[Sherlock BBCx2009] Echoes of a Distant Tide, Part 3
Title: Echoes of a Distant Tide
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (BBC+2009)
Rating: PG-13/R (15)
Warning(s): Brief references to character death and PTSD
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson, implied pre-Sherlock/John (+squint friendly permutations thereof); past Watson/Mary Morstan
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine. A Game of Shadows was released after the majority of this chapter was already written, and while that doesn't have any direct impact here, it might for the rest of the story.
Notes: I apologise for the delay. I hit a snag upon realising that I needed to have some idea of how Frycroft would differ from BBC!Mycroft in order to write much of anything pertaining to Mycroft. This was a sizeable problem! A Mycroft-sized problem, incidentally.
---
Morning brings with it the discovery that John's nightmares of blood-dampened sand and oppressive heat have adopted the scent of chlorine, in their midst.
Every crevice in the skin of his hands, under his nails, up to his wrists, is caked with the blood of the dead and the dying-flaking off in the form of a fine red dust on everything, everyone he touches, leaving in his wake a trail of death, of men he has killed (couldn't save)-and when at last (too soon) the bullet hits to take him away (to take him away), he opens his mouth to shout or cry or breathe and the air is thick with chlorine where there should be oxygen, so instead he only chokes.
When sun and desert give way suddenly to the damp chill of an early winter morning in London, John finds himself bolt upright in the cramped space of the sofa, his fingers digging painfully into the bone-deep ache in his shoulder and his leg throbbing irritably at him in protest to his less than ideal sleeping arrangements. After sternly reminding the latter of these ailments that it is both fictitious and deeply aggravating for its persistence despite this, John finds next the tattered housecoat arranged artfully around his waist and draped half onto the floor, having presumably been disturbed in the throes of sleep. He gathers it up, revealing the dozing form of an ancient-looking bulldog who snuffles against the base of the sofa but appears otherwise unperturbed, and after a moment's hesitation slips the garment on before attempting to pull himself from his makeshift bed.
His leg twinges painfully in response to the movement, nearly giving out completely the moment he manages to settle any weight upon it, forcing John to grasp desperately for the back of the sofa to keep himself upright, muttering a string of vehement swears behind clenched teeth in the process. Either his psyche has given up on him altogether after the events of last night (presently on-going, so it would seem) or the limp isn't entirely a figment of his imagination here, wherever here may be.
Either way, he is grateful for the walking stick propped up thoughtfully to the side of the fireplace. In light of everything that's happened in so short a time, he's willing to count it as less of a defeat than he might have otherwise, leaning against the added support.
It is while he's re-evaluating the state of his leg that John notices the knife plunged into the mantel, pinning down another untidy stack of letters. He can't help but feel a bit ridiculous for the sense of nostalgia that creeps up on him in remembrance of his first steps into the flat that had so quickly become home; the finer details are indeed what makes this place so familiar, in spite of its direct contradictions.
"My life re: 1895," John mutters to himself in the hopes that hearing it aloud might allow the thought to sink in with more solidarity than it had previously, shaking his head and giving the sitting room another cursory glance. Most of the bits and pieces are either exactly the same or directly complimentary to, and what isn't strikes him as a perfect fit regardless. The bulldog, he thinks idly, making his way back over to his seat on the sofa and reaching down to scratch behind the dog's ears, is one such addition. He'd always wanted a dog, so far as he can remember, but the life of a single man in the Army had never really facilitated that sort of thing and since moving in with Sherlock there had always seemed to be too many other things to worry about at any given time for the thought to have ever come around into the realm of possibility again.
Looking up, he notes that in his rifling through the letters on the table before him the previous night he had at some point inadvertently revealed a telegram hidden among the mess. The dog at his feet huffs and turns in its sleep when he removes his hand to reach for the offending piece of paper, picking it up and looking at both sides before settling back to examine the strange message written thereon, signed with his own name.
John flips it over in his hands a second time, searching for some form of return address, but all it seems to include are the post offices the message had been sent and received from. This information only proves further baffling upon scrutiny, however; why bother sending a telegram from one end of London to the other, much less even half that distance?
"Good morning, doctor," breaks him from his pensive state, tucking the message into the pocket of his borrowed housecoat, "Breakfast?"
