The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past. Chapter Seven.
Title:The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past. Chapter Seven. DS Weller Pays a Call.
Author: ghislainem70
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 2300
Summary: John returns from Afghanistan
Disclaimer: I own nothing, all honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Warnings: explicit sex, graphic violence, massive dose of angst and hurt/comfort, reference to mental illness.
Chapter Seven. DS Weller Pays a Call.
I wanted things to get better
I was in pain
I wanted you to be my lifeline.
The flashing lights have gone away
Emergency has passed . . .
The future's right in front of me,
And I won't finish last.
Today
is the day
That I love you. . .
Lyrics to "The Emergency," All Rights Reserved, BT and Andrew Bayer
John’s eyes fluttered open. When he was able to focus he saw a coffered ceiling of richly carved dark wood. He was laying down. His head hurt.
There was a tremendous amount of shouting, different voices; some nearer than others; all seeming filtered through cotton wool. He blinked. Things became louder and clearer.
"Damn you! Out! All of you, out! Mother, fetch the doctor!"
This voice he knew. This was Sherlock. He was shouting hectically for some reason. But that couldn’t be right. Sherlock was dead.
He was dreaming, then. He had been feeling for some time - how long, exactly? - as though he was in a dream. He remembered that.
And that was all right.
He didn’t want to wake up, really. He would just lie here for a while and let it play out. Because if he woke up, he would be in the real darkness.
He heard other voices, protesting. And now there was more loud shouting, approaching, but farther away than the others: "Don’t you try to hang one on me, Mister Sherlock Holmes. You’ll have to get up a sight earlier in the day than that to fool old Weller. He’ll be questioned, like it or no -"
"Piss off, Weller," Sherlock yelled.
A door slammed.
The noise reminded him of gunfire and he instinctively closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. Even if it was a dream. But then his hands were being lifted, and he looked up. Sherlock’s face hovered over his, his expression twisted into something like terror.
"John, say something to me. Please. What happened? What hurts?" He didn’t wait for John to respond, but was checking his breathing, lifting his eyelids and peering into his eyes, checking his pupils, John supposed. His voice sounded perfectly clear, if frantic; and he wasn’t shouting anymore.
John felt his breath on his cheek. Now was putting his ear to John’s chest.
For a dead man, he felt rather warm and solid. John decided to try an experiment.
"Sherlock. Am I dreaming?"
Sherlock sat up and stroked John’s forehead, pushing the hair aside. "That’s the second time you’ve said that to me today. Do you - do you remember?" He looked afraid, terribly afraid.
This morning. Yes, he remembered. He did remember, very clearly. Laying on a couch. His head was in Sherlock’s lap. There was a billiard table there. Waking up, saying, "Am I dreaming?" And Sherlock replying, "Not unless I’m dreaming, too."
But - Spartans. Guns. An explosion. Sherlock killed in the same deadly trap.
John reached up and squeezed Sherlock’s hand as though to stop him from falling, although he was laid out on the floor. The hand, slender though it was, felt very solid and reassuring. Suddenly, tears were flowing down his cheeks unbidden, and he couldn’t stop.
"Sherlock, I thought they killed you. I thought you were dead." He was racked with deep, shuddering sobs and he couldn’t stop. He turned his face away. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, least of all Sherlock. What was wrong with him? But he couldn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand.
"No, I’m here, I’m here, John, I’m fine, I’m not dead," Sherlock repeated over and over, like a mantra, like he could just - reason - with John.
Finally, John became a little calmer. Sherlock gently raised John up and maneuvered him to a huge battered old divan covered with worn kilims and flattened cushions. All of the strength had left his limbs; he felt like rubber. And then he felt surrounded by Sherlock’s bony arms and legs clasping him in a fierce embrace. He couldn’t have escaped if he tried. But he didn’t intend to try.
His head actually felt clearer now. His headache was gone, although his nose and eyes were swollen and red from crying. He still saw the dancing kaliedoscope of memories passing through his brain, but now it was somehow reassuring rather than frightening. Now he thought he understood what may have happened to him. And had some inkling of what Sherlock must have gone through.
