Sherlock Holmes had not foreseen this.
Sure, he played if off like his plan had all along been to be trapped in a cage with a werewolf, but he had honestly not expected his now captors to be observant enough to pick up on him being a feral of sorts in the first place.
Just change, let them take a blood sample, and they wouldn’t open the gate separating him from the angry pacing feral-lupus snarling at him from the metal divider. They called it Watson, as they drove the beast toward the divider with electric prods. And it had been driven into a rage sometime before Sherlock had been forced into its vicinity; fur ragged and unkempt, matted with sweat and blood; foam gathering at the corners of its mouth with each snarl. It had been beaten and tasered into a bloodlust, and now it’s all attention was now solely on Sherlock.
Don’t shift, and they will let the wolf loose on him. Still refuse to shift, and it will kill him. Sherlock could only hope it was angry enough to go for a kill shot from the start, instead of letting it drag out. Because these men still believed him to be a ‘werewolf.’ They had no clue that therianthropy (or feralism to the common man) had such a large variety, and Sherlock had absolutely no intention of letting them find out from him.
The grates shifted, signaling the door will soon move; that the wolf would soon take him down. He hated to even entertain the thought, but Sherlock Holmes now saw his imminent death at the jaws of a bloodlust driven feral-lupus.
The moment the gate lifted enough, the beast easily dove under it, snarling and raging as it launched at Sherlock, easily toppling the man to the ground. Heavy, hot breath and the gazing of teeth was at his throat, warning him to remain still. But no bite; no pain and no blood. Then, the muzzle pulled away, snarling at their captors while laying heavy over Sherlock’s body.
There was swearing; the electric prods reaching their long arms in and tried to persuade the beast into attacking; it failed. The feral continued it’s aggression to their captors, the faint tingling of jolts vibrating the air where the beast hovered just over Sherlock, pulling away enough to not force the downed ‘human’ to endure the tazering.
Such as it was, Sherlock refused to leave the cage; the men refused to come in and get him. They did manage to corral the two into the smaller half of the cage, door dropping down from above to keep them penned. They did manage to corral Sherlock and the feral enough to inject the beast, it’s contents causing the canine to slump heavy against him, pinning Sherlock once again to the floor with it’s bulk.
It smelt like blooming wolfsbane and the copper of blood- whatever had been injected- still clinging lightly to the injection site. It’s effect was immediate; the wolf breathing laboriously and dead weight on him. That was why Sherlock was here, rumors that those who’d stolen his research on wolfsbane all those years ago, where using the then-untested theories with marvelous results.
Oh, how he wanted to explore the mixture that his cagemate had been injected with! What else had been used - besides the most obvious effects, what else did the mix do, if anything? What else CAN the mixes do - what had they been able to find out, using his notes as a starting point?!
His mind raced with theries and experiments he'd start as soon as he could return home so many possibilities awaited his discovery, if only he was free of such close confines.
It was a few hours before Watson seemed to stir, grumbling and rumbling into Sherlock’s hip. The feral-lupus took a few minutes before he could look up at Sherlock, face expressive: radiating exhaustion, hurt, and concern. He took a great shuddering breath in through his nose, a sigh, and then turned to curl more comfortably at Sherlock’s side, burying his head in his toes, tail curling around to block his face.
Sherlock could deduce a great many things from the slumbering beast; could read the torture and beatings the animal had been submitted to in the last few months. Meager feedings, hostile enclosed spaces crammed close with other feral-lupus in the same state. When not being tested on, he was likely paraded about and beaten for the amusement of humans.
Therianthropes heal fast - and a rapid shift between forms could even save them from otherwise fatal injuries, if they had the stamina to pull it off. Scars were rare; the massive knotted tears in flesh barely hidden from sight by coarse patchy fur along the feral-lupus’ left shoulder about as startling as the fact Sherlock was sitting here unharmed. It looked like a gunshot wound, as interpreted by Picasso, and gentle prodding said the injury wasn’t just skin deep; the muscles and bones just as torn and disfigured.
It didn’t make sense, just like the fact this beast - a total stranger - had deemed it fit to NOT slaughter him (Though, maybe it was the fact he was a stranger that saved him).
This time, when their captors returned, the guns they carried held more weight - armed with bullets this time, not traqs or stunners. Likely silver too, from the smell, all the more dangerous for their feral prisoners. Even then, it was only when the muzzles turned on Sherlock, did the beast comply, letting them usher him out the small door into the next adjoining cage.
Watson was injected again - this dose smaller, leaving him weak and disoriented, but still able to move under his own effort. A heavy silver and steel chain collar was clipped around his neck, wire and mesh muzzle around his snout. He flinched from the silver but made no sound, letting them open the cage and lead him wearily away.
