[Sherlock BBCx2009] Echoes of a Distant Tide, Part 1
Title: Echoes of a Distant Tide
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (BBC+2009)
Rating: PG-13/R (15)
Warning(s) (entire fic): Victorian morals, drug use, discussions of suicide, character death
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson, implied pre-Sherlock/John (+squint friendly permutations thereof); past Watson/Mary Morstan
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine
Notes: I must have been insane to decide this was a good idea. Had to fudge numerous canon timeline details (not that the film hadn't done that already; not that ACD canon isn't convoluted enough) to get this to mesh in any workable fashion. And just to cover all my bases; this was is being written before either A Game of Shadows or series 2 of Sherlock aired, so please excuse further temporal improbabilities than were strictly necessary by virtue of the plot.
Inspired in part by Keane's "The Lovers are Losing" & "The Iron Sea".
---
With us time itself does not progress. It revolves.
--Oscar Wilde
"I dreamed I was drowning in the river Thames," are the final words Mrs Mary Watson speaks to her despondent, loyal husband as he holds one frail hand between both of his own, begging her silently for patience and forgiveness and time. She smiles faintly, tiredly, lovingly, and the rest of that sentiment goes unspoken between them:
I drowned in the river Thames at the hands of a shadow, like those poor souls that Mr Holmes has been investigating, and you were at his side the way you've always longed to be, and for one fleeting moment I was finally able to be a part of that.
Mrs Mary Watson née Morstan passes on with a smile upon her lips, recalling the memory of a long-forgotten gleam in the eyes of a man she had tried in earnest to love as well as he'd deserved. A piece of John Watson dies with her.
What remains dreams of the river Thames.
In the bleak and endless hours that make up the following day, time trundling on unforgivingly as though nothing at all out of the ordinary has happened, Doctor Watson sees only a small smattering of his scheduled patients (he had been unable, in light of her rapidly failing health, to convince Mary that she was of greater importance than his practice; of course, of course, but she had never allowed him to do anything less than everything he was capable of) before he can be convinced that there are more important matters to attend to presently. Some come and go with little more than their condolences, a kind word and a brief touch to his arm as they smile kindly and delicately manoeuvre themselves away from the petty and all too frequently entirely imagined reasons for their visits to begin with.
At the end of this, his most trying day in longer than he cares to remember, as the sun sets and London slows and stills around him, ignorant of the ache in his heart, the maid-and oh, a dear friend of Mary's, her eyes glossy and her lips trembling; he sends her away with a soothing hand upon her shoulder to rest, to do as he has been advised a hundred times today alone and leave the work for another time, once things have settled some-delivers unto him a message, handwritten and brought to his door by a slip of a boy, unremarkable in appearance for anything other than his obvious vagrancy, though by the description alone Watson can recall a half-dozen instances in which they have previously met.
He crumples the note without reading it; the following morning he sends a telegram, finishes the remainder of necessary funeral arrangements, and studiously cleans his service revolver for the sake of giving his hands something with which to occupy themselves while he thinks.
For the third night in a row, the Thames fills his dreams.
On the fourth, it fills his lungs.
---
The surface of the water ripples, bends, moves in indistinguishable patterns; in constant motion.
It is entrancing, if only because he is alive to see it. John gazes out across the tiled floor, watching distantly, taking in the way the dim lights refract through the depths of the pool, dancing reflections across the water's surface, the roof, the walls. He comes back to himself, adrenaline slowly fading, heart still hammering wildly in his chest, at the sound of Sherlock's voice.
"That, uh- thing, that you- that you did. That, um-" He clears his throat, "That you offered to do, that was... um," searches briefly for a word, settles on: "...good."
Distracted, stilted, awkward; scared, a little, just perhaps- not at all the sociopath his flatmate claims to be. But John had known that since the instant they'd locked eyes across the room; suspected it for longer, or the edge of disappointment in the times the other tried in earnest to prove him wrong would never have cut as deeply as it had. It's gratifying, John realises, to be right about something significant for once. No wonder Sherlock's built his empire upon such feats.
