Fic: Guide You Home
Title: Guide You Home
Fandom: Canon/Granada
Wordcount: 2,196
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson (implied)
Summary: Just when it seems Watson has come to a crisis in his life without his dearest friend, a mysterious stranger turns up.
A/N: Hiatus fic. This is somewhat a mixture of Canon and Granada 'verse, being that Mary Morstan does not seem to exist ;) Have also thrown in a dash of Catullus, just to spice up the mix. You're welcome.
Also - after watching the Granada version of The Final Problem, where DB's Watson looks so devastatingly heartbroken in that final scene, this plot bunny got all rabid on me... it was one of those stories that had to be written or it would never have stopped gnawing at me.
~*~
The smoke gathering in the billiard room of my club is thickening to stifling proportions, and yet, I’ve been well aware for no little time that my legs will not be persuaded to carry me out of this asphyxiating atmosphere. It reminds me so intensely of him that I cannot endure it, aware I am to be forever denied the simple pleasure of throwing open the sitting room door in Baker Street to be greeted by noxious plumes of shag, the tangible evidence of Sherlock Holmes’ great mind untangling some new conundrum.
The laughter amidst the clacking of cue balls, the faint aroma of brandy -- aspects of this oasis I once relished, now serve only to turn my stomach. For me, there is no longer solace here. Instead, I find my nerves are grated down so thinly by the merriment of men I once called amiable acquaintances, I can hardly manage reaching out to the half empty glass of spirits on the side table without a persistent palsy undermining my efforts. Utterly pathetic.
Gratefully, I am not quite so inebriated the liquor doesn’t burn deliciously on its way down. What it fails to do, however, is warm me. My insides are frozen, though not from the residual coolness of this early spring night. It’s rather warm here, cozily so, as a matter of fact, the hearth blazing intensely. No, no. My chill emanates from the soul, and has never subsided in nigh on three years.
Whatever possessed me to abandon the safe confines of my house to wander into this place I’ve had no desire to set foot in since I returned home from Switzerland, I cannot say.
Ah, but I am a liar. I wanted to see the inside, the familiar faces, just once more. Was morbidly curious to know if the sight of those men stirred any semblance of what, once upon a time and long, long ago, made me human. A folly, if ever there was one, for the single thing I needed to spark the flame within back to life was lying in a tangled mass of decaying limbs at the bottom of Reichenbach Falls.
Casually, so as not to draw undue attention upon myself, I slide a trembling hand into my inner pocket, feel the reassuring weight of cold steel between my calloused fingers. This elicits a twisted ghost of my old smile; it seems I no longer recall how to even imitate the way my lips curled in genuine happiness.
With precise movements, so as not to overturn the thing and draw undue attention upon myself, I set down the emptied glass. Time to go home, but tonight I shan’t be hailing a cab back to my practice in Kensington. I am so tired, so very achingly tired, and there is only one sleep that shall grant me any rest. One route to lead me back home.
Someone calls out to me as I manoeuver my way through the maze of socializing men into the hallway; my old billiards partner, Thurston, if I am not much mistaken. An amiable sort of fellow, I cannot deny, though it wearies me how all the old acquaintances openly gasp at the shadow before them, how they pelt me with a torrent of bothersome questions, not the least of which being why I still dress in full mourning attire. Do I not see this habit as shockingly inappropriate at best, scandalous, even? The devil can take them all, they who dare dictate the length of time allotted to my heart for grieving.
***
Westminster Bridge is less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from my club. Not an ideal location for what I have in mind, but it’s deserted enough at this ungodly hour that I’ll be afforded relative seclusion.
Leaning over the rails, I wait for a lone cab to pass as I finger the loaded service revolver snugly ticked away in the inner pocket of my sack coat. Vaguely, I’m aware of heavy footfalls behind me, the tap of a walking stick on pavement, it’s owner remarkably unsteady on his feet by the sound of his stick grinding into the stones as he throws all his weight atop it with each step.
“Mind if I rest here a mite, guv? Me ol’ bones ain’t wot they used to be.”
My irritation at having my grim thoughts interrupted is fleeting. This peddler bracing himself against the gas lamp is not so much aged as he is simply weary, though admittedly, his dark colored spectacles prevent accurate gauging of his years, and his hair and facial stubble are pure silver. From the painful way his bones virtually protrude through flesh, heaven only knows when he occasioned upon a decent meal, or for that matter, the meagrest scrap of bread. The sight of it stirs something akin to the distress I felt when Holmes, in the throes of a black mood or an absorbing case, refused sustenance.
