sojournerdeep | Location - a disturbing hallway

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Location - a disturbing hallway

There is a passageway in Sojourner dotted with irregularly-placed stone plinths that serve as columns for a latticed ceiling. The first thing one might notice about it is the scent wafting forth; a sweet, warm smell that is... well, what is it? A scent from one's childhood, surely, a comforting scent. Fresh bread for some. Mown grass for others. But it's a scent that tugs one's lips into a smile, and twinges a string of nostalgia in the heart, and more often than not, draws feet in that direction.

Finch has one such pair of feet. He limps down the corridor, his leashed dog at his side; and he pauses occasionally to sniff the air, to smile absently, then to resume his forward progress and idle inspection of each of the rough-hewn stone monoliths he passes. There are no markings, but they glitter as if fine mica or quartz had been dusted along their slate-dark surfaces.

Another scent, replacing the fragrance of (for Harold Finch) a pot roast dinner. This one is... thick in the air, cloying, and Finch pauses with a slow blush creeping up his neck. (For Harold Finch, it's now the smell of a former lover's aftershave; for others it might be any number of scents that bring to mind intimate moments.) After a long, hesitating moment (while Bear whines in confusion, his canine nose registering entirely different things than a human might), he keeps going.

And any others who follow this fascinating olfactory trail to its conclusion - well, they find Harold Finch standing at a blank wall that fills the passage floor to ceiling. It appears to be steel - or something like it - its blank, ugly surface scarred and pitted with gouges and gashes, like a spoon put down the garbage disposal.

And for those viewing it? They feel a curious sense of existential dread, visceral, dwelling in the gut rather than the mind. There is no obvious threat. There is no sense of a knife-wielding maniac or a monster about to devour you. There is only that wall, flat, scarred, final as a summary execution, and the slow flooding awareness that all is meaningless, has been meaningless, will always be meaningless.

Harold Finch stands and stars, stands and stares. There is a cold sweat beaded on his brow, and he looks somewhat grey around the gills.

The dog barks, a worried sound, unsure what is wrong with his human but knowing that something surely is.

[ooc: Open to any! Finch is going to stubbornly return to this wall a few times, so multiple people should feel free to jump in and we'll assume chronological jumps if necessary. Feel free to add any details about this hallway you think would be interesting!]

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It is not the smell of the fresh-laundered bedsheets that brings Sherlock Holmes to the passageway, but rather the obstinate intent to plot an accurate map, starting with the cluster of buildings, if you can call them that. The sheets are an afterthought; the sheets are dismissed as a malfunctioning dispenser, from Sherlock's brief experience so far with dispensers. They get an unnerved start out of him, to be sure, but no hope: just recognition and a mote of curiosity. They are not enough to turn him off his steady and meandering course.

But eventually, his course does take him there, and the mote is satisfied. He too passes each column with an interested frown, crouching down in front of one to study the material, the way that it glisters from one angle to another.

As he wanders along, the scent changes--to something completely unfamiliar. Not only something Sherlock doesn't recognize, but of which he can't catalog the attributes; he has no idea whether what he's smelling is sweet, or musky, or astringent. It can't be placed. It must be some chemical having an olfactory effect. Having come to this reasonable enough conclusion, Sherlock covers his nose and mouth experimentally with his hand and then lets it drop. Well, he doesn't seem to be being gassed--no more than with the warm fabric and the detergent--it's just almost as if, almost like...

His feet take him around a corner and he finds a man staring at a wall. The man is middle-aged and well-groomed, carrying a blanket of some sort, though not in quite as good of physical health--he has a canine companion with the present manner and reactions of a concerned service dog. This is probably because his master is staring at the wall. Sherlock's eyes flick to the man for signs of seizure or post-traumatic flashback, and then to the wall--

The map Sherlock is making is pointless, he realizes; all his attempts to create a new frame of reference for himself are pointless. His world is gone. It didn't have much of a place for him to begin with, maybe, but it's certainly gone now, and with it his life's work. The stubborn effort to find a signal in the noise is just that--an effort, busywork. Human endeavor is as chaotic and meaningless--and evil--here as everywhere, and anything Sherlock does will make no more of a dent in it than it ever has.