"Starving," he answers, shuffling the papers on the table into a clumsy pile to allow for the tray of tea and toast that Mrs Hudson has brought with her.
She stays to have a cup of tea herself while he eats, though for the life of him John can't seem to find a discrete or tactical way to shift their light conversation towards any topic that might prove useful in his wasted efforts to find his bearings or figure out what may have happened. Thus far all he's managed to puzzle out from her is is that he'd apparently been away for some time and that it had rained quite heavily the previous night. The latter seems like the sort of thing he should have noticed, but attempting to recall the information for himself reveals only that his memories of events immediately after the explosion at the pool consist mostly of absolute conviction in his own loss of sanity (he'd been drenched, of course, but then he had just gone for an impromptu swim, however little that explained anything here). So, rain, then.
Rain and the river, he vaguely remembers having been close to its banks when Holmes- It couldn't have rained that heavily, John realises abruptly. Holmes' coat had been warm and dry around his shoulders, and even assuming the very real possibility that his memory was faulty, why bother with the gesture at all if it were rain-soaked? More importantly, why tell Mrs Hudson otherwise?
"Where's he gone off to, anyway?" he interrupts as she speaks about the man in question (something to do with the state of the rooms; he hasn't really heard any of it, lost in his own thoughts).
"Back out, I suppose," she answers with a thoughtful frown. "You know how he is about his work, so little else arrests his attention once he's been called upon."
John hums in agreement, though furrowing his brow even as he does.
"Frankly," Mrs Hudson continues, gathering up her breakfast tray as she speaks, "I'm surprised-pleasantly surprised, mind you-that he took pause for as long as he did. Caring as little for propriety as he does, I worried even..." She places John's empty tea cup back on the tray with a definitive clink, expression shifting momentarily. "...I apologise. I meant not to speak of it."
She smiles at him and John's frown deepens in response.
"He's on a case?" he clarifies, choosing to sidestep the rather significant portion of that conversation he isn't confident in his ability to fumble through with so little context, "Why didn't he wake me?"
The partly dubious, mostly scandalised expression that particular enquiry earns him strikes John as the sort of thing that would be highly amusing if only it were directed at anyone other than himself. As it is, it proves only strikingly unnerving. Surely that can't be the thing that's changed between here and home; would his mind be so cruel as to supply him with a reality where he was summarily dismissed from the part of Sherlock Holmes' life that had so thoroughly attracted him to the man's company to begin with?
"Doctor Watson," Mrs Hudson says softly, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder as she does, "Mary, God rest her soul... I can't begin to imagine the talk if you were to go out again so soon after your wife's only just passed on."
It takes until she removes her hand to pat his shoulder more deliberately for John to retrieve his train of thought from the spectacular wreck of a derailing that statement had initiated. "My wife?" he repeats as steadily as he is able, voice catching in his throat in sheer bewilderment of such a ludicrous notion.
Mrs Hudson's fingers tighten around his shoulder momentarily before she makes a soft sound of concern and turns to her breakfast tray once more, "Oh, he did warn me of this. Another cup of tea will do you right, dear, you just take it easy. My cousin suffered a nasty bout of brain fever himself, after the loss of his wife; positively beside himself for months. It does happen to the best of us, I'm afraid."
John manages to bite his tongue, resting his head in his hands while he works his way through this turn of events as calmly and rationally as possible. He's lost a wife he hadn't known he had and been diagnosed with the 19th century catch-all for emotional and psychological distress in one fell swoop, and as baffling as the former is, the latter makes all of his good sense (however admittedly overtaxed it may presently be) want to shout in protest.
What is there to say in his own defence, though, really? 'Actually I've just come from the future, which is also apparently an alternate timeline, to take the place of myself, which is a bit disorienting in general and all really very Doctor Who when you stop to think about it'? No, brain fever sounds much more reasonable-and far more likely-by comparison.
"What you need," Mrs Hudson is saying when at last he resignedly lifts his head, "is plenty of bed rest. You should have that bath, as well. Have yourself a good, long soak, I'll brew up a fresh pot of tea, and then you can rest for as long as you need."
Her smile doesn't seem to sit right, suddenly, upon meeting his gaze. The moment hardly lasts a fraction of an instant before she sighs and turns away with her tray in hand, nearly through the threshold of the door before she speaks again. "Your room is as you left it. Whatever else he says, I know you're welcome to it."