Sherlock stood warily, watching, noting with displeasure how... eager … the men where in dragging the beast away. How.. entertained they were with the idea of what awaited the beast.
They were leading Watson, the oddly kind feral-lupus, to his death. A likely bloody and violent one, with many, many human spectators.
These cages were meant for werewolves. Built to hold feral-Canidae indefinitely.
They were not built for Sherlock’s maybe tall, but narrow body, not his skill in lock picking. They were definitely not built for the powerful body he shifted gracefully into, human clothes shredding away without second thought. There would be cameras; something he’d ultimately have to inform his brother of at some point to make sure such footage, and any misfortunate enough to witness it, vanish. But it was something to deal with later.
Because the protective feral-lupus lupus with the unidentifiable scar - the first in a long time to show Sherlock Holmes any kindness- was about to be slaughtered for sport.
Sherlock Holmes had not foreseen this. He had never once thought he’d be spurred by such an illogical need to act in someone else’s favor.
But the massive black leopard kept down the hall all the same. Watson was already inside the center cage - a feral-lupus chanco pacing the divider separating them. Watson remained calm; drugged into a stupor. The moment the gate went up, the other feral-lupus would easily tear him apart, a crowd of twenty humans screaming and chanting for blood waiting and watching them.
Even with the silver, the fencing that was too much for a feral-lupus was no match for a feral-pardus fusca, and Sherlock shredded the metal netting to the raging feral, full with bloodlust, and waiting to be let loose on anything that moved. Watson remained safe inside the cage, and so did Sherlock, perched above until it was safe to slip in the vacated hole, as the feral-l. chanco went about slaughtering the humans unchecked.
Once it had moved off to chance the fleeing humans down, Sherlock easily freed the trapped feral-l. lupus and they fled into the night.
----
When shifted, most therianthropes will flee to the countryside. Human emotions are unstable in regards to them, and it was just safer that way. Sherlock Holmes was not most feral, instead his large gait was directed to London herself, and Watson followed (abit slower than Sherlock would have otherwise liked) without question. Sherlock supposed it was times like this where being pack driven was an advantage, and he lead them deep into London’s underground; where being a therianthropes was likely the least threatening thing lurking in the endless shadows.
He slowed to a casual trot as he searched out a corner of the deep that would be safe from the prying eyes of the outcastes; wolf struggling visibly now to keep pace. The horizons had begun to lighten before they hit the tunnels, sun rise would be not long in following. It was the second day of the new moon, in a very short time, they would both be forced back into human bodies. Without a proper hiding place, without clothes to hide in, it would be all too easy to find and capture them when it did happen.
He could feel the itch of moon rise in his fingers and spine, and knew they could look no further, darting down one last tunnel as the new moon broke the horizon, somewhere on the surface.
His own shift was smooth, leaving him shivering and blinking in the lowly light and damp air. He stood on long pale legs to regard the feral-lupus who’d thrown such a wrench into things, wanting to speak to the man properly.
Watson was not having such an easy time, crying softly in a massive pile of bones broken, but not yet remending. The coarse, wiry wolf hair had actually fallen out, leaving a bare skinned wolf sobbing out as bones struggled to reknit themselves in a human form. The snout had started to retract, hands mostly human, but the soft light brown hair growing on his head was also sprouting up on the back of still wolf ears. Sherlock knelt down next to him to get a better look; the short fur continued down his neck and back, growing out of the tail that refused to go.
Watson trembled, voice rough and still beast-like as it quietly voiced its agony to him, shuddering and pitching forward and Sherlock moved to catch him.
In the still trembling mess of bones, the wound was easily that of a long range gun, clear and distinctive. As his shoulders started to set into a more human arrangement, the wound became mishappened and wrong again.
Watson had been shot with a sniper rifle roughly six months ago - mid shift.
And judging from how calm, if not miserable, Watson was at the moment, this mutilation of the human body he was still trapped in - not man, but no longer beast - was a sadly normal state of affairs.
The sun had risen over England, but even with the push of the new moon, Sherlock found himself sitting next to the only therianthrope he'd ever met who remained unhuman.
______
In the early morning hours, Sherlock sent out word that he was in need of The One Who Questioned.
And by the time the working world was rising from their bed, two homeless youths joined the scattered lurkering masses in the dark of the tunnels.
It was Thomas who gave a soft giggle at him, when she spotted Sherlock in the tunnel’s shadow. Holding her smoke tight in her lips, she slid off her coat - a ratty, terrible smelly thing far too large for her tiny frame - and handed him the offending garment.
