FIC: A Secret History
Title: A Secret History
Author: moony
Pairing: Watson/Holmes
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: Watson receives a trunk. Holmes is impatient. And a stuffed tiger is returned to the boy he once knew.
Notes: Inspired by a discussion with flying_android regarding Watson and a stuffed animal. With apologies to Bill Watterson for the borrowing of a concept. Thank you to radiobroadcast, coffee_n_retcon and veul_mclannon for reading through it for me. :)
--
Holmes was in the sitting-room, in his dressing-gown, looking through the obituaries, when Mrs Hudson came in to inform him of the delivery of a trunk.
"A trunk?" Holmes put up his newspaper and rose, rubbing his hands together. "Most intriguing. Perhaps it is my long-overdue payment from that duchess, back in October. The one whose son had absconded to France with the silver, a rare Bible and the beloved family dog." He frowned. "I do hope she did not send the dog."
Mrs Hudson, holding the door open for two boys who lurched into the room, bearing a large, leather-bound hat-trunk between them, shook her head. "Doubtful, Mr Holmes, for it is addressed to Doctor Watson."
The boys placed the trunk in the center of the room and looked at Holmes expectantly. With a grunt he produced two coins from his pocket and pressed them into the dingy, outstretched palms. "Begone with you," he muttered, and the boys bolted. To Mrs Hudson he said, "The good doctor has not yet risen. I shall guard his trunk until he is present to open it."
"You won't break into it," she said, warily. It was not a question. "It's nothing to do with you."
"My dear woman!" Holmes laughed. "Do not address me as though I were a common criminal! I assure you that I have no intention of breaking Watson's precious trunk. Go downstairs and make my breakfast, if you would, and bring some up for Watson. He rises on the hour, you know."
Mrs Hudson gave him a long, searching look before she left the room, muttering what Holmes assumed were unkind things under her breath. When he was certain she was gone (seventeen footsteps descending, fourth step creaks, click of the kitchen door as it swings shut) he turned to the trunk and regarded it as he might a sentient adversary.
"Well, then. What have we here, Gladstone?" He looked to their trusty if a bit overweight (too much sausage from Watson, too many chemical-laced biscuits from Holmes) bull-dog, who was sprawled across the tiger rug and basking in the firelight. The animal looked up, yawned and rolled over. "Oh, do not get yourself worked up, my dear boy," said Holmes wryly. "Honestly, you'll bring the house down with all your barking."
Holmes crouched down and peered at the label pasted to the outside of the trunk. "To Doctor Watson, 221b Baker Street, London. From G. Chase, Waterstone Hall, Sevenoaks, Kent. Hum! Who might you be, mysterious sender of trunks, to our dear Watson?"
He puzzled over the label and the handwriting (delicate hand, most likely an older woman, the letters crooked and unsteady, as if the hand holding the pen shook uncontrollably), the condition of the trunk (sturdy, well-used, early '60s manufacture), and the smell of it (musty, as though it had been stored somewhere and forgotten). Still pondering, he returned to his chair and picked up his newspaper again, but he did not open it. The trunk sat still, silent - it mocked him. 'Look at me, Mr Holmes,' it said, in the sort of voice a trunk ought to have, 'Look at me and wonder at my secrets! Secrets about your Watson! If my exterior has you so vexed, imagine what stories my contents could tell!'
And then the trunk laughed. It was haughty. Holmes could not abide haughty objects, especially ones that were trunks addressed to Watson. Watson, who was lazy and exceedingly late in rising, which was completely unfair as Holmes could not be expected to remain so patient for so long. Didn't Watson know him well enough to understand that Holmes's curiousity was insatiable, and that allowing mysterious trunks to enter their home was an incredibly careless thing to do? Damn it, Watson!
Or perhaps it was a trap of some sort, a diabolical device disguised as a trunk and sent by one of Holmes's many enemies, intended to damage poor Watson in an act of revenge? What sort of friend would Holmes be, if he did not eliminate the initial threat, at great, personal sacrifice? Poor Watson!
The clock ticked. Gladstone snored. The trunk remained... trunkish. And Holmes's patience grew thinner and thinner until, finally, after nearly an hour of waiting for Watson to get the hell out of bed, come downstairs and open the god-damned thing already, it snapped altogether.
Holmes stood and looked to the dog again. "Gladstone, I have come to rely on you as a confidant of a sort, and I trust you won't betray what I'm about to do, not to Watson and certainly not to that busybody downstairs!"
With that, Holmes went to his desk, pulling at drawers until he at last located his kit (under the post from several days ago, a bit sticky from a slightly-melted toffee, blast it). From it he extracted the proper tools and returned to the trunk, where he bent low and went about his task.
