Fic: You Better Stop And Rebuild All Your Ruins - 7/12
Title: You Better Stop And Rebuild All Your Ruins - 7/12
Author: RubyChan05
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Watson/Mary
Word Count: 2124
Rating: PG-13
Chapter 7
It had been five weeks since Watson had disappeared. Holmes had spent every waking moment of every day since going over the evidence, refusing all other distractions to the detriment of his health, London’s crime rates, and Mrs Hudson’s patience.
And all for naught.
Not a single new witness had come forward. His various visits to Walton-on-Thames had turned up no new leads, and the constabulary were now able to not only recognise him on sight, but also predict his leading sentence right down to each individual word. To put it bluntly, Holmes was stuck, and that just wasn’t good enough when it was Watson’s life on the line.
God, Watson.
Sitting in Watson’s old chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, Holmes stared intently at the board of evidence he’d erected against the opposite wall. There had to be something he’d missed. Some grain of truth, some tiny detail that would prove the keystone to this entire case.
Men like Watson did not simply disappear. He was far from some villainous husband who had grown bored of city society and simply gone off to seek new pastures. And he wasn’t rich enough to merit any sort of kidnap and ransom.
He had no enemies besides those Holmes himself shared, and a vigorous investigation of London’s seedy criminal underbelly had left the majority of felons Holmes had encountered bruised and bloody, but not turned up any sign of vengeance directed at Holmes.
He’d long determined that the gang Watson had been fighting had not abducted him for nefarious reasons, and he could find no trace of obsessive stalkers or husbands who’d somehow managed to get the entirely wrong idea about Watson’s interactions with his patients.
Lestrade had told him that the case had been put aside for now, demoted to make way for fresher, more solvable cases. And that just wasn’t good enough.
He’d let his friend down enough already. Holmes wasn’t about to let him rot out there.
No. Not rot. That brought far too many images to mind that Holmes didn’t even want to consider.
There was a knock at the door, and Holmes cursed under his breath. Mrs Hudson had truly started earning her ‘Nanny’ nickname recently, regularly coming in to check on him every three hours or so to make sure he was eating what she left out for him. If the plate remained full, she would stand over him and lecture until he’d eaten at least half, thrusting glasses of water under his nose to wash the food down.
He’d thought that Watson was tenacious when it came to looking after his health, but he had nothing on Mrs Hudson when she had a bee in her bonnet.
Shoving the remaining ham sandwich into his mouth, Holmes winced as he swallowed the barely chewed snack.
“C’m ‘n.” He managed through the bread currently choking him, beating a fist against his chest in an attempt to ease its passage.
The door creaked open, but rather than the landlady he’d expected to see, it was to his immense surprise someone entirely different.
“Mary? Good lord, I haven’t seen you since…since the day after your wedding.” He exclaimed, sitting upright and hurriedly straightening his dressing gown somewhat. Mary smiled wanly at him, shuffling over to the spare seat and easing herself down. She didn’t look well - her cheeks had sunk into her face, making her look drawn and gaunt, and her hair was visibly lank despite having been manhandled into an elegant bun.
Clearly, Watson’s disappearance had taken its toll on her.
He wondered what he would have looked like if it weren’t for Mrs Hudson.
“Well, if you’d accepted any of the dinner invitations we sent you…” She chastised Holmes gently. Holmes coughed, looking slightly embarrassed.
“Of course. Sadly I had…um…prior engagements.”
“Indeed.” They sat in silence for a while, neither meeting the other’s gaze. It was only when the grandfather clock chimed the hour that Mary finally spoke again.
“They’ve dropped John’s case.”
“I know.”
“They’re just going to leave him out there…wherever he is. What if he’s lying in some hospital somewhere, hurt? Or robbed and penniless, unable to get back home?” Mary exclaimed, voice anguished. Holmes bit his lip.
“I’ve been trying to work out what happened to him…but by the time I got to the crime scene, the locals had already ruined it beyond saving. I’ve had nothing but eyewitness accounts and the evidence collected by the police themselves to go on.”
Mary looked at him fondly, eyes drooping tiredly as she covered a harsh cough with a gloved hand.
“I know you have. I didn’t expect any less of you. John was always talking about you, both whilst he was still living with you and after he moved out. He was proud to call you a friend.”
