Prompt: Look away, from cjnwriter
A/N: I have a thing for Holmes and Watson during WWI, which is the only excuse I can offer for the way this response got away from me and expanded into something massive. That, plus I got to include Mycroft and make it angsty, so it was really everything I love. I AM SORRY. ANGST AHEAD.
If I had known that I should someday return to London and find it alien to me, I would have thought myself in a cocaine-induced haze. Yet since the start of this accursed war, a heavy, somber atmosphere hung over the city that I was unfamiliar with. Though in truth, Sussex Downs was little better. After two and a half years of war, during which nighttime bombing raids were not uncommon and the threat of invasion hung over a weary populace, much of the country was gripped by the same fear. This war, it would seem, heralded the start of a new age, one far removed from the more genteel time I had once railed against. I was not sure I wished to live in this new world; indeed, there were times I felt as if I were a relic from an earlier age, one that many were already beginning to refer to as "Victorian" after Her Late Majesty.
Nevertheless, I was glad enough to return to London just before Christmas of 1916 when Mycroft asked me to give a briefing to some intelligence officials on the relations between the German government and the rebel Irish factions. Thanks to the time I spent in America, I am now considered something of an expert in the subject, which only proves how wartime turns everything upside down. But I have always found work to be the best antidote to any sorrow or worry, and so I much preferred spending my time reading intelligence reports and memorizing the histories of Irish rebels to reading the casualty lists over and over again. Even tending my bees gave me too much time to think and wonder at the purpose and outcome of it all.
Perhaps retirement does not suit me as I thought it would. Watson would probably tell me that he had told me so, if he were here (actually, I know he would, for he has said as much in his letters). No matter. Through what small assistance I can give our war effort, I shall make sure he can do so again in person, and soon. I shall consider simply having him back home well worth a certain smugness on his part for judging me rightly, as he always has done. I arrived at Whitehall and hurried past Mycroft's staff, noting how grim they looked, knocked on his office door and he waved me in. My brother did not look at me, his keen eyes fixed on something on the far wall. I looked at it curiously, then immediately wished I had not.
The invention of the motion picture camera was heralded as a miracle. At that time, of course, no one saw this war coming, and no one anticipated how it could be used to bring the horrors of war directly into one's life. The images playing on Mycroft's far wall, grainy, black and white, and soundless, nonetheless captured the stark destruction now raging in France, and I could not look away. My eyes remained fixed on the images, no matter how many times I told myself to look away, to look at anything else.
The trenches were exactly as I pictured them in my mind, full of mud and grime and from Watson's letters I knew how many of the young men serving there fell ill and died before they ever saw battle. The young soldiers in Mycroft's newsreel appeared to be barely more than schoolboys. I wondered suddenly how many of my Irregulars were there now. How many of them would survive, and how many would not. I swallowed forcefully, viewing now the hideous machinery of war. The Gatling guns that fired so many bullets at once accuracy was no longer a necessary skill, the tanks that made their slow, steady way across what Watson always termed No Man's Land - a hideous, desolate landscape between the trenches littered with barbed wire and dead bodies no one claimed. Watson said it was called such because no man could climb from the trenches onto it and live.
I had seen what this country had looked like before the war. Green fields, small towns with thatched roof cottages. I had always told Watson the countryside filled me with dread, so easy was it to commit a crime before help could arrive. Now, that seemed a quaint worry, and I wondered if it was even possible for a country to recover from this destruction.
The image on the newsreel changed in quick succession; from a soldier in a gas mask, to one who had suffered the hideous fate of mustard gas poisoning. I gasped aloud at this; the disfigurement, Watson said, was nothing compared to the interior damage. Many of these men would never breathe without assistance again. It was not until the newsreel began to show bombs falling with abandon on the trenches, blowing them apart as if they were child's play, that Mycroft turned it off with a worried glance at me.
"Sherlock?" he asked. "I am dreadfully sorry. I had no idea you would be so affected by that."
I struggled to regain some composure and rounded on him. "You would do well to remember, Mycroft, that Watson is there now," I said angrily, before I sighed. "My apologies. I know you must review the footage. It is just that I have never seen it before."
"You must be the only man who can avoid it," Mycroft said.
"You know I permit no distractions while I am engaged on a case," I said. I had always treated my intelligence work, such as it was, as a case, and refused to read any war news not directly related to it, save for Watson's letters and the casualty lists. Every case must have a solution. Should I find this one, perhaps we can finally end this pointless destruction.
I looked at the wall again, now blank, though I could still see the bombs and the trenches in my mind's eye. "Watson is there," I said, more quietly. "I know he is at a hospital and not at the front but still…" His stories from the hospital, such that he told me, were horrifying and I knew he spared me the worst. That was not a kindness, for my overactive mind immediately contrived to supply me with all sorts of scenarios to fill in what he did not say. Now that I had seen the front, even in so poor a copy, I could do little else but imagine him in the middle of that destruction. Bombs were indiscriminate in their destruction, diseases equally so in who they struck, and Watson was not young. It seemed impossible that one man could survive this carnage. Yet he had survived so much else. Was it truly too much to ask for?
"You have heard from him recently?" Mycroft asked.
"A fortnight ago," I said. "He says he is well, though tired. Though at times I would say he almost sounds...despairing. It is most unlike him." My dear Watson is a gentle soul, who insists on meeting the world as if all in it is good. I suspect it is that which made him the ideal companion for me, and I shudder to think that after everything he has been through, it is this which could finally destroy that in him.
