The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past. Chapter Three
Title: The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past.
Chapter Three. Riddleston Hall
Author: ghislainem70
Word Count: 2100
Rating: NC-17
Summary: John returns from Afghanistan with amnesia.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs. Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Warnings: Massive dose of angst and hurt/comfort. Explicit sex, graphic violence, reference to non-con, deals with mental illness.
Chapter Three. Riddleston Hall
You fell down of course,
and then you got up of course:
and you started over ---
forgot my name of course,
then you started to remember --
pretty tough to think about. . .
Lyrics to "The Same Boy You've Always Known," All Rights Reserved The White Stripes
Riddleston Hall was a somber Palladian manse of grey Yorkshire stone, walled and gated, approached through a long alley of massive elms. The wrought iron gates were adorned with the sweeping letter "C" for the Cholmondeleys (pronounced "Chumley"), Lady Holmes' family. The Hall was set in a large park overlooking a river. In the distance sheep could be seen grazing the checkerboard hills.
It was early autumn, fine sunny weather in London, but so far north, the warmer days were on the brink of giving way to the cold and dark. John was quietly astonished as they pulled up the swept gravel drive before huge double doors thrown open wide for the mistress's arrival. Edgar hurried to help another servant with Lady Holmes' luggage (Goyard) and John's ragged duffle, which was conveyed into the house with as much care and respect as if it had been one of Lady Holmes' own bags.
Sherlock seemed quite nervous and John could not help be influenced by his anxious demeanor. He was apprehensive about something, John thought. He wondered what it might be. Some family trouble, probably. Evidently, Holmes had been neglecting his family duties.
Lady Holmes kept up a steady stream of light, amusing talk as they entered the huge doors and into the entrance hall. She started to explain to John that the room was architecturally significant for some reason, but Sherlock rather rudely interrupted.
"Yes, yes, Mother, may we have the grand tour another time. I should like to have a private word, if you please," he burst out impatiently. Lady Holmes ignored his boorishness and turned a serene smile upon John.
"Captain Watson. Please forgive my son. No doubt you are well acquainted with his utter lack of manners. My fault entirely, I suppose. Well. McLeod here will show you to your room -- the green room, I think, McLeod. Please make yourself comfortable. I'll have tea sent up directly. Drinks at seven and dinner at eight. We don't dress, please don't trouble yourself."
"Thank you kindly, Lady Holmes. I look forward to it." He had a strong urge to kiss her hand but figured that would be a gross breach of etiquette.
McLeod was a tall, sturdy and cheerful-faced housekeeper, in fact Lady Holmes' head housekeeper. John followed her plain grey dress and sturdy black shoes through a maze of corridors lined with obviously rare antiques and gilt-framed oil paintings. He was no judge of these things, but even he could see that this was not a family that had been forced to sell off the silver to keep the roof in repair.
After what seemed a mile of corridors and a flight of stairs, John was tired. His leg throbbed and his abdominal scars burned. He was actually winded. He hadn't walked so far in he couldn't remember how long. He felt a flash of bitterness.
Because your memory's shot, Watson, old boy, he said to himself.
* * *
The green room was exactly as described, a large room with french doors opening to a small stone balcony, furnished with matching wall coverings, bed coverings, and draperies all in an emerald green damask. There was a fireplace here but it was not lit. The french doors had been thrown open to the fine afternoon air. John wondered how Lady Holmes had the foresight to prepare this room for him.
McLaod regarded John with dismay. "You poor dear, look at you, you’re all done in! I’m terribly sorry, sir, you might have said something, I get to tearing down these halls meself - the Holmeses being all so very impatient, you know, dashing up and down; well, excepting Mr. Mycroft, you know," she clucked, inspecting the massive bed and pulling back the heavy bed curtains so that John might lie down if he chose.
John reddened with embarrassment and tried not to lean so hard on his cane. His face was beaded with perspiration. Mycroft? No, he didn’t know, actually. He tried to summon forth a visual of this Mycroft but of course, there was nothing but the blasted white empty space there.
"Ah, really, it’s - fine. I’ve just been . . .just been out of hospital, is all," he tried to say casually, but caught himself with a little tremor to his voice, so he shut up.
McLeod positively bustled with motherly concern. She pushed him back onto the mattress with her strong hands and forearms - the woman could be a professional wrestler, John thought with awe. She took away his cane and leaned it against the nightstand.
"Now, my fine lad, time for a good lie-down. Tea will be up shortly but you should catch a wink or two," she declared, her eyes bright with determination. He imagined if he tried to get up she would just wrestle him back down again, a contest he would lose in his pathetic state.
He stayed put.
"Right then," he said. "I’ll just be having a lie down, take your time with the tea."
McLeod closed the door softly behind her and he could hear her rapid, purposeful steps retreating down the hall, then silence.
He stared at the pattern of the damask canopy overhead. Truthfully he could almost fall asleep again. There was a sound of birds, and possibly crickets, drifting in from the open window. The air was fresh. The bed was amazingly comfortable.
But he was heartily sick of sleeping.
In the hospital, everyone constantly was ordering him to get some rest, get some sleep. If he didn’t cooperate, pills were administered. Dr. Nazimi kept up the same patter - get your rest, catch up on your sleep. And now, McLeod.
He wanted to scream with frustration.
The only person who didn’t do this was Holmes. Holmes did not disturb him if he did doze off - which he was prone to do at unexpected times - but never tried to suggest that he would be better off sleeping, either. John had been noticing that Holmes never appeared to sleep, himself. Or probably he did; but so far, John had never caught him at it.
My flatmate’s a bloody vampire, he giggled to himself. He didn’t know why he thought that was funny. Holmes’s pale, almost wasted form was nothing to laugh at.