Holmes winced, remembering the stunt he’d pulled on the night before Watson’s wedding. He had no doubt that Mary would have far fewer kind words for him had she only known what he’d done.
“Yes, well…”
“Some police came to my house today.” Mary said suddenly, staring intently at the fireplace. “Not Lestrade and his gang - the ones lower down the ladder. They asked me if John had any reason to just up and leave. Debts, feuds…an unhappy marriage.”
Oh, Lestrade was going to hear about this, Holmes seethed inwardly. The inspector may be a clot sometimes, but he would never have stood for such impertinent questioning of a lady in Mary’s state. He’d have to get their names off Mary later…he guaranteed that within a few weeks of Lestrade catching wind of what had happened a few officers would be demoted.
“He’d put his gambling days far behind him. And he got on with everybody.” Holmes reassured her. “As for an unhappy marriage…I’ve never known a man willing to do so much for his bride. He truly loved you Mary.”
Mary shivered, her eyes dropping to the floor.
“It’s just that sometimes…sometimes he could be distant. As if he’d gone somewhere else, somewhere I couldn’t follow him. From the moment we got married, he seemed…changed…somehow. Like something had happened that I could never hope to understand.”
Holmes swallowed hard, tugging at his collar surreptitiously. There was only one thing that Mary could be referring to. Watson had undoubtedly been remembering the night Holmes had enticed him into bed, the night Watson had decided to give up Mary in order to have a life with Holmes.
Watson hadn’t been the only one to find himself dwelling on it. Holmes himself had found that night frequently in his thoughts, wondering what would have happened had it not merely been an ill judged scheme to make Watson stay with him.
He wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that he himself remained stuck on it, or the fact that in all his fantasies they were happy.
“It was nothing to do with you.” Holmes said quietly, crushing his own guilt and leaning forward to take Mary’s gloved hand in his. He was momentarily shocked by the feeling of bones through leather, but swallowed his horror back and continued on. “Watson came back from the war a broken man. He may seem whole now, but he can never truly be what he was before. You just hadn’t spent enough time with him to notice.”
It was a pathetic lie, but hopefully a good enough one to fool a woman as desperate as Mary. Sure enough, she leapt on the sliver of hope like one starved of food.
“I never knew…I was beginning to think his heart belonged to another.” She laughed hollowly, and Holmes suddenly found the sky outside to be a very interesting thing indeed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I still have yet to find your husband.” Holmes blustered. “Not that he’d be very happy to see you in the state you’re in now. You or his child.”
Mary stared at him, mouth open.
“How did you know?”
“You’ve been cradling your stomach ever since you first sat down. And every time you mention Watson, you rub it.”
“No one else has noticed…”
“That’s because you’re letting yourself waste away.” Holmes said sternly. “You’re meant to be eating for two, not eating child sized portions. How do you think Watson will feel, coming back only to find his wife and unborn child dead of malnutrition?”
Mary smiled softly, levering herself to her feet and kissing Holmes softly on the brow.
“You’re right. I haven’t been looking after myself. I’ve been selfish - I have someone else to look after now.”
Pausing at the doorway, Mary turned to look back at Holmes, eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“People talk about him in the past tense now, you know. I keep catching myself doing it. Even you were doing it earlier.”
“Mary…”
“I don’t want to be a widow before I have to be. But I can’t live off hope forever either. Please…find him for me.” She pleaded desperately. Holmes nodded, trying to convey his earnestness through his eyes.
“I promise you, Mary. One way or another, I will tell you what has become of your husband. I’ll solve this. Whatever the cost.”
Mary smiled gratefully, shutting the door behind herself as she left. Holmes listened to the sound of her heels on the stairs, moving to the window in time to see her start off down the street, occasionally stumbling as she searched for an empty cab.
If she didn’t do something soon, she wasn’t going to make it long enough to see her husband return.
“Did you manage to give the poor woman some hope?” Mrs Hudson asked, coming into the room with a fresh pot of tea. Holmes shrugged, moving to stand in front of his evidence board and crossing his eyes in an attempt to see things in a different light.
“A little. There’s not much to go around these days. Every day that goes by, the trail gets colder.”
“No new leads then?”
“No. I’m heading back into Walton-on-Thames tomorrow to see if I can’t drag something new from the local police.”
Mrs Hudson shook her head, tutting at the mess of crumbs Holmes had left all over the carpet. Though at least it was sign that he was eating, she supposed.
