5 + 1: J + S, A Ride through Time
Written in the 5+1 Style. I am going to tell you flat out it gets a bit angsty and violent, but hang in there! I just hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it and I hope its not too over the top.
5 + 1: J + S, A Ride through Time
1: ca. 1450 BCE, Minoan Crete
Jaycen was on the beach, rolling up the netting from the day's excursion. He had been out on the water all day and was happy with his large catch. He worked confidently, muscles playing in his back and down his arms under his tan skin. He finished drawing up the net and placed it lovingly into his boat.
He wiped his hands on his leather loincloth and adjusted the leather belt on his hips. Jaycen ran a hand through his thick light-colored hair and reflected back to the sacrifice he had made to Lord Poseidon that very morning. He had found the largest and most beautiful fish from his last catch and offered it up to the god of the sea. Poseidon must have found favor, since Jaycen had brought in such a bountiful catch today.
Jaycen was still quite happy as he sat down on a small bench outside his friend's metal-working shop and slowly laced up his sandals. He could hear the ringing of hammers on metal and the grunt of the bellows as the men worked inside. He had finally worked up the courage to tell his friend how much the other man meant to him and tonight would be the night. Maybe this year during the Feast he would have even more to celebrate.
Several women walked by as Jaycen waited for his friend. Their fair and dark hair was done up in complicated styles adorned with jewels and silver ribbon. They were all dressed in long white ruffled dresses with short sleeves. The women waved at the fisherman as they passed him. He waved back, but his heart really wasn't in the gesture. It was interesting how things had changed in the past few months.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the metal shop. Jaycen looked up to see a tall man with black curly hair and piercing green eyes. The man's pale skin was slightly reddened from close contact with the fire and his leather kilt was slightly stained with ash. Stavros smiled down at his friend and held out his arms. Jaycen reached out to the other man and held him close, admiring the brand new bronze blade hanging at his side. They stood that way for a moment.
"Jaycen! Lord Poseidon has favored you today!" He boomed out to his companion.
Jaycen could not hold his pleasure inside any longer. "Yes, I have a full catch today. Would you be so kind as to join me in dinner?"
"Let me just cleanse myself first. Should we head out to the private bath?" Stavros winked down at his shorter friend.
"Yes." They walked side-by-side towards the massive palace, the front of the building flanked with tall wooden columns. The companions climbed the steps and entered the open bathing area. Naked men and women walked, sat, bathed and even swam in the pool before them. They each dropped their clothes in the floor and slipped off their sandals. Stavros reached out to Jaycen and linking hands, they padded across the tile towards the pool. Several of the other people smiled and welcomed them. The bath was only private so much as there were no children in attendance.
Without warning, the palatial bath was overrun with Mycenaean soldiers. The men pushed through the room with swords hacking at anything that moved. Soon there were puddles of blood spattered all over the white and cream-colored tiles. Stavros jumped out of the pool and ran towards the place where he had dropped his sword. Bare naked, he stood his ground but was soon outnumbered. As he felt the slash of the enemy's blade, he reached out towards his friend who was lying half in and half out of the water, his eyes wide-open and staring. Jaycen had one hand reaching out. That was the last thing Stavros knew before he was plunged into darkness.
2: The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, late in the 4th Century CE
Sefu startled himself awake. He mopped his sweaty brow and carefully pushed the scroll he had been translating away from himself. The long wooden table where he sat was piled high with scrolls besides the one he had inadvertently made a pillow out of. Small dust motes filtered through the air on shafts of new sunlight.
He stood and stretched, running his hands through his neatly shorn curls. The small silver ring on his hand caught the early morning sunlight filtering through the large windows. He glanced around the stacks, mentally cataloging the knowledge within.
Euclid, Aristarchus, Homer, Plato, some of the first editions of the Hebrew Old Testament, and Herophilus were some of his favorites. Sefu was especially enamored of the physician Herophilus, as he had been to the library on occasion to perform human cadaver dissections. It was one of his tomes that Sefu had fallen asleep over.
Sefu stretched his long legs and rearranged his robes. He had missed the morning ritual but he was certain that his goddess would understand. It was his search for The Knowledge that had led him here in the first place. He was surrounded by wooden shelves piled high with scrolls. One of his lifetime goals was to get through every one of them.
One of the inner doors opened quietly. Soft footsteps highlighted by the swishing of a long white robe announced the presence of Sefu's friend, Jahi.
Like Sefu, Jahi was in his early twenties. He had come to the Library to study, but preferred the medical and mathematics scrolls to the historical ones. It was for Jahi that Sefu was translating the work of Herophilus. Jahi would be completing his studies soon and moving to Cairo.