"I'm glad no one saw that," he mutters, at last. At the questioning glance, the hummed request for clarification that comment earns, he continues, "You... ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool." As if everything else about this, about them, whatever it is that they've become, wasn't already ridiculous enough, "People might talk."
He catches movement from the corner of his eye, the brief shake of Sherlock's head drawing his attention back from all its scattered corners of the building; "People do little else."
Their eyes meet properly for the first time since they've been left here alone together, a moment passing before Sherlock breaks into a smile with a short exhale that falls only just short of laughter. John can't help but echo the sentiment, chuckling quietly in response while he tries to coerce protesting muscles back under his jurisdiction and force himself back onto his feet.
The red dot flitting across his chest is as hateful a sight as it is maddening, because the adrenaline's gone and he's too winded, too exhausted to do anything but accept that the both of them had to be bloody stupid to believe for even a second that they'd managed to slip through the cracks with such ridiculous odds against them.
"Sorry, boys!" Moriarty announces his reappearance with a clap of enthusiasm, "I'm so changeable!"
Multiple rifle sights have suddenly sprung to life, too many for either of them to dodge or outrun or fight back. Their already insurmountable odds have just plummeted.
"It is a weakness with me," Moriarty continues, "but to be fair to myself- it is my only weakness."
Sherlock briefly catches his eye, and in his expression John can see a decision in the making.
"You can't be allowed to continue. You just can't. I would try to convince you, but... everything I have to say has already crossed your mind!" Moriarty taunts.
The look in Sherlock's eyes shifts, just slightly. His decision's been made, then, but still he's hesitating for some reason. ...seeking permission, John suddenly realises. And, more importantly, entrusting whatever meagre chance they have at making it out of this alive to him. He nods in assent, short but direct.
"Probably my answer has crossed yours."
With that, Sherlock turns and holds the gun at the ready, pointed sure and steady at the expectant, casual expression across Moriarty's face. A beat, and then, his arm lowers, bringing the gun down to aim instead at the heap of coat and Semtex lying on the floor between them. Moriarty looks on quizzically, a smile playing at the corners of his lips while red dot sights wander anxiously, Sherlock's sharp grey eyes steel with grim determination, and John silently begs the doctor and the soldier in himself for the kind of consummate precision he's long let tarnish in disuse.
He tenses, waits for the instant where purpose meets resolve and there's no room for doubt, no time left for Sherlock to back out or ease off the trigger, nothing but the shot to follow, and throws every ounce of the strength he has left to scrounge up into a burst of energy that takes the form of a rugby tackle his mates from what feels now like a lifetime ago would have been damn proud of.
The heat and force of the explosion ensures that the breath is torn from his lungs even before they hit the water, propelled down nearly to the bottom of the pool where the pressure burns inside his nose; no air to breathe out to expel the rush of water, too disoriented to find up from down, all bright lights and heat and the sharp, stinging pain of chlorinated water and too little oxygen and sheer panic accelerating everything because the whole world's gone bright whites and oranges and black, and up wouldn't matter if his hands could just find purchase on anything Sherlock-
Reflex forces him to inhale in spite of all his better judgement (chlorine, water, choking, panic), just as his fingers find and clutch reflexively into the sodden material of Sherlock's sleeve. The cloth slides easily through his feeble grasp when the other's arm moves-up, with purpose, some far off part of him realises, light-headed with relief (or lack of oxygen; it's not important)-and at last the darkness overtakes him.
Cold.
Breathing hurts- stings, sears, blinding white; his chest convulses and he coughs up what feels as though it should be an inordinate amount of water, trying to curl in on himself, on his side, through the pain, but the hands at his arm and at his face keep him steady through his tremors while the constant rumble of a voice in his ear keeps him grounded, awake.
The air is too crisp, too sharp, too cold; John opens his eyes and finds open air, the sky, and an expression he's seen only once before, mere minutes ago, in eyes that are a great many shades too dark. His breath catches, stutters, chokes and stops; and a man who can only be Sherlock Holmes leans over him, hands at either side of his face, and swears vehemently in between demands that consist almost entirely of breathe.