“You’ll be lucky. According to my niece they’ve just found a body in the river. Suicide, poor thing. All because her lover refused to mar…”
“Of course, that’s it!” Holmes exclaimed, slamming a hand against the board. How can I have been so stupid?! Nanny, you’re a genius!”
Mrs Hudson blinked, unsure of what exactly she’d said to get Holmes quite so excited. She failed to see how her mentioning such a thing as suicide could inspire Holmes so.
“Walton-on-Thames is on a river! On the Thames, to be more precise. I may have been checking every last inch of ground about the crime scene, but Watson never left the bridge via the ground! He went over the side!”
“Oh my…then surely he’s…”
“Hush now Mrs Hudson. The height is nowhere near enough to cause death upon impact. Now, if we are to assume that Watson was unconscious, or at least stunned, when he hit the water…”
Sweeping the masses of pinned paper off the board, Holmes began writing feverishly on the bare surface, his hand moving so fast that it was nearly a blur.
“He would have been swept downstream - summer rainstorms always make the current swell - until he hit the first curve in the bank. This landmass would have sent him spinning down the river at an angle of…” Holmes trailed off, muttering calculations under his breath as he attempted to visualise the situation.
Mrs Hudson waited, hope swelling in her chest.
“…until he emerged at the critical point, which is here!” Holmes finally proclaimed, stabbing a pin into a map of southeast England and bounding across the room. Mrs Hudson peered closer, frowning slightly.
“He’s in Southend? Isn’t that upstream?”
Holmes paused, wheeling back.
“Hmm. So it is. Hold on.” Spinning the map round, he slammed the pin in again, tapping it furiously. “That’s better. Far more likely than Southend. Whoever heard of a man floating upstream? He’s in Marlow. I’d stake Gladstone on it.”
He paused, frowning.
“That is, had Watson not taken him with him. My hat then. I’d stake my hat.”
“Then why hasn’t he gone home?” Mrs Hudson questioned, smoothing down her skirts in nervous agitation. Holmes winked at her, flipping his hat up his arm and onto his head.
“That, my dear Mrs Hudson, is what I intend to find out. I promised Mary that I would find her husband, and I intend to keep that promise.”
Chapter 8
Master Post
Author: RubyChan05
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Watson/Mary
Word Count: 2124
Rating: PG-13
Chapter 7
It had been five weeks since Watson had disappeared. Holmes had spent every waking moment of every day since going over the evidence, refusing all other distractions to the detriment of his health, London’s crime rates, and Mrs Hudson’s patience.
And all for naught.
Not a single new witness had come forward. His various visits to Walton-on-Thames had turned up no new leads, and the constabulary were now able to not only recognise him on sight, but also predict his leading sentence right down to each individual word. To put it bluntly, Holmes was stuck, and that just wasn’t good enough when it was Watson’s life on the line.
God, Watson.
Sitting in Watson’s old chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, Holmes stared intently at the board of evidence he’d erected against the opposite wall. There had to be something he’d missed. Some grain of truth, some tiny detail that would prove the keystone to this entire case.
Men like Watson did not simply disappear. He was far from some villainous husband who had grown bored of city society and simply gone off to seek new pastures. And he wasn’t rich enough to merit any sort of kidnap and ransom.
He had no enemies besides those Holmes himself shared, and a vigorous investigation of London’s seedy criminal underbelly had left the majority of felons Holmes had encountered bruised and bloody, but not turned up any sign of vengeance directed at Holmes.
He’d long determined that the gang Watson had been fighting had not abducted him for nefarious reasons, and he could find no trace of obsessive stalkers or husbands who’d somehow managed to get the entirely wrong idea about Watson’s interactions with his patients.
Lestrade had told him that the case had been put aside for now, demoted to make way for fresher, more solvable cases. And that just wasn’t good enough.
He’d let his friend down enough already. Holmes wasn’t about to let him rot out there.
No. Not rot. That brought far too many images to mind that Holmes didn’t even want to consider.
There was a knock at the door, and Holmes cursed under his breath. Mrs Hudson had truly started earning her ‘Nanny’ nickname recently, regularly coming in to check on him every three hours or so to make sure he was eating what she left out for him. If the plate remained full, she would stand over him and lecture until he’d eaten at least half, thrusting glasses of water under his nose to wash the food down.