His eyes come unfocused. It doesn't immediately occur to him to look away, because it doesn't immediately occur to him that anything could affect his cognition this deeply.

Then the dog whines, and something in the back of Sherlock's now deeply depressed mind reminds him: yes, but this man might be having a seizure. He glances over at the stranger--and blinks, as the depression ebbs. He looks back at the wall. He looks back at the man. It's having a very choppy effect on his serotonin levels.

Edited 2016-10-05 07:36 (UTC)

Finch supposes it's stupidity that led him back to the wall, again. It is absolutely stupidity to have done it without John Reese, at his side to serve as guardian against unknown threats. Although--

--well, it's perhaps not the worthiest thought in the world, and he wouldn't vocalize it aloud on pain of torture, but on some level, Harold Finch's estimation of his friend-and-employee's mental health is: not always the most solid.

He'd had to tell John some very unpleasant news, quite recently, and it had inspired an existential crisis for John Reese back 'home,' and he is not altogether certain that this Wall (it's acquired a capital letter in his mind) might not... be... the best thing... to inflict on a man who is just hearing of the death of a friend.

(It does not really cross Harold Finch's mind that it's probably not the best thing to inflict on a man who's recently buried two friends, namely himself; with unconscious arrogance his mind swoops past that.)

It needs to be dealt with, is all, so he has returned, grimly determined to deal with it. He has Bear, if there are threats, and Bear doesn't seem affected by it, after all. And he has a blanket-- a thing from the dispensers, and it's a coarse ugly scratchy woolen thing that he is just as glad he isn't intending to actually use to sleep on, but for these purposes, it should suffice.

And he is standing here, forcing himself to stare at the damned Wall, when the intelligent thing to do (some corner of his mind acknowledges this) would have been to approach it backwards, or by feel, and spare himself this, this, this hideous lurching oily weight in his belly that screams that everything he has ever tried to do, every life he has ever tried to save, is so much pointless chaff...

Motion from the corner of his eye pierces the bubble of blackness. With an effort, Finch wrests his gaze away, pivoting with his whole body to see--

--another pale young man, as respectably dressed as the other one wasn't. Finch takes him in perfunctorily, his senses still swimming a bit with the dizzy relief of not feeling like that again.

"Hello," he manages. "Awful, isn't it. I came here with some notion of covering it up."

Come to think of it, this new young man is rather tall; he could be of use in that, Finch thinks.

The American has the affect of an academic, but he's not dressed like one, by far. He moves like someone with nerve damage, Sherlock decides, localized in but not limited to his spine--injury more likely than illness, reminiscent of a collision victim or a veteran. But he's certainly never been in the military. It's an unusual combination altogether, dress and manner and disability, and Sherlock finds himself flicking over the stranger's appearance more than once for new details: his clothing is ever-so-slightly creased in a way that suggests new arrival, because this one has the habits and resources of someone used to changing clothes for the occasion, not just the day, yet he hasn't.

The dog looks friendly. Sherlock is unsure what to do with friendly assistance dogs: or animals in general, really, but particularly those engaged in a duty. He looks back up to the master.

"You should consider posting a warning in the hallway instead," he says; he looks at the wall through his eyelashes, he unfocuses his vision as far as it will go, experimentally. At a certain point with both methods he finds himself remembering that once a junkie, always a junkie, and-- Well, never mind that. "I was thinking it might be another psychoactive gas here that's undetectable, but the effect at least seems to be connected to looking at the thing. That still doesn't rule out the possibility."

In saying this he's brusque and half addressed to himself; part of him is clearly accustomed to periodically thinking aloud, and the American stranger is a substitute for whomever this is usually directed to.

"I'm not familiar enough with neurology to be able to speculate on exactly how it works," Finch admits, observing the young man since it's certainly better than letting his gaze drift back to the wall.

Intelligent, he thinks, and rude. There'd been no automatic greeting of response to his own hello, not even the nod that passes for basic social courtesies. The vocabulary is that of a scientist. Finch absently wonders if he himself at, oh, eighteen or so, had come off quite like this; Nathan had told him more than once he lacked in the social graces (Nathan, of the effortless charm).