"She said not to break into it," he muttered, ostensibly to the dog but more to himself. "Daft woman knows nothing about lock-picking. If it's done properly, the lock remains unharmed. So, to be technical, I am not breaking anything at all. Merely eliminating an obstacle in my path."
It took only a few practiced turns of the wrists, a wiggle here and there, and soon the lock clicked its defeat and Holmes sat back in satisfaction. "You were hardly a worthy opponent after all," he admonished it, pushing the lock out of the way and lifting the lid (even mustier on the inside, dusty, everything inside must be decades old). "Now then, let's see what you're hiding." A puff of dust emerged and lodged itself in Holmes's face, resulting in several sneezes before he could wipe the grit from his eyes and peer inside.
It was not a trap. No badgers or poisonous springs leapt out at him. It was a perfectly ordinary trunk, and Holmes wondered if, now that the threat of danger was exorcised, he ought to close the trunk. He started to, then wondered if perhaps it was meant to look initially harmless just for that purpose, to fool Holmes into a false sense of security! The nerve of the blackguard that sent the infernal trunk! He would have to empty it of its contents. Just to be certain. For Watson's sake, of course.
The first thing he spotted was a filmy, grey pile of cloth, which turned out to be a dress. The style he placed firmly in the '50s, and he thought it strange that someone would go through the trouble to send Watson an old, shabby dress. Almost immediately, his mind supplied him with the completely unhelpful image of Watson in the dress, which was a terrible thing for a mind to do to its owner. "I shall wound you with alcohol later," he told it, putting the dress aside. He would ponder it further once he'd finished uncovering the rest.
Beneath the dress was a small portrait of a young boy, no more than three, posing with a small dog. It was instantly apparent to Holmes that this was, indeed, a very young John Watson. It was in the eyes, the chin, the left corner of his mouth that hid a near-constant smile. Those things were still very much present in the Watson Holmes knew, things Holmes knew by heart. He looked at the portrait for a long time before he finally set it aside and resumed digging.
Obviously, this trunk had come from someone in Watson's family. Further inspection revealed papers containing childish drawings of sailing-ships, dragons and horses, a box of old jewelry of no real worth, several more small portraits of Watson at various stages of growth, a school-scarf of faded blue and yellow, a battered copy of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, a tiny jar containing a lump of what looked like metal, and finally, a lump of fabric and stuffing that Holmes suspected had once been a toy.
Holmes sat with these items strewn all around him, mind whirling. This, he deduced, was no revenge plot, no message of animosity. This was Watson's secret history, a puzzle spread out before him, waiting to be assembled and admired.
Much like the man himself, thought Holmes. He'd always regarded Watson as the most difficult of mysteries to unravel, a man who could be a stoic gentleman one moment and a scrappy, brave rascal the next. Watson's genial nature gotten them out of as many scrapes as his pistol had. And Watson was usually the first to jump into the fray when things (inevitably, because that was their way of things) went south, only to take Holmes back to Baker Street and bandage him up with hands too gentle to have thrown the first punch only moments before. A consistent contradiction was his Watson, his favourite conundrum, and Holmes appreciated that he now had much more data on the subject than he'd ever had before. He only had to translate it.
So distracted was Holmes by his thoughts that he did not notice the door open, or Watson's soft footfalls as he padded (barefoot, Watson disliked slippers in the morning and detested sleeping in socks) across the floor.
"Holmes?" His voice was soft and rough with sleep. "Good morning. What have you got, there?" He took in the trunk, frowned a bit at the label. "Why, that's addressed to me!"
"Yes." Holmes held up the dress, the first thing he put his hand to. "These are your things, I believe. They arrived just this morning." He swallowed hard. "I, er, took the liberty of opening it for you."
Watson blinked and accepted the dress, running his hands over the thin fabric. "This... This was my mother's dress," he said. "She wore it when she married my father."
He looked over all of the things spread out on the floor. "These are- These are my things. Oh, my!" Watson dropped to the floor awkwardly, wincing as he bent his bad leg, and picked up the portrait of himself as a child. "I have not seen these things in years. I thought them lost!"
"A Mrs G. Chase sent them," said Holmes quietly, sheepishly. He budged over slightly, giving Watson room to sit on the floor properly. "I assume she is a relation."
"My governess," said Watson, still staring at the portrait. "Well, not so much a governess as my grandmother's housekeeper, but during my time there she was nursemaid and governess to me." He smiled and held out the portrait for Holmes to see. "This was done when I was nearly three, for my mother's birthday. That was my dog, Cheshire."
Holmes smiled. "You kept your affinity for dogs," he said. "Among other things. I knew that portrait was of you as you have not changed so much as you've merely gotten taller, and hairier." He poked at Watson's moustache. Watson batted his hand away and put the portrait aside, picking up another.
