I have arrived, at last, to the end of my May prompts, this being the one for the 32nd of May, a day I decreed to exist so that I could add one last prompt of my own for myself, in honor of @calaisreno,😘 and the magnificent, awesome festival they brought into being with the May writerly shenanigans! So much creativity unleashed, all at the invitation of one very special person. 🤗 As you may have guessed from the title, the word for my own personal May 32nd 🙃 is: appreciative.
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This last chapter and the previous ones are here at ao3.
Program Note: In the penultimate chapter posted at ao3, I added a note saying that I've decided to take these thematic seat-of-the-pants daily prompt responses and (fingers crossed) turn them into a real story. It will take a while, as it needs to then have, like -- AN ACTUAL PLOT -- but now I'm curious about all the ins and outs of how this premise I've been winging might work 🙃 -- of John figuring out that Sherlock is alive and strong-arming Mycroft into allowing John to secretly shadow him as protection -- so I'll try to figure it out!
tldr; one of these days, look out for take 2 of my May 2024 prompts as a proper fic of its own: Threading a Shadow through the Eye of the Storm :-)
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Warning: This ended up being 3x as long as any daily prompt chapter has a right to be . . .
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Sherlock slips through the jetliner’s door at the last possible moment, very nearly missing his flight from Zagreb to Split. Feeling skittish after suspecting that he was being followed, he’d chosen to advance his departure by one day, erring on the side of caution that it was time to move on. His concern had been sparked after a bank visit to obtain funds to support his travels in Croatia; after moving down the steep set of stairs into the crowd of bodies milling about Jelacic Square, he had registered some sort of movement in his peripheral vision, giving rise to a judgment that he was being tailed. An impression of an instant was of dubious value for making decisions, but turning around for a closer look would have negated any slight advantage he might have gained.
He had disappeared behind a horse-drawn carriage, slipped into an alley and swiftly turned the corner, placing himself at the back of a cafe next to the rubbish bins. He’d made quick work of switching out of his navy blazer and forest green button-down shirt for the precautionary items in his briefcase: a white and red striped athletic shirt, a camo patterned bucket hat, and a worn gray rucksack. He binned the briefcase and his original clothes, and melted back into the crowd, reasonably certain that his wardrobe change undercut any efforts to resume tracking him at a distance.
Later that evening, he’d called the hotel and made a false arrangement to extend his stay for a week, attempting to wrong-foot any unwelcome players he may have attracted. He had purchased a new ticket on a different carrier using his Norwegian alias, and was reassured that, at least for now, he had neutralized any threat. He’d been on the road for so long, however, that he'd lost any sense of whether such actions were evidence that he was executing sterling tradecraft, or if he was seeing shadows refracted through a prism of paranoia.
An hour later, he arrives in Split without incident, and makes his way briskly toward the arrivals hall, stopping momentarily to rotate in a circle until he spies signage for the shuttle to Trogir, a city of 10,000 or so, a short distance away. He’ll be housed there for a few days – or at least until he determines whether or not there is more intelligence to be had in Croatia – before he boards the train that will carry him to Sarajevo for a similar stop, and then on to Belgrade and the risks it poses.
His fellow riders on the shuttle appear to be innocuous – locals returning from holidays or shopping trips, visitors touring the Dalmatian coast, house cleaners and sales clerks and restaurant staff on their way home after a day’s work in the city. As he leaves the transport, his anxiety is goading him to move quickly, but he forces himself to approximate a meandering gait, so as to appear innocuous himself.
He completes a circuitous route to end up nearly where he began, making his way to the DHL baggage station to retrieve a package holding the address and keys for the safe house, along with a miscellany of other items: colored brochures, bulky printouts, grainy photos. It’s been some time since he’s had a report from home; he doubts that there will be anything about London, and a quick glance tells him that his supposition is correct. He is never sure whether or not the lack of content is a good thing or a bad thing. Hearing nothing, were he to admit it to himself, is probably the better option, since it keeps him from having to battle the misery that arises when confronted with how long the tally of days marking the presence of his absence extends.
By the time he's located his lodging, dusk is beginning to close off the day; he opens the door to a one-bedroom apartment in a small building that is currently unoccupied. It's a relief to have a door to lock behind him, to be enclosed within four walls where he can begin to dial down his hyper-awareness of his surroundings.
The place contains nondescript chairs, a dining table with a stained surface that has seen better days, and lamps with dusty shades, but it seems comfortable enough. His needs are few, pared back to essentials – security and quiet being the most important among them. He leaves the lights switched off, and walks out onto the small balcony, brushing away the pollen that covers the wooden chair, which he uses as a front-row seat as the sun sets over the sea, a silent and solitary figure who becomes less and less visible as darkness first enshadows him, and then fully cloaks his presence.
He's worn-out, through and through, his emotional being as much as his physical state; he feels as if his nervous system is made of cast iron filings, heavy and tending toward rust, a corrosive scraping of his soul. He tries to shake off his turn into a viscerally maudlin state and to keep any further negative waves at bay by putting himself into motion, rising up from his seat and returning to the apartment in search of something to eat, if only for a distraction. He supposes it may be too much to hope that there is food waiting there for him; he regrets having made such haste to get to this new phase of his mission. Perhaps he’ll find some overlooked cartons of one sort or another; after all, his contacts aren’t hoteliers, but busy agents in the field, tasked with many more matters than dancing attendance on him. He moves toward the kitchen, turning on a few table lamps along the way, and is pleasantly surprised to find that there are food parcels to unwrap.
He tears off a portion of lepinja, the local flatbread, which he has come to like very much. There is a carton of eggs, a bottle of olive oil, tins of sardines packed in coarse salt, and fresh lemons. Packages wrapped in wax paper turn out to be several kinds of cheese, and inside a carrier bag there is a container of jam made from plums and another from figs, and a trio of multi-hued jars of honey.
