target all them. If we're going to give away our position, my as well go all out, right?"
"True." I say as I walk down the catwalk towards the small group.
I wedge myself in a crack in the wall because once I take a shot, everyone will know where I am, not just the four Lestrade and I are targeting. I fire at Damion then Jamie. I see Lestrade has targeted Sàràh and Ethan. As soon as we fired all guns turned towards the cat walk.
"I can't stay here, I'm a sitting duck." I mutter.
Well my covers blown anyway. May as well make some noise. I run as fast as I can across the cat walk, throwing my laser knives as I go. Reaching the edge I jumped off. I don't know what I was thinking and for a moment everyone stopped firing. For a minute I'm soaring through the air, then I'm falling. My hands catch the edge of something, another cat walk hidden in complete darkness. I manage to hoist myself up the start firing at everyone. I hit them all at least twice before they regained their composure and ran for cover then start firing again. Lestrade manages to make it over to my catwalk.
"I get a free shot." He says as he stands back up.
"Why?"
"You hit me."
"Fine."
Lestrade fires at me. I look down to my life count and see I've lost ten lives so far. I ask Lestrade about his count. He's lost eleven. We play the game until just before dinner. We meet back up in the small room where we first went before the game started. Jarvis tells us he has uploaded the scores to the television in the main kitchen. We put away our gear and head up to the kitchen for our scores and dinner. We laugh at each others mistakes and marvel in our small victories. We get off the elevator and enter the kitchen to see the adults watching the replay of when I jumped off the catwalk.
"Why would you just jump off." Steve asks me when they notice we are in the kitchen.
"Uh, spur of the moment?" I try to answer.
"She's very impulsive. Always acts on impulse, no matter the time or situation." Lestrade says.
"I do not. Name one time." I say slightly offended.
"What about 1906?" Watson questions.
"Or 1907?" Lestrade points out.
"1908?"
"1910?"
"1911?"
"1912?"
"1913?"
"1914?"
"2026. Yup. Defiantly impulsive." Watson finishes.
"Okay, okay! Geeze! I said one." I muttered.
"What about 1910?" Damion asks.
"Surprisingly, nothing. It honestly scared me a little." Lestrade jokes.
"Ha. Ha. Very funny." I say, my sarcasm leaking through.
"Why are you so impulsive?" Tony asks.
"I like danger. It's my job." I deadpan.
"Before we start talking about my life," I continue before someone else asks a question. "Who got what score?"
"Jarvis, load screen." Jamie says.
The score come up as follows:
1. Cam
2. Holmes
3. Luca
4. Lestrade
5. Jamie
6. Jenifer
7. Watson
8. Ethan
9. Sàràh
10. Tànne
11. Damion
"What!? How am I last?" Damion wails.
"You were trying to show off." Jamie replies with a smirk.
"Luca, you got beat, by a girl." Damion says changing tactic.
"Eh, at least it was only one. You however, were beat by not one, not two, but four girls." Luca replies.
"Besides. She's a good shot." He finishes.
We continued to talk about the scores and laugh at Damion as we ate dinner. I, for once, was actually tired. I excused myself from the group to go to bed. However, I could not sleep as my mind was plagued by thoughts of the past, thoughts of my father, thoughts of the case, and thoughts of how to get home. Cam is right, we don't belong here and I would be selfish to keep my comrades stuck here in this time without trying to find a way home.
I pick up a tablet and continue to work on trying to find away home, to our original time. I work until my half lidded eyes refuse to open again and my hands cease to move and fingers stop tapping equations and algorithms and plans on the tablet. I fall asleep with the tablet tucked under my right hand and blissfully enter the darkness.
So, I have a question. I need your opinions for this. For Holmes, who would you rather see her with? Do you want her and Cam? Or do you want her and Luca? I find it hard to choose because Cam and Luca are like brothers and very similar, but with distinctive differences. PM me your answer or put it in the reviews. If you want anymore info on any of the characters, or to choose between Cam and Luca, PM me and I will tell you and answer any questions. Thanks!