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WHO| Sherlock, Crenteus and introducing John Watson
WHAT| Sherlock gets really fed up, and gets punished for it
WHERE| District 3 Suite, then Crenteus' office, and then in the hall just outside her office
WHEN| A couple days after valentines
WARNINGS| Sherlock being a dick but that's pretty standard

If Valentine's had taught him anything it was that he was utterly and completely tired of this place. The tiny x's that he had drawn to mark every camera in District 3's suites had been bothering him, gloating sullenly, and Sherlock had just about enough of it. In a fit of petulance he woke up in the morning and strode straight to the first camera in his room, glared into it, and then dismantled it.

He proceeded to do so with every camera he got his hands on in the suite.

He was about an hour and a half into this exercise (and 16 cameras down) when he was interrupted, hands freezing in the giant potted plant in the corner as the peacekeepers arrived. He smirked at them, and tossed the remnants of the camera at their feet.

"Took you long enough," He said triumphantly.

Neither of them said anything at all as they grabbed him bodily and dragged him from the suite. Sherlock considered attempting to wrestle from their grip, but in truth he was tired of seeing only the bottom of the totem pole. He wanted to know who was at the top. Or at least who these two particular brutes reported to. So down they dragged him, down down deep into the training center, far below what he had ever traveled down to. His silent sentinels finally came to a stop outside a door and shoved him less than gracefully inside.

He straightened his jacket, narrowed eyes surveying the room.

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"Yes, fine, I can walk perfectly well myself, thank you very much, now let me g--"

Sherlock stopped dead the moment the guards pulled him into the common room, his annoyance and his voice fading instantly on his tongue as soon as he saw John standing there.

They'd told him, of course. Consequences. But he hadn't been able to believe it, didn't want to believe it. He'd managed to separate his life here from the one back home, wandering through this world like an extremely elaborate and annoying dream. At least here, he only had his own life to worry about. At least here, he wasn't responsible.

"No."

The guards were gone, the doors closed behind him and a very still, very stiff Sherlock was quickly overloading with fury.

"No. No, absolutely not, you can't be here, you have to go home."

John greeted him with a tight smile and an even tighter nod, his shoulders stiff.
"Nice to see you too," he commented lightly. "Mind telling me what the hell we've got ourselves into this time?"

The fury was slowly starting to spill onto his face, so overcome with rage that he didn't particularly know what to do with himself, the icy grey eyes on fire.

"This is absolutely irrational!" He snapped, towards John but not really at him, instead turning abruptly and violently, eyes immediately flashing towards a camera and locking upon it. He pointed at John.

"Really? Really? For a few cameras. Or, perhaps, just a new form of torture. A new entertainment? Well I won't be obliging you."

He wet his lips, quite understandably confused, and shifted his weight uncomfortably, following Sherlock's gaze to the camera. He'd assumed he was under guard after being escorted here, so the surveillance wasn't much of a shock. Sherlock's reaction to it, however...

He wasn't really in the mood for being snapped at to shut up, so he didn't bother asking Sherlock to explain himself yet. He'd wait it out.

If there was anything at hand to throw, he would, but there was nothing save John, himself, and his impotent rage.

"And you thought I was being insolent before," he bit at the cameras, but snapped his jaw shut immediately after. He knew what the threat really meant. They could bring anyone. First John, then Lestrade, then Molly or Mrs Hudson....

His lips formed a thin, tight line and he fell utterly silent, fist balling tightly at his side. He didn't look back at John. How was he supposed to explain this?

John cleared his throat, waiting with as patient an expression as he could muster on his face. Sherlock was fuming, and though he didn't have a clue as to the reason it seemed like he might have been brought here as some kind of threat to force Sherlock to comply with some kind of demand.

"Sherlock? Planning on letting me in at any point, or should I keep on examining the carpet and hoping listening in on you shouting at the ceiling will help me put things together?"

Sherlock was silent for another moment, his mind furiously assessing.

There were several possibilities.

1) That this was indeed John Watson, from the same time period as him - (which, of course, if he was real, he had to be, John didn't look like he had aged a day since Sherlock had last seen him) - and that they had somehow brought him here because of Sherlock's actions. (Which of course implied time travel.)

2) That John had been here the whole time, and that they were 'woken' when needed, and that they had woken up John in an effort to prove their ability to Sherlock.

3) That this wasn't John at all, but a trick, a replica, built from his memories and made to force him into submission.

It would be easier to reason everything out if he hadn't literally witnessed monsters and giants spiders turning into people and hadn't died, himself, and felt it and--

"You're not supposed to be here," He bit out bitterly, trying to force his mind to a standstill. He crossed closer to John. "How do I know that you're even real?"

"Not a clue," John admitted, offering him a tiny, slightly helpless smile. "Look, Sherlock, I don't have the faintest idea what's going on. I don't know if you're real, if any of this is. But I think we'd be better off comparing notes. Right?"

Sherlock's brows knight slightly at that, taken aback for a moment.

"Notes." He said finally, eyes narrowing further. He glanced up at the cameras, then back at John. "Yes. Fine. Notes." It was too sensible a proposition to mingle well with his rage, and it took him a moment to change tracks. Once he did, however, the words came spilling out of him like an avalanche.

"This place is built specifically to throw you into death matches of varying levels of entertainment and watch you die, brutally, again, and again, and again. At least two hundred years in the future - though whether it is our future directly is of course entirely unclear - somewhere in the mid United States, I'm assuming Mid-north Rockies? - though the Arenas are anyone's guess - level of technology unprecedented though seems focused on the superficial - plastic surgery has certainly seen a boom - and the fashion industry of course though seriously John you've never seen such an eyesore. They are completely obsessed with a war 75 years in the past and use past atrocities as thinly veiled excuses for barbarism and totalitarianism." He added the last with a glare up at the camera again. "Oh, and did I mention the giant spiders? And the mind-built weapons? Not that I can do any of that, obviously, but--"

"Right."