She glances back before she leaves with a slight, knowing nod, and at once John realises that the malaise in her expression is a weariness that seems to multiply her years incalculably by the lines of her face. He stands as the door closes behind her, burying his hands in the pockets of his borrowed housecoat to prevent himself from calling out after her or asking further questions he knows he won't yet find answers to.
The telegram sits like a lead weight in his pocket, edges cutting into the flesh of his palm as he closes his fist around it.
---
In an anomaly fitting of the evening's events Watson dreams not of the Thames, but sleeps as sound and as still as the dead. Upon waking he cannot recall the moment in which unconsciousness finally managed to overtake him, and that he wakes at all is implausible enough that the impossibility of his surroundings makes for the more believable work of imagination, as surely one cannot dream within such an elaborate dream.
The morning light spills through half-pulled blinds, illuminating the spartan room in which he'd found himself after a brief examination of the upstairs rooms the previous night. Sherlock had retreated upstairs after their encounter in the sitting room, the sound of running water jostling Watson from his musings and into the first proper inspection of his surroundings. Upon the discovery of a device that put the early experiments of tele-photography to shame-for there before his very eyes were images as clear as the world before him, events of the day not transcribed for the papers but displayed in moving pictures, as though transpiring directly outside the window-he'd quickly opted for the relative comfort of his refuge by the fire, eyeing the room's other assorted oddities from a safe distance while his mind raced to reconcile the impossibility and the novelty of all that lay before him.
When Sherlock had at last returned, Watson took immediate advantage of the opportunity to abscond up the stairs for himself, finding the bathroom and its assorted appliances as surreal and unconventional as the rest of the flat and its trappings, made no more accommodating by the presence of a mirror and the singular occurrence of his own changed reflection. Further down the hall yielded the discovery of a room whose sparse and simple furnishings were of an unquestionably military bearing, static and sterile in a way that suggested it was hardly lived in, familiar of a time some years ago before Mary had begun to share his own intimate living space-before even Holmes had managed to encroach upon nearly every corner of his privacy some time before that. He'd not left, upon entering.
The room was and is familiar in a way that is displaced from familiarity, divorced from existence in a fashion that is very nearly palpable in the atmosphere itself. He sits in the centre of the bed and allows this melancholy to settle, to drudge up memories of his early days after Afghanistan, when he'd wandered in a state of only half-being, his constitution frail, his nerves in shambles, and every day before him as bleak and empty as his pockets. The parallel is incontrovertible; it is the same oppressive sense of loss, of breathlessness, devoid of direction or purpose, as the stillness and the silence of his practice in the wake of Mary's illness. If it is a dark place of mind, it is one with which he is at least well acquainted-which is in itself more than can be said of much anything else, of late.
Between remaining hidden away in this room with only his black thoughts for company or braving the world beyond, fascinating and disorienting in equal measure, it fast degrades into a battle of willpower. He is hopeless to exposure should he be faced with the task of merely existing in the same room as Sherlock Holmes, of that much he can be certain, but what London's greatest mind would make of such an outlandish tale? It is impossible to comprehend. Nevertheless, if the alternative is to sit in isolation until driven to madness by the downward spiral of his innermost thoughts-
Well, certainly true madness must be preferable to perceived madness. It is only a question of how he is to distinguish between the two, given all that has happened.
He allows this quandary to hold him to the spot long after a time that his delay might still have been excused, even by the most lenient of standards, before at last squaring his shoulders and venturing forth into what this new day in an unfathomable reality may hold.
It begins with a man in the sitting room.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Watson," the man drawls upon his entry, though making no effort to acknowledge him further. Saved at least the question of whether he should require introduction, Watson casts a reluctant glance towards the kitchen, hesitant to believe that the distraction of a single guest might arrest Sherlock's attention well enough to disguise his ignorance of the cupboards and appliances. It is a risk not worth taking in light of his already precarious situation, so he inclines his head in acknowledgement and takes up the newspaper lying on the coffee table, instead.
He takes a seat upon the sofa, unfolding the paper across his knee before settling in to make what he can of the scene before him.
