"Baker Street 3: A Journey in a Closed Carriage"
Another one of these. It's begining to look like an actual
story, so I won't fight it!
Title: "Baker Street 3: A Journey in a Closed Carriage."
Author: Gaedhal
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Dr. John H. Watson; Gladstone.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Notes/Warnings: "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) Universe. Set before the Blackwood case.
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit. Enjoy.
Summary: Holmes and Watson travel by carriage to Chichester.
By Gaedhal
Previous segments here:
1. "A Walk to Regent's Park"
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/367955.html
2. A Meeting in Piccadilly
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/368712.html
If we hadn't brought the dog, then we could have taken the train from Victoria Station and arrived in Chichester well before the morning was done.
Gladstone would have been fine staying with Mrs. Hudson. He's stayed with Mrs. Hudson dozens of times. He's perfectly happy with Mrs. Hudson. She feeds him leftover shepherd's pie and makes a fuss over him.
She also refrains from killing him. In that, she is a decided improvement over my esteemed friend with whom I share rooms in 221b Baker Street, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
"The dog wants air, Watson," Holmes reasoned as he paced the sitting room in his ragged dressing gown. "He wants stimulation. The refreshment of a change in scenery. He needs to arouse his canine instincts anew. Pursue rabbits and stalk other vermin. Water new and exotic flora. Dig his claws deep into the soil of Sussex."
"He eats, sleeps, and farts," I stated. "That is what he wants, that is what he needs, that is what he does. No more and no less."
"You give the poor beast no credit, Watson," Holmes yawned. "Pack his valise -- and yours! We leave early in the morning and will be there in time for supper, unless the roads are bad." He frowned and glanced out the window. Holmes' practical and theoretical knowledge is extensive, but weather prognostication is not one of the areas of his expertise. "It's fair today, so I assume it will be fair tomorrow. Bright and sunny as any April day could be! Perfect for traveling."
We departed from Baker Street the next morning in a driving rainstorm and bounced and bumped the entire way, cold and soggy in a closed carriage that leaked in at least two places, one of which was directly above my head.
"Think of how convenient this is, my boy," said Holmes, lighting his pipe. "We are lucky to have avoided the train. Mycroft rarely uses his carriage and he's never at the house, so we will have a splendid time in the country, with few intrusions and at no expense whatsoever."
"Except the cost of pneumonia," I fumed. "My deuced leg was already acting up. Soon my shoulder will begin to ache in this cursed damp!"
"Your leg only wants exercise," said Holmes, dismissively. "There are some fine walks in West Sussex. Beautiful country, that. Historic."
Confound the man! I knew for a fact that Holmes hated the country and became restless if he was separated from London for more than a few hours, that he detested walking, unless he was in pursuit of some miscreant, and that history had little significance to him if it did not shed light on a case. Yet he had set his mind on this trip to his brother Mycroft's estate in West Sussex and he would not be denied.
I admit that I had no desire to remain in London. I, too, wished to make an escape, but for my own reasons -- reasons I did not share with my companion. But there were more congenial places than a remote and unfamiliar country house. And certainly more congenial methods of traveling there.
I am a smoker myself, although I am attempting to quit the filthy practice, as I believe a physician should set an example of healthful habits to his patients. But Holmes is a chronic and compulsive puffer. And his pipe tobacco, a rough shag which is tolerable in an airy sitting room with a high ceiling, was not so agreeable in a closed carriage.
I sneezed. And then sneezed again.
Then Gladstone made a noise that is much like a sneeze, but which signaled a function considerably more unpleasant to other parties sharing his space.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed, taking out my handkerchief and covering my nose. "He's been doing that all morning! What in the name of heaven did you feed him, Holmes?"
Holmes shrugged. "The leavings of my own breakfast. A few kippers. A half of a blood pudding. The remains of a bowl of oatmeal. While you lay abed, slumbering the day away as usual, I partook of a hearty meal provided by the valuable Mrs. Hudson, fortifying myself for the rigours of travel."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You never take more than coffee and a crust of toast! You fed the dog all that food on purpose, just to plague me! You knew the effect it would have upon his digestive tract!"
"Balderdash!" he snorted, looking out the window and puffing on his pipe. "I did no such thing."
Holmes truly is the most insufferable creature! His methods are as transparent as his motives are mystifying.
That is, until he makes them clear.
"I hope you slept well last night," he said, still perusing the countryside. "I know your rest is often compromised."
"I slept..." I paused. The reason I had difficulty rising in the morning was that I often could not get to sleep, or else woke often in the night from unremembered but troubling dreams, as well he knew. "My sleeping habits are of no consequence, Holmes."
