Fic: A Crack In Time PART 7/8
Title: A Crack In Time
Fandom: BBC Sherlock, The Time Traveller's Wife
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Genre(s): Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy
Warnings: None
Length: 13,939 total words
Summary: Sherlock Holmes has never been the subject of bullies, and has a rather happy childhood. But he's also alone. And while he doesn't mind being alone, he would like a friend.
But one day a man literally pops into his garden.
Notes: Original prompt http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/19743.html?thread=119001119#t119001119
17th April 2012. (John is 40 and 40, Sherlock is 36.)
The day had been noticeably quiet. John had vanished in the middle of making breakfast for himself at 9am. They were both supposed to have been busy today - Sherlock at Barts to inspect the victim’s DNA in their latest case since the Scotland Yard forensics team had seemed to be more idiotic than usual lately, and John to work. Sherlock had had to phone in sick for him again. He hadn’t wanted to, but Mrs Hudson had berated him about not looking out for his friend when he needed him the most. He’d mostly done it to get her off of his back.
He shouldn’t really be surprised, John had been there for just over a month now, thinks Sherlock as he lounged on his chair, plucking at his violin. He’d finished the analysis of the blood and solved the case (it was a boring, simple domestic murder, as they usually are at this time of the year. No good murderers seem to want to go out in the rainy season, heaven forbid). Lestrade had been rather pleased and even offered to go to Sherlock to question him about the case and get his statement rather than the other way around. So here it is that Sherlock is waiting for the Detective Inspector to come around so he can give the necessary details and then shove him unceremoniously out of the door and wait until John gets back.
It all comes back to him time traveling blogger in the end.
At the sound of a car stopping outside on the street, Sherlock sighs and plucks the resin from the table. By the time Lestrade has jogged up the stairs, Sherlock has started polishing his bow, looking bored and presumptuous.
“I’ll make this quick then, shall I?” asks Lestrade wryly.
Sherlock opens his mouth to reply, a cutting remark on the tip of his tongue, when a tremendous crash echoes on the landing. Sherlock leaps up out of his chair and out of the flat door, Lestrade at his heels. He stops so suddenly that the DI runs into him, making them both stumble.
It’s John. His right forearm is stained red, possibly a venous cut judging by the quantity and colour. Behind the blood, Sherlock can see the slight rip in the skin, but it’s straight and clean cut, so not a knife, a bullet perhaps. Something with enough force to get the job done neatly and quickly. The way John’s leg shakes and can’t seem to hold his weight reinforces the idea of a bullet, the sense of an army flashback. Not a rubber bullet though, those are hard to draw blood with, they’re designed to stun or badly bruise, so proper metal bullets. So it’s someone who has access to lethal bullets, to a gun; someone with a steady hand but purposefully missed; someone who aimed from behind, so they have no sense of morality, only the thought of work. Already, Sherlock has an idea of what might’ve happened to John, but he grasps John’s shoulders and double checks, because you can’t draw a conclusion without sufficient facts, and the injuries are just clues, they don’t tell the story properly.
“John?” says Sherlock, dropping to the tips of his feet. “John, what happened?”
As though waking from a nightmare, John looks up with wild eyes. He hauls in a gasp of breath and the words come tumbling out.
“Moriarty. Moriarty has me, well, he has John. Your John, present John. I appeared in front of him and he shot at me and I was in a chair and,” John sucks in another breath, only this time it comes out as a horrified sob. “Oh god, Sherlock, help me, please, he’s electrocuting me, fucking help!”
Sherlock’s heart is pounding frantically against his ribs. For the first time ever, he’s unsure of what to do. He doesn’t know whether to stay and look after this John, who barely looks a day older than his present John, or whether to start searching for the one in serious trouble - his John.
“He’s ruined the timeline,” John says suddenly, “this never happened to me, I’m from next month, but I was never tortured by Moriarty, I swear it.”
John suddenly reaches up, grasps Sherlock by the front of his coat and pulls him with surprising strength.