His flagging spirits lift slightly, and he mocks himself that a loaf of bread and the taste of plums he licks off his fingers has made the difference, as he can’t provide an objective rationale for how such a mundane circumstance has dispersed some of the inky clots lodged in his mind. He savors the reveal staged by the opening of the door of the refrigerator to see if there’s anything inside, and is pleased at what he finds: a crockery bowl of cooked pasta which looks to be sauced with truffles, prosciutto, grilled sausages, bottled milk, and orange soda. He closes the door and turns to the other end of the counter, where he is particularly appreciative to find a plate of phyllo pastry containing a surfeit of cherries, and a version of shortbread biscuits stamped with outlines of bees. He dips his already sticky fingers into the cherry pudding and licks them clean, and then bites into one of the biscuits, which explodes on his tongue with the simultaneous taste of pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, and then quickly gathers up the rest, biting into a second one. Mrs. Hudson couldn’t have done better, he thinks, with a wistful nod of approval, as a whisper of melancholy reaches out and wraps around him.
He brings the plate of biscuits and the milk to the table to inspect various items that have been placed there. The most obvious is a map of Southeastern Europe spread out across most of the surface, and next to it, a tidy pile of travel guides for Croatia and Serbia – he finds the idea of a travel guide to Serbia to be grimly humorous, given the peril that he is bound to encounter when he arrives there and tries to disrupt the organization he hopes to set on a path to destruction. He rolls his eyes, finding it doubtful that its pages of advice on local highlights will contain anything relevant to his tasks . . . but then quickly reverses himself and thinks again: information of another kind may be exactly what he finds has been added. He’ll look at it more closely later, and sets it out of sight for now on the empty chair he’s standing next to.
He opens the cover of a book entitled Omis: The City of Pirates, produced by the city's board of tourism, and pulls out a chair to page through it, losing himself in another world for a few moments, adrift in the gulf of Venice in the twelfth century, having set sail from the former pirate town, aboard a medieval corsair preying on Adriatic shipping, which slips surreptitiously into one of the multitude of small coves and inlets that form a jagged saw-toothed edge along the Dalmatian coast.
His pleasure turns to delight when he puts the book aside to find a reprinted volume of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates from 1724, and he luxuriates in the indulgence of re-visiting tales about Blackbeard and Calico Jack. When he finds to his chagrin that he has eaten all of the biscuits, he decides it is time for something approximating a proper meal, or at least as proper as it can be, with himself leaning against the counter, as he’s not inclined to set up a place setting for one, for reasons that are unnecessary for him to devote attention to excavating.
His tabletop search later turns up one more item: a dvd set of an American historical adventure series, Black Sails. He remembers watching most of the first season at 221B with John – in the time before he’d abruptly had to make his exit from London. The totality of his haul of riches here reminds him of the safe house in Vienna, where he’d found a similar cluster of goods seemingly tailored to his tastes. Sherlock thinks acerbically that big brother must be experiencing prickings of guilt about his little brother's odyssey, and therefore has been supplying agents with a tip list. He finds it hard to credit, to be honest. It's certainly uncharacteristic for Mycroft to indulge him so, but perhaps he is becoming sentimental as he ages, or perhaps believes he needs to balance the books given the hazards that Sherlock is currently facing. He remembers that the safe house in Vienna had been stocked with a dvd set entitled Good Omens, which he’d sheepishly welcomed as an auspicious portent, despite knowing that such flights of fancy are nonsensical. That the current option on offer is Black Sails, is, he acknowledges, a reasonable augury of what lies ahead once he boards the train that will take him across the border from Croatia into Serbia.
For now, he feels fleetingly cared for and content, a rare state of existence in the two years and more since he has been away from London. A short while later, he puts the first disc into the player, and lies down on the sofa with a cushion wedged under his head; within minutes he falls into a deep sleep that lasts for seventeen hours.
When he awakens, it’s to a workshop in his mind palace, where he finds himself sharpening a steel bar capable of taking the brunt of a flinty determination to spark an endgame to his Moriartian exile. As he leaves the workroom to wander through the corridors, he opens the door to the tower that represents the last fortress to be breached. He doesn’t know if his chances of survival would benefit from an effort to be optimistic, rather than remaining resolutely realistic, but he’s dubious that he will be able to conjure up a positive vision of the future if he tries, without devolving into a spectre at the feast, and decides against making the effort.
He studies the Serbian guidebook with fierce attention – it is indeed rife with coded information – until he thinks it’s been shorn of all the surplus value that it contains. As dusk approaches, he realizes that he’s been sitting in one position from his awakening in the early hours of the morning until now; his muscles ache, and so does his head. A restlessness sweeps over him, and he decides there’s no more to be done at present; he’ll be waiting at least another day or two to rendezvous with sources who can update his earlier forays through Stockholm, Copenhagen, Malmo, and Gothenburg, the power base of one of the most dangerous of the arms of the Serbian mafia, built on a foundation from the mass immigration of Yugoslavian guest-workers to Sweden in the 1970s. Buttressed by the Yugoslavian secret services -- who made use of the expat criminal outfits as informants and assassins, providing them with weapons and legal protection -- the gangsters had grown to be formidably wealthy. The horizontal sturcture of the organizations have given Sherlock a great deal of trouble in bringing the personnel into the light, one of the reasons that he has been gone so much longer from London than he had ever imagined. Moriarty the man could well have been the god of chaos, but Moriarty, the institution, was a model of stealth order.
