Tears of Ash and Soot
originally posted to Watson's Woes on August 29, 2009 as challenge 005
Title: Tears of Ash and Soot
Author: Pompey
Words: 2312
Characters: Watson, Mary, and Holmes
Rating: PG-13 (for safety’s sake)
Summary: In this world, Mary was not visiting a friend the night of Holmes’s visit on April 24, 1891. Nor was Baker Street the only rooms that were set afire.
Warnings: character-death and AU world
The phoenix may rise from its ashes but first it must burn and die. - Anonymous
I have a few definite memories of that night, the night Sherlock Holmes told us Moriarty was on his trail and both Mary and I were in danger and needed to leave first thing in the morning. One memory is of seeing him scale the back garden wall like some giant spider before returning inside to pack my travel bag. Another is of how Mary suddenly pleaded with me to spend the night in our own guestroom rather than the bedroom. A woman’s instinct, she said; she simply would feel safer if we did so. I laughed at her gently but giving in if only for her peace of mind.
My last clear memory of that night was wishing Mary a good night and hearing her say in return, “I love you.”
There are other memories of what came next though I have no desire to recall them any better than I already do. They are blurred and confused: a thick, all-encompassing blackness; intense confusion; a heaviness on my chest and a lightness in my head; searing heat; and then a terrible, jarring blow that drove the breath from my lungs and the last remnants of consciousness from me.
My next memory is of terrible pain and heat and an inability to breathe, laced through with the scent of charred wood and hair. Fear and confusion blossomed but it was too bright to open my eyes; the light filtered through closed lids was bad enough. And no matter how I turned my head I could not escape it. Nor I could not inhale for coughing. After a time there was a hiss and a strange, slightly bitter taste and then there was nothingness again.
When I awoke I realized by smell alone that I was in a hospital. My face and hands were stinging and throbbing abominably. My throat felt so hot and desert-dry I did not dare make a sound or even attempt to swallow. After a while I cracked my eyes open to meet the blinding white light. A groan escaped me and it was as painful as I had feared. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then there was a gentle hand on my arm and quiet, familiar voice. “Watson? Wait a moment.” I heard some shifting of fabric and the light decreased to tolerable levels. “Is that any better?”
I nodded slightly and ventured to open my eyes again. It was Holmes, of course. He had positioned himself so that his own body was blocking the worst of the brightness from me, for which I was unspeakably grateful. But I was also shocked, even in my barely lucid state, by his appearance. Never had I seen my friend look so disheveled, not even after his days spent in the wilds of Dartmoor. His clothes were rumpled and stained, his hair tangled, and his face smudged and unshaven. And the whole of his being reeked of smoke. Glancing down, I saw my hands were bandaged loosely but extensively, as one would do for burns. It suddenly dawned upon me that I had survived some sort of fire, and that I had no idea what had become of Mary.
“Holm -” I began but erupted into coughs so harsh tears welled up involuntarily.
Immediately he had me upright, allowing me to lean on him until the fit passed. “Don’t speak, Watson, please,” Holmes pleaded as he assisted me in sitting back. “You’re not in any condition to do so yet.”
I accepted the sips of water he gave me then, but I could not rest in such uncertainty. “Mary?”
His face tightened. “She has been tended to,” Holmes answered steadily. “I have seen her for myself. But listen, Watson, I have little time here. Moriarty’s cronies are still after me. There are things that must be said and I’d rather you hear them from my lips than a stranger’s. Do you remember what happened?”
I shook my head, then paused. “A fire?”
“Don’t talk!” snapped he, then relented with a sigh. “I shall tell you but only if you refrain from speaking. This will be hard enough for me to relate without interruption.” I confess I was alarmed by his last statement but did not ask anything further.
“Yes, it was a fire. After I left your home last night I made my way to one of my bolt holes and had not been there for more than an hour or so when I realized what danger I had put you and Mrs. Watson in. Those who were pursuing me may have seen me enter but I took such pains when leaving it was possible they thought I was still in residence. I left with all haste but as luck would have it my route took me along Baker Street.
