prompting part XXIII
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Prompts from this post can be filled on the Overflow Post
IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
Over thirty years later, the melody of the music box is coming to a close. With one parent gone and the other quite ill, John and Harry are about to turn from flesh and bone back into painted clay. That is, unless someone wishes for them to stay. Harry drinks her grief into silence, knowing that she is nothing anyone would wish for. John risks his life, thinking those born of anything living are worth more; he doesn't even try. And both count the days until the magic of the wish runs out. But the day comes and goes; their last parent dies but the melody stays. So do they. Who saved them? Who loved either of them enough to want them forever? And that is the prompt.
Even better if there's a scene where John and Harry unconsciously imitate music box figurines by dancing in circles together around a room. Maybe they even hum the tune.
(Mycroft says 'Inductive; cetect.' Mycroft thinks Sherlock should do the legwork here. Obviously.)
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Seconded! This is such a beautiful prompt!
So beautiful!
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THIRDED.
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When she was a little girl, the very youngest she had ever been, Harriet's mother took her to see a disney film, and she was obsessed. Dancing, colors, music. The princesses, too, sometimes, intrigued her. But more than that, it was the movement, the artistry, though eight year old dolls don't know such a word.
Those films were like going home, to a warm bed and a soft whisper.
She doesn't watch them now, because of that. Soon she will go back there. Back to paly and ceramic and metal, back to music and stiff arms that she cannot feel, but that flow with such odd grace all the same.
She doesn't want to go home.
==-==-==
John's father did an excellent job of teaching his son the value of life. Too well, some might argue. It doesn't matter, really, in the end. The fact of it is, he has saved lives. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. He has make life worth living for far fewer, but the numbers aren't infinitessimal.
John Watson has made it the work of his years to improve life for the people around him. And he had done brilliantly. He should be satisfied with it. But he isn't.
He breathes in. He breathes out. He imagines hearing a whirring gear, but that's all it is. Half a memory, and wholly imaginary. Much like the pain in his shoulder, which doesn't exist, and does.
He never asked, but he supposes his mother dropped the box. When he goes back, there'll be a chip on his shoulder- as if there isn't already- and his stem will be dented. He'll never spin in a circle properly.
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters, really. Nothing at all.
==-==-==
Harry wanted to be a mother. She wanted a little girl- or boy, she wasn't too picky- of her own, to coddle and protect, and show all the magic and wonder of the world.
She wanted someone to love and cherish, to be loved by as well. A little piece of herself that would live on.
Dolls can't have children. And some cruel part of her, as she stares at the pale waif that was once her mother, breathing so harshly on that hospital bed, think that this woman should never have had children either. Should have been condemned to suffer the loneliness, the certainty of the end, just as she had to now.
But she isn't that awful. Just angry and upset. And even now, when the words would be only noises to that emptying body, she doesn't tell her mother. Doesn't explain the horrible truth that she's known since before she could understand.
That the magic is ending. The screen is growing darker, as the last notes being to fade.
==-==-==
He eats, he sleeps, he dreams. He vomits, sometimes, when he's ill. He studies the gun he picked up in a fit of pique, years ago now, and never actually put down. Saving lives by ending them is a silly thought. The ideas of a young man, that can never be repented for, no matter what he does.
He hold the heavy weight of it, and makes a decision that really isn't his to make. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he will go home.
He can't shoot himself.
He can shoot the box.
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"Don't do this. You don't have to do this. You... You're the only... Please."
"Right. Yes. It's always me, isn't it. I just..."
She wins him over, in that impossibly sad way of her. She hasn't got much left, nothing worth keeping. But what is left, is hers, and she wants it. She wants is so badly. She has never seen her brother deny her anything. Not candies, not favors, not girls. He is too good, and too bright, and the only one of them who can fix this. He's right, and she's wrong, but that's not the important part now. Because, she is the bigger one, if not the older, and she has never let him get his way when it's at cross purposes with hers.
She isn't about to start now.
==-==-==
He decides that his last months are going to be his best ones. Or rather, the deicsion is mad for him. By an idiot-savant. Or genius-savant. Idiot genius?
Regardless, everything changes so suddenly that he doesn't really have the choice, does he?
It's so bright, so hot, so wonderful. It makes him feel so alive.
It makes the gloom of his coming death that much darker.
==-==-==
Their mother dies.
==-==-==
I don't... I don't understand this. Not really. Thinks a woman, staring at the flickering lights of her mogue. I just... I don't want him to go away.
And she should. She should want him to go away. She should be petty and jealous, because just this once, just this one time, she's entitled to it.
But she can't, because he's too kind, and it's impossible to stay mad at a man like John Watson. Particularly when his mother is ill. Particularly when he's making plans to leave.
She knows leaving. She's seen it plenty of times. She knows what it means, when people start being too friendly, start trying to make every day brighter and brighter, fighting against the tides of life.
Then, the gifts. Giving away things they can't take, or don't want to. Trying to make memories concrete and solid.
It's a beautiful box. Rosewood and gold, and full of sweet, delicate clockworks that Sherlock would break in seconds just because he could. She's really the best recipient. Only, perhaps it should have gone to Mrs Hudson.
I wish he would stay.
She's wished on stars before. And when she was little, one wish came true. It filled her with warmth, a sudden sense of certainty.
She doesn't have that now.
But she has the box, and it has a key. And she twists the spring inside it tight, because it really is a lovely box, with such beautiful music.
==-==-==
Their mother died.
They haven't, not just yet.
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Oh! What is this perfection? I had my heart all achey and my eyes all squinted up to keep the tears in!
Oh, author!anon this is a beautiful piece! I just love how you had Molly recieve the box and she was just so gentle and desperate to not see John go. That was beautfiul!
This fill is beautiful!
Thank you for writing this author!anon!
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I just wanted to say that I admire you for managing to create such a beautiful and moving story in relatively few words
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