He looked up. "Sherlock," he whispered, "I remember. I remember now. I remember everything. Almost everything, I think."
Sherlock didn’t speak, but his embrace became tighter if that was possible. He murmered something against John’s hair that he couldn’t hear. It may have been, "Thank God." Then he cleared his throat. "Are you all right now? Are you in pain?"
"No. I feel better now - better than I remember feeling since . . . it must have been since . . .was I in hospital . . . at Camp Bastion?"
Sherlock shook his head. "No, we didn’t have time. We never made it to Bastion." Sherlock stopped a moment and swallowed hard, remembering John’s massive hemorrhaging, Caldwell’s desperate effort to transfuse enough blood to get John even as far as Bagram. They had made it by possibly less than a minute. "We had to take you to Bagram, do you remember Bagram?"
John remembered. But then he remembered, too, awaking at some point . . . in a hospital room, with a huge white space where memories used to reside, and excruciating pain under the mask of opiate drugs. And Sherlock had been there, the very first time he opened his eyes, but he hadn’t known him. The enormity of it took his breath away.
"Sherlock, Sherlock, I’m so sorry. God. I’m so sorry. I can’t explain - I never meant to hurt you. You have to believe me. You must believe this. I thought you were dead. Do you understand? Dead. But I didn’t even know that, until just now, here." He pressed his head against Sherlock’s shoulder, feeling the solidity there, the rise and fall of his chest, the comforting thump of his heartbeat.
This was real.
He felt Sherlock’s limbs tense against his. John tried and failed to imagine what it must have been like for him. They lay quietly, breathing slowly becoming one.
"What did it?" He finally asked. "How did you remember?"
John laughed a little. Which felt strange under the circumstances, but now that his brain was functioning again, actually bringing forth real memories when he asked it to, he felt giddy, he felt like he could fly. "It was your father’s skull - I don’t mean his skull, of course; I mean that skeleton over there in the corner. It just struck me all of a sudden. That skull, the skull in 221b, that first day we met. And that made it all come crashing in, like I opened a locked door. I suppose I did."
"The skull," Sherlock repeated, as though the word had a foreign taste. "That skull. That’s - perfect," he sighed. John thought Sherlock sounded as though he had just received a very special present, something long desired, possibly rare or difficult to obtain, and which he no longer had any hopes of receiving. He supposed that was actually true.
"And you remember now? Everything?"
"Yes. At least, I think so."
"Prove it. Tell me something from before. Before . . . Afghanistan." He looked into John’s face, blue eyes very serious. "But nothing - bad, nothing painful. Something . . . good."
"All right . . . I know where we got the scars, the ones on our palms. And I remember why we did it. It was in Switzerland. . . .I remember everything."
John felt Sherlock heave a huge sigh, and some of the tension left his body.
"If you remember everything, John, then you remember what happened next," Sherlock whispered.
"Yes," John said, kissing his scarred palm gently, and proceeded to show him, slowly and reverently, as though either of them might break, or disappear at any moment, with his lips, his hands, his body, how very well he remembered.
* * *
After a time, there was a discreet knock at the door to the laboratory. John felt himself virtually strangled by Sherlock’s limbs. Sherlock whispered in his ear: "That will be the doctor. I suppose we must have them look at you."
"Then let’s get it over with."
There was more knocking.
"Why don’t they come in?"
"Because I locked the door," Sherlock said wickedly. "I know you’re all right. You had a vasovagal syncope. Common faint exacerbated by migraine headache. You’ll be perfectly well now. I believe your headaches should cease altogether. Your subconscious didn't want to remember, and the strain was giving you migraines. I know I'm right. Doctor Nazimi warned me, you know. She said I would be able to figure out why you couldn't remember. But I never did, you know," he said wistfully.
"Sherlock, dear, Open the door at once, please. Doctor Foster is here. Is Captain Watson all right? Please, Sherlock, we’re terribly worried."
John nodded to indicate that they had to re-enter the real world, that Sherlock should open the door. Sherlock reluctantly released John with a final kiss. Hovering at the door was a pale, concerned looking Lady Holmes and an elderly gentleman in old-fashioned country tweeds, wearing huge magnifying bifocal spectacles that made his pale blue eyes look like they were swimming in clear deep waters. He was slightly stooped over but briskly pushed his way into the laboratory when Sherlock cracked the door open wider.