"-worth all this," he hears through the rattle of his own lungs, blinking into an awareness beyond the initial shock and suddenly aware of just how tightly the man above is holding him, "Mary would have my head if-"
"Sherlock," he breathes, throat raw and voice rough like there's still water caught somewhere in between, and can't decide if it's laughter or tears or some amalgamation of the two that threatens to tip him over the fragile edge of clarity he's managed to obtain when the man's dark brown eyes meet his gaze in recognition and anticipation, if also with some degree of hesitation. It's all wrong, all of it; everything-
"...'Mary'?" his mind suddenly catches up, bewildered, and judging by the look of undisguised (odd, wrong, so very wrong) alarm that his own confusion is met with, John knows he's somehow stumbled across exactly the wrong thing to say.
The man's hands grip his arms (entirely too tightly, as though perhaps the other fears he may slip away without that point of contact), dark eyes betraying a wealth of hurt and concern as he speaks; "Watson, I must insist that you return to Baker Street with me. Temporarily, if you would truly rather this alternative, but... please. I beg of you, at least until the worst has passed."
It doesn't occur to John that he can't think of where else he might return to, aside from maybe the hospital or possibly real life, too absorbed in the depth of honesty to be found in this man's eyes, in his words, all of it so fundamentally wrong, but familiar, all too easy to imagine after the momentary glimpse he'd had upon stepping out into the dim light of the pool at Moriarty's behest to watch incomprehension battle trepidation on his flatmate's face in the moments before their situation became abundantly clear.
This man, somehow, is Sherlock Holmes. For now, that is enough.
"...alright."
It is a blessing in many ways that John finds standing under his own power just a little too much to ask of himself in light of everything, considering the way that his legs threaten to give out from underneath him almost instantly once he is finally in a state to take a sufficient look around.
"Sherlock," he whispers urgently, missing the look of distinctive unease that accompanies his companion's glance, clutching at the man's sleeve and leaning almost entirely against him while his mind reels with the force of absolutely impossible that is taking place all around him. What year is this? presents itself as an entirely legitimate line of enquiry, but the thought is only all the more insane and nothing outside of his own protesting mind has yet given him reason to believe that anything he's seeing should be unfamiliar to him. Maybe he never reached the water after all-the thought skitters clumsily through his head, conveniently omitting the fact that he's presently soaked through to the bone, shivering himself to pieces-maybe he'd been caught in the explosion or thrown aside by the force of it and hit his head something fierce, possibly he's unconscious or dying or already dead and a lot of people who care about what comes after that sort of thing are going to be sorely disappointed someday.
Or, rather more likely, he's gone delusional after experiencing a proverbial cocktail of physical and psychological trauma in the space of one evening. Splendid.
He finds himself wrapped in the other's coat, ushered gently into a hansom cab upon reaching the street (bloody horses; utterly mad, this can't be happening), dimly aware all the while that he is losing vast amounts of mental footing on the situation with every passing moment. The cars, the buses, the buildings; it's all gone.
London as he's known it for over thirty years is gone, and Sherlock Holmes is a terribly unkempt man with dark, expressive eyes, and 221b Baker Street is a similar but imperfect replica in Victorian set pieces, and a too-casually discarded (too-freshly printed) issue of The Daily Graphic lying across the arm of the sofa reads-
-1895.
John stumbles to his feet, his blasted leg threatening to crumple under him with a raw vehemence that proves a great many things about its previously imagined ailments, grasping the man before him by the arms and realising in the silence that follows that the steady hum of background noise since his earlier vertigo has been this man's voice, and stares into wide brown eyes in desperate search of anything that might resemble any form of explanation. Abruptly he notices, standing at his full height, that he is taller than his companion. His fingers clench.
"Sherlock-"
"Watson."
He blinks, inhales; watches something like discomfort chase perplexity through a flicker in the other's eyes. Ah. Too familiar, too intimate for one hundred years ago (that's it then, he thinks with finality, I've gone completely round the bend).
"Sit. Rest," the man implores, guiding him back into his seat, "You are not at all yourself."
John tries to laugh-because it's really quite the opposite, isn't it?-but the sound comes out strangled and causes an unidentifiable expression to cross the other man's face, so he doesn't try again.
