Title: Cuimhne
Authors: Double-Pro! (Ready-made Prodigy and Protector of the Gray Fortress)
Rating: PG(-13ish)
Disclaimers: Too brilliant to be ours, too awesome not to borrow
Warnings: Some supernatural elements
Word Count: 6,433
Summary: An old enemy sets out to destroy the great detective by crippling his right hand. Stapleton wants more than just revenge. He has taken Watson's memories. Holmes wants them back.
A/N: Originally for Challenge 012 at Watsons_Woes on lj. This was a joint project between the two of us that although brought about much grief and strife, certainly produced a fair amount of magic as well. Please read and enjoy.
Prologue...
London is rather nice this time of the year. The heat is sweltering, yes, but at least the city, devoid of the sprawling expanse of stinking bog, politely refrains from sending up an odour of decay and heavy miasmic vapours. It had a fog of its own, of course, stained an oil scum brown, which suited me just fine.
I have always liked the city, you see.
Devonshire had only appealed to me for its opportunity to attain a gratuitous fortune with the least amount of effort theatrically, the Grimpen Mire because it had been instrumental to my plans, convenient even. It added to the overall drama and acted as the perfect kind of escape route, one that deterred absolutely everyone from following.
The danger was a very real one however, and the Mires, those endless miles of green-scummed pits and foul quagmires interspersed with tufts of rank reeds and lush, slimy water plants that fooled one into believing there only be a few inches of blackened water rather than man-sized depths it housed in truth, had nearly claimed my life that night.
I'm sure there are many in the opinion that I should have justly died, victim to my own evil machinations. The world, however, is not so fair in its dealings. Just as a good man could be given the most gruesome death imaginable for absolutely no reason other than the horse happened to startle at the wrong moment, an undeserving man such as myself can be blessed with a random act of kindness. Rest assured I am not making some glib reference to a second chance at life, but nothing less than a gift from God.
Or should I say Gods?
Best laid plans count for bloody nothing in the dark. My guiding wands, tipped white as they were, didn't stand a chance against the thick fog and inky blackness. I had traded my lamp for the certainty I would not be followed and it seemed as I plunged through what looked like a peninsula of safety rather than a thick clump of weeds that I had traded the certainty that I would not land in gaol for an undignified death in the moors.
The water had smelt worse, but the taste was foul. It was up my nose and into my mouth before I could protect myself against it. I sank like a goddamn stone and though anyone and everyone would advise for a man in my situation not to struggle, I did little else besides. Rationality fled, replaced by pure determination. I would not die amidst failure. I would not drown like an imbecile. I would not be beat by a ridiculous man in a deerstalker, swooping down from London like a crow to signify my imminent downfall.
I knew the surface was close, just as I knew that the grainy, muddy bottom was far, far below. I swept my arms out in every direction, looking for purchase, desperate for any way out of my cosmically just predicament. My fingers scrabbled over bent and loosened reeds and finally, finally a solid sort of root that did not immediately give way to my desperate tugging came to my immediate notice and I would have grasped it like the lifeline it was until I felt the very edge of my shoe brush against something in the liquid sludge I had submerged myself in. It was no rock or wood set adrift as I was. No, it was smooth and presented a flat plane where it was pressed against my shoe, from the inside of my sole to the toe.
In truth I hadn't know what it was, but I knew what I wanted it to be. I had searched for it, moved to the country, had seduced two women, killed one man and nearly killed a second to have, all for the money to buy it and here it was, testing me. Teasing me.
I chose death above losing such an opportunity. Maybe that's what it takes to gain power.
So I let go of the branch with no assurance of ever finding it again and dove down just a little further into death to grasp my prize.
The Cuimhne.
In retrospect, a person could question whether attaining a book bound in tanned leather and looking altogether average other than its age to the point of its pages crumbling to dust and the elaborate design the decorated the cover that somehow bolted the whole thing shut was worth such a hefty sacrifice as a moment of intense agony as the oxygen in my blood thinned and finally expired. That person is a fool. Because the book has power. I can feel it even now, thrumming against the crook of my elbow where it rests. Warm. Alive.
