(no subject)

[alldeduction]

Who| Sherlock and Openish!
What| Kind of a catchall from between the crowning / christmas and the district tours
Where| See individual prompts
When| from the crowning to the night before the district tours
Warnings/Notes| This is a catchall to catch up on a bunch of stuff for Sherlock, mostly threads that I've already discussed with people. HOWEVER! If you'd like a thread either hit me up or grab one of the open prompt tags below!


See the comments for prompts!

Comments

After the Crowning - District 2 Suite

[alldeduction]

Sherlock awoke from his nightmare with a start, sweating and breathing hard. His Escort and the peacekeepers were already seeing themselves out, and he only had a few seconds to hurl abuse at them before the left, shutting the door behind them. Sherlock scowled and pulled himself from bed, feeling woozy and shakey but almost triumphant - the nightmare had lived up to it's name but the information he'd managed to collect before that...

He stumbled over to his dresser to grab his housecoat and stumbled out into the district suite. He was absolutely famished, for whatever reason, and he had no idea what time it was but expected the rest of the tribute tower to still be asleep.

Even if they would be waking up soon. He pulled out his communicator and typed in 'not dead' and sent it to John, just in case.

[drpsychosomatic]

John was relieved to get the message despite himself- of course he was, he always would be, and he knew Sherlock knew it.

After stewing for a few moments he typed out 'congratulations', deciding against sending it at the last minute. A little too hostile for pretending nothing had happened, probably. He settled on 'Glad to hear it' instead, sent the reply and slumped back onto his bed.

[alldeduction]

He stared at the screen for a long moment, as if expecting more, and frowned when it didn't come. So John was still angry with him.

Quickly, he typed:

Dreams apparently come with a nightmare component. Very unsettling. Did not intend being unable to finish our conversation. SH

[drpsychosomatic]

He sighed, pulling himself up to sit on the edge of his bed. Nightmares, he understood.

Did you want to talk about it? he sent back, scrubbing at his eyes.

[alldeduction]

I think my life is enough of a nightmare, John, without dwelling on the ones I can't control.

He pressed send, then paused, frowned, and typed in:

Hungry?

[drpsychosomatic]

I could eat he sent, cursing himself both for letting Sherlock get to him like this and for not being able to get past his hurt, too.
Where did you have in mind?

[alldeduction]

Somewhere restive, I think.

And then a moment later:

Noir?

[drpsychosomatic]

Well, there was only one thing that suggestion meant, considering how they'd been able to communicate there before. He thought it over for a moment- did he really even want to talk to Sherlock right now?

Yeah, alright. Meet you there in 15?

[alldeduction]

He was already grabbing for his coat when the message came, and he tapped out a quick 'Yes' in reply. So John was mad at him enough to not want to share the walk there. Well, fine. He had a plan to foil even infrared sensors, and the John wouldn't be mad at him any more.

It took him exactly 7 minutes and 46 seconds to reach the front door of the restaurant, and he waited there, despite the fact that it was snowing with thick heavy flakes.

He wished desperately for a cigarette as he braced himself against the cold and waited.

Christmas

[alldeduction]

Christmas was hard on Sherlock. Harder than he ever thought possible. He did his duty by the secret santa, halfheartedly and uncaring, leaving Jack a pair of skull cufflinks. He didn't stick around to see the man receive it, because he simply didn't care.

In fact his mood was so dark and snappish that he did his best to absolutely avoid everyone. This wasn't Christmas. Christmas was at 221b Baker Street with Mrs Hudson's meat pies and a small group of people that he actually probably cared about, not dozens of people who at best didn't care about him and at worst actively despised him.

So he spent the day sulking in his room and refusing to get dressed, unwilling to even look at the pristine glass violin that sat on his bed.

[formersurgeon]

Joan, of course, did care, very much. She was already worried about Sherlock's state of mind after the events of both the Arena and the Crowning, so when he withdrew entirely, Joan went to him, to check on him. To be with him on Christmas. And to give him a present.

She was carrying a tablet when she went to his suite and knocked on the door.

[alldeduction]

Sherlock groaned but went to the door anyway.

"I told you that you have the day off. I don't care what your overlords say, I refuse to be waited on during a hol--" He stopped dead when he opened the door and saw Joan on the other side of it, rather than an avox.

"... Ah. Joan. Come in, please." He stepped aside and pulled the door open wider.

[formersurgeon]

"Merry Christmas. I promise not to wait on you," she teased as she entered.

He wasn't dressed, and she wasn't surprised. The fact that he answered the door indicated that he was doing better than she feared.

"How are you?"

[alldeduction]

"Fine," He lied flatly. Of course he wasn't fine, but he knew there was little he could do to escape Joan and John fretting over him save lying through his teeth. He walked over to his bed and picked up the beautiful, but utterly useless, glass violin.

"Cruentus sent me a present."

[formersurgeon]

He was a terrible liar, at least when it came to her. He wasn't fine, and a single word that was obviously a lie wasn't going to keep her away. She raised her eyebrows when he picked up the glass violin, though. Another thing the two Sherlocks had in common, then.

