TITLE: Once You Eliminate the Impossible.
AUTHOR: Doqz
FANDOM: Sherlock Holmes
ARCHIVE: Please ask.
DISCLAIMER: Main characters mentioned belong to Arrthur Conan Doyle and/or Joss Whedon . No profit is being made.
The condition that hounds the great and terrible Sherlock Holmes is that he is unable, and unwilling, to turn off his brain. He knows that, as he knows many things about people and himself. But there is a difference between a problem and a condition.
The problems, Holmes thinks as he expertly flicks open the tobacco snuff case that Mycroft brought him last Christmas, can be solved. Find the cause, treat it, move on. Neat and tidy. As things should be.
Below him the children begin to run, as the rocks hit them. Just as Holmes had known they would. Tears, screams, blood and pain mingle in the air as the cocaine mixture he prepared himself hits his system and has the expected effect.
The world sharpens and hums with meanings like God's own tuning fork.
Holmes distantly feels his pale lips quirk as he closes his eyes to take in the fullness of the rush.
The conditions can not be solved. Only endured.
The high doesn't linger. It never does. But for a split second he is free of his ennui. Of the boredom that pervades his days and of the quiet desperation howling beyond it.
Springheel Jack, the putative chief of the Baker Street Irregulars, leaps with the disgusting vigor of the young and latches on easily to the low step of the fire escape ladder, pulling himself up into an agile and fluid climb. His gap-toothed grin shines through the veil of blood, streaming from the cut above his eyes.
Like all head-wounds are wont to do, it is bleeding profusely, Holmes notes analytically. Pity Watson isn't about, he does so love to fuss with the urchins...
"Bloody hell," The detective spits out tiredly, viciously and a little sadly. There it goes again.
Jack smiles up at him a little uncertainly. 'Dr. John' is beloved, Holmes is respected and not a little feared. None of the street children have the illusions that made it possible for Watson to be his friend. Cynicism is not a parlor game for Jack and his ilk, it is a survival skill.
In another life, Jack would have been a Great Captain, Holmes thinks clinically as he extends his hand to pull up the chief of the Irregulars up his windowsill.
Charisma and ability boil beneath the bedraggled, scabbed exterior. Jack comes up with the double envelopment idea essentially on his own; a sooty, diminutive Hannibal ambushing Holmes at the door with a crudely drawn schematic of how he was planning to crash the invaders of his domain.
Apart from a few mild refinements, all Holmes attributes to the battle is a discussion with Lestrade that keeps the bobbies away from the fracas that ruins a perfectly good afternoon in a solidly respectable neighborhood.
Well, sacrifices have to be made in war.
"Budge up." Jack orders imperiously, belligerence being his natural reaction to even a glimmer of fear or uncertainty. Holmes moves obediently, freeing up the requested space
The triumphant child-general and a stoned deductionist sit silently for a time, the legs swinging out of rhythm as they placidly observed the grisly aftermath of the conflict.
"Got a smoke for us then?"
Jack is young, has not yet grown to appreciate the delights of ritual. Thus he steadfastly refuses to take his tobacco in a pipe. In one of his innumerable daily concessions to the poor taste of the masses Holmes had bought a box of celebratory cigars, which he now produces.
"Cor, you are aces, you are!"
"True." Holmes agrees. "Shall I be expecting your mob to become regularly available for my needs once again, now that St. George has smiled on your martial pursuits?"
Jack blinks at him again, this time with somewhat pitying expression. "Er, you should lay off the snuff a touch, gov'nor. You dinnae wan' to go they way of me Aunt Harry, you surely do not."
Holmes's head tilts in a slow considering motion, before he sighs and, in two abrupt but exact motions, wraps a scarf around Jack's forehead. "My thanks for the advice. We'll talk again soon, I am sure."
Springheel's wide mouth gapes momentarily, something of the child he never was flickering in the muddy-green eyes, as he touches the fabric that now transforms his visage into that of the unlikeliest Beduin. "Like that, eh? Be wanting to gloom it up on your own, then, all brassed off and uncheerful?"
The clever eyes flicker sideways at Holmes, before Jack pries open the box and sticks one of the cigars between his teeth, and another two behind his ears. "Will Your Worship still be wanting us to wander uptown, subtle like?"
Holmes's push looks almost lazy, despite the fact that the speed of his hands had frustrated innumerable pickpockets and (on a rather memorably terrifying occasion) a maddened king cobra.
Jack tumbles off the windowsill laughing, grasping the ladder in midair to correct his trajectory and lands nimbly on the pavement; arms akimbo and the tobacco bounty flying into among his ragamuffin court. After another second the police finally arrive, sprinting into the street, much as Homes had deduced they would.