Sefu quietly welcomed his friend. They touched lips to cheeks and Jahi seated himself at Sefu's side.
Jahi and Sefu shared the same skin tone, though Jahi's was a bit darker. His hair was unusually fair, and with his light-colored eyes, Sefu felt he was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The gods had chosen well when they made his friend.
Jahi could feel the flush begin on his cheeks under the heavy gaze of his friend. He smiled up at the other young man. "How is it that you my friend could be here any earlier than myself? Is it that perhaps you never left?"
The faint staining of ink on Sefu's face gave him away. Though Jahi grew a neat brown beard, Sefu's face had only a hint of the shadow that most men his age had to suffer through daily.
Sefu smiled. His heart was always lighter when Jahi was around. Sefu reached out his hands and laid them on the table. Jahi laid his slightly smaller ones in the open palms. Sefu leaned in a bit closer and opened his mouth…
Right at that moment, they smelled smoke. Flames licked at the windows from all around. There were shouts outside, angry Roman soldiers and their loud voices. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Sefu grabbed up as many scrolls as he could carry and stuffed them under his robes. Jahi did the same.
Jahi grabbed Sefu's sleeve and pulled him towards the inner door that he had come through moments ago. Terror was apparent on his face, but he felt that with his friend they might actually get through this alive. Jahi reached for the handle of the door but it was suddenly forced open from the other side.
Sefu leapt in front of Jahi, taking the brunt of the Roman's sword. He felt the tip pierce his heart and reached out for Jahi, but he could not reach him. Another soldier had pushed his way into the room and was pushing Jahi towards the floor. The soldier looked down at the two men and spat on them, cursing them and all pagans.
Jahi turned his dimming vision towards the place where his friend lay. In his darkening mind, he willed his hand towards the other man. His body was too far gone and did not respond. As the soldiers stalked back out of the Library, neither noticed that one centimeter further and the two men would have been able to link hands, one last comfort before they perished together.
The Library went up in flames a few moments later. Much of the knowledge of the ancient world was gone in seconds, thanks to the armies of Theophilus.
3: ca 400 AD, the Coliseum, Rome
Napping quietly in the shadow of the great Amphitheatrum Flavium, Junius was wakened by a miserable groan. He adjusted his tunic and leggings and moved as quickly towards the sound as he could with his one bad leg. He entered the lower belly of the great Coliseum, going into a small chamber with a bed in the center. A dark-haired man lay upon the bed, one long arm hanging off of the side and the other curled on his battered abdomen. What hair Junius could see from the back was nothing more than blood-soaked curls. He would carefully wash them out in just a few moments.
Quietly, Junius picked up and held a goblet out to the gladiator whom he was pledged to care for. The man lay on his back, great gashes across his chest from his recent bout with a lion. The long cuts had become infected and it was all Junius could do to keep the man's pain down.
He cautiously stepped around to look the gladiator in the face. He carefully touched the man's face and whispered his name. "Sergius."
The gladiator groaned again but opened his eyes. Junius saw the light dimming behind the great green irises. He felt the tears welling up in his own eyes. If there had been some way out of this, he would have faced the great beast himself. But it was not to be. Sergius was just as much a slave as himself. Sergius, however, meant so much more to Junius than that.
Since they had both been at the Coliseum, a thick bond had grown between the two men. Sergius never faulted Junius for his limp nor his muteness. He was a cold man, torn between trying to survive and being forced to kill for the Emperor's entertainment.
But he was never cold to Junius. Instead, he had taken the disabled man under his wing and had even seemed healthier in Junius' hands. Junius kept him fed and clean and gave him somewhere to rest his sandals at night. Junius held his hand and allowed Sergius to rest his head in his lap when the nightmares plagued him.
Junius reached out and cupped the other man's cheek with his hand. Sergius seemed to want to speak, but when he opened his beautiful lips no sound came out. Junius watched the life leave the other man's eyes, his own spilling with tears. He laid his head down on Sergius' now-quiet chest and cried silently.
Within moments of the gladiator's death, he found himself in the center of the Coliseum running for his life. A task made even more difficult due to his bad leg. He could not scream nor plead for mercy when the lion jumped him from behind.
His last thought was that perhaps he would see the smiling face of his friend at the gates of Hades.
4. Winter, 1838. The Cherokee Indian Camp, Cleveland Tennessee, USA.
Jonathan Wilson sits astride his sturdy mount in the dark and watches the Indians. Out of all the men who had been sent that winter to "round up" the Cherokees from their homes throughout the state of Georgia, Sergeant Wilson was one of the only few who felt that what he was doing was very, very wrong.
