Hello! This is my first Sherlock Holmes fan fiction, and I realize it is not strikingly original, but I thought I may as well post it up since the idea struck me. I apologize for every mistake that is certainly here. I type this at midnight and without anyone to beta, so I hope you can forgive the weird tenses and probable typos/misspellings. I should be writing my paper on the Mixtecs, but here I write fan fic. Thus is life.
Sherlock Holmes and associated © to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Often in Watson's narratives I am depicted as exceedingly Bohemian in nature. There is a never-ending list of men and women who have deemed me odd and unfit for polite society, and the only reason I am accommodated is sorely for my brilliant mastery of the art of deduction. I am the world's only private detective, and for it I gain none few admirers, both criminal and high-ranking. I am not one to change my habits much, and when I find them altered, it piques me greatly. I am brilliant, but as Watson would say, "the most untidy of men*," though it is not from a general adoration of disorder but of proximity. It is integral to my deliberation that any and all material is close at hand, for the insights that Watson has me known for do strike at any time. I also take great pride in the strength of my memory, and there is little I forget, be it allegedly minute or profound. I become rather vexed if I cannot recall what I normally can. Thus to find myself suddenly awake, not in any clothes I would deem proper and in a room so pristine and neat that I could not readily recognize it as my own, and with my the grandest of headaches I have ever endured, I admit to being rather incensed.
But then I remember, and the whole of the tale rather shocks me as so few things have done in my curious life. It is most fortune that I have, at some point in time, collected enough empty journals to contain this tale, for I know it should be lengthy, as the thoughts are already beginning to spill onto these pages. I am not a writer like Watson and I know I lack the grandeur that such fiction demands, but in such an uncommon disheveled state of mind, I believe I may be able to supply the luridness required.
And so I begin at the hazy beginning, at least I believe it to be so.
The first memory I have is of his voice.
"Holmes, Holmes," the desperate cry rose up from somewhere around me, flowing into the warm, protective darkness like floating lanterns, and I opened my eyes to try and soothe the anxious party.
"You must stay awake, old fellow. Just for a little longer," he pleaded, all tight lines and pale lips.
"Hm?" I murmured quite against my will, and nearly forgot I had said anything at all when something tightened on my arm. His hand, I deduced hazily.
"Please," he nigh-whimpered, and at last I conceded to let my eyes stay open completely, though the world around me remained fuzzy and indistinct.
Who was this man? Someone important, surely.
"Dr. Watson," shouted another voice, waspish and direct. The man responded with a wave, not at me-was his name Watson? I suppose that was it-but at someone in the distance. A rat-faced man bounded into my vision, startling me somewhat with the impression of it, and I suppose I must have moved because this Watson immediately began to soothe me.
They spoke and hovered and I felt I dreamt it all, Watson urgently pleading for me to stay awake and the rat-man expounding on "circumstances changing...what should we do with him?" It was difficult to pay any attention at all, and I must have drifted off, for I knew nothing but the darkness for some time. The next I was fully aware I was laying in a cold bed, my head pounding and a strange man looking down on me.
"Awake, I see." He looked like a mole.
Went to Whitechapel this evening, ate dinner with his aunt, walked a while to find a cab, 'tis raining, ate soup.
Why was it at all important that he ate soup?
The man continued to speak, something about having a very severe concussion-"You are a very lucky man, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, not to have received any internal bleeding. You'd be doin' us a fine favor, that's for sure, dying in a gutter somewhere in Dorset Street."-but overall I was unhurt. I did not feel it, for the infernal pounding in my head seemed only to worsen as he rambled on.
"I will need you to rest for the next week or so, though in all honesty I expect it longer, but I have no doubts that Dr. Watson, the fine fellow that he is, will make sure you do not move more than required!" He leant forward to touch my head, something I could not abide by, for all the parade that was cavorting in my skull, and before I could stop myself, I had planted a great blow to his eye. The man yelped, the pain skyrocketed, and darkness claimed me once more.
For the second time I came to with a pounding in my head, yet not, strangely, in the same bed I had been, but in a shady room far smaller in size and much more comfortable. I was lying on back, my head pounding less painfully than before, and my face turned toward the wall to my left. There was a man there, mustachioed and sleeping. His face was drawn and pale and I realized that he was the Watson fellow that starred in a very vague memory. He had clearly been up all night. He hadn't eaten, there being no crumbs on his person, and his clothes were unabashedly rumpled, meaning he had not changed them. This train of thought startled me-how could I know so much of a man I had just met? Or had I?