But this young man isn't eighteen... mid-twenties, Harold might say if he had to guess, and if he's a scientist he's a well-dressed one. Most of the 'brain trust' Finch remembers from MIT had been young men (and the rare woman, in those days) more concerned with matters of the mind than matters of their wardrobe. Even in the thinking of it he acknowledges the stereotype-- there's nothing wrong with his own wardrobe these days, is there-- but all the same...

"A warning in the hallway wouldn't be exclusive," he points out mildly. "Doing both would be prudent. Would you mind giving me a hand with this?"

Said as he lifts the blanket, awkwardly. The stiffness of the gesture isn't exaggerated-- that's the bad shoulder, he doesn't need to feign any extra lack of mobility-- but it's also not concealed. He could have used his other arm, but Finch has discovered most people are more willing to help those they perceive as incapable.

Sherlock shrugs both shoulders: as if to say, Certainly, but in fact it is just a shrug. His message is a bit clearer when he takes up one edge of the blanket, taking pains not to look directly to one side; "I'm not a neurologist," he says, "but I've studied the subject. What I would imagine is a powerful hallucinogen and dopamine inhibitor--something that binds with the receptor sites quickly and catastrophically. I wouldn't know how to go about accomplishing that chemically, but given the proper tools I could try to create something similar. Of course, the proper tools aren't exactly--" He grimaces. "--Easy to come by. The laboratory I used to work with--"

If talk of science doesn't precisely make him friendly, it certainly brings him much closer to 'chatty.' It's not on purpose. Problems like this just tap into a vein of unadulterated interest--being on one topic centers him. Well, half on one topic, anyway. The other half is drifting over the man he's talking to, idly teething on his disability, the stiffness of his movement. He chances a glance down at the man's shoulder, the way it locks up.

They're carrying the blanket closer to the wall now. Both of them are looking anywhere else, which has the somewhat socially odd effect of making them look at one another.

"--You weren't in an accident," Sherlock suddenly interrupts himself. This is an idle comment, akin to You're American, aren't you? "How long ago was it? Three years? Four?"

Scientist is confirmed, with emphasis, even if the exact field is still up for debate. Finch idly wonders: a general chemistry student? Physicists and astronomers and that ilk tend to not study the brain, in his experience, too interested in the cosmos for the minor details of grey matter to, erm, matter. Mathematician? Not an engineer, he doesn't think.

He lifts his corner awkwardly-- injury aside, Sherlock has several inches of height on him, and longer limbs as well--

--and almost drops the blanket, at that off-hand statement, the out-of-nowhere pinpoint targeting of a fact about him that shouldn't be knowable.

He stares. Sherlock Holmes no doubt finds it validating, when people do that; when they react to his effortless knowledge display with shock and bemusement and demands to know what the trick is. But Finch stares with a certain gobsmackedness that verges on hostility: his pupils dilate a bit, his breathing shallows out.

When one goes through life with a careful screen of anonymity, invisibility around one's actions and person... it's deeply disconcerting to stumble into someone who saunters past one's maintained illusions with such reckless, nonchalant confidence.

The blanket is sliding from his nerveless fingers; Finch grips tightly before it can. His mind races. He forces out a steadying exhale: it's disconcerting, but it's immaterial. Wherever they are now, whatever this surreal place is, it doesn't seem to be some sort of government operation, and the CIA and FBI are not lurking behind the coarse blanket he's gripping.

This young man is not a spook ready to finish the job a car bomb failed to do. Surely.

"That's rather a personal question, don't you think?" he says flatly, after he's convinced himself his voice will be level when he speaks. Finch presses his mouth together and swings his end of the blanket up and over.

Edited 2016-10-14 07:08 (UTC)

Sherlock tucks his edge of the blanket in. Finch's reaction is no surprise; if anything, it is validation, confirmation that Sherlock is correct in the brazen limb onto which he's gone out. He's accustomed to shock. He's even accustomed to... this. No, not accustomed, he supposes, there's something particularly frightened about this man's reaction-- but that's surely not Sherlock's doing. Well. It is, obviously, Sherlock's doing. That's beside the point.

Obviously he has touched a nerve. He is well used to ignoring nerves that he's touched, but is not quite sure what to do with them besides that; the man has clearly had a deep well of self-assurance disturbed, if not ease of living in the first place. It has already occurred to Sherlock that someone caught in a bomb blast might live a life of day-to-day safety concerns. It did not really follow for him that saying something might trigger them.