“Do you realise what this means?” says John, looking wild once more. “He’s ruined the timeline. He’s done something that was never meant to happen, Sherlock! He could be wrecking havoc on the world as we speak. Time isn’t supposed to work like that; you can’t change what’s already happened, Sherlock. Jesus Christ, stop looking so vacant, the world could be fucking ending right now, and I-“
John cuts off suddenly and collapses, boneless in Sherlock’s arms.
“Sorry,” says Lestrade, as he works off his own coat and starts to wrap it around John. “He was getting hysterical.”
“So you knock him out?!” growls Sherlock. He bats Lestrade’s hands away and starts to work the buttons on the coat himself.
Lestrade looks uncomfortable. He looks down and starts to pull his shirt off. “He was going into shock. I didn’t want him to suffer any more.”
With that, he tears his shirt into strips with difficulty and hands them to Sherlock, who gets the message and starts forming a makeshift bandage around the cut on John’s forearm.
“Call 999,” mutters Sherlock. He doesn’t really like sending John to the hospital, because he could vanish and not only would it mess up his vitals and medication, but it could send him into fame and cause uproar over the disappearing man. But with Sherlock’s mind made up about going to rescue John and the only other person in the flat being elderly Mrs Hudson, he knows that a wound like this could go from bad to worse without proper medical assistance.
Lestrade dials the numbers on his phone, asks for an ambulance and explains the emergency and address. After the call, he shakes it at Sherlock. “Don’t think for one second that you’re going without me, Holmes.”
“And get your least annoying officers,” adds Sherlock as an afterthought, blatantly ignoring the DI.
Lestrade splutters. “Sherlock, you realise I can’t get the force on this with me. This isn’t my division. This isn’t homicide. But even if it were, they won’t go on a case unless there’s circumstantial proof a person is missing.”
“Well, report John missing then.”
“Missing persons have to be missing for at least 12 hours.”
Sherlock sighs and grinds his teeth. “Lie to them. Tell them he’s been missing for 14 hours. Mrs Hudson will report him.”
“I can’t lie to them! They’d need proof!” replies Lestrade, aghast. “Any anyway, they’d be too busy searching this flat for clues than searching London for Moriarty’s base.”
“Well tell them the truth and hurry up! We don’t have time to lose, Detective Inspector!” shouts Sherlock angrily.
Lestrade rubs the bridge of his nose. “Sherlock, Scotland Yard would report me to the asylum if I said that John was a time traveller and he travelled back to us to say that his past self was being tortured.”
“For god’s sake. Whether we have the force behind us or not, John needs our help now. If you’re too worried about appearances, then I would prefer not to have your help. I can solve this on my own,” snaps Sherlock. He props John up against the wall and calls for Mrs Hudson, before stomping down the stairs.
Lestrade sways uneasily on his feet, before making a decision and leaving John on the floor. He passes Mrs Hudson on the stairs, and gestures upwards.
“He’s up there. An ambulance is coming soon, but keep pressure on the wound, okay? Say he was mugged.”
Then he runs past her and out of the door to find and follow Sherlock.
*
17th April 2012. (John is 40 and 40, Sherlock is 36.)
“How do you do it, pet? How do you DO IT?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
“Is that so?”
“If you press that button again, then you’ll never know. I’ll vanish.”
“Let’s see what happens. I’ve always liked to live life on the edge.”
John screams. Electricity runs through him and licks burns onto his skin. But he doesn’t vanish.
“See, pet? You need to trust ol’ Jim. You won’t vanish. You won’t…time travel.” Moriarty creeps closer. “Oh, how I’d love to cut you open and prod around in there, search for that gene that makes you different. Special, even. But I won’t. I’m very merciful. As you’ve seen! I could’ve got Seb up there to shoot the other you straight in the head, BANG! But no, I was kind. I let him go. I made him go. You won’t have help come to you, not even Sherlock Holmes, until you tell me HOW YOU DO IT!”
The button is pushed and John screams hoarsely. He can feel himself going, just a little more torture to endure. Oh god, he hates himself. The one time he wants to vanish and he can’t!
