Behold I dream a dream of good

[mustbethetruth]

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.

Comments

[lightconductor]

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?"

[lightconductor]

Watson shut his eyes, drawing in his breath in a small expression of surprise. He hadn't expected this, and wasn't entirely convinced it was necessary, but he let Holmes work, marvelling at the touch on his skin. It was all he could do not to lean into it, to catch up Holmes's hands and find some better use for his fingers, even as irritated with him as he was.

"I'm sure I'm missing some vital part of this plan," he said, quietly because it felt like the sort of moment where softness was mandatory, "but if this Moran fellow is watching to see if you contact me, and he saw a bookseller and myself enter, and a bookseller and yourself leave, won't he guess the truth of it?"

He was clutching the cushions of the sofa under him rather tightly, feeling tense and anxious, angry and glad.

[lightconductor]

The restaurant was just as dodgy as Holmes had implied, and talk of seafood aside there wasn't much on the menu he did trust. He was, however, ravenously hungry, so he ate a little light supper, and he waited.

Good Lord, how he waited.

He could only think of the multitude of things he hadn't asked. Where had he been? What had he done? He was regretting his show of temper and his anger, now, or at least somewhat. If this evening was really going to be dangerous, he hated their last private conversation to have been so violent.

But no one would die tonight, not if Watson had anything to do about it. And he was actually going to be here tonight, and not decoyed away.

He sipped his glass of beer, waiting, growing more and more anxious about Holmes's continued absence.

[lightconductor]

Watson poked the toe of his shoe at his double, an eyebrow raised. It was rather eerie to see himself with a bullethole through his temple. "He is a good shot," he said, rather appreciatively, as he bent to finger the bullethole carefully. "At least if I had died, it would have been at the hands of an artist."

It was a dark thing to say, a cruel thing to say, and yet he found he needed that sort of gallow's humour, in that moment. He rose again, and went to the sideboard to pour out brandy.

"I never asked you where you've been," he said, quietly.

[lightconductor]

Sleep did not come easily to Watson. Too much had happened, too much had changed too quickly, too much was now roiling about in his brain. He dozed fitfully for a short time, but at last he found himself lying wide awake, staring into the dark room. His stomach was clenched, and he felt hot and sweaty, almost feverish. On the other side of his bedroom door was Sherlock Holmes, and he could think of little else.

For all his fears of being weak, of being easily influenced, for all his anger and his hurt, he was still desperately, hopelessly, completely in love with Holmes. He couldn't deny that. Always, he had said, and perhaps that still held, but three years ago seemed a lifetime away. How could he just... forgive that, so easily?

Watson rolled over in bed, picked up his pocketwatch from the bedside table, and lit a match to read it by, before sinking back down into the bed. All this trouble was, of course, assuming Holmes really was still out there, that it hadn't been a dream, or he hadn't left. At least his expressed desire to stay suggested there wasn't some other man out there, some handsome chap who had replaced Watson in Holmes's absence. Probably some... some obnoxiously clever police inspector, who never had any difficulty in applying Holmes's methods, who was skilled at deceit, who could speak French. Perhaps a brilliant actor, rather, one who was witty and fascinating and worshipped Holmes as keenly as Watson ever had.

Watson stopped himself when he realised he was expending a good deal of hatred towards a theoretical and probably fictional man.

Without quite knowing the reason why, he rose from the bed. He had cast off his nightshirt in his feverish agony, but he pulled the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around him. Softly as he could, he padded out into the sitting room, needing to see for himself.

And there was Holmes, of course, stretched out on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, so perfectly beautiful Watson could have wept. He stood there in the darkness, clutching the blanket, just looking, and not sure what to think.

[lightconductor]

"You're incorrigible," Watson laughed breathily. He shifted downward to kiss Holmes's chest, going by feel with his eyes closed. "But I don't think I would have you any other way, either."

He gave a long sigh, pulling himself very close. "Perhaps some time I ought to let you take it off, then. In the meantime, I'm already naked as a jaybird, so there isn't much point." He placed several more kisses across Holmes's skin, then added thoughtfully, "Perhaps it would be worth getting up to see if there's coffee."

[lightconductor]

Watson raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling, broadly and with no small amount of anticipation. He felt just slightly in thrall, for all the game of power, and he followed Holmes out of the tub, eagerly, impatiently.

He took the towel, before advancing to kiss Holmes hard again, too impatient to wait, still feeling clouded with lust. He had half a mind to take Holmes's hand and put it back on his cock, truthfully.

"Well? I'm out. You had better decide before I decide for you."

[lightconductor]

"Ah, you have seen what I've done in the Strand, then." Watson gave a small, nervous little laugh. The writing he'd done after Holmes's death was the sort of thing he had had to do or suffocate with grief. He was proud of it, in its way, and he had made a decent sum for it, but it was also not something he'd ever expected Holmes to actually see.

He was almost afraid to ask what Holmes thought of it.

"But very well, our cases, if you say so." He smiled a little, pleased at being included in that possessive. "They shall be my first priority, so long as I'm permitted."