Hi all! Wow, that last chapter was a popular one, considering that not much went on... This one is shorter, but I'm going to rachet up the angst, so be warned! Speaking of which:
Warning: an animal dies in this chapter, so if that sort of thing upsets you, skip over it. John takes off all his clothes at one point. Also, things get weird and twisted in this chapter, so tread carefully. Let's just say Sherlock has trouble reining in his animal instincts...
Disclaimer: same as always. Not mine, this writing is just for fun.
A week wore itself away, each day following the same pattern as the first one John had spent with Sherlock. He would rise early, breakfast with Mrs Hudson, and spend the morning and early afternoon wandering the grounds and mansion. The library was his favourite haunt, but there was a maze in the grounds he got lost in a couple of times, as well as beautiful gardens to wander through, with sculpted hedgerows and old trees and statues and a small brook running through the grounds. And on one day he found himself in a gallery containing portraits of what must be Sherlock's ancestors.
John had lingered there for a long time, looking at the portraits, which ranged from the Tudor period to the almost contemporary. Sherlock himself was there, ten years younger, with all the fire and arrogance John had noted in him when they first met blazing in his painted eyes. The metal frame that surrounded it was scratched, dented and damaged, and covered in what looked remarkably like claw marks, a little to John's alarm. Next to Sherlock's picture hung a portrait of another dark-haired man, softer-featured and rather chubby, but with equally intense eyes, that John presumed was Sherlock's brother.
A little way below those portraits was a dark patch on the wall where a painting had once hung. A small brass plaque hung underneath, dull and unpolished, bearing simply the name Martha. John assumed it meant Mrs Hudson. He was sorry it had been removed, as he would have liked to learn what she looked like, and wondered what had become of it.
The picture that interested him most had the inscription Violet, 1972 carved into its simple hardwood frame. It showed a beautiful woman, with long black curling hair and high cheekbones, gazing out of the picture. She was leaning against what looked like an oak tree, and a robin was perched on one upheld hand. John guessed that this was Sherlock's mother – the family resemblance was striking. Yet her young face held none of her son's haughtiness, only a merriness that was touched with deep wisdom in the lines of her features. John looked upon her for a long time, and left feeling absurdly comforted.
Late afternoons and evenings were invariably taken up by Sherlock, research, and finally a short time either talking or sniping at one another in front of the fire, in their respective armchairs. John was beginning to enjoy their arguments almost as much as he did each fresh discovery about magic. Sherlock knew all about magic, of course, and much of it bored him, but with a little prompting he would explain things to John, and even demonstrate.
'Quite simple, really,' he said once, plucking a flame from a candle and with a few dramatic gestures shaping so it resembled a deer leaping its way over the palm of his hand. John had watched, entranced. Sherlock had snorted at his awe. 'Quit gawping, it's little more than a parlour trick. Fire is easy to magick.'
'All this magic, all these amazing things, and yet you have no capacity for wonderment, Sherlock,' John said softly, as the deer grew wings and turned into an eagle. 'It's all just business as usual for you.'
'What else can it be?' Sherlock asked him, sounding curious. 'I have always known magic and have always practised it, so it holds no surprises for me. That is the attraction of curse-breaking – there's always something new to puzzle out.'
'There are always surprises to be had, Sherlock,' John had remonstrated as Sherlock returned the flame to its candle. 'No one can know everything in the universe.'
'I intend to try,' Sherlock had proclaimed confidently, and John had turned back to his books with a chuckle.
Worryingly, it was getting increasingly difficult to dislike Sherlock, despite his questionable ethics. Sherlock was brilliant; there was no other word for it. His mind was scintillatingly intelligent, and he was entertaining despite his complete lack of social skills. Even his arrogance and ego were fun to undermine whenever possible. John continually had to remind himself that the man was effectively his jailer, and that he owed him no loyalty, only a grudging form of support and help.
True to Sherlock's word, John had not seen the monstrous servant since his first day in the mansion. Where the creature was hiding he had no idea, but it was evidently obeying orders not to come near him. John would have been glad to forget the monster entirely, were it not for a sense that he was missing something of importance in connection with the creature. As it was, his mind kept replaying his encounter with the beast in quiet moments, trying to establish what it was he was worrying over.