The agony stops. His fingers tingle and turn solid again. John moans in anguish.
“I’m tired of this charade now; I have things to do, people to see. I’ll leave you here and see if anyone finds you in time. Or if you can put that admirable talent to use,” Moriarty says, a petulant look on his face. He grins when he sees John’s expression. “OH, surprised that I’m leaving? Well, I’m not leaving for long you know. Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only one holding my interest now. You’re not just a pawn anymore, Johnny boy. We have our own little game now. And you can’t escape it, that I do swear.”
Moriarty grabs John’s hair and pulls. He snarls in his ear.
“Know this, wherever you are, wherever you hide, I will find you. There is not a crevice in this world where I haven’t eyes. I will find you and I will extract the information I want. Mark my words.”
He brightens again. “Ciao!”
With one last manic grin, Moriarty takes John’s head and slams it into the concrete wall. John slumps immediately.
When Sherlock and Lestrade storm the empty building not ten minutes later, John is still unconscious and Moriarty long gone.
*
18th April 2012. (John is 40, Sherlock is 36.)
Later, in the private room Mycroft snagged them at the hospital, Sherlock awkwardly twines his fingers around John’s and holds his hand fast.
“What do you remember, John?”
“Nothing.”
*
29th April 2012. (John is 40, Sherlock is 36.)
It is a damp day. Rain trickles down the window, the air is muggy and John’s bed is still damp from nightmare sweat.
Sherlock hasn’t told him what happened on that night. He knows that John will figure it out eventually. Say, in a month, when he will travel back in time and actually witnesses it. He also knows that John was right to panic that night; time shouldn’t be altered. It has a fixed path and no matter how much people tell themselves about free will, destiny and fate, the conclusion is that it is none of those. Destiny and fate may have a hand perhaps, and free will does exist, but time is a tape recorder - a steady line of events. Perhaps people can tamper with it, but that’d cause untold damage. That’s why John’s condition is so dangerous. It’s as if he’s rewinding the tape, but sometimes he rewinds too far and it’s back in the fuzzy static, where he has no idea what’s happening or what to do about it, because he certainly can’t go forward intentionally. So he doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t want to do anything unless it’d ruin timelined events, but then perhaps he was meant to do those things, that he can’t help but do those things, because his timeline is written in that way. So John is rather a big elastic ball of time, pinging back and forth all the time.
Time.
Sherlock doesn’t bother with the logistics of time. You could go on forever making sense of it. And while Sherlock Holmes is a very curious man, he’s more for clues and conclusions.
This is how he observes that his friend has woken from a nightmare. It is two in the morning and as John trudges down the stairs sleepily, Sherlock can see the damp patches on his back and the nape of his neck, dotting his forehead and dragging his mouth down.
“Tea?” asks Sherlock. John jumps as if he hadn’t even recognised Sherlock’s presence. It’s a common occurrence these days. For although John may not remember the event, his body does and it does not respond well now to sudden actions.
“That would be lovely, thanks,” replies John. He slumps down into his chair and closes his eyes, looking as if he would be perfectly happy to sit there forever.
Sherlock stands up from his desk and goes to make tea for them both. It’s a courtesy he only extends to John, and perhaps sometimes Mrs Hudson when she’s feeling particularly down. He’s not as good at making tea as John is, although he should be seeing as Sherlock’s the scientific man, but John has had years of experience and he is a proper, quintessential English gentleman. He has a certain knack for it.
“I had another nightmare,” says John.
As if Sherlock didn’t already know. He hums anyway.
“I died,” says John.
Sherlock goes stiff. Getting shot in Afghanistan and Sherlock himself dying are common nightmares of John’s, but he’s never heard of this one before.
“Sherlock,” starts John. He breaks off, but seems to gather himself together and tries again. “Sherlock, have you ever seen me older than I am now?”
Sherlock is silent. Then:
“I have never seen you past forty, John. “
“Ah,” says John. “Ah, okay.”
