mustbethetruth | Behold I dream a dream of good

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Behold I dream a dream of good

Holmes is not dead, but that seems a mere technicality. It’s only because the world thinks he’s dead now—that Moran thinks he’s dead—that he can even begin to consider himself alive. Even still, even with the tentative new grasp on himself, even with the aftershocks of having been so close, so very close to tipping over into actual oblivion, he doesn’t feel alive. His heart beats, and his lungs expand and contract, and he moves from Tibet to France to London, but it’s all just movement, just technicalities that propel a man who is but a technicality himself.

Holmes does not feel alive until he’s dressed as an ancient bookseller, and he has a pain in his back and his neck from stooping, and he smells of spirit gum and makeup, and he sees his soul from across the street.

He could hardly be blamed for nearly forgetting himself, forgetting all of this, and crying out to Watson. What else would a body do, when it sees its soul, ripped from him for far too long?

Maybe that’s overly sentimental, but he’s nearly faded away to his own death in an opium den, and spent the next several months under the careful care of monks, themselves prone to sentimentality and metaphor. He’s allowed.

And besides, it’s true.

The purpose of his mission is to guarantee that Watson is not being tailed, that Moran has not noticed Holmes’s technical state of being, that Moran has not decided to give in and kill where his loyalty has so far stayed his hand. Very shortly, nothing seems more important than cataloging everything about Watson; what weight he’s gained or lost, what new items of clothing he’s bought, what needs to be replaced, where he’s been walking, how much sleep he’s been getting, the emotions that flicker over his face (annoyance at the man who walks far too slowly in front of him, fondness for a boy who might’ve been an Irregular).

He only barely remembers that he has more to do today than drink in Watson’s presence, but suddenly the prospect of reuniting with Watson seems far too real, far too frightening. He’s been dead for so long, to himself as much as anyone, and coming back to life is daunting, like emerging from a cave and finding himself entirely unaccustomed to the light of day.

He allows himself this: he crosses their paths, he bumps into him on the sidewalk, he spills his armful of books, and he flees before they sew themselves together again, as they must inevitably do.

~

Mrs. Hudson faints when a bookseller transforms into the specter of Sherlock Holmes in her entryway.

Holmes revives her in her kitchen, and she cries in little bursts, and she clings to Holmes’s neck, and Holmes hugs her back because she doesn’t smell any different, not in the least, and her hair’s the same, but her apron is new. A present from Watson. When she confirms the deduction, Holmes has to stop himself from fingering it, from imagining Watson lingering in a shop and choosing this for her for her birthday.

Everything is arranged, she says; Mycroft’s package is here, and she hasn’t touched it, like he asked. She fixes her hair and blots her face and hugs Holmes again, arms tight around his back, before she pushes him upstairs. She promises tea, promises composure, and disappears into the kitchen.

There is danger. There will come a time when Moran must know, when Moran will step back into the hunt, and his target will be very different. His target will be far more precious. If Holmes slips, if he fails, the story of Sherlock Holmes will be over; his body, the corpse that still breathes, will complete its decomposition, and maybe the darkness will take him.

But he won’t fail. Before he was but a ghost; soon he will be resurrected.

In their sitting room, he is the bookseller. Sherlock Holmes is not alive still; he is not yet complete, but he will be soon. He sips his tea, and he waits.

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Sometimes the days blended together in an endless, grey haze.

Life... went on, after death, as Watson had always known it would inevitably do. There were days he felt but half of himself, but the world wouldn't understand that, so he pulled himself together and found what purpose he could. He wrote, he worked his practice, he spent some time with the Yard, he visited the Lestrades -- in short, he carved himself out some semblance of a new life, with new reasons, and he lived that.

Yet that never stopped him musing over crimes in the papers, wondering what Holmes would have made of them, it never stopped him wanting to hear of work that Lestrade might be involved in that Watson's humble role as a police surgeon did not enter into, it never stopped him missing the feel of Holmes's body in bed beside him. At some point in the last three years he had moved rather more permanently into Holmes's old bedroom, citing that it would be mroe convenient to avoid the stairs to his own, but truly it had just made it easier for him to sleep, sometimes.

Watson tossed a quick greeting to Mrs. Hudson, who he heard but did not see, as he came home, and he ascended the steps, almost lost in thought. It had been a dull day at his practice -- he found many of them dull, frankly, after the life he'd led -- and he was looking forward to dinner, but first a cigar by the fire and a bit of reading, to lose himself in someone else's fiction.