Also, when alone, reading or strolling or simply sitting thinking, John would sometimes gain the impression that he was being watched. The skin on his back would tingle, his hair would stand on end, and he knew that there was a pair of strange eyes scrutinising him. He would turn, but there was never anything there. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if the servant was lurking somewhere, keeping a watch on him.
He knew it was foolish, and risky, given John's awareness of when he was being watched, but Sherlock's fixation with John had only increased as the days passed. He saved interacting with his guest for late in the day, to give himself something to look forward to in the grey, dead waste of time that constituted the majority of his existence. Sometimes he forced himself out into the woods to hunt or simply to run and spend excess energy. But increasingly he was lurking behind trees or in the mansion's secret passages or underneath furniture in order to observe his companion.
Sherlock hadn't followed him into the portrait gallery, however – he found it too painful to wander in there and see the eyes of his ancestors, of the man he used to be, staring down upon him. He was not a fanciful man but always imagined his family staring down at him in disgust, and his own portrait seemed to mock him with reminders of what he had once been. He had tried to tear it into shreds in more than one fit of temper, only Mrs Hudson had managed to place a charm on it to prevent it being damaged. Damn her.
But he shadowed John everywhere else he went. Sherlock was well aware that this placed him indisputably within the bounds of the term 'obsessed moron.' But he was unwilling to stop. John was by far the most interesting thing to have happened to him in years. Even Adler, for all her brilliance, had not perplexed him as John did with such disturbing ease. That was probably because she hadn't babbled about morality and caring and emotions at every opportunity. Given she had been on the run from the police and looking for a hideout when she stumbled across the mansion, that was unsurprising.
But Sherlock had been forced to concede John had a point about his actions during their first, deplorable encounter. His cold-blooded violence towards Lestrade had not been one of his finer moments, and he knew he had shocked both John and Mrs Hudson. In all honesty, the idea that strangling the man would be regarded as morally reprehensible, particularly as he had not been directly responsible for the destruction of Sherlock's Stradivarius, had not occurred to him at the time. Lestrade had been a means to end, just as John had been.
But for all his disinterest in humanity, Sherlock had not made a habit of harming people to get what he wanted. And it was becoming increasingly difficult to think of John as merely a 'means to an end.' Sherlock wasn't sure what he would term John – a companion, an assistant perhaps – but he was no longer simply a device to get the job done.
A week after John's arrival, Sherlock found himself peering through a peephole he had made when younger in one of the secret passages, watching the man exploring one of the corridors on the third floor of the mansion. Sherlock had not been up to this section of the mansion in years, but he remembered perfectly well what was up here, and he watched John's face eagerly, waiting for him to try one of the doors marked with a carved sigil.
At last, John stopped before one door and reached out a curious hand. The door swung back, and Sherlock smiled his beastly smile to see the expression on the doctor's face. Incredulity, mingled with just a little apprehension that swiftly gave way to a smile of pure delight.
Sherlock's lungs seemed to have ceased operating correctly – his breath caught when he saw John's smile, and he could not for the life of him suck in any air. But before he could analyse why, John had stepped through the door and disappeared from his view.
John was standing on a beach of soft whitish sand, the sea breeze ruffling his hair and the scent of the ragged pines trees nearby drifting past. He turned to see the door leading back to the mansion standing there, offering him a glimpse of the corridor beyond. He smiled again and turned back to wander down the beach, stopping at one point to crouch and trail his hand in the waves climbing up the sand. The water felt blissfully warm. He could see the sun beaming down on him from a cloudless sky, a lone lighthouse in a sea of blue that mirrored the one below it.
Where am I? He wondered. Am I still in the mansion, or have I left it and gone back into the real world? Is any of this real, or is it an illusion?
His senses all told him it was real, so John decided to accept it as such. He continued to traverse the beach, only end back up at the doorway in a little under fifteen minutes. He was on a tiny island, a stepping stone in a vast sea – he could see it stretching out to meet the sky on every horizon.