Men could have their science. Science tells us that that everyone eventually dies, that the body will decay, that there is nothing beyond this Earth. But I want more, infinitely more. The stories of old tell us about the old Gods and Goddesses, jealous of our mortal follies and constantly meddling with our affairs. There are stories of the heroes of old, free from age, sickness, and death. If science can't give me that, then I will turn to the old ways.
Blood, sacrifice, power, desire.
Those who want power merely require the will to take it.
And my opportunity had just exited some private residency, his jacket draped over one arm and his shirtsleeves showing signs of having been rolled up recently, though he had replaced his cuffs with precision. He carried on down the street without replacing the jacket, an understandable breech in protocol considering the heat and that his practice was a scant block away. The man was tall, perhaps not impressively, but the erectness of his shoulders and bearing made him seem so. He had brown hair that looked like a burnt gold in the sun and an easy smile playing about his lips and mustache.
He played the part of kind and gentle London physician very well, an English patriot marked by his limp that bespoke of old wars and continued bravery. I however, knew him as a different man entirely. I knew him as a nosey and ill adept inquirer into my business, who, though easily expendable, had not been worth my time to kill properly. Then he had been the man silhouetted against the waning moonlight beside the man who had orchestrated my ruin, his hand steady and his aim sure as he filled my beloved beast full of revolver bullets.
Despite the man's handiness with a gun as well as a scalpel, I knew his true use. He was Holmes' exception because Holmes was a man like me. The world at large held no interest to us and its individual inhabitants even less until some problem was presented to us, then those uninteresting individuals became inconveniences as we made our way to our solutions. Holmes had consistency, as all proper men should, but to hold one man above the diffidence he held the rest of the world in was a dangerous decision. It was a weakness.
I waited for his approach, marking each step like a clock ticking down. Just as he came into view of the alley I had secreted myself in, I bent over double into a seizing fit of coughs worthy of a plague victim. He rushed forward to aid me, predictably so full of concern and with his self-appointed task of righting me against the wall to ease my spasmodic lungs that he didn't notice that I had stuck his hand with my modified cufflink.
"Sir, are you alight? Tell me, have you had this illness long? It could be serious."
Deadly serious, in fact.
I don't know what he could have thought of me as I jerked about his grip and pressed his slightly bleeding hand against the book I held.
"Cheannsa," I hissed. "Cheannsa Cuimhne!"
Only then did I risk looking up into his eyes because surely no man could forget those of a killer. Surely the greatest detective's stooge would not forget the face of Jack Stapleton, the real terror behind the Baskerville murders, though I had gone through great pains to find clothes incongruent with the dapper man he had met some time ago and had grown a closely trimmed goatee.
Mine, I had said. My Mind.
It was Gaelic and it released a force that I had not anticipated.
Because much to my shock, the spark of recognition I had expected to see in the doctor's face died. It literally died before my very eyes as his comprehension melted to confusion, fear, and then utter blankness.
The book, the hallowed artifact I had pulled from the moors had devoured the blood it had been fed, seeping into its pages and I could see shimmering lights erupt beneath its cover, see random flashes as the pages turned the blood to ink.
The doctor crumpled, sinking to his knees, eyes wide and blown with an utter incomprehension for his surroundings.
I stared and with shaking hands opened the book, a powerful artifact of Norse legend known as the Cuimhne. Inside, spidery letters were still spiraling across the page, an indelible black, framed by the lighter silver that helped it take shape along the many lines.
"Where—W-Who am I?" the doctor whispered, seemingly to the open space of the alley.
My eyes darted to the very top corner of the first page of my now filled manuscript. There was no longer any shock to be had when John Hamish Watson appeared on the page.
Mind, I thought curiously. In my eagerness, perhaps my Gaelic had failed me.
Cuimhne meant 'memory' as well.
I had meant to take control of Watson's mind, but perhaps I had the next best thing: the man himself, all neatly filed into one condensed item currently in my possession.