"Quite a gift. Of course, an instrument is only as good as it's performance," she noted. Very like Sherlock, although she doesn't say it out loud. Both instruments rendered silent by this place. Joan wondered if that was Cruentus' point as well. "How thoughtful of her."

[alldeduction]

"Quite," Sherlock agreed, completely incapable of keeping the bitterness out of his tone. He thought for a moment about smashing it - but he had a massive aversion to damaging violins, even glass ones, so he set it down carefully on the sheets instead.

He then realised that the appropriate response to Joan questioning after him was to question after her - and upon realising that, he also surprised himself with realising that he actually cared about her answer.

"And you? Having a joyous Christmas so far?"

[formersurgeon]

"It's been okay, actually. Maximus gave me a present." She shifted the tablet to the other arm and displayed the snake bracelet coiled around her wrist. She was curious how Sherlock would react to it, considering her own initial reaction.

Searching for Creature

[alldeduction]

Sewn together from parts.

When Joan had described the Creature Sherlock had been fascinated, of course, and extremely skeptical. What she proposed was simply scientifically impossible (regardless of the fact that he, himself, had died so many times). Beyond the Capitol's technology he had never heard of anything even vaguely similar, and the fact that Joan said that the creature looked like him? Well. It warranted investigation, that much was clear.

So Sherlock made his way to District 8, unsure of what exactly he would find, but determined to find it anyway. Upon arriving on the floor, he asked a nearby Avox to show him to the creature's room, before sharply knocking on the door.

[isthistheregion]

He no longer had much desire to venture outside of his room. He'd seen enough of the city, and didn't trust that he would be able to escape, even if he could climb one of those walls. Meanwhile, they brought food to his room when he wished it, and the room had not yet begun to feel too small again. He could wait.

Sherlock would be able to hear the television faintly through the door. Highlights from a previous Arena. The volume didn't change after the knock, but inside the room, the Creature looked away from the screen.

"Who is it?"

The voice, while perhaps reminiscent of his own, wouldn't sound precisely the same. There was something muddled about it, as if the speaker's mouth were partially numb.

[alldeduction]

"Sherlock Holmes. Tribute. District 2." He was more than used to the suffixes, now. He considered simply walking in, but John's little nagging voice at the back of his head reminded him that perhaps that wouldn't make the best impression.

"I a... friend, of Joan Watson's."

[isthistheregion]

Joan. The woman had expressed such curiosity about him, before he'd lashed out at her. Anyone who was a friend of hers either harbored a similar curiosity, or wanted some sort of revenge for what he'd done.

"What do you want?"

He didn't trust that the man would tell the truth, if he meant him any harm. But he wanted to hear the answer.

[alldeduction]

"I heard that you have my face," He said, loudly enough to be heard through the door, and, perhaps, for his skepticism to be apparent. "Well. Part of my face," He corrected himself.

"Given the number of possible universes it's hardly impossible, but you'll understand that I would wish to see for myself--"

[isthistheregion]

Now he remembered. Does the name Sherlock mean anything to you?

The television blinked off.

"Enter."

He was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the unmade bed, barefoot, in pajama pants and a loose, tunic-like shirt. There was a half-finished plate of grapes and cheese on the bed next to him, the television remote on the other side. There was a bottle of wine on the floor next to the bed, near an end table, open but only barely drunk (and not touched for some time).

The Creature himself would glance up when the door opened. He was skeptical, uncertain -- yet this place was already forcing him to face what he'd previously thought was impossible. He would -- he wanted to -- look this man in the eye.

[alldeduction]

He opened the door with no hesitation whatsoever when granted permission, but he came to a stop quite a bit more quickly than he meant when he got his first good look at Creature.

It was wrong, was the first glaring thought on his mind. He'd been around bodies - hundreds of bodies - and he knew very well the difference between plastic surgery and an autopsy, and the Creature very firmly resembled the latter. The pieces didn't make sense, nor seemed to quite fit, and Sherlock was surprised by the very visceral reaction in the pit of his stomach that this was very, very wrong.

He was very careful to make sure none of that managed to leak into his face, besides the first second or two of surprise. He cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to set aside the first distracting emotional reaction and actually get a good look at the man's - if you could call him that - face.

He could see it. He could see what Joan meant, could see pieces of himself staring back at him.

"... Fascinating," He stated, bluntly, and he meant it. He was fascinated at the same time that he was revolted.

[isthistheregion]

Before he had been brought to Panem, the Creature had barely ever seen his own reflection. There had been moments, in window glass or in the still surface of a pond, but that had been all. Only moments -- glimpses.

Things were different here. He'd seen more of his own face in the last days than he ever had just by virtue of the bathroom mirror.

With that in mind, he supposed he could see some resemblance. But it was difficult to understand why people seemed to think that was so remarkable.

"Well, what do you think?" He tipped his chin upward and kept his eyes on Sherlock, meeting his stare with something like defiance. "Was she right?"