He pulled up short, however, to find a stranger in his sitting room; it brought back memories of other days, of coming home arm in arm with Holmes to find a client waiting for them, or of later, darker days, when people had come looking for the famed detective Sherlock Holmes and only found his grieving doctor, unable to help them. That hadn't happened for quite some time. Small blessings.

"I beg your pardon, I hadn't realised I had a guest," Watson said. He was wary, on his guard, but polite all the same. In his new, dull life, strangers did not regularly come calling on him at his home. A patient, perhaps, who had missed his hours at his office down the street? But no, he realised slowly, he knew this man. It was that peculiar bookseller Watson had collided with on the sidewalk, whose peculiar books he had scattered. The tree worship, the Catallus. "What can I do for you, sir?"

He ought to reveal himself; he ought to drop this pretense and tell Watson now, but the pretense is the only thing that's keeping him upright. It is a difficult thing, to raise oneself from the dead, and what if -- what if he would be unwelcome? Watson has not taken up another lover, Holmes can see that; he sleeps in Holmes's room, he hasn't abandoned their flat. But what if, in the intervening years, Watson had decided to release himself from the terms of their always?

What if, upon discovering the game, he decides Holmes doesn't deserve resurrection?

"It's just that I've seen you a time or two, sir; I have a bookshop at the corner, and when I realized I'd bumped into my neighbor, I thought I ought to come and apologize for my gruff manner. Occupational hazard, sir, to be so involved in my books, and I really wasn't watching where I was going. I only wanted to apologize, sir, and to thank you."

"It's hardly worth mentioning," Watson said, rather perplexed. "You were already forgiven." He recalled the bookshop at the corner, vaguely, but could not recall this man at all before their accidental meeting earlier that day. He liked to think he was at least a little more observant than that. An owner who lurked in the back of the shop, unseen? Perhaps.

Still, it was deucedly odd. There were, too, old instincts still in him, from more dangerous days, that told him to be on his toes.

"I trust none of your books were damaged," he said, and truthfully this was something that had concerned him a little. "You needn't have come all this way merely to thank me for picking up your books."

Rather casually, he removed his hat and coat, deposited his stick in its place by the door, and turned back to this stranger, attempting to look carefully neutral.

He clings to the performance; he reminds himself he is still on stage, that he can't reveal himself, but he can feel his hold on the situation beginning to waver. It's time to drop the pretense, and he wills his hands to keep from shaking.

"But it wasn't far! And I thought you might enjoy -- you look the sort that reads, sir. I have here a nice assortment -- British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War. Something among the lot is bound to strike your interest, and there's a vacancy on your shelf, just there."

He points at a shelf that really isn't lacking any books at all, except it is lacking everything that was his. He's beginning to sweat, he realizes, and the adrenaline floods his system. If only this could stay a performance; if only he could maintain the act, then he might get through this, but in a very few moments he must step off the stage; he isn't sure he's quite ready.

This was to be a sales pitch, was it? That was more annoying than anything else. Watson glanced automatically at the shelf indicated, and sighed inwardly. The shelf was fine, it needed nothing, this was the maddest excuse to try to sell something he had ever heard of. His guilt over a pedestrian collision in the street did not extend to purchasing obscure and potentially expensive books.

"I'm afraid that--" Watson turned back, as polite a dismissal as he could manage on his tongue, but stopped short, discovering that the bookseller had entirely vanished. He was, instead, replaced with a wholly remarkable and wholly impossible sight: Sherlock Holmes, in the bookseller's clothes.

His mouth fell open, even as the blood drained visibly from his face. Watson did not believe in ghosts. Potentially this was just him finally losing his mind. While he gave a weak sort of groan instead of any verbal reply, his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed in a dead faint.

Holmes almost considers not dropping his disguise, but Watson turns around and his body sets into motion, following the script even as his mind is struggling to keep up. He smiles, tentative and uncertain, when Watson turns around, and he starts to step toward him, but then Watson faints, and Holmes isn't quite sure what to do. There's an embarrassing moment in which he only stares confusedly at Watson on the floor, but once he has a handle on the moment, he hurries to his side.

He manages to get Watson over to the sofa, and he hurriedly pours him a brandy. (In the same spot, in the same sideboard; his hands start to tremble, despite himself.)

"Watson?" he asks, returning to his side. "John?" He administers the brandy, frowning deeply.

