Author's note: A little one-shot to mark the anniversary of Sherlock's and John's first meeting :) (To all those wondering what am I doning, writing a one-shot when I promised a new chapter for Part 3 of my series - don't worry, I'm working on it :) )
Disclaiming all that doesn't wish to be mine...
Enjoy!
The 29th of January is almost always a cold day. Sometimes there's snow. Sometimes, there is no snow, but there's rain. Sometimes the date falls on a Saturday and sometimes it's a Friday or a Thursday. There are many variables regarding the 29th of January, but there is only one thing that is absolutely constant about it.
It's a day of a meeting. Their meeting. The most important meeting.
This meeting always takes place on the 29th of January, but it isn't just a single meeting – it happens again, and again, and again.
The first time they meet, it's 1881 – a mirror year, if you look at it closely, where two parts of the number reflect each other, an 18 and an 81, entities made of same components arranged in a way so they seem different, when in fact they are the same, at their core. How fitting this is, that they should meet in a mirror year, these two mirror-men, seemingly in an irreconcilable contrast, but in fact kindred spirits if there ever were any. They chase men that are more frightening than demons and reveals demons that can only be found in men, reading in their expressions stories of their lives and telling of their lies. A sleuth and his chronicler, with the smell of the Thames in their hair and clothes and the fervour of the chase in their breath and blood. They run until their time runs out.
Only, it never really does.
In 1921 they find each other again, eyes meeting eyes in a silent monochrome as they turn from letters to pictures. They run together through scenery of black and white, inseparable, until it is once again a time to fade away.
Eight years later, in 1929, they have their third first meeting, this time with the ability of speech – a proper introduction. Their voices resonate, speaking to each other like no one else is there to hear, like they don't care even if there was.
It goes on and on, this constancy of the 29th of January. In 1954 they cross the Atlantic and in 1959 for the first time the pink of their wind-whipped cheeks is seen in colour. Every now and then, a third party tries to join them, but they never last long. This isn't their story. It's a story about the two men that met on that 29th of January of that mirror year. They are each other's only constant.
Sometimes we catch them in that sad part where they're together but not in every sense of the word, where that desperately unspoken thing of theirs is carving a bitter divide between the detective and his doctor, the way it did in 1970. The divide is always real and raw and its mending is just slightly uncertain. We know that it will happen, but they don't. It is in those instants that it hurts, this epic story of theirs. It is such moments that feel like an ending.
But they're not. Never. It always starts anew, this epic story of theirs.
1984 marks a very good year for their umpteenth first encounter – they run together for ten years after that one, a raven-haired man and his loyal companion. They laugh and shout, worry and argue, live. There's a flat where they reside –the same one where they always did– with walls that keep their secrets and a landlady that puts up with their mischief. They're happy in this one, so very happy. There's the deerstalker and the ridiculous coat, the pipe on the mantelpiece and the magnifying glass chucked carelessly between the cushions of the sofa. There's the mystery and the thrill and the love. Ah, yes, the love. Wasn't it there always? Wasn't it always this?
Every time they meet, it's in a place as timeless and as constant as them, a venue where lives are lost but where lives are saved as well – in more ways than one. The Detective takes on a case, the greatest mystery he will ever encounter, one that will take lifetimes to unravel and that will keep surprising him time and time and time again, through decades and centuries, across continents and nationalities. The Soldier-Doctor takes on a co-combatant and a patient, one who will save him and who will by saved by him, time and time and time again, from perils both physical and those of the mind, across expanses of a Swiss waterfall and in close quarters of London flat, in nights where the darkness of the sky seems bright in comparison with the darkness of their thoughts.
Each time they meet, it's always their first meeting, but each time they seem to know each other a bit better, a fraction more than the last time, despite never having seen each other before (oh, but they have...they have). Each time it's more and more a reunion than it is an introduction, because, in fact, they have met before. Maybe it's just us and the fact that with each new cycle we know them a little bit better, or maybe it's two souls recognising each other from previous lives, remembering memories that are yet to be made and recalling events which are both their past and their future. Either way, the meet and step out together for the very first time (or so they think) and those firsts steps always taste like possibility and adventure.