"Since you returned home quite late the other night," Holmes remarked, turning his gaze in my direction. "Or should I say... morning?"
There it was.
It irked him that I had been out. But it irked him more that I would say nothing about that evening, where I had been or what I had done. But I had vowed to myself that I would never relate what had passed then to any man. Or woman. But especially not to him.
"A fixed point, Watson, that's what you are," he mused. "Good old Watson."
But I didn't respond. I refused to respond.
I never ask where Holmes goes at all hours, sometimes for days at a time, returning dressed in rags, or smelling like chemicals, or with unexplained wounds on his body. I never ask. It is not my place to ask. Even when I sit up for hours into the night, staring out of the windows of the sitting room at 221b, listening to the passing hansoms and drays, the whistle of the policeman on his beat, watching the fog thicken and swirl. Wondering if he will ever return.
Wondering.
But I never ask. Never.
But he had the gall to probe me in his circular, infuriating way. He smelled a mystery.
I refuse to be one of his mysteries!
I closed my eyes, feeling the rocking of the carriage, the jolt as it hit another rut in the dreary road to Chichester.
Wiggins. I could still feel his hands on my body. Still feel his breath against my face. His...
But I cannot! Cannot think. Cannot remember!
Wiggins had broken something in me. Broken my resolve. My discipline. Awakened a monster within my breast. Broken me as certainly as I had been broken in the mountains of Afghanistan, never to completely recover. But that was only my body. This was my mind, my being. My soul, as it were.
I don't speak of it to many people, even my intimates, but I was born and raised in the Roman Catholic faith. Catholics are not acceptable to most people in England. Although my family was as British as any in the Queen's Empire, we were looked down on, as other Catholics are looked down on still. The hint of Popery is foreign, even tainted, to the stout Anglo-Saxon sensibility. I was educated from childhood by the Jesuits, another suspect foreign order, but they taught me well, I believe. They taught me to reason and to value knowledge. And they taught me control: control of the mind and control of the body.
Control.
That teaching served me well in my medical studies. And it served me well in Her Majesty's service. And it has served me in my excursions, my adventures if you will, with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
But that control was crumbling, like a wall with a weak foundation, like a building undermined from below and shaken. Shaken to its very essence...
Gladstone began whining, his paw tapping at my leg.
"Tell the coachman to stop," I said. "Gladstone needs to stretch his legs."
"Yes," said Holmes. "I need to stretch mine as well. Too much coffee this morning. It goes through me like a sieve."
"Don't be vulgar!" I snapped.
"Really, Watson, I've rarely known you to be so out of temper," said Holmes, rapping on the front of the carriage. The coachman opened the slot. "We will need a few moments of respite, Webb. If you would be so good as to pull to the side of the road?"
"Certainly, sir."
The rain had ceased, but we stepped out onto a disgracefully muddy road that sucked at our boots and spattered our trousers. The grass on the verge was even more sodden, but Gladstone snorted and sniffed there quite happily.
Holmes sighed and unbuttoned his fly, pissing on a rock at the side of the road. I looked away, but did the same. It was still hours away from Chichester and who knew when we would next be offered relief?
"Life is what it is, Watson," Holmes said. The comment was out of the blue. He looked up at the sky, where the sun struggled to break through the glowering clouds.
"I don't know what you mean," I replied.
"We see, but we do not observe. We sense, but we do not perceive. We feel, but we do not act upon those emotions. We move through this life like sleepwalkers, or like Gladstone there, taking each moment as it comes, heedless of the future and forgetful of the past."
"I'm not forgetful of the past," I said, turning away. "The past sits on my shoulder like a great dark bird, blighting my very existence and making any future happiness impossible!"
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "You take things too much to heart, my dear boy."
But I shook off his touch. It was the last thing in the world I desired. "Don't call me your 'dear boy'! I am not a boy! I have never felt like a boy, not even when I was a child! Perhaps that's part of my problem, the reason I cannot find peace. And the reason I can never hope to find happiness!"
I stumbled back to the carriage, slamming the door behind me. It was several minutes before Holmes returned, tugging at Gladstone's lead. The dog jumped inside, his paws filthy with muck. He sprawled on the floor of the carriage and began noisily licking himself. Holmes likewise settled on the opposite seat. He rapped sharply on the barrier and a moment later the carriage lurched forward.
"I'm looking forward to taking my leisure," said Holmes, taking out his damned pipe once more and lighting it. "There's nothing like the country to stimulate thought and encourage relaxation, isn't that true, my boy?"
