Cycle 4, Round 4 Entries: #23- #26
23.
Emma was not much given to memorializing the dead. Her parent’s graves were kept tidy but their headstones were plain. Her sister’s urn was buried neatly next to the two babies Emma had lost before they drew more than a handful of breaths, both little boys tucked up carefully with their aunt who died far too young. Her husband…Well, Emma thought, who cared where Thomas’ remains wound up. The state of Florida had offered her his body or his ashes. She had refused both and informed them that no, he would not be donating his body to science, thank you. He did not deserve to be thought well of, even in death. She thought of the dead often, but never considered setting up tiny monuments for them, enshrining them, making them something they were not, to be to her taste. There were, however, exceptions to every rule.
Dorothy Davis was small, feline and pretty even after the surgeries to repair her face and hands. Her daughter let Emma in and shower her to the parlor where Dorothy waited, lap quilt tucked tidily around her knees on the old settee. “Emma,” Dorothy said, a smile in her voice, “I haven’t seen you in almost ten years!”
Dorothy’s daughter shut the study door quietly, leaving the two women in peace. Emma waited for an extra second before speaking. “I heard about the cancer, Dot. I’m so sorry…”
“Emma, I’ve survived worse.” She raised her scarred hands to her face and her lips twisted in a parody of a grin.
“Dot, don’t fib to me,” she scolded, a trace of her old nanny tone creeping back in; she was rewarded with Dot’s sigh and slight shake of her head. “Your own daughter told me it was already at stage four.”
“I’m on chemo,” she admitted. “And things seem to be slowing down… nothing has changed in the last few checks.” She sighed again and closed her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be just the trick, survive a serial killer only to die from some quiet little disease a decade later?”
“Dotty…”
“Emma, listen to me. Please.” She rose to her feet somewhat gingerly-Thomas Hudson had done a number on her hamstrings, making her unable to flee his attack ten years previous, and surgery had helped but only just-and made her way to the piano set against the far wall. “There’s something I need for you to keep for me.”
“Dorothy Eleanor Davis, you stop thinking that right this instant. I-“
“Please, Emma. Cor, do you know how odd it is to call you that, even at this age?” She retrieved a sheaf of papers and limped to Emma’s side. “I wrote this a year ago. I’ve been trying to play it but it just won’t do right with these fingers. Hold on to it for me, would you? When I’m done with chemo, I’d like…” she paused, drew a deep breath. “I’d like to hear it played.”
Emma took the papers and nodded once, sharply. “Now, tell me all about Sophie’s foray into modeling. She wouldn’t say much when she came ‘round for tea last week. It’s working out, isn’t it?”
Sherlock didn’t have to ask why Emma Hudson was standing in his doorway at six in the morning on a Tuesday. “Dorothy Davis?”
“An hour ago.”
He stepped back to let her in, ignoring the heavy sound of John’s steps as he staggered down the stairs. They’d only been home an hour or so, John just falling asleep minutes before the knock on the door. They moved to the kitchen table, John stumbling in to fill the doorway with a confused frown before lurching towards the kettle. Sherlock nodded to the papers in Emma’s hands. “May I?”
“She wrote it a year ago,” she murmured. “She was never able to truly play again, after Thomas…well, after what he did to her. But she kept writing music.”
“Requiem,” Sherlock said softly, fingering the pages. “She wrote her own requiem.”
“It’s for the piano,” Emma added. “I…I don’t know anyone who plays other than you.”
John yawned. “You play the piano?”
“Mmm. I’m better at the violin.” He looked up and smiled, a true smile, at Emma. “Give me a moment to dress and I’ll be down shortly.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you, Sherlock. I…we’d appreciate that.”
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24.
Westminster Cathedral was filled near to overflowing. But this occasion was not a royal wedding, nor a royal funeral. The occasion was, sadly, more commonplace than either.
Today was the annual Solemn Requiem Mass of the Catholic Police Guild for police officers recently deceased.
The Metropolitan Police’s Male Choir sang the liturgy, doleful and majestic. Row after row of dark-uniformed police bowed their heads and paid respect to their departed fellow officers.
One figure did not bow his head. Instead, he was fuming, glancing distractedly between his watch and the great doors of the Westminster. He refused several officers a place next to him. That place was being held for John.
But John did not come.
This year’s Requiem Mass was distinguished by following immediately upon the funeral of two officers, Renwick and Ellis, who had died in a bombing that very week. A third officer was gravely wounded. Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, at the last minute, agreed to join them for a game of racquetball, protesting that his record as a marksman would likely not carry over onto the court.
He never got a chance to find out.