"Here's one of all of us. That tall fellow, that's my father. He purchased a commission in the Army, served in the Crimean War. You can see his medal, just there." He pointed to his father's coat. "And there's my brother, and my mother, Gilda." He ran the tip of his finger over the image of his mother. "She was Scottish and poor, but my father adored her. He'd shot himself in the foot accidentally while hunting grouse near her family's home. She removed the bullet and sent him on his way. Afterward, he would return week after week, asking her to give him the bullet. Every time, she told him she couldn't find it, and could he come back next week?"
"Crafty woman," offered Holmes, listening intently. "Really, quite shrewd!"
"You don't know the half of it," said Watson, laughing. "She kept it up until he said, 'I have had enough of traveling here. I am going to marry you, and together we will look for my bullet.' She agreed, but after they said their vows she reached into the pocket of her dress and produced- oh, yes, here it is!" Watson picked up the little jar containing the lump of metal and shook it gently. "She'd kept it with her the entire time he courted her."
Holmes smiled. "That is a brilliant story," he said. "Now I know how you came to possess your wit."
"Oh, I am not half as clever as my mother." Watson looked around at the objects on the floor. "Look here," he said, and he picked up the bedraggled toy. "This is Darwin. My mother made him for me when I was very small and had contracted a fever."
"Darwin," said Holmes with interest, though he was not nearly so interested in the thing as he was in the way that Watson held it. He cradled it, as though it were alive, wounded, comprised of the most valuable materials. "I wondered what that was."
"Named for Charles Darwin, of course." Watson scrutinized the thing, holding it up to the light and feeling along its splitting seams. "My mother was a great reader, and I recall that she read from his book On the Origin of Species while she sat with me during my fever. She read and sewed me this toy at that time, and fashioned it to look like a tiger, my favourite animal when I was small."
The sitting-room became utterly silent save for the crackle of the fire and Gladstone's snoring. Watson stared down at the little scrap of his childhood, as though he were waiting for it to divulge his life's story itself. Holmes leaned close, eager to hear more but unwilling to speak and break whatever magic was being worked in Watson's mind at that moment. Silently he followed the line of Watson's thoughts as they traveled across his face (furrowed brow, quirk of the left corner of his mouth, slip of tongue as he wet his lips). He suspected that Watson was about to impart something important.
"My parents died when I was young," said Watson finally. "My mother contracted St Anthony's fire and languished for weeks, her beautiful face a mass of red flesh." He shook his head. "She died in agony, and several months later my father followed her, his death hastened by an addiction to laudanum."
He looked at Holmes pointedly, who could not look back for very long without turning away. Watson cleared his throat. "It was then I decided to become a doctor," he went on. "I wanted to cure people, to ease their suffering, not encourage it. The doctor - if you could call the bastard such - who treated my mother was useless, and he supplied my father the laudanum. I vowed to be a proper doctor, so that one day I might be able to save someone else's young mother or father from such fates.
"I went to live with my grandmother, my father's mother, in Sevenoaks. She never approved of my mother, believing my father had married too far below his station, but she spoiled me. I suppose because I looked like my father, and he had been her only son. I was well-educated, sent to very good schools, and encouraged in my medical studies. But so dull was my childhood at her estate, because I had no playmates and my brother was away at school, that when I finally received my degree I elected to join the Army, to see the world, have adventures in far-away, exotic places."
Watson looked down at Darwin. "One of many poor decisions I would make in my life," he said quietly, shifting his bad leg into a better position.
They were silent again. Holmes studied Watson for a long moment and found that instead of wanting to analyze the discomfort on Watson's face, which was his usual (awkward, often inappropriate) response to moments such as these, he wanted to chase it away. He did not know how to do so, or what to say. His rat-maze mind was suddenly empty, and for the first time in decades Holmes found himself at a complete loss. He had no next move. He would have to risk it.
Holmes reached out and touched Watson's wrist. "To be fair," he said, "I think you look a great deal more like your mother."
The smile that spread across Watson's face told Holmes it was precisely the right thing to say. "You know," he said, "I've been so caught up in telling you these things that I've rather forgotten to be angry with you for opening my trunk without me."
"I apologise," said Holmes. He ducked his head. "A locked trunk of unknown origin quite vexed me, and I feared it might pose a threat to your well-being."
"Because it is such a threatening trunk." Watson nudged Holmes with one shoulder. "I should strike you." He smiled. "Or put you in the trunk and post it to Siam."
Holmes made a face. "I'm sure I would not appreciate the trip," he said. "I'm not fond of the Far East."
"I'd put holes in the top."
"Watson."
They grinned at one another for a moment before Holmes plucked Darwin from Watson's hands. "Why do you suppose your governess sent you these things now?" he asked, turning the toy over in his hands. He surmised by the degrees of wear on certain patches of the tiger's fur that Watson had clutched it most often with his right hand, and another worn spot on an ear indicated where a small Watson might have chewed the toy in distress or boredom. "You did not request them."
