Sooo how about that new episode of Sherlock everybody? Well guess what, this story has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! This story was inspired by one of the greatest stories I've ever exprienced before. It's the game 'To the Moon'. This story is a rehashing of that, with the characters of Sherlock. If you don't know the story of To the Moon, look up a Let's play of it or buy the game yourself. BUT ONLY AFTER YOU READ THIS! You will spoil the ending for yourself if you look it up. No cheating!
Reviews are welcome and appreciated. Disclaimer, I do not own Sherlock or To the Moon. Alright, now that's out of the way. Enjoy!
Another day, another new patient. At least, that's how it felt for Dr. Neil Watts as he drove down the road. He was slightly annoyed though, their patient lived in the middle of no where! There was literally nothing on either side of the road, except trees, and rocks, and a SQUIRREL!
Swerving to evade the pea-brained creature that had just run out into the middle of the road, he ran into a tree. He looked up, well at least they were relatively close to their patient's house. He could have crashed in a worse place.
Climbing out of the car, he winced as his co-worker began to ream him out. The front of their car was smoking a little bit, but he could still make out her angry expression as she glared at him from the other side of the car.
"Where were you looking, Neil?" she questioned.
Dr. Watts felt a little angry that she'd question him like this when he was only trying to do a good deed. "Well excuse me for heroically evading that squirrel coming out of nowhere!"
She looked over to the road, he followed her gaze and was sadden to see that he hadn't evaded the squirrel after all. "You ran over it anyways," she told him, making him feel worse.
"Oh," was all he could manage.
"You ran over it and hit a tree..." she sounded more resigned than angry now, at least that was a good thing right?
He tried to assure her that it wasn't so bad, "It was a company car!"
That didn't seem to matter much, and for several more minutes they stood and argued over the car. Finally she simply ordered him to grab their equipment from the car so they could go already. He grabbed it, however it was big and bulky which made it hard to carry. He wished he'd parked closer after all.
The two of them tramped through the woods, climbing up steps that lead to the house. Finally they reached the top, Dr. Watts wanted to stop to catch his breath but Dr. Eva Rosalene would not allow him even a second. They continued walking until they reached the front door of a very large house. Dr. Rosalene knocked on the door while Dr. Watts put the equipment down so he could rest for a moment.
"Not a bad place to retire to," she commented while they waited for someone to answer the door.
Dr. Watts shrugged, "Meh, I could do better."
They continued talking for another minute when a young woman answered the door. Dr. Watts once again hefted the equipment into his arms and followed her into the house.
The woman thanked them for coming on such short notice, introducting herself as Lily, their patient's caretaker. She also introduced her two children, and explained that the owner of the house, Sherlock, allowed them to live there.
Dr. Rosalene asked, "I suppose this Sherlock is our man?"
That name rang a bell, "Sherlock?" Dr. Watts repeated, "As in Sherlock Holmes?"
Lily smiled sadly, "Yes, the famous detective. He's hardly the same man anymore though. He's upstairs with his medical doctor, come on."
She lead them up the stairs, Dr. Watts feeling as though his back would break. As they reached the top of the stairs, the two children began playing a song on the piano below. They didn't have time to appreciate the song though, they had a dying man to attend to.
As they entered the room, Dr. Watts realized what Lily had said. Sherlock Holmes, greatest detective in all of London, was lying old, grey, and dying on the bed. He averted his eyes, instead focusing on setting up the machine.
Dr. Rosalene began speaking with Lily and the doctor, asking how much time Sherlock had left to live while he set everything up. "So you two can grant him any wish, huh?" Lily asked curiously.
"To try, at least." was Eva's answer.
Dr. Watts smiled, "But we always succeed because we're awesome." he replied cheerfully, trying to lighten the mood in the room. A part of him wished Sherlock were awake, so that he might say something enlightening.
"So what's the wish?" Dr. Rosalene asked, they needed to know what they were trying to accomplish here.
Lily glanced over at Sherlock before returning her gaze to the doctor in front of her, "The moon," she said. When Dr. Rosalene voiced her confusion Lily continued, "The moon... He wants to go to the moon."
"Weird wish for someone who didn't know the earth went around the sun." Dr. Watts mused. Dr. Rosalene silenced him with a glare.
Lily asked, rather timidly, "So can you do it?"
Dr. Watts assured her that they could, however Dr. Rosalene was not quite so sure. Changing the subject, she asked if Lily could tell her anything about the patient.