She only grinned at his discomfort, but he slid the coat on never the less. It was shorter than most coats he prefered, the bottom coming mid-thigh on him. “I hear you got a new cat lady, Holmesie,” the shorter woman chuckled, handing him her own smoke, “She’s a ~Doctor~ I hear too. Dead bodies and all. Aren’t you just the kitty who got the cream.”
There were very few people in the world Sherlock could tolerate this level of stupidity from, and fewer still he’d look at with any level of fondness. “Doctor Hooper. Molly. Not much for therianthropes, I’m afraid -”
“But all the dead bodies a mad scientist could ask for. How could I compete?”
“I’m hardly a mad scientist” he muses, handing the smoke back. There’s a moment of silence, and Thomas finishes the cigarette. “You haven’t been down here for the moon shift since you got that flat on Montague Street. You needing a roof again? I’m sure Judas won’t mind.”
“Hmm. Not at Montague anymore. Disagreement with landlord.” Thomas snorted, a smirk on her acne ridden features. Sherlock nodded to the tunnels where he could hear Thomas’ newest charge skirting nervously out of sight. “That would be Judas, then?”
“hmm.” but she offered nothing more - not that she needed too. Sherlock could tell from the young man’s pacing enough to know he was mid twenties, born into feralism, but had recently had a violent falling out with his previous group. He wasn’t shy so much as on edge, and he was dangerous to anyone that might corner him - including Thomas.
Normally, Sherlock wouldn’t care - but Thomas had taken him in when he returned to England after he’d been infected; hadn’t turned him away when he turned to drugs in the beginning; hadn’t shunned him, or judged him. And simply chuckled in amusement every time he tried to tear her apart with his observations.
“No roof this time,” he said finally, turning the conversation back to why he’d come groveling back to her in the first place, “Just a few blankets until moon fall.”
She cocked her head, the look she pinned him with likely a mirror of the look he’d used on others like her so often. Then, slowly, she nodded, striding down to where Judas was lurking. She spoke to him in soft tones, and he scurried off.
“You still gonna be around in the morning?” she asked as they waited for the man to return.
“Likely not. I hope to move someplace more secure this evening. The Tunnels have advantages, but there are still too many eyes. I’ll drop them off before I leave tonight - no worries. I know you have a short supply.”
“You need them, Holmesie, and they’re yours.” She looked at him intently, “You do know that, right? That you need something, you just have to ask. No strings.”
“Which is why I sought you out this morning. I can’t be known to be here.”
“Nor your lupus?”
He stiffened, “I won’t ask how. But yes. He more so, at this point.”
Judas returned then, arms piled with four ratty, but warm blankets. He stepped in sight long enough to hand off the stack off the Sherlock before darting back into the shadows.
Thomas shook her head. “His betrayal is past, Holmes. And he’s suffered for it already.”
Sherlock nodded once. “I’ll see you after moon fall. But I will be burning this coat. It’s horrible and needs to die."
"Only so long as you get me a new one."
______
Ms. Hudson was rummaging down stairs, the sounds of tea making working their way up the stairs to flat B of 221 Baker street.
He was still in boxes, had been busy with some cases both for NSY and his own investigations into some of the feral disappearances that seemed to be more frequent in the last four months. As he listened to his new landlady bustling about, Sherlock sprawled out on his only partially unburied couch, as the last day of Moon Shift started.
By moon down yesterday, it seemed the last of Watson’s injections had cleared his system, and he’d shifted flawlessly into beast with all the natural grace of a born therianthrope. The faux eurasian wolf had followed a shifted Sherlock though the tunnels and then streets of London without hesitation, showing only the first signs of unease when they’d made it to lurk next to the bins of Baker Street until kindly Ms Hudson had awoken to Sherlock’s soft growls and let them both inside.
Watson had hung back, slunk down next to the rubbish. But when the elderly lady didn’t bat an eye at the black Indian Leopard striding into her home, he eased forward, tentatively.
"Well, Hello. Come in Dear." she told him from the open doorway. Even then, it wasn’t until Sherlock looked back to see what was taking so long before the wolf darted inside.
At some point in the night, Watson had curled up in the closet of Sherlock’s bedroom - the small area a sad comfort after so much time in captivity, no doubt.
Sherlock had left a dressing gown folded down on the floor next to the sleeping beast, and a few hours after moon rise, a short blond man, appearance only hinted at yesterday, wandered unsteadily out into the living room in said gown.
He looked around the room, seeming confused at the mess and his current location.
“Ah, Watson. You’re awake.” Sherlock sat up, judging the man’s reactions, “The name’s Sherlock Holmes. Welcome to 221B Baker Street.”
The man made a low growl, before shaking his head with a cough. His voice was dry and soft, scratchy from disuse. He gestures to the mantle, his first words in six months.
“That’s a skull.”