Watson nodded. "As I said before, I thought these things had been lost. My grandmother took Darwin away when I was about ten, claiming it wasn't proper for a boy to carry a doll about." He frowned. "I think it was less about propriety and more about banishing my mother, even her memory, from her home. She sincerely hated my mother, and was determined that I would retain none of her loving influence." He looked over to the trunk. "My grandmother must have passed away at last."
"Strong words, coming from you, Watson."
"No, no," said Watson quickly. "I may not have seen eye to eye with her but I harbor no ill feelings. I am only glad to see her suffering come to an end, as she has been quite ill for the last few years. I only regret I did not call upon her before her passing, God rest her." He sighed and gestured toward Darwin. "I'd wager she gave him to Mrs Chase to throw out, but Mrs Chase could not do it. She saved him, along with all of these other things, for me. And with my grandmother gone she was finally at liberty to send them."
"That is remarkable of her," said Holmes. "To save your things for so many years. Clearly your Mrs Chase was fond of you and looks out for you even now. For that I am glad, for you are a creature that deserves the utmost attention and care. Now, we should put these things back into the trunk and preserve them." He looked to Watson for approval and felt a wave of guilt once more. "And I am truly sorry for opening it without your permission," he added quickly. "I did not mean to steal your story, I only wished to learn it." He cleared his throat, ears suddenly burning. "I only wish to know you as I ought."
For a moment, Watson only looked at him. Then, "When I was small, I told Darwin of everything. How I was feeling, what I intended to do with my day, the food I ate - everything. I imagined him as real as a tiger named for a scientist could possibly be, imagined him into the friend I'd never had but always wanted. We had such adventures together, my only friend." Watson touched his nose to the top of Darwin's head and then placed him in the trunk. "And yet, I have not missed him as I thought I might."
"No?" Holmes blinked. "Well, that's only appropriate. You are an adult now, and you have outgrown that sort of thing."
"No, there were times as a grown man," said Watson, "when I missed him to the point of near-madness. Long nights alone in the boys' house at school, when the bullet shattered my leg, as I lay dying of enteric fever in India. I wished for Darwin to provide me some sort of comfort, to give me someone in whom I could confide my pains, my fears and my heartaches. I wished for him to remind me of my mother's love, the only love I'd ever been properly certain of. And there were exciting times in the war when I wished for him to be there, to have the adventure with me. But not since I returned to England have I missed him in that manner again."
"Whyever not?" asked Holmes. Watson smiled, a small, secretive smile that made him look every bit like the young, impish boy in the portrait. At the sight of that smile, something in Holmes's chest constricted, and suddenly he found it quite difficult to breathe.
"Because," he said, eyes shining over-bright, looking directly into Holmes's. "Now I have you."
Before Holmes (surprised, pleased, vaguely terrified) could respond, Mrs Hudson arrived with their breakfast and immediately scolded them for making a mess on the floor. Sheepishly, both men got to their feet (Watson reaching for Holmes's hand to pull himself up) and began returning things to the trunk. Mrs Hudson stood by, glaring at Holmes.
"I told you not to break into it," she said, frowning so that Holmes was tempted to ask her if she had any gargoyle relations. "You have absolutely no manners in you."
"My dear woman," he said, folding the wedding dress neatly and placing it on top of the portraits in the trunk. "As you can see, the trunk is still quite functional, indicating that I did not break anything. I made you no promises that I would not open it, nor did you extract such a promise from me."
Mrs Hudson threw up her hands, turned and stomped out of the room. Holmes sniggered, and Watson sighed at him but said nothing. When they finished picking up, Watson poked through the trunk to make sure that everything was in order.
"Holmes," said Watson, turning to Holmes with a frown of concern. "Have you seen the bullet? The one in the jar."
"I have not," said Holmes. "It would seem that I have misplaced it."
Watson looked at him strangely. "Misplaced it."
Holmes nodded. "Indeed," he said. He looked back at Watson, mirth dancing in his eyes. "And I fear I am far too weary to look for it. Perhaps... next week?
After a long moment in which Holmes waited impatiently, fidgeting, slipping his hand into his pocket and taking it out again, Watson slowly smiled at him. His face bloomed a fetching shade of pink. Without a word he stepped up to Holmes, put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, gently.
"I'd rather not wait that long," he said softly, leaning in.
--
In the end, the trunk was put away into storage once again, though it missed two of its former occupants. One was a battered and much-loved stuffed tiger that found himself a new home on a bedside table.
The other was a jar containing a single bullet, thought to have gone missing after the initial delivery of the trunk, only to be recovered from Holmes's dressing-gown pocket a few days later.
