AN: Hi! Okay, I know I should be continuing Stranded, but Johnlock has been filling up my life of late, and I thought I'd try this out as a little one-shot. I'm thinking of doing other ficlets based on The Little Prince verse, considering all the beautiful tales Saint-Éxupery wrote in TPP. But till then, this is what I have. I tried my best to copy S-É's simple, moving style and language. I hope I succeeded (I doubt so) in doing him justice! If you have any comments/feedback I'd love to hear it.
Based on the little prince's story with the rose. To refresh your memory: The prince had a rose on his planet that he looked after and loved. She was petty and vain, but loved the prince very much. Later he finds a huge garden of roses on Earth, and is saddened to know that his rose isn't unique. But he meets a fox who asks to be tamed, and learns that his rose is special after all. If you haven't read this book, READ IT... please? And the essential quote from the wise fox: "What is essential is invisible to the eye." Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I OWN NUTHIN.
-end long rambly AN-
The detective recognised the lines of disturbance in the army doctor's face. It had been two days since his return, and three years since he had left the doctor.
The doctor had spent the majority of those two days sitting on his usual chair, his head in his hands, deliberately not looking at the resurrected consulting detective.
When he spoke, his voice was dead and low. "I had to bury you."
The detective did not know what to say to close the gaping wound he had torn open. Apology seemed insufficient, so he remained silent. The army doctor got up and began packing his things, because he did not know how to be together with this detective anymore, had finally filled the hole the detective had left in his life just as the man had returned.
He had no space to take the detective in, for he knew the detective would consume much of him.
"Goodbye," the army doctor said finally.
The consulting detective stood by the window, staring out, and said nothing.
"Goodbye," the doctor repeated firmly.
The detective coughed. "Forgive me," he said at last. "I… I believe I understand. Try to be happy."
The army doctor stood, bewildered, by this unusual show of sentiment. He did not understand this gesture.
"Of course I do not wish you to leave," said the detective. "But it is my fault, and I accept that. I have been foolish. But you – you have been just as foolish as I, caring for a man like myself. Try to be happy."
The army doctor blinked as the consulting detective turned away once more. "My friend…" he began.
"Don't linger. You have decided to go away. Now go!"
For the consulting detective, for all his intelligence and mania, was a proud man, and he knew that if the doctor said another word, he would have begged him to stay.
And the doctor would have listened to the detective, dropped his bag and returned into his old life if asked. This the consulting detective knew. But he wanted the army doctor to do it of his own volition and initiative. The detective stayed silent.
So the army doctor left, and began a slow exploration of the world.
The army doctor, in his travels, came to a house of scholars. They were all of them thin and underfed, concerned only with academics and work. They were all of them manic and brilliant.
"Good morning," the doctor said, upon entering the house of scholars.
"Good morning," they chorused. The inner rooms were strewn with books, and as the doctor explored all these rooms, he found men well-versed in every subject, each cleverer than the last. He gazed at them, thunderstruck, and painfully reminded of the consulting detective.
"Who are you?" he demanded, of a group that was studying criminology in one of the many libraries.
"We are detectives," they said. "Or consultants. The police seek our expert help."
The army doctor was overcome with sadness, for he had believed the consulting detective when he called himself "the only one in the world." And here were tens of them, all alike, in one room!
"He would be very much annoyed to see this," the army doctor said to himself. "But he would pretend not to be, for this out of everything he has ever known is the one thing he prides himself on too much to show what he truly feels. He would pretend to have some urgent experiment or case and he would have rushed off. And I would have followed him, for if I did not do that to humble myself also, he would have cried… and the consulting detective should never, ever, cry…"
And he went on with his reflections as he watched the detectives work, typing away at laptops or flipping through books on murder and psychology, some muttering aloud at each other or to themselves. "I thought I had a man unique in all the world, and this would make me unique as well – and all I loved was a common man. A common man, an alcoholic sister, and a squalid flat… is this all I shall love in my life?"
The army doctor walked out of the house of scholars. He came to a small motel and booked a room for the night. He lay on the small bed and felt the space next to him and remembered the lean body of the consulting detective against his. He curled up so he occupied the empty space as well, and cried himself to sleep.
That night the consulting detective came to him in a dream. They stood on a street in London – Baker Street, the army doctor recognised. This was their first meeting.
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" the detective asked.
"Who are you?" the army doctor said.
"I am a consulting detective, the only one in the world."
"Let us share a flat," the army doctor proposed. "I am very lonely."