Mycroft sighed. "It is a brave man, or perhaps merely a naive one, who is not despairing right now, Sherlock."
"Are things truly that bad?" I asked in some shock.
"I can see no end to this," Mycroft admitted. "We are spending months and thousands of soldiers, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of pounds of equipment, only to gain a few inches, and so are the Germans. I cannot see a way to victory for either side, yet neither will give up. We are at an utter stalemate that is not likely to end."
I need not say how disconcerting it was to hear my brother admit he could not predict with his usual infernal accuracy how things in his sphere of politics were going to turn out. He held my gaze for a moment before looking away. "I am sorry, Sherlock," he said. "I wish I could tell you something different."
I had never seen him so affected, and I studied him closely. I did not have to observe him for long before the obvious occurred to me: it was highly unlikely Mycroft would survive the strain the war effort put on him, and I saw him smile sadly at me as he read my deduction on my face. "My only wish is to see Great Britain through to the end," he said. I made a face that let him know what I thought of that, which caused him a chuckle, though neither of us felt much like laughing. This war has already taken my dear Watson, now it will almost certainly take my brother.
Though Watson will come back. I am sure of it. I cannot, will not, believe anything else or else I shall have nothing left.
I gave my briefing, told Mycroft that I would be staying in a hotel (his habits are far too routine for my liking, and mine too eccentric for his, so we agreed years ago we should not share rooms), and resolved to spend the night doing anything else but reading about the war. I wish I had thought to bring my violin.
I had decided to stay in London over Christmas only because I had no wish to join the throngs of Christmas travelers, and thought it best to wait. I spent much of my time at the Royal Society, where there was an excellent apiculture library I had long wished to study, and only wished I could have spent Christmas Day there as well. It was sure to be a lonely day that would only remind me of happier years at Baker Street.
Yet when I awoke late on Christmas morning, it was to a telegram from Mycroft. This was a mystery in itself, for he never marked Christmas Day, and yet his telegram asked me to meet him at Whitehall, which was undoubtedly closed for the holiday.
Well, Mycroft certainly knew how to intrigue me. I arrived at Whitehall to find it empty, save for my brother. "What is it?" I asked. I suddenly feared the worst. Perhaps he had had some dreadful news he wanted to tell me before the papers could report it. Perhaps Watson…"For heaven's sake, Mycroft, what is it?" I asked more urgently.
"Do calm down, Sherlock," Mycroft said. He gestured me toward his desk. "I only wanted to give you your Christmas gift."
"You have not given Christmas gifts since you turned ten," I said. I remembered well the tantrum I had thrown as a three-year-old when I had not received a present from my brother.
"I have made an exception," he said. He looked at the phone on his desk, where as if he had willed it, the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yes, this is Mr. Mycroft Holmes. You have him? Good. I shall hand it over now."
I took the receiver in some confusion, though nothing could have prepared me for what I heard next. "Hello?" a voice said. I glanced up at Mycroft for confirmation. Surely it couldn't be...but of course I knew that voice, as well as I knew my own name.
"Watson?" I cried. "Watson, old fellow, is it really you?"
There was silence on the other end, then I could tell Watson must have been smiling. "Holmes! Good heavens, Holmes, it is good to hear your voice!"
"Yours as well, old friend," I said. "We have Mycroft to thank for this, I expect. But that is no matter. Are you well, Watson?"
"As well as can be expected," my friend answered. "This is a terrible business, Holmes. I can hardly believe we once thought it would be over by Christmas two years past."
"I never thought so, Watson," I said, before I could stop myself.
"Now I am sure it is you," Watson said. "You are the only one who would argue the point at such a time."
I laughed aloud. Watson has never realized he is the only man who can make me laugh in such a way. "I am glad you are alright, Watson."
"I am busy," Watson said. "We have little time to think in the midst of this. Perhaps that makes it easier. But how are you, Holmes? I imagine it is a trial for you to be at home in the middle of all this, watching."
Watson knows me well. What little I did for the intelligence effort could not compare to what he, or even Mycroft, were doing. "I have found ways to keep busy," I said, then added, for I knew he would think that I had resurrected old vices, "I consult with our intelligence operatives sometimes. I keep my bees, conduct my chemical experiments. I still play the violin, of course." Every night now, as sleep eluded me. Nighttimes were the hardest; as I listened to the air raid sirens I could only imagine what was going on in France.
"I am glad, Holmes," Watson said. "I particularly want to thank you for your letters. You've been a remarkable correspondent, old fellow. It quite makes my day when I receive one."
"I could say the same," I said, though letter writing came much easier to him than it ever had to me. I have not the patience for it. Until now.
I - oh, I didn't realize - Holmes?" Watson said. "I am afraid I need to go."
"Yes, of course," I said, though I had not the slightest idea when, or if, I should hear his voice again. "I understand."
"But it was excellent to talk to you. Do tell Mycroft thank you," Watson said. "Take care of yourself, Holmes, please?"
"Of course I shall," I said. "And you must do the same."
"Yes," he said. "Well, goodbye, Holmes."
"Goodbye, my dear Watson," I said. Mycroft took the receiver from me and tactfully looked away so that I could compose myself - I have become quite emotional in my (near) old age; it is most embarrassing.
"Thank you, Mycroft," I said. "Truly, thank you."
Mycroft simply smiled sadly. "Merry Christmas, Sherlock."
A/N: Of course Watson will survive the war, because I'm not heartless.