Archive of Our Own ^beta

The neon sign in the Whitechapel skyline blinked its usual glow of those four comforting letters as they spelled out KYAL while Sharara was driven home by the woman who somehow knew her name. Sharara felt an unusual familiarity throughout the trip as the driver kept going but Hasan couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Why was this particular woman so unnaturally familiar to her soul? Had she met her before? If she did meet that woman, which Hasan had no memory of as of 2023, how did they meet if the woman was, in the current year of 2023, a mere five-year-old girl?

The 2053 that Iris had come from and once called home now never existed, because Elias Mannix never took the place of Sir Julian Harker, and thus, Hayden Harker was never born from Polly Hillinghead-as-Lady Harker. The rest was a gap in history that filled itself. 

In 1941, DS Charles Whiteman and Esther Jankovsky took a train north to Inverness, Scotland and the world they lived in let them live the remainder of the Second World War out in relative peace, despite the antisemitism common for the time being a bothersome idea, but history was used to keeping track of bothersome ideas and the two of them were too tough to let it get them down. For the next four years after those blitz bombings, the (now legally adoptive) father and daughter duo decided to make a joint name for themselves by doing some odd jobs here and there, with the typical Jewish taste for entrepreneurship naturally becoming an influence on their business attempts, for fairly obvious reasons. By the time the war was over, they returned to London, helping out with postwar repairs and refugee relocations if and whenever possible. They watched the world change and history moved on beyond them.

Sergeant Whiteman would die of a drunken game of Russian roulette at the Silk by the time the Berlin Wall was beginning construction in 1961, whereas one DCI Jankovsky-Whiteman would witness that same structure be torn down to rubble and ruins in 1989.

Meanwhile, in 1890, Henry Ashe continued to find himself fascinated by DI Hillinghead. Perhaps viewing him as a muse of sorts, which isn’t too inaccurate, as DI Hillinghead was quite an attractive gentleman to take a liking to. Lady Hillinghead was a very fortunate woman to have his hand in wedlock. Miss Hillinghead was even more auspicious to have such a wonderful man to be her loving and compassionate father.

On the topic of Miss Hillinghead, there was word going around that she was playing gigs at pubs, preferably the Silk, and that she was getting paid quite handsomely for her little ditties and skits. By the time jazz music started to blair through the radios and jukeboxes, the aforementioned composer known as Polly Hillinghead quickly took her skill with the piano from out of the churches and pubs of London and into places like Sueol and Toronto and Los Angeles, carving out a powerful reputation for herself and a legacy that would become deeply remembered through her son, Hayden Hillinghead, who would follow his mother’s footsteps following the Great War and his grandfather’s footsteps once he ended up unable to afford the stocks he had saved up to give their old piano access to a repairman in 1933.

That same old Hillinghead heirloom piano would eventually find its way to a repairman through the remainder of the 20th Century and survive the early 21st, being given plenty of love and care in the meantime, reaching its newest owner by a greatly changed 2053. 

DC Jawad Hasan would play with the instrument as frequently as he could. His mother would watch him play old Polly Hillighead songs and Muslim religious hymns and whatever else came to mind. He wasn’t sure why his mother listened to Hillinghead’s music so frequently when he was young but there was always an unease in her eyes every time those records would be played, and despite not understanding why, Jawad could feel that something was off about the very piano that he currently owned.

As if the instrument was haunted somehow by a ghost he didn’t know how to speak to.

In that same year of 2053, DC Iris Maplewood was in her flat, having dinner with Alby and Marina and their baby girl named Polly Maplewood, when Lorna Dunnet and Prof. Gabriel Defoe came over with a quartet of guests. A boy from America with a female peregrine falcon on his arm. (Thankfully the boy was wearing a pair of falconer’s gloves.) An Asian girl with a strange green glow behind her eyes was standing next to him, and standing next to her was an eerily familiar young man holding a swan-necked hexagonal-styled Victorian-era cane in his right hand.

“How is this happening?” Constable Maplewood questioned as she walked towards the blond lad with the cane.

“Detective Constable Iris Maplewood. My friends and I haven’t disrupted anything important, have we?” The blond lad said as he gestured to himself and his companions.

“We’re in the middle of dinner and what is going on? How do you know my name?”

