Fic: Pocketwatch (SH) [1/1]
~*~
“How do we know that inception will work?”
It was Clarky, the youngest, the newest, who had asked. But Lestrade was in earshot and gently led him away. It didn’t matter. I could already remember. Memories returned as shards of glass that cut each time they were touched.
We went deep. Too deep. Into limbo. We couldn’t get back, dreams and reality mixed and muddied like blood and water so that our lives were diluted shells of what they could be. We stayed there, for so long. Building our own little world with recreations of Baker Street on each corner, Watson’s childhood home proudly displayed, hedges trimmed and the door slightly ajar. Waiting for him to return, mine hidden behind high gates, paint peeling and a general air of dishabille haunting it. I made Watson promise never to enter.
We grew old together in each other’s arms. In this world of our creation we could love freely and wholly. No part of each other’s mind was hidden. We were finally together in a way we always wanted to be.
But Watson had locked something away, stopped remembering that this was a dream. He began to talk of it as our reality; he’d locked away Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Clarky. In the box under the floorboards lay his brother’s pocket watch. Lid closed. Hands unmoving.
I knew we had to leave.
So I did it. I stole through the open door. Avoiding the portraits that watched me. Eyes on me, hating me. I crept up the stairs, the house was warm. It was forever held on a midsummer’s day, laughter heralded up the stairs. But I knew if I looked out the window I would see an empty garden. Watson’s room was at the end of the corridor. Next to his brother’s. I entered and fell to the floor before his bed. Underneath I dislodged a floorboard, feeling around the discarded rugby ball and cricket bat. It was a shoebox, empty apart from a few pictures of his mother, and the watch. Lid closed. I lifted it carefully, noting the scratches I’d seen when I first beheld it. Running my fingers over the initials. I pressed the switch and held my breath as the lid flicked open. Bearing the clock face. Hands stilled. The mechanisms silent. I breathed out. Placing it back into the box and replacing the lid I slid it back under the bed. Lid open. I stood to my feet, swiping any dust off the knees of my trousers and exited the house.
Back through the front door. I stopped, watching the world we had built for ourselves. It was beautiful. Here we were happy, unhindered, free to love. Free to be loved. We chased imaginary criminals, facing no harm to our beings. There was no death, no patients, no sick or injured or ill. We would fall into bed each day, in each other’s arms. Laughing, crying, smiling. And we would love until the early hours of the morning, safe, happy.
But it was a dream.
We couldn’t stay.
Soon I had Watson questioning our world. Soon I had him convinced we had to die, to live. And so we found ourselves standing, facing each other, on Tower Bridge. A stormy Thames stretched below us. I held his hands in mine, and looked into his eyes. Loyalty, love, and trust shone back at me. As it should.
I took a deep breath, and said: “I love you, John.”
He smiled, eyes sad. I leaned forward and kissed him, upon the lips, as lovers did. As we fell into the unrelenting waters of the Thames.
We awoke upon the floor of Baker Street. Hands holding, arms outstretched, and wires leading into a box between us. I threw these off and took him into an embrace, but he was stiff, unresponsive. And I felt the first wisp of fear in my heart.
From then on every smile was forced, every kiss was chaste. It had only been an idea, a simple idea.
This was a dream.
But I could never have guessed what impact it had.
There was one moment, where he stood in my room, holding my syringe, staring at it intently as though it held the answer to everything. I walked to him and took it away, drawing him into a kiss instead. And although I knew he loved me, every time he said it. It felt hollow. Every time he looked at me, he was looking through me. He was thinking of something else. And it was my fault.
Until one day he was standing before me, holding his own service revolver, pointing it at his temple and whispering: “I love you, Sherlock.”
He cocked the gun.
“No.” I whispered, edging forward, “You cannot leave me.”
“I’m not.” He rasped, mouth dry, “You’ll follow me. You cannot live without me.”
“John, please.”
He fired the gun. The sound riccoched into silence
I knelt beside his body as it lay on the ground. I cradled his face in my lap. I wiped away his blood from my forehead. I cried as I held him close to me.
“It’ll work. Trust me.”
I called to Clarky over my shoulder. I clutched Watson’s pocket watch in my hand. If I lifted it to my ear I could hear it ticking. Hands moving. Mechanism working.
I never opened it anymore.
fin