-end-
Author: moony
Pairing: Watson/Holmes
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: Watson receives a trunk. Holmes is impatient. And a stuffed tiger is returned to the boy he once knew.
Notes: Inspired by a discussion with flying_android regarding Watson and a stuffed animal. With apologies to Bill Watterson for the borrowing of a concept. Thank you to radiobroadcast, coffee_n_retcon and veul_mclannon for reading through it for me. :)
--
Holmes was in the sitting-room, in his dressing-gown, looking through the obituaries, when Mrs Hudson came in to inform him of the delivery of a trunk.
"A trunk?" Holmes put up his newspaper and rose, rubbing his hands together. "Most intriguing. Perhaps it is my long-overdue payment from that duchess, back in October. The one whose son had absconded to France with the silver, a rare Bible and the beloved family dog." He frowned. "I do hope she did not send the dog."
Mrs Hudson, holding the door open for two boys who lurched into the room, bearing a large, leather-bound hat-trunk between them, shook her head. "Doubtful, Mr Holmes, for it is addressed to Doctor Watson."
The boys placed the trunk in the center of the room and looked at Holmes expectantly. With a grunt he produced two coins from his pocket and pressed them into the dingy, outstretched palms. "Begone with you," he muttered, and the boys bolted. To Mrs Hudson he said, "The good doctor has not yet risen. I shall guard his trunk until he is present to open it."
"You won't break into it," she said, warily. It was not a question. "It's nothing to do with you."
"My dear woman!" Holmes laughed. "Do not address me as though I were a common criminal! I assure you that I have no intention of breaking Watson's precious trunk. Go downstairs and make my breakfast, if you would, and bring some up for Watson. He rises on the hour, you know."
Mrs Hudson gave him a long, searching look before she left the room, muttering what Holmes assumed were unkind things under her breath. When he was certain she was gone (seventeen footsteps descending, fourth step creaks, click of the kitchen door as it swings shut) he turned to the trunk and regarded it as he might a sentient adversary.
"Well, then. What have we here, Gladstone?" He looked to their trusty if a bit overweight (too much sausage from Watson, too many chemical-laced biscuits from Holmes) bull-dog, who was sprawled across the tiger rug and basking in the firelight. The animal looked up, yawned and rolled over. "Oh, do not get yourself worked up, my dear boy," said Holmes wryly. "Honestly, you'll bring the house down with all your barking."
Holmes crouched down and peered at the label pasted to the outside of the trunk. "To Doctor Watson, 221b Baker Street, London. From G. Chase, Waterstone Hall, Sevenoaks, Kent. Hum! Who might you be, mysterious sender of trunks, to our dear Watson?"
He puzzled over the label and the handwriting (delicate hand, most likely an older woman, the letters crooked and unsteady, as if the hand holding the pen shook uncontrollably), the condition of the trunk (sturdy, well-used, early '60s manufacture), and the smell of it (musty, as though it had been stored somewhere and forgotten). Still pondering, he returned to his chair and picked up his newspaper again, but he did not open it. The trunk sat still, silent - it mocked him. 'Look at me, Mr Holmes,' it said, in the sort of voice a trunk ought to have, 'Look at me and wonder at my secrets! Secrets about your Watson! If my exterior has you so vexed, imagine what stories my contents could tell!'
And then the trunk laughed. It was haughty. Holmes could not abide haughty objects, especially ones that were trunks addressed to Watson. Watson, who was lazy and exceedingly late in rising, which was completely unfair as Holmes could not be expected to remain so patient for so long. Didn't Watson know him well enough to understand that Holmes's curiousity was insatiable, and that allowing mysterious trunks to enter their home was an incredibly careless thing to do? Damn it, Watson!
Or perhaps it was a trap of some sort, a diabolical device disguised as a trunk and sent by one of Holmes's many enemies, intended to damage poor Watson in an act of revenge? What sort of friend would Holmes be, if he did not eliminate the initial threat, at great, personal sacrifice? Poor Watson!
The clock ticked. Gladstone snored. The trunk remained... trunkish. And Holmes's patience grew thinner and thinner until, finally, after nearly an hour of waiting for Watson to get the hell out of bed, come downstairs and open the god-damned thing already, it snapped altogether.
Holmes stood and looked to the dog again. "Gladstone, I have come to rely on you as a confidant of a sort, and I trust you won't betray what I'm about to do, not to Watson and certainly not to that busybody downstairs!"
With that, Holmes went to his desk, pulling at drawers until he at last located his kit (under the post from several days ago, a bit sticky from a slightly-melted toffee, blast it). From it he extracted the proper tools and returned to the trunk, where he bent low and went about his task.