The people were huddled in a group around a single barrel that had been ungraciously given to them in an effort to stop them freezing to death. Sadly, the only argument that worked on Jonathan's colleagues was that each living Cherokee moved to the established Indian Territory was worth more than a dead one.
He had tried to help the people as much as he was able. They had lost several individuals this trip and now all that remained was a young male child, an older woman and what seemed to be a middle-aged man. Jonathan could not even say the word "buck" in his own mind. He knew from the beginning that it was going to be awful. The tribesmen were so poor than the majority of them did not even have shoes on their feet. What were they thinking moving people in the middle of winter barefoot?
Jonathan had been reprimanded quite heavily a few days back for trying to give the child his own coat. His face still bore the black eye and slight swelling of the nose from the beating his superior officer had given him. It had hurt, but had been worth the fight when he saw that the child wasn't shivering as much as before. He cared little for the diseases that were said to run rampant around the Cherokee, and did not believe the stories anyway.
Rusty, the bay Morgan gelding that Jonathan was sitting on, shifted his weight from one back foot to the other. Jonathan murmured his apologies to the horse, it was his fault that they were on night watch for the next few days. He told the horse the story of how he lost his coat and watched as Rusty's ears moved back and forth. He thought Rusty understood.
Noting that the rest of his squad seemed to be huddled in their sleeping bags, he nudged Rusty closer to the Indians. He had recently taken up the habit of speaking to the middle-aged man, whom he had learned was called Sachetan, a name that seemed to be "rational" or "logical." As he rode closer, the odd light-eyed gaze of Sachetan followed his and Rusty's movements.
Jonathan stopped the horse next to the group of people and swung down out of the saddle. He pushed back the knee rolls and pulled several bread-and-venison sandwiches from under the leather. He held them out to the little group and the older woman stepped forward. She reached out a hand for two of the sandwiches, and said "thank you." She stepped back and called the child to her side, handing him the bigger one of the two. Jonathan had tried to make them all the same size, but it was difficult to handle the crusty, frozen bread with a dull knife.
Sachetan, however, just eyed the soldier up and down in that funny way that made Jonathan believe that the Cherokee was reading his mind. Jonathan himself studied the other man's high cheek bones and thick black hair. He was starting to feel that there was some understanding between them, but had so far been unable to identify it.
Sachetan gestured with his elegant hands. "Take half of it for yourself. They are feeding you no better than they are doing us."
Jonathan wanted to argue with the taller man, but it was better just to do as he says. He is trying desperately to keep these people alive. At least once they reach Indian Territory, they may have a chance to scrape together some sort of life.
Jonathan nods to Sachetan and pulls the sandwich apart with his hands. He tries hard to make sure the majority of the dark brown meat goes with the half he extends to his friend. Jonathan isn't even aware of when he stopped calling the other man anything else. In the past two weeks, he would like to believe that under different circumstances, they could be friends. Maybe it would be better if Jonathan moves to Indian Territory, too.
Without warning, there is the loud report of a rifle. The bullet rips through his shoulder, hitting the artery. Someone is calling him a "traitor" and an "Injun lover." Jonathan slumps forward and Sachetan catches him before the soldier hits the ground.
Sachetan grabs the horn of Rusty's saddle as the horse attempts to flee and swings himself up onto his back. He looks down at the only white man that has ever treated him with any respect and makes a prayer to the Great Spirit to look after the soul of this man.
Sachetan never grabs the reins but instead uses his legs to turn the horse toward the lowlife who shot a fellow soldier in the back. He holds his arms out straight from his sides and squeezes his legs. Rusty jumps forward, headed straight for the soldier who is still holding his rifle in the most dangerous position. Sachetan is angry and hurt and this is the only revenge he will ever have. As the bullet tears through his own chest, Sachetan takes great pride in hearing the sound of hooves shod with steel tearing through a human skull.
5: Korea, 1952.
Jonty stands outside the mess tent, smoking a cigarette with an American officer. The American is a tall ginger who holds the cig like its his lifeline. They are smoking and making small talk about aeroplanes. Jonty is excited to hear about the Havilland Comet being the first turbo jet passenger plane to be used in regular service.
One of the nurses steps outside and taps Jonty on the shoulder. Jonty leans in toward the woman and listens. He makes his apologies to the American, who nods politely as Jonty walks towards the hospital tent.
