It was the stillness that woke him.
Blinking sticky eyes, John sat up and cracked his neck. The train had stopped moving. There was no sign of the pudgy conductor, and no sounds other than the ones he himself made met his ears. He stood, and made his way—feeling somewhat week and watery, the way one feels after a long, long car ride—to the door of the car.
"Mind the gap," warned the same, not-quite-mechanical voice.
He stepped out into a large rock cavern. Not a station, not exactly, though there was—at odds with everything else about this decidedly-odd experience—a park bench and a red telephone booth sitting a few strides from the train. John quirked an eyebrow at these, and couldn't help but wonder who would be waiting for this train in order to leave, and who might use the telephone.
"It doesn't actually work," a young voice said. John, startled, spun to see a shaggy-haired boy standing behind him, his hands in the pockets of trousers that looked like something John's great-grandfather would have worn. He wore a rough cap, and withdrew one hand just long enough to touch the brim in a sort of half-hearted salute. "We just keep it there to make people—mortals—feel more at home."
"It's actually rather…disconcerting," John muttered.
The boy shrugged. "Hestia's idea. She's a bit odd, that one." He jerked his head toward the other end of the cavern, where John could dimly make out the outline of a door. "I'm to take you in. And…" he held out a hand. "I need to take your gun."
"What?" John's hand went to where the gun in his pocket. "You're not taking my gun."
"Yes, I am." The boy stared at him with such imperious eyes that John found himself releasing the handgun into the boy's grasp with no memory of actually having taken it from his pocket. "Thank you."
John stared at him, shook his head, and tried his best to remember that this entire escapade was truly happening and not the result of a poorly digested bowl of chili before bed. The boy led him across the vast stone room to the massive, grand doors at the end of the hall. They were only open part of the way, but even casually ajar, they were imposing. John tugged at the bottom of his jumper, wishing he had thought to dress up a bit for his appointment with…whoever waited on the other side.
The boy stopped at the entrance and called out in a loud voice, "John Watson, doctor and soldier, to see you sire."
A deep, booming-but-hollow voice replied, "Thank you, Adonis. That will be all."
The boy touched his cap again to John, and disappeared into the gloom.
Taking a deep breath, John stepped through the half-opened, immense door and found himself at the end of a long throne room. At the other end, a tired-looking man sat on a throne that looked disturbingly like a pile of bones sculpted into the approximate shape of a chair. He waved an impatient hand, and said, "Come in, come in. This may be the Underworld, but there's no need to stand on ceremony. It isn't as if we don't have all the time in the world."
John, falling back on his military training and keeping his head high, walked down the long aisle leading to the dais and the throne and the man sitting on it. Though, as he neared, he realized that the man wasn't exactly a man. For one thing, he was far too large. Nearly twice as tall as John and built like a character in a Tim Burton movie, the man—the being—was all legs and arms and highly-domed head.
The being looked down at him as he neared and sighed. "I suppose you're here to beg some sort of favor, aren't you?"
"Pluto?" John asked, "I'm ah…I'm to tell you that Fate sent me?"
"Yes. You are here for a favor. But worse," the giant made a grimace that would have been nasty enough on a normal face, but on that death's-head was something like a nightmare. "Worse, you're here with permission. Which means I have to listen to you and can't just chuck you into the river Styx and be done with the matter."
Unsure whether to be relieved that he wasn't in immediate danger or worried that the lord of the Underworld apparently liked the idea of his demise, John settled for a simple nod. "I'm here for Sherlock Holmes," he said. It was as if a weight lifted off his chest as soon as he actually admitted that this was what he was doing—trying to cheat death, trying to break the rules of the Way the World Worked, trying to bring Sherlock back from the dead.
"I figured as much," Pluto sighed again. He really was rather melancholy, John thought. Maybe he should leave his therapist's number. He smiled to himself at the thought of her face if she had this fellow in that uncomfortable chair in her office.
"Very well," the lord of the Underworld continued. "What have you brought?"
"Brought?"
"Didn't Charon explain to you?"
"The old women said—"
"Whatever those old biddies said to you, it was certainly not the whole story." Pluto wrinkled his nose, which caused it to nearly disappear into his skull-like face. John tried not to stare. He had seen a movie once where the villain was an evil wizard with no nose, and he had the oddest feeling that whoever designed that character had met Pluto on a bad day.
"You can't get something for nothing," Pluto explained, apparently oblivious to John's fascination with his nose. "And before you offer, no I don't take cash, check, or credit. Not even Visa. I'm also not interested in any kingdoms, herds of horses, beautiful maidens, or your first-born child. I'm a god—I can get those anywhere."