Good God, his voice. He hadn't heard that voice in far too long but he knew it like he knew his own soul.

Watson coughed and spluttered on the brandy a little; consciousness returned quickly to him. Finding himself moved to the sofa, and Holmes -- mirculously, impossibly Holmes -- peering anxiously over him. This was real. Holmes was alive, against all odds or sense, and here with him.

"Holmes," Watson said, half perplexed, half disbelieving. As he pulled himself up into a half-seated position, two thoughts occurred to him: first, Sherlock Holmes was not and had never been dead; second, Sherlock Holmes had let him believe in his death anyway. The injustice of that stung. It had all been some damned game, some planned deception, for all the talk of always there was no truth behind it at all.

Suddenly furious with the release of three years worth of grief and pain, Watson drew back his fist and flung a punch at Holmes's face; the brandy went flying, but he hardly cared.

It's a bad day for Holmes's reflexes to be sluggish, but waking up from a long, deep depression has left him weak, rather than refreshed. He really needs to improve on that, and the best lesson he's had of that so far all day is that he gets hit when he could probably have dodged it, had he been paying attention. He falls back onto the floor, and his face throbs as he reaches up to cradle his cheekbone, and he finds himself falling into an insecure panic.

"Watson," he says again, still on the floor, and he takes his hand away from his face once he ascertains no real permanent damage has been done. He struggles for composure; if Watson truly no longer wants him around, then Holmes at least needs to get him through the day, and he'll need to keep himself together.

"I trust you no longer need the brandy."

"Do I need the brandy," Watson scoffed. He got to his feet, his fists still clenched tightly as he took a step towards where Holmes was on the floor. Distantly, he recognised this scene of Holmes on the floor clutching his face as wrong, terrible, particularly if he was responsible, but he was in a red haze of fury.

"How dare you," he hissed. Watson advanced on him, his face a mask of rage and betrayal and hurt. "How dare you! Three years, Holmes. Three years! After all your talk of 'always' you throw this sort of deception in my face?"

He exhaled sharply through his nose, his face no longer white with horror to be sure.

Always. He'd meant it, of course. He still does. In the context of always, three years is but a hiccup, but they didn't feel like a hiccup to him, and obviously not to Watson either. He sighs and gets to his feet, and he arranges his clothes more neatly, and he shrugs out of the bookseller's jacket. The struggle to keep from breaking down entirely is becoming more difficult, but he doesn't want to come apart at Watson's feet. The point of this was to put himself back together.

He'd been prepared for this, and he's already been struggling with guilt, because he could have defeated Moran sooner. He knows this, is sure of it, but his volatile nature finally bested his mind, and he sunk into a numbing depression that left him exposed and vulnerable. He should've fought harder.

"It wasn't my idea," he says, avoiding Watson's eyes as he adjusts his cuffs. "I hope you have another right hook left, for you'll want it by the end of the evening."

"I can certainly think of a target for another good right hook," Watson countered. "It wasn't your idea? What utter nonsense. You were dead. You let me believe you were dead."

Advancing, he grabbed Holmes by the shirt, suppressing the urge to simply shake him violently. "How dare you use me like this," he hissed, sounding far more broken than he had as yet, although no less angry. "Am I nothing more than a prop in your mad schemes?"

His eyes were brimming with angry, frustrated tears, which irritated him even further; the last thing he wanted right now was to appear in any way vulnerable. "Give me one good reason," Watson said, "why I shouldn't throw you out of my home right this instant."

When Watson grabs him, he can't help but look into his eyes, and he doesn't really like what he sees there, not in the least. It does, however, start to stir him, to shake him from the cold foundations on which he'd been resting. He doesn't resist, however; he doesn't have the fight in him to be able to throw Watson off. He doesn't want to struggle; it's horrible to be staring down into Watson's rage, but he doesn't know yet if this is the closest he will get to being allowed in Watson's embrace. He can smell Watson from here, and he smells the same.

The only weapon he has against Watson's fury just now is the truth, and he wields it as placidly as he's ever wielded it, even if his voice slips into the telltale flat tone of his suppressed emotion.

"Because there is a man with very good aim and a very quiet gun, and the second he is aware that I am alive and in your presence, he will attempt to kill you."

He waits for that to sink in before he reaches up to Watson's wrists and touches them lightly.

"I ask you to save at least one right hook for him, if you please, as it's his scheme in which we find ourselves props."