And don't their steps always sound the same, beating a steady tempo against London's pavements? Can you hear it? The rhythm of their constant rebirth? They might have walked on some foreign grounds, through some foreign cities, from time to time, but they always come back to the one which was their first home. And as they step out now, onto the cobblestone-paved street that is now a relic for tourists to admire, the paving stones – the same ones that witnessed their first steps taken together – sing in recognition, humming an inaudible 'welcome back, we've missed you' that resonates in every heart that's ever heard their name. Time plays no role in this – the sound in unmistakable, each and every time.
Ink and parchment give way to keyboard and screen, and hansoms step into the shadows of history to allow motorised cabs to take centre stage. Gas lamps no longer have a place in this electrified, brighter world, but their warm glow finds refuge in looks shared between two men who lived to see the first spark of electricity ever to be used to illuminate dark nights, who lived through wars and armistices, who witnessed innovation previously equated to magic, and who always found their way back to each other and to us. They may not remember all this, but we do.
And now they're here, and we with them. Love turns 133 and if love ever started it started there, in 1881 which is also here and now, again and always. It's an ancient love and an infant love, their Hecate who wears a deerstalker instead of a dress and walks in a soldier's marching step. Repetitive and infinite, this love lingers in a state of unending metamorphosis when considered superficially, but at its core, it remains unchanged in a way that no skin-deep transfiguration can ever alter. They are younger than we've seen them in a long time – we've caught them at the very start this time, it would seem – and yet their love is older than ever, stronger and woven ever so more tightly into the very fabric of their existence. And here's the deerstalker and the ridiculous coat, the cigarettes hidden beneath the skull on the mantelpiece and the magnifying glass chucked carelessly between the cushions of the sofa. There's the mystery and the thrill and the love. Oh, the love. It was always there. It was always this.
They chase men that are more frightening than demons and reveals demons that can only be found in men, reading in their expressions stories of their lives and telling of their lies. A Consulting Detective (a sleuth) and his blogger (his chronicler), with the smell of the Thames in their hair and clothes and the fervour of the chase in their breath and blood. They run together through scenery of modern-day London, all colour and sound and bright electrical lights at night. They're a reincarnation, but they are also a summation of all their previous lives. And their love, the love that was always there, from their first first meeting to the last one (last for now), it runs along with them in this new, freer world. It is slowly coming into its right, striving to take its true form. A slide of hand, a lingering look. A very fond smile and the quickening of breath. Pupils dilate. Pulse picks up its pace.
Any day now. Just one more step. Just one more breath.
They meet, they live out their adventures, they grow apart only to fall back together again and then they seem to end. And you can imagine them ending in any way you like – in a cottage in Sussex, together or apart, immortal or asleep, because it doesn't matter – because, truth is, they never truly end. They always meet again. The 29th of January always comes around again, each year, unerringly punctual, a fixed point in a changing age...
Inevitable.
Just a bit of data that I used in the fic (because data is cool and it might come in handy):
1881 - the year SH and JW meet in the ACD cannon (I guess this bit is a little redundant, but hey...)
1921 - a series of B&W silent films about SH by Stoll Pictures is produced
1929 - the first sound film version of SH stories
1954 - an American TV series about SH
1959 - first SH film in colour
1970 - "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", for which Mark Gatiss said (I'm paraphrasing) depicted the fact that SH "effectivelly falls in love with Watson, but it's so desprately unspoken" (as you can see, I borrowed a bit of that :) also, a line in the fic draws inspiration from the script of A Study in Pink which is available as part of the S3 DVD set :) (more precisely, the part of it describing the last scene) )
1984 ( - 1994) - Granada's version of SH
The 29th of January, 1881(their first first meeting) was a Saturday, while the 29th of January, 2010 (their last first meeting) was a Friday.
:)