A/N: Sorry, I'm missing a lot of the things I did, that filled up my inspiration bucket, so I'm putting that last one on hold (yet another one!) and putting this incomplete weird drabble forward. I don't know how to explain it, it has been chasing me for weeks now. -csf


I.

'Think of it as the underworld, John... Minus the demons and all that folklore.'

Sherlock's words are quietly chuckled beside me. I turn to him, that solid, tall, familiar figure that seems to accompany me always, to find my friend quietly watching me.

'Breathe, John', he dares to add, full of cheek. He knows that once again he's outdone himself, and he lives for these moments; dazzling the audience, gripping its attention, luring me in.

He said "wannabe go for a walk" and we ended up 20,000 leagues under the sea, give or take. It's definitely a world apart from our ordinary lives.

Breathe, he told me. I seem to have forgotten that breathing is not boring, despite all the rightfulness with which I lectured Sherlock in the past, so I now resume the autonomic mechanism. Letting myself sag back against the worn out leather chair on a wooden frame that creaks to the melody of inner woodworm tunnels carved inside the frame.

I shut my eyes tightly, pressing my eyelids firmly, tuning everything out; the chair, the dusky room, Sherlock's eager running analysis of his commonplace flatmate. Finally I reopen my eyes wide. The same scenario greets me again, a landscape of wonders, full of undiscovered world undertones. I had half hoped it was a hallucination; having foolishly started taking up Sherlock's coffee offers again. It might still be a dream. I may not be awake, drifting through my subconscious stream of thoughts, concepts and ideas, wrapped in superfluous layers of symbolism.

Nope. This is a far stretch from my usual imagination limits.

I'll still settle for that. It's a dream. A good one.

Passively sitting back, I'm taking in the scene around us.

We're deep down on the ocean floor, in a small manmade craft – I should call it a submarine, really, or perhaps a pod connected to the shore above of a mother ship in wait. From what I can tell, the edges of the small room disguised by shadow and darkness, we are in a contained space, devoid of artificial lights. Yet a quicksilver glow of deferred light shimmers across the room, reflected off the waters' natural undulation. More diffuse light passes through the bay window we're facing, a contraption of regular staccato angles forming a curved window, a half-moon crescent that separates is from the cold waters beyond. The glass is old, deforming the view beyond through occasional veins in the molten silica beds. It reminds me of an aquatic version of the old greenhouses in Kew gardens. Floor to ceiling tightly fitted glass panels in an engineering masterpiece, a lost piece of human ingenuity and defiance, built long before a standard production of Navy submarines. Bearing the hallmarks of a crazy scientist's lair, some shed sized live in apparatus set up long in the past history, destined to explore those deep seas that, to the day, remain an unforgiving frontier of human knowledge.

Very well built, in fact, considering we've not yet been buried alive by the depths of water above us. The steel structure groans and moans under the water column pressure compounded above, so we must be quite a way down. Only a fraction of sunlight seeps through the compact body of water, bathing our controls room – or observation room, or autonomous laboratory – in a peaceful, timeless glow from the evaded world above, to which we must return at some point.

Again I take a better look inside. There are echoes of the eclectic 221B decor in here, in this jumbled living room, library, laboratory, arts studio, music room and, yes, controls room. Our aligned chairs take centre stage over a Persian rug – definitely not Navy standard protocol. The control panel is fitted to the side of the big glass window, left of my armchair. It's an enigmatic collection of levers, pulleys, buttons, analogue dials, barometer, thermometers and clock faces, plus the all sorts navigational aids that litter the room. No sight of modern instruments, like radars, autopilots, computers. This is from an older era, before deep sea exploration got standardised, sanitised, parameterised. It reeks of freedom, daring possibilities, dangerous adventures. I like that.

Whoever the lost scientist and dreamer that built this vessel, they wouldn't have been able to foresee the progress and commodities we take for granted today. No Wi-Fi, no computers, no recording cameras.

Their advantage was their mad drive, the reckless experimentation, the dangerous first-hand testing of their creations.

Wow, Sherlock must be right at home in this setting.

He is very much like that. Recklessly endangering our lives, by unspoken mutual consent.

'Why bring me here, Sherlock?'

'You looked bored.'

'Oh.' I gulp. How can every daring impossibility be so easy to grasp for Sherlock?

'You seemed to benefit from a change in scenery, I knew of this place, it was uninhabited and safe, so... when I say safe...'

I grin. 'You don't mean it at all.'

I wouldn't have it any other way. He knows it, he grins too. For a moment our twin set of grins mirror each other.

'What? Is there a giant squid out there, captain Nemo?' I mock.

Out returns to an absolute seriousness.

'Something far more dangerous than the giant squid. Cleverer and more perfidious, I should imagine', my friend answers gravely. 'Something I haven't yet had the chance to catalogue. But it shouldn't bother us today.'

'How can you be sure?'

'Today it studies us', Sherlock says, pointing into the sleek dark waters. I follow his lead and get a last glimpse of something eclipsing into the murky folds of water.

It looked frighteningly like the black iris of a giant eye blinking shut.

I gulp drily.

No, not sure that was what I saw. Could be my imagination. I could be in a dream, right?

With a weight sinking in my stomach – a terrible giant creature out there would hardly detain Sherlock on our little stroll – I get on my feet and approach that glass.

The glass pane feels cold under my fingertips. An impertinent barrier when I want to move beyond the restrictions and explore this new world.

I glance back at Sherlock, who has taken a seat in the other armchair.

We still just might.

.

TBC