BBC Sherlock: The Case of the Colonel Carruthers' Connection
Chapter 9: Errors and Deceptions
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"Bad company ruins good morals."
1 Corinthians 15:33
Bliss buoyed John's normal tolerance for Sherlock's eccentricities, especially during the Watson's nuptials. Sitting beside his new bride on the wedding-party dais, John listened behind as straight a face as he could possibly manage to his Best Man's speech, suffering through Sherlock's awkwardness in front of "actual people actually listening." John sighed at his own foolishness for putting his best friend in the spotlight. Minutes into his opening statements, the self-proclaimed high-functioning sociopath had thoroughly insulted and horrified their guests.
"The point I'm trying to make…" Sherlock's tone suddenly shifted from piercing to personal. "…is that I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant and all-round obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet…."
The silence among the shocked guests confirmed their unanimous agreement.
John had long-since conceded that he was powerless at softening Sherlock's blunt edges, but he had hoped when he had chosen him that Sherlock would have risen to the occasion—at least during the wedding reception. As Sherlock was his best friend, he deserved the place of honor, but as matters stood, Sherlock seemed incapable of conforming to the societal niceties; John would accept the blame. Except, an instant later, his best friend redeemed himself and John's faith in him.
"So if I didn't understand I was being asked to be best man," Sherlock continued, "it is because I never expected to be anybody's best friend….Certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing."
Soft awwws arose from the wedding guests. Mary beamed a smile at her new husband.
"John, I am a ridiculous man—,"
John concurred with a nod of his head.
"—redeemed only by the warmth and constancy of your friendship. But, as I'm apparently your best friend, I cannot congratulate you on your choice of companion.
Just as the wedding guests registered the criticism, Sherlock turned it around, giving them all a rare glimpse of his human side. "Actually, now I can. Mary, when I say you deserve this man, it is the highest compliment of which I am capable. John, you have endured war, and injury, and tragic loss—so sorry again about that last one—" he interjected softly in a personal aside. "So know this: today you sit between the woman you have made your wife and the man you have saved. In short, the two people who love you most in all this world. And I know I speak for Mary as well when I say we will never let you down, and we have a lifetime ahead to prove that."
Such heartwarming words were as startling as they were touching for everyone, but more importantly, they exonerated John's staunch belief in Sherlock Holmes. John rewarded Sherlock with an affectionate hug of approval whilst the assembly dabbed away sentimental tears and applauded. As he sat down beside Mary and listened to Sherlock's account of their ridiculous adventures, John was chuffed, smiling with gratitude at his wife and friend—the two people he not only "loved and cared about most in the world" but whom he could always trust.
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His blissful trust, an illusion, proved short-lived.
John's choice of clever wife which, according to Sherlock, had been a step up from his best friend was, rather, a major misstep. Mary's deceit-by-omission about her past shook John to the core. The three had just returned to 221B to settle the Watson's domestic, and John, bewildered and enraged, had asked his lying wife. "Is everyone… I've ever met...a psychopath?"
"Yes." Sherlock, not Mary, had answered his question, proving his affirmative with data from John's past. "You were a doctor who went to war. You're a man who couldn't stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high…. Even the landlady used to run a drug cartel…. You are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You're abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people... so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you've fallen in love with conforms to that pattern?"
Stunned by having his life flayed open in so frank a fashion, John looked toward the friend he trusted and away from the wife who had betrayed his trust. "But she," he pointed to the stranger behind him, "wasn't supposed to be like that..." Strangling emotions made his rebuttal sound lame to his ears. "Why is she like that?" He had given them both his loyalty and his trust and had expected their best in return, so Sherlock's answer—"because you chose her"—had upset him further.
"Why is everything… my fault!" he had erupted in anguished fury. It had been the second time in recent months that John had been faulted for having a normal reaction to duplicity. In the previous instance, he had objected to being kept in dark by Sherlock's faked death. "Why am I the only one who thinks that this is wrong—the only one reacting like a human being?"
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After Mary's deceit, disillusionment set in. John let a furnished room in a shared four-bedroom flat to stay apart from Mary. Sometimes he overnighted in 221B. He needed time to forgive her treachery for shooting Sherlock and for deceiving him, if forgiveness were even possible. Who is she? Who am I, really? John wondered in the silent isolation of his temporary living quarters. He felt unmoored, uncertain where he belonged, where home was for him. Not with Mary? Not in Baker Street? Yet he longed to return to normalcy. What is normal, anyway? First Sherlock and Mary lie to protect me from the truth—like I'm too normal for them—then they accuse me of being attracted to abnormally dangerous situations? Which is it?