"She said not to break into it," he muttered, ostensibly to the dog but more to himself. "Daft woman knows nothing about lock-picking. If it's done properly, the lock remains unharmed. So, to be technical, I am not breaking anything at all. Merely eliminating an obstacle in my path."
It took only a few practiced turns of the wrists, a wiggle here and there, and soon the lock clicked its defeat and Holmes sat back in satisfaction. "You were hardly a worthy opponent after all," he admonished it, pushing the lock out of the way and lifting the lid (even mustier on the inside, dusty, everything inside must be decades old). "Now then, let's see what you're hiding." A puff of dust emerged and lodged itself in Holmes's face, resulting in several sneezes before he could wipe the grit from his eyes and peer inside.
It was not a trap. No badgers or poisonous springs leapt out at him. It was a perfectly ordinary trunk, and Holmes wondered if, now that the threat of danger was exorcised, he ought to close the trunk. He started to, then wondered if perhaps it was meant to look initially harmless just for that purpose, to fool Holmes into a false sense of security! The nerve of the blackguard that sent the infernal trunk! He would have to empty it of its contents. Just to be certain. For Watson's sake, of course.
The first thing he spotted was a filmy, grey pile of cloth, which turned out to be a dress. The style he placed firmly in the '50s, and he thought it strange that someone would go through the trouble to send Watson an old, shabby dress. Almost immediately, his mind supplied him with the completely unhelpful image of Watson in the dress, which was a terrible thing for a mind to do to its owner. "I shall wound you with alcohol later," he told it, putting the dress aside. He would ponder it further once he'd finished uncovering the rest.
Beneath the dress was a small portrait of a young boy, no more than three, posing with a small dog. It was instantly apparent to Holmes that this was, indeed, a very young John Watson. It was in the eyes, the chin, the left corner of his mouth that hid a near-constant smile. Those things were still very much present in the Watson Holmes knew, things Holmes knew by heart. He looked at the portrait for a long time before he finally set it aside and resumed digging.
Obviously, this trunk had come from someone in Watson's family. Further inspection revealed papers containing childish drawings of sailing-ships, dragons and horses, a box of old jewelry of no real worth, several more small portraits of Watson at various stages of growth, a school-scarf of faded blue and yellow, a battered copy of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, a tiny jar containing a lump of what looked like metal, and finally, a lump of fabric and stuffing that Holmes suspected had once been a toy.
Holmes sat with these items strewn all around him, mind whirling. This, he deduced, was no revenge plot, no message of animosity. This was Watson's secret history, a puzzle spread out before him, waiting to be assembled and admired.
Much like the man himself, thought Holmes. He'd always regarded Watson as the most difficult of mysteries to unravel, a man who could be a stoic gentleman one moment and a scrappy, brave rascal the next. Watson's genial nature gotten them out of as many scrapes as his pistol had. And Watson was usually the first to jump into the fray when things (inevitably, because that was their way of things) went south, only to take Holmes back to Baker Street and bandage him up with hands too gentle to have thrown the first punch only moments before. A consistent contradiction was his Watson, his favourite conundrum, and Holmes appreciated that he now had much more data on the subject than he'd ever had before. He only had to translate it.
So distracted was Holmes by his thoughts that he did not notice the door open, or Watson's soft footfalls as he padded (barefoot, Watson disliked slippers in the morning and detested sleeping in socks) across the floor.
"Holmes?" His voice was soft and rough with sleep. "Good morning. What have you got, there?" He took in the trunk, frowned a bit at the label. "Why, that's addressed to me!"
"Yes." Holmes held up the dress, the first thing he put his hand to. "These are your things, I believe. They arrived just this morning." He swallowed hard. "I, er, took the liberty of opening it for you."
Watson blinked and accepted the dress, running his hands over the thin fabric. "This... This was my mother's dress," he said. "She wore it when she married my father."
He looked over all of the things spread out on the floor. "These are- These are my things. Oh, my!" Watson dropped to the floor awkwardly, wincing as he bent his bad leg, and picked up the portrait of himself as a child. "I have not seen these things in years. I thought them lost!"
"A Mrs G. Chase sent them," said Holmes quietly, sheepishly. He budged over slightly, giving Watson room to sit on the floor properly. "I assume she is a relation."
"My governess," said Watson, still staring at the portrait. "Well, not so much a governess as my grandmother's housekeeper, but during my time there she was nursemaid and governess to me." He smiled and held out the portrait for Holmes to see. "This was done when I was nearly three, for my mother's birthday. That was my dog, Cheshire."
Holmes smiled. "You kept your affinity for dogs," he said. "Among other things. I knew that portrait was of you as you have not changed so much as you've merely gotten taller, and hairier." He poked at Watson's moustache. Watson batted his hand away and put the portrait aside, picking up another.