John sat down on the sand and looked about him. Of all the extraordinary things he had encountered since his arrival here, this had to be the most enjoyable. There was sun, sea and sand, and utter peace, broken only by the gentle rhythmic sound of the waves and the pines creaking in the mild breeze.
John looked at the deep blue calm lapping at his shoes, and his hands, almost of their own volition, went to undo his shirt buttons.
Sherlock crouched in the scrub at the centre of the little island and watched his guest keenly. It had been a long time since he had entered any of the pocket dimensions created by his Great-Aunt Hermione, a magician of tremendous skill and vivid imagination, if more than a little eccentric. He had explored them all as a child, but had seldom visited since he was cursed – they offered no respite from his beastly state, nor any means of alleviating it.
But he felt, oddly enough, a vicarious pleasure in watching John's wide-eyed discovery of the little island, surrounded by sea, and all contained within one little room. He wondered if John had guessed that he was in a pocket dimension, or if his guest was still trying to puzzle out the mystery. He thought the latter, from John's expression – happily, the doctor's amazement at his discovery had distracted him and prevented his realising Sherlock was watching, otherwise he would surely have had to retreat and leave John alone by this point. So he continued to watch.
After a short time, John sat down on the beach, and Sherlock stared at his back, the left shoulder as always held more stiffly than the right. Then he started slightly – John was removing his shirt. His shoes and socks followed, and then he stood.
Sherlock's mouth went dry as John began to remove his jeans, a wholly irrational response to – to what, exactly? Sherlock wasn't entirely certain, as his brain went the same way as his lungs had earlier and refused to work properly. John hesitated for a second after taking off his jeans, hand on the waistband of his underwear, and Sherlock managed to draw breath.
Then the underwear was pulled off, and Sherlock found himself staring at a naked man, and completely unable to look anywhere else.
He had never seen another man sans clothing, save himself. Lack of socialising and team sports meant he had never seen men unclothed in places such as locker rooms, and sexually men had never aroused his interest. Nor had women, come to that, save one rather mechanical encounter he had succumbed to for the sake of experience.
But now, staring at John's compact frame, the scarring on his left shoulder, the golden hue the sun was bringing out on his skin and in his tousled hair, Sherlock couldn't help but find him very interesting indeed. His gaze travelled lower, running over the strong curve of his lower back, the buttocks and down to his bare legs, eyes lingering over every inch of the man's skin and muscle, drinking it all in greedily.
He was glad the man was standing with his back to Sherlock's piercing gaze. John's naked form was having a most peculiar effect on him physically – his breath was hitching in his throat, his heart was hammering and his innards seemed to be writhing and squirming in ways he was fairly certain nature had not intended them to. Heaven help him if he saw what John's manhood looked like – the very notion was making him tremble. What was this? Sherlock couldn't ever recall feeling like this before.
Was it plain curiosity? No, impossible – he knew what curiosity was, and it dwelt within his mind, not his body.
Is this desire? He wondered. The impulse to walk out and touch John, run his hands over the golden skin, to run his fingers through the fair hair, was nearly overwhelming. Sherlock controlled himself rigidly, forcing himself to remain still and silent, but could not bring himself to look away.
He continued to watch as John waded forward into the water, before leaning forward and swimming out into the sea, a bright figure amid the blueness. Slowly, as the doctor put some distance between them, and as his body was concealed by the water, Sherlock's physical reactions dwindled, rather to his relief.
He stepped back into the shadows, calculating the odds of reaching the door and leaving without John spotting him – and realised that he was still a beast. He had not yet been human that day. His reactions – had they been a result of this form?
Instead of reassuring him that his response was merely another physical demand of his monstrous body, his gorge rose and nausea clawed its way up his throat. Ridiculously, he felt that somehow he had defiled John, reacting as he had – reactions that he had no right to have, not as a monster. Sherlock did not know why, but the thought that he had been affected by John, unclothed in all innocence, whilst spying on him and shaped like a monster into the bargain, made him want to use his claws to tear bloody strips off his hideous face and hide, made him want to suffer, to do penance. To make this beastly body he loathed contort with agony and purge it of the sensations that had gripped it.