"That... I don't really know much. Sherlock's an odd man, Through the two years that I've worked here, he rarely spoke. He of course as everyone knows, worked as a consulting detective for most of his life. And his husband passed away two years ago. I don't really know many details."
"I know more from reading the papers for Pete's sake!" Dr. Watts berated, once again he was silenced with a glare from his co-worker.
Lily shrugged, "Well, I suppose if you look aroudn the hosue, you may find some more info. I suppose Sherlock wouldn't mind, since he signed for you two."
Dr. Rosalene sighed, running a hand through her long black hair, "Mm, so be it." she said. Walking over to the machine where her partner was still tinkering, she asked, "Alright, which one of us plays detective?"
Immediately Dr. Watts jumped up, "I'll do it! Remember that time I placed Sherlock in our high school musical?"
"I remember you playing Watson..." she replied, raising an eyebrow.
Dr. Watts huffed, "Well, same thing." He instructed her on what to do before heading for the door. Before he left though, the medical doctor handed him a small heart moniter, so that he could keep track of Sherlock's health. Lily also told him that her children would be able to show them around.
He left the room then, heading down the stairs and to the piano where the two children sat, still playing the same song. They looked up at him, looking upset that he'd interrupted their playing. "Wa'cha want?" the little girl, Sarah, asked.
"Hey, your ma told you to show me aroudn the house," he informed them.
The two children grinned cheekily at each other before the girl looked back up at the doctor, "Ok maybe we will."
"Maybe?"
"I just think we need a little convincing, that's all! Wut do ya think, Tommy?"
"Yah!" Tommy, the little boy replied, nodding his head vigerously.
Sighing, rather annoyed that these children were wasting his time, Dr. Watts asked what they wanted. They replied that they wanted a candy cane that their mother had put on a high shelf in the kitchen to save for when they'd done chores. They were too short to reach it themselves, and wanted the doctor to get it for them. For some crazy reason, he agreed to get it for them. Once he agreed, they told him which door was the kitchen and then returned to playing.
Getting the candy cane was no easy feat, and he had to move things around so that he could reach it. However once he delivered the goods, the children complied with his wishes and began showing him around. As they walked through the house, they told him about a strange room in the basement. It was weird apparently, Dr. Watts wanted to see it.
They helped him find the key, which was very cleverly hidden in a copy of the book 'Twilight', before leading him to the basement. He approached the door, suddenly a little afraid of what weird things would be in there. He inserted the key, clicked the lock open, and went inside. The room was pitch black, and he immediately groped around for a light. When he clicked it on, he almost regretted doing so. The entire floor was covered in rabbits.
Oragami rabbits, hundreds of them in all sorts of colors. There was hardly an inch of floor space. There were two boxes as well, probably containing more rabbits. However on top of one, there was a broken music box, on the other, a strange stuffed platypus. He picked up the toy, stuffing it in his lab coat pocket to possibly show his partner later on. It seemed important, even if it wasn't it was still weird and he wanted to show her.
The two children were waiting for him outside the door when he left the room. "Did you see it?" Sarah asked, her eyes wide.
"What do you kids know about those rabbits?" Dr. Watts asked, interrogating them.
Tommy, immediately shook his head, "Nothing!" he said quickly. "The old man didn't want anyone to go inside, so we never told him."
Sarah suddenly seemed to remember something, "There's more of them, actually!"
"Where?" Dr. Watts asked.
"Inside the abandoned lighthouse! It's just beneath this cliff!" Tommy replied knowingly.
The little girl reached into a pocket in her dress and pulled out a ring of keys, "Wanna go see? Look I've got the keys!"
Dr. Watts frowned, "Let me guess, you're not supposed to go in there either?"
When the two children simply giggled, he sighed and agreed to go to the lighthouse. If Sherlock was keeping rabbits there too, perhaps there were other importants things up there about him.
The trek to the lighthouse was long, and Dr. Watts wasn't looking forward to having to trek back up to the house. They had to retrace their steps, going all the way back down to his car and then taking another path up to the cliff where the lighthouse was. They encountered a squirrel on their way, the children named it Teddy.
Finally though, they reached the lighthouse. At the base of it there was a tombstone, Dr. Watts stared at it for a moment. 'In memory of John Watson' it read, "John Watson, huh?" The doctor stayed for a moment to pay his respects, as a kid he'd been a huge fan of John Watson's blog. He vaguely remembered him marrying Sherlock at some point towards the very end of their career.