"Here's one of all of us. That tall fellow, that's my father. He purchased a commission in the Army, served in the Crimean War. You can see his medal, just there." He pointed to his father's coat. "And there's my brother, and my mother, Gilda." He ran the tip of his finger over the image of his mother. "She was Scottish and poor, but my father adored her. He'd shot himself in the foot accidentally while hunting grouse near her family's home. She removed the bullet and sent him on his way. Afterward, he would return week after week, asking her to give him the bullet. Every time, she told him she couldn't find it, and could he come back next week?"
"Crafty woman," offered Holmes, listening intently. "Really, quite shrewd!"
"You don't know the half of it," said Watson, laughing. "She kept it up until he said, 'I have had enough of traveling here. I am going to marry you, and together we will look for my bullet.' She agreed, but after they said their vows she reached into the pocket of her dress and produced- oh, yes, here it is!" Watson picked up the little jar containing the lump of metal and shook it gently. "She'd kept it with her the entire time he courted her."
Holmes smiled. "That is a brilliant story," he said. "Now I know how you came to possess your wit."
"Oh, I am not half as clever as my mother." Watson looked around at the objects on the floor. "Look here," he said, and he picked up the bedraggled toy. "This is Darwin. My mother made him for me when I was very small and had contracted a fever."
"Darwin," said Holmes with interest, though he was not nearly so interested in the thing as he was in the way that Watson held it. He cradled it, as though it were alive, wounded, comprised of the most valuable materials. "I wondered what that was."
"Named for Charles Darwin, of course." Watson scrutinized the thing, holding it up to the light and feeling along its splitting seams. "My mother was a great reader, and I recall that she read from his book On the Origin of Species while she sat with me during my fever. She read and sewed me this toy at that time, and fashioned it to look like a tiger, my favourite animal when I was small."
The sitting-room became utterly silent save for the crackle of the fire and Gladstone's snoring. Watson stared down at the little scrap of his childhood, as though he were waiting for it to divulge his life's story itself. Holmes leaned close, eager to hear more but unwilling to speak and break whatever magic was being worked in Watson's mind at that moment. Silently he followed the line of Watson's thoughts as they traveled across his face (furrowed brow, quirk of the left corner of his mouth, slip of tongue as he wet his lips). He suspected that Watson was about to impart something important.
"My parents died when I was young," said Watson finally. "My mother contracted St Anthony's fire and languished for weeks, her beautiful face a mass of red flesh." He shook his head. "She died in agony, and several months later my father followed her, his death hastened by an addiction to laudanum."
He looked at Holmes pointedly, who could not look back for very long without turning away. Watson cleared his throat. "It was then I decided to become a doctor," he went on. "I wanted to cure people, to ease their suffering, not encourage it. The doctor - if you could call the bastard such - who treated my mother was useless, and he supplied my father the laudanum. I vowed to be a proper doctor, so that one day I might be able to save someone else's young mother or father from such fates.
"I went to live with my grandmother, my father's mother, in Sevenoaks. She never approved of my mother, believing my father had married too far below his station, but she spoiled me. I suppose because I looked like my father, and he had been her only son. I was well-educated, sent to very good schools, and encouraged in my medical studies. But so dull was my childhood at her estate, because I had no playmates and my brother was away at school, that when I finally received my degree I elected to join the Army, to see the world, have adventures in far-away, exotic places."
Watson looked down at Darwin. "One of many poor decisions I would make in my life," he said quietly, shifting his bad leg into a better position.
They were silent again. Holmes studied Watson for a long moment and found that instead of wanting to analyze the discomfort on Watson's face, which was his usual (awkward, often inappropriate) response to moments such as these, he wanted to chase it away. He did not know how to do so, or what to say. His rat-maze mind was suddenly empty, and for the first time in decades Holmes found himself at a complete loss. He had no next move. He would have to risk it.
Holmes reached out and touched Watson's wrist. "To be fair," he said, "I think you look a great deal more like your mother."
The smile that spread across Watson's face told Holmes it was precisely the right thing to say. "You know," he said, "I've been so caught up in telling you these things that I've rather forgotten to be angry with you for opening my trunk without me."
"I apologise," said Holmes. He ducked his head. "A locked trunk of unknown origin quite vexed me, and I feared it might pose a threat to your well-being."
"Because it is such a threatening trunk." Watson nudged Holmes with one shoulder. "I should strike you." He smiled. "Or put you in the trunk and post it to Siam."
Holmes made a face. "I'm sure I would not appreciate the trip," he said. "I'm not fond of the Far East."
"I'd put holes in the top."
"Watson."
They grinned at one another for a moment before Holmes plucked Darwin from Watson's hands. "Why do you suppose your governess sent you these things now?" he asked, turning the toy over in his hands. He surmised by the degrees of wear on certain patches of the tiger's fur that Watson had clutched it most often with his right hand, and another worn spot on an ear indicated where a small Watson might have chewed the toy in distress or boredom. "You did not request them."