The stranger is immaculately dressed and seated in the armchair directly opposite Sherlock, who in turn has his hands clasped and tucked under his chin, leaned so far forward that his elbows rest upon his knees, with an intense scowl set into his features and directed pointedly towards the other man. They'd been speaking only moments previous, going silent before Watson had made it even halfway down the stairs. In all, they are clearly familiar and it can be assumed the matter is a sensitive one.
The unknown man's gaze flickers towards him momentarily, Watson immediately allowing his own to fall to the paper in his lap.
"You are well aware of my limitations, Sherlock," the interrupted conversation continues, after a tense stretch of silence. "You must understand it is a highly delicate matter. My hands are full as it is, or I would hardly risk your assistance."
"'Risk'," Sherlock repeats tersely, incredulous, straightening in his seat. When he does not continue that thread, Watson looks up once more to witness the silent war presently being waged between steely glare and cool stare. There are very few men he can recall who can claim to stand their ground in the face of Sherlock Holmes- and only one so effectively.
Mycroft tilts his head back appraisingly, allowing this new silence to slowly approach the limits of his younger brother's patience, Sherlock practically vibrating with the effort of his self-restraint.
"He's not infallible," Sherlock snaps, at last. "There's a mistake somewhere, something he missed. There has to be. Genius or no, he's a madman; madmen always miss something."
"Yes," Mycroft agrees, catching Watson's gaze in the briefest of sidelong glances once more, the subtle smile that accompanies his words as formidable as it is captivating, though it is quick to vanish, "That would so often appear to be the case."
There isn't pause enough for a reaction from anyone before Mycroft continues, his attentions fully on Sherlock once more, to which Watson can only breathe a silent sigh of relief, his paper suddenly a welcome shield rather than the cover it was intended. If there was any doubt as to the man's identity, cast by his significantly altered appearance or the sheer weight of the volatile atmosphere between he and Sherlock, his penetrative gaze has more than set those uncertainties aside.
"I don't have time to play games, Sherlock."
"It stopped being a game the second-"
"-the moment you began tossing around matters of national importance like so many insignificant bargaining counters," Mycroft interrupts smoothly, his tone light as it is sharp. "Pray tell, what precisely did you intend to accomplish? You may pretend otherwise, Sherlock, but you rarely act without at least considering the consequences inherent to your decisions."
"'Consequences'," Sherlock once again parrots incredulously, expression dark, "what consequences? What risk? If it were as important as you've been making it out to be you wouldn't have sent me off to play fetch in the first place. The plans were never intended to be used; they've always been a bargaining counter for your game of shadow politics. In the wrong hands they're an inconvenience for as long as it takes to wipe your hands of them as the source and uncover the designs as a fraud."
Mycroft eyes the handle of his umbrella, twisting it between his fingers with a thoughtful frown before he speaks, "That's quite a bluff for you to call without absolute certainty." His gaze meets Sherlock's, holding steady. Though his expression is neutral, the effect is no less foreboding. "Why gamble with such high stakes?"
Something twists in Sherlock's own expression, then, before he shuts it down completely. His tone is painstakingly even as he replies to a fixed point somewhere behind his brother's shoulder, "It would have made you an ally, if that had been what he was after."
Another long, tense silence follows that statement, time glossing over the perfect stillness of the room for seconds lasting lifetimes before Mycroft's lips quirk into a smile that doesn't come anywhere close to approaching sincere.
"Rather unsporting of you," he replies.
When Sherlock is not forthcoming with any form of elaboration, Mycroft breathes a silent, resigned exhale and taps the point of his umbrella against the floor as he stands. "You have my attention, Sherlock, and what resources I can afford. In future, however," he speaks, towering over the other's seated form, still staring at some indeterminable point on the far wall, "A simple request for assistance would suffice."
Mycroft excuses himself with a nod of farewell in Watson's direction, though it is not until the outside door to the street is closed that Sherlock moves, a sudden rush of anxious motion as he roughly reaches for his violin and shuts himself into his room, the door closing hard enough behind him to rattle in its frame.
Watson looks on from his seat upon the sofa before returning to his paper for lack of anything remotely useful to do, though it is quickly abandoned once his eyes fall upon the date printed thereupon. He stands and makes his way to the kitchen, discordant wailing from the violin a strangely suiting backdrop to his rummaging of the cupboards and the swirling haze of confusion that makes up the vast majority of his thoughts.
Among them, perhaps strangest of all is that he'd never realised he had missed the sound.