“No, not at all.” The words, to my great surprise, are not affected politeness. I don’t mind his presence in the least, a queer thing considering how thoroughly I’ve shunned humanity of late. “In fact, I should like you to have this,” I add, rummaging through my pockets for the few shillings within. “I fear it’s not much, but enough to come by a good meal.”
My last good deed.
As I hold out the change to him, his eyes sear through me from behind the spectacles. It unnerves me so greatly I wonder if he hasn’t read my thoughts. Seems to have slipped my mind that Holmes was the only man ever able to master that particular trick.
“I can tell you’re a decent sort,” says he, closing my outstretched hand with spidery fingers. “Don’t yew go wastin’ nothin’ on me, guv. I get by just fine.”
“Do you expect me to believe that when you appear to have not eaten in days?”
He chuckles. “Oh, I eat plenty, don’t you worry none about that. It’s just that you could say I’m usin’ meself up too freely, is all. I’ll get by… always do.”
With a frown, I return the change back into my pocket, intent on sneaking it into his tattered overcoat the moment his attention wavers. Those that decline help are oft men who need it most.
I’ve returned to gazing down into the near black waters of the Thames, contemplating what it will feel like to be swallowed up into that abyss, which is as good a place as any for my corpse to rot, when his hoarse whisper shatters my reverie.
“Sorry ‘bout your bereavement, guv.”
“How the devil?”
“Oh, don’t go lookin’ at me like that! There weren’t nothin’ to it, honest! Ain’t so blind yet that I can’t see yer all decked out like yew just come back from a funeral. A widower, then? ’Course yew are. A man don’t get hisself so worked up in a mess o’ knots over just anyone. But it’s been a good long while, yer sufferin’, h’aint it?”
“It’s not possible you can know such things,” I say, intending to convey irritation at this unwarranted intrusion into my life, but the sting is absent from my words.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, I weren’t meanin’ to be meddlesome. But yer weddin’ ring tells this bloke all he needs to know.”
“I have no wedding ring.” The words are bile in my mouth.
He barks out a laugh, as if I’ve said something outrageously hysterical. Or perhaps he’s as mad as I am. “Right you are. And there ain’t no marks from any ring on yer finger, neither. Means you’ve took it off, but that was so long ago yer skin’s done tanned over the mark a ring like that goes and leaves. So’s I look at yer finger and say to meself ‘there’s a feller what done lost his spouse to be all decked out so sombre like, but he don’t wear his ring no more so’s it must have been years ago.’”
My grip on the railing tightens. I’m scarcely capable of restraining myself from whipping out my revolver and ending it all this instant, with my wounds having been salted so viciously. The words themselves are trivial in comparison to the method of delivery, parallel to one of Holmes’ deductions.
“Like I say, ain’t no harm meant,” says he, almost jovially. “But say, yew look like the reading’ type. Like books, guv? Sure yew do; ain’t met a toff yet what didn’t enjoy the writt’n word. Now, who’d think it to look at me, but I taught meself to read an’ write as a lad, and when things look awful dark, what helps is a good book ter take the mind off me troubles. Can’t always make it threw them long-winded types, but this one done me good in a bad spot.”
From somewhere in the depths of the shredded inner lining of his overcoat, which, by the by, must contain the entirety of his worldly possessions, he produces a pocket sized, very dog-eared book. I suspect this may be the most valuable item he can lay claim to.
“I cannot take this --”
“Look ‘ere,” he ignores me, “there’s a cab comin’ right this way. Be a good feller an’ hail it down fer me, then.”
I do as he requests, hoping that if I can pay for this hansom to alleviate that leg which pains him, it will be some compensation for his efforts to cheer a man who is, unbeknownst to him, incapable of ever smiling again. As I speak to the driver, the old man slips the little book inside my inner pocket, and with a companionable pat on the back, fairly shoves me into the cab. To my even greater astonishment, he is bellowing out my precise address and before I can do so much as gather my scattered bearings, we are turning in the direction of Kensington.
“Just yew hold out a bit longer, mate” I can hear him call over the clattering of the horse’s hooves.
