Letters, Resolved (14/14)
Jan. 26th, 2014 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Letters, Resolved (14/14)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The letters have been written, read, and discussed. But that doesn't mean anything's been resolved. Yet.
Author's Note - Thank you toarctacuda for the beta and flawedamythyst for the Britpick.
So this is it, guys. We've reached the end, finally, of the Letters saga, which started as what I thought would be a quick little experiment in epistolary writing while I was in a flight delay at an airport. Oops!
Several people have asked me if I've edited this at all in response to S3. Answer: Nope. The first draft of this was finished in April, and it's substantially the same, save for Britpick and beta edits.
If you're watching Sherlock on the U.S. schedule, tonight you're getting to watch MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF THIS SHOW EVER. But, even if you disagree and think the show jumps the shark with this episode, the trend seems to be that you will really, really like the next episode. So look at it this way: Most of you will soon be seeing your favorite Sherlock episode of all time. It's just that you may really dislike the other one you've got to deal with...
Either way, next week in this space will be a brand-new, mid-length fic in which I attempt to "fix" S3. I hope you'll come along for the ride, because I'm a little bit in love with the fic's premise.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
John had hated the plan as soon as Sherlock had proposed the plan, and there was no way he was going to let Sherlock make him sit in Baker Street, practically wrapped in cotton wool, while Sherlock was out there getting himself killed.
John ran out of the flat with his mobile to his ear, and Mycroft picked up on the second ring.
“Follow that cab,” John gasped to the cab that pulled up for him, and then to Mycroft, “I have no idea what I even expect you to do but Sherlock’s in trouble.”
“I’ve got his cab on CCTV.”
“Pull it over. Do something.”
“You’re sure he’s in trouble?”
“Yes,” John snapped. “I’m sure. He’s going to meet Moran and he’s keeping his cards too close to his vest and he’s going to do something stupid.” He ended the call and texted Sherlock just to remind him that he was supposed to be keeping in touch. And the reply he got back was…unsigned. Sherlock had never once, in all their acquaintance, no matter how well they knew each other, sent him an unsigned text. Never.
John’s mobile rang in his hand. “Mycroft,” he said, answering it.
“John—” Mycroft began, his voice sounding tense.
And then John’s cabbie slammed on his brakes with such force that John had to put out a hand to keep from colliding with the plastic screen between them. From up in front of them came the sickening sound of squealing brakes followed by a crash, then another, and another, and another. And John knew immediately. He dropped his phone in horror, thinking, Oh my God, Sherlock, what have you done?
His driver said, “Hey, that taxi you told me to follow just—”
John staggered out of the car and ran through the pile of stopped vehicles between him and the scene of the accident. People had begun getting out of the cars, and he had to dodge around them. A little circle had opened up around the accident itself. There were several smashed-up cars and then the cab—Sherlock’s cab—crumpled and resting upside-down, half of it wedged against a bank. The backseat, where Sherlock had surely been, had collapsed into itself like an accordion.
Someone had reached out and stopped John from rushing directly up to the accident. “Not sure you want to see that, mate,” said the man who had stopped him.
“I’m a doctor,” John said, automatically. “Let me through, I’m a doctor.”
Those were always magic words, and John found himself with a clear path to run up to the cab. A few people were peering through it.
“The driver’s still alive,” said one of them to John as he ran up, “but he’s wedged in there.”
John ducked down to look through the passenger side window. The driver, blood pouring down his face, looked over at him from where he was trapped, upside-down, between the steering wheel and the wall of the bank. And, amazingly, on the roof of the car between John and the driver was Sherlock’s mobile. John would have recognized Sherlock’s mobile anywhere. John lifted his eyes back to the driver, who looked back at him, and there was something in his gaze, some form of recognition. John suddenly wanted to take his gun out and shoot Moran right between his eyes. He said instead, sweeping his eyes over him, his voice sharp and clean, “Forget about the driver, his internal injuries are too severe. He’s not going to make it. What about the passenger?”
The standers-by all made general quizzical sounds at him, but John crawled to the back of the car. The back windows had all shattered, and the roof had crumpled but it had crumpled toward the front seats, which left a tiny hole of space. John could see Sherlock’s arm, enclosed in Sherlock’s wool coat.
John lowered himself to his stomach and crawled farther into the car, which creaked and groaned above him and John hoped that it wasn’t about to collapse entirely. He stretched out and reached and managed to grab Sherlock’s arm, which fell unresponsively toward him when he tugged on it, and for a dizzy moment John thought he might actually be sick, right there in the car. He forced himself to breathe and reached for Sherlock’s wrist and felt for his pulse. Please be there, please be there, please be there. It was. For a moment John thought maybe the wishful thinking of his imagination had put it there, but no, there was a faint, thready pulse.
“Sherlock,” said John, even though it was clear Sherlock must be unconscious, because maybe he would hear John, somehow, someway, and remember that he had something to live for and he really needed to fight. “Sherlock, I’m here and you’re going to be fine,” said John, crawling deeper into the car. He got a hand under Sherlock’s armpit and thought for a moment about the possibility of neck or spinal injuries.
The car groaned around them, and John decided he didn’t have a choice, he had to get Sherlock out of there. He tugged, and Sherlock came into view, and he was covered in blood. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and tugged some more, as gently as he could. He made slow, excruciating progress, and it felt like it took him half an hour to get Sherlock out of the car, but it could only have been a minute or so. He was vaguely aware that people were helping, but he couldn’t pay attention to them. He laid Sherlock out on the pavement and took stock of his injuries immediately. The blood all over his head was worrisome, but it was the least of John’s immediate problems, that problem mainly being that Sherlock’s left leg had gotten trapped between the roof of the car and the backseat. It was badly broken, the bone protruding sickeningly from the skin, but far worse was the amount of blood that was gushing out of it. Sherlock was in danger of bleeding out. If John had been any later getting to the scene, if John had hesitated even a second in leaving Baker Street, Sherlock would have already been dead by the time John had managed to get there.
John swore even as he pulled his belt off and shouted at people to get out of his way and let him work.
“I swear to God, Sherlock,” he said, as he twisted his belt into a tourniquet on Sherlock’s leg, “if you die on me right here, I will never forgive you, do you understand me? Stop. Bleeding.” He pulled the tourniquet as tight as he could get it, relieved when the flow of blood did seem to ease up.
There were sirens, John registered dimly, and that was a good thing. Satisfied with the tourniquet, John moved back up Sherlock’s body, felt carefully through the blood-matted thickness of Sherlock’s hair. His hand came away covered with blood, but nothing worse. Outwardly, Sherlock’s skull was still intact, although John had no idea what hideous things might be going on in Sherlock’s brain. What he was mostly focused on was that Sherlock was breathing, shallowly but steadily, and John leaned his ear down and listened to Sherlock’s chest. His lungs seemed all right, which was a relief.