“I might have continued on my way had I not spied the faintest curl of smoke emanating from my bedroom. To sum it up, Watson, one of my pursuers - Albert Fenwick - had thought to set fire to the files I had not yet sent to the police. And I do not doubt that my death would have been a bonus to him. I caught up with the man not a block away and I left him trussed up in my handcuffs in front of 221.”
Holmes paused, his face grave. “As I left he made a comment. He said, ‘I wonder, Mr. Holmes, if you haven’t been putting out the right fire.’ I realized my worst fears were valid.
“Fenwick had started the fire in your master bedroom and for a moment I held out no hope. I don’t know what caused you to spend the night in your own guestroom but I thank God you did. It undoubtedly saved your life.
“I discovered this by accident, when I gained access to the house by climbing to the side-kitchen’s roof and opening the guestroom window. The front door was blocked off by the firemen who said it was too risky to enter so I went around to the back and gained access to the guestroom window by climbing up the side-kitchen and standing on its roof. That’s when I saw you and Mrs. Watson - in danger but presumably still alive.
“I went in and tried to rouse you but the poisonous fumes had already started their work. And then I had to make a choice, Watson, that I pray you will forgive me for. I could certainly pull an unconscious body through the window but only one at a time. I chose to save you first.”
He stopped and looked hard at me. I could only look back in confusion. I heard his words clearly and understood them but I did not yet grasp the significance. I opened my mouth to ask. Holmes held up a hand to stop me.
“You were first, Mrs. Watson second. And I fear in the end I had to push you off the side-kitchen roof. Opening the window only fanned the flames.” Holmes stopped again and looked at me intently if sadly. “Your hands and face were already from just being on the roof burnt; I thought even a short fall would be preferable to fire. Do you remember that?”
I nodded distractedly for I did recall the impact with the ground at least. But that still left one vital question unanswered. “But . . . Mary - ”
“Don’t talk!” he snapped again but the anger dissipated immediately. “It went harder for her than it did you, my dear fellow. She was exposed to the smoke and fumes longer than you and women are more susceptible to such things than men.”
I felt the skin pull painfully as my brow furrowed. It was not like Holmes to give oblique answers in times of crisis. “Is she -”
“She is not all right, Watson,” said Holmes gently. “As I said, it went harder for her. And it was bad enough with you. I watched them give you oxygen as a final resort and for a long while I thought . . . But then you finally coughed faintly and began to breathe unassisted.”
I cared less about the danger to myself than Holmes obviously did. A terrible, icy dread had crept over me and I stared at him in horror. It could not be.
As if reading my thoughts he placed a hand lightly on an uninjured part of my arm. “The doctors did everything they could for her,” he continued. “They gave her oxygen; they worked on her until even I knew it was in vain. She never woke.”
I did not realize I was shaking my head in violent denial until Holmes reached out to stop me. “Watson . . . ”
“No!” The pain of shouting with an abused airway was nothing compared to the rest. And perhaps, if I kept denying it, it would cease to be true. I closed my eyes, trying to block the images that rose up unbidden
“They said it was likely a peaceful passing, that she was not aware of any pain,” Holmes’s voice continued implacably but still soft. “Certainly I didn’t see any burns on her. Only a bit of ash in her hair and some traces of soot.”
I could not control my respiration enough to reply. The breaths came too sharply and irregularly. My jaw was starting to ache and I realized it was tightly clenched. My hands were balled into fists despite the protests set forth by the fresh burns. I ignored them. Perhaps, if I denied their existence as well I would wake to find this all some terrible nightmare. I shook my head again.
“I am so very sorry, my dear fellow - ”
“No,” I whispered, inaudible even to me.
“ - but she is dead.”
The stark, final words caught the breath in my throat and I heard a strangled, animalistic noise I barely recognized as coming from me. Then my eyes and throat were burning as though I were plunged back into that loathsome fire that had stolen my life away from me. Despite the bandages and blisters, I gripped my own elbows in an effort not to shatter into a thousand pieces. Then there were sobs, harsh and spontaneous. And then horridly rough wool against my burned cheek and cool linen against my burning eyes and two thin, strong arms encircling me.