The kettle screeches.
Fandom: BBC Sherlock, The Time Traveller's Wife
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Genre(s): Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy
Warnings: None
Length: 13,939 total words
Summary: Sherlock Holmes has never been the subject of bullies, and has a rather happy childhood. But he's also alone. And while he doesn't mind being alone, he would like a friend.
But one day a man literally pops into his garden.
Notes: Original prompt http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/19743.html?thread=119001119#t119001119
17th April 2012. (John is 40 and 40, Sherlock is 36.)
The day had been noticeably quiet. John had vanished in the middle of making breakfast for himself at 9am. They were both supposed to have been busy today - Sherlock at Barts to inspect the victim’s DNA in their latest case since the Scotland Yard forensics team had seemed to be more idiotic than usual lately, and John to work. Sherlock had had to phone in sick for him again. He hadn’t wanted to, but Mrs Hudson had berated him about not looking out for his friend when he needed him the most. He’d mostly done it to get her off of his back.
He shouldn’t really be surprised, John had been there for just over a month now, thinks Sherlock as he lounged on his chair, plucking at his violin. He’d finished the analysis of the blood and solved the case (it was a boring, simple domestic murder, as they usually are at this time of the year. No good murderers seem to want to go out in the rainy season, heaven forbid). Lestrade had been rather pleased and even offered to go to Sherlock to question him about the case and get his statement rather than the other way around. So here it is that Sherlock is waiting for the Detective Inspector to come around so he can give the necessary details and then shove him unceremoniously out of the door and wait until John gets back.
It all comes back to him time traveling blogger in the end.
At the sound of a car stopping outside on the street, Sherlock sighs and plucks the resin from the table. By the time Lestrade has jogged up the stairs, Sherlock has started polishing his bow, looking bored and presumptuous.
“I’ll make this quick then, shall I?” asks Lestrade wryly.
Sherlock opens his mouth to reply, a cutting remark on the tip of his tongue, when a tremendous crash echoes on the landing. Sherlock leaps up out of his chair and out of the flat door, Lestrade at his heels. He stops so suddenly that the DI runs into him, making them both stumble.
It’s John. His right forearm is stained red, possibly a venous cut judging by the quantity and colour. Behind the blood, Sherlock can see the slight rip in the skin, but it’s straight and clean cut, so not a knife, a bullet perhaps. Something with enough force to get the job done neatly and quickly. The way John’s leg shakes and can’t seem to hold his weight reinforces the idea of a bullet, the sense of an army flashback. Not a rubber bullet though, those are hard to draw blood with, they’re designed to stun or badly bruise, so proper metal bullets. So it’s someone who has access to lethal bullets, to a gun; someone with a steady hand but purposefully missed; someone who aimed from behind, so they have no sense of morality, only the thought of work. Already, Sherlock has an idea of what might’ve happened to John, but he grasps John’s shoulders and double checks, because you can’t draw a conclusion without sufficient facts, and the injuries are just clues, they don’t tell the story properly.
“John?” says Sherlock, dropping to the tips of his feet. “John, what happened?”
As though waking from a nightmare, John looks up with wild eyes. He hauls in a gasp of breath and the words come tumbling out.
“Moriarty. Moriarty has me, well, he has John. Your John, present John. I appeared in front of him and he shot at me and I was in a chair and,” John sucks in another breath, only this time it comes out as a horrified sob. “Oh god, Sherlock, help me, please, he’s electrocuting me, fucking help!”
Sherlock’s heart is pounding frantically against his ribs. For the first time ever, he’s unsure of what to do. He doesn’t know whether to stay and look after this John, who barely looks a day older than his present John, or whether to start searching for the one in serious trouble - his John.
“He’s ruined the timeline,” John says suddenly, “this never happened to me, I’m from next month, but I was never tortured by Moriarty, I swear it.”
John suddenly reaches up, grasps Sherlock by the front of his coat and pulls him with surprising strength.