John lifted his head back up and brushed blood off of Sherlock’s face. Some of it had dried and crusted on and it was a lost cause.
“Okay,” John said, softly, just for Sherlock’s benefit. “You’re going to be just fine, do you hear me? That is my official diagnosis. You’re fine, and you’re coming back to me, and I won’t hear anything else about it.” John leaned down, brushed a very tender kiss over Sherlock’s unmoving lips. “I love you,” he reminded him. “Fight for me.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a paramedic behind him, and then gently manhandled him away from Sherlock.
John went, dully, numbly, because he couldn’t think what else to do and in his current state he was going to do Sherlock little good. He brushed a hand over his face, surprised when it came away wet, and looked at his hand, expecting to find it covered in blood. But it wasn’t. Tears, he realized. He was crying. When had that happened?
Someone led him away and was asking him questions—Do you know the two men? Who are they? Can we ring their families?—and he thought he might be answering the questions, but he wasn’t sure. Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders, and John broke into hysterical laughter over being in shock and having a blanket, until Mycroft said, “Take the blanket off of him, can’t you see that’s making it worse?”
The familiarity of Mycroft’s voice seemed to cut through John’s haze. “Mycroft,” he said, and he didn’t even recognize his own voice, it was so choked with emotion. He had done this once before, been covered in Sherlock’s blood, and it had all been a trick, a magic trick. “Was it planned? Did you plan this?”
“Get in the car, John,” said Mycroft, not unkindly, and nudged him into the backseat of the waiting sedan.
“If this was all some elaborate plan,” John continued, as Mycroft slid in after him, “I wish you two had let me in on it this time, because I really could have done without—” It wasn’t a plan, and he knew it wasn’t a plan, and he ended the sentence on a sob that he pushed down. He was a doctor, damn it. He had knowledge about these things, and he could help Sherlock, surely he could. “What are they saying?” he asked, after a moment of gathering his composure. “What’s the prognosis?”
Mycroft didn’t say anything.
John looked at him. “Mycroft,” he said, sharply, “tell me.”
“They don’t know. They’ve got to get him to hospital before they can do anything with the head injuries.”
John knew that objectively, but he wanted Mycroft to say that Sherlock was absolutely fine.
“John, you’re bleeding,” Mycroft pointed out, and handed him a handkerchief.
“What?” John looked down and realized that he was bleeding. He’d torn through his jumper, and his forearm was covered in blood. “Must have been the car…” he realized, dazedly, pressing Mycroft’s handkerchief against it.
“You’ll stop and get stitches for it whilst they’re checking Sherlock out,” Mycroft commanded.
“It doesn’t need stitches,” said John.
“Take another look at it.” Mycroft’s tone was mild.
Mild enough that John, annoyed, pushed the tatters of his jumper out of the way so he could show Mycroft that it was nothing more than a scratch. Except that it was a deep, jagged cut and he definitely needed stitches. John stared at it because it didn’t hurt at all, not even a little bit, he wasn’t in any pain.
“You’re in shock,” Mycroft told him, obviously reading his thoughts.
John took a deep breath and put his arm down. He looked out the window. He said, “He isn’t going to die.”
“No,” Mycroft agreed. “He’s not.”
But Mycroft was humoring him, and Mycroft had never humored him ever before, and John had the sudden clear insight that, if he hadn’t been in shock, he would have been doubled over on the floor sobbing.
***
Sherlock had a variety of more minor issues, the most serious of which was the broken leg, which they’d set. What the doctors were really concerned about was the internal bleeding that had built up on his brain. They’d relieved the pressure, and they insisted that Sherlock merely needed to heal himself now. There was nothing more they could do. John knew that objectively, but the idea that now all he could do was sit by Sherlock’s hospital bed and wait for him to come back to him was horrifying.
But he did it because he had nothing else to do. He sat there and watched Sherlock take deep, even breaths, his chest rising and falling. He was the stillest John had ever seen, stiller than any sulk John had ever seen him in the grips of, and John wanted to shake him back into activity.
Mycroft came in and leaned against the wall behind John, and John was grateful for his presence. Mycroft and Sherlock didn’t have an easy relationship, but Mycroft loved Sherlock and understood that John loved Sherlock, too, and John needed not to be judged for the turmoil he was in at the moment.
“You saved his life,” Mycroft remarked, after a moment. “Another minute and he would have bled out, according to the doctor. He would have been dead by the time the emergency services got there.”
“I’d be more pleased with myself if he wasn’t in a coma right now,” John said, dully.
“He has to heal, John. Comas aren’t necessarily bad things, and you know that.”
“He’s never quiet.” John scrubbed a hand over his face. “Even when he’s being quiet, he’s the loudest quiet I’ve ever encountered. He isn’t this.”
Mycroft said nothing. John supposed he didn’t know what to say.
“What happened to Moran?” John asked, eventually.
There was a moment of silence. “I am not at liberty to say,” said Mycroft.
John kept his eyes on Sherlock’s bruised and battered and unmoving face. “Tell me he’s dead,” he said, viciously. “I don’t want him imprisoned somewhere, I want him dead. If you haven’t killed him, I am going to find him, and I am going to do it myself, and do not even for a second think otherwise.”
“He’s dead,” said Mycroft.
“Good,” said John, and leaned forward and took Sherlock’s hand, still and unmoving in his own.
Mycroft said, “I’ll stop by again tomorrow. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. You should get some sleep.”
John did not reply, because there was no way he was going to get any sleep. He listened to Mycroft leave the room and lifted Sherlock’s hand to his face and breathed into his palm, “You have to keep fighting, Sherlock. Just a little more fighting. You’re almost there.”
***
Visitors cycled in and out. John paid little attention to them. Mrs. Hudson came in and fussed and cried. John tried to reassure her but found he had no energy for it. He was barely clinging to sanity himself, and he couldn’t take care of other people’s sanity at the moment.
Harry arrived and sat with him silently, and John was so grateful for it that he actually took her hand and squeezed it. He wanted to say that he had no idea what he was going to do if Sherlock didn’t come out of it, but he couldn’t say that out loud yet. He had, once before, picked up the pieces of his life and started over. He couldn’t imagine doing it again.
He had been so furious when he had first realized that Sherlock had faked his death. Now he wished desperately for another hoax to be perpetrated on him, because he couldn’t handle the harshness of this reality he was in.
Mycroft came and went, seldom speaking to John but frequently speaking on his mobile. John was sure they were probably state-secret-level conversations and he should have been flattered that Mycroft trusted him enough to have them in front of him, but John never paid attention to what Mycroft was even saying. The thought of it was simply too exhausting.