He decides to take a breather and to play tourist for the evening and thumbs a ride into the city, using the opportunity in conversing with the driver to re-acquaint himself with Lukas Sigerson’s accent and demeanor. By the time his friendly volunteer transport service has dropped him off near the city center, he’s realigned his presentation of self -- despite lacking enough of the bearded scruff to be completely in character, and the fact of his hair currently being a russet-tinged shade of Venetian blonde -- but he can make it work for his persona . . . he thinks. The lighter locks may lend themselves to being expected to be inhabiting a more gregarious disposition, which may be an insurmountable hurdle.
He's intrigued by what he sees before him as he makes his way further into the city center, the extensive Roman garrisoned fortress and monumental-scale palace built in the late third century for the emperor Diocletian to inhabit in a splendorous retirement, and even ever after, as his imperial remains were contained within the custom-built mausoleum. As he strolls around the perimeter, examining the walls, he drifts in and out of different tour groups being conducted in Croatian, English, Japanese, German, and Italian, hearing how several hundred years after Diocletian’s death and the fall of Rome, townspeople elsewhere in the region fled from invaders who had razed their city, seeking out the safety of the empty palace, where they had re-constituted their lives, incorporating their houses and workplaces within the impregnable palace walls and the cavernous barrel-vaulted cellar. In doing so, they had seeded the emergence of the city that now exists, and set the conditions for the continual presence of local people living and working within its precincts on up until the present-day, several hundred buildings, with several thousand people. Sherlock hears snatches of tales and questions and answers, including a 20th century description of the palace as “the most serviceable ruin in the world.”
He chooses to enter the palace compound itself from the east side, through the walls of the so-called Silver gate. He walks lightly down the pathway that takes him to the round vestibule that served as the first section for the corridor leading to the emperor’s apartments, and stands quietly, hands clasped behind his back, imagining the reverberations that music played within its circular wall would generate. He gazes up through the oculus at a waning crescent moon, acutely aware of the intangible stretching of earth connected with sky. As he wanders the compound, walking across stone streets gleaming from the passage of uncountable numbers of feet from ancient times until the present, he makes a game of deducing the palace's transformations, feeling rather smug when he reads on a plaque that his estimate that the emperor’s body had been jettisoned by later inhabitants to a place or places unknown, and his mausoleum repurposed as a Christian church is correct. He nods approvingly at another informational plaque that sardonically conveys the historical fact that the church became a cathedral named in honor of St. Domnius, one of the Christian spiritual leaders that Diocletian had persecuted and executed.
He wanders without purpose through the labyrinth of narrow passages and hidden courtyards, occasionally noticing someone looking out from higher up, or reeling in the washing hung out in lines above the streets. He wonders idly at the gamut of emotions that have restlessly circulated through the formal halls and the private corners, allowing himself to lower his threat level, determinedly eschewing his usual practice of straining his ears to identify hints of adversaries who seek to thwart him. He is rounding a corner when he hears strains of jazz music reverberating against the walls, a silky contralto whose words sing of wanting something cool, off to the right somewhere a bit further beyond. He decides to allow the music to pull him toward its source, and the vibrato leads him to a door with a sign that announces that what lies within is Marvlvs Library Jazz Bar.
“And what might a library jazz bar be?” he muses, peering closer in the shadowy space at the explanatory plaque on the wall, which says:
"You are standing outside where once the home of Marko Marulic (1450-1524) was located, a man whom contemporaries styled as the Christian Virgil, and who later came to be known as the 'Dante of Croatian literature.' Among his many works was the epic poem Judita (1501), based on the Book of Judith.”
He steps across the threshold, after first giving way to a cat who darts around his ankles ahead of him, to see what he'll discover. The space is of a piece with the rest of the palace: the contemporary layout is built atop the ancient stone floor, and incorporates the original graceful arches, as well as a wooden beamed ceiling and other touches that are likely five centuries old, from the time Marulic was held to have lived here. Starting near the entrance, books are shelved everywhere one looks. As Sherlock walks alongside the rows of neatly lined-up titles, he discerns an organizational logic, although not one based on alphabetization or time period. What stands out for him at first is how the subject matter moves from the physical world, to the biological world, and to the social world, moving then into representations and culture, from lies to truths, and from hearts to minds.
The bar is relatively empty at this late hour of a week-day evening, with only a few pairs of scattered patrons, and a lone bartender towards the back, so he commandeers a generously sized table intended for a group, that is placed beneath a massive painting of "Saint Jerome in His Study" – he is surely seated in the only bar on the planet which features a depiction of the patron saint of translators, encyclopedists, and librarians. He is charmed to find that the menu is itself a multi-paged book, filled with small stories, quotations, and poems woven in between the items listed on offer. Sherlock returns to the menu’s prologue, which he had skipped initially; the owner, it appears, is himself a poet: in fact in his introductory comments he remarks that he considers himself “to be married to his poetry,” and Sherlock feels a flicker of satisfaction at the second-hand encounter with a kindred spirit.
In keeping with the literary rationale of the bar, Sherlock has retrieved some volumes to skim, chosen from the nineteenth century: Bees: Their Habits, Management, and Treatment by the Reverend J.G. Wood; a second edition of Samuel Bagster’s The Management of Bees, with a description of the ‘Ladies Safety Hive’; and Thomas Nutt, Humanity to Honey Bees: or Practical Directions for the Management of honey-bees upon an improved and humane plan by which the lives of bees may be preserved, and abundance of honey of a superior quality may be obtained. He also has brought with him a mid-twentieth century volume with an enticing cover: H.J. Wadey, THE BEHAVIOUR OF BEES – and of bee-keepers. He considers it to be unlikely that he’ll eventually realize his dream of settling somewhere close to the sea and becoming a keeper of bees himself. But surely there is no harm in imagining that it might be so for a few hours.
