bakerstreet | last night, i dreamt i was a muffler.

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last night, i dreamt i was a muffler.

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D R E A M S ~ M E M E

Dreams are difficult enough to understand. They range from embarrassing, to frightening, to thought-provoking, to just plain nonsensical. You may find yourself wondering what that was all about, or trying to forget about it as quickly as you can. It may be close enough to reality to confuse you, or dream logic may prevail. Whatever the case, the world of dreams is a way to delve into your psyche and deal with what happened to you that day, your fears, and whatever's on your mind.

Except... what's that person doing there?

Potential Trigger Warning!

How It Works:

~ Post with your character, name and fandom in the subject.

~ Others respond to your character.

~ Roll the RNG 1-6 for your situation, from the list below. That's the type of dream your character is having. Or, just pick the one you like the best.

~ The replier has found themselves in your character's dream, able to interact freely.

~ Have fun!

1. sweet dreams

Something like this might not happen too often in your waking life, if ever. You've found the world's largest supply of grape ice cream, you've won the lottery... or, perhaps, you're just having a really good day. Will this person share in your joy or ruin it for you?

2. nightmares

Your worst fears are being visited upon you tonight. Whether it's falling, losing those closest to you, insects, or something particular to you, there's no doubt you'd wake up in a cold sweat if everything went normally. Having this person there isn't 'normal', though. Maybe they can make things better.

3. sexy dreams

Isn't it so awkward when the person you're in bed with suddenly asks why you're dreaming about them in a schoolgirl costume?

4. bizarre dreams

It's hard to categorize this, but it probably seems perfectly natural to you that you need to find the smallest grain of sand in the world to stop an alien invasion up until someone points out how weird that is. And maybe it still seems normal to you even after that. They might be the ones being silly!

5. memories

The mind often revisits important events in one's life. For good or bad, you're back in time, reliving something that stuck in your head. But... that guy wasn't here before, was he? Or maybe he was, but hasn't seen it from your point of view yet.

6. combination/other

Dreams are many and varied. Mix up the flavors, or try something completely different. Wherever your mind will take you is game.

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[ Well. When he'd gone to bed, he'd hardly expected to wake up here. ]

[It's a dark, clearly abandoned building. Might have been a tea shop in its previous life, perhaps a cafe or a restaurant judging by the shattered mug abandoned on the floor, the stack of three dust-covered plates on the counter.

There's a dark haired woman in the middle of the room, trying to peer into the dark shadows. It was mid afternoon outside, but the abandoned building, with its boarded up windows, dwelled in perpetual twilight.]

Miss Adler sent me.

[The voice is familiar, though the hair colour may not be. It's Kate, her assistant. Irene stands silent in the shadows, her expression a cold mask, as she waits for what she knows will come next. The sharp shot-like bang of the door being forced open, the thug that will enter.

She barely notices Sherlock's presence.]

[ Interesting.

He stands in the darkness, lips pursing together in a thoughtful display. His eyes scan first the shambles of the room, taking in the dust and broken porcelain and disrepair, before falling on Kate in the center, left alone in the dim light. It's strange enough that he's suddenly wherever he is in the first place, but something all this seems... surreal. Off.

His gaze is drawn to The Woman straight away.

The distance between them is closed easily and silently as he moves up behind her, straightening up and flipping the collar of his coat up about the sides of his neck. When he speaks it can barely be called a whisper, breathed out so softly that only she could hear, if she strains to. ]

I get the distinct feeling I'm not supposed to be here.

[She's had this dream before, and the familiar but unexpected voice is a sharp deviation from the memory and despite the quiet she notices. It's in the logic of the dream that she doesn't ask why he's here, or how he's here but accepts it simply as fact.

She shakes her head, her attention clearly still preoccupied by the scene unfolding. The thug she'd expected, one of Moriarty's hired guns, bursts into the room right on time and despite Kate's words, the first blow is struck across the young woman's face]

I'm not either. [She watches as a second blow to the stomach drives Kate to her knees and the young woman cries out.] Did you ever notice that Kate and I share the same measurements?