Lestrade stopped by. He didn’t stay for very long, and he seemed awkward and unsure what to say. John appreciated the sentiment but couldn’t bring himself to make any sort of small talk.
The doctors came by and conferred and said things to him, but John didn’t need these things to be said to him. John went through Sherlock’s chart and knew everything they were saying for himself already. The first twenty-four hours of a coma could be very helpful, healing. The second twenty-four hours, which they were swiftly approaching, were not a good sign at all.
“Sherlock,” John whispered to him in the silent darkness of the hospital room after everyone had left and there were only machines to keep him company, after the second twenty-four hours had begun and hope was an ever more difficult thing for John to harbor in his ribcage. “I know you don’t get enough rest. Normally you know I’d be encouraging you to sleep as long as you need. But I need to you to come back to me now, okay? I need you to wake up and open your eyes and say my name and be you, and then we’ll go back to Anguilla, to the little villa, and we will nap on the veranda together. We won’t have to worry anymore, not about anything, right? I will teach you every constellation in the sky, because I will learn them all for you. You will cook me fabulous food, and we’ll drink good wine, and we won’t get out of bed for days on end, and you can sleep, okay? You can sleep and sleep and sleep, and I won’t bother you, I’ll stand guard and make sure no one and nothing disturbs you. But right now I need you to wake up, Sherlock. Wake. Up.”
Sherlock did not wake up.
John put his head down on Sherlock’s bed and registered that he was actually too exhausted to even cry.
***
For a long time Sherlock could not make sense of what was going on. He thought vaguely that, under normal circumstances, he should have been annoyed by that, but he couldn’t be bothered. He drifted comfortably, and much of the time everything was silent and dark and it was lovely and just what he needed, and then little by little the silence and darkness leaked away and then things were incredibly loud and everything hurt and Sherlock tried to make sense of all of this, of the beeping and whirring all around him and the fact that his legs were heavy and he couldn’t move his arms and that his head throbbed like one enormous bee sting. But it was exhausting to make sense of it and easier to just wish that everything would get dark and silent again.
And then, abruptly, slicing through everything, came a single voice, saying his name. “Sherlock,” it said, sharp and begging all at once. “Sherlock, please.”
John, thought Sherlock, and, annoyed at the silence and the darkness, began pushing it away. It was sticky and stubborn and kept trying to pull him back, but he swirled toward John, keeping the fact of him in his head. John, John, John, somewhere, wanting him, looking for him, calling him, and he was keeping him waiting, and Sherlock struggled and struggled, and when he opened his eyes he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his entire life, and he was a little annoyed to find himself lying in bed. All that work just to wake up in bed.
The room was dim, although not dark. His eyes were clearly open. He looked at the ceiling for a little while, and it took him a long time to determine that it was unfamiliar. He frowned, thinking that he did not know where he was, and that was unacceptable. There was data, all around him, he just needed to take it in.
He turned his head, which was a huge mistake, both because he was hooked up to enough tubes that he couldn’t really turn it and because it hurt, pain slicing up through his spine, and he thought he might be in danger of falling backward into all that silent darkness again. But then he breathed through it, and it subsided somewhat, and he made sense of the fact that yes, he was in bed, and there was someone leaning on the bed with him. Sitting in the chair next to him, slumped forward so his head was on the mattress, near Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock peered at the head, whose back was to him, so it wasn’t like he could see his face. John, he thought, and then, once he had placed him, Yes, of course it’s John, how could I have been so idiotic not to have seen that immediately?
He tried to speak, to say John’s name, but he couldn’t figure out how to make sound come out of his mouth. Well. That was inconvenient. He used to know how to talk. Didn’t he?
His hand was close to John’s head. He tried to lift it, to put a hand in John’s hair, but his hand wouldn’t budge. It lay heavy and unresponsive on the mattress. Sherlock stared at it in a mix of irritation and disbelief. All of this was absolutely unacceptable. He concentrated very, very hard and got his fingers to twitch. Well, he supposed. That was something. Concentrating again, he got them to twitch against John’s skull, the merest brush of contact, and then he had to rest because he was exhausted again.
But it seemed to have been enough. John stirred on the bed, and Sherlock willed him to wake up, but all John seemed to do was turn his head over. Sherlock could see his face now, and his eyes were closed, apparently sleeping.
Annoying, Sherlock thought. John did so much sleeping.
Sherlock didn’t mean to drift away from John again because he thought that it did because the next time he opened his eyes it was brighter in the room. He thought it was, at least. Grayer. His sense of time was confused. He didn’t remember sleeping, but he seemed to have the idea that waking up had been easier this time, that the darkness had clung to him less tightly, had released him more easily.
John was in the same sport, head still by Sherlock’s hip, facing Sherlock, eyes still closed in sleep. Sherlock gathered together some remnants of energy and twitched his fingers again. He didn’t touch John—he wasn’t close enough—but John must have sensed something finally because his eyes opened. He stared at Sherlock’s fingers on the mattress in front of him, and Sherlock, getting the hang of it, twitched his index finger. Hello, he meant it to say.
John sat up so quickly that he knocked the chair over with a loud clatter that echoed like a just-rung bell through Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock winced, and then John was leaning over him, brushing his hair back with the lightest of touches.
“Sherlock,” he said. “Oh my God, Sherlock.”
Sherlock looked up at him and tried to explain, using his eyes, that he couldn’t speak just yet, and he was very tired, and perhaps John could stop yelling at him.
“Good,” said John, clearly speaking more to himself than to Sherlock. “Good, this is good. Stay awake for me, okay? Can you stay awake? I need to go get the doctors and I need to— This is good. This is very good.”
He was repeating himself, thought Sherlock. How tiresome. How very like him.
John disappeared out of Sherlock’s eyeline, and Sherlock was too exhausted to turn his head to keep him in sight, and, anyway, the memory of the pain he had experienced the last time he had done that was enough to deter him.
Then John reappeared, and he was grinning. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even say hello. Hello. I’ve missed you. I love you. Good, a smile, that’s what I was going for.”
Was he smiling? Sherlock wasn’t sure, but he supposed he was. It was nice that John still had the ability to make Sherlock smile without Sherlock having to put effort into it. It was yet another thing to love about John Watson.
“I’ll be right back,” John said. “I’m going to fetch the doctors. Don’t go anywhere. Stay here with me.”
Sherlock wanted to ask where he would go. He had no desire to go anywhere that wasn’t with John.
***
Sherlock was, predictably, a terrible patient, but John relished every moment of complaining that he did. He recovered in leaps and bounds once he’d woken up, and by the time they released him from the hospital he sounded entirely like his old self, speaking in rapid-fire, disapproving paragraphs of deductive brilliance about everything. John was relieved beyond belief. There was always so much danger with head wounds, so much fear that the person receiving the wound might not be the same afterward, but Sherlock was very recognizably himself.