He’d thought that Watson was tenacious when it came to looking after his health, but he had nothing on Mrs Hudson when she had a bee in her bonnet.
Shoving the remaining ham sandwich into his mouth, Holmes winced as he swallowed the barely chewed snack.
“C’m ‘n.” He managed through the bread currently choking him, beating a fist against his chest in an attempt to ease its passage.
The door creaked open, but rather than the landlady he’d expected to see, it was to his immense surprise someone entirely different.
“Mary? Good lord, I haven’t seen you since…since the day after your wedding.” He exclaimed, sitting upright and hurriedly straightening his dressing gown somewhat. Mary smiled wanly at him, shuffling over to the spare seat and easing herself down. She didn’t look well - her cheeks had sunk into her face, making her look drawn and gaunt, and her hair was visibly lank despite having been manhandled into an elegant bun.
Clearly, Watson’s disappearance had taken its toll on her.
He wondered what he would have looked like if it weren’t for Mrs Hudson.
“Well, if you’d accepted any of the dinner invitations we sent you…” She chastised Holmes gently. Holmes coughed, looking slightly embarrassed.
“Of course. Sadly I had…um…prior engagements.”
“Indeed.” They sat in silence for a while, neither meeting the other’s gaze. It was only when the grandfather clock chimed the hour that Mary finally spoke again.
“They’ve dropped John’s case.”
“I know.”
“They’re just going to leave him out there…wherever he is. What if he’s lying in some hospital somewhere, hurt? Or robbed and penniless, unable to get back home?” Mary exclaimed, voice anguished. Holmes bit his lip.
“I’ve been trying to work out what happened to him…but by the time I got to the crime scene, the locals had already ruined it beyond saving. I’ve had nothing but eyewitness accounts and the evidence collected by the police themselves to go on.”
Mary looked at him fondly, eyes drooping tiredly as she covered a harsh cough with a gloved hand.
“I know you have. I didn’t expect any less of you. John was always talking about you, both whilst he was still living with you and after he moved out. He was proud to call you a friend.”
Holmes winced, remembering the stunt he’d pulled on the night before Watson’s wedding. He had no doubt that Mary would have far fewer kind words for him had she only known what he’d done.
“Yes, well…”
“Some police came to my house today.” Mary said suddenly, staring intently at the fireplace. “Not Lestrade and his gang - the ones lower down the ladder. They asked me if John had any reason to just up and leave. Debts, feuds…an unhappy marriage.”
Oh, Lestrade was going to hear about this, Holmes seethed inwardly. The inspector may be a clot sometimes, but he would never have stood for such impertinent questioning of a lady in Mary’s state. He’d have to get their names off Mary later…he guaranteed that within a few weeks of Lestrade catching wind of what had happened a few officers would be demoted.
“He’d put his gambling days far behind him. And he got on with everybody.” Holmes reassured her. “As for an unhappy marriage…I’ve never known a man willing to do so much for his bride. He truly loved you Mary.”
Mary shivered, her eyes dropping to the floor.
“It’s just that sometimes…sometimes he could be distant. As if he’d gone somewhere else, somewhere I couldn’t follow him. From the moment we got married, he seemed…changed…somehow. Like something had happened that I could never hope to understand.”
Holmes swallowed hard, tugging at his collar surreptitiously. There was only one thing that Mary could be referring to. Watson had undoubtedly been remembering the night Holmes had enticed him into bed, the night Watson had decided to give up Mary in order to have a life with Holmes.
Watson hadn’t been the only one to find himself dwelling on it. Holmes himself had found that night frequently in his thoughts, wondering what would have happened had it not merely been an ill judged scheme to make Watson stay with him.
He wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that he himself remained stuck on it, or the fact that in all his fantasies they were happy.
“It was nothing to do with you.” Holmes said quietly, crushing his own guilt and leaning forward to take Mary’s gloved hand in his. He was momentarily shocked by the feeling of bones through leather, but swallowed his horror back and continued on. “Watson came back from the war a broken man. He may seem whole now, but he can never truly be what he was before. You just hadn’t spent enough time with him to notice.”
It was a pathetic lie, but hopefully a good enough one to fool a woman as desperate as Mary. Sure enough, she leapt on the sliver of hope like one starved of food.