He loses track of time as he immerses himself in his haul, until he senses reverberations from a tapping sound coming from the table, and then, startled, looks up, noticing the bartender he’d glimpsed after his entrance, standing beside him. He tamps down his threat response: it's merely a neutral personage, a pleasingly graceful young man whom he assesses to be twenty-six or twenty-seven, sporting a medieval phoenix tattoo, beautifully colored, that can be glimpsed from under the rolled-up sleeves of a soft, sky blue linen shirt tucked neatly into the snugly-fitted jeans that are at eye-level. When Sherlock raises his face, he sees a sun-kissed complexion and a deep set of dimples, dark brown eyes that match the color of the man's hair, which is cut longer at the crown and angled rakishly over his right eye, the tapered sides fading until they touch the open skin at the collar of his shirt. Although not a threat, Sherlock's pulse has yet to completely return to its baseline.
“You look like you’ll be thirsty soon,” the blue-and-brown speaker says teasingly, “if you’re not already, with how hard you’ve been going at your research. May I bring you something to eat or drink? We'll not be open very much longer, so it's now or never."
For some reason that escapes him at the moment, Sherlock can’t seem to summon up a vocal response, although this doesn’t seem to put off his visitor.
“Perhaps you’d like something regional, to soak in the aura of the place more deeply?”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “If that’s a roundabout way of suggesting slivovitz, please, no thank you, please. I know for certain that I am not going to be in Croatia long enough to develop a taste for it.”
“Well, yes, it did cross my mind,” the bartender says with a cheeky smile that activates his captivating dimples. “But I’d like to stay on your good side. No, I was thinking of something that would pair well with your bee-keeping books.”
“And that would be?” Sherlock asks, his voice softening slightly, awarding the young man points for fine observational skills.
“Medenica,” the bartender says confidently. “A honey-based brandy. It is well-known in these parts as an excellent aperitif – to stimulate the appetite and open the digestive system – and, as it happens, as an excellent post-meal digestif as well. Which is not to say that it is not an excellent drink to have first thing in the morning, as an aid in ‘cleaning the body,’ although it is also true that it really is suitable for any time of the day, or night, for that matter, such as when alone, and perhaps needing some assistance in ensuring a restful sleep. So, you see, no matter what your state of being presently, it is a superb option.”
“Well,” Sherlock says dryly, “It seems as if the only possible answer is . . . yes. So, yes," he offers, with the slightest of smiles.
“Wonderful! Feel free to wave me off, but perhaps you’d like to join me at the bar, keep me company, while I prepare it for you? It will take a few more moments than how we typically serve it, as I’ll warm it before pouring. Oh, and I should introduce myself ," he says with a slight bow. "My name is Petar.”
Sherlock nods his head in response, and says primly, “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Petar. I’m Lukas.”
Once he’s seated at the counter, Sherlock finds that he is mesmerized by the thick, golden liquid sliding down the side of the glass, and then realizes that he’s lost track of whatever Petar has been saying, and tries to catch up. “I’m sorry, what was it that you asked?”
Peter laughs. “If you work with plants? Or if you are perhaps an entomologist?”
“Not presently,” Sherlock says. “Perhaps one day. My work is in the field of computer science.”
“And what is your area of expertise, Lukas?”
Sherlock looks at Petar skeptically. “You really want to know?”
“Really," he replies, his hand brushing against Sherlock's as he places the heavy, warmed glass in front of him.
Sherlock pulls up the relevant details from his background cover. “Computational intelligence. Fuzzy logic.” He takes a sip from his glass, and shakes his head in wonder at how good the honeyed brandy tastes. “My research entails trying to program computers to answer questions that can’t be solved in exact terms, with either a yes or a no, because the questions arise from processes entangled with highly complex, changing variables, that are open to chance.”
“Something like the weather,” Petar suggests, beginning his evening clean-up, drying glasses, and hanging them in the hanging overhead holder.
“That’s not a bad example,” Sherlock concedes. “My focus, however, is in using biological instances as a characteristic approach. Think about the survival of a species – that’s a problem that requires a solution. Natural selection doesn’t offer a yes or no answer; it inherently diversifies the possible range of solutions through mutations, which themselves are impacted by open-ended sets of variables.”
“And how is it that these interests have brought you to Split? Although I can make an argument that we live amongst fuzzy logic here," he chuckles, "So perhaps that answers itself."
“I was in Zagreb for a meeting of the Computational Intelligence Society, at a conference hosted by I triple E – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.”
“And how is it that a computer man finds himself having traveled from technical proceedings to wandering about an ancient palace?” Petar asks.
Sherlock shrugs. “I’d never seen the Adriatic coast, and the thought of all that sun was appealing. Living in the northern latitudes inspires one to seek out occasions to escape the darkness." He sips thoughtfully, closing his eyes as the liquid moves from his mouth down his throat. “I have a question for you,” he offers. “The informational sign out front explains the reason for the library theme, as it is presumed to be the site of a lauded author. But how did the choice of jazz music come along with it?”
“That’s an easy one,” Petar replies. “The owner didn’t feel compelled to carry through the theme completely, as he thought late medieval, early modern music would be unlikely to draw crowds.”
“Fair enough,” Sherlock responds, and then tries some teasing of his own. “Working from the information in the menu, mightn’t a writer of moral and theological treatises feel compelled to haunt the premises, unamused by the rhythms of modern jazz permeating his home?"
“Well, the owner claims that Marulic wrote on a wide range of topics. For example," Petar says, with a wink, "I’ve heard it bandied about that he wrote glosses on the erotic poetry of Catullus.”
“Did he now?” Sherlock responds, an inviting lilt accompanying his words. "Do tell.”
Petar grins. “I’m sure we have a volume of Catullus’ poems at the ready if you give me a minute or two. In the meantime, would you like another drink?" and his smile broadens when Sherlock agrees. “My shift is almost over, as it’s nearing time for us to close. Would you mind waiting for me for a short time, with your bee books to keep you company, while I finish tidying and then lock up? After that, I can join you with a glass of Medenica as well, and we can chat at our leisure.”
