Fic: Bel Canto - 2/16 (BBC Sherlock)

[bendingsignpost]

Title: Bel Canto
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 6.9k out of 123.5ishk
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, eventual

Comments

[rachelindeed]

Hello :) I've been reading along and enjoying each new chapter greatly, but I need to play catch up with my commenting. I have a newborn baby, actually, and he keeps me on something of a wacky nighttime schedule. It might make you smile to know that this story has been in my mind and so I've been humming "Angel of Music" to him as a lullaby (I don't remember the words, but that tune never dies). So, no matter how fraught this story eventually gets, it will still have lulled a baby to sleep. #tangentialeffectsoffanfiction

It was fun coming back to this chapter to review it, because it's easier to see what you're building in retrospect.

I’m sick to death of idiots wondering if this strange feeling is love.

Oh, Sherlock. Famous last words, my friend.

“You’ve never been homesick?” / “Never. I’m not sentimental towards locations.”

And having just read Mrs. Hudson's charming stories of Sherlock's childhood hiding out in all the nooks and crannies of this opera house in Chapter 6, I can now see the sheer size of this lie.

“I don’t see how separation from a place or person could result in comparable mental anguish.”

Ah, and here's the Sword of Damocles hanging over this story. Noted.

Heh. I'd forgotten just how rude Sherlock is in these early chapters. John gets a kick out of this with both Sherlock's incarnations, charmingly. And you can just see the way John's own sharpness surprises Sherlock in the Vernet persona; he's not used to operating at this level of manners, I don't think, and is clearly caught by John's willingness to do things like walk out on him when he's being a berk. It reminds me a bit of an exchange in one of the closing chapters of Pride and Prejudice, oddly enough, wherein Elizabeth asks Darcy if he first began to like her because she was unconcernedly rude to him, and although he hems and haws a bit, the answer is basically yes.

I like the way you write Molly. You capture her scattered manner and the competence beneath it.

I also like the conversation here about Mary, and especially that you used the lighthouse metaphor from "The Man With the Twisted Lip" (That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house.) That image of her character has always stayed with me, actually; it evokes a lot with very few words.

And I admire the way you establish Sherlock's two voices as Vernet and Mr. Holmes, distinct in manners of speech and body language, all recognizably his but neatly divided. All disguise is a self-portrait, as Irene once said :)

Thanks again for writing, this is a lovely story and already rewarding rereading.