“Do you realise what this means?” says John, looking wild once more. “He’s ruined the timeline. He’s done something that was never meant to happen, Sherlock! He could be wrecking havoc on the world as we speak. Time isn’t supposed to work like that; you can’t change what’s already happened, Sherlock. Jesus Christ, stop looking so vacant, the world could be fucking ending right now, and I-“
John cuts off suddenly and collapses, boneless in Sherlock’s arms.
“Sorry,” says Lestrade, as he works off his own coat and starts to wrap it around John. “He was getting hysterical.”
“So you knock him out?!” growls Sherlock. He bats Lestrade’s hands away and starts to work the buttons on the coat himself.
Lestrade looks uncomfortable. He looks down and starts to pull his shirt off. “He was going into shock. I didn’t want him to suffer any more.”
With that, he tears his shirt into strips with difficulty and hands them to Sherlock, who gets the message and starts forming a makeshift bandage around the cut on John’s forearm.
“Call 999,” mutters Sherlock. He doesn’t really like sending John to the hospital, because he could vanish and not only would it mess up his vitals and medication, but it could send him into fame and cause uproar over the disappearing man. But with Sherlock’s mind made up about going to rescue John and the only other person in the flat being elderly Mrs Hudson, he knows that a wound like this could go from bad to worse without proper medical assistance.
Lestrade dials the numbers on his phone, asks for an ambulance and explains the emergency and address. After the call, he shakes it at Sherlock. “Don’t think for one second that you’re going without me, Holmes.”
“And get your least annoying officers,” adds Sherlock as an afterthought, blatantly ignoring the DI.
Lestrade splutters. “Sherlock, you realise I can’t get the force on this with me. This isn’t my division. This isn’t homicide. But even if it were, they won’t go on a case unless there’s circumstantial proof a person is missing.”
“Well, report John missing then.”
“Missing persons have to be missing for at least 12 hours.”
Sherlock sighs and grinds his teeth. “Lie to them. Tell them he’s been missing for 14 hours. Mrs Hudson will report him.”
“I can’t lie to them! They’d need proof!” replies Lestrade, aghast. “Any anyway, they’d be too busy searching this flat for clues than searching London for Moriarty’s base.”
“Well tell them the truth and hurry up! We don’t have time to lose, Detective Inspector!” shouts Sherlock angrily.
Lestrade rubs the bridge of his nose. “Sherlock, Scotland Yard would report me to the asylum if I said that John was a time traveller and he travelled back to us to say that his past self was being tortured.”
“For god’s sake. Whether we have the force behind us or not, John needs our help now. If you’re too worried about appearances, then I would prefer not to have your help. I can solve this on my own,” snaps Sherlock. He props John up against the wall and calls for Mrs Hudson, before stomping down the stairs.
Lestrade sways uneasily on his feet, before making a decision and leaving John on the floor. He passes Mrs Hudson on the stairs, and gestures upwards.
“He’s up there. An ambulance is coming soon, but keep pressure on the wound, okay? Say he was mugged.”
Then he runs past her and out of the door to find and follow Sherlock.
*
17th April 2012. (John is 40 and 40, Sherlock is 36.)
“How do you do it, pet? How do you DO IT?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
“Is that so?”
“If you press that button again, then you’ll never know. I’ll vanish.”
“Let’s see what happens. I’ve always liked to live life on the edge.”
John screams. Electricity runs through him and licks burns onto his skin. But he doesn’t vanish.
“See, pet? You need to trust ol’ Jim. You won’t vanish. You won’t…time travel.” Moriarty creeps closer. “Oh, how I’d love to cut you open and prod around in there, search for that gene that makes you different. Special, even. But I won’t. I’m very merciful. As you’ve seen! I could’ve got Seb up there to shoot the other you straight in the head, BANG! But no, I was kind. I let him go. I made him go. You won’t have help come to you, not even Sherlock Holmes, until you tell me HOW YOU DO IT!”
The button is pushed and John screams hoarsely. He can feel himself going, just a little more torture to endure. Oh god, he hates himself. The one time he wants to vanish and he can’t!