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"Major?" It was late evening several weeks after the awful revelation; John had been walking briskly to his lodgings when it popped into his head to ring Sholto. His former commander, having fully recovered from the attempt on his life at the Watson's wedding, had returned to his secluded home. Occasionally they rang each other, so the Major would not suspect anything amiss with the call. Perspective from someone who had known him during the height of his military career was what John sought.
"Captain!"
John could hear the smile in Sholto's voice. He smiled back. It was a reflex. Weighed down by his doubts, John hadn't been smiling the moment before.
"Mrs. Watson is fine, then?"
"Yeah. All good," John lied, pulling his collar up against the chilling fall breeze that kicked through his hair. "Baby is due in several months still. We're pumped, of course…"
"Quite. Hmmmmm." Sholto may have sensed the strained enthusiasm in John's voice. "Things okay, otherwise? Little news has reached here since the shooting. How's Holmes' recovery?"
"He's coming along. All his genius wits about him, thank God, but he's not entirely back on his feet. Overall, the prognosis is good. Things should be getting back to normal—normal for Sherlock, if there's such a thing—soon enough," John lied again. Normal was an intangible and the truth was complicated.
"Haven't caught who shot him, then?"
John stopped dead in his tracks. Night buses rolled past, their interior lights illuminating the few passengers within as he stood paralyzed by Sholto's innocent question. Secrets gnawed at him. No one should know that his wife had been a trained assassin; that she had shot Sherlock to forestall her plan to take down her real target, the media magnate and blackmailer, Charles Augustus Magnussen. "Oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from CAM. Wish your family could have seen this."
"Everyone's in the dark…" John's stomach clutched with this third lie.
"I see. Quite disturbing, that. I guess you heard about Carruthers, then?" The Major interjected. "Saw the obit. Massive stroke, it seems."
"Yeah. Sad," John agreed as he resumed walking, glad their conversation, like his steps on the pavement, had rounded a corner. When John had begun his new life with Mary and the good life with Sherlock, he no longer suffered from the Colonel Carruthers' shaming tactics. That connection had finally dissolved. However now, John was dealing with shame in his choice of wife. "I was told he'd been prone to silent strokes for a while before the first big one. He'd had a few more strokes after that, too, before this last. Such bitterness…. a poor end for a once highly principled man."
"Highly principled? He'd lost the plot well before, especially by what he did to you, Watson. Highly principled?" Sholto snorted his objection. "Sorry. At his best he was extraordinary, but at his worst he was too rigid. Gave no allowance for human error. A man that brittle…that's why he broke…." He finished with slight contrition in his voice. "Not to speak ill of the dead. God knows, there will be worse things said about me."
"Of us all," John agreed solemnly, hit with envy by a passing couple, arm-in-arm, who giggled and whispered with affection, lost in their own world.
"You, Captain?" Sholto scoffed. "Except for Carruthers' outlandish accusations, never heard a complaint about you."
Feeling worse about his lies, John fumbled to reply, "I'm sure you just didn't get wind of them. No one's that perfect. Coincidentally, that's why I rang you. This might be…odd… Sod it, it is odd, but…Jim, how would you describe me… what I mean is… the Captain John Watson who'd been under your command?"
"Can't imagine what prompts you to ask. However, to know the answer, John, you need only to reference my reports on your outstanding service."
"Yes. Thank you, sir. I've always been humbled by your esteem."
"Certainly earned. What more do you need to know? Whilst your ethics, your integrity were of the highest standards, your compassion kept you nonjudgmental of others who failed to attain your levels… unlike Carruthers, I might add, who was inflexible. Let's see… you were a top-notch surgeon, loyal friend and a practical and level-headed soldier who knew the difference between courage and fearlessness. Your fidelity and obedience to duty were especially outstanding under fire…"
"Good to hear. Again, thank you, sir." John hesitated, aware that his next question was properly peculiar. "Would you say I was abnormally drawn to dangerous situations?"
"Abnormally? Strange question, John." Sholto chuckled softly. "What is normal during armed conflicts against an aggressive enemy, then? You were never reckless or foolhardy, still you had nerves of steel…I admit that cliché fits you. You took care to ensure those around you were safe and you did your utmost to rescue the wounded. If that's abnormal, I'd wish more of my men had acted that way."
Sholto paused, his curiosity obvious. "This should be a subject for your therapist. Still topping off with occasional visits, are you?"