"What do you want then?" John had nothing with him, had nothing to offer—he was an invalid army doctor, for Pete's sake. He wasn't exactly rolling in cash.
"I want something new," Pluto sighed. "Something I've never seen before, and something that only you can possibly give me."
"What?"
The being shrugged. "I don't know. You figure it out."
He's bored, John realized, and nearly barked a half-hysterical laugh. Just like Sherlock, just like Moriarty—Pluto was intelligent, supernaturally so, and he had nothing to keep his mind occupied. He was bored.
"I can play the clarinet," John suggested, only half-joking. Pluto made a face.
"So does my wife," he said. "And it's dreadful."
"Song and dance routine?"
The look Pluto gave him would have felled an ox.
"I'm rather good at riddles."
"Do I look like Gollum to you?"
John decided not to answer that one.
He stood there, under the cold, impassive gaze of the lord of the Underworld, and racked his brain. What did he have? What would be worth the life of Sherlock Holmes to this being who, as he freely admitted, wanted for nothing? The only thing Pluto didn't have was full access to the living world…
"What about…" John swallowed. "What about memories?"
For the first time, a flicker of interest crossed the dull, grey face. "What sort of memories?"
Could he honestly give that up? "Adventures," he forced himself to say. "Sherlock and I solved crimes."
"That sounds…promising." Pluto stroked his bony chin. "You realize, of course, that you would be giving up those memories permanently, not merely sharing them."
"You mean, I would forget?" He would lose part of his past—not just his past with Sherlock, but his actual past, his life.
Pluto gave a dismissive little wave. "Well, if you're not interested, I'm sure I can get Charon to take you back—"
"No." John cleared his throat and jutted out his chin. "No, I can I can give up a few of those."
"How many?"
"How many will it take?"How many of my memories of life will satisfy you, you shriveled old—
"Careful, I can hear you." Pluto sat and thought for a long moment. Finally, he gave a decisive nod. "Four," he said. "But one of them has to be a big one."
John closed his eyes, sorting through different moments. He couldn't give up that first case, the Study in Pink. That was when he met Sherlock. Nor could he bear to give away the case with the Chinese gang, or the Baskerville case, or anything to do with Moriarty… But there were a few cases he thought he could sacrifice. Ones he had written down in any event, ones that had been exciting at the time, but nothing special in the long run.
He looked up at Pluto. "How, ah… how do we do this?"
The lord of the Underworld looked as excited as a cadaver on All Hallows Eve. "Bring the memories you are willing to sacrifice to the fore of your mind. I'll take care of the rest."
"And how do I know you won't—"
"Won't take more than I'm given? Please, Doctor Watson," Pluto grimaced in distaste. "I may be the lord of the dead and doomed to an eternity of existence in the Underworld, but I'm not a crook."
Fair point.
John steeled himself. "Alright," he said. "Whenever you're—"
Suddenly, it was as if he had been plucked from that underground cavern and plopped into his old rooms at 221b. Sherlock—old, familiar Sherlock—sat on the couch, listlessly plucking at his violin. John, a bowl of steaming ramen in his hand, was walking into the room just as the door burst open and Detective Inspector Lestrade entered, a bit out of breath.
"Sherlock—it's another one of the scorpion ones," he said. "Will you come?"
In an instant, Sherlock transformed from languid lounger to a point hound. "John, get your coat," he commanded in his familiar baritone voice. John felt both the excitement of his past self, looking forward to another day of being Sherlock Holmes' faithful shadow, and the sharp nostalgia of his current self, hearing his best friend's voice for the first time in three years.
Fascinated, John watched his memory play out before him, even as he participated in it. Somehow, he could feel himself reacting within the memory as well as his "real" reactions in the present. It had been an odd case: seventeen young women, most of them stage personalities of some kind, all poisoned by some unidentifiable breed of scorpion. Ten of them died, six were hospitalized in medically-induced comas, and the one that Lestrade had come barging into the flat about had just been taken by medics to a nearby emergency clinic. Each of the victims had apparently allowed a scorpion—one un-cataloged by science, as far as they could tell—to sting them multiple times on their stomachs.
As it turned out, they had all met a phony doctor whose daughter had died of anorexia as a result her involvement in the beauty-pageant-industry. The girls had all been told that the scorpion was some sort of weight loss/beauty treatment by the killer, who had bred the deadly strain himself. The Navel Treatment, John had called it.
As they came to the end of the adventure, John felt the entire episode slipping away from him, like a history fact that you need to know for the exam but can't quite recall.
He opened his eyes to see Pluto, looking fascinated. "This Holmes fellow," he said with relish. "Quite the character, isn't he."
"He is," John managed, feeling off-balance and woozy. "Mind telling me—what did I just give you?"