The thing that took the longest to heal was Sherlock’s broken leg. Sherlock hobbled around detesting it and making sure John knew he detested it, and John knew he was feeling better the day he started complaining about it less and started using it more as an excuse to make John do more for him than John normally did.
By then summer had come to London. Well, the week of summer that London usually enjoyed. The days were warm and the sun was bright and John and Sherlock had stopped looking over their shoulders. There were no assassins in the building opposite them. John threw open the windows and let fresh air and city sounds into the flat, and he looked at Sherlock, newly off his crutches and perched at the kitchen table, lost in his microscope.
“Let’s go for a walk,” John suggested.
“What if we miss a client whilst we’re out?”
“We’ll have Mrs. Hudson ring us. Come on,” John wheedled. “It’s a gorgeous day, and the fresh air will do you good.”
“I don’t see why you say that. The air is full of pollen, it will clog up my nasal passages.”
“You’re not allergic to pollen.”
“I could be.”
“Come outside with me,” John said, and kissed the base of Sherlock’s neck.
“Fine,” agreed Sherlock, with the air of doing John a great favor.
John insisted on Regent’s Park. Sherlock, once outside, relaxed into the excursion. John bought them ice cream cones and watched Sherlock eat his with the relish of the true sweet-lover that Sherlock Holmes was, and, as they walked, he reached out and took Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock didn’t even notice. Sherlock was in the middle of a monologue about ice cream melting times and murdering people in freezers and other things John was only half-listening to. Children laughed and played in the distance and an airplane droned overhead and traffic noises drifted over to them and Sherlock suddenly stopped walking.
John looked back at him.
Sherlock was staring down at their joined hands. Then he looked up at John. “You planned this,” he accused.
“Hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park,” John affirmed. “Isn’t that what you told me you wanted? Ages ago?”
Sherlock used their joined hands to tug John closer to him. “It turns out that was an extremely specific request.”
“Yes. It was.”
“What I really wanted was you.”
“I knew that. I knew it as soon as I read your letters. Here.” John reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the envelope he’d stuck in there that morning. “This is for you.”
Sherlock had to drop John’s hand to take it, since his other hand was still holding his ice cream cone. He thrust the ice cream cone into John’s hand, the better to pull the letter out of the envelope.
Dear Sherlock, the letter began. I do not have your way with words. Which is funny because I’m the one who is theoretically the writer.
“It’s your letter,” Sherlock said, in amazement. “You wrote me your letter again.”
“Well. I tried to. I didn’t have it memorized, so this is just the general gist.”
“Yes,” agreed Sherlock, affably. “You did get it a bit wrong.” But he looked so delighted to be holding the letter that John took no offense. He flipped it over to the back, where John’s list trailed off this time into To be continued. Sherlock frowned a bit. “You didn’t end it.”
“Because it doesn’t end, Sherlock,” John said, firmly. “It’s never going to end. I will never come to the end of the list of things I love about you.” John took a step closer to him. “Because now I can just say it to you, and I will say it to you every day. I love you more than I can say, more than I can tell you, so I’m going to show you. I will never let you shatter. I will keep you safe and sound. My love. My life. My heart.”
Sherlock stared at him, and then he reached for him and kissed him, hand-in-hand, in Regent’s Park.
THE END
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The letters have been written, read, and discussed. But that doesn't mean anything's been resolved. Yet.
Author's Note - Thank you to
arctacuda for the beta and flawedamythyst for the Britpick.So this is it, guys. We've reached the end, finally, of the Letters saga, which started as what I thought would be a quick little experiment in epistolary writing while I was in a flight delay at an airport. Oops!
Several people have asked me if I've edited this at all in response to S3. Answer: Nope. The first draft of this was finished in April, and it's substantially the same, save for Britpick and beta edits.
If you're watching Sherlock on the U.S. schedule, tonight you're getting to watch MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF THIS SHOW EVER. But, even if you disagree and think the show jumps the shark with this episode, the trend seems to be that you will really, really like the next episode. So look at it this way: Most of you will soon be seeing your favorite Sherlock episode of all time. It's just that you may really dislike the other one you've got to deal with...
Either way, next week in this space will be a brand-new, mid-length fic in which I attempt to "fix" S3. I hope you'll come along for the ride, because I'm a little bit in love with the fic's premise.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
John had hated the plan as soon as Sherlock had proposed the plan, and there was no way he was going to let Sherlock make him sit in Baker Street, practically wrapped in cotton wool, while Sherlock was out there getting himself killed.
John ran out of the flat with his mobile to his ear, and Mycroft picked up on the second ring.
“Follow that cab,” John gasped to the cab that pulled up for him, and then to Mycroft, “I have no idea what I even expect you to do but Sherlock’s in trouble.”
“I’ve got his cab on CCTV.”
“Pull it over. Do something.”
“You’re sure he’s in trouble?”
“Yes,” John snapped. “I’m sure. He’s going to meet Moran and he’s keeping his cards too close to his vest and he’s going to do something stupid.” He ended the call and texted Sherlock just to remind him that he was supposed to be keeping in touch. And the reply he got back was…unsigned. Sherlock had never once, in all their acquaintance, no matter how well they knew each other, sent him an unsigned text. Never.
John’s mobile rang in his hand. “Mycroft,” he said, answering it.
“John—” Mycroft began, his voice sounding tense.
And then John’s cabbie slammed on his brakes with such force that John had to put out a hand to keep from colliding with the plastic screen between them. From up in front of them came the sickening sound of squealing brakes followed by a crash, then another, and another, and another. And John knew immediately. He dropped his phone in horror, thinking, Oh my God, Sherlock, what have you done?
His driver said, “Hey, that taxi you told me to follow just—”
John staggered out of the car and ran through the pile of stopped vehicles between him and the scene of the accident. People had begun getting out of the cars, and he had to dodge around them. A little circle had opened up around the accident itself. There were several smashed-up cars and then the cab—Sherlock’s cab—crumpled and resting upside-down, half of it wedged against a bank. The backseat, where Sherlock had surely been, had collapsed into itself like an accordion.
Someone had reached out and stopped John from rushing directly up to the accident. “Not sure you want to see that, mate,” said the man who had stopped him.
“I’m a doctor,” John said, automatically. “Let me through, I’m a doctor.”
Those were always magic words, and John found himself with a clear path to run up to the cab. A few people were peering through it.
“The driver’s still alive,” said one of them to John as he ran up, “but he’s wedged in there.”