Who was I, exactly?
Amnesia, of course. But was it temporary or permanent? In most cases-most? what experience do I have with it?-it only lasts for a certain amount of time, and often some memories do not return at all, though for the most part they will fit back in place. The few memories I have appear to be recent, and the hints to my identity few. My name appears to be Sherlock Holmes, for the mole-like doctor had referred to me as such. What cruel parents had I, to name a child Sherlock? A name, nonetheless, oriented me, though I was still at every loss. I ought to ask Watson what this was all about, but I cannot bring myself to wake him. Then I shall find out myself. This must be my dwelling, by the way Watson has dressed himself so casually, so consequently there must be something that will explain me. I moved to sit up and immediately found the action to be a very poor idea. The room spins and dips and nausea rides across my stomach. The headache intensifies as well, and I bit my lip to muffle a pained cry. My actions are in vain, however, for I hear the man jolt awake and nearly topple out of his chair.
"Holmes!" he shouts, his voice raw and stricken, and for some reason I feel as if I was the one who knocked me over the head and caused the concussion, for all the guilt that I was feeling in that moment. His strong hands wrapped around my shoulders and he laid me back on the pillow. After a few seconds his face righted itself, and I was able to see just how terrified he really was, his eyes wide and his breathing quick and hitching.
"I am fine," I say, though my voice sounds strange to my ears. It is deep and smooth like butter.
"You are most certainly NOT fine. You...I..." he takes a deep breath and I am lost on how to comfort the poor man. This does not seem the appropriate time to ask him who I am, but I could not think of anything else to say.
"My dear...Watson, I..." and then another thought suddenly occurs to me, "Did I hit that man?"
He laughs tearfully, and it is full of such relief that I am in awe of the emotion I see play across his features. He rubs his face wearily with his hand and smiles widely. "Yes, my dearest fellow, you did. I never knew you had the arm for it, but I have been proven wrong. Dr. Peters was not very pleased, and I believe he raised the price for it! I heard him grumbling about your lack of respect as he left the sitting room."
"Well, if he had not been so insistent on babbling like a..." I stop when he looks at my strangely. Ah, I rather forgot the matter at hand.
"Are you all right, Holmes?" He does not add that I must be acting unlike "myself," though who or what that self is I do not yet know, and the intensity returns to his features. The way he tenses makes me wince, for though he had moved back from the bed, his hand had taken rest on my shoulder. It clenched tightly enough to hurt. Who was this Dr. Watson and what was his relationship to me?
"What happened?" I ask instead of answering his question. He withdraws his hand as he notices the pressure he is putting on me, looking sheepish but guarded, as if he wasn't quite sure if it were positive that I was of the mind to ask or negative that I could not remember. Nonetheless, he steadied himself and explained.
"We were in Dorset Street, Holmes. Lieutenant Barrington had escaped the Yard at the conclusion of our case, and we happened upon him running past us on our way to the Millwall Case. He attacked you Holmes." His words trailed off, and I felt rather than saw the weight of this action. Does he care so much about me, I wonder, that his posture becomes unconsciously furious?
"He knocked me, did he? It explains the headache." The strange look returns, this time with a frown, and I realize that I must not be this man that Watson is speaking to, by the way he responds.
"And what happened to the Lieutenant?" The longer I wait to reveal my secret, the more I dread his reaction. I dislike having to burden the doctor more, for he looks likely to collapse where he stands.
"After throwing you back, he went to attack Lestrade, and I shot him in the arm. He is alive and in custody, but it appears the thief escaped as well, and Lestrade has sent squads out for him. Lord Whemsby has sent a very heated letter," Watson's voice dips into a whisper and his eyes drag across my figure and onto the floor. The names bounce around in my head with no meaning, their importance lost completely on me, but I am nonetheless impressed that the fellow had the mind to respond so quickly.
"I'm impressed," I say, and I can almost see his teeth clench through his clamped lips.
"Holmes..." he begins, and we are finally at the matter now. He looks hesitant, but steels himself. "Do you remember what the case was about at all? Do you remember why were chasing the Lieutenant down the streets of Whitechapel?"
I sigh, and instead decide to respond with something fairly unrelated, though I suppose it would answer his wordless question just as well.
"I apologize, my dear Watson, but I don't quite know who you are."
* - A bit of a quote from the The Musgrave Ritual. Best to use it in Watson's own terms, eh?