Watson stared at Holmes for a long moment. He released his grip on his clothing, but didn't step away, either. Good God, after all this time, to be this close to Holmes. Even if he was furious with him, it was a heady drug to be near him once more.

"Men don't try to kill me anymore," he said, in a low voice. "Not since you died." And that was true, both blessing and curse. Whatever else life with Holmes had been, it had never been boring.

He drew back fractionally, giving Holmes a searching look. When he spoke, his voice was still hard, but some of the anger had drained out of it. "Why should he want to kill me for that?"

He'd wanted to rehearse this speech in his mind, but every time he'd tried to pen what he was going to say, how he was going to explain this situation, he'd shied away from actually determining how to say it. He knows he doesn't want it to come out painting him some victim; he'd had little choice in the matter, but he hadn't done a very good job of playing the hand that had been dealt to him.

"Because those were the terms of my death," he answers, trying to sound calm, but his voice is more hushed, more revealing than he'd intended. "No one has tried to kill you these last three years because I have let you believe me dead."

He thinks about continuing, about dumping more information onto Watson, but he stops himself there before he goes on. It's the searching look that does it, the lack of anger, and the faint hope that he might be able to salvage something here, that always won't crack under the weight of three years. He doesn't shy away from Watson's eyes now; he gives him a searching look of his own, and prays his desperation doesn't bleed into it.

None of this made sense to Watson. Why anyone should care so much about whether or not he knew Holmes was alive was beyond him. That his life was now in danger he understood, and he understood the ramifications of that far too well.

"Let me get this straight. Are you seriously telling me that I've grieved for you for these past three years -- grieved, make no mistake about it -- because someone threatened to kill me otherwise?" He was incredulous. It was a mad idea, and he was on the verge of accusing Holmes of lying to him, of trying to make some excuse for his horrendous act. Still, at the same time, he was still caught in the long habit of taking what Holmes said as gospel.

"Fine. Say that I believe you. Why return now?"

He hadn't considered that Watson wouldn't believe him. When does Watson ever not believe him, once he's demonstrated the trick? He blinks at his questions, a wrinkle in his composure, and he steps back, needing to regroup.

There will come a time he'll tell Watson about how close he came to actually dying, about his time with some monks who managed not just to change his life, but to give him the equipment to take it back for himself. Now is not that time, even if the most accurate answer to Watson's question is that now he's gone sufficiently long enough without yearning to shoot something up his arm.

"Funnily enough, because now he believes me dead. I couldn't set my trap until he abandoned the trail." There isn't anything funny about it, and his tone isn't very light.

When he goes to the sideboard again and pours out another glass of brandy -- for himself this time -- he doesn't even realize it isn't his brandy to pour until the glass is at his lips. He takes a long drink.

Watson watched Holmes drink his brandy with a peculiar sense of irritation, though a muted one. Even if this was, currently, no longer Holmes's home, and that was certainly not Holmes's brandy to help himself to, Holmes just seemed to fit into Baker street in a quiet, intrinsic way. He belonged here, even after three years, even with his belongings shipped or packed away.

"This man has been tracking you for three years? Waiting for, what, for you to contact me?" He raised an eyebrow, not exactly sceptical, but wary. "If I find out you're lying to me, God help me." It was a half-hearted sort of threat, certainly. He hardly thought he meant it. He had spoken of throwing Holmes out, but in the calmer frame of mind he had achieved, it seemed unlikely that he could bear to look away from the man for any length of time, let alone bodily force him away. Bloody hell, even after three years he was a lost cause. "Fine. You're here. What now?"

He doesn't even know how he could begin to explain what Moran had done to him over the past three years, especially when he knows he did a good deal of it to himself, too. He has another swallow of brandy, and he closes his eyes as he walks through his plans for this evening. Maybe once Watson sees the man, he'll understand, he'll believe, and Holmes won't have to lay it out.

"I must let him see me alive. I must let him see me leave Baker street. And you, my d-- " He shoots a cautious glance at Watson and presses on. "And you, Watson, must flee under cover. We will reunite, and then we will lie in wait for him. He will walk into my trap, and hopefully we'll both have the chance to deliver a right hook or two before Scotland Yard arrives to take him where he belongs."

He looks back into his brandy glass and swirls it idly, watching the liquid slosh around.

"I didn't spend three years concocting an elaborate lie to trick you into letting me help myself to your brandy. I spent three years waiting to tell you the truth. There is little else I'd like to do just now."