John ducked down to look through the passenger side window. The driver, blood pouring down his face, looked over at him from where he was trapped, upside-down, between the steering wheel and the wall of the bank. And, amazingly, on the roof of the car between John and the driver was Sherlock’s mobile. John would have recognized Sherlock’s mobile anywhere. John lifted his eyes back to the driver, who looked back at him, and there was something in his gaze, some form of recognition. John suddenly wanted to take his gun out and shoot Moran right between his eyes. He said instead, sweeping his eyes over him, his voice sharp and clean, “Forget about the driver, his internal injuries are too severe. He’s not going to make it. What about the passenger?”
The standers-by all made general quizzical sounds at him, but John crawled to the back of the car. The back windows had all shattered, and the roof had crumpled but it had crumpled toward the front seats, which left a tiny hole of space. John could see Sherlock’s arm, enclosed in Sherlock’s wool coat.
John lowered himself to his stomach and crawled farther into the car, which creaked and groaned above him and John hoped that it wasn’t about to collapse entirely. He stretched out and reached and managed to grab Sherlock’s arm, which fell unresponsively toward him when he tugged on it, and for a dizzy moment John thought he might actually be sick, right there in the car. He forced himself to breathe and reached for Sherlock’s wrist and felt for his pulse. Please be there, please be there, please be there. It was. For a moment John thought maybe the wishful thinking of his imagination had put it there, but no, there was a faint, thready pulse.
“Sherlock,” said John, even though it was clear Sherlock must be unconscious, because maybe he would hear John, somehow, someway, and remember that he had something to live for and he really needed to fight. “Sherlock, I’m here and you’re going to be fine,” said John, crawling deeper into the car. He got a hand under Sherlock’s armpit and thought for a moment about the possibility of neck or spinal injuries.
The car groaned around them, and John decided he didn’t have a choice, he had to get Sherlock out of there. He tugged, and Sherlock came into view, and he was covered in blood. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and tugged some more, as gently as he could. He made slow, excruciating progress, and it felt like it took him half an hour to get Sherlock out of the car, but it could only have been a minute or so. He was vaguely aware that people were helping, but he couldn’t pay attention to them. He laid Sherlock out on the pavement and took stock of his injuries immediately. The blood all over his head was worrisome, but it was the least of John’s immediate problems, that problem mainly being that Sherlock’s left leg had gotten trapped between the roof of the car and the backseat. It was badly broken, the bone protruding sickeningly from the skin, but far worse was the amount of blood that was gushing out of it. Sherlock was in danger of bleeding out. If John had been any later getting to the scene, if John had hesitated even a second in leaving Baker Street, Sherlock would have already been dead by the time John had managed to get there.
John swore even as he pulled his belt off and shouted at people to get out of his way and let him work.
“I swear to God, Sherlock,” he said, as he twisted his belt into a tourniquet on Sherlock’s leg, “if you die on me right here, I will never forgive you, do you understand me? Stop. Bleeding.” He pulled the tourniquet as tight as he could get it, relieved when the flow of blood did seem to ease up.
There were sirens, John registered dimly, and that was a good thing. Satisfied with the tourniquet, John moved back up Sherlock’s body, felt carefully through the blood-matted thickness of Sherlock’s hair. His hand came away covered with blood, but nothing worse. Outwardly, Sherlock’s skull was still intact, although John had no idea what hideous things might be going on in Sherlock’s brain. What he was mostly focused on was that Sherlock was breathing, shallowly but steadily, and John leaned his ear down and listened to Sherlock’s chest. His lungs seemed all right, which was a relief.
John lifted his head back up and brushed blood off of Sherlock’s face. Some of it had dried and crusted on and it was a lost cause.
“Okay,” John said, softly, just for Sherlock’s benefit. “You’re going to be just fine, do you hear me? That is my official diagnosis. You’re fine, and you’re coming back to me, and I won’t hear anything else about it.” John leaned down, brushed a very tender kiss over Sherlock’s unmoving lips. “I love you,” he reminded him. “Fight for me.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a paramedic behind him, and then gently manhandled him away from Sherlock.
John went, dully, numbly, because he couldn’t think what else to do and in his current state he was going to do Sherlock little good. He brushed a hand over his face, surprised when it came away wet, and looked at his hand, expecting to find it covered in blood. But it wasn’t. Tears, he realized. He was crying. When had that happened?
Someone led him away and was asking him questions—Do you know the two men? Who are they? Can we ring their families?—and he thought he might be answering the questions, but he wasn’t sure. Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders, and John broke into hysterical laughter over being in shock and having a blanket, until Mycroft said, “Take the blanket off of him, can’t you see that’s making it worse?”
The familiarity of Mycroft’s voice seemed to cut through John’s haze. “Mycroft,” he said, and he didn’t even recognize his own voice, it was so choked with emotion. He had done this once before, been covered in Sherlock’s blood, and it had all been a trick, a magic trick. “Was it planned? Did you plan this?”
“Get in the car, John,” said Mycroft, not unkindly, and nudged him into the backseat of the waiting sedan.
“If this was all some elaborate plan,” John continued, as Mycroft slid in after him, “I wish you two had let me in on it this time, because I really could have done without—” It wasn’t a plan, and he knew it wasn’t a plan, and he ended the sentence on a sob that he pushed down. He was a doctor, damn it. He had knowledge about these things, and he could help Sherlock, surely he could. “What are they saying?” he asked, after a moment of gathering his composure. “What’s the prognosis?”
Mycroft didn’t say anything.
John looked at him. “Mycroft,” he said, sharply, “tell me.”
“They don’t know. They’ve got to get him to hospital before they can do anything with the head injuries.”
John knew that objectively, but he wanted Mycroft to say that Sherlock was absolutely fine.
“John, you’re bleeding,” Mycroft pointed out, and handed him a handkerchief.
“What?” John looked down and realized that he was bleeding. He’d torn through his jumper, and his forearm was covered in blood. “Must have been the car…” he realized, dazedly, pressing Mycroft’s handkerchief against it.
“You’ll stop and get stitches for it whilst they’re checking Sherlock out,” Mycroft commanded.
“It doesn’t need stitches,” said John.
“Take another look at it.” Mycroft’s tone was mild.
Mild enough that John, annoyed, pushed the tatters of his jumper out of the way so he could show Mycroft that it was nothing more than a scratch. Except that it was a deep, jagged cut and he definitely needed stitches. John stared at it because it didn’t hurt at all, not even a little bit, he wasn’t in any pain.
“You’re in shock,” Mycroft told him, obviously reading his thoughts.
John took a deep breath and put his arm down. He looked out the window. He said, “He isn’t going to die.”
“No,” Mycroft agreed. “He’s not.”
But Mycroft was humoring him, and Mycroft had never humored him ever before, and John had the sudden clear insight that, if he hadn’t been in shock, he would have been doubled over on the floor sobbing.