And to that I did not say a single word.
***
story, so I won't fight it!
Title: "Baker Street 3: A Journey in a Closed Carriage."
Author: Gaedhal
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Dr. John H. Watson; Gladstone.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Notes/Warnings: "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) Universe. Set before the Blackwood case.
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit. Enjoy.
Summary: Holmes and Watson travel by carriage to Chichester.
By Gaedhal
Previous segments here:
1. "A Walk to Regent's Park"
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/367955.html
2. A Meeting in Piccadilly
http://gaedhal.livejournal.com/368712.html
If we hadn't brought the dog, then we could have taken the train from Victoria Station and arrived in Chichester well before the morning was done.
Gladstone would have been fine staying with Mrs. Hudson. He's stayed with Mrs. Hudson dozens of times. He's perfectly happy with Mrs. Hudson. She feeds him leftover shepherd's pie and makes a fuss over him.
She also refrains from killing him. In that, she is a decided improvement over my esteemed friend with whom I share rooms in 221b Baker Street, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
"The dog wants air, Watson," Holmes reasoned as he paced the sitting room in his ragged dressing gown. "He wants stimulation. The refreshment of a change in scenery. He needs to arouse his canine instincts anew. Pursue rabbits and stalk other vermin. Water new and exotic flora. Dig his claws deep into the soil of Sussex."
"He eats, sleeps, and farts," I stated. "That is what he wants, that is what he needs, that is what he does. No more and no less."
"You give the poor beast no credit, Watson," Holmes yawned. "Pack his valise -- and yours! We leave early in the morning and will be there in time for supper, unless the roads are bad." He frowned and glanced out the window. Holmes' practical and theoretical knowledge is extensive, but weather prognostication is not one of the areas of his expertise. "It's fair today, so I assume it will be fair tomorrow. Bright and sunny as any April day could be! Perfect for traveling."
We departed from Baker Street the next morning in a driving rainstorm and bounced and bumped the entire way, cold and soggy in a closed carriage that leaked in at least two places, one of which was directly above my head.
"Think of how convenient this is, my boy," said Holmes, lighting his pipe. "We are lucky to have avoided the train. Mycroft rarely uses his carriage and he's never at the house, so we will have a splendid time in the country, with few intrusions and at no expense whatsoever."
"Except the cost of pneumonia," I fumed. "My deuced leg was already acting up. Soon my shoulder will begin to ache in this cursed damp!"
"Your leg only wants exercise," said Holmes, dismissively. "There are some fine walks in West Sussex. Beautiful country, that. Historic."
Confound the man! I knew for a fact that Holmes hated the country and became restless if he was separated from London for more than a few hours, that he detested walking, unless he was in pursuit of some miscreant, and that history had little significance to him if it did not shed light on a case. Yet he had set his mind on this trip to his brother Mycroft's estate in West Sussex and he would not be denied.
I admit that I had no desire to remain in London. I, too, wished to make an escape, but for my own reasons -- reasons I did not share with my companion. But there were more congenial places than a remote and unfamiliar country house. And certainly more congenial methods of traveling there.
I am a smoker myself, although I am attempting to quit the filthy practice, as I believe a physician should set an example of healthful habits to his patients. But Holmes is a chronic and compulsive puffer. And his pipe tobacco, a rough shag which is tolerable in an airy sitting room with a high ceiling, was not so agreeable in a closed carriage.
I sneezed. And then sneezed again.
Then Gladstone made a noise that is much like a sneeze, but which signaled a function considerably more unpleasant to other parties sharing his space.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed, taking out my handkerchief and covering my nose. "He's been doing that all morning! What in the name of heaven did you feed him, Holmes?"
Holmes shrugged. "The leavings of my own breakfast. A few kippers. A half of a blood pudding. The remains of a bowl of oatmeal. While you lay abed, slumbering the day away as usual, I partook of a hearty meal provided by the valuable Mrs. Hudson, fortifying myself for the rigours of travel."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You never take more than coffee and a crust of toast! You fed the dog all that food on purpose, just to plague me! You knew the effect it would have upon his digestive tract!"
"Balderdash!" he snorted, looking out the window and puffing on his pipe. "I did no such thing."
Holmes truly is the most insufferable creature! His methods are as transparent as his motives are mystifying.
That is, until he makes them clear.
"I hope you slept well last night," he said, still perusing the countryside. "I know your rest is often compromised."
"I slept..." I paused. The reason I had difficulty rising in the morning was that I often could not get to sleep, or else woke often in the night from unremembered but troubling dreams, as well he knew. "My sleeping habits are of no consequence, Holmes."