"Not recently," John admitted. His illusion of contentment, when everything had really seemed fine, gave him cause to end his sessions with Ella Thompson.
"No one returns unscathed from war. You told me that yourself in so many words when you used to visit me in the VA hospital. PTSD aside—or PTSS, whatever they're calling it now—the long-term effects will make us notice personality changes, especially in civilian settings. We've both been changed by this…this metamorphosis of war. It's the highly principled and self-disciplined man who keeps it under control. No one, in my estimation, has done it better than you, John."
The words had a familiar, therapy-session ring to them. John smiled. "You're seeing a trick cyclist, then?"
Sholto laughed. "How can you tell?"
"Oh, the science of deduction," John grinned. "It works every time! Well, not for me, but you know… it's the Sherlock-Holmes effect. Everybody thinks they can do it. Most everybody is bloody awful at it, including me."
When John rang off and entered his dark room, he considered the possibility that what Sherlock believed about him was true. He flipped on the lights and stared at the stark single bed he had tidily made up that morning. In the shared, tiny kitchen, empty of other residents as it was past dinnertime, he prepared his meal. Putting leftover soup in the microwave, he gathered ingredients for a quick chicken dish in the skillet. Whilst chopping kale and baby bok choy on a bistro table that did double duty as a worktop, he sipped his soup to take the edge off his appetite. As he worked, John could not keep the lingering heartache about Mary at bay. He missed her. Would a good and decent man feel this way? Was it a sign of his abnormality—his desire for dangerous situations—to choose to keep the people in his life who hid behind their disguises? Was it wrong of him to turn a blind eye to the dangers inherent in Sherlock's eccentricities and Mary's past deceptions or both their amoral views of justice?
John was no paragon of virtues, although he believed himself to be a good man who sought to do the ethical thing, but the saying, "show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are," kept repeating in the back of his mind. Did that mean that by willingly associating with Mary and Sherlock, he, too, was capable of deception and amoral perspectives? By accepting them as they were, had he become like them or had he always been like this?
In reviewing his past, John concluded that there was a difference—Sholto called it the metamorphosis of war—in how he reacted to situations since leaving the army. His strong moral principles had kept him from shooting Jeff Hope, the serial-suicide murderer, until Sherlock seemed in immediate danger. Would he have fired at all to protect a man he barely knew were he not army trained? Working with Sherlock, seeing the world through the eyes of such astonishing and clear-sighted genius, hadn't he aided and abetted in many nebulously irregular if not unlawful break-ins? Skirting the law was easy, even justified, on an investigation with Sherlock. Was this what Sherlock had meant about an affinity to dangerous situations? Were these the acts of an upstanding and decent man or the actions of a person changed by PTSD?
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Variations of these questions dogged him during the months leading to Christmas. "After all, it's the season of kindness and charitable gestures, a time of forgiveness for all our missteps in life." Sherlock had said that to him once many New Year's Eves ago. The words reminded John that he had not lost his compassion and empathy for others. He still knew the value of kindness. He also believed in forgiveness. He had already forgiven his friend for pretending to be dead. Did Mary merit forgiveness, as well?
Resignation replaced John's self-doubts and compassion was the constant that propelled him forward. On Christmas Day, he deferred his judgement about his wife's dubious morals by choosing to remain ignorant. He let go of his lingering qualms with Mary's deception—especially because their baby was on the way. He was being a generous and loving husband when he redeemed her—and himself—with the simple, "The problems of your past are your business; the problems of your future are my privilege." That hard-won reconciliation brought John the first peace he had known in months.
In a matter of hours, however, John's peace-filled prospects dropped from blissful ignorance to abysmal truth. Sherlock had willfully committed cold-blooded murder to save John and Mary from Magnussen's blackmail. His noble and terrible sacrifice had crossed the line in the eyes of the law; the consequence for murder—despite Sherlock's good intentions—was long-term incarceration. In the end, Mycroft's intervention had negotiated Sherlock's exile.
John could not reconcile why Sherlock would forfeit himself in such a reckless way. Forgiveness and dread filled his heart. He was about to lose his friend yet again when a twist of fate dealt a surprising hand. Faced with new threats from Moriarty, the British Government bent Justice's will and cleared Sherlock Holmes—"the blunt instrument, the sharp dagger, the scalpel wielded with precision and without remorse." Sherlock's service being deemed important for the defense of the land meant that Sherlock himself was more important than the law of the land.