The Irregulars scatter in a practiced swirl, Jack taking the time to salute him half-mockingly before disappearing down an alley.
The bobbies exhibit a modicum of furious energy for a brief moment, before most of them run out of breath and all retreat - with a couple of slower Irregulars in hand, barely enough energy to spare a glower toward Holmes's perch.
He tips his hat at them. A few smile back.
Soon the street is silent again, majority of his neighbors having learned ago that he is largely impervious to entreaties, scandals, complaints, histrionics and hysterics. These days they universally approach the problem of Holmes by trying to outflank him.
Unfortunately for them Mrs. Hudson huffs disgustedly a week ago, produces some sort of sick cousin in the country, and stomps off muttering a variety of unflattering things about her charge, his habits, general hygiene and parentage.
She slums the door with the strength surprising for someone her age, but not before icily informing him that she will be back in a month and whatever the condition of the house is at the time of her return, he will come resemble it shortly.
Holmes believes her, but the ennui has reached that enervating stage when he finds it difficult to care very much. And so the house reeks of kerosene and brimstone, one of the chairs bears evidence of being used for saber practice, and there is a Disraeli-shaped spot on the ceiling of his room.
In Holmes's defense he is rather positive that he has on his hands the makings of a truly innovative paper on the ameliorating effect of an entirely new and entirely artificial psychostimulant.
He's thinking of calling it the Philosophers' Stone due to the crystallizing effect. It is all quite fascinating really.
His keen deductive instincts make him dubious that it's going to be enough to deter Mrs. Hudson from undue excitement over the matter.
In any case, she is not currently available as an avenue of restraining influence on the enfant terrible of Baker Street. And neither is John. Who, along with Mary, cordially invites their dear fiend Mr. Holmes to accompany them to the Opera last evening.
"God's blood! Will you stop?" Holmes can feel and hear his teeth scrape against each other and tugs on his hat. Talking to himself is an old habit. And these days he rather lacks for any company, much less worthy one.
It is rather obvious when the realization that Watson was gone for good, and Mrs. Hudson for the intermediate future, had finally percolates through the neighborhood. There is a sort of a collective shudder that ripples through the street and the life of Baker Street takes on the funereal appearance of a city besieged by plague. Hushed, low-key, and drowning in the oppressed air of waiting for the first body to be found.
It amuses Holmes briefly before receding into dull background along with everything else. Even his violin, dusty and forgotten, has been sitting idle on the desk for days now.
He needed a case. Urgently, hungrily, terribly.
Something complex and vicious, taxing and a little bloody. Anything to give his mind another bone to gnaw upon.
But London is a fickle bitch and at the moment she is in no mood to do favors for him. Even Lestrade notes the unnaturally quiet streak. For a time Holmes is placid. Waiting for Moriarty to make his move, after the prerequisite pause.
But time passes and there is no trace of the mysterious professor. One of Holmes's working theories is that Moriarty's absence is a form of elaborate psychological combat specifically aimed at driving the detective mad with boredom. He even considers the likelihood that the professor is the one that declared a moratorium on interesting crime in the Empire's capital.
Whatever the case (or rather the lack of it) Holmes is trapped in the mundane. And his mind, that terrible calculating machine that knows no rest and wants none, begins to run backwards.
Quite simply, Holmes finds it necessary now to concede that the situation is more problematic than he first expected. It seems easy enough at first. And he fully expects it to get easier still with time. Instead, like a snake biting its own tail, it all begins to unravel, crumble in his grasp and his thoughts, lacking the required sustenance of a different sort, circle endlessly over the same ground.
Homes hates the thought of Mary in no small part because he, to put it quite simply, rather likes her. It is an instantaneous emotional response formed the minute that uppends the pitcher over his head. Everything after that only reinforces the impression of quiet strength underneath the genteel veneer, grey-eyed intelligence, steel wrapped in silk, and deep, deep well of... something primal and good. It might be love. Or kindness. Or comfort. Or... Or.
He is not entirely sure, frankly. And uncharacteristically he chooses to think no more of it. Yet he is quite sure that he likes Mrs. Watson. Which makes the situation that much harder. And that much more ridiculous.
It is past time for Watson to move on, to marry, to have a family and build a real practice. Children would surely come next. Every step that he takes, in the face of Holmes's petulance, is the correct one. Including the firm decision to stop participating in Holmes' excursions. Maddeningly, Mary argues and advises Watson against it. But he insists. Correctly, of course. It is no fitting life for a new husband and a future father.
Correct, rational decision once again. Elementary.
