AN/ Written for Day 4 on the Tumblr Johnlock Party: AU, and then re-drafted to actually make some sense. Pre-slash John/Sherlock.
In response to indiegal - thank you, and yes, Frankenstein did influence this slightly, especially Sherlock's characterisation. Damn Gothic literature and its shear wonderfullness =)
Summary: AU. Sherlock Holmes moulds a man from clay, brings him to life with a name and kiss in the hope that he might just find what he's been looking for. Pre-slash S/J. Golem!John.
Golem
The golem has not been constructed with normal conventions by any means. His creator sought out arcane textbooks, musty and yellowing with misuse and damp, scribbled down in bulging notebooks the materials he would need, the conflicting processes and near-illegible handwriting of those who came before him. But when it came to the final project, he took all his research and refined it with the logic of a modern man without superstitions, with practicality and care for the aesthetics.
Sherlock Holmes is a scientist first and foremost. Yet while his fellows at university went of into biomolecular and cutting-edge chemical fields, the most intelligent of their class, the most solitary, instead has the past few months confined himself to the small spaces in his flat on Baker Street; half-buried under ancient books of outdated lore, the sort of sciences that would be the scorn of most of his classmates but to him are the tools by which his path is illuminated. He devours feverishly works of Flamel, Paracelsus, Agrippa, the disregarded alchemists in an age where the functions of a cell at microscopic level, where even the origins of the universe might be explained, the hours of his days swallowed up by the Kabbalah and its legends, old books of occultists, the mystics and the madmen.
Sherlock doesn't have any particular belief in the kind of magics those men of so long ago believed they possessed, but he remains objective, taking scrawling notes down in the margins and squashing two sentences per line for so long the time drifts well into the early morning. He takes no cases from Lestrade, ignores all concerned texts and Mrs Hudson knocking on the door, asking if he wants tea – really asking if he is alright. He is satisfied when she finally understands that he is busy in a most revolutionary venture, and stops disrupting his study. Very little has been more important than this.
It can often be said that the most rational minded make the most unconventional of all artists, and that is what Sherlock is trying to attain. He sees murder every day, the leylines of motive and cause, all threaded together with a blood-red stain, and for once, Sherlock wants to create something, bring life into the world, rather than catalogue the way it has been extinguished and destroyed.
He has taken unusual care with his creation; the golem – anatomically male so much as he has a gender to speak of – not sculpted with mud, rushed so that his facial features are defaulted settings; a lump for a nose, a scratch across the lower half of the face with a penknife to form a rudimentary mouth. Rather, sand has been used to compact his body, the indents of his eyes packed with shards of glass, the rest of his clay shape made with dedication and care to be suitably proportioned and correct. Sherlock designs him to be of a strong, stocky build; an unconscious opposite to his own angular rakish appearance, moulding a shorter man than is common. There is a spidered shatter mark across the shoulder where the firing process to harden the skin went wrong.
The actual face took over three days. It's expressive, wide, curious-seeming eyes, soft but with a line of hardness to them, a pert nose with the slight leanings of a frown in the curve of his mouth. Sherlock then carves the right runes into the arms, pronouncing slow Latin phrases as he does so, conjugating verbs in a deliberate monotone so as not to make any mistakes, smoothing each mark over with his thumb back into the composition of skin when he is done.
Sherlock doesn't make the golem for the express position of a minion, or to be a thoughtless labourer that blindly follows his bidding. He's dealt with the plastic liars, those that expound on his intelligence, how clever he is, and then mock him behind his back; the many fools of the world that just run so slow and fall behind in his wake. He's had enough of being a pack of one, lone wolf in his quiet den at Baker Street, with no-one to share his brilliance, to tell him he's amazing, to shake their head and hold him back when he's 'a bit not good'.
Sherlock Holmes, above all things, wants a friend. Acquaintances and siblings and family, of course he has all of these, but actually having a friend... that has always been too hard for him to master. His words don't fit right when he introduces himself, his actions aren't the norm, too unyielding, too intense, and so in the end he is always left alone. So instead he fashions himself a man out of clay, foregoing food and sleep and the other necessities of life, because for the first time in a long time, he hopes. Believes without logic, without empirical proof, that this golem might become the friend he wants. The one he needs.
On a slip of paper torn from a lined notebook, he scrawls the final stage of the process, writing down with coarse ink lines something powerful. A name, the strongest of magics, binding and enduring, the empowering magic that will bind into the immobile form, the very act of giving the golem an identity allowing him to grow a soul.
John, he writes, clear strokes and curves making up the letters. It is a good, solid name. He pushes the paper into the formed flesh of the golem's right palm, tenderly pressing it down. He compacts it over with more clay to seal it in, invisible to the naked eye, the ink on the page bleeding into the flesh; inside the sedimentary man, he knows the blue ink is making up rivulets of veins, draining down into arteries, infusing life into his creation.
Sherlock Holmes waits for his miracle.
A few seconds pass and a frown furrows his brow as the golem does nothing. No motion, no flicker that indicates sentience. No life. Why isn't it working? He followed the steps, the method, procedure, dropped and declined cases in order to correctly research every facet to prevent mistakes. There is nowhere he has gone wrong.
He steeples his fingers, shifts from one foot to another, thinking, correlating strands of thought and dismissing each. But then he pauses in his considerations, recalling an archaic suggestion for such a problem, from an old piece of literature he almost disregarded from his research, pages pulling away from the dog-eared bindings, wear and tear rendering it near useless. It explained how to complete the method and induce true life, by giving something stronger to his creation than ink and clay. He has given a name, and now he needs to offer up something else, a reason for the crafted man to open his eyes, expose a part of his own soul in the process. The solution it offers is ridiculous of course, unnecessary and overly emotive, but he wants this to work so badly he doesn't care.
He just doesn't want to be alone anymore.
Standing upright before the frozen man, a pause almost suggesting hesitation, he leans in, closing his eyes and placing his lips softly on the similar constructs he himself moulded, the clay lips cold and earthy. He pours into his action his wants, his desires, his burning drive and his isolated loneliness, the frailty of genius, the action knocking down all the walls of what he shows on the outside and what he truly is inside, opening his own human heart to the golem's carved one, housed under a torso that is now blooming flesh-coloured under his touch.
There is a gasp, an intake of breath that does not come from him. Sherlock opens his eyes.