"The Navel Treatment," Pluto said, rolling the words off his tongue like poetry. "A clever title, I will say."
John racked his brain to think of the occasion…and came up blank. He vaguely remembered posting something with that title on his blog, but the actual mystery was an utter blank. He could probe around the edges of the memory, feel the hole that was there, but…It was just a hole. Nothing to be remembered—it wasn't forgotten, it was simply gone.
He coughed slightly, hating every second of this…this devouring of his memories by a life-starved god of the dead. "Shall we go on?" he asked.
"Please do."
Once again, John found himself within a memory. This one was much more "pedestrian," to use Sherlock's term. A string of robberies with absolutely no evidence left behind. No footprints, no fingerprints, no dust or epithelials or hair or other DNA—nothing. Sherlock had eventually, with the help of an American lab tech who had recently tracked down a serial killer with a similar MO, discovered that the burglar was using a special suit. The material the suit was made of used static electricity to actually remove evidence from the scene. Thus, nothing for forensics to find. Anderson and his team of specialists had been quite annoyed, but the case earned the department a well-deserved recognition from the Powers That Be. As was actually quite usual for Sherlock, he had disclaimed any official gratitude, satisfied with a puzzle solved and the look of consternation on Anderson's usually-smug face.
John came back to himself sitting down, having apparently collapsed at some point during the…removal. He was panting slightly.
Pluto looked intrigued now. "And he takes no credit for his cases solved?" he asked.
John, to his consternation, didn't quite know which case they were talking about. He felt rather like a child who had been called on in class, only to realize that he'd been daydreaming out the window for twenty minutes.
"Ah…" he blinked. "No credit? Ah—right. No, no, Sherlock cared more about being right than being thanked." He was thanked, of course, especially in the private sector and often with most generous gifts. But most of the time, he would just slip out the back and be all triumphant to himself on the way home. John propped himself up with a hand on the cold, stone floor. "We nearly done?"
"Halfway there."
Pluto didn't even give John a chance to ready himself this time, before hungrily diving into the memory John held waiting.
It was the counterfeiting case. This one had been sent over by none other than Mycroft Holmes, who needed someone a bit less official to look into a ring of money printers in Northern Ireland. A couple of smooth impersonations, bluffs, and a container of black-light-visible powder dusted all over the fake cash had closed that case with relative simplicity, but the leader of the ring had been a clever chap and outsmarting him gave Sherlock cause to chortle for several weeks after the case was closed.
This time, John found himself crumpled entirely to the floor with Pluto looking down at him in a sort of disdainful concern. "Are you alright?" he asked.
John knew that the being was more concerned with getting his final taste of Life With Sherlock Holmes than with the welfare of Doctor John Watson, but he pushed himself into a sitting position, breathing heavily, and rasped. "Fine." There was a cold sweat on his forehead, and a trembling in his hands, not to mention some glaring and uncomfortable blank patches in his memory. He suddenly realized that even if Pluto did decide to steal more memories than the deal specified, he would never know. Pluto could take years of his life, and John would never be able to remember that he forgot. He cleared his throat four or five times and wiped moisture from under his eyes. "Last one."
Pluto squinted at him. "It had better be something important," he warned. "Something that means a lot to you, something that has made you the person you are."
"Why?" Not that the reason would change anything—John had chosen this memory carefully. But he still wanted to know.
"Because I am you, John Watson." Pluto spread his hands, almost as if in a blessing. "I am equal parts Sherlock Holmes, Abraham Lincoln, Stalin, Dickens, Shakespeare, Cleopatra, and every other person who has ever lived. I am the last repository of memory. When the dead pass the river Styx, they shed their memories, and their memories flow into me." He shrugged and admitted, "It's not exactly the most pleasant of experiences at times. Generally, I don't even read them, I just put them in storage unless they're needed for some odd reason."
"Then why…" John tried to catch his breath long enough to form a full sentence. "Ahem. Why do you…need my memories?"
A slow smile, like tar melting on a hot day, spread across Pluto's face. "Because you," he said, "Are still alive. The memories of the dead are faded, photographs that have sat in the sun for too many years. All the colors blanch out and the details dissolve. But your memories are fresh and warm." A pale tongue ran over the being's sallow lips. "They are…delicious."
John shuddered. "Wait," he said, suddenly, straightening up in alarm. "The dead lose their memories? Then if I get Sherlock back he will be—"
Pluto waved a hand. "I'll give his back—god's honor."
Whatever that amounts to… "Fine," John relented. "Let's get this over with."
"As you will."
The last memory was not a happy one. It wasn't one that John held on to because it reminded him of the way life had been, but it was certainly, as Pluto had put it, a memory that shaped who he was today. In fact, it was part of the reason he had ventured to the Underworld at all.