It's hard to miss.

[ A slight evasion: He'd noticed the fact, of course... but not until after he'd found out Irene had faked her own death. He hadn't checked thoroughly enough. He hadn't really looked. It's still a minor tear at his pride. ]

Is this what happened to her, then?

[ He watches the blows dispassionately, hands sliding into his pockets. Blow to the cheek: shattered cheekbone, laceration, hemorrhaging. Blow to the stomach: internal bruising, damage to the floating rib. There's no feeling for her; this is already passed. Kate is dead and caring about it now won't change that. ]

Awfully cold-blooded of you, Miss Adler.

[Kate curls up small and defenseless as her assailant continues raining blows, a futile attempt to protect her vital organs. Irene knows exactly how many blows it takes for the look of confusion to fade from the young woman's face to be replaced by fleeting comprehension (seven), then to immediately be replaced by betrayal and anger (eight), and dissolve into blank pain and unconsciousness (ten).

She knows, and so she turns away from the scene and gives Sherlock a cool, thin smile.]

Maybe I'm not as sentimental as you thought, Mr. Holmes.

[ Sherlock watches each strike without flinching; he's a man without a heart, or so he's been told, but some part of him does feel a distant sort of sorrow at the vision before them. Pity that she had to die this way. Pity that Irene Adler allowed it.

People will do some interesting things for their own benefit. ]

Perhaps.

[ He regards her with a smile of his own, just as guarded. She's still so difficult to read. It's as frustrating as it is alluring. ]

Or perhaps we're here because it's not something you've so easily been able to forgive yourself for. I hear guilt can be quite crippling over time; have you considered the services of a good therapist?

[She isn't surprised that he notices the alternate possibility. But she's too proud, too careful of her disguises and self-portraits to admit it. Because that's part of what draws them, this tension between truth and admission, between deduction and discernment and manipulation.

She gives him a sidelong glance.]

I prefer the services of consulting detectives.

Saving your life wasn't service enough?

[ His tone is derisive, but only on the surface. It's been a long time since that day, and he can't deny that he's glad to see her, fondness seen in the easy set of his shoulders and the way his eyes linger over her hair. ]

We both know that we can never see each other again. Not if we don't want that little trip I took to be wasted.

[ It's not hard to figure out: an impossible scene from their past folding out before them, a strange place he's never been, a woman from whom he's destined to remain apart. One, or perhaps somehow both of them, is dreaming.

He tries to pretend it isn't a disappointment. ]

Mycroft came up with some story about you being in a witness protection program to try and spare me the news of your supposed death, had John deliver the news.

There's always dinner.

[It's enough, to know that the other is out there, her misbehaving, him solving crimes. It's enough to know that there is someone like themselves, someone extraordinary, out there in the world, to know that they are not quite as alone as the world would let them believe.

It doesn't make things less dull though, in day-to-day moments.

She would smile but her eyes are caught by Kate again. As Moriarty's thug kicks her hard enough to break bone, and the young woman goes utterly still.]

Charitable of him. Or do you think he was simply trying to keep John from coming to him about your writing sad music all day long?

Hmm. I'm not hungry.

[ He too watches as, mercifully, Kate's body goes rigid, then completely still. The hired help did not go easy on the girl. He's impressed she lasted as long as she did, really; Irene must have trained the girl well.

At the little jab he turns his nose up, tone going dry. ]

I'm sure he's more concerned about what sort of impact the stress will have on his diet.

And it was poignant music.

You never are.

[The wetworks man gives her a few more kicks for good measure, then begins dragging Kate's body out of the abandoned cafe and into a darkly tinted car. The scene around them moves, still seen through some combination of Irene's eyes and the holes in memory filled in by her mind, to the ditch outside London where they dump the body.