Sherlock offers a small, lop-sided smile. “That sounds acceptable.”
“Well, then, Živjeli, to us!” Petar says, warmly. "The night has only just begun, and there are so many possibilities before us.”
Here I am in August -- uggggh -- August! -- finally, at last, able to re-wind back to May 31st, and finish up my contribution to the May Prompt Fest, today and tomorrow, with the last two prompts. Last two prompts, you say? Surely you know, bee, that there is no May 32nd?
Ah, yes, but I have decreed it to be thus, because I want to add one last prompt of my own for myself, in honor of @calaisreno,😘 and the magnificent, awesome festival they brought into being with the May writerly shenanigans! So much creativity unleashed, all at the invitation of one very special person.🤗
My word for tomorrow -- my own personal May 32nd🙃, as it were -- is: appreciative.
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This latest chapter and the previous ones are here at ao3.
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The extravagant greens of the Cotswolds begin to recede from view, and John stretches at an awkward angle to catch a last glimpse of the dense forest canopy shot through with shafts of sunlight. He drops back into his seat and centers himself, shutting his eyes as he readjusts the earbud he’d jostled, smoothing his hands across the tops of his thighs, fidgeting, his restless mind acting like a needle skipping across a damaged vinyl record.
His mind skirts the edge of lucid dreaming, and he makes an effort to surface, knowing that they’ll soon encounter the Severn and cross over into Wales. He gazes out the window, focusing on the outspread wings of a kestrel as it glides high above purple and gold drifts of heather and gorse, likely in search of prey, John supposes, but he thinks idly that it might also be for the sheer sport of being in command of the air.
The sharp edges of London’s stone and concrete abrade as each mile of track recedes, streets and buildings recollected as if glimpsed through infinitesimal droplets of fog. The opaqueness somehow eases the way for the broken pieces of his past life with Sherlock to reassemble in his mind. John closes his eyes once more, letting the illusory cordon that encloses his memories of his last days at 221B to dematerialize.
What first comes to mind is the dissonant clanging of the media that was the intrusive accompaniment to his and Sherlock’s movements when, unbeknownst, Moriarty had been toying with them. He remembers a feeling of disquiet pushing him off-center, sweeping his legs out from under him. He had sensed danger, although he’d not been able to identify why, and that had left him irritable and uncertain. Sherlock had borne the brunt of his roiled state of mind in their last days together, his friend becoming quieter and more withdrawn in response.
John makes a try at looking from the outside in; at first he fancies the vantage point as being as if looking through the sitting room window, but then grimaces. A rather ham-handed conceit compared to the actuality of the surveillance devices that were watching and listening 24/7. His mouth twists and he feels acid flaring up from his stomach. All he has to do is to imagine what Moriarty saw and heard being recorded.
He thinks back on the morning they’d been knee deep in newsprint, Sherlock flouncing about like an agitated heron in his blue dressing gown, exasperated at the faux bonhomie of being hailed as “Boffin Sherlock Holmes” in 48-point type in the Daily Star.
Sherlock had already clocked a reference to John on the inside, and tipped him to it. John had immediately begun vocalizing his dismay at the innuendo about his intimacy with Sherlock being hung round his neck, while his friend paced back and forth, seemingly preoccupied with dramatizing his annoyance at the mean-spirited gift of the deerstalker the Yard had given him.
He’d rounded on Sherlock, his voice urgent and heated, verbally grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, telling him that the press attention had become too much, and that they needed to be careful.
Sherlock had stopped short and had asked him two questions: what had he meant about them needing to be more careful? And why was John so bothered about what people said about Sherlock in the press?
John had deflected – and, in his non-responsiveness, had signaled to the-most-observant-man-he-knew, that no, his questions didn’t warrant a discussion. He’d left Sherlock with the impression that John thought that Sherlock’s image – and, therefore, because of their close association, John’s image – was the paramount issue. He had only himself to blame, if, in warning Sherlock that the press would turn on him as a figure of note, that the conclusion that Sherlock drew from the immediate context was of John being convinced of the necessity of thwarting any implications that the two of them were more than colleagues.
John acknowledges that, were he to have been more aware, that he would not have been surprised if Sherlock had thought that John was regretting their partnership. After all, John had spent the previous week correcting Sherlock in public. And, going forward, he would instruct him multiple times not to be himself.
In fact, he’d underscored his dismay by demanding that Sherlock keep a low profile, stay out of the news, confine himself to a case of little consequence.
And Sherlock had heard him, and had done as he had asked. The next morning John had found him cloistered indoors, occupying himself with a case that kept him completely out of sight, given that he was examining written materials relating the facts of a case that had been said to be a suicide . . . back in the 19th century. And John had been oblivious to Sherlock’s deference, and had mocked him for it.
That was the last moment that there was anything that Sherlock could have done to remain cloistered. Moriarty had been, of course, merely biding time until the moment had arrived for his grand re-entrance, pirouetting through the defenses of the kingdom’s strongholds as if they were tissue paper, detonating Sherlock’s inner psyche like a ticking time bomb.
As he scans the past, John wonders: If he’d been sharper, and quicker off the mark, could he have managed to disarm Moriarty's threats at the start, as the bastard lured Sherlock further and further into harm’s way? No, he decides, it wouldn’t have been possible; Moriarty would simply have mounted other threats.
But there's the rub: John is a soldier, in a campaign where his objective was to protect Sherlock. Winning one battle wouldn’t have made them the victors in Moriarty’s war. But it could have won them some respite, by degrading the enemy’s efforts, slowing the chain of events by throwing a spanner in the works, buying them time to take stock, to bring in reinforcements, to gather more intelligence: to give them a fighting chance, by having secured a better position from which to do battle.
