Summary: Alternate take on the wharf explosion: Holmes is the one to discover Watson, and neither is so well-off.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. (Nothing!)
A/N: This is 2009 movie-based, with some attempt at Conan Doyle's style. If I had to judge I'd say it skews *slightly* towards Ritchie's Holmes/Doyle's Watson, but hopefully I've achieved some balance that is faithful to the overall spirit of the characters.
Thanks for reading!
I: Prologue
A high-pitched ringing: that was all the great detective Sherlock Holmes had in his ears at the moment.
He blinked slowly, a spectre of a moon hanging in his line of vision.
Heavy smell of powder all about, charred brick and mortar and wood. Holmes's head lolled to the side, and he promptly felt a piece of gravel dig at his scalp.
He was . . . on the street? Yes, quite on the street. He had to . . . had to what, exactly? Get up, perhaps. That was likely a step in the right direction, though the motivation to depart his peculiar situation presently eluded Holmes somehow. He felt vastly disoriented, and in the distinctly unsettling way that suggests injury as opposed to something of the more pleasant variety.
Holmes let his head fall to the other side. Perhaps it wasn't quite as bad as all that. No need to sit up and attempt forward motion just yet. He licked his lips, a rather foul taste accompanying the action. In the dark, he frowned. No. No cause for panic. Surely Watson—
Watson!
»»««
John Watson did not open his eyes. All sound had dissolved into one single, alien frequency. The stench of ash and smoke filtering directly into his nose from his moustache, Watson's lips parted against the rough-hewn stone they seemed to be pressed against. He felt no desire to move anything else. It all hurt too much to make any such endeavour.
There was the ache of having made some bit of forceful contact, and a sort of sick, lancing fire that was more than vaguely troubling. Was some part of him burning? No, Watson was reasonably sure he would be able to smell that, if he so happened to be lighting this little corner of the world that lay just beyond his closed eyelids. Shrapnel, most likely . . . heated bits of shrapnel sending intermittent currents upon their various points of intrusion. A wondrously pleasant thought. He speculated on how much blood there might be. He didn't want to reach anywhere and feel. Holmes would have a laugh at that.
Holmes.
Watson's eyes opened blearily from his prone position on the ground.
Had he warned him in time? He thought he'd warned him in time.
The curl of his eyelashes drifted shut once more.
He hoped so, at least.
END 1/3
Stuck here, in the middle of nowhere
With a headache and a heavy heart
Well nothing was going quite right here
And I'm tired
I can't play my part
. . .