Prompting Part XXIV
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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... )
Mike hears the news on the radio, while he’s brushing his teeth. He chokes on his toothpaste and coughs, and has to sit down on the side of the bath to steady himself.
It’s on the BBC, and so his instinct is to trust what they’re saying, but he can’t reconcile the portrait they’re painting with the man he knows. It’s possible, he thinks, after all, all those murder cases you see on the news, with the neighbours saying what a nice man he was and I’d never have guessed. Except, he doesn’t know anyone (with the possible exception of John Watson or Molly Hooper) who’d call Sherlock Holmes a nice man, so it’s not like that at all, really.
It takes him four days and innumerable newspapers to make his mind up. The hospital canteen has been running rife with rumour, each one wilder than the last, and it makes him sick to witness.
He takes the afternoon off to drop by Baker Street, and discovers from their distraught landlady that John’s staying with his sister again at the moment. He spends half an hour trying to comfort Mrs Hudson, and comes away feeling emptier than ever, with a damp shoulder.
When he finally catches up with John, it’s to find him dry-eyed and silent, still caught in the moment of watching Sherlock fall. Mike finds himself involuntarily reminded of when they’d met by chance eighteen months ago: John’s back is held ramrod straight, his gait more marching than walking, his face so defensively neutral that it was hard to believe he was the same John Watson that had laughed his way through medical school, or the same John Watson that had rolled his eyes and grinned while recounting Sherlock’s latest antics with a client a mere month ago. This was John Watson just out of a war zone.
Mike thinks of all the possible openings to this conversation. Gentle sympathy doesn’t seem the right fit for a hard-eyed John, and bland commiseration would probably be offensive. Mike wonders how many people have already hurt John by their assumption that Sherlock betrayed his trust, and settles for acknowledgement of the circumstances.
“Sherlock Holmes was a first-rate multidisciplinary scientist that excelled in all of the biological, chemical and forensic sciences - and also an ornery sod who couldn’t be bothered with social niceties when there was an interesting experiment in the offing. I’ve watched him work. I’ve proof-read some of his papers and been part of the peer-review process for others. I introduced you to him, if you remember. I know he wasn’t a fraud.”
John’s mask cracks briefly, and he takes a long, shaky breath. His shoulders relax fractionally.
“Thank you,” he says.
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John returns one day to Harry’s, after a walk, to find a cream envelope with his name on it has been hand-delivered through her letter box.
Torn between curiosity and lurking dread, he opens it to find a card exceptional only in its taste and discreet elegance, written in a loose, flowing hand that loops and swirls, even as it occasionally stutters with age. Distantly, he remembers a card with similar writing appearing at Baker Street earlier in the year, and Sherlock attempting to hide a flattered smile even as he verbally dismissed it as a grateful but dim relative of a client and consigned it (rather carefully if John remembers correctly) to a desk drawer.
“Dear Dr Watson,” it says,
“I feel that I must write and convey my sympathies for the loss of your friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes. His talents and vitality will be missed by all who knew him and of him, and I wish that we had had the opportunity to meet in person. I can only hope and trust that the wrongful damage to his reputation can be repaired in time, and the truth of his deeds known once again.
“With all my best wishes,
your grateful client, E.”
John sets the card down with a trembling hand, and wipes the sudden tears from his face. He puts it back in its envelope and carries it upstairs for safe-keeping. He’s not sure what he feels.
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Molly isn’t sure what she should or shouldn’t say. Or how to say it, if she should ever work out what “it” is.
She wants to tell John everything, to reassure him, to stop him looking like his best friend’s died - which he did, at least as far as John knows, so that’s not really a good way of phrasing it even in her own mind. She wants to hug him hard and let him cry the numbness away. She wants to see his face relax into any emotion other than the terrible frozen mask that he’s become.
She can’t even look him in the eye. It’s guilt of course, because she could stop his pain by talking to him, but she knows he thinks it’s because she believes in Sherlock’s guilt.
And maybe she would give in and tell John, if it wasn’t for the fact that Sherlock had begged her for this one (albeit massive) favour. For the fact that he had (for just this one essential time) confided in her everything, the words spilling out in a way that she had never expected from Sherlock of all people. All his conclusions about the way that Jim had set the trap; his certainty that people whose lives had interwoven with his would be punished for the crime of knowing him; his reasons for suspecting that there would be back-up plots in place to ensure that he had no choice in the end, even to the point of endangering his closest acquaintances. Or at least the ones that Jim thought were important - and this was key, because Sherlock’s plan hung on the belief that Moriarty had forgotten to take Molly into account.
At the last, before Molly left to put their plan into action, Sherlock had grasped her shoulders in his hands, his fingers firm but somehow tentative, and then he leaned in to kiss her briefly on the forehead. It felt like a goodbye from a brother.
“Thank you,” he said, stepping back again. His eyes had met hers solemnly and then skittered away, already thinking twenty steps ahead to the inevitable confrontation. “If this doesn‘t work…” His voice stopped and he fell into silence, searching for words.
She tried to smile reassuringly, but her lip felt suddenly wobbly and she ended up biting it nervously instead. There was no guarantee that it would work, and no way for her to convince him of it.
“I’ll do my part,” she had said, and fled.
She could tell John all of this, but she won’t. Because if Sherlock’s right - and Sherlock is almost always right - John’s still in just as much danger as when Jim was alive. And it’s John they’ll be watching.
--end--
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GOOD JOB, anon. :)
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I'm glad that John came across well. I was trying to see him through the other people's eyes mostly, rather than focusing on his reaction to the people coming forward, so I'm relieved it worked!
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This... Is amazing. Beautiful. I love this as much as the other fill.
I... My prompts hardly ever get filled, let alone twice. Tonight is a good night.
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