Jonty pushes his way through the doors and wades into a sea of military-issue beds. Almost every single one of them is full. Since being assigned as a surgeon with this American M*A*S*H unit, Jonty has witnessed this sight several times a day. He hates the reasons he is here, but he finds pride in working with people whose two biggest goals are to save as many lives as they can and then unwind with as much booze as they can drink. Until the next day when the call comes in that there is more wounded on the way and it's back up and at 'em one more time.
Jonty scans the room for his friend Steven. It was Steven's brother Michael that Jonty had just been outside smoking with. Steven has been a surgeon here for the past year and is responsible for teaching Jonty the ropes, including how to wind down and relax in such a crazy place.
Over the past few months, the Englishman and the American have formed a tight friendship. Steven is hoping for a quiet evening alone with his friend while everyone else is enjoying a movie reel. He has managed to stash away a couple bottles of real beer from the officer's mess thanks to his brother Michael and has some things he wants to say before Jonty gets shipped home at the end of the week. He especially wants to give Jonty the photograph of all of them in their loud-print Hawaiian shirts that was taken a few nights ago at the party in the R&R tent.
Steven watches his friend enter the hospital tent and considers how many hours the other man has been up within the last twenty-four (at least nineteen judging by the wrinkles in his olive-drab shirt and his overall run-down appearance.) Steven can smell the cigarette smoke from where he stands next to the make-shift nurses' station and recognizes his brother's favorite brand.
Steven holds out his hand and Jonty reaches for it to shake.
That's when the world explodes.
The next day, when the fires are put out and it is safe for emergency teams to re-enter the area, two surgeons are found lying a few feet apart under some wreckage. Their hands are outstretched towards each other, fingers barely touching. A tall red-haired man appears on the scene and regards the two dead men silently. His heart breaks as he identifies his younger brother and his British friend.
+1: London, England, Summer 2013.
John Watson is standing in the middle of the park, thoroughly enjoying the summer day. He still feels sad sometimes that his best friend is not there by his side. He is slowly working through his grief, day after day. But somehow it all still feels so wrong. He has played the scene over and over in his mind so many times that he no longer has to close his eyes to see it play out.
Sherlock Holmes standing on the roof of St Bart's, reaching out his hand towards him. Sherlock's voice in his ear, saying it's all a magic trick. As the sunlight blasts out through the clouds above him, suddenly John gets it. He knows!
At that very moment, a tall man with a crazy black mop of hair on his head is striding toward John, his arms outspread and his face open. For a second, John starts to pull back, but it's no good. They crash together after so long apart and there are tears and crushing lips and grazing teeth and no, it isn't so much the feeling of being back together but rather the feeling of being together again. The feeling that the danger has passed and now they can make a new life for themselves, a lifetime of understanding and mutual attraction that they need not explain to each other, a lifetime of coming home.
With Sherlock's arms and body around him and oh god, John's hands tight around that too-skinny waist, it is the feeling of a longing never quite admitted to himself, but no more. For John, time has stood still since Sherlock jumped and John only became alive again in that moment when he saw through the façade. Later, Sherlock will explain the deception. John's emotions will run the gambit: he will be angry and sad and then he will forgive his friend who quite literally died for him. It is the feeling of two halves finally being whole. It seems it has been so much longer than two and a half years. So much longer.
When they finally pull away from each other, they stand in the middle of the park in the middle of a bright sunny day with their foreheads pressed together, Sherlock's long fingers twisted into John's rather shaggy blond hair. There are crystal teardrops on the ends of the long dark eye-lashes that surround those sea green orbs of mystery and John reaches up slowly and brushes them away; his own face is no drier but he doesn't care because he is finally whole. Sherlock smiles a real smile that reaches his eyes and John can feel himself doing the same. They stand that way for just a few moments, breathing each other in and just being.
Sherlock pulls back and straightens up, but never let's go of John's hand. John looks up into the radiance of this mad genius and listens to the drumming of his own heartbeat in his ears I love you I love you I love you.
Sherlock gazes deep into John's ice-blue eyes and finds a warmth there that has been missing for all this time and he suddenly has a flash of memory, a sense that this is very real and is everything that life is supposed to be and the feeling that perhaps they have always reached for this moment, for each other, but have never actually attained this closeness that will never be torn asunder again.
Sherlock reaches down and John pushes up on his toes and this time when they kiss it's an announcement to the world that two hearts that have been searching for each other for so long have finally, finally, come together.
With a rush of breath, Sherlock Holmes looks deep into John Watson's eyes and searches for the other half of his soul. His deep baritone rumbles through his chest and he asks very simply:
"John, do you believe in reincarnation?"