The official line was that the officers had been deliberately targeted. Drug lords, Islamic extremists, and disaffected youths were variously blamed.
Evidence was scant.
* * *
“How long does a man live?” Bishop Stack looked out over the throng of officers.
“They live, we are taught, in our memories, and in our experiences, long after they have gone. It is our recollections that keep them alive. Remember your fallen brothers, and especially Officers Renwick and Ellis, who fell to a brutal and senseless bomb attack, just five days past.
“Let us pray.”
* * *
In the silence before the prayers for the dead, Sherlock sprang to his feet.
“Remember them! Remember your fallen brothers!” He shouted, striding between the pews, his voice echoing amongst the stone pillars."
“Praying won’t bring them back. Don’t you see, the way to honor the dead -- is to avenge them. None of you should be here. On your knees. Waste of time. You should be out - solving crimes. That is the way to honor dead policemen.”
There was a general uproar as policemen protested: some leaped forward to restrain Sherlock, but he was too quick. He was in the front pews now, where the pallbearers from the funeral sat.
“Sit down, sir,” the Bishop ordered, scandalized.
“Willingly. After all of the pallbearers remove their gloves. Now.”
The pallbearers stared up at Sherlock, pale and furious, an avenging angel.
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police pulled at Sherlock’s shoulder. “Mr. Holmes. Stop this or I’ll have you arrested.”
“Arrest me: but make them take off their gloves.”
“What’s this about, Mr. Holmes?”
“You know my record: Do it, and I promise you will do more for your dead officers than a hundred Requiems.”
The Commissioner nodded at the pallbearers, who began removing their gloves. Gloves which had just lowered the dead officers into their graves.
The last pallbearer was pale and shaking, shrinking in his seat. The others stared at him, and then up to Sherlock, looking grimly triumphant. Before the man could flee, two pallbearers tackled him and forcibly removed his gloves. They handed them to Sherlock with awe.
Sherlock turned them out.
The insides of the gloves were stained with brilliant blue blotches.
* * *
“I arranged for gloves saturated with a reagent of my own invention to be substituted for their own gloves,” Sherlock announced. “The pallbearers were made to change their gloves for the final handling of the caskets. It reacts to the minutest of traces of very particular type of explosive. An explosive, I might add, stolen from police evidence. Renwick had caught our pallbearer - his best friend - stealing from the evidence room: drugs, money, guns. Renwick was going to turn him in.”
Sherlock handed the gloves to the Commissioner; at his signal, officers took the pallbearer swiftly away to general uproar.
“There’s a proper Requiem, Bishop,” Sherlock said, and strode out of Westminster Cathedral. Row by row, officers rose to thank him.
He paid them no mind whatsoever.
* * *
Sherlock entered to the quiet hospital room where Lestrade was recovering. John was there, pale and exhausted. Lestrade was still unconscious.
Observing Sherlock’s formal suit, John smacked his forehead. “The Requiem Mass. Sorry, Sherlock. I -“
“There were some departures from the traditional service,” Sherlock said. He leaned down close to Lestrade’s ear and whispered.
Lestrade’s eyes fluttered.
John could almost swear the ghost of a smile crossed his lips.
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25.
Warning:
Character death and death of actual persons
When John Watson was 18 - after passing his Bursary and nursing an injured knee from a particularly brutal forward tackle - he sat in a chippy, trying not to think too much about his future, when everything went a little bit… swirly.
Originally, playing on the radio should have been the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun, released on the 22nd of November, 1968. Instead, the Beatles had never made it past the first month playing at the Indra in Hamburg. George Harrison had been convicted of being underage anddeported, Paul McCartney and Pete Best set fire to the Bambi Kino theatre, Stuart Sutcliffe fell quite artistically for an Existentialist, and John Lennon had screwed around with a prostitute who looked a little bit like Bridgette Bardot for a couple of weeks before growing bored and heading back to Liverpool. They never did get back together. Instead, John Watson was being serenaded by Cliff Richard. Totally different feel that. Pity, too. The 6/8, 6/4, 6/8, 7/4 polyrhythmic masterpiece of The Beatles Song that Never Was Written would have spurred John into a very interesting, dangerous life.
Instead, uninspired by Carrie, John gracefully conceded to his ready-made future and became a rugby star. Which would turn out to be as equally dangerous, in the long run.
Or rather, he did both.
It wasn't until the moment that he was shot that the duality was finally revealed to him. That he was able to see the fork where his two lives diverged. Six gunshots testified of the differences. One, a bullet through the upper thigh, mud in his mouth, wet grass up his nose and the scream of fans fading in and out of his ailing ears. The second, third, fourth and fifth punched through John Lennon. The sixth got his Military self low in the left shoulder. Laid him down in the sand. Drained him into the desert.