At one time, the idealistic John Watson would have found this disturbing—these machinations of the seamy world of subterfuge and secret negotiations and compromises—the world of shadows that Mycroft Holmes, the most powerful man in the country, moved in. It was the same clandestine realm in which the black ops agent, code named A.G.R.A., had worked before becoming "Mary Morstan Watson." It was precisely the world in which the criminal element that Sherlock pursued thrived.
For the metamorphosed John Watson, however, seeing how this world worked for those privileged to live outside the moral order confirmed what he had reluctantly come to understand. Maintaining high standards in such a world was ludicrous, futile. Morality was actually not black and white, but as grey as the densest fog swallowing up the clear path forward.
In his relief for Sherlock, John welcomed the fog. For the love of his wife and their newborn daughter, he strayed from the moral high road. He relaxed his idealized standards and acquiesced in the duplicity of the real world.
After that, minute fissures cracked the veneer of John's "good" life. The like-mindedness that Mary and Sherlock shared began to needle him, make him feel unneeded. If being best friends with an "unsavory companion of dubious morals" as Sherlock once referred to himself was John's first misstep off the ethical road, then discovering Mary's deception—"that wife! John Watson's in trouble"—and choosing to forget it, was his second. His third misstep—the one that caused him to stray the farthest—was the undercutting, morale-sapping mockery of his ingenious best friend and his brilliant loving wife—"in short, the two people who love you most in all this world." Those two extraordinary people had peculiar ways of demonstrating their undying love, tongue in cheek or not, by suggesting he was unnecessary or worse, not up to their standards.
"She's better at this than you."
"Better?"
"So I texted her."
"Hang on. Mary's better than me?"
"Well, she is a retired super-agent with a terrifying skill set. Of course she's better."
"Yeah, okay….What, so I'm supposed to just go home now, am I?"
"Oh, what do you think, Sherlock? Shall we take him with us?"
"John or the dog?"
"Ha-ha, that's funny."
"John."
"Well ..."
"He's handy and loyal."
"That's hilarious."
"Mm."
"Is it too early for a divorce?"
Their jesting contained a kernel of truth—that John was superfluous. He had felt it, long before he could have articulated it to himself. John did not want to be as useful as a balloon on a string, a smiling face floating above his armchair, he wanted more. So when a tempting smile from a strange woman on the bus caught John's eye, his fidelity to his wife slipped—truly a dangerous situation if one's wife "is a retired super-agent with a terrifying skill set."
The flirtation between John and the woman on the bus went no farther than texting—which John, putting reason before flattery and abiding by his marital vow, ended soon enough.
Unsettled by the ease of this temptation, John took stock of himself. He had been living lie after lie after lie. He was not the man Mary had believed him to be; "All the time. You're always a good man, John. I've never doubted that. You never judge; you never complain. I don't deserve you... You don't make it easy, do you?...being so perfect." He was neither good nor perfect and, eroded by self-doubts, had devolved to being judgmental.
"Mary,... I-I need to tell you...," but he had been interrupted before he could clear his conscience. John's time with Mary ran out. The problems of her past could not be averted, even though Sherlock had vowed to protect them. The best of times had become the worst of times.
Mary caught a bullet meant for Sherlock. She died in John's arms, and John again lost his way, this time in all-consuming grief, regret, and self-loathing. Blame was everywhere and forgiveness was out of reach. Irrational and distraught, he drank to banish his feelings whilst banishing the vow-breaking Sherlock from his life. He berated himself with greater cruelty than Colonel Carruthers had ever done. His guilt in both failing to keep Mary safe and deceiving her with his inappropriate intentions ate at him.
For Rosie's sake, John pulled himself up by the bootstraps, barely breaking the hold of his regrets that kept pulling him back into the abyss.
"I'm at the bottom of a pit and I'm still falling and I'm never climbing out. I'm a mess; I'm in hell…Look at me. Can't do it, not now. Not alone." Sherlock had said, off his nut on drugs, after appearing in the office of John's new therapist to ask for John's help to stop the villainous Culverton Smith. It was as if Sherlock was describing John's state of mind.
Where John was falling into a private hell of self-blame and Sherlock was diving headlong into a hellish drugged state, the tensile strength of their extraordinary connection was suffering the greatest test. Like the old Zen parable of the Long Chopsticks at the Banquet Tables in Hell and Heaven demonstrated, however, those who served each other, saved each other. John by saving Sherlock's life and Sherlock by needing to be saved by John, each received the hand-up they both needed to escape hell.*
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EPILOGUE TO FOLLOW
*The Lying Detective and see also the fanfiction by Wynsom: BBC Sherlock One Shot To Hell and Back
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