John mentally braces himself for what comes next, the worst of it. In the last hours, he’d accused Sherlock of not caring for Mrs. Hudson (that was a cavalier bit of non-sense for the ages). And he’d accused Sherlock of having personal agency and responsibility for attracting the assassins, and, as a consequence, putting those around him in positions to have their lives taken from them.
He’d lashed out at Sherlock, calling him a machine, and, losing his temper, had responded to Sherlock’s statement that being alone protected him, by self-righteously declaring that “friends protect friends” – as he walked away from his friend, leaving his friend alone at St. Bart’s . . . and unprotected. As had Lestrade. As had Mycroft.
(He becomes aware of a notion niggling at the edges of his reverie . . . “Alone” at “Bart’s.” Bart's. Molly. Molly. Bart's. . . . is he overlooking that there may have been one friend who had remained at Sherlock’s side? Had Molly been at Bart’s? Perhaps? . . . He wonders . . .)
John stays with what he remembers, asking himself: what if he had paused, had taken a beat, had really listened when Sherlock had said: “I need to think.” What if he’d asked Sherlock what he needed to think about? Might Sherlock have said something like: “Moriarty’s been screwing with us, John. Why don’t we double-check that this call about Mrs. Hudson isn’t a red herring? It will only take a few seconds.”
What would have been the result, if he had simply stopped at that moment, and opted to follow Sherlock’s lead? But he’d not done so, had he? And Sherlock had believed himself to be an object of scorn from John as the endpoint of the final problem barreled forward.
John sighs, and rubs at his dry eyes, only making them hurt even further. He looks at his watch, if only to distract himself from the gloom evoked by his thoughts, and sees by the elapsed time that they must be near where they’ll make their descent into the tunnel that will carry them underneath the Severn. They are, and four minutes of darkness unspool, before they begin their ascent, and emerge into the light on the western shore.
When they pull into the station, he knows now why he has come to Cardiff, why he had left London to arrive at this touchpoint from the past that had set in motion his and Sherlock's first case. There is no way, now, in the present, that he can undo how events had played out -- but he can bear witness to them, and try to sort through the confusion to find what truths he might discover. He will do what he can to protect Sherlock’s reputation, and to bring evidence to bear that will require the great and the good to see the stories spun by “Jim Moriarty” for the falsehoods that they are.
And he’ll also collect Sherlock’s cases into a more permanent form than as a set of blog entries. He makes a vow that he will write a book, and, in doing so, that he will take pride in setting down the adventures of Sherlock Holmes for posterity.
And, perhaps, along the way, he will put into print the words that he should have said then: and to say them, now.
This latest chapter and the previous ones are here at ao3.
(I'm a bit distant at this point from May, I know! . . . and there's one more prompt still to go, but then I'll finally be caught up with everyone else :-)
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As the train moves through the wintered fields, stations shuttered long ago flicker past, punctuated bits of expired time. An hour out from London, they begin to slow on the approach to Swindon, coming to a stop in a four-minute flurry of going and coming. Gathered round the door are a dozen or so lads in football kit with red dragons across their chests, waiting for the woman and the little boy who had been a few seats down from John to step off from the carriage. They scramble aboard, noisily pleased with having won their match, bringing in a blast of cold air that reaches in and chills John underneath his neck. They muck about as they jostle each other, eventually more or less coordinating their sprawls amongst extra rows of seats beyond what's necessary, some of them popping up to take selfies and shoot videos.
A faint smile whispers and shuts in an instant across John’s face at their exuberance, and he plugs his earphones into his mobile. He dithers about what to listen to, finally settling on a playlist that comes up after he types “welsh music” into the search bar, and then closes his eyes and slackens against the back of his seat as the train pulls away from the station and they resume their journey.
He’s vaguely bemused by young people's social media, especially their attachment to filming their lives; quite different from people his age, who've never been much fussed about having a camera to hand. He does regret, though, that he doesn’t have many photos of Sherlock; he always felt he needed to be surreptitious about taking shots, as if doing it in plain view would disturb their balancing act as flatmates. There are two amongst the small number that he likes very much: one of Sherlock facing the window while playing his violin, sunlight bringing out coppery glints in his dark curls; a second of him laid out on the sofa, allegedly in his mind palace, but actually taking a kip like an ordinary mortal. He doesn’t think Sherlock knew that he had a small set of photos – they were transferred to his laptop and sequestered several levels down inside a folder titled “Household Chores”– but since the git seemed to think that whatever was John’s, was his as well, he wouldn’t be surprised if somehow Sherlock had come across them one day when he was poking his nose about where he shouldn’t.
That thought begets another (didSherlockevertakeanypicturesofJohn?) although he decides to duck out from under that one straight off and leave it behind.
As the soft, plaintive reverberations of a pavane-like harp play inside his head, he recalls with chagrin how he jollied Sherlock into attending the media events that occurred in that last span of their time together. Clients had wanted to thank Sherlock for his successful efforts on their behalf: the rub was that they wanted to do so in front of the press. There was an auction house director for whom he’d retrieved a stolen painting worth nearly two million quid, and the big cheese banker who had been kidnapped, and then rescued by the detective.
The amount of interest Sherlock had in attending these: nil.
But he eventually complied, as he usually did when John asked him to do something; that hadn’t meant, however, that he’d play nicely. He had been cuttingly deductive, peevishly stating at the first event that the gift box held out to him contained diamond cufflinks – adding dismissively, “all my cuffs have buttons!” – and offering a similar pronouncement at the second, giving the box a shake and sharing the reveal – “tie pin!" – adding dismissively: “I don’t wear ties.”