“You’re the creator of the Maplewood Paradox, and Timekeeper’s come here and now to recruit you to-”

“To join your doomsday cult, Commander Mannix? I’ve already changed the past and broke the bloody incest bomb loop you made by Philip J. Frying yourself into existence, so you shouldn’t be here inside my flat disrupting me and my family in the middle of supper!”

“What? No! Are you insane, Maplewood?! That’s disgusting! What’s wrong with you?! And what’re you calling me commander for in this timeline? That makes no sense. I mean, granted, from your perspective, I shouldn't be surprised by that, but this whole Deutch Particle thing is confusing. Anyways, before you interrupted me, I am trying to say that the Timekeeper, Marcy, Miss Peregrine and I came to Whitechapel, London, 14th of July 2053, to recruit you into our fold. Or, as you might call it, my doomsday cult. But we’re not making a bomb this time. Not this time. We’re creating something new, and we need your help to forge it.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Let’s just say that the next time you see me do not fear the falcon and know you are loved.”

2053

2023

1003 AFC

DS Shahara Hasan finds herself wondering her way towards Longhavest Lane after the England’s Glory rally just a few hours earlier. She’s not sure as to why she’s there, but a weird sense of deja vu tells her that she’s supposed to find something important there, again and again without beginning or end. Then she sees not the thirty-years-later corpse of Prof. Gabriel Defoe, but instead, a naked girl of 19 or 20 screaming for help in Japanese huddling in the alcove underneath the lightbulb installed in its ceiling.

“What in the Milky Way Galaxy?” Hasan mutters in surprise by seeing the girl.

“Nani? Watashi - Where sekai am uchi? Is the torture over? Is Loss-Sama done with us now?” The girl asks as her maroon eyes stare back into Hasan’s toffee brown. The girl was covered in claw marks, bite marks, signs of being splashed by something highly corrosive, possibly some sort of acid, and a pair of tattoos on the inner sides of both wrists. She was clearly gaining several infections and looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks at the very least. What happened to this woman?

“Attention all units within the Whitechapel area, this is Echo 5-1-9-1-2, I am in Longharvest Lane with an unidentified Human AFAB of Eurasian descent and is in critical need of immediate medical attention ASAP! I repeat, this is Sergeant Hasan in Longharvest Lane with a Human AFAB in need of immediate medical attention!”

1941

920 AFC

“Call for you, Charlie.” Kathleen announced and gave the telephone over to DS Whiteman.

“Hello?”

“Sargent Whiteman, you no longer need to worry yourself about your old gambling debts anymore, and don’t panic when Miss Jankovsky comes into the station. The Timekeeper and I have soothed those financial problems for you, so no more worries, darling dear. Just take a pop over to Longharvest Lane and perform a pick-up on the Finnish woman in the alcove at precisely 22:15 and take her home. We’re already getting your car ready for you. Bring a raincoat and an umbrella. Do not fear the falcon and know you are loved, Sergeant Whiteman.”

Something about that voice sounded strangely familiar to him but he couldn’t pinpoint as to why.

1890

869 AFC

As DI Hillinghead was escorted throughout Whitechapel with the rest of his co-workers into Longharvest Lane, he took notice of the alcove as the gaslight seemed to be dimmer than it should’ve been but that was far from his only focus, although the green shade of the lantern's fire was quite odd. Regarding the subject who was in Longharvest Lane, he was a Human male with thoroughly burnt skin and missing his hand, feet and teeth, without clothing. His brown eyes were still moving, bleeding with each glance. He was trying to scream, but something was blocking him from speaking.

“Good God! What in the damn Hell happened to this man?!” Alfred yelled out in shock upon seeing the Longharvest Man, as Mr. Ashe was now calling him, since he didn’t know his actual name.

“Lord Loss…He did this to us…” The Longharvest Man rasped out in his ruined whispering voice.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“Hank… Sparrow… What is yours?”

“Detective Inspector Alfred Hillinghead.”

“Nice to… meet you, Inspector… Please, help us…”

“We will. I promise you, Mr. Sparrow, we will find the madman who did this to you.”

“No… Not safe to fight him… God won’t answer your prayers… God doesn’t give mercy anymore... He never loved us… Not since Eve and Lucifer… Inspector, please make this pain finally stop…”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Sparrow. A medical team will be here soon.”

“Not what I meant, Inspector. Do you have a weapon on you?”