You would think that with the two John's now aware of each other in that fragile moment on the cusp of death that the split would have to have something to do with him, right?
Wrong.
It had absolutely nothing to do with John Watson. Except for some strange coincidental happenstance whereby in which he shared the name.
John.
George Harrison - had he still been alive - could have told either of the John Watsons that John Lennon was a crazy bastard, but could not have told you how he broke the universe in less than 20,000 words. The John Watson that knew of John Lennon would never have thought him that special. But that John Watson was buried in the sand right this minute, not thinking of much beyond the colour red and Please God, let me live. Rugby star John Watson, the number nine burning lines on television screens across the country, was too busy screaming to think about much of anything, let alone wonder who in the unholy blazes was John Lennon and what the hell he had to do with a song about a Walrus.
There are places I remember….
All my life, though some have changed…
That wasn't the right song, thought Doctor John Watson, illogically, as he was dragged to safety. Didn't the Walrus one go
goo-goo-ga-joob?
Though I know I'll never lose affection...
And then it hit Rugby Star John Watson. The familiarity of the jingle. This song he'd never heard before, that ran through his mind with all the persistence of a failed play after a tournament was lost.
He knew it. Had known it...
I know I'll often stop and think about them...
He used to bash random keys on his mothers piano when he was a child, trying to find the same ones. The constant repeat, repeat, repeat of it on the clarinet as a teenager when he sought some kind of calm in amongst the madness of a father who drank, punched and cried all the time. Sometimes he had dreamed snatches of lyrics…
In my life...
And now he saw, from beginning to end, why that song had plagued him. From low on his gurney, vision swimming in and out, he saw the future of his Sinister self, the left hand of his split life. Laid low, in coffin and in ground, and the song, echoing back through time, and twisted lives, and a broken universe, from an equally broken man he would never know save by this;
In my life
I'll love you more...
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26.
Requiescat in Pace
Waiting…
He was waiting for something.
Waiting.
But what for? What about all the others. Criminals? Victims? He didn’t recognize any of the faces, but he knew. They were waiting, too.
Waiting…
He needed to know… if only the movie would end so he could think! Think! Just for a moment… figure out what he was waiting for. Was someone about to walk into the pool of streetlight and announce himself, or...
He blinked. Surely that was laptop light... and... hadn’t he been standing outside in the cold? Why was he...
Oh...
It had been a dream. That did happen occasionally when he took a desperately needed nap after a case.
Though perhaps this something more than an example of stress-related insomnia…
“John what is that heinous... aural torture?”
John was typing with two fingers on his laptop.
“What? Sorry! Did I wake you?”
“Did you wake me? Of course you did! What is that?”
John looked around the room in confusion. “Wha...”
“The music?”
“Oh... You mean you don’t... of course you don’t know... It’s Journey, Sherlock. Everyone loves Journey!”
“Well, I’m not everyone. Turn it off!”
OoOoO
Sherlock couldn’t ever remember feeling so exhausted… Was this what they meant when they said you feel your age? It couldn’t! He wouldn’t be fifty for… three months, two days, six hours, and eleven minutes.
But he had to admit that after that chase, he did not want even to eat a sandwich. He just dropped to the couch in his coat. The pillow was soft. His eyes began to close. He would never admit it to anyone, but he liked that muzzy place where sleep and waking become indistinguishable. It was pleasant... relaxing... A few minutes of this, and he would get up, eat something, and then change into something more comfortable for bed.
A few more minutes. It was warm. Comfortable. It was…
“SHOT THROUGH THE HEART!”
Sherlock jumped up and clutched at his chest. Was this what it felt like to have a heart attack?
“John! What have you done? This is your fault! You’ve killed me!”
John had slammed his laptop shut, and was staring back at Sherlock guiltily. “I… I didn’t realize it was still attached to the speakers… sorry.”
Sherlock was still focused on breathing. “That… that is because you… you see, but…”
“But I don’t observe. I’m sorry, Sherlock. Just… go back to sleep.”
The last thing he registered before the muzziness took over was John gingerly lifting his laptop lid back open.
OoOoO
Something was wrong. Not that he was smoking it, surely. Even Mycroft had indulged once in his career. And it didn’t hurt him. It was just… nice… not to have to think all those thoughts… instead to feel relaxed, happy, carefree. He’d been wanting that recently - escape from his own head. Why did it feel wrong now?
Ah.
He realized after a confused moment. Because he was so many years
removed from those days. Because…
“John, turn it off, I’m trying to sleep.”
“What’s wrong with ‘Truckin’?”