John had intervened, correcting and redirecting Sherlock to concede to propriety and conform to convention, saying pointedly to the auction house director: “He means thank you,” to which Sherlock had snarked, “Do I?” to be countered by John pushing back: "Just say it.” In the second event he just gave it up as a bad job, and . . . shushed him.
The regular way of their world, right? Sherlock being an arse, John trying to save his arse.
As time had passed, however, John had begun to think that his attitude had been flirting at condescension, in a way that hadn’t been there at the start of their work together. When had he shifted to focusing on Sherlock as being deficient as a human being in social situations, as opposed to seeing Sherlock’s idiosyncrasies as indicative of degrees of comfort (or not) with those he perceived as outsiders?
To be fair, Sherlock’s disdain for the gifts was defensible: he didn’t sport the posh affectation of cufflinks for every day; nor had he ever been seen to wear a tie. If it was “the thought that counts,” then the thought appeared to be that, beyond his utility, Sherlock-as-individual was a human-as-null-placeholder.
In being thrust into the spotlight, abetted by John, Sherlock had been diverted from his own circumspect path, onto the one controlled by the ravening press, where it was they who decided on the right of way, whether there was safe passage to be had, and, if so, at what cost.
What if, in running interference in a way that placed John close to the side of propriety and conformity, he’d instead put his thumb on the scale for Sherlock?
It might have gone perhaps something like this: [Sherlock speaks] [John: subtle nudge, subtle nudge] [John (sotto voce): “What a wanker, eh?”] [Sherlock smiles at John] [John smiles at Sherlock] [John and Sherlock are pleased with themselves, and each other, two-of-a-kind people who laugh together at crime scenes, without giving a hang about proper decorum] [Sherlock feigns politeness] [Social order is maintained . . . a bit].
And, actually, for whose benefit were these thank-you events? Looking back with a skeptical eye, John sees them now as highlighting the givers: it was the poncy auction house director and the illustrious banker who were preening in front of the cameras – Sherlock was a pretext, surplus to requirements. Neither of the worthies needed to stage a press availability to thank Sherlock: appreciation could have been conveyed privately.
The simp of an art dealer, smarmily posing beside the “masterpiece by Turner,” with Sherlock off to the other side, while the public relations cameraman snapped images suitable for public distribution. Turning that skeptical eye on the whole scenario, the painting would now command likely a doubled sold-at-auction price, given the publicity and the story surrounding it having juiced up the intangibles that make up any artwork’s value on the open market.
The self-important banker, posed on the stairs within the embrace of his loving family – several steps higher than the detective, turfing him out onto the pavement. The journos gossiping that Mr. Something-or-Other-in-the-City was ready to climb the greasy pole, to one day get himself slotted in as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a launching pad for Prime Minister, as Major, Brown, and Sunak had done. Among the side effects of the kidnapping as media spectacle had been the boost it had given to the financier’s perceived significance, valor, and . . . name recognition.
John’s mind is expletive-strewn as he speculates how it was that these Sherlockian triumphs were choreographed by the hand of the consulting criminal, who likely pulled off a doubled win: had he inveigled the auction house to allow its painting to be stolen, and the aspiring government minister to allow himself to be kidnapped? (And therefore pocketed a tidy fee for the planning and execution of these gambits?) These events set in motion by him toward achieving the objective of setting up Sherlock to be sucked into the publicity maelstrom, as the “hero detective” became giddily glorified by the press? The bastard had probably even conspired with the unscrupulous publishing baron, Magnussen, to stage-manage the journalistic hue and cry to his specifications.
The ramping up of the press frenzy was the piece de resistance: all the fawning adulation naming Sherlock as a hero pivoted on using the Met as a foil, painting them as hapless and ineffectual, turning the table upside down by portraying them as the true amateurs, and Sherlock as a professional disguised as an amateur. Sherlock's overnight overnight celebrity ensured that his detractors at Scotland Yard would become ever more enraged at Sherlock’s existence, increasing their seething resentment and desire to take him down. The deerstalker was the Yard’s I.O.U.
John allows that he may be on the verge of losing himself in the land of the paranoid, but he wonders if Moriarty even stage-managed the thank-you events himself, through a word in the ear of those in charge, ensuring the planting of certain details. To wit, Moriarty, in his Vivienne Westwoods and beyond-bespokes: his shirts were fastened with cufflinks, his always-tied-up self flaunted tie pins. Moriarty knew that eventually Sherlock would wonder if these two data points were taunts that meant Moriarty was lurking just beyond view. And Moriarty would have felt as blissed-out at Sherlock’s sartorial humiliation as his target would have felt beleaguered, cursed as he was forevermore to be crowned by the misbegotten deerstalker in press photos.
He suspects now that Moriarty had drilled down into John’s psychology with a cleverness equal to his emotional profiling of the public, the press, and the Met, and had foreseen that he could steer John into unknowingly working with him, prompting him into facilitating Sherlock being fed into the maw of the beast by providing a platform that tapped into John’s desire to see Sherlock get his due in public.
As twisted as the maggot was, he seemed to know more about John’s and Sherlock’s emotional landscapes than perhaps they did themselves.
What had Moriarty known about John and Sherlock, the each of them? What had Moriarty known about the two of them together? And when? And why had they been blindsided?
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p.s. The shooting script at the BBC for S2E3 uses the term "auction house" at one point, and I've used that tiny blip for my between-the-lines jumping off point use of "canon" here, in case anyone wonders :-)
This latest chapter and the previous ones are here at ao3.