In fact he had caught himself often gazing after the man’s tall form with - curiousity? fascination? Whatever it was, John always tried to stop before Holmes caught him staring like a lunatic - but you couldn’t catch Holmes out, that much he had learned and learned quickly. There wasn’t anything that Holmes didn’t observe, classify, and catalogue in the appropriate place in his restless, brilliant brain.
He knew, though, that while Holmes might not sleep, he was disturbed by John’s constant nightmares. When John woke in a cold sweat, gasping and sometimes even calling out, shouting, flailing against the tangled sheets, his eyes always opened to find Holmes’s silhouette in his doorway. He felt guilty knowing his weakness was probably ruining any chance of rest the man ever got himself, and he looked like he desperately needed it. The circles under Holmes’s eyes looked like they had been made with purplish paint.
John took sleeping pills now mainly because he didn’t want to be such a bother to Holmes. Whether he took them or not, though, the nightmares came.
And so, with these interesting musings to occupy his thoughts, John stayed awake in this luxurious bed, studying the elaborate bedcurtains, his eyes mindlessly following the endlessly repeating pattern of the damask.
* * *
Lady Holmes led Sherlock into the conservatory, where she attended to her collection of world-class exotic orchids and other rare plant specimens. Her former husband, the late Lord Anthony Delamere Holmes, had been an ethnobotanist of international repute.
Sherlock had been just nine years old when his father vanished on an expedition in the rainforests of Borneo. Lady Holmes knew perfectly well that he was dead. She also knew that Sherlock, and to a lesser degree Mycroft, in some ways never stopped expecting him to return, though neither would admit it.
Sherlock paced restlessly while Lady Holmes worked quietly. For a few minutes the only sound was from the tinkling of a small fountain.
"Grammanginis Spectabilis is doing nicely," she said approvingly, examining an exquisite orchid with greenish brown speckled petals and brilliant purplish-pink lips. "Don’t hover, Sherlock," she said firmly. He stopped hovering and dropped to one of the wrought iron benches. Lady Holmes sat beside him and took his hand gently.
"Sherlock, my dear. I’ve been so very distressed over this business with you and Captain Watson. Mycroft told me everything, of course. Not at first, of course, but I persuaded him."
Mycroft likely hadn’t needed much persuading, Sherlock thought. He had always been so easily guided by their mother. Not so Sherlock.
"How could you do something so rash, so very, very, dangerous, as to go into Afghanistan?"
"If you’ve spoken to Mycroft, and he told you everything, then you know why."
"But couldn’t you have kept Captain Watson at home? If only you had -"
"Don’t dare say it, Mother. Don’t dare say that if I had kept him at home, none of this would have happened. Do you think I don’t know that? No one could have stopped him, I assure you. God, you never used to be so - unobservant," he said bitterly.
"Sherlock, I know Captain Watson had a very - noble - reason to return to Afghanistan. And you, too, Sherlock, to go with him. No one has ever questioned your nerve," she said.
"Noble!" Sherlock snorted. "God, Mother, doesn’t anybody understand anything? John, yes, of course, he is noble down to the bones. Me, I had a different motive altogether," he said despairingly. He did not try to remove his hand from hers, and she stroked it gently. She turned the palm over and observed the pink line of a scar across it, as though someone had deliberately cut it with a sharp blade.
"Why must you always be so very hard on yourself, Sherlock? Whatever you mean, it’s nonsense, only nonsense, you know. Of course your motive was noble. You have been very brave, my dear, and I’m proud," she said gently.
Now she put her arm around his shoulder, slowly and stealthily, in case he should spring away as he usually did. But now he just bowed his head.
"No, it wasn’t, Mother. It was cowardly, and it was selfish. In the end I went there because I was afraid. Afraid of John leaving me, afraid of John never coming back to me. Afraid of - living without him. I can’t, you know."
"Oh, Sherlock," she whispered. "My poor boy. It will be all right. He hasn’t left you -- and you did save him, in the end. Mycroft told me what happened."
"Don’t you see, he has left me. He doesn’t know me, and it’s becoming rather obvious that at some level deep inside he doesn’t want to know me - not like that, not any more. And I don’t know what to do. Every day I wake up and think, this will be the day, Mother. This will be the day. And it never is."
Now Eugenia Holmes held her son tight, and he did not draw away. His dark head finally sank against her shoulder. She closed her eyes. Sherlock had not permitted this since he was a boy.
"Sherlock, listen to me. You are so like your father. So impatient with the world. Always, the world has to bend to your expectations, everything according to your own time. Captain Watson is very, very ill. But give him time, give him his own time, darling, and don’t give up. He’ll come back to you, in the end. I know it."
"How do you know," Sherlock mumbled against her shoulder.
"Because, Sherlock, I understand the human heart much better than you do. You’re quite ignorant that way. No, don’t say anything, Mycroft isn’t any better really. Anyway, Captain Watson may not remember you, but he loves you."
Sherlock snorted against her shoulder, or maybe it was even a sob. "Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. You’ve spent less than a day in his company and he slept all the way in the car. You can’t know that."
"I knew instantly that your father was in love with me from the very first moment he laid eyes on me -- even though we didn’t meet for another year after that. But I knew. Later, he told me. But I always knew. I know these things, Sherlock. In some ways you are still very young, you know."
"Just don't say anything to John, please, Mother. Let it come from him. Do you understand?"
She nodded and patted his hand. "If you insist, Sherlock. I happen to think you are very wrong, but I understand."
Sherlock reached over and kissed her cheek with his cold lips. "I’m sorry, Mother," he said, and stood to go.
"Whatever for?"
"For everything," he said, and he left her alone with the rare plants his father had brought from exotic lands, years before Sherlock was born.
To be continued . . .
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