Comments | marysutherland: Last letter

marysutherland

Last letter

Oct 14, 2010 06:50

BBC Sherlock

Rating: 12: angst, implied character death, implied slash

Spoilers: none

( Sherlock hesitated for a long time as he stood in Mycroft's office, turning the envelope over and over in his gloved hands. )

slash, john's pov

Comments 42

irisbleufic October 14 2010, 07:35:12 UTC

Well, hell: you've managed to push just about every button I've got with this. Gorgeously written; John first-person would be, I think, tricky, and this is just right. And I'm glad it ends the way it does; otherwise, I'd have been pretty somber at work all morning.

et_cetera55 October 14 2010, 17:44:36 UTC

Oh that was beautiful. I was tearing up reading it (and v v grateful for the happy ending!)

marysutherland October 14 2010, 19:06:53 UTC

I'm afraid the ending proves I'm just sentimental as well, but I can at least claim that you can always trust Sherlock to find even the most carefully hidden things.

fengirl88 October 14 2010, 20:59:26 UTC

this one really hurts, even with the happy ending.

believing J's letter entirely; it is so like him.

it is just as well in this instance that S. is no respecter of other people's privacy.

marysutherland October 16 2010, 06:16:39 UTC

I was inspired to write this partly by the memory of this amazing, but *VERY SAD* real-life post (which being real, can't be fixed with a happy ending).

As for privacy, I'm sure Sherlock would point out that the letter was addressed to him, so how could it possibly be a breach of privacy? He's not stealing or intruding on anything, he's merely anticipating events (which is something he's rather good at doing).

fengirl88 October 16 2010, 10:25:47 UTC

mostly not reading the very sad real-life post (beyond glancing at it to see what it was) - but will go back to it at some point when I am in a better state for reading such things.

this whole business of posthumous letters saying what people wouldn't or couldn't say while alive is exercising me. what must it be like to receive something like that when the writer is dead and beyond reach? especially if the letter sketches a whole other dimension to the relationship that could have happened and didn't because the letter-writer did not speak while he was alive. think this would be /very/ hard to bear, in addition to the bereavement itself.

does part of J know that S will find and read the letter, and how does that change the meaning of the letter if so? not sure about this.

also wondered why he suggested till death us do part would not be a long time with him. health broken by military service? some other reason?

marysutherland October 16 2010, 11:49:56 UTC

I think that it's a very different matter writing a posthumous letter to someone with ordinary emotions and writing one to Sherlock. At the risk of going on forever, and over-explaining the story, I think that at the heart of it is John's belief that Sherlock is a sociopath or at least emotionally lacking in some way. I don't know how actual sociopaths behave, but in the fics I write where Sherlock is implicitly a sociopath (and that's not all of them) I imagine him as having no instinct for what other people might feel. If he is observing and concentrating he can calculate reasonably accurately how they will feel and behave, and even be able to manipulate them, because he's trained himself to do that, but whenever he gets distracted or absorbed by other things, other people become opaque to him ( ... )

Thread 7

stellary October 15 2010, 00:39:55 UTC

Not a S/J shipper but was very touched and grateful for the ending.
Trust Sherlock to find all things secret indeed.

stellary October 15 2010, 01:10:38 UTC

Wait, so - John made Mycroft the keeper of the letter?

marysutherland October 16 2010, 06:08:57 UTC

I think you've got the problem with the letter of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" - who guards the guards? Who else does John leave the letter with but Mycroft? Harry's unreliable (and so is Mrs Hudson, in a very different way), stuff held by the police obviously isn't safe from Sherlock, and the implication of John and Sherlock hanging onto each other's bank cards and cheques is that anything at the bank is pretty much open access as well. Mycroft is probably actually one of the few people who might be able to keep the letter without Sherlock getting access to it.

Except, of course, that Mycroft's office is an obvious magnet for Sherlock's investigations and/or that Mycroft is another devious bastard who probably has the equipment to read people's letters without even opening them, and the wish to use them as he chooses. I leave it entirely up to the reader as to Mycroft's role in all of this.