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TEST DRIVE MEME #5
1. not subtle revealings
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.
then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.
in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]
3. complex mementos
[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]
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"Your Sherlock," she says, looking back at him. "I assume he lives in London? Does he live at 221B Baker Street?"
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And then, hesitant, because if the answer is yes it may very well be upsetting, "Does the name 'Moriarty' mean anything to you?"
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And then John mentions Moriarty, and she staggers slightly.
"...I need to sit down," she says. She spots a bench against the wall, and manages to get to it and sit without collapsing.
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He follows her to the bench, and sits beside her; he feels rather faint, himself. "I don't know what this is," he says in a low voice, "and I haven't any explanation for this. It feels like a cruel joke."
Is he meant to call her "Dr. Watson"? Because that's... weird.
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"I don't know what this is either. I mean...if this is a dream..." She shakes her head. "But that doesn't work, assuming we're actually both here and you're not from my subconscious or something. I've met people who've said they're from different times, even different planets. Maybe...maybe we come from similar worlds, and we're different versions of what we could be." She breaths a short, mirthless laugh. "Not all that happy that Jamie Moriarty is apparently in both worlds, though..."
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Watson shakes his head in disbelief, resting his hands on his knees. "I have been here for, oh, four and a half months now. I have seen many strange things, and heard many strange stories. This is still a new one for me. If you're some phantom of my mind... well, I doubt I would have imagined a version of myself that was an attractive woman."
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She smiles, dropping her eyes. "That's...really sweet of you to..."
Then what he said first registers, and she looks up again, brow furrowed. "Wait...you said Moriarty is a 'he?' He's a man in your world?"
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"He isn't in yours?" Watson is startled, then shakes his head. "But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, now that I've met you. I'm sure between the two of us we can work this out. The what, at least, if not the why."
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"She's a woman in my world. And obsessed with Sherlock. Before Sherlock and I met, Moriarty pretended to be a woman named Irene Adler to get close to him. He fell in love with her. She then faked her own death, letting Sherlock believe she had been murdered by a killer he was tracking. It almost destroyed him."
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"I knew an Irene Adler," Watson says slowly, "but she had nothing to do with Moriarty. The king of Bohemia approached us, claiming that she was desperately in love with him even after the end of their affair, and that she intended to ruin his impending marriage by sending his future wife a photograph of the two of them. In retrospect, I rather doubt his version of events. Miss Adler outsmarted Holmes, married in secret, and ran away to America with her new husband. Holmes respected her, certainly, but love? I never knew him to speak of love, not about anyone."
Strange, the things that were different.
"Moriarty was a man at the head of a criminal empire who objected to Holmes's interference in his business. It culminated in a murderous attack in Switzerland at Reichenbach Falls. I thought both of them had perished there, but... apparently Holmes did not. Or so I have been told since I came here."
It's... very complicated, to be fair. And obviously upsetting.
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She reaches out to gently touch his hand.
"I'm so sorry. It must have been terrible to think you'd lost him." She pauses for a moment, then goes on carefully. "Are you sure your Irene Adler and Moriarty are different people? Moriarty would have men pretend to be her when she thought someone wouldn't take her seriously as a woman."
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But he considers her suggestion a moment, then shakes his head. "No. I'm certain. Miss Adler dressed as a man herself on occasion, for precisely that reason, but she had nothing to do with Moriarty. She passed from our lives entirely, fully two years before things with Moriarty came to a head."
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"Does your Sherlock have a beehive?" she asks, wanting to focus on something less heartbreaking.
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That startles him into a laugh. "Goodness. I hate to think what Mrs. Hudson would have to say about that. No, no beehive, not in the middle of London." Watson shakes his head. "Though... I have heard him occasionally speak of them with interest, but I'm not sure that means anything. Many things interest him."
The real answer is "not yet" but Watson can hardly be said to know that. "Does your Holmes have a brother? Mycroft Holmes?"
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At his question about Mycroft Joan's smile fades a little, a touch of sorrow creeping into her expression.
"He does. I'm...going to assume you didn't have a romantic relationship with him."
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Well, that was an answer he hadn't expected. "I'm sorry, you -- no. No, I did not have that sort of relationship with Mycroft Holmes. Good heavens." He's not exactly shocked, but he is extremely surprised. "I... I was married to a woman named Mary Morstan, a former client. She died some... some ten months back, now."
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Hm. But leaving aside that Watson has come here in what is objectively the worst period of his entire life, because if some momentary fourth-wall breaking is allowed then he's being puppeted by a monster, evidently that name didn't mean anything to her. There is no Mary Morstan for her, nor any similar name. No... Mark Morstan or anything. Instead... Mycroft. He'll have to assume the Mycroft she knows is a little different than the one he knew, but then, her Holmes apparently fell in love with a woman, and Watson can't imagine that either.
Mycroft.
"I don't understand how we have so much in common, and yet so much is so different," Watson says, baffled. "Mycroft, really?"
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She can't blame him for changing the subject, turning it back to Mycroft. She breathes a small laugh at his incredulity.
"I don't know what he's like in your world," she says, glancing at him. "In mine...I didn't even know he existed until I met him. He and Sherlock weren't close." She glances down at her hands. "He was sweet. He wanted to have a relationship with Sherlock but didn't know how. We..." She doesn't finish that sentence, trusting John will fill in the blanks.
"He came to New York to open a restaurant, and we started seeing each other. Then I found out he was working for MI6 and hadn't told me. Or Sherlock. He'd been pressured into it to protect Sherlock, and he was being set up to take the fall for a mole in the agency." She shakes her head. "Sherlock and I tried to come up with a solution, but he wound up faking his own death. This was...about five years ago. I haven't seen him since."
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Watson takes a breath. "The Mycroft I knew is a peculiar, unsociable man who rarely deviates from his routine. His brilliance has him at the centre of the British government, in an inconspicuous position that gives him far more power than most people realise he has. He is also the founding member of a club in which it is forbidden to speak to other members under any circumstances." He gives Joan a crooked smile. "His relationship with Sherlock is... complicated, as they're both peculiar men, but friendly, for the most part."
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"...was the club called Diogenes?"
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It's a guess, but it seems a safe guess. Watson sighs, wishing desperately that Holmes, his Holmes, were here to help make sense of everything. "This feels like a terrible joke. What else can I ask you? Madame -- Doctor -- Joan, if you'll permit me the informality," because if you can't be on a first name basis with your alternate universe self, who can you be, "this goes far beyond mere coincidence, I am satisfied as to that. But I have no explanation, either."
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Joan wishes her Sherlock was here too. She knows she can do a good job figuring things out on her own, but when she works with Sherlock the two of them together are greater than the two of them apart.
And she misses her friend. Although John must miss his Sherlock so much more.
"You can call me Joan," she says, and smiles again in mild amusement. "No need for formalities between Watsons from different universes. And I'm not a doctor anymore." She sighs, eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "I don't have an explanation either. That said, I just got here. What's your experience here been like?"
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"There are long periods of rather lazy peace interspersed with... troubling events. Death is impermanent, and I know this because I have died once already." Watson gives her a slightly apologetic look, because he knows that sounds crazy. "We were put on an island and asked to fight to the death. Really, it wasn't a fair fight. I like to think I can hold my own, but there are people here with implausible powers, magic, because they come from worlds where those things are real. I suppose another version of myself is in line with that."
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"You've died?"
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