"I cannot," the detective replied. "We hardly know each other." Distantly, the army doctor recognised this as a role reversal, for it had been the detective who had asked the doctor to live with him first in reality.
"You do not live on Baker Street," the detective said. "Why are you here?"
"I need something to fight," the doctor said. "Give me something to fight."
"I cannot," the detective repeated. "We hardly know each other."
"And how shall I know you better?"
"When you begin to need me, and I you. When we become friends. To me you are still nothing more than a lonely man in London looking for a reason to live, and there are plenty of those here. To you, I am nothing more than a stranger. But if we were to become friends… to me you will be unique in all the world, and to you I will be unique."
"Fantastic," the army doctor said, for he wanted to cry. "I believe I understand – you see, outside of this world, there is a detective… I think we are friends…"
"How interesting," the detective said, eyes bright. But he soon returned to his previous train of thought. "My life, for all its danger, is monotonous. I observe everything, and say what needs to be said for these observations to be used to catch criminals. It is always the same. There is always the case. But if you become my friend, it shall be very different. Now every time I succeed at something, I will wait for your praise, I will hunger for it. I shall know a man at last who will not ask anything of me but love. I have no use for tea, for I am a man who prefers the electricity in a cup of coffee or a cigarette. But the smell of tea will be a comfort and a reminder of home, because you drink tea so often and it will remind me of you. You will have made something useless into something beautiful."
The detective studied the army doctor for a very long time, then bowed his head. "Please," he said quietly.
"I want to very much," the doctor said. "But I am afraid…" He did not say that he was afraid that the detective would hurt him, as he had in the world outside his dream. Or, even worse, that the army doctor would hurt the detective. "What must I do, to be your friend?"
"It requires much patience," the detective said. "For I am not a creature that usually enjoys company. We shall begin at a distance. You may come up to my flat and sit and drink tea, and I will work on a case. I shall look at you occasionally out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing, for the English language is the root of so much misunderstanding. But every day we will become closer…" The detective turned abruptly and entered 221B Baker Street, beckoning the army doctor to follow.
The next day, for the army doctor's dream lasted through sleep and waking, the detective dragged the doctor through London on a mad chase after an arsonist. When they returned to Baker Street, the detective promptly collapsed on the sofa, as he had not slept for days. The doctor smiled exasperatedly at those long limbs splayed across the arm of the sofa and went out to buy takeaway.
When he returned, the detective was awake. "I recognise the sound of your step on the staircase," he said softly. The doctor nodded.
They ate their food in silence, then as the doctor cleared the plastic trays, the detective took his violin from its case and teased out a sweet melody.
"I used to play the most dissonant chords," the detective mused, half to himself, and half out loud to the doctor. "When I was searching for something to play for."
"Did you find it?" the doctor asked.
"I believe it found me."
The doctor, felt himself waking, an unusual phenomenon he could not explain to the detective. "I must leave," he said to the detective, even as the walls of 221B faded around him.
"Ah." The detective drew his bow across the strings once, a long, mournful note, and fell silent. He stared out of the window.
"I am sorry," the doctor said, for he knew what it was like to be left behind.
"Do not be sorry," the detective said. "You have been my friend."
"But I have saddened you!" cried the doctor. "My friendship has done you little good!"
"It has done me good," explained the detective,"because of the smell of tea, the song of a violin, the colours of your striped jumper." And then he added, "Go back to your world and find your detective. You will understand now that he is unique in all the world."
The flat crumbled around them, and the army doctor tried to cross the room to reach the detective, but he woke up too soon.
He left the motel in the wee small hours of the morning to return to the house of scholars. It was dark, except for one room that remained lit, and he went to that room. It was the room of the detectives, who were staying awake to solve a particularly difficult murder.
"You are not at all like my detective," he said. "As yet you are nothing. You have no friends, and you love nothing but your work. It is not really a love but an obsession. You are like my detective when I first knew him – he was only a man like a hundred thousand others. But he is my friend and flatmate now, and he is unique in all the world."
The detectives in the room were embarrassed.
"You are brilliant, radiant men, but you are empty and alone," the doctor continued. "One could not die for you. Any ordinary passer-by would find my consulting detective to be exactly like you. But he is more important and more wonderful than all of you detectives put together, because it's him I have cared for and fed, it's him I have watched bad movies with, it's him I follow through the night and it's him I carry my gun for. Because it's his violin I listen to, his poison I have drunk, his death and return I have suffered. Because he is my detective, and I am his blogger."
The army doctor left the house of scholars once more, and set out on a journey back home.
FIN.