I do not know how long we remained like that - I a mere doorway through which unrelenting grief poured through, bubbling up from some hidden spring, and Holmes the rock that remained steady throughout the onslaught of deluge. Even when the wretched coughing threatened to suffocate me entirely he stayed in position and did not attempt to quiet me. I do not think he would have been successful and perhaps that is why he did not bother trying.
I was nearly asleep by the time my weeping had dwindled to shuddery breaths. As I drew away from him I saw where I had rested my head against his shirt was a dark grey blot. I wondered for a moment if I had been shedding not tears but char. Perhaps it was but one more piece of evidence that I had been irreversibly altered by the fire, my old self burned away entirely. With such nonsensical thoughts in my head I drifted off. When I awoke Holmes was gone. All that was left of him was a note scribbled on pages torn from his notebook and tucked into my hand.
He was fleeing to the Continent but where precisely he could not tell me for he himself did not yet know. He could not but think he would ever return to England but had no regrets for himself so long as he might bring down the Napoleon of Crime with his demise. What he did regret was the pain his passing would cause his friends, most notably myself. He wished me well and begged me to forgive his failure to save my wife. And he was “very sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.”
It has been nearly a fortnight since my home and practice in Paddington was razed to the ground. It has been a week since I was finally released from the hospital and a mere six days since I saw my dear Mary laid to rest.
And it has been three days, according to the papers, since Mr. Sherlock Holmes was last seen alive in some little town in Switzerland. I pray Holmes’s prophecy did not come to pass but as each hour passes without word from him I feel a little more hope die away.
I have strange dreams now: dreams of Mary clothed in flames that do not injure her; of Holmes tumbling to his death locked in the arms of his arch-nemesis while behind them burns a cascade of fire; of the new, twisted ropes of scars on my face and hands snaking out to my throat to suffocate me until I wake up gasping futilely for air as I must have done that first terrible night.
I do not weep now, even when the grief and pain and loss overwhelm me. I cannot weep. At times I can feel my eyes burn and sting with the effort but I know it is not tears that try to escape. It is the ashes and soot that have filled my being. It is all that remains of me now. That is why I can afford to feel a small bit of gratitude at my inability to cry. For if I could shed even tears of naught but ash and soot, to be scattered by the wind, there should be nothing left of me at all.
Title: Tears of Ash and Soot
Author: Pompey
Words: 2312
Characters: Watson, Mary, and Holmes
Rating: PG-13 (for safety’s sake)
Summary: In this world, Mary was not visiting a friend the night of Holmes’s visit on April 24, 1891. Nor was Baker Street the only rooms that were set afire.
Warnings: character-death and AU world
The phoenix may rise from its ashes but first it must burn and die. - Anonymous
I have a few definite memories of that night, the night Sherlock Holmes told us Moriarty was on his trail and both Mary and I were in danger and needed to leave first thing in the morning. One memory is of seeing him scale the back garden wall like some giant spider before returning inside to pack my travel bag. Another is of how Mary suddenly pleaded with me to spend the night in our own guestroom rather than the bedroom. A woman’s instinct, she said; she simply would feel safer if we did so. I laughed at her gently but giving in if only for her peace of mind.
My last clear memory of that night was wishing Mary a good night and hearing her say in return, “I love you.”
There are other memories of what came next though I have no desire to recall them any better than I already do. They are blurred and confused: a thick, all-encompassing blackness; intense confusion; a heaviness on my chest and a lightness in my head; searing heat; and then a terrible, jarring blow that drove the breath from my lungs and the last remnants of consciousness from me.
My next memory is of terrible pain and heat and an inability to breathe, laced through with the scent of charred wood and hair. Fear and confusion blossomed but it was too bright to open my eyes; the light filtered through closed lids was bad enough. And no matter how I turned my head I could not escape it. Nor I could not inhale for coughing. After a time there was a hiss and a strange, slightly bitter taste and then there was nothingness again.
When I awoke I realized by smell alone that I was in a hospital. My face and hands were stinging and throbbing abominably. My throat felt so hot and desert-dry I did not dare make a sound or even attempt to swallow. After a while I cracked my eyes open to meet the blinding white light. A groan escaped me and it was as painful as I had feared. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then there was a gentle hand on my arm and quiet, familiar voice. “Watson? Wait a moment.” I heard some shifting of fabric and the light decreased to tolerable levels. “Is that any better?”