I’m ashamed to admit the extent of my confusion, but my state is nothing compared to what it becomes when I pluck out the book from my pocket. My revolver is missing. There is no other viable explanation other than the old man has pinched it. To turn back now would be pure folly -- I am certain he is long gone.
In it’s stead is the book of poetry, containing verses from classical to modern. There are a few of Petrarch’s unrequited love poems, various sonnets, and one in particular by the Roman poet, Catullus. It reads:
“Veranius, out of all my friends standing first,
to me, among three hundred thousand,
have you come home to your own Penates
and your close-knit brothers and aged mother?
You have come! O news blessed to me!
Let me see you unharmed, and hear you telling,
as is your custom, of the Spanish places,
deeds, and peoples; and applying myself to your
delightful neck I shall kiss your eyes and mouth.
O, however many of blessed men there are,
who is more happy or blessed than I?”
I re-read the verses until I’ve memorized them when the cab pulls up to my door. It strikes me, rather late on, yes, although I was not functioning at full capacity by any means, that this anonymous fellow knows a great deal more about me than he’s let on. I am too exhausted, and the hour is far too late to be giving a care over such matters. So I simply pay the driver and head straight to my bedroom, where I do not even bother to undress, just kick off my shoes and slip under the covers, the lines of that poem dancing in my brain.
That it is blatantly homoerotic is obvious. That a perfect stranger should refer me to so flagrant a poem is what unsettles me, and I cannot shake the feeling I am missing something of significance within it’s pages. But I know not what, and fall asleep to dream of Holmes’ standing over me, those sensitive hands grazing my cheek, my lips tingling from the ghost of his soft kiss.
When I dream of my dearest friend, it never fails that I wake with a heavy sorrow on my breast. That morning, I am as near to light-hearted as I’ve been in three years, and when I head out for a morning walk, only to find someone has mistakenly delivered a newspaper to my doorstep, I am pleasantly astonished to find some enjoyment in the day’s articles. There seems to be a particularly abstruse case on the front page concerning one Ronald Adair. Instead of reveling in my misery, I make a game of deducing how a man could have his head blown off in a sealed room from the facts presented by the reporter. Scotland Yard is bungling the case, I’ve no doubt.
My lips curl upwards at the thought, and, making for Park Lane, I decide it may just be worth my while to view the scene for myself.
Fandom: Canon/Granada
Wordcount: 2,196
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson (implied)
Summary: Just when it seems Watson has come to a crisis in his life without his dearest friend, a mysterious stranger turns up.
A/N: Hiatus fic. This is somewhat a mixture of Canon and Granada 'verse, being that Mary Morstan does not seem to exist ;) Have also thrown in a dash of Catullus, just to spice up the mix. You're welcome.
Also - after watching the Granada version of The Final Problem, where DB's Watson looks so devastatingly heartbroken in that final scene, this plot bunny got all rabid on me... it was one of those stories that had to be written or it would never have stopped gnawing at me.
~*~
The smoke gathering in the billiard room of my club is thickening to stifling proportions, and yet, I’ve been well aware for no little time that my legs will not be persuaded to carry me out of this asphyxiating atmosphere. It reminds me so intensely of him that I cannot endure it, aware I am to be forever denied the simple pleasure of throwing open the sitting room door in Baker Street to be greeted by noxious plumes of shag, the tangible evidence of Sherlock Holmes’ great mind untangling some new conundrum.
The laughter amidst the clacking of cue balls, the faint aroma of brandy -- aspects of this oasis I once relished, now serve only to turn my stomach. For me, there is no longer solace here. Instead, I find my nerves are grated down so thinly by the merriment of men I once called amiable acquaintances, I can hardly manage reaching out to the half empty glass of spirits on the side table without a persistent palsy undermining my efforts. Utterly pathetic.
Gratefully, I am not quite so inebriated the liquor doesn’t burn deliciously on its way down. What it fails to do, however, is warm me. My insides are frozen, though not from the residual coolness of this early spring night. It’s rather warm here, cozily so, as a matter of fact, the hearth blazing intensely. No, no. My chill emanates from the soul, and has never subsided in nigh on three years.
Whatever possessed me to abandon the safe confines of my house to wander into this place I’ve had no desire to set foot in since I returned home from Switzerland, I cannot say.
Ah, but I am a liar. I wanted to see the inside, the familiar faces, just once more. Was morbidly curious to know if the sight of those men stirred any semblance of what, once upon a time and long, long ago, made me human. A folly, if ever there was one, for the single thing I needed to spark the flame within back to life was lying in a tangled mass of decaying limbs at the bottom of Reichenbach Falls.
