Preservation
Fandom: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure I like the implication that I'm quite that old! :P
Paring: It’s pretty ambiguous really... If you have slash goggles, you’ll probably see slash. If not, you won’t.
Rating: Maybe PG for mature concepts? If you think it needs a higher rating, tell me.
Categories: Angst! Lots and lots and lots of angst!
Warnings: I'm new to livejournal, so despite my best efforts I have no beta. You have been warned, and if you'd like to correct anything here, please, be my guest. Also, it’s better if you don’t look behind the cut, I promise there’s minimal violence and no sex-things! There is a major character death! Also, mental illness warning-ish.
Summary: He writes himself to the brink of madness until the writing is his only respite. Ooh, sounds dramatic! :)
Although I am not normally a particularly gifted writer, my grasp of imitation does not extend only to my numerous disguises. This, combined with my ability to pick out infinitesimal flaws in order to recognise a copy, give me the ability to carry off the perfect fraud when given time to continually review my handiwork, modifying a letter, or a story until it could fool even I.
This was a useful skill in the years before Baker Street, as my well documented habits made it difficult to procure any form of testimony about my merits as a lodger that would not hurt my case beyond repair and leave me homeless. This skill fell into disuse when I met my dear doctor, and we took residence at Baker Street together; he made an honest man of me with his presence, but that change did not linger in his absence, for now I write in another man’s hand in every spare moment, scribbling and revising for hours without rest until every story is perfect.
The Yarders still accept my help, and indeed, Lestrade seems to bring me more cases than ever (and I often wonder if this is deliberate; a form of pity), but they all think me mad. I can read it in their countenance; they tread around me as if the ground is littered with eggshells, or as if I might suddenly shatter before their eyes.
I wish they were right. I long to believe the fantasy I create, and share with the world. I wish with the sincerity that readers of The Strand doubt I possess, that just one of those dinners at Simpson’s that I write could be real; or that I could believe it was real.
With his pen, I wrote myself dead at Reichenbach Falls, so that it could end as it should have, with my doctor safe and able to return to his wife. I wrote that he grieved me a reasonable amount, because it would reflect badly upon him if he did not, but no more than was absolutely necessary, as he had given up too much for me already. Then Mary died, and I realised he would be alone, so I wrote myself alive again. I had him forgive me, because if it were all a cruel trick, and he knocked on the sitting room door tomorrow, I would never hold it against him.
Of course, I know that it is no trick. Moriarty had a knife. They fell over the edge together, but the good doctor had been fatally wounded moments before they fell. I watched him fall, and when they found his body a few days later, the knife was still buried in his heart.
The adventures of Sherlock Holmes went on after his fall, lonely but soothing, until Lestrade remarked that it would be a shame the case of the Norwood builder would go unwritten. That night I took his ink and began to copy out the story in my best imitation of his writing, inserting him in where I could. From then on, it was my obsession.
It was, for the most part, merely a way of creating his presence and preserving him, but this was not always the case. I had myself nearly kill him in The Devil’s Foot, because I was responsible for his death, and London ought to blame me, even if they didn’t know why they should. Then in the adventure of the three Garridebs I wounded him, so that I could ensure the man I was creating knew how deeply I cared, and so that London new he was worth my tears. I wrote his banter and his concern, because the absence of those pained me, and I began to plot out the ways I would bring him into the story while I solved the case. In this way, I brought him on my adventures with me, as I began to write him into my life without a pen, with some small part of me always dedicated to wondering how my dear Boswell would react.
I am so close to madness. He follows me now, and I cannot make myself stop creating him, even in the most innocuous and dull moments of my existence. I hear his echo everywhere, but I am not fooled. I created these delusions, but I cannot believe them, and so I curse my logician’s mind daily that its grasp of reality was too firm to let me slip into this madness. I take the interesting cases that come to me, and I am treaded politely, though warily by those who know me, and the ghost I constructed haunts me quietly so that I am perpetually caught between two worlds, only one of which is real. The cocaine blurs the lines between them, but I only feel whole and sane when I write in his hand, as then he is entirely confined to fiction
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