---
Chapter: [1] [2] [3] >> [TBA]
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (BBC+2009)
Rating: PG-13/R (15)
Warning(s): Brief references to character death and PTSD
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson, implied pre-Sherlock/John (+squint friendly permutations thereof); past Watson/Mary Morstan
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine. A Game of Shadows was released after the majority of this chapter was already written, and while that doesn't have any direct impact here, it might for the rest of the story.
Notes: I apologise for the delay. I hit a snag upon realising that I needed to have some idea of how Frycroft would differ from BBC!Mycroft in order to write much of anything pertaining to Mycroft. This was a sizeable problem! A Mycroft-sized problem, incidentally.
---
Morning brings with it the discovery that John's nightmares of blood-dampened sand and oppressive heat have adopted the scent of chlorine, in their midst.
Every crevice in the skin of his hands, under his nails, up to his wrists, is caked with the blood of the dead and the dying-flaking off in the form of a fine red dust on everything, everyone he touches, leaving in his wake a trail of death, of men he has killed (couldn't save)-and when at last (too soon) the bullet hits to take him away (to take him away), he opens his mouth to shout or cry or breathe and the air is thick with chlorine where there should be oxygen, so instead he only chokes.
When sun and desert give way suddenly to the damp chill of an early winter morning in London, John finds himself bolt upright in the cramped space of the sofa, his fingers digging painfully into the bone-deep ache in his shoulder and his leg throbbing irritably at him in protest to his less than ideal sleeping arrangements. After sternly reminding the latter of these ailments that it is both fictitious and deeply aggravating for its persistence despite this, John finds next the tattered housecoat arranged artfully around his waist and draped half onto the floor, having presumably been disturbed in the throes of sleep. He gathers it up, revealing the dozing form of an ancient-looking bulldog who snuffles against the base of the sofa but appears otherwise unperturbed, and after a moment's hesitation slips the garment on before attempting to pull himself from his makeshift bed.
His leg twinges painfully in response to the movement, nearly giving out completely the moment he manages to settle any weight upon it, forcing John to grasp desperately for the back of the sofa to keep himself upright, muttering a string of vehement swears behind clenched teeth in the process. Either his psyche has given up on him altogether after the events of last night (presently on-going, so it would seem) or the limp isn't entirely a figment of his imagination here, wherever here may be.
Either way, he is grateful for the walking stick propped up thoughtfully to the side of the fireplace. In light of everything that's happened in so short a time, he's willing to count it as less of a defeat than he might have otherwise, leaning against the added support.
It is while he's re-evaluating the state of his leg that John notices the knife plunged into the mantel, pinning down another untidy stack of letters. He can't help but feel a bit ridiculous for the sense of nostalgia that creeps up on him in remembrance of his first steps into the flat that had so quickly become home; the finer details are indeed what makes this place so familiar, in spite of its direct contradictions.
"My life re: 1895," John mutters to himself in the hopes that hearing it aloud might allow the thought to sink in with more solidarity than it had previously, shaking his head and giving the sitting room another cursory glance. Most of the bits and pieces are either exactly the same or directly complimentary to, and what isn't strikes him as a perfect fit regardless. The bulldog, he thinks idly, making his way back over to his seat on the sofa and reaching down to scratch behind the dog's ears, is one such addition. He'd always wanted a dog, so far as he can remember, but the life of a single man in the Army had never really facilitated that sort of thing and since moving in with Sherlock there had always seemed to be too many other things to worry about at any given time for the thought to have ever come around into the realm of possibility again.
Looking up, he notes that in his rifling through the letters on the table before him the previous night he had at some point inadvertently revealed a telegram hidden among the mess. The dog at his feet huffs and turns in its sleep when he removes his hand to reach for the offending piece of paper, picking it up and looking at both sides before settling back to examine the strange message written thereon, signed with his own name.
John flips it over in his hands a second time, searching for some form of return address, but all it seems to include are the post offices the message had been sent and received from. This information only proves further baffling upon scrutiny, however; why bother sending a telegram from one end of London to the other, much less even half that distance?
"Good morning, doctor," breaks him from his pensive state, tucking the message into the pocket of his borrowed housecoat, "Breakfast?"