***
Sherlock had a variety of more minor issues, the most serious of which was the broken leg, which they’d set. What the doctors were really concerned about was the internal bleeding that had built up on his brain. They’d relieved the pressure, and they insisted that Sherlock merely needed to heal himself now. There was nothing more they could do. John knew that objectively, but the idea that now all he could do was sit by Sherlock’s hospital bed and wait for him to come back to him was horrifying.
But he did it because he had nothing else to do. He sat there and watched Sherlock take deep, even breaths, his chest rising and falling. He was the stillest John had ever seen, stiller than any sulk John had ever seen him in the grips of, and John wanted to shake him back into activity.
Mycroft came in and leaned against the wall behind John, and John was grateful for his presence. Mycroft and Sherlock didn’t have an easy relationship, but Mycroft loved Sherlock and understood that John loved Sherlock, too, and John needed not to be judged for the turmoil he was in at the moment.
“You saved his life,” Mycroft remarked, after a moment. “Another minute and he would have bled out, according to the doctor. He would have been dead by the time the emergency services got there.”
“I’d be more pleased with myself if he wasn’t in a coma right now,” John said, dully.
“He has to heal, John. Comas aren’t necessarily bad things, and you know that.”
“He’s never quiet.” John scrubbed a hand over his face. “Even when he’s being quiet, he’s the loudest quiet I’ve ever encountered. He isn’t this.”
Mycroft said nothing. John supposed he didn’t know what to say.
“What happened to Moran?” John asked, eventually.
There was a moment of silence. “I am not at liberty to say,” said Mycroft.
John kept his eyes on Sherlock’s bruised and battered and unmoving face. “Tell me he’s dead,” he said, viciously. “I don’t want him imprisoned somewhere, I want him dead. If you haven’t killed him, I am going to find him, and I am going to do it myself, and do not even for a second think otherwise.”
“He’s dead,” said Mycroft.
“Good,” said John, and leaned forward and took Sherlock’s hand, still and unmoving in his own.
Mycroft said, “I’ll stop by again tomorrow. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. You should get some sleep.”
John did not reply, because there was no way he was going to get any sleep. He listened to Mycroft leave the room and lifted Sherlock’s hand to his face and breathed into his palm, “You have to keep fighting, Sherlock. Just a little more fighting. You’re almost there.”
***
Visitors cycled in and out. John paid little attention to them. Mrs. Hudson came in and fussed and cried. John tried to reassure her but found he had no energy for it. He was barely clinging to sanity himself, and he couldn’t take care of other people’s sanity at the moment.
Harry arrived and sat with him silently, and John was so grateful for it that he actually took her hand and squeezed it. He wanted to say that he had no idea what he was going to do if Sherlock didn’t come out of it, but he couldn’t say that out loud yet. He had, once before, picked up the pieces of his life and started over. He couldn’t imagine doing it again.
He had been so furious when he had first realized that Sherlock had faked his death. Now he wished desperately for another hoax to be perpetrated on him, because he couldn’t handle the harshness of this reality he was in.
Mycroft came and went, seldom speaking to John but frequently speaking on his mobile. John was sure they were probably state-secret-level conversations and he should have been flattered that Mycroft trusted him enough to have them in front of him, but John never paid attention to what Mycroft was even saying. The thought of it was simply too exhausting.
Lestrade stopped by. He didn’t stay for very long, and he seemed awkward and unsure what to say. John appreciated the sentiment but couldn’t bring himself to make any sort of small talk.
The doctors came by and conferred and said things to him, but John didn’t need these things to be said to him. John went through Sherlock’s chart and knew everything they were saying for himself already. The first twenty-four hours of a coma could be very helpful, healing. The second twenty-four hours, which they were swiftly approaching, were not a good sign at all.
“Sherlock,” John whispered to him in the silent darkness of the hospital room after everyone had left and there were only machines to keep him company, after the second twenty-four hours had begun and hope was an ever more difficult thing for John to harbor in his ribcage. “I know you don’t get enough rest. Normally you know I’d be encouraging you to sleep as long as you need. But I need to you to come back to me now, okay? I need you to wake up and open your eyes and say my name and be you, and then we’ll go back to Anguilla, to the little villa, and we will nap on the veranda together. We won’t have to worry anymore, not about anything, right? I will teach you every constellation in the sky, because I will learn them all for you. You will cook me fabulous food, and we’ll drink good wine, and we won’t get out of bed for days on end, and you can sleep, okay? You can sleep and sleep and sleep, and I won’t bother you, I’ll stand guard and make sure no one and nothing disturbs you. But right now I need you to wake up, Sherlock. Wake. Up.”
Sherlock did not wake up.
John put his head down on Sherlock’s bed and registered that he was actually too exhausted to even cry.
***
For a long time Sherlock could not make sense of what was going on. He thought vaguely that, under normal circumstances, he should have been annoyed by that, but he couldn’t be bothered. He drifted comfortably, and much of the time everything was silent and dark and it was lovely and just what he needed, and then little by little the silence and darkness leaked away and then things were incredibly loud and everything hurt and Sherlock tried to make sense of all of this, of the beeping and whirring all around him and the fact that his legs were heavy and he couldn’t move his arms and that his head throbbed like one enormous bee sting. But it was exhausting to make sense of it and easier to just wish that everything would get dark and silent again.
And then, abruptly, slicing through everything, came a single voice, saying his name. “Sherlock,” it said, sharp and begging all at once. “Sherlock, please.”
John, thought Sherlock, and, annoyed at the silence and the darkness, began pushing it away. It was sticky and stubborn and kept trying to pull him back, but he swirled toward John, keeping the fact of him in his head. John, John, John, somewhere, wanting him, looking for him, calling him, and he was keeping him waiting, and Sherlock struggled and struggled, and when he opened his eyes he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his entire life, and he was a little annoyed to find himself lying in bed. All that work just to wake up in bed.
The room was dim, although not dark. His eyes were clearly open. He looked at the ceiling for a little while, and it took him a long time to determine that it was unfamiliar. He frowned, thinking that he did not know where he was, and that was unacceptable. There was data, all around him, he just needed to take it in.
He turned his head, which was a huge mistake, both because he was hooked up to enough tubes that he couldn’t really turn it and because it hurt, pain slicing up through his spine, and he thought he might be in danger of falling backward into all that silent darkness again. But then he breathed through it, and it subsided somewhat, and he made sense of the fact that yes, he was in bed, and there was someone leaning on the bed with him. Sitting in the chair next to him, slumped forward so his head was on the mattress, near Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock peered at the head, whose back was to him, so it wasn’t like he could see his face. John, he thought, and then, once he had placed him, Yes, of course it’s John, how could I have been so idiotic not to have seen that immediately?
He tried to speak, to say John’s name, but he couldn’t figure out how to make sound come out of his mouth. Well. That was inconvenient. He used to know how to talk. Didn’t he?