I nodded slightly and ventured to open my eyes again. It was Holmes, of course. He had positioned himself so that his own body was blocking the worst of the brightness from me, for which I was unspeakably grateful. But I was also shocked, even in my barely lucid state, by his appearance. Never had I seen my friend look so disheveled, not even after his days spent in the wilds of Dartmoor. His clothes were rumpled and stained, his hair tangled, and his face smudged and unshaven. And the whole of his being reeked of smoke. Glancing down, I saw my hands were bandaged loosely but extensively, as one would do for burns. It suddenly dawned upon me that I had survived some sort of fire, and that I had no idea what had become of Mary.
“Holm -” I began but erupted into coughs so harsh tears welled up involuntarily.
Immediately he had me upright, allowing me to lean on him until the fit passed. “Don’t speak, Watson, please,” Holmes pleaded as he assisted me in sitting back. “You’re not in any condition to do so yet.”
I accepted the sips of water he gave me then, but I could not rest in such uncertainty. “Mary?”
His face tightened. “She has been tended to,” Holmes answered steadily. “I have seen her for myself. But listen, Watson, I have little time here. Moriarty’s cronies are still after me. There are things that must be said and I’d rather you hear them from my lips than a stranger’s. Do you remember what happened?”
I shook my head, then paused. “A fire?”
“Don’t talk!” snapped he, then relented with a sigh. “I shall tell you but only if you refrain from speaking. This will be hard enough for me to relate without interruption.” I confess I was alarmed by his last statement but did not ask anything further.
“Yes, it was a fire. After I left your home last night I made my way to one of my bolt holes and had not been there for more than an hour or so when I realized what danger I had put you and Mrs. Watson in. Those who were pursuing me may have seen me enter but I took such pains when leaving it was possible they thought I was still in residence. I left with all haste but as luck would have it my route took me along Baker Street.
“I might have continued on my way had I not spied the faintest curl of smoke emanating from my bedroom. To sum it up, Watson, one of my pursuers - Albert Fenwick - had thought to set fire to the files I had not yet sent to the police. And I do not doubt that my death would have been a bonus to him. I caught up with the man not a block away and I left him trussed up in my handcuffs in front of 221.”
Holmes paused, his face grave. “As I left he made a comment. He said, ‘I wonder, Mr. Holmes, if you haven’t been putting out the right fire.’ I realized my worst fears were valid.
“Fenwick had started the fire in your master bedroom and for a moment I held out no hope. I don’t know what caused you to spend the night in your own guestroom but I thank God you did. It undoubtedly saved your life.
“I discovered this by accident, when I gained access to the house by climbing to the side-kitchen’s roof and opening the guestroom window. The front door was blocked off by the firemen who said it was too risky to enter so I went around to the back and gained access to the guestroom window by climbing up the side-kitchen and standing on its roof. That’s when I saw you and Mrs. Watson - in danger but presumably still alive.
“I went in and tried to rouse you but the poisonous fumes had already started their work. And then I had to make a choice, Watson, that I pray you will forgive me for. I could certainly pull an unconscious body through the window but only one at a time. I chose to save you first.”
He stopped and looked hard at me. I could only look back in confusion. I heard his words clearly and understood them but I did not yet grasp the significance. I opened my mouth to ask. Holmes held up a hand to stop me.
“You were first, Mrs. Watson second. And I fear in the end I had to push you off the side-kitchen roof. Opening the window only fanned the flames.” Holmes stopped again and looked at me intently if sadly. “Your hands and face were already from just being on the roof burnt; I thought even a short fall would be preferable to fire. Do you remember that?”
I nodded distractedly for I did recall the impact with the ground at least. But that still left one vital question unanswered. “But . . . Mary - ”
“Don’t talk!” he snapped again but the anger dissipated immediately. “It went harder for her than it did you, my dear fellow. She was exposed to the smoke and fumes longer than you and women are more susceptible to such things than men.”
I felt the skin pull painfully as my brow furrowed. It was not like Holmes to give oblique answers in times of crisis. “Is she -”
“She is not all right, Watson,” said Holmes gently. “As I said, it went harder for her. And it was bad enough with you. I watched them give you oxygen as a final resort and for a long while I thought . . . But then you finally coughed faintly and began to breathe unassisted.”