He caught the abbreviated endearment, and it made his heart ache. That Holmes would ever hesitate to call him his dear Watson was a terrible thing, and yet, after three years, perhaps his reluctance was understandable.

Perhaps always had finished. Perhaps Holmes was here to protect an ex-lover of whom he was still fond, but nothing else. Perhaps after three years, Holmes had found some other acolyte to follow him about with a revolver. It was a surprisingly painful thought, considering that minutes ago Watson had punched Holmes in the face.

"I prefer not dying," he said at last. It was an agreement, an acceptance. He would go where Holmes asked, do what he wanted. If he were truthful with himself, this was the inevitable result. He was not capable of denying Holmes anything. "You have a plan, I assume."

"I do," he he murmurs, and he is relieved to hear that Watson is no longer challenging him. "It's quite elaborate, borderline ridiculous, and altogether ingenious. I'd prefer to keep it a surprise until all is revealed. As usual," he adds, with a small smile.

Oh, but this is heartbreaking. Watson really hasn't taken another lover, but his discerning eye can't, in this case, reliably tell if Watson is still in love with him or not. That isn't something he fancies he can read off the cuffs of his shirt, or the way he's stacked his newspaper. He inclines his head toward something a little more telling.

"That is your room now," he ventures, feeling hesitant. Watson staying in his room is hardly indicative of his feelings for Holmes; maybe he just didn't want to climb the stairs every evening when it was no longer necessary.

Edited 2012-01-25 08:48 (UTC)

"It is," Watson said. He was watching Holmes carefully, not sure of his own feelings at this point, not sure if he was angry or grieved or something else entirely. He was having a hard time taking his eyes off of Holmes, and he wasn't sure he wanted to examine that fact to see what it meant. They couldn't possibly just pick up from where they left off three years ago, could they? They couldn't pick up the shattered remains of always?

And how to even begin explaining his taking that room as his own, when he couldn't even explain it to himself?

"It was... easier." He meant the stair climbing, he meant greiving, he meant everything and none of it. "It was quiet around here, without you."

"But you didn't find another lodger," he points out, and he hopes, prays this fact is as significant as it seems. Watson could've moved out; he could've found another lodger. But no -- he didn't hate Holmes when Holmes was dead. He wonders if this had been part of Moriarty's plan too, if he'd considered what would happen if Holmes did come back after lying to Watson; had Moriarty planned the particular death that would come from Watson shutting Holmes out of his heart?

He can see that Watson's unable to look away from him, mostly because he's unable to look away from Watson either. Though there have been miles between them for the past three years, he hasn't felt farther from Watson than he feels right now.

"Should I have?" There was a certain amount of challenge in Watson's eyes, as though daring him to say, well, anything on the matter at all. "Perhaps I tried, but I've picked up too many bad habits from you to be a good roommate any longer."

It was a patently false idea; he couldn't have borne the idea of any man living in Baker street other than Holmes, but he was still hurt, still angry at having been abandoned so completely without a word. Even if it was for his own protection, it had hurt to be betrayed like that.

He laughs, a weak sound, and he doesn't really know where it comes from. The idea that someone wouldn't want to live with Watson -- that Watson would be so unpleasant a person so as to drive away lodgers -- is just ridiculous. He is Watson. He is considerate, and caring, and compassionate; he is everything that is good, and it hits him that Holmes might have alienated him forever. His laugh breaks, and he presses his hand to his mouth to stop anything else from coming out as he skirts his eyes away from Watson.

"Lying is still not among them," he says, trying to recover himself, but something cracked in him that he isn't sure he's going to be able to repair so easily. He takes a breath and exhales slowly, avoiding Watson's eyes.

"Are you certain I wasn't your worst habit?" he asks quietly.

"I'm not sure you weren't, at that." Watson's voice was soft; even if Holmes had been something as insignificant as a habit, he wasn't sure that he was strictly a bad one.

He closed his eyes, swallowing hard. It occured to him that Holmes had always had a certain influence over him, and he had no idea if that still held. If Holmes went so far as to insist upon a return to their old relationship, Watson wasn't sure he would have much choice in the matter. Perhaps that was all right, but he hadn't any idea how he felt about it. Yes, he had spent three years dreaming of this man, and missing him, and loving him even in his absence, but that had been... well, before.

"I saw the footprints up the slope, you know," he said, abruptly. Discussing his own living arrangements stung a little, and made him wonder if Holmes himself had been alone all these past years. "None came back. How do you explain that?"

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Behold I dream a dream of good

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