His hand was close to John’s head. He tried to lift it, to put a hand in John’s hair, but his hand wouldn’t budge. It lay heavy and unresponsive on the mattress. Sherlock stared at it in a mix of irritation and disbelief. All of this was absolutely unacceptable. He concentrated very, very hard and got his fingers to twitch. Well, he supposed. That was something. Concentrating again, he got them to twitch against John’s skull, the merest brush of contact, and then he had to rest because he was exhausted again.
But it seemed to have been enough. John stirred on the bed, and Sherlock willed him to wake up, but all John seemed to do was turn his head over. Sherlock could see his face now, and his eyes were closed, apparently sleeping.
Annoying, Sherlock thought. John did so much sleeping.
Sherlock didn’t mean to drift away from John again because he thought that it did because the next time he opened his eyes it was brighter in the room. He thought it was, at least. Grayer. His sense of time was confused. He didn’t remember sleeping, but he seemed to have the idea that waking up had been easier this time, that the darkness had clung to him less tightly, had released him more easily.
John was in the same sport, head still by Sherlock’s hip, facing Sherlock, eyes still closed in sleep. Sherlock gathered together some remnants of energy and twitched his fingers again. He didn’t touch John—he wasn’t close enough—but John must have sensed something finally because his eyes opened. He stared at Sherlock’s fingers on the mattress in front of him, and Sherlock, getting the hang of it, twitched his index finger. Hello, he meant it to say.
John sat up so quickly that he knocked the chair over with a loud clatter that echoed like a just-rung bell through Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock winced, and then John was leaning over him, brushing his hair back with the lightest of touches.
“Sherlock,” he said. “Oh my God, Sherlock.”
Sherlock looked up at him and tried to explain, using his eyes, that he couldn’t speak just yet, and he was very tired, and perhaps John could stop yelling at him.
“Good,” said John, clearly speaking more to himself than to Sherlock. “Good, this is good. Stay awake for me, okay? Can you stay awake? I need to go get the doctors and I need to— This is good. This is very good.”
He was repeating himself, thought Sherlock. How tiresome. How very like him.
John disappeared out of Sherlock’s eyeline, and Sherlock was too exhausted to turn his head to keep him in sight, and, anyway, the memory of the pain he had experienced the last time he had done that was enough to deter him.
Then John reappeared, and he was grinning. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even say hello. Hello. I’ve missed you. I love you. Good, a smile, that’s what I was going for.”
Was he smiling? Sherlock wasn’t sure, but he supposed he was. It was nice that John still had the ability to make Sherlock smile without Sherlock having to put effort into it. It was yet another thing to love about John Watson.
“I’ll be right back,” John said. “I’m going to fetch the doctors. Don’t go anywhere. Stay here with me.”
Sherlock wanted to ask where he would go. He had no desire to go anywhere that wasn’t with John.
***
Sherlock was, predictably, a terrible patient, but John relished every moment of complaining that he did. He recovered in leaps and bounds once he’d woken up, and by the time they released him from the hospital he sounded entirely like his old self, speaking in rapid-fire, disapproving paragraphs of deductive brilliance about everything. John was relieved beyond belief. There was always so much danger with head wounds, so much fear that the person receiving the wound might not be the same afterward, but Sherlock was very recognizably himself.
The thing that took the longest to heal was Sherlock’s broken leg. Sherlock hobbled around detesting it and making sure John knew he detested it, and John knew he was feeling better the day he started complaining about it less and started using it more as an excuse to make John do more for him than John normally did.
By then summer had come to London. Well, the week of summer that London usually enjoyed. The days were warm and the sun was bright and John and Sherlock had stopped looking over their shoulders. There were no assassins in the building opposite them. John threw open the windows and let fresh air and city sounds into the flat, and he looked at Sherlock, newly off his crutches and perched at the kitchen table, lost in his microscope.
“Let’s go for a walk,” John suggested.
“What if we miss a client whilst we’re out?”
“We’ll have Mrs. Hudson ring us. Come on,” John wheedled. “It’s a gorgeous day, and the fresh air will do you good.”
“I don’t see why you say that. The air is full of pollen, it will clog up my nasal passages.”
“You’re not allergic to pollen.”
“I could be.”
“Come outside with me,” John said, and kissed the base of Sherlock’s neck.
“Fine,” agreed Sherlock, with the air of doing John a great favor.
John insisted on Regent’s Park. Sherlock, once outside, relaxed into the excursion. John bought them ice cream cones and watched Sherlock eat his with the relish of the true sweet-lover that Sherlock Holmes was, and, as they walked, he reached out and took Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock didn’t even notice. Sherlock was in the middle of a monologue about ice cream melting times and murdering people in freezers and other things John was only half-listening to. Children laughed and played in the distance and an airplane droned overhead and traffic noises drifted over to them and Sherlock suddenly stopped walking.
John looked back at him.
Sherlock was staring down at their joined hands. Then he looked up at John. “You planned this,” he accused.
“Hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park,” John affirmed. “Isn’t that what you told me you wanted? Ages ago?”
Sherlock used their joined hands to tug John closer to him. “It turns out that was an extremely specific request.”
“Yes. It was.”
“What I really wanted was you.”
“I knew that. I knew it as soon as I read your letters. Here.” John reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the envelope he’d stuck in there that morning. “This is for you.”
Sherlock had to drop John’s hand to take it, since his other hand was still holding his ice cream cone. He thrust the ice cream cone into John’s hand, the better to pull the letter out of the envelope.
Dear Sherlock, the letter began. I do not have your way with words. Which is funny because I’m the one who is theoretically the writer.
“It’s your letter,” Sherlock said, in amazement. “You wrote me your letter again.”
“Well. I tried to. I didn’t have it memorized, so this is just the general gist.”
“Yes,” agreed Sherlock, affably. “You did get it a bit wrong.” But he looked so delighted to be holding the letter that John took no offense. He flipped it over to the back, where John’s list trailed off this time into To be continued. Sherlock frowned a bit. “You didn’t end it.”
“Because it doesn’t end, Sherlock,” John said, firmly. “It’s never going to end. I will never come to the end of the list of things I love about you.” John took a step closer to him. “Because now I can just say it to you, and I will say it to you every day. I love you more than I can say, more than I can tell you, so I’m going to show you. I will never let you shatter. I will keep you safe and sound. My love. My life. My heart.”
Sherlock stared at him, and then he reached for him and kissed him, hand-in-hand, in Regent’s Park.
THE END
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 08:11 pm (UTC)This whole series was absolutely fantastic, I hung on your every word and am sad to see it end. But the resolution you gave us definitely makes up for the sadness of it being the end of this ride as well. :)
Thank you so much for all this awesomeness, and I will be eagerly awaiting your next masterpiece!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 08:37 pm (UTC)And then, the ending. Ye gods. Wow.