Watson nodded. "As I said before, I thought these things had been lost. My grandmother took Darwin away when I was about ten, claiming it wasn't proper for a boy to carry a doll about." He frowned. "I think it was less about propriety and more about banishing my mother, even her memory, from her home. She sincerely hated my mother, and was determined that I would retain none of her loving influence." He looked over to the trunk. "My grandmother must have passed away at last."
"Strong words, coming from you, Watson."
"No, no," said Watson quickly. "I may not have seen eye to eye with her but I harbor no ill feelings. I am only glad to see her suffering come to an end, as she has been quite ill for the last few years. I only regret I did not call upon her before her passing, God rest her." He sighed and gestured toward Darwin. "I'd wager she gave him to Mrs Chase to throw out, but Mrs Chase could not do it. She saved him, along with all of these other things, for me. And with my grandmother gone she was finally at liberty to send them."
"That is remarkable of her," said Holmes. "To save your things for so many years. Clearly your Mrs Chase was fond of you and looks out for you even now. For that I am glad, for you are a creature that deserves the utmost attention and care. Now, we should put these things back into the trunk and preserve them." He looked to Watson for approval and felt a wave of guilt once more. "And I am truly sorry for opening it without your permission," he added quickly. "I did not mean to steal your story, I only wished to learn it." He cleared his throat, ears suddenly burning. "I only wish to know you as I ought."
For a moment, Watson only looked at him. Then, "When I was small, I told Darwin of everything. How I was feeling, what I intended to do with my day, the food I ate - everything. I imagined him as real as a tiger named for a scientist could possibly be, imagined him into the friend I'd never had but always wanted. We had such adventures together, my only friend." Watson touched his nose to the top of Darwin's head and then placed him in the trunk. "And yet, I have not missed him as I thought I might."
"No?" Holmes blinked. "Well, that's only appropriate. You are an adult now, and you have outgrown that sort of thing."
"No, there were times as a grown man," said Watson, "when I missed him to the point of near-madness. Long nights alone in the boys' house at school, when the bullet shattered my leg, as I lay dying of enteric fever in India. I wished for Darwin to provide me some sort of comfort, to give me someone in whom I could confide my pains, my fears and my heartaches. I wished for him to remind me of my mother's love, the only love I'd ever been properly certain of. And there were exciting times in the war when I wished for him to be there, to have the adventure with me. But not since I returned to England have I missed him in that manner again."
"Whyever not?" asked Holmes. Watson smiled, a small, secretive smile that made him look every bit like the young, impish boy in the portrait. At the sight of that smile, something in Holmes's chest constricted, and suddenly he found it quite difficult to breathe.
"Because," he said, eyes shining over-bright, looking directly into Holmes's. "Now I have you."
Before Holmes (surprised, pleased, vaguely terrified) could respond, Mrs Hudson arrived with their breakfast and immediately scolded them for making a mess on the floor. Sheepishly, both men got to their feet (Watson reaching for Holmes's hand to pull himself up) and began returning things to the trunk. Mrs Hudson stood by, glaring at Holmes.
"I told you not to break into it," she said, frowning so that Holmes was tempted to ask her if she had any gargoyle relations. "You have absolutely no manners in you."
"My dear woman," he said, folding the wedding dress neatly and placing it on top of the portraits in the trunk. "As you can see, the trunk is still quite functional, indicating that I did not break anything. I made you no promises that I would not open it, nor did you extract such a promise from me."
Mrs Hudson threw up her hands, turned and stomped out of the room. Holmes sniggered, and Watson sighed at him but said nothing. When they finished picking up, Watson poked through the trunk to make sure that everything was in order.
"Holmes," said Watson, turning to Holmes with a frown of concern. "Have you seen the bullet? The one in the jar."
"I have not," said Holmes. "It would seem that I have misplaced it."
Watson looked at him strangely. "Misplaced it."
Holmes nodded. "Indeed," he said. He looked back at Watson, mirth dancing in his eyes. "And I fear I am far too weary to look for it. Perhaps... next week?
After a long moment in which Holmes waited impatiently, fidgeting, slipping his hand into his pocket and taking it out again, Watson slowly smiled at him. His face bloomed a fetching shade of pink. Without a word he stepped up to Holmes, put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, gently.
"I'd rather not wait that long," he said softly, leaning in.
--
In the end, the trunk was put away into storage once again, though it missed two of its former occupants. One was a battered and much-loved stuffed tiger that found himself a new home on a bedside table.
The other was a jar containing a single bullet, thought to have gone missing after the initial delivery of the trunk, only to be recovered from Holmes's dressing-gown pocket a few days later.
-end-