"Starving," he answers, shuffling the papers on the table into a clumsy pile to allow for the tray of tea and toast that Mrs Hudson has brought with her.
She stays to have a cup of tea herself while he eats, though for the life of him John can't seem to find a discrete or tactical way to shift their light conversation towards any topic that might prove useful in his wasted efforts to find his bearings or figure out what may have happened. Thus far all he's managed to puzzle out from her is is that he'd apparently been away for some time and that it had rained quite heavily the previous night. The latter seems like the sort of thing he should have noticed, but attempting to recall the information for himself reveals only that his memories of events immediately after the explosion at the pool consist mostly of absolute conviction in his own loss of sanity (he'd been drenched, of course, but then he had just gone for an impromptu swim, however little that explained anything here). So, rain, then.
Rain and the river, he vaguely remembers having been close to its banks when Holmes- It couldn't have rained that heavily, John realises abruptly. Holmes' coat had been warm and dry around his shoulders, and even assuming the very real possibility that his memory was faulty, why bother with the gesture at all if it were rain-soaked? More importantly, why tell Mrs Hudson otherwise?
"Where's he gone off to, anyway?" he interrupts as she speaks about the man in question (something to do with the state of the rooms; he hasn't really heard any of it, lost in his own thoughts).
"Back out, I suppose," she answers with a thoughtful frown. "You know how he is about his work, so little else arrests his attention once he's been called upon."
John hums in agreement, though furrowing his brow even as he does.
"Frankly," Mrs Hudson continues, gathering up her breakfast tray as she speaks, "I'm surprised-pleasantly surprised, mind you-that he took pause for as long as he did. Caring as little for propriety as he does, I worried even..." She places John's empty tea cup back on the tray with a definitive clink, expression shifting momentarily. "...I apologise. I meant not to speak of it."
She smiles at him and John's frown deepens in response.
"He's on a case?" he clarifies, choosing to sidestep the rather significant portion of that conversation he isn't confident in his ability to fumble through with so little context, "Why didn't he wake me?"
The partly dubious, mostly scandalised expression that particular enquiry earns him strikes John as the sort of thing that would be highly amusing if only it were directed at anyone other than himself. As it is, it proves only strikingly unnerving. Surely that can't be the thing that's changed between here and home; would his mind be so cruel as to supply him with a reality where he was summarily dismissed from the part of Sherlock Holmes' life that had so thoroughly attracted him to the man's company to begin with?
"Doctor Watson," Mrs Hudson says softly, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder as she does, "Mary, God rest her soul... I can't begin to imagine the talk if you were to go out again so soon after your wife's only just passed on."
It takes until she removes her hand to pat his shoulder more deliberately for John to retrieve his train of thought from the spectacular wreck of a derailing that statement had initiated. "My wife?" he repeats as steadily as he is able, voice catching in his throat in sheer bewilderment of such a ludicrous notion.
Mrs Hudson's fingers tighten around his shoulder momentarily before she makes a soft sound of concern and turns to her breakfast tray once more, "Oh, he did warn me of this. Another cup of tea will do you right, dear, you just take it easy. My cousin suffered a nasty bout of brain fever himself, after the loss of his wife; positively beside himself for months. It does happen to the best of us, I'm afraid."
John manages to bite his tongue, resting his head in his hands while he works his way through this turn of events as calmly and rationally as possible. He's lost a wife he hadn't known he had and been diagnosed with the 19th century catch-all for emotional and psychological distress in one fell swoop, and as baffling as the former is, the latter makes all of his good sense (however admittedly overtaxed it may presently be) want to shout in protest.
What is there to say in his own defence, though, really? 'Actually I've just come from the future, which is also apparently an alternate timeline, to take the place of myself, which is a bit disorienting in general and all really very Doctor Who when you stop to think about it'? No, brain fever sounds much more reasonable-and far more likely-by comparison.
"What you need," Mrs Hudson is saying when at last he resignedly lifts his head, "is plenty of bed rest. You should have that bath, as well. Have yourself a good, long soak, I'll brew up a fresh pot of tea, and then you can rest for as long as you need."
Her smile doesn't seem to sit right, suddenly, upon meeting his gaze. The moment hardly lasts a fraction of an instant before she sighs and turns away with her tray in hand, nearly through the threshold of the door before she speaks again. "Your room is as you left it. Whatever else he says, I know you're welcome to it."
