bakerstreet | Insomnia meme.

Insomnia meme.

the i n s o m n i a meme

It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?

i n s t r u c t i o n s

• Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!

o p t i o n s

01 • FEAR. Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.
02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.
03 • PAIN. Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.
04 • SOLITUDE. For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...
05 • DISCOMFORT. Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.
06 • PENSIVE. Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?
07 • SADNESS. Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.
08 • ANGER. You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.
09 • RESTLESS. You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.
10 • WILDCARD. Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

The father's far too heartbroken to function, let alone kill anyone. Unless insanity is the option on his part.

[She's surreally beautiful, leaning up against the lamppost with the occasional flurry of snow falling around her hair like a halo. Not that Irene could've ever properly worn a halo. She would've been unbelievably boring if she did.]

If I touch you, will one of the two of us disappear?

Too bad an actor to be banking on insanity. His wife knows about the affair he's trying to hide.

[The question startles her into looking back at him, back at the way tension lingers in the line of his body, in the way he's watching her like she is about to disappear. She marvels at how her mind has made those details so clear, while writing him so differently, so subtly unlike the man who'd walked into her flat in Belgravia.]

If you do, I would expect you to disappear before I did.

I should have disappeared in the first place.

[There is no lack of sincerity in his words. He genuinely believes this, just as he genuinely believes that her death is his fault. No amount of psychological nagging on Watson's part will change his mind.

He looks away and sniffs, telling himself that the cold air is irritating his nose.]

Unless he doesn't know. A split personality, perhaps?

[He is far more sincere than she'd ever have thought possible, which simply reinforces the idea that this is a figment of her overtaxed and overtired mind, that the two of them could ever be sincere in their words.

Even Karachi and Islamabad had been defined more by what had not been said than what had, by the recorded breathless moan of a mobile text alert, by the touch of skin that was an unspoken farewell.

That brings a small, melancholic smile to her lips.]

You think a split personality is more likely than the mistress?

Why flay them, though? It would be a lot quicker and easier to simply kill the little girls than to murder them so brutally.

[he raises his hands up to his face and rubs his eyes.]

46 hours, no sleep. Hallucinating. I probably need some coffee.

Stimulants rather than sleep, when your mind's already missing the obvious?

[She gives him a searching, knowing look, and begins walking again, this time towards one of the twenty-four hour shops that managed to somehow manage to keep themselves in business by virtue of being the only thing open in the middle of the night.]

Seems I'm not the only one avoiding something.

You're avoiding your bad dreams and so am I.

[He'd rather her bad dreams weren't his reality.

He hurts. Going home means going to the place where the little box under the floorboards looms at him. What would Watson say if she found that, he wonders.

She'd tell his father. He'd be on the streets. Certainly fitting.]

Do you ever wonder, if you and I had been out here together? In New York.

[He was tired, to give that up so easily. Or her mind wants to win and has written him to give in. How odd that she couldn't be certain which it was.]

No. I preferred us in London. [That was how she likes to remember him. In front of the fireplace in that little flat on Baker Street. Not in the eerie jumbo jet where she'd torn him apart. Not at the country manse where he had returned the favour. Not even in Karachi or Islamabad. London was where he was most quintessentially himself, and she was most purely herself.]

But this [She weaves around another pile of snow, and gestures to the city around them, with its cold winters and busy skyscrapers and utterly irritable Americans.] will have to do, I suppose.

You've survived in far worse.

[he smiles at the way she gestures, imagining the irritation at the Americans, irritation at the lack of intrigue. They're all so dull, and while it's in a way that Holmes prefers, it's not in a way Irene would. She'd despise their obviousness.]

I didn't keep the notes you sent me.

[He means paper letters. He thinks about mentioning that he blended them with Watson's breakfast, but decides not to.]

You read them.

[She means texts. But then she would. She wasn't one to write paper letters, to leave notes behind. Too romantic, too sentimental. She prefers being cold, aloof. It protected her.

Still, her wry smile as she taps her temple is affectionate. She is tired enough that it slips out.]

That means you kept them.

[He can't help it. He finds himself smiling. Of course he kept them. He remembers every loop and every turn of her handwriting, every pressure point against the paper. Sometimes the words get blurry, but not the shape of the letters.

Memory is a funny thing that way.]

Always.

[She turns to look at him again, and this time she is close. Closer than the last few times she'd stopped to take him in. Her subconscious is getting sloppy, she thinks. His smile is different, even if she knows the sentiment behind it. The fact that the sentiment is there at all.

She must be tired, and a part of her wonders if the dream will fade and she will be back in Karachi with the next blink, with the next twitch in her sleep cycle. But still, she smiles, because even in a dream, in a reality dictated by her subconscious, she still counts it a win to draw sentiment out of him. Even if he is not exactly as she remembers him, even if he is in some senses warmer, in a lot of senses easier to read, to pull apart.