Sherlock did none of those things. As soon as he was sure John was far enough out in the water that he wouldn't be spotted, he slipped like a shadow over the sand and through the door. He did not stop running until long after he reached the woods and had vented his anguish on a rabbit that screamed as it died a mercifully swift death. As he ate the raw, dripping meat, the image of John stripping off his clothes played itself across his consciousness, teasing him, tormenting him, until he threw back his head and howled to the blood-red sun above.
John swam for longer than he intended, and after he had dried himself by simply lying in the sun for a time, dressed and run fingers through his short hair to tidy it, it was well past the time he usually met Sherlock in the library to commence research, or at least commence note-taking whilst Sherlock thought aloud, got frustrated, hurled things and proclaimed 'this is boring! Let's move on!' He hurried down, apologies at the ready, only to discover that the huge room was deserted. He settled in to wait, conscious that he was disappointed rather than relieved by his housemate's absence.
An hour later, he was growing anxious about the break in routine. Sherlock always turned up by five at the latest, they would work for two hours, and then part and meet again later in their sitting room. John had been sent no message or indication Sherlock would be late or that he would be taking a day off. Sherlock might simply have not bothered about informing him about a change in plans, he was superior enough for that, but he had been so ardent about their research that it seemed unlikely.
At last, John went to locate Mrs Hudson in her kitchen, to see if she knew where Sherlock was, but to no avail.
'Don't worry dear,' she advised him. 'Sometimes he gets in one of his moods and vanishes for days at a time. I'll go and have a look for him. You sit here and have your dinner – I made lasagne for a change.'
John toyed with his food, managed to eat most of it to please Mrs Hudson, washed up and then went back to being partly worried and partly annoyed. He wandered back into the hall and went to the sitting room to wait, but grew bored after only a few minutes. Sitting there by himself wasn't nearly as diverting as sitting there and arguing with Sherlock. His chair looked curiously empty minus its usual lanky inhabitant.
Eventually, John left the room and went back to wandering the corridors, not really seeing any of the beautiful artwork or decoration that adorned it, wondering what had become of Sherlock. That the man was moody he was well aware by this stage, but vanishing for no apparent reason seemed a bit extreme. Still, there might be a reason John wasn't aware of. He hoped the servant wasn't causing problems.
It was while pondering the monstrous servant that John caught his first glimpse of it in over a week. He had paused at a window that looked out upon the vast sweep of gravel that formed the drive, and as he stood there, he saw a dark figure moving against the pale road. A twisted shape, that went on all fours. John froze, initially nervous, but he relaxed as he realised the creature probably couldn't see him, high up as he was and standing behind a heavy curtain. Indeed, the monster did not look up as it walked, its eyes fixed firmly on the ground as it moved slowly back to the mansion. John watched it pass underneath the window and out of sight.
John moved on then, walking slowly along the carpeted hall, sighing as he contemplated the servant's presence in the mansion. What was it about the creature that had gotten under his skin?
He paused in his wanderings to lean against the corridor wall, next to a small marble statue of an owl decorated with what looked like semi-precious stones. Its obsidian eyes gleamed at him in the fading afternoon light.
'I don't suppose you know where Sherlock's got to, do you?' John enquired laconically. The owl didn't respond, but as John gazed at it a light seemed to flicker in the polished stones of its eyes. John started – a week ago he would have dismissed it as reflected rays from the setting sun, but now he was less ignorant and more credulous. Was something sending him a message? Cautiously, he put out a hand to the statue. As he did so, his hand brushed a large moonstone set in the statue's breast like a medal of honour.
And without the slightest warning, the wall and floor moved, swung round, and seconds later the corridor was empty, save for an identical stature sitting immobile on its pedestal, indistinguishable except for the carnelian eyes that twinkled merrily in the growing gloom.
Author's Notes: I hope I didn't freak anyone out too much with this chapter! Actually, freak out all you want, I'd rather horrify my audience than have them go 'meh'. But I wanted to convey the idea that one of the real cruelties of Sherlock's curse is that he has a human's feelings but no safe outlet for them. And where has John ended up? Well, you'll find out soon - and John's going to be finding out a few things too... One last thing: Great-Aunt Hermione is of course named for Hermione Granger of Harry Potter fame, one of fiction's greatest heroines.