Kate's body flops into it, and Moriarty's men drive away but the dream doesn't end, not yet.

Only now does a wry smile touch Irene's lips.]

If I heard it, I would judge for myself.

I'm a light eater.

[ His respect for her won't keep him from being deliberately obtuse, it seems. As the girl's lifeless body rolls to a stop, he tilts his head at the face to take in the details that he should have seen in the morgue that day. Was he really so smitten with the woman he could not read that the obvious went totally unnoticed?

Apparently so.

His eyes turn away to offer his clever companion a snide look down his nose. ]

It was rubbish; I've long since deleted the tune.

[ A bold-faced lie, of course. He could play it in his sleep. ]

[To be fair, she'd used the obvious to her advantage. Kate's hastily dyed hair, the sort of thing that one might do if nervous, putting together a quick disguise. The relentless bruising that made the face all but unrecognizable. The suggestion that she was dead. The recordkeeper.

She gives him a sidelong glance and the dreamscape shifts around them again, this time to a warehouse by the waterfront. The sort of place one expected clandestine meetings.]

No you haven't.

[A gun appears then in Irene's hand and she moves away from Sherlock in the familiar gestures of the dream, greets the thugs and goes through the motions and waits until he's confirmed with Moriarty that he's been paid, etc etc. And then she puts three bullets into the man. One in each kneecap, and one in his gut. And the butt of the pistol breaks his jaw.]

[ Sherlock doesn't interrupt this walk through the woman's past, instead straightening to watch with interest. He's absently taking note of the man's details that he couldn't see in the dim light moments before (left-handed, recent tooth extraction, knee surgery as a child) before he sees Irene shift just so... and realizes it doesn't really matter.

The gun fires a moment later.

Even in a dream the decibel is painful; his hands close over his ears moments before she puts the first bullet in one knee but it only takes the edge off, leaving a ringing in its wake when she takes the pistol to his jaw. This certainly adds credibility to the guilt theory. ]

You're quite handy with a nine millimeter... though I suppose that's no surprise, given your penchant for "misbehaving."

[She doesn't seem to hear him for a moment, her expression carefully blank as she watches Moriarty's man. The wounds are painful and slowly fatal. She's seen this part of it before too, knows exactly how long it will take him to die. She doesn't need to pay attention to know that it takes a very long time. She'd been there, after all.

And so she turns her attention back to Sherlock.]

Don't credit that to misbehavior, Mr. Holmes. It's insurance. I like being alive to misbehave.

[ The man writhes on the floor and Sherlock finds this easy to watch; after all, he dropped a member of the United States Secret Service out a window once or thrice for simply laying a hand on Mrs. Hudson. Had they done worse, he would have had far less survivable wounds befall him.

Of course, Sherlock hadn't put her in the line of fire. Not intentionally, anyway.

Approaching the fallen thug, he tilts his head to examine her handiwork. It will be slow and painful. The fallen criminal will likely beg and curse and plead until the bleeding is too much for his body to take, organs shutting down one by one until his heart slows to a stop. It is a ruthless. He's not the least bit surprised. ]

This was your retribution, then? Killing the man hired to murder the girl you sent to her death?

[Not that begging or cursing did very well with a broken jaw. She doesn't even bother looking at the man, though his burbling angry incoherent cries are easily audible.

There's still very little expression in her face, because she doesn't admit weakness. It's a battle to draw it out of her, and even when he hits the nail on the head, she refuses to acknowledge it. But there is something there, simmering anger in the set of her lips, in the hard look in her eyes as she stares down at the dying man.]

It's tying up loose ends.

[ The details here are different than what happened to Kate: these are not just blanks that have been filled. This is an experience. She stayed here until the unlucky hitman drew his last breath. She watched. Could he say he wouldn't have done the same, though? ]

Yes. I suppose it is.