They entered the lighthouse when the children began getting impatient. There were a lot of stairs, winding up. Dr. Watts wished he had the energy to spare as he gasped and weezed all the way to the top. When they got there, it was incredibly similar to the room in the basement. Rabbits, paper rabbits all over the floor. He had a hard time crossing the room without stepping one, however he was very curious. There was a rabbit different from all the others.
It was blue, with a yellow body. All the others were one color, this one was two colors, and brighter. He was examining it when his cell phone began to ring. A quick glance at the caller i.d. showed it was Eva, who was probably ready to ream him out again for leaving the house.
As expected, she yelled at him and told him to return immediately. Before he left though, he nabbed the two colored paper rabbit. The trip back was slow, and Dr. Watts felt completely drained by the time he got back to Sherlock's room. Why did they have to get calls in the middle of the night, and why did Sherlock have to live in a place that required so much uphill climbing?
Dr. Rosalene was explaining the way the machine worked as he entered the room, so he took the opprotunity to sit on the couch and catch his breath. "The machine does everything really. In a nutshell, our job is to travel through his memories to as early as possible, and when we do, we would then transfer his registered desire of going to the moon to the reconstruction of the world and himself at that early state. And with the help of a wiki of data and his own, the machine would then simulate a rerun. Except this time, he'll have the motivation of his registered desire with him all his life."
"So you'd be depending on him fulfilling his own wish by simply having the desire to?" Lily asked. Dr. Watts could practically see the gears turning in her head as she tried to understand the logic behind what they were explaining. "How could that be?" she asked, "Everyone has ambition for things, but most don't accomplish them."
"That's because in the real world, ambitions fluctuate, and fade" Dr. Rosalene patiently said. "People start things with a passion, but eventually they lose that initial drive and slow down. But imagine if you locked onto that initial push through your entire life, never wavering. It's more powerful than it seems."
Dr. Watts picked up his helmet, running his hands over its smooth surface, "That being said, no ambition's gonna help a dead man. I'd better get started."
He placed the helmet on, closing his eyes and travelling into Sherlock's head. When he reopened his eyes, he was standing in Sherlock's bedroom, except no one was there with them. They were in!
The two doctors travelled downstairs and left the house, seeing as no one was around. They walked up behind the house, following a path. They found Sherlock sitting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the abandoned lighthouse. The two doctors approached him, ready to introduce themselves, but he heard them and turned around.
"You're here from Sigmund Agency of Life Generation aren't you?"
The two glanced at each other before slowly nodding. He ran a hand through his grey curly hair, which had thinned somewhat in his old age. His eyes also seemed a little less bright than they used to be, as though the raging wildfire that had once driven him had been reduced to a mere smoldering ember.
"So can you do it?" Sherlock asked, leaning back where he sat against a signpost and steepling his fingers under his chin, "Can you get me to the moon?"
Dr. Watts cocked his head, "Why do you want to go to the moon?" he asked.
Sherlock's expression suddenly went blank, and he blinked, "I don't know."
Once again the two doctors shared a look before returning their focus to the retired consulting detective. "It's fine, you can tell us," Dr. Rosalene encouraged, "It's essential for helping us to get you to go there."
"Do you want the fame? The money?" Dr. Watts prodded, although he wasn't sure why Sherlock Holmes would seek what he already had. "You've got to have a motive."
Sherlock's expression remained blank, and he shook his head, "I'm sorry, but I really don't know. I just... do."
Dr. Watts already felt annoyed. Was Sherlock serious or was he just being a pain in the ass? Because most stories about him said he was a pain in the ass most of the time. Maybe he was just trying to make this difficult for his own amusement.
"Nevertheless, Sherlock, here's what we will do," Eva said, "We need to get to your childhood, but it is too distant to do so in one memory hop. Thus we will need to traverse through your memories with gradual backwards leaps."
"Which you've given us the permission to do in the relative future," Dr. Watts chimed in as a reminder.
"Once we've gone all the way back, we'll return here. That's when you'll need to help us influence the childhood you to become an astronaut. That's why you'll need to have more to say about why you want to go when we get back."
Sherlock shrugged, "As long as you can take me to the moon, I will cooperate," he told them.
Dr. Rosalene smiled, "Good. Now in order to go back, we need something that is important to you. A memento."
For a moment, Sherlock seemed to think about this, before he reached into a bad he had sitting in the grass beside him and pulled out a two colored paper rabbit. Dr. Watts stared at the rabbit, why would those rabbits be important? They were so weird?
They used it to go back anyway, and off they went shooting back into Sherlock's memories. Dr. Watts felt very strange, he'd never had a problem doing this before. However this time, he felt wary that things might not be so easy this time.