(I had hoped to finish with everyone else on the 31st of May, but alas, it looks like it will be May 32nd or 33rd for me . . . )
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In Vienna, his search and destroy mission retained its danger; it was as exhausting, and as nerve-wracking as any other part of his journeys to date. It was, however, undoubtedly a much more elegant and luxurious phase. His cover was as an art dealer, an international concierge of sorts, assisting in obtaining the exact object to be placed in exactly the right hands. That this was rarely an above-board legal transaction was, of course, the point. One might say that his current activities fell under the umbrella of the art of money laundering.
Although there had been recent flurries on the part of policing agencies to upend the illicit trafficking of art and antiquities, the Moriarty organization, like many other criminal enterprises, had been delighted to add participation in the circulation of fake and stolen artworks to their already robust departments of fraudulent real estate deals, as vehicles for making illegal monetary gains appear to be legitimate. Auction houses and the like were under no obligation to report large cash transactions to governing authorities -- unlike banks, life insurance companies, casinos, currency exchangers, and precious metal dealers. They could even keep the names of buyers and sellers anonymous. It was like stealing candy from a baby.
His activities had him bouncing from the unsavory world of back-street feloniusness, to the elite world of the over-monied and the over-gullible. Personally, he himself believed that, in a properly-run world, it would be perfectly acceptable if being a billionaire was illegal, but no one had asked him, as such, to draw up plans toward that end. At the very least, he could kill two birds with one stone, by draining the coffers of the obscenely-wealthy as expertly as possible, while also bleeding dry the Order of Moriartyites.
There was a completely legal print gallery next door to the famous Opera House, and he had come to enjoy dropping by on occasion when he wanted to simply enjoy art for recreational reasons, rather than pecuniary ones. The gallery possessed one of the largest collections of original Japanese woodblock prints in Europe, and he had become particularly captivated by their collection of pieces by the nineteenth-century master of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world"), Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. There were many mesmerizing items from two of his series -- 100 Aspects of the Moon and New Forms of 36 Ghosts -- but the images that he especially craved to return to and study, were from his 50 renditions of Handsome and Brave Heroes of the Suikoden, fantastical images of spirits, monsters, and magical creatures, drawn from legendary histories and myths.
On his last day in Vienna, he indulged himself by buying a copy of "Toraomaru Riding a Tiger," an image that encapsulated the feeling that was his constant companion, of living out a life reflecting the aphorism, "He who rides the tiger, dare never dismount." It was a reckless thing to do -- he had no fixed location, no place to store anything important, and whatever he "owned" was only on loan to him as a temporary matter, as it might have to be jettisoned or abandoned at a moment's notice. Nevertheless, he stubbornly refused to submit to practicality in this one instance.
A month later, after many different instances of meditating upon his Yoshitoshi print, the reason the universe had wanted him to own it became clear. While running down new leads on the west coast of the States, he had passed a tattoo shop one day in San Francisco, and impulsively stopped in to see if he could make arrangements soon, in the time before he would have to leave, to have one of the artists interpret the Toraomaru on his left arm. Two days later, he had the art piece vibrantly reproduced, and healing, on his body (and, not so incidentally, allowing the marks from his drug injection days to disappear). His intimate acquisition was a defiant, sentimental, and minutely optimistic act of voicing the unvoiced center of his existence, even if visually, rather than aurally.
And, as someone dear to him from his past might have said: quite apropos for a drama queen.
Using the writing skills we know
This group perked ears up and began to show
Our tricks and our fics
And our cool limericks
With May Prompts from our Calais Reno!
Who made all these prompts happen? Calais Reno!
Who made sure to reblog all the things on Tumblr? Calais Reno!
Who gave a whole bunch of encouraging words to everyone in the game? Calais Reno!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Seriously, @calaisreno, I've never had so much fun writing. Thanks for the impetus and all the great comments. See you around the fandom!
Jealousy/Empty: May 27 & 28 Prompts from @calaisreno
This latest chapter and the previous ones are here at ao3.
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On only rare occasions did Mycroft Holmes’s body register qualms about a plan of action. Long ago he had decided not to second-guess well-studied plans at their point of execution; to do so was to invite potentially disastrous distractions, with the deployment of second guessing performing as does Hercules’s sword when it slashes at the neck of the mythical hydra, only for it to grow two more, and so on ad infinitum. The meeting about to take place that he had arranged by subterfuge is one of those rare occasions.
Watson’s visit the preceding week had been exceedingly unwelcome for a number of reasons, but mostly as it left him with having to decide how to resolve the dilemma it presented of his brother’s instruction that Dr. Watson was not to be given any indication that Sherlock had survived the fall from Bart’s roof. However, the stable door was no longer shut, and the horse had bolted.
After failing his brother in the Moriarty affair, Mycroft had felt honor-bound to accept Sherlock’s outline of his plans to go underground and undercover, after he had been summoned to the morgue by Miss Hooper. He had indeed acquiesced to Sherlock’s strategies at the launching of his mission; once a mission is underway, needs must as to corrections and improvisations that have to be made based on changed circumstances. Such was his conclusion.
In consequence, there was one matter that he had decided could no longer remain hidden. The remedy required summoning Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and Detective Inspector Lestrade. He refused to undergo the required machinations three times as a concession to his own disquiet about the matter. He had made a reservation for Watson to take Mrs. Hudson to tea at St. Ermin’s Hotel, and he had made an arrangement for the Detective Inspector to meet with one of his MI5 case officers off-site from their respective government offices at the Caxton Bar at the hotel. At the conclusion of these two events, preparations had been made to take all three of them through an underground tunnel that ran from the hotel to a secure location nearby, which held only three chairs and a table. It was now time for him to join them.
As he opens the door to the room, all three faces greet him – as he had expected – with various mixtures of surprise, resignation, resentment, and curiosity.
“I want to thank you all for being here,” he begins, with all three of them rolling their eyes. He grimaces, and continues, saying, “you will understand the need for secrecy directly.” He places in front of each of them a stapled stack of papers with a