Casually, so as not to draw undue attention upon myself, I slide a trembling hand into my inner pocket, feel the reassuring weight of cold steel between my calloused fingers. This elicits a twisted ghost of my old smile; it seems I no longer recall how to even imitate the way my lips curled in genuine happiness.
With precise movements, so as not to overturn the thing and draw undue attention upon myself, I set down the emptied glass. Time to go home, but tonight I shan’t be hailing a cab back to my practice in Kensington. I am so tired, so very achingly tired, and there is only one sleep that shall grant me any rest. One route to lead me back home.
Someone calls out to me as I manoeuver my way through the maze of socializing men into the hallway; my old billiards partner, Thurston, if I am not much mistaken. An amiable sort of fellow, I cannot deny, though it wearies me how all the old acquaintances openly gasp at the shadow before them, how they pelt me with a torrent of bothersome questions, not the least of which being why I still dress in full mourning attire. Do I not see this habit as shockingly inappropriate at best, scandalous, even? The devil can take them all, they who dare dictate the length of time allotted to my heart for grieving.
***
Westminster Bridge is less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from my club. Not an ideal location for what I have in mind, but it’s deserted enough at this ungodly hour that I’ll be afforded relative seclusion.
Leaning over the rails, I wait for a lone cab to pass as I finger the loaded service revolver snugly ticked away in the inner pocket of my sack coat. Vaguely, I’m aware of heavy footfalls behind me, the tap of a walking stick on pavement, it’s owner remarkably unsteady on his feet by the sound of his stick grinding into the stones as he throws all his weight atop it with each step.
“Mind if I rest here a mite, guv? Me ol’ bones ain’t wot they used to be.”
My irritation at having my grim thoughts interrupted is fleeting. This peddler bracing himself against the gas lamp is not so much aged as he is simply weary, though admittedly, his dark colored spectacles prevent accurate gauging of his years, and his hair and facial stubble are pure silver. From the painful way his bones virtually protrude through flesh, heaven only knows when he occasioned upon a decent meal, or for that matter, the meagrest scrap of bread. The sight of it stirs something akin to the distress I felt when Holmes, in the throes of a black mood or an absorbing case, refused sustenance.
“No, not at all.” The words, to my great surprise, are not affected politeness. I don’t mind his presence in the least, a queer thing considering how thoroughly I’ve shunned humanity of late. “In fact, I should like you to have this,” I add, rummaging through my pockets for the few shillings within. “I fear it’s not much, but enough to come by a good meal.”
My last good deed.
As I hold out the change to him, his eyes sear through me from behind the spectacles. It unnerves me so greatly I wonder if he hasn’t read my thoughts. Seems to have slipped my mind that Holmes was the only man ever able to master that particular trick.
“I can tell you’re a decent sort,” says he, closing my outstretched hand with spidery fingers. “Don’t yew go wastin’ nothin’ on me, guv. I get by just fine.”
“Do you expect me to believe that when you appear to have not eaten in days?”
He chuckles. “Oh, I eat plenty, don’t you worry none about that. It’s just that you could say I’m usin’ meself up too freely, is all. I’ll get by… always do.”
With a frown, I return the change back into my pocket, intent on sneaking it into his tattered overcoat the moment his attention wavers. Those that decline help are oft men who need it most.
I’ve returned to gazing down into the near black waters of the Thames, contemplating what it will feel like to be swallowed up into that abyss, which is as good a place as any for my corpse to rot, when his hoarse whisper shatters my reverie.
“Sorry ‘bout your bereavement, guv.”
“How the devil?”
“Oh, don’t go lookin’ at me like that! There weren’t nothin’ to it, honest! Ain’t so blind yet that I can’t see yer all decked out like yew just come back from a funeral. A widower, then? ’Course yew are. A man don’t get hisself so worked up in a mess o’ knots over just anyone. But it’s been a good long while, yer sufferin’, h’aint it?”
“It’s not possible you can know such things,” I say, intending to convey irritation at this unwarranted intrusion into my life, but the sting is absent from my words.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, I weren’t meanin’ to be meddlesome. But yer weddin’ ring tells this bloke all he needs to know.”
“I have no wedding ring.” The words are bile in my mouth.