I'm drowning in feels.
Perfect ending
Date: 2014-01-26 08:46 pm (UTC)Which made it so much more distressing. But what a relief that John got there without a minute to spare – only to spare Sherlock’s life.
”…hand-in-hand, in Regent’s Park.”
Perfect.
*happy sigh*
I can hardly believe we’ve come to the end, but it the nicest, most delightfully happy way possible. And yes I’m very much along for the ride in your attempt to fix S3!
(PS Did you realise you hadn't put this behind a cut? Just in case you want to fix it!).
*hugs*
Re: Perfect ending
Date: 2014-01-27 04:48 am (UTC)And thanks for telling me about the cut issue. I fixed it. :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 09:05 pm (UTC)I have enjoyed every word of this excellent tale. Thank you again for such a ripping good story!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 09:15 pm (UTC)Very excited about your fix-it fic. We need it after the mess that is Season Three.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 09:59 pm (UTC)You had me scared for a minute there. But all's well that ends well. I adored John rewriting his letter for Sherlock. That made me smile so much.
Welp. Now I have to go back and read the saga from the beginning now. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 10:32 pm (UTC)Cheers!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-26 10:49 pm (UTC)THis has been such a wonderful story. Nice to see its happy ending. Nice to see the happy ending never ends. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 12:49 am (UTC)***
I hope you'll come along for the ride, because I'm a little bit in love with the fic's premise.
I know you have more problems with HLV than I do--but any idea you are even a bit in love with I know is going to delight me, I can't wait!
This is why I don't review all that often.......
Date: 2014-01-27 02:21 am (UTC)While reading I was spun between feelings of joy and grief-and now am amiss for the proper words to express proper gratitude for such a wonderful tale.
For several months now upon discovering your work I have been a dedicated fan,but neglected to post a review......
So in thanks for providing what I believe is a simply superb finish to one of my favorite pieces of Sherlock fiction posted here,amends are to be made:
There were moments in which I verged upon discontinuation of reading this last chapter;I thought,well,this has been a pretty angst-ridden and intense write throughout,and now what if I'm headed for is a heartbreaking finale? What if Sherlock dies? Then-alright,what if he wakes up and cannot recognize John-has his memory or mentality damaged beyond repair? And then all we are left with is a crushed John Watson and an attack of grief?
After so much emotional investment,I don't think I could ever forgive you,dear.(I lie.About 20-35% of the time here I am,eager to absorb as much of your writing as possible.)
Anyways,we are blessed as readers to have the mercy of a light'n'fluffy ending.Relief!
I am a bit of a critic,however,and while artfully written,the story does contain one or two defects.Which is only to be expected from even the best writers,after all.
But as I was saying-and this could be more personal opinion than anything concrete-at times the writing became superfluous in detail and composition which prevented the story from maturing.
I speak not only in regards to this story,but others....I'd like to be more specific in what I'm saying exactly,but I fear of making this one "review" too interminable to pick through.
But otherwise I wouldn't have changed a thing about such a memorable tale. Kudos to you,my lovely and enthralling Earlgreytea! Sorry for what I know to be a review heavy in length,but hopefully my intentions are not lost.
Looking forward to more drama,comedy and romance here in future!
-Grenda XOXO
Re: This is why I don't review all that often.......
Date: 2014-01-27 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 03:48 am (UTC)Thanks so much for sharing this!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 05:31 am (UTC)I'm looking forward to all of your fix-it fics too :)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-28 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-27 11:49 pm (UTC)Beautiful ending with the unfinished letter, I loved that. Which makes me a tiny bit sad that the series has come to an end ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-28 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-28 08:18 am (UTC)Lovely lovely ending. Love this whole Letters series. :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-15 09:25 pm (UTC)“Sherlock,” said John, even though it was clear Sherlock must be unconscious, because maybe he would hear John, somehow, someway, and remember that he had something to live for and he really needed to fight.
[...]
John, thought Sherlock, and, annoyed at the silence and the darkness, began pushing it away. It was sticky and stubborn and kept trying to pull him back, but he swirled toward John, keeping the fact of him in his head. John, John, John, somewhere, wanting him, looking for him, calling him, and he was keeping him waiting, and Sherlock struggled and struggled
Sherlock clawing his way back to life for John is now canon, and you didn't even know that when you wrote it. Gosh, you're strong! :D
“If this was all some elaborate plan,” John continued, as Mycroft slid in after him, “I wish you two had let me in on it this time, because I really could have done without—” It wasn’t a plan, and he knew it wasn’t a plan, and he ended the sentence on a sob that he pushed down.
Ow, poor John. That's heartbreaking.
“I don’t want him imprisoned somewhere, I want him dead. If you haven’t killed him, I am going to find him, and I am going to do it myself, and do not even for a second think otherwise.”
*applauds and cheers* Yes John, this is the right way to react when someone tries to kill Sherlock. You don't go and forgive the guy. *gives Mary a sidelong look*
Sherlock, getting the hang of it, twitched his index finger. Hello, he meant it to say
[...]
Then John reappeared, and he was grinning. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even say hello. Hello. I’ve missed you. I love you. Good, a smile, that’s what I was going for.”
That's adorable. Sherlock meaning to say "Hello" to John with his index finger on waking from his coma, and John getting out of the room and coming back immediately just to return the "hello".
Aaaaah, the end is perfect. The circle is complete. I love how John keeps the promise he made in Letters, Revisited about walking hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park, and how he writes his love letter again. I remember, when Sherlock got the letter wet and ruined it in Anguilla and was so sad about it, I wrote in my comment that, since he had memorised it, he could dictate it to John. It's even better that John did it all alone, as a surprise to Sherlock! I also love that John repeats the last words of the letter aloud, because when he wrote them they were a promise but also a plea for Sherlock to let him love him, and he could fear that Sherlock wouldn't let him, but now they're together and happy and the words are only a promise, there's no fear any more, and... *clears her throat* Well. That, er ... thing that you, er, that you wrote... That was, um ... good. :D
That was, in a way, a fix-it story for season 3. The scenes at the hospital, the way John doesn't leave Sherlock's bedsite, the whole scene of Sherlock waking up, were so comforting to read after seeing His Last Vow. If you had written the episode it would have been so much better. *is not biased at all* Anyway, that was a wonderful series, from the start to the end, and the ending is bloody perfect. (I know I already said it. I don't care. I JUST LOVE THAT ENDING. :D)
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Date: 2014-09-30 07:19 pm (UTC)I loved every part of it, but my favourite is the first one. Sherlock's letters were so desperately him! And I love that you ended it on a letter again. Thank you!!
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Date: 2014-10-01 03:11 am (UTC)