It was a sunny afternoon. It shouldn't have been sunny, he remembered thinking. It should have been raining and cold and blowing so hard that umbrellas were useless and people had to be wet and miserable. The entire world, he thought, should be miserable. It was only fair.
He stood, the gentle sunlight beaming down on his taut face, before an open grave. He didn't hear a word of the service, all of his attention fixed on the glossy red lid of the coffin before him. One wreath of flowers—roses, with no card to identify the sender—graced the top of the coffin, and a bleak, black headstone already waited to mark the final resting place of Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective.
He had spent the night before with Molly, sitting in silence in the kitchen of 221b, with Mrs. Hudson fussing over them like a mother duck, bringing coffee, and tea, and little sweets, until Molly finally broke. She and Mrs. Hudson held each other and cried, while John simply sat and stared at the clock on the wall, ticking away the seconds.
Now, his own face reflected in the polished side of the coffin, he stood as the minister finished the short ceremony and wondered if he might never feel again. Physical sensations, of course. But grief, or joy, or anger or anything else that made a human a human? He couldn't picture it. It was the opposite of his war wound, actually. That had made all physical sensation fade, save for the aching pain in his shoulder, and the phantom pain in his leg. But his emotions—in escaping death so nearly, he felt more alive than ever before. This…this was like having the part of his brain that felt things disconnected and buried with his best friend's body.
John had picked this memory with care. He figured that, one way or another, he'd be better off without it. If he succeeded in returning to the world above with Sherlock at his side, he would have no need to remember the funeral. But, if he should somehow fail—if Pluto wasn't satisfied with the memory—then at least he wouldn't have to keep that particular memory in the same mental drawer as all of the good ones.
This memory faded more slowly than the others had. John, now a trembling, weakened wreck on the floor of the cavern, felt as though he hadn't eaten in weeks or slept in days. He struggled to lift his eyes to Pluto, and blinked in shock.
Tears, black and thick as oil, streamed down the being's cadaverous face.
John gaped at the being, who shook his head and swallowed two or three times, making a dull clacking sound in his throat.
"I have never seen death from the other side," he whispered, his sepulchral voice reduced to a breath. "I have never…felt what death is from that perspective. There have been memories, of course, from others of the dead, but never ones that fresh or real—too often, they are tainted by the more recent memories of their own deaths."
John, barely able to keep his head up, nodded—though he wasn't sure why.
Pluto cleared his throat, and wiped a hand across his face, clearing away the dark tears. "Thank you, Doctor Watson," he said. "You have given me a precious gift."
He sat in thought for a long moment, and then cleared his throat.
"Adonis!"
At his call, the boy who had greeted John at the train appeared from behind the throne, a look of awe on his small face. John got the idea that he'd been eavesdropping, and had just seen a side of the lord of the Underworld that he had never experienced before.
"Adonis," Pluto rumbled, pulling himself back into his normal, distant persona. "Bring the doctor some ambrosia, and then—when he's recovered—take him back to the station."
Adonis nodded, and darted off into the darkness.
"Station?" John protested weakly, dragging himself upright. "What about—"
"Your friend will be there to meet you," Pluto assured him. A grave look came over his face. "However," he said, "There are requirements."
"Of course there are."
Adonis reappeared at John's side and handed him what appeared to be a steaming cup of Earl Grey. John took a sip and felt as though he'd drunk liquid sunlight. Energy and life flowed back into his limbs, and he straightened. "What are they?" he asked.
Pluto held up a finger. "First," he said, "You cannot look at or speak to your friend until you are both back at your home of 221b Baker Street."
"But—"
"This is my law." There was no room for argument in the god's voice. "Second." He held up another digit. "You may never tell another soul what you have seen and done here."
John took another drink of the tea. "Not even Sherlock?"
"Him, you can tell," Pluto acquiesced. "But none other. Whatever story you make up to explain his sudden reappearance in the world of the living, it can have nothing to do with me, this place, or even the three old women you met in the cemetery."
Nodding, John agreed. "Understood." He stood, feeling even stronger and more alive than he had felt upon arriving. Adonis took the still half-full teacup from him, and John turned to follow him out.
"One more thing," Pluto stopped him. John looked up at the god and saw some flicker of the emotion that had brought tears to the being's eyes. "And this is my gift: Never again will you and Sherlock Holmes be separated by death. When next my servants come to fetch one of you, they will come for you both."
John's eyes stung, but he blinked fast, snapped to military attention, and gave Pluto a sharp nod. He didn't say "thank you," but he knew that the dark, brooding being understood.
Pluto gave a final, dismissive wave. "Go," he ordered. "And tell no one what you learned here."