I cared less about the danger to myself than Holmes obviously did. A terrible, icy dread had crept over me and I stared at him in horror. It could not be.
As if reading my thoughts he placed a hand lightly on an uninjured part of my arm. “The doctors did everything they could for her,” he continued. “They gave her oxygen; they worked on her until even I knew it was in vain. She never woke.”
I did not realize I was shaking my head in violent denial until Holmes reached out to stop me. “Watson . . . ”
“No!” The pain of shouting with an abused airway was nothing compared to the rest. And perhaps, if I kept denying it, it would cease to be true. I closed my eyes, trying to block the images that rose up unbidden
“They said it was likely a peaceful passing, that she was not aware of any pain,” Holmes’s voice continued implacably but still soft. “Certainly I didn’t see any burns on her. Only a bit of ash in her hair and some traces of soot.”
I could not control my respiration enough to reply. The breaths came too sharply and irregularly. My jaw was starting to ache and I realized it was tightly clenched. My hands were balled into fists despite the protests set forth by the fresh burns. I ignored them. Perhaps, if I denied their existence as well I would wake to find this all some terrible nightmare. I shook my head again.
“I am so very sorry, my dear fellow - ”
“No,” I whispered, inaudible even to me.
“ - but she is dead.”
The stark, final words caught the breath in my throat and I heard a strangled, animalistic noise I barely recognized as coming from me. Then my eyes and throat were burning as though I were plunged back into that loathsome fire that had stolen my life away from me. Despite the bandages and blisters, I gripped my own elbows in an effort not to shatter into a thousand pieces. Then there were sobs, harsh and spontaneous. And then horridly rough wool against my burned cheek and cool linen against my burning eyes and two thin, strong arms encircling me.
I do not know how long we remained like that - I a mere doorway through which unrelenting grief poured through, bubbling up from some hidden spring, and Holmes the rock that remained steady throughout the onslaught of deluge. Even when the wretched coughing threatened to suffocate me entirely he stayed in position and did not attempt to quiet me. I do not think he would have been successful and perhaps that is why he did not bother trying.
I was nearly asleep by the time my weeping had dwindled to shuddery breaths. As I drew away from him I saw where I had rested my head against his shirt was a dark grey blot. I wondered for a moment if I had been shedding not tears but char. Perhaps it was but one more piece of evidence that I had been irreversibly altered by the fire, my old self burned away entirely. With such nonsensical thoughts in my head I drifted off. When I awoke Holmes was gone. All that was left of him was a note scribbled on pages torn from his notebook and tucked into my hand.
He was fleeing to the Continent but where precisely he could not tell me for he himself did not yet know. He could not but think he would ever return to England but had no regrets for himself so long as he might bring down the Napoleon of Crime with his demise. What he did regret was the pain his passing would cause his friends, most notably myself. He wished me well and begged me to forgive his failure to save my wife. And he was “very sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.”
It has been nearly a fortnight since my home and practice in Paddington was razed to the ground. It has been a week since I was finally released from the hospital and a mere six days since I saw my dear Mary laid to rest.
And it has been three days, according to the papers, since Mr. Sherlock Holmes was last seen alive in some little town in Switzerland. I pray Holmes’s prophecy did not come to pass but as each hour passes without word from him I feel a little more hope die away.
I have strange dreams now: dreams of Mary clothed in flames that do not injure her; of Holmes tumbling to his death locked in the arms of his arch-nemesis while behind them burns a cascade of fire; of the new, twisted ropes of scars on my face and hands snaking out to my throat to suffocate me until I wake up gasping futilely for air as I must have done that first terrible night.
I do not weep now, even when the grief and pain and loss overwhelm me. I cannot weep. At times I can feel my eyes burn and sting with the effort but I know it is not tears that try to escape. It is the ashes and soot that have filled my being. It is all that remains of me now. That is why I can afford to feel a small bit of gratitude at my inability to cry. For if I could shed even tears of naught but ash and soot, to be scattered by the wind, there should be nothing left of me at all.