Echoingly, crushingly unsettling. Not at first. But as the time goes by and the patterns unravel. Quietly, steadily, destructively
Holmes is no longer Watson's center, the anchor of his universe, the touchstone, the friend and confidante. Mary now fills his days and thoughts. It is her insights that he finds fascinating, and they make her seem more beautiful in his eyes. Her opinions matter, her thoughts form the topics of their dinner talks and frame their life.
She's the nexus of his world, and what he used to see in Holmes he sees in her.
Intolerable!
The idea of him seeing the same things in Mary that he once admired in Holmes... It feels him with nameless dread.
He doesn't need this. There are plenty of doctors in London happy not to help him!
Holmes blames Watson for much of this, for breaking his lifelong habit of self-containment and self-rewarding solitude. And then just... abandoning him!
It is all very petulant and puerile. It's jealously. He's acting like some sort of spurned lover. Irrational, ludicrous and - frankly - vaguely indecent.
But then Holmes has always believed in indulging himself.
His strength is that unlike most people he does not force patterns on the uncertainty and chaos he abhors. Holmes sees things as they are. He finds the patterns, he does not create them to lullaby the so very human fear of the chaotic universe.
A disciplined mind is a powerful resource. He thinks little of the new theories being peddled on the Continent of 'unburdening' himself, sharing, talking endlessly about the problem. What rubbish and absolute twaddle! Un-British, at the very least.
No. Ignore and move on, forget, think not. And eventually, like a dog broken to the heel, it will require no effort whatsoever. New habits form, old skills of functioning in the vacuum of peace - return.
He thinks of that, and other comforting thoughts as he accepts Mrs. Watson's invitation and comes to dinner, that swiftly, unnoticeably becomes tradition. In all truth he accepts the first invitation as much out of necessity as anything else. Upon receiving the card he suddenly realizes that the house is utterly bereft of food, his stomach is plaguing him with pangs characteristic of a series of missed meals, and there's a tight, wound sound somewhere behind his eyes that indicates a somewhat excessive use of the snuff box.
So he comes, participates in the witty and urbane repartee with no talk of 'business.' His sickly fondness of Mary growing as she keeps up with him with very little effort. She's smarter than Watson, he realizes. And so does John - Holmes can see it in his eyes - proud and warm with quiet admiration as he keeps looking at her, as if seeing something new every time. Unable to stop touching her hand, her shoulder, her face.
Young love, Holmes thinks dryly. But there's no strength to the mental jibe. They are happy. Their pattern is building upon itself.
His is dissolving beneath his feet. Irene had left. Watson is gone. Even Moriarty has abandoned him.
And sometimes Holmes is not entirely sure what he regrets What he wants. Watson back at his back, revolver and pseudo-bitter retort ever at hand? Or what Watson has now? Or what Holmes used to have, before these questions began to plague him in the night.
It is all so very pedestrian, melodramatic and common. And Holmes hates Shakespeare.
Time is all that is needed.
Time, and a new case.
For in the interim, the dog that is his mind is wild, turning upon itself. He returns to it over and again, picking at it like a scab. Like a malfunctioning mechanism. Looking for the answer. What was. How it worked - with Watson and before him. Who is Mary and how she fit then and fits in now. He thinks, constantly and without respite. Even as the very mention of her name, even if only at the echoing recesses of his mind, makes hollow and painful slither that reaches all the way down to his stomach.
The nadir is when he actually contemplates sending the Irregulars to scout out the house to see how things progress, to keep track and document the ongoing experiment. He blanches when he realizes that he is seriously considering the idea.
Besides. Chances are that the woman would not just notice the boy, but likely
invite him in to be fed.
He understands early on that he has to find an entirely new equilibrium. Time is a river which no one enters twice. What he was before John is gone, washed away. Something new has to emerge.
But he needs a case to build it. To anchor himself, to remind him who and what he is now.
A case. His soul for a case!
"Are you going to jump or something? Because can you - uh, not? I am here to hire you, and it's sort of important. If you want you can do it afterwards. I'll help! Are you high? Why are you high? I don't have time for you to be stoned!"
He turns to take in the woman suddenly yelling at him, his mind automatically switching itself into the data-gathering and collating mode. He has not heard her come in, she is wearing male-clothing but of strange colors - blue pants and intricately-patterned shirt, both are of a rather revealing design. Much like the rest of her clothes her shoes are unfashionable yet strangely utilitarian. Slender build, long dark-brown hair and generous mouth, frankly appraising eyes.
She also has no shadow.
"Hey, Sparky, my eyes are over here. Snap out of it. Pay attention. I am a Higher Being, you know! Honestly, you meet most appalling people in this business" She glides forward to offer him her hand. "I am Cordelia Chase. Your hat is ridiculous."