He barks out a laugh, as if I’ve said something outrageously hysterical. Or perhaps he’s as mad as I am. “Right you are. And there ain’t no marks from any ring on yer finger, neither. Means you’ve took it off, but that was so long ago yer skin’s done tanned over the mark a ring like that goes and leaves. So’s I look at yer finger and say to meself ‘there’s a feller what done lost his spouse to be all decked out so sombre like, but he don’t wear his ring no more so’s it must have been years ago.’”
My grip on the railing tightens. I’m scarcely capable of restraining myself from whipping out my revolver and ending it all this instant, with my wounds having been salted so viciously. The words themselves are trivial in comparison to the method of delivery, parallel to one of Holmes’ deductions.
“Like I say, ain’t no harm meant,” says he, almost jovially. “But say, yew look like the reading’ type. Like books, guv? Sure yew do; ain’t met a toff yet what didn’t enjoy the writt’n word. Now, who’d think it to look at me, but I taught meself to read an’ write as a lad, and when things look awful dark, what helps is a good book ter take the mind off me troubles. Can’t always make it threw them long-winded types, but this one done me good in a bad spot.”
From somewhere in the depths of the shredded inner lining of his overcoat, which, by the by, must contain the entirety of his worldly possessions, he produces a pocket sized, very dog-eared book. I suspect this may be the most valuable item he can lay claim to.
“I cannot take this --”
“Look ‘ere,” he ignores me, “there’s a cab comin’ right this way. Be a good feller an’ hail it down fer me, then.”
I do as he requests, hoping that if I can pay for this hansom to alleviate that leg which pains him, it will be some compensation for his efforts to cheer a man who is, unbeknownst to him, incapable of ever smiling again. As I speak to the driver, the old man slips the little book inside my inner pocket, and with a companionable pat on the back, fairly shoves me into the cab. To my even greater astonishment, he is bellowing out my precise address and before I can do so much as gather my scattered bearings, we are turning in the direction of Kensington.
“Just yew hold out a bit longer, mate” I can hear him call over the clattering of the horse’s hooves.
I’m ashamed to admit the extent of my confusion, but my state is nothing compared to what it becomes when I pluck out the book from my pocket. My revolver is missing. There is no other viable explanation other than the old man has pinched it. To turn back now would be pure folly -- I am certain he is long gone.
In it’s stead is the book of poetry, containing verses from classical to modern. There are a few of Petrarch’s unrequited love poems, various sonnets, and one in particular by the Roman poet, Catullus. It reads:
“Veranius, out of all my friends standing first,
to me, among three hundred thousand,
have you come home to your own Penates
and your close-knit brothers and aged mother?
You have come! O news blessed to me!
Let me see you unharmed, and hear you telling,
as is your custom, of the Spanish places,
deeds, and peoples; and applying myself to your
delightful neck I shall kiss your eyes and mouth.
O, however many of blessed men there are,
who is more happy or blessed than I?”
I re-read the verses until I’ve memorized them when the cab pulls up to my door. It strikes me, rather late on, yes, although I was not functioning at full capacity by any means, that this anonymous fellow knows a great deal more about me than he’s let on. I am too exhausted, and the hour is far too late to be giving a care over such matters. So I simply pay the driver and head straight to my bedroom, where I do not even bother to undress, just kick off my shoes and slip under the covers, the lines of that poem dancing in my brain.
That it is blatantly homoerotic is obvious. That a perfect stranger should refer me to so flagrant a poem is what unsettles me, and I cannot shake the feeling I am missing something of significance within it’s pages. But I know not what, and fall asleep to dream of Holmes’ standing over me, those sensitive hands grazing my cheek, my lips tingling from the ghost of his soft kiss.
When I dream of my dearest friend, it never fails that I wake with a heavy sorrow on my breast. That morning, I am as near to light-hearted as I’ve been in three years, and when I head out for a morning walk, only to find someone has mistakenly delivered a newspaper to my doorstep, I am pleasantly astonished to find some enjoyment in the day’s articles. There seems to be a particularly abstruse case on the front page concerning one Ronald Adair. Instead of reveling in my misery, I make a game of deducing how a man could have his head blown off in a sealed room from the facts presented by the reporter. Scotland Yard is bungling the case, I’ve no doubt.
My lips curl upwards at the thought, and, making for Park Lane, I decide it may just be worth my while to view the scene for myself.