It is a small comfort in a sea of weary sleepless nights and perhaps it is enough.

She reaches for him, but stops, halfway there, as if changing her mind.]

Flaying's a lot harder than it looks. I'd suggest finding out which of your suspects has a habit of recreational scolding.

[Her hand stops part of the way, and he extends his own hand out, stopping just short of hers. An invisible wall of their own making keeping them apart.

He'd stay awake forever if he knew she wouldn't leave. That's such a romantic ideal, it would probably make Watson's knees go weak. But no, no, Irene is gone.]

The mistress is a frequenter of some of New York's more premiere clubs in the area, but she acts as a submissive. I doubt I can get Watson to go ask around.

[Dreams are funny things. The details her mind manages to spin. She can feel the radiant body heat from his hand in the space between them like a brand or a beacon in the cold winter's night, and it feels utterly real.

And because she is, despite the exhaustion and the alias, uniquely and utterly herself, Irene Adler pushes the boundary and takes his hand.

That too, the dream makes feel utterly real, utterly solid beneath her fingertips. She smiles wryly, a part of her holding her breath to see if he would disappear.]

Are you trying to suggest I go looking for you?

[His heart starts pounding in his chest at the feel of her hand in his. Small, delicate, with long, blood-red fingernails. A vicious predator in a world of very small and very stupid prey. She's the personification of his old addiction and his even older addiction. The bright, unending intellect of Irene Adler, combined with the coldness and precision of a needle.

She doesn't vanish, and he curls his hand around hers.]

You'd make far too much of a splash, I'm afraid.

[His fingers curls around hers, and Irene's thumb brushes against his wrist. Pulse, elevated. She smiles at his words.

It is enough, she thinks, to keep Karachi at bay, and she leans in to brush a kiss against his cold cheek.]

Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Edited 2012-11-18 21:48 (UTC)

[It's a goodbye. He knows this goodbye, though the voice that spoke it sounded much different than the one that speaks it now. He keeps his eyes open as she leans forward in case she might vanish with a blink. Back to the ether of the dead and gone within his brain.

He'd forgotten how her hair smelled. His eyes burn.]

I did not take your last departure well.

[And that detail, too, is precise and perfect despite the differences in the larger picture. That he will always want to have the last word.

His cheek is rough against her lips, and her kiss leaves a trace of red lipstick behind as she pulls away.]

You were there exactly when I needed you to be, Mr. Holmes.

[It's a reminder to herself as much as to him, that the dreams of Karachi are nothing more than nightmares, and she takes a step back. It was late, she was cold, and the flat on Fifth was beckoning. She lets go of his hand, but doesn't pull away completely, the only point of connection his fingers curled around hers.]

[He doesn't let go. Even when he's rested, even when he knows she isn't there, standing in front of him in all of her ghostly beauty, he won't let go.]

If only I had been.

[Surprise flickers over her face when he doesn't let go, when his grip is still warm and solid around her fingers and the world doesn't dissolve back into sleep and darkness.]

Smug superiority suits you better than regret. [Her other hand closes over his, fingertips cold but firm.]

Edited 2012-11-19 04:27 (UTC)

Give me a few hours of sleep and I'll be right back there again.

[A few hours without Irene. Though it was impossible to be without regret. Without needing penance.]

Would you forgive me, if I asked you for it?

[A pause] Begged you for it?

You always do.

[A moment of hesitation at the question, and she begins prying his fingers away from hers.]

You told me once you'd never beg for mercy.

[he doesn't properly let go. He won't hold her if she wants to extract herself, but he will cling just the slightest bit, and his hand will fall down to his side like it's lost all of its energy.]

And I never would.

It's forgiveness, though and I---

[He doesn't deserve it.]

[In the morning, she'll think about all the incongruities of the dream, all the little things that are so obviously right and all the ones that are so subtly wrong. The way he clings, ever so slightly, is one of the latter.

But then to think about it in the morning was to admit that the dream had affected her, that she was bothered by it, that perhaps it wasn't a dream but some other sort of hallucinatory madness.

So perhaps she'll simply let it go. Bury this exchange in the back of her mind, a part of her knowing it will happen again.]

There isn't anything to forgive, Sherlock. We've been even for a long time.

[He'd beaten her, but she'd won, in the end. Had made him feel sentiment, and that in turn had brought him to her exactly when she'd needed him. A fair exchange, in her mind. And perhaps the reason she is content to simply know he is out there.]

No.

No, you bested me, I should've left it at that.

[And now, she's gone. Gone forever.]

I'm going back to the Brownstone. Going to go over the case files again.

(no subject)

womanwhobeatyou - 2012-11-19 06:36 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

i_favour_you - 2012-11-20 16:26 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All