And now he's faced with a man struggling to pull together his composure. Coldly, in Sherlock's mind, it only confirms more things he already knows: that the stranger has enemies. Interesting.

The awkwardness of the moment has not passed. Sherlock thins his mouth and looks away, and says, "Yes." He adds, after some consideration: "You're not the first survivor of a bomb blast that I've met. Though most of the others have been in the military--you've lived an interesting life, haven't you?"

Finch inhales. He's better braced for it this time, at least. Rather than raw shock, his mind jumps tracks to start with the wondering instead: how does this man know these things?

Just because he's been abducted to a- to a-- an alien space-ship, apparently, with mind-altering blank walls-- is no reason to start succumbing to irrational explanations, so he's not going to entertain the immediate paranoid response of wondering if this is the stuff of which Twilight Zone episodes are made: the young man is not a psychic, for instance. (No, he is not going to entertain it.)

It's obvious that Finch, himself, is injured, of course. To his own eye, he can't guess what possible clues there would be that would lead someone to guess not a car accident, let alone to correctly guess bomb blast, but-- if the-as-yet-nameless young man does have past experience of bomb blast victims, then perhaps there is some sort of tell that Finch himself is unaware of. It's not impossible. It's more probable than psychics. (Isn't it?) The conclusion that he's not military doesn't faze him as much: Harold knows he has zero bearing of the military man, no hint of physical capability in that regard. That's Mr. Reese's sphere.

The blanket is in position. Finch lets it go. Bear is plastered to his leg, not quite growling at the lanky young man but with his hackles up, because Bear can pick up on his emotional distress, animals are perceptive in a way humans are not.

Excepting, perhaps, the human in front of him. Finch bends down enough to collect Bear's leash, taking some solace from the soft zip of the smooth leather cord through his fingers until he reaches the end of it. He has a highly-trained violent canine literally within arms' reach; he is not defenseless, in the instance of a physical attack.

"If we're playing a game of unsolicited, unwelcome, and intrusive questions, very well: You don't have many friends, do you?" Finch's voice is several degrees cooler and sharper than it was for his mild initial statements.

The dog registers, emphatically. The distress of the man was present before--though Sherlock hadn't quite quantified it that way, distress--but the dog has his hackles up. He considers Sherlock a threat. It hadn't really occurred to Sherlock that, whatever else he was doing, he could be considered threatening; yet here they are, and here the dog is, on the verge of growling at him. That snaps him back to reality more than the stranger's question.

... But the stranger's question does, too. There is something edged and self-protective about the man's response, as well as offended: Sherlock is used to offended, all right, and in the habit of brushing it off as the go-to response of people who don't like the truths they hear. Certainly Lestrade has detectives like that.

But there is a part of even Sherlock Holmes that is aware of the existence of lines, and of crossing them. There are things even he doesn't say aloud to people about their appearances. Perhaps--he considers--perhaps this should have been one of them. Or there was a point of no return, sooner or later, before which he should've turned back.

No, no. Sherlock frowns minutely; other people are always turning back, conversationally, people are ever in the habit of walking back the statements they make to test boundaries, or in the service of candor. It's just that he isn't. This is foreign territory.

As a few more facts introduce themselves (dog for protection, not just guidance; what was his industry, anyway?) he thinks about how to respond, and opts ultimately to tilt his head to one side and say, frankly, "No. Well. Not particularly."

He's at a loss for where to go with this from here. Unfortunately, there is only one way he knows particularly well.

"I took you for independently wealthy," he says after a moment. "But now I'm thinking tech: something in security? I suppose I should say something about myself. To be fair. I'm a detective." Pause. "Not with the police. Well. Sort of with the police--" This is all coming out halting, awkward. "You have keyboard calluses. Most people do, now, but not quite like that, not at your age. You should consider ergonomic."

No says the young man, no, he doesn't have many friends, and the baldness of the statement, the awkward addendums to it, do more than many things might have to somewhat defuse Finch's own tight, coiled anger.

It's guileless and it contains none of the notes he might have expected. No tight smirk, no edged comment that someone such as, say, Sameen Shaw might haven given (Nah, they get in my way) or even the little flinch he supposes the words might have elicited in, say, John Reese, with his omnipresent longing for the fantasy of a normal life. If his words cut this young man (as Finch must admit to himself he had been aiming for, at least a little bit), then it doesn't show; his words might as well have been a non sequitur, he supposes.

