[network] @ADMIN; Arrival

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Comments

[howdull]

[That's something, at least.]

How fast can you be at the hospital morgue? There's no time to waste and there's so much to do.

Isn't this place magnificent, John?

[Sure, he's annoyed at having to lie, and about being cold, and about being in pain, and about being pulled away in the middle of an important case. But this place.]

[jumpthegun]

[Well, he's not going to sound it from the rooftops that this place has made him feel more alive in the months since Sherlock's death than anything else back home. Or that he's desperately grateful that he's getting another chance to have Sherlock because of whatever's bringing them here...]

It's certainly something.

But I'm not going to be running. We're down to our last quarter of quarter rations at this point. Two days to reach the school and stock up. Three days back down. Five to seven days provided the weather holds. It'll take you a bit to get over there, too. [This is all with John assuming he'll be able to move with any real efficiency.]

[howdull]

[Oh yes, he almost forgot the leg injury in his excitement. That's annoying, inconvenient too.]

Ten days. I have somewhere else to be first.

[He's going on a field trip to the fire station to see the trapped anomaly!]

Build skiis, you'll move faster with most of the energy coming from your arms and upper body.

[jumpthegun]

[John's just going to refrain from mentioning that he can't really put any weight on his right leg. And that his ribs are broken...]

Where are you going?

[howdull]

The fire station, there's an anomaly trapped inside just waiting to be examined.

[Can John picture the face Sherlock is making? The excited, long limbs all over the place, grinning and manic sort of face.]

[jumpthegun]

[He can picture it precisely, and it makes him want to facepalm.]

Don't let it out or go inside with it.

[howdull]

Explain to me how I am supposed to examine it without going inside with it?

[Don't be moronic.]

[jumpthegun]

Get someone to go with you and stick a bloody tablet in the room. Or coax out a leg and lop it off with something. You're the genius. Treat it like it's radio active and figure it out.

[howdull]

[Okay, that makes him laugh to himself. Perhaps it's just excitement to have a project. Either way, he's not going to listen to John. When does he ever?]

I'm not taking anybody with me, you know how the levels of idiocy in a room can hinder my thought process.

[jumpthegun]

I know being unconscious and/or dead hinders them a hell of a lot more.

[howdull]

I'm not going to die, John. Don't fuss.

[jumpthegun]

You don't want me to fuss about you potentially dying in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where everything from the snow to the town itself is trying to kill us. Right. Sure.

[howdull]

[He almost cracks a joke about how him dying is so two years ago. Almost.]

Everyone has a time to die. In a fire station, examining what is most likely another case of hallucinatory gas, is not mine.

>private

[jumpthegun]

[Now that. That is going to be a problem.]

It's not gas, Sherlock. People have died here. Really died and come back. There have been proper murders. And those anomalies... what they look like might be an hallucination, but they're a hell of a lot more dangerous than a dog underneath.

I have seen the Hound here, though. Early on when I first arrived. Everyone was seeing things, though. And it turned up in my dreams, too, when we were sharing dreams somehow.

[John switches to private briefly.]

Moriarty was in them, too. Alfie saw him and you when he was rattling around in my head. Duster and Luna, as well. Just so you know.

private

[howdull]

[Oh, John.

It must be so hard to have a mind that accepts things seen as fact without looking for the explanations, Sherlock can scarcely imagine it. He's both impatient with John for believing this nonsense, especially when they have experience in these matters, and also worried at the extent his friend seems to have been dosed.

He needs to investigate this quickly before he succumbs to the same problems.]

People may have died and appeared to come back from the dead, but I assure you that there will be an explanation behind it that is quite sound. I will find it and prove it to you.

[Moriarty doesn't surprise him. Why shouldn't he be in John's hallucinations when he's always in Sherlock's?]

private

[jumpthegun]

[This place is going to break a man like Sherlock. Or at the very least, bend him in very uncomfortable ways. John's not willing to accept a supernatural explanation, but he is willing to accept a technological one.]

Yes, Sherlock. Machines that are far more advanced than anything we've got in our time and place. I need you to treat this like everything you see is real. Because it's not just the anomalies that are dangerous. There are people here, too, who're impossible.

They're people from comic books and films in our world, Sherlock.

private

[howdull]

Of course you would say that, you've been exposed to the drugs for a prolonged period.

[Not to mention he doesn't have the most analytical brain, very easy to fall under suggestion when it comes to situations like this.]

But listen to yourself, John. There are answers here beyond the smoke and mirrors, and I will find them. The game is on.

private

[jumpthegun]

[John sighs. Sherlock's going to have to learn this in his own time. That's regrettable when it's probably going to send him into a worse panic than he Hound.]

I suppose it is. I'll see you in a while.

[And hopefully be there in-person to deal with the fallout from the mess of the other man breaking.]

private

[howdull]

Yes, quite.

Goodbye, John.