"Since you returned home quite late the other night," Holmes remarked, turning his gaze in my direction. "Or should I say... morning?"
There it was.
It irked him that I had been out. But it irked him more that I would say nothing about that evening, where I had been or what I had done. But I had vowed to myself that I would never relate what had passed then to any man. Or woman. But especially not to him.
"A fixed point, Watson, that's what you are," he mused. "Good old Watson."
But I didn't respond. I refused to respond.
I never ask where Holmes goes at all hours, sometimes for days at a time, returning dressed in rags, or smelling like chemicals, or with unexplained wounds on his body. I never ask. It is not my place to ask. Even when I sit up for hours into the night, staring out of the windows of the sitting room at 221b, listening to the passing hansoms and drays, the whistle of the policeman on his beat, watching the fog thicken and swirl. Wondering if he will ever return.
Wondering.
But I never ask. Never.
But he had the gall to probe me in his circular, infuriating way. He smelled a mystery.
I refuse to be one of his mysteries!
I closed my eyes, feeling the rocking of the carriage, the jolt as it hit another rut in the dreary road to Chichester.
Wiggins. I could still feel his hands on my body. Still feel his breath against my face. His...
But I cannot! Cannot think. Cannot remember!
Wiggins had broken something in me. Broken my resolve. My discipline. Awakened a monster within my breast. Broken me as certainly as I had been broken in the mountains of Afghanistan, never to completely recover. But that was only my body. This was my mind, my being. My soul, as it were.
I don't speak of it to many people, even my intimates, but I was born and raised in the Roman Catholic faith. Catholics are not acceptable to most people in England. Although my family was as British as any in the Queen's Empire, we were looked down on, as other Catholics are looked down on still. The hint of Popery is foreign, even tainted, to the stout Anglo-Saxon sensibility. I was educated from childhood by the Jesuits, another suspect foreign order, but they taught me well, I believe. They taught me to reason and to value knowledge. And they taught me control: control of the mind and control of the body.
Control.
That teaching served me well in my medical studies. And it served me well in Her Majesty's service. And it has served me in my excursions, my adventures if you will, with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
But that control was crumbling, like a wall with a weak foundation, like a building undermined from below and shaken. Shaken to its very essence...
Gladstone began whining, his paw tapping at my leg.
"Tell the coachman to stop," I said. "Gladstone needs to stretch his legs."
"Yes," said Holmes. "I need to stretch mine as well. Too much coffee this morning. It goes through me like a sieve."
"Don't be vulgar!" I snapped.
"Really, Watson, I've rarely known you to be so out of temper," said Holmes, rapping on the front of the carriage. The coachman opened the slot. "We will need a few moments of respite, Webb. If you would be so good as to pull to the side of the road?"
"Certainly, sir."
The rain had ceased, but we stepped out onto a disgracefully muddy road that sucked at our boots and spattered our trousers. The grass on the verge was even more sodden, but Gladstone snorted and sniffed there quite happily.
Holmes sighed and unbuttoned his fly, pissing on a rock at the side of the road. I looked away, but did the same. It was still hours away from Chichester and who knew when we would next be offered relief?
"Life is what it is, Watson," Holmes said. The comment was out of the blue. He looked up at the sky, where the sun struggled to break through the glowering clouds.
"I don't know what you mean," I replied.
"We see, but we do not observe. We sense, but we do not perceive. We feel, but we do not act upon those emotions. We move through this life like sleepwalkers, or like Gladstone there, taking each moment as it comes, heedless of the future and forgetful of the past."
"I'm not forgetful of the past," I said, turning away. "The past sits on my shoulder like a great dark bird, blighting my very existence and making any future happiness impossible!"
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "You take things too much to heart, my dear boy."
But I shook off his touch. It was the last thing in the world I desired. "Don't call me your 'dear boy'! I am not a boy! I have never felt like a boy, not even when I was a child! Perhaps that's part of my problem, the reason I cannot find peace. And the reason I can never hope to find happiness!"
I stumbled back to the carriage, slamming the door behind me. It was several minutes before Holmes returned, tugging at Gladstone's lead. The dog jumped inside, his paws filthy with muck. He sprawled on the floor of the carriage and began noisily licking himself. Holmes likewise settled on the opposite seat. He rapped sharply on the barrier and a moment later the carriage lurched forward.
"I'm looking forward to taking my leisure," said Holmes, taking out his damned pipe once more and lighting it. "There's nothing like the country to stimulate thought and encourage relaxation, isn't that true, my boy?"
And to that I did not say a single word.
***