She glances back before she leaves with a slight, knowing nod, and at once John realises that the malaise in her expression is a weariness that seems to multiply her years incalculably by the lines of her face. He stands as the door closes behind her, burying his hands in the pockets of his borrowed housecoat to prevent himself from calling out after her or asking further questions he knows he won't yet find answers to.
The telegram sits like a lead weight in his pocket, edges cutting into the flesh of his palm as he closes his fist around it.
---
In an anomaly fitting of the evening's events Watson dreams not of the Thames, but sleeps as sound and as still as the dead. Upon waking he cannot recall the moment in which unconsciousness finally managed to overtake him, and that he wakes at all is implausible enough that the impossibility of his surroundings makes for the more believable work of imagination, as surely one cannot dream within such an elaborate dream.
The morning light spills through half-pulled blinds, illuminating the spartan room in which he'd found himself after a brief examination of the upstairs rooms the previous night. Sherlock had retreated upstairs after their encounter in the sitting room, the sound of running water jostling Watson from his musings and into the first proper inspection of his surroundings. Upon the discovery of a device that put the early experiments of tele-photography to shame-for there before his very eyes were images as clear as the world before him, events of the day not transcribed for the papers but displayed in moving pictures, as though transpiring directly outside the window-he'd quickly opted for the relative comfort of his refuge by the fire, eyeing the room's other assorted oddities from a safe distance while his mind raced to reconcile the impossibility and the novelty of all that lay before him.
When Sherlock had at last returned, Watson took immediate advantage of the opportunity to abscond up the stairs for himself, finding the bathroom and its assorted appliances as surreal and unconventional as the rest of the flat and its trappings, made no more accommodating by the presence of a mirror and the singular occurrence of his own changed reflection. Further down the hall yielded the discovery of a room whose sparse and simple furnishings were of an unquestionably military bearing, static and sterile in a way that suggested it was hardly lived in, familiar of a time some years ago before Mary had begun to share his own intimate living space-before even Holmes had managed to encroach upon nearly every corner of his privacy some time before that. He'd not left, upon entering.
The room was and is familiar in a way that is displaced from familiarity, divorced from existence in a fashion that is very nearly palpable in the atmosphere itself. He sits in the centre of the bed and allows this melancholy to settle, to drudge up memories of his early days after Afghanistan, when he'd wandered in a state of only half-being, his constitution frail, his nerves in shambles, and every day before him as bleak and empty as his pockets. The parallel is incontrovertible; it is the same oppressive sense of loss, of breathlessness, devoid of direction or purpose, as the stillness and the silence of his practice in the wake of Mary's illness. If it is a dark place of mind, it is one with which he is at least well acquainted-which is in itself more than can be said of much anything else, of late.
Between remaining hidden away in this room with only his black thoughts for company or braving the world beyond, fascinating and disorienting in equal measure, it fast degrades into a battle of willpower. He is hopeless to exposure should he be faced with the task of merely existing in the same room as Sherlock Holmes, of that much he can be certain, but what London's greatest mind would make of such an outlandish tale? It is impossible to comprehend. Nevertheless, if the alternative is to sit in isolation until driven to madness by the downward spiral of his innermost thoughts-
Well, certainly true madness must be preferable to perceived madness. It is only a question of how he is to distinguish between the two, given all that has happened.
He allows this quandary to hold him to the spot long after a time that his delay might still have been excused, even by the most lenient of standards, before at last squaring his shoulders and venturing forth into what this new day in an unfathomable reality may hold.
It begins with a man in the sitting room.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Watson," the man drawls upon his entry, though making no effort to acknowledge him further. Saved at least the question of whether he should require introduction, Watson casts a reluctant glance towards the kitchen, hesitant to believe that the distraction of a single guest might arrest Sherlock's attention well enough to disguise his ignorance of the cupboards and appliances. It is a risk not worth taking in light of his already precarious situation, so he inclines his head in acknowledgement and takes up the newspaper lying on the coffee table, instead.
He takes a seat upon the sofa, unfolding the paper across his knee before settling in to make what he can of the scene before him.