The agony stops. His fingers tingle and turn solid again. John moans in anguish.
“I’m tired of this charade now; I have things to do, people to see. I’ll leave you here and see if anyone finds you in time. Or if you can put that admirable talent to use,” Moriarty says, a petulant look on his face. He grins when he sees John’s expression. “OH, surprised that I’m leaving? Well, I’m not leaving for long you know. Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only one holding my interest now. You’re not just a pawn anymore, Johnny boy. We have our own little game now. And you can’t escape it, that I do swear.”
Moriarty grabs John’s hair and pulls. He snarls in his ear.
“Know this, wherever you are, wherever you hide, I will find you. There is not a crevice in this world where I haven’t eyes. I will find you and I will extract the information I want. Mark my words.”
He brightens again. “Ciao!”
With one last manic grin, Moriarty takes John’s head and slams it into the concrete wall. John slumps immediately.
When Sherlock and Lestrade storm the empty building not ten minutes later, John is still unconscious and Moriarty long gone.
*
18th April 2012. (John is 40, Sherlock is 36.)
Later, in the private room Mycroft snagged them at the hospital, Sherlock awkwardly twines his fingers around John’s and holds his hand fast.
“What do you remember, John?”
“Nothing.”
*
29th April 2012. (John is 40, Sherlock is 36.)
It is a damp day. Rain trickles down the window, the air is muggy and John’s bed is still damp from nightmare sweat.
Sherlock hasn’t told him what happened on that night. He knows that John will figure it out eventually. Say, in a month, when he will travel back in time and actually witnesses it. He also knows that John was right to panic that night; time shouldn’t be altered. It has a fixed path and no matter how much people tell themselves about free will, destiny and fate, the conclusion is that it is none of those. Destiny and fate may have a hand perhaps, and free will does exist, but time is a tape recorder - a steady line of events. Perhaps people can tamper with it, but that’d cause untold damage. That’s why John’s condition is so dangerous. It’s as if he’s rewinding the tape, but sometimes he rewinds too far and it’s back in the fuzzy static, where he has no idea what’s happening or what to do about it, because he certainly can’t go forward intentionally. So he doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t want to do anything unless it’d ruin timelined events, but then perhaps he was meant to do those things, that he can’t help but do those things, because his timeline is written in that way. So John is rather a big elastic ball of time, pinging back and forth all the time.
Time.
Sherlock doesn’t bother with the logistics of time. You could go on forever making sense of it. And while Sherlock Holmes is a very curious man, he’s more for clues and conclusions.
This is how he observes that his friend has woken from a nightmare. It is two in the morning and as John trudges down the stairs sleepily, Sherlock can see the damp patches on his back and the nape of his neck, dotting his forehead and dragging his mouth down.
“Tea?” asks Sherlock. John jumps as if he hadn’t even recognised Sherlock’s presence. It’s a common occurrence these days. For although John may not remember the event, his body does and it does not respond well now to sudden actions.
“That would be lovely, thanks,” replies John. He slumps down into his chair and closes his eyes, looking as if he would be perfectly happy to sit there forever.
Sherlock stands up from his desk and goes to make tea for them both. It’s a courtesy he only extends to John, and perhaps sometimes Mrs Hudson when she’s feeling particularly down. He’s not as good at making tea as John is, although he should be seeing as Sherlock’s the scientific man, but John has had years of experience and he is a proper, quintessential English gentleman. He has a certain knack for it.
“I had another nightmare,” says John.
As if Sherlock didn’t already know. He hums anyway.
“I died,” says John.
Sherlock goes stiff. Getting shot in Afghanistan and Sherlock himself dying are common nightmares of John’s, but he’s never heard of this one before.
“Sherlock,” starts John. He breaks off, but seems to gather himself together and tries again. “Sherlock, have you ever seen me older than I am now?”
Sherlock is silent. Then:
“I have never seen you past forty, John. “
“Ah,” says John. “Ah, okay.”
The kettle screeches.