He blinked, shaking his head slightly. "Right, okay. So... time travel, death matches, a war, spiders and mind-weapons. I can see why you were worried about me being real or not. Sherlock... what are they making you do? I know they're trying to make you do something."

"What, beyond the death matches and the constant surveillance for a reality tv show entirely about our grisly deaths? They want me to watch you die, John, or, probably more accurately, they want to throw us in a situation where I'm forced to be responsible for your death but I refuse - I refuse--"

"Well, I'd definitely rather not die," he agreed, carefully. "But if I'm supposed to believe that we're going to be put into some sort of area where we'll all have to fight to the death, it looks... we'll have to work something out."

Sherlock threw his hands up in frustration, though it was only very minimally at John himself.

It was as if every last crazy thing he had been forced to endure for weeks was now coming to a head, and John's arrival was the catalyst.

"You don't have to believe it on my word," He said finally, darkly, knowing exactly what to show him. He stalked across the room to one of the many screens and turned it on. It was still showing an endless loop of 'best of' moments from the last arena, and if he waited long enough--

"There!" He said in an angry snap, finger jabbing into the screen as he watched Lindsey rip a broadsword right threw him on the screen. He'd seen it before, of course. He couldn't help but watch himself die, again and again, noting with vague dispassion how his insides looked exactly the same as any other sword-wound victim, though he'd never quite seen any this bad.

His shoulder ached at the thought.

"There, see? I've already had to do it once."

John stared, lips parted. That was definitely Sherlock, and that was definitely death. There was no way the bifurcated man on the screen could be the man standing in front of him, and probably no way either of them were Sherlock, come to think of it.
He fought off the urge to take a step further away from whatever he was sharing the room with furiously.

"I would... really like to wake up now," he said mostly to himself, his fingers balled in tight fists at his sides. "Look, I don't know what the hell is going on here, Sherlock, but you can't-- you can't tell me you've died, and stand there complaining about it. No. Doesn't work like that."

"Yes, I can." Sherlock snapped, shutting off the screen as it switched to the gruesome death of another tribute. "I can. After having to go through that, I think I am well within my rights to complain as much as I like."

The truth was that he'd barely complained at all, barely even mentioned it, but with John here it was impossible to keep all his frustrations caged behind his lips.

"None of it makes any sense and yet for all intents and purposes is real."

Edited 2013-02-21 15:03 (UTC)

"I wasn't referring to the complaining so much as the being here to do it, but no. Sorry, Sherlock, but no. There's no way you can be the same man as the one I just saw killed. I know death, alright? I've seen enough of it, and..."

He trailed off, uselessly. What difference did it make if he believed it or not? The unbelievable was all he really had to go on.

"So what do we do?" he asked eventually, setting his shoulders square.

"I agree," Sherlock said firmly, before slipping hands to his shirt and undoing the first few buttons, pulling it and his jacket down from his shoulder. He ignored the question for the more pressing discussion - something that had been bothering him since he had woken up again, safe and sound, back inside the capitol.

"See? No mark. Nothing." He replaced the clothing and then held up his hands. "My fingers were almost black with frostbite, and you can't even tell. I'm afraid my knowledge of science fiction isn't acute enough to theorize." The bitterness was more than obvious.

John frowned, crossed the remaining distance between them to take Sherlock's hands in his, examining his fingers thoughtfully.
"Well, however you were reconstructed, if that's what we're going on, they very carefully gave you your scars back," he pointed out, gesturing to the minute scarring on Sherlock's hands. "So... I don't know. I suppose it's unlikely you're a clone, not that it's something I've ever dealt with, exactly."

He didn't flinch or move as John took his hands, though he looked down at them.

"Yes. I've checked - everything is as identical as I remember to the moment I left, and anything that happened to me in the arena is gone. Whatever technology it is, it is far beyond anything currently available in our time period."

He wet his lips and let go of Sherlock's hands, trying not to think about how ridiculous it all sounded.

"Anything that happened in the Arena apart from the inevitable psychological damage, you mean," he corrected. "Perhaps the arena is some kind of virtual reality? Not that it explains how we're here in the first place. I don't know. I assume you haven't found a way back."

"It was real," Sherlock said forcefully. "Or as near to it as to make no difference. If they are able to recreate reality in a virtual medium to that level of detail, there's no way to prove we aren't part of it now."

He shook his head to the question. "No. I have yet to determine how they even brought us here, let alone how to return. But as far as I can tell it is entirely a one-way trip."

He sighed, glancing at the camera and back to Sherlock, clearly mulling everything he'd been told over.

"I just don't understand why. If this civilisation has developed to the point where they have the ability to raise people from the dead, advanced medical science... why they would steal people from the past to watch them kill each other. Wouldn't they also have the technology to fix whatever problem it is they're trying to distract people from with all this?"

Sherlock threw up his hands, but said nothing.

He didn't need to. His frustration with the entire situation was clear enough. It had been eating at hims since he got here, and unleashed it like a wave upon John as soon as he appeared, but he had no answers.

"I cannot possibly theorize," He said eventually.

"Bricks without clay. Right. Well, we'll just have to find you some clay, then," John decided. "Are we allowed out of here?"

"Yes." Sherlock said, making an abrupt motion and heading towards the window. "We're currently in the Training Center, which houses the Tributes and our District Quarters - What is your district, by the way? Probably too much to ask for them to have put us in the same one. However, we're allowed the use of the city..."

He stepped right up to the window and gestured out to the massive city wordlessly.

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