The stranger is immaculately dressed and seated in the armchair directly opposite Sherlock, who in turn has his hands clasped and tucked under his chin, leaned so far forward that his elbows rest upon his knees, with an intense scowl set into his features and directed pointedly towards the other man. They'd been speaking only moments previous, going silent before Watson had made it even halfway down the stairs. In all, they are clearly familiar and it can be assumed the matter is a sensitive one.
The unknown man's gaze flickers towards him momentarily, Watson immediately allowing his own to fall to the paper in his lap.
"You are well aware of my limitations, Sherlock," the interrupted conversation continues, after a tense stretch of silence. "You must understand it is a highly delicate matter. My hands are full as it is, or I would hardly risk your assistance."
"'Risk'," Sherlock repeats tersely, incredulous, straightening in his seat. When he does not continue that thread, Watson looks up once more to witness the silent war presently being waged between steely glare and cool stare. There are very few men he can recall who can claim to stand their ground in the face of Sherlock Holmes- and only one so effectively.
Mycroft tilts his head back appraisingly, allowing this new silence to slowly approach the limits of his younger brother's patience, Sherlock practically vibrating with the effort of his self-restraint.
"He's not infallible," Sherlock snaps, at last. "There's a mistake somewhere, something he missed. There has to be. Genius or no, he's a madman; madmen always miss something."
"Yes," Mycroft agrees, catching Watson's gaze in the briefest of sidelong glances once more, the subtle smile that accompanies his words as formidable as it is captivating, though it is quick to vanish, "That would so often appear to be the case."
There isn't pause enough for a reaction from anyone before Mycroft continues, his attentions fully on Sherlock once more, to which Watson can only breathe a silent sigh of relief, his paper suddenly a welcome shield rather than the cover it was intended. If there was any doubt as to the man's identity, cast by his significantly altered appearance or the sheer weight of the volatile atmosphere between he and Sherlock, his penetrative gaze has more than set those uncertainties aside.
"I don't have time to play games, Sherlock."
"It stopped being a game the second-"
"-the moment you began tossing around matters of national importance like so many insignificant bargaining counters," Mycroft interrupts smoothly, his tone light as it is sharp. "Pray tell, what precisely did you intend to accomplish? You may pretend otherwise, Sherlock, but you rarely act without at least considering the consequences inherent to your decisions."
"'Consequences'," Sherlock once again parrots incredulously, expression dark, "what consequences? What risk? If it were as important as you've been making it out to be you wouldn't have sent me off to play fetch in the first place. The plans were never intended to be used; they've always been a bargaining counter for your game of shadow politics. In the wrong hands they're an inconvenience for as long as it takes to wipe your hands of them as the source and uncover the designs as a fraud."
Mycroft eyes the handle of his umbrella, twisting it between his fingers with a thoughtful frown before he speaks, "That's quite a bluff for you to call without absolute certainty." His gaze meets Sherlock's, holding steady. Though his expression is neutral, the effect is no less foreboding. "Why gamble with such high stakes?"
Something twists in Sherlock's own expression, then, before he shuts it down completely. His tone is painstakingly even as he replies to a fixed point somewhere behind his brother's shoulder, "It would have made you an ally, if that had been what he was after."
Another long, tense silence follows that statement, time glossing over the perfect stillness of the room for seconds lasting lifetimes before Mycroft's lips quirk into a smile that doesn't come anywhere close to approaching sincere.
"Rather unsporting of you," he replies.
When Sherlock is not forthcoming with any form of elaboration, Mycroft breathes a silent, resigned exhale and taps the point of his umbrella against the floor as he stands. "You have my attention, Sherlock, and what resources I can afford. In future, however," he speaks, towering over the other's seated form, still staring at some indeterminable point on the far wall, "A simple request for assistance would suffice."
Mycroft excuses himself with a nod of farewell in Watson's direction, though it is not until the outside door to the street is closed that Sherlock moves, a sudden rush of anxious motion as he roughly reaches for his violin and shuts himself into his room, the door closing hard enough behind him to rattle in its frame.
Watson looks on from his seat upon the sofa before returning to his paper for lack of anything remotely useful to do, though it is quickly abandoned once his eyes fall upon the date printed thereupon. He stands and makes his way to the kitchen, discordant wailing from the violin a strangely suiting backdrop to his rummaging of the cupboards and the swirling haze of confusion that makes up the vast majority of his thoughts.
Among them, perhaps strangest of all is that he'd never realised he had missed the sound.
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