---Chapter: [1] >> [2] [3]
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (BBC+2009)
Rating: PG-13/R (15)
Warning(s) (entire fic): Victorian morals, drug use, discussions of suicide, character death
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson, implied pre-Sherlock/John (+squint friendly permutations thereof); past Watson/Mary Morstan
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine
Notes: I must have been insane to decide this was a good idea. Had to fudge numerous canon timeline details (not that the film hadn't done that already; not that ACD canon isn't convoluted enough) to get this to mesh in any workable fashion. And just to cover all my bases; this was is being written before either A Game of Shadows or series 2 of Sherlock aired, so please excuse further temporal improbabilities than were strictly necessary by virtue of the plot.
Inspired in part by Keane's "The Lovers are Losing" & "The Iron Sea".
---
With us time itself does not progress. It revolves.
--Oscar Wilde
"I dreamed I was drowning in the river Thames," are the final words Mrs Mary Watson speaks to her despondent, loyal husband as he holds one frail hand between both of his own, begging her silently for patience and forgiveness and time. She smiles faintly, tiredly, lovingly, and the rest of that sentiment goes unspoken between them:
I drowned in the river Thames at the hands of a shadow, like those poor souls that Mr Holmes has been investigating, and you were at his side the way you've always longed to be, and for one fleeting moment I was finally able to be a part of that.
Mrs Mary Watson née Morstan passes on with a smile upon her lips, recalling the memory of a long-forgotten gleam in the eyes of a man she had tried in earnest to love as well as he'd deserved. A piece of John Watson dies with her.
What remains dreams of the river Thames.
In the bleak and endless hours that make up the following day, time trundling on unforgivingly as though nothing at all out of the ordinary has happened, Doctor Watson sees only a small smattering of his scheduled patients (he had been unable, in light of her rapidly failing health, to convince Mary that she was of greater importance than his practice; of course, of course, but she had never allowed him to do anything less than everything he was capable of) before he can be convinced that there are more important matters to attend to presently. Some come and go with little more than their condolences, a kind word and a brief touch to his arm as they smile kindly and delicately manoeuvre themselves away from the petty and all too frequently entirely imagined reasons for their visits to begin with.
At the end of this, his most trying day in longer than he cares to remember, as the sun sets and London slows and stills around him, ignorant of the ache in his heart, the maid-and oh, a dear friend of Mary's, her eyes glossy and her lips trembling; he sends her away with a soothing hand upon her shoulder to rest, to do as he has been advised a hundred times today alone and leave the work for another time, once things have settled some-delivers unto him a message, handwritten and brought to his door by a slip of a boy, unremarkable in appearance for anything other than his obvious vagrancy, though by the description alone Watson can recall a half-dozen instances in which they have previously met.
He crumples the note without reading it; the following morning he sends a telegram, finishes the remainder of necessary funeral arrangements, and studiously cleans his service revolver for the sake of giving his hands something with which to occupy themselves while he thinks.
For the third night in a row, the Thames fills his dreams.
On the fourth, it fills his lungs.
---
The surface of the water ripples, bends, moves in indistinguishable patterns; in constant motion.
It is entrancing, if only because he is alive to see it. John gazes out across the tiled floor, watching distantly, taking in the way the dim lights refract through the depths of the pool, dancing reflections across the water's surface, the roof, the walls. He comes back to himself, adrenaline slowly fading, heart still hammering wildly in his chest, at the sound of Sherlock's voice.
"That, uh- thing, that you- that you did. That, um-" He clears his throat, "That you offered to do, that was... um," searches briefly for a word, settles on: "...good."
Distracted, stilted, awkward; scared, a little, just perhaps- not at all the sociopath his flatmate claims to be. But John had known that since the instant they'd locked eyes across the room; suspected it for longer, or the edge of disappointment in the times the other tried in earnest to prove him wrong would never have cut as deeply as it had. It's gratifying, John realises, to be right about something significant for once. No wonder Sherlock's built his empire upon such feats.
"I'm glad no one saw that," he mutters, at last. At the questioning glance, the hummed request for clarification that comment earns, he continues, "You... ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool." As if everything else about this, about them, whatever it is that they've become, wasn't already ridiculous enough, "People might talk."