"I can’t imagine what you young men are getting up to in here," he said crossly. Sherlock hastily smoothed his disordered clothing. "I’ve come all the way out to examine this patient at Lady Holmes’ special request. I don’t appreciate being left hanging about. Please leave, Mr. Holmes, and give me and Captain Watson some privacy," he said with asperity. John nodded, letting Sherlock know it was fine, and Sherlock left, closing the door on them.
Lady Holmes could see from Sherlock’s radiant face that all was well. She embraced her son. "Sherlock, please tell me, is he quite all right?"
"Yes, Mother. Everything is going to be all right. He’s remembered. Everything. He’s quite well, well, almost."
"Good Lord. Whatever happened to bring it back like that, so suddenly?"
"The skull. It was the petite madeleine, Mother. The skull."
Lady Holmes smiled. She didn’t know what Sherlock could possibly mean, well, except that it had to do with Proust, which made some sense here. But she could see Sherlock’s brain was now actually at rest, for once he was peaceful, happy. She didn’t want to spoil it by cross-examining him. She took his arm.
"Come along, Sherlock. Let’s go down and wait for Doctor Foster to finish. And let’s open some champagne. I feel like celebrating. I still have some of that wonderful ‘88 Veuve Cliquot."
Sherlock didn’t want to leave, he wanted to stay outside the door until John came out. But Lady Holmes gave him a knowing look, and he sighed. Possibly he was going to have to relax his vigilance. Just a bit. He followed her down to the library where Mycroft and Lestrade were waiting, Lestrade anxiously, Mycroft appearing, if anything, slightly bored. Lady Holmes announced that Captain Watson was quite well, and had fortunately recovered his memory.
"And I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask both of you to leave Captain Watson to himself, please don’t pry. He’ll tell us all about it, I’m sure, when he’s ready. Ah, McLeod, the champagne, lovely."
McLeod brought in a few bottles set into ice buckets, but didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked very worried. She whispered discreetly into Lady Holmes’ ear. She shook her head.
"I suppose it can’t be helped. I thought I made it clear to come back in the morning. But I suppose he has his job to do. Send him up, if you please. It’s quite all right." McLeod left. "Detective Superintendent Weller is quite determined. I admire persistence in a man," she said smoothly as McLeod opened the door again and announced, "Detective Superintendent Weller, my lady."
Weller came through the door like a bull charging a matador. He stopped and surveyed the scene.
"We meet again. What did you say your name was again, you there," he hollered at Lestrade. Without his mirrored sunglasses, his dark, shrewd eyes were like hard marbles.
"Detective. Inspector. Lestrade. New. Scotland. Yard."
"New. Scotland. Yard." Weller repeated thoughtfully. "I remember hearing on them, once. But strange to tell I’ve solved near on a hundred murders, mebbe more, in my day. Never once needed any ponce from New Scotland Yard to teach me how to suck eggs, if you catch my meaning."
Lestrade crossed the room with two swift steps and was nose to nose (or near enough) with the hulking detective with a dangerous look in his eye: "Here now, who’re you calling a ponce, mate? I’ll teach you to suck -"
"Detective!" Lady Holmes gasped, shocked. The men fell back, embarrased, stammering apologies to Lady Holmes. There was an awkward silence.
"Why are you here, Detective Superintendent," Sherlock asked, enunciating the words with the staccato diction of an Harrovian.
"Well, I don’t mind telling you. I need Captain Watson to account for his -" Weller appeared to search for the correct phrase " - movements I believe they would say, even in London, am I right Detective Inspector - his movements. Aye. For the night afore that lass’s body were found."
Everyone was stunned to silence.
Weller grinned broadly at the assembled faces. "Mebbe now’s not the best time for you to break out the bubbly. No call to get all mardy, but. On second thought, I’m that flaggin’. Glass’ed go down nicely." He looked expectantly at the shining silver buckets, water droplets glistening on their polished surfaces like they were crying tears of their own.
To be continued . . .
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