Finch exhales. He has a better sense of this odd young man: there is no malice behind what he is doing, just a vast gulf of-- ignorance. A strange word to apply to all those far-too-exact observations, perhaps, but true all the same: ignorance of others as.... people, as people with needs and feelings and fears. A deep awareness of people as puzzles, instead.

There'd been a time he'd not been entirely dissimilar, Finch supposes. Though he likes to flatter himself he might have been less rude.

"Af, Bear," he murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, while the young man awkwardly carries on trying to solve the Puzzle that is Harold Finch, and, just as awkwardly, puts little pieces of himself out. 'Awkward' is a fitting word for him, Finch thinks. Despite a certain fine-bonedness to his features and what Finch will grant is a flattering wardrobe, he wouldn't class the young man as attractive-- because of that awkwardness. There's something lost about the way he volunteers things about himself. That phrase: to be fair. He's finally clued in he's done something to offend-- but doesn't stop doing it: he's still speculating, and then uncertainly offering forth details about himself, as if to square the balance. As if he didn't know how else to try and right things.

Finch closes his eyes a moment, and rubs at his face, fingers sliding up beneath his glasses to do so. Bear has dutifully eased back down, but is still being watchful.

Very well: he's run into a precocious hyper-observant-- an extraordinarily clever young man (except where it comes to emotional intelligence) who is used to putting his talents to work for law enforcement. Finch mulls this over a few seconds, and resists the urge to rub his fingertips together self-consciously at the mention of his calluses.

"Thank you for the suggestion," he sighs. He's tried any number of keyboards, ergonomic and otherwise, but no matter. "Well, you have quite the eye for details, detective, but presumably you know that about yourself already." It's not quite a confirmation of any of those half-fishing statements, nor a rebuttal of any of them either.

Finch pauses a moment. "What made you consider a bomb blast?" he asks, because with the blaring alarms starting to ease, he is left still with the curiosity.

The other man eases up, and Sherlock wonders briefly at what makes some people soften and others not: towards him, specifically, and towards his particular brand of candor. It makes him think of John, somewhat and incongruously; more than that, however, it makes him think of Gregory Lestrade. It wouldn't be accurate to say that Lestrade never took anything personally; it would be more accurate to say that Lestrade readily let go of any rancor. Lestrade took Sherlock in context. It'd probably be too much to say that he took him in stride.

The comparison ends there, naturally: this man has nothing in common with an ordinary Metropolitan Police detective inspector. But it gives Sherlock a flicker of homesickness, and... regret, is that what he's identifying? And now, offered the chance to back away from his careening train of conversation and into more comfortable territory, he does, pausing for a long moment to consider his words.

"The way your nerve damage radiates, rather than being a bit more centralized," he says with a nod to Finch. He doubts he has to explain the man's disability to himself, so he doesn't: falling instead to, "To answer your true question, it's a matter of observing enough case studies of bomb and automobile crash survivors. Once you've examined the patterns, they become evident in individual cases. I've had reason to study both." His mouth takes on a wry twist. "It's a matter of research. As you see, the trick is not so impressive once the magician explains it."

Finch listens, his head tilted to the side, absorbing this, and absorbing the young man's delivery as well. He's not reluctant to talk about his methods, then. Pleased, maybe? Harold himself had always been pleased, when Nathan had inquired as to what he was doing with his computers.

He notes that little wry twist to the mouth, as well, and has to stop himself from snorting. It would hardly be politic. There's a touch of aggrieved bitterness there, isn't there? Huhmmn.

"Oh, it's still rather impressive," Finch says after two seconds' consideration. "Observing patterns is a skill. One I must assume you've practiced a great deal, in order to be able to draw conclusions like that. But you must be aware a stranger might not-- welcome having a painful bit of their past so casually discussed?"

Finch's voice is even now, not the hard fear of earlier. If there is a hyper-observant deductive genius around, Finch would rather the person were.... ~~cultivated~~ not hostile, at the least.

Edited 2016-11-08 07:47 (UTC)

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Location - a disturbing hallway

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