He catches movement from the corner of his eye, the brief shake of Sherlock's head drawing his attention back from all its scattered corners of the building; "People do little else."
Their eyes meet properly for the first time since they've been left here alone together, a moment passing before Sherlock breaks into a smile with a short exhale that falls only just short of laughter. John can't help but echo the sentiment, chuckling quietly in response while he tries to coerce protesting muscles back under his jurisdiction and force himself back onto his feet.
The red dot flitting across his chest is as hateful a sight as it is maddening, because the adrenaline's gone and he's too winded, too exhausted to do anything but accept that the both of them had to be bloody stupid to believe for even a second that they'd managed to slip through the cracks with such ridiculous odds against them.
"Sorry, boys!" Moriarty announces his reappearance with a clap of enthusiasm, "I'm so changeable!"
Multiple rifle sights have suddenly sprung to life, too many for either of them to dodge or outrun or fight back. Their already insurmountable odds have just plummeted.
"It is a weakness with me," Moriarty continues, "but to be fair to myself- it is my only weakness."
Sherlock briefly catches his eye, and in his expression John can see a decision in the making.
"You can't be allowed to continue. You just can't. I would try to convince you, but... everything I have to say has already crossed your mind!" Moriarty taunts.
The look in Sherlock's eyes shifts, just slightly. His decision's been made, then, but still he's hesitating for some reason. ...seeking permission, John suddenly realises. And, more importantly, entrusting whatever meagre chance they have at making it out of this alive to him. He nods in assent, short but direct.
"Probably my answer has crossed yours."
With that, Sherlock turns and holds the gun at the ready, pointed sure and steady at the expectant, casual expression across Moriarty's face. A beat, and then, his arm lowers, bringing the gun down to aim instead at the heap of coat and Semtex lying on the floor between them. Moriarty looks on quizzically, a smile playing at the corners of his lips while red dot sights wander anxiously, Sherlock's sharp grey eyes steel with grim determination, and John silently begs the doctor and the soldier in himself for the kind of consummate precision he's long let tarnish in disuse.
He tenses, waits for the instant where purpose meets resolve and there's no room for doubt, no time left for Sherlock to back out or ease off the trigger, nothing but the shot to follow, and throws every ounce of the strength he has left to scrounge up into a burst of energy that takes the form of a rugby tackle his mates from what feels now like a lifetime ago would have been damn proud of.
The heat and force of the explosion ensures that the breath is torn from his lungs even before they hit the water, propelled down nearly to the bottom of the pool where the pressure burns inside his nose; no air to breathe out to expel the rush of water, too disoriented to find up from down, all bright lights and heat and the sharp, stinging pain of chlorinated water and too little oxygen and sheer panic accelerating everything because the whole world's gone bright whites and oranges and black, and up wouldn't matter if his hands could just find purchase on anything Sherlock-
Reflex forces him to inhale in spite of all his better judgement (chlorine, water, choking, panic), just as his fingers find and clutch reflexively into the sodden material of Sherlock's sleeve. The cloth slides easily through his feeble grasp when the other's arm moves-up, with purpose, some far off part of him realises, light-headed with relief (or lack of oxygen; it's not important)-and at last the darkness overtakes him.
Cold.
Breathing hurts- stings, sears, blinding white; his chest convulses and he coughs up what feels as though it should be an inordinate amount of water, trying to curl in on himself, on his side, through the pain, but the hands at his arm and at his face keep him steady through his tremors while the constant rumble of a voice in his ear keeps him grounded, awake.
The air is too crisp, too sharp, too cold; John opens his eyes and finds open air, the sky, and an expression he's seen only once before, mere minutes ago, in eyes that are a great many shades too dark. His breath catches, stutters, chokes and stops; and a man who can only be Sherlock Holmes leans over him, hands at either side of his face, and swears vehemently in between demands that consist almost entirely of breathe.