[ Adjusting his collar, he turns his back on the man without a second thought, his plight easily forgotten as he focuses on his companion instead. Watching a stranger die - particularly one of unsavory morals - is no more startling to him than the plight of a drowning fly to an ordinary person. It's not even a blip on his radar.

Irene, however, holds his attention quite easily. ]

What's to say I didn't delete that song? It was only to pass the time, after all. A simple distraction of notes strung together and placed in a line on a page.

[She pulls her attention away from Moriarty's man and his burbling and arches an eyebrow at Sherlock. He is far more interesting than the dead man, and she already knows what will happen to him.

The shift in topic is better, and she smiles, the expression sharper, more like herself and without that touch of tension and simmering anger.]

Because you came to Karachi.

[Because he had written it as eulogy, thinking she were dead, and he had come halfway across the world to prevent it happening again. Because she knows with a certainty that only comes with knowing someone is of similar mind, similar temperament. Or maybe she doesn't know for certain and is simply remarkably good at knowing what he likes, or in this case, doesn't like.

To be reminded of having been beaten.

It could be that. A small likelihood, but possible.]

[ The way he begins to shift her attention away from the writhing, sobbing man on the ground is subtle, first with conversation, then with a slow turn to encourage her away from the memory that leaves her jaw tight and her eyes dark with a rage she clearly works hard to repress. It's a small kindness that he'd rather she not be aware of, as such shows of emotion go rather against his nature.

Irene may be different than others, but he'd like her to not lord that over him more than she already does. The scales are already tipped too far in her favor.

To her observation he offers a half-hearted shrug, one shoulder rising and falling almost imperceptibly. Her theories hang unspoken between them, hidden in plain sight within her words. He neither confirms or denies them, at least at first. After a moment he turns to look at a faraway point in the building, sensing the eyes of a man who would later discredit his genius to an entire populace... but he can't be seen, not from here. He wonders if Irene ever knew he was watching. ]

I've never had an ear for eulogies. The feeling behind them is lost on me.

[ Of course, six months of mourning says otherwise... but he stands by his statement all the same. ]

[She hadn't known Moriarty had been watching. But if he told her, she wouldn't have been surprised. She might even have been pleased.

Because Kate's death had been a necessity, but that didn't mean it hadn't been a waste.

Irene gives Sherlock a sidelong look, a hint of arch amusement in her eyes, in her voice.]

Still insisting that sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side?

[Of course she remembers the exact words he used. They had been as sharp as the crack of a whip when he'd unlocked her phone and left her defenseless. And she'd thought they were true up until that night in Karachi.

Well, that night had changed a lot of things.]

I've seen no evidence to the contrary.

[ He remembers, too. He'd like to say that his revealing her, and his rather acrid choice of words, was vengeance for the destruction of Bond Air and any subsequent plans that would come after it; he'd even like to say it was entirely his bruised pride speaking, the shame of being so easily tricked into her web.

He'd rather not think about the fact that, deep down, he had felt betrayed. If that was what it was to have a heart then he would gladly toss it away and accept it as a waste of time and precious intellect. He would care no more for Irene Adler, never again speak her name, and move on with his life...

And yet he couldn't walk away from that. Not to the point of letting her die. The heart was a tricky thing, after all.

His gaze finally falls away from where he can practically feel Jim Moriarty's eyes burning into him, leaving his skin prickled with discomfort. The look he gives Irene is reproachful, but with that same confused affection he still can't quite wrap his head around. ]

I should hope you haven't made the same mistake with whatever new life you've created for yourself.

[She wonders briefly what in the distance had caught his attention, and tries to think back to that day. The sharpest memories are of vindictive satisfaction, the man's burbling death. Which she supposes isn't what's transfixed his attention.

She laughs quietly.]

I'm cold-blooded and I enjoy being alive to misbehave, Mr. Holmes. I save the sentiment for dreaming.

Irene Adler || BBC Sherlock

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