“I never knew…I was beginning to think his heart belonged to another.” She laughed hollowly, and Holmes suddenly found the sky outside to be a very interesting thing indeed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I still have yet to find your husband.” Holmes blustered. “Not that he’d be very happy to see you in the state you’re in now. You or his child.”
Mary stared at him, mouth open.
“How did you know?”
“You’ve been cradling your stomach ever since you first sat down. And every time you mention Watson, you rub it.”
“No one else has noticed…”
“That’s because you’re letting yourself waste away.” Holmes said sternly. “You’re meant to be eating for two, not eating child sized portions. How do you think Watson will feel, coming back only to find his wife and unborn child dead of malnutrition?”
Mary smiled softly, levering herself to her feet and kissing Holmes softly on the brow.
“You’re right. I haven’t been looking after myself. I’ve been selfish - I have someone else to look after now.”
Pausing at the doorway, Mary turned to look back at Holmes, eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“People talk about him in the past tense now, you know. I keep catching myself doing it. Even you were doing it earlier.”
“Mary…”
“I don’t want to be a widow before I have to be. But I can’t live off hope forever either. Please…find him for me.” She pleaded desperately. Holmes nodded, trying to convey his earnestness through his eyes.
“I promise you, Mary. One way or another, I will tell you what has become of your husband. I’ll solve this. Whatever the cost.”
Mary smiled gratefully, shutting the door behind herself as she left. Holmes listened to the sound of her heels on the stairs, moving to the window in time to see her start off down the street, occasionally stumbling as she searched for an empty cab.
If she didn’t do something soon, she wasn’t going to make it long enough to see her husband return.
“Did you manage to give the poor woman some hope?” Mrs Hudson asked, coming into the room with a fresh pot of tea. Holmes shrugged, moving to stand in front of his evidence board and crossing his eyes in an attempt to see things in a different light.
“A little. There’s not much to go around these days. Every day that goes by, the trail gets colder.”
“No new leads then?”
“No. I’m heading back into Walton-on-Thames tomorrow to see if I can’t drag something new from the local police.”
Mrs Hudson shook her head, tutting at the mess of crumbs Holmes had left all over the carpet. Though at least it was sign that he was eating, she supposed.
“You’ll be lucky. According to my niece they’ve just found a body in the river. Suicide, poor thing. All because her lover refused to mar…”
“Of course, that’s it!” Holmes exclaimed, slamming a hand against the board. How can I have been so stupid?! Nanny, you’re a genius!”
Mrs Hudson blinked, unsure of what exactly she’d said to get Holmes quite so excited. She failed to see how her mentioning such a thing as suicide could inspire Holmes so.
“Walton-on-Thames is on a river! On the Thames, to be more precise. I may have been checking every last inch of ground about the crime scene, but Watson never left the bridge via the ground! He went over the side!”
“Oh my…then surely he’s…”
“Hush now Mrs Hudson. The height is nowhere near enough to cause death upon impact. Now, if we are to assume that Watson was unconscious, or at least stunned, when he hit the water…”
Sweeping the masses of pinned paper off the board, Holmes began writing feverishly on the bare surface, his hand moving so fast that it was nearly a blur.
“He would have been swept downstream - summer rainstorms always make the current swell - until he hit the first curve in the bank. This landmass would have sent him spinning down the river at an angle of…” Holmes trailed off, muttering calculations under his breath as he attempted to visualise the situation.
Mrs Hudson waited, hope swelling in her chest.
“…until he emerged at the critical point, which is here!” Holmes finally proclaimed, stabbing a pin into a map of southeast England and bounding across the room. Mrs Hudson peered closer, frowning slightly.
“He’s in Southend? Isn’t that upstream?”
Holmes paused, wheeling back.
“Hmm. So it is. Hold on.” Spinning the map round, he slammed the pin in again, tapping it furiously. “That’s better. Far more likely than Southend. Whoever heard of a man floating upstream? He’s in Marlow. I’d stake Gladstone on it.”
He paused, frowning.
“That is, had Watson not taken him with him. My hat then. I’d stake my hat.”
“Then why hasn’t he gone home?” Mrs Hudson questioned, smoothing down her skirts in nervous agitation. Holmes winked at her, flipping his hat up his arm and onto his head.
“That, my dear Mrs Hudson, is what I intend to find out. I promised Mary that I would find her husband, and I intend to keep that promise.”
Chapter 8
Master Post