"-worth all this," he hears through the rattle of his own lungs, blinking into an awareness beyond the initial shock and suddenly aware of just how tightly the man above is holding him, "Mary would have my head if-"
"Sherlock," he breathes, throat raw and voice rough like there's still water caught somewhere in between, and can't decide if it's laughter or tears or some amalgamation of the two that threatens to tip him over the fragile edge of clarity he's managed to obtain when the man's dark brown eyes meet his gaze in recognition and anticipation, if also with some degree of hesitation. It's all wrong, all of it; everything-
"...'Mary'?" his mind suddenly catches up, bewildered, and judging by the look of undisguised (odd, wrong, so very wrong) alarm that his own confusion is met with, John knows he's somehow stumbled across exactly the wrong thing to say.
The man's hands grip his arms (entirely too tightly, as though perhaps the other fears he may slip away without that point of contact), dark eyes betraying a wealth of hurt and concern as he speaks; "Watson, I must insist that you return to Baker Street with me. Temporarily, if you would truly rather this alternative, but... please. I beg of you, at least until the worst has passed."
It doesn't occur to John that he can't think of where else he might return to, aside from maybe the hospital or possibly real life, too absorbed in the depth of honesty to be found in this man's eyes, in his words, all of it so fundamentally wrong, but familiar, all too easy to imagine after the momentary glimpse he'd had upon stepping out into the dim light of the pool at Moriarty's behest to watch incomprehension battle trepidation on his flatmate's face in the moments before their situation became abundantly clear.
This man, somehow, is Sherlock Holmes. For now, that is enough.
"...alright."
It is a blessing in many ways that John finds standing under his own power just a little too much to ask of himself in light of everything, considering the way that his legs threaten to give out from underneath him almost instantly once he is finally in a state to take a sufficient look around.
"Sherlock," he whispers urgently, missing the look of distinctive unease that accompanies his companion's glance, clutching at the man's sleeve and leaning almost entirely against him while his mind reels with the force of absolutely impossible that is taking place all around him. What year is this? presents itself as an entirely legitimate line of enquiry, but the thought is only all the more insane and nothing outside of his own protesting mind has yet given him reason to believe that anything he's seeing should be unfamiliar to him. Maybe he never reached the water after all-the thought skitters clumsily through his head, conveniently omitting the fact that he's presently soaked through to the bone, shivering himself to pieces-maybe he'd been caught in the explosion or thrown aside by the force of it and hit his head something fierce, possibly he's unconscious or dying or already dead and a lot of people who care about what comes after that sort of thing are going to be sorely disappointed someday.
Or, rather more likely, he's gone delusional after experiencing a proverbial cocktail of physical and psychological trauma in the space of one evening. Splendid.
He finds himself wrapped in the other's coat, ushered gently into a hansom cab upon reaching the street (bloody horses; utterly mad, this can't be happening), dimly aware all the while that he is losing vast amounts of mental footing on the situation with every passing moment. The cars, the buses, the buildings; it's all gone.
London as he's known it for over thirty years is gone, and Sherlock Holmes is a terribly unkempt man with dark, expressive eyes, and 221b Baker Street is a similar but imperfect replica in Victorian set pieces, and a too-casually discarded (too-freshly printed) issue of The Daily Graphic lying across the arm of the sofa reads-
-1895.
John stumbles to his feet, his blasted leg threatening to crumple under him with a raw vehemence that proves a great many things about its previously imagined ailments, grasping the man before him by the arms and realising in the silence that follows that the steady hum of background noise since his earlier vertigo has been this man's voice, and stares into wide brown eyes in desperate search of anything that might resemble any form of explanation. Abruptly he notices, standing at his full height, that he is taller than his companion. His fingers clench.
"Sherlock-"
"Watson."
He blinks, inhales; watches something like discomfort chase perplexity through a flicker in the other's eyes. Ah. Too familiar, too intimate for one hundred years ago (that's it then, he thinks with finality, I've gone completely round the bend).
"Sit. Rest," the man implores, guiding him back into his seat, "You are not at all yourself."
John tries to laugh-because it's really quite the opposite, isn't it?-but the sound comes out strangled and causes an unidentifiable expression to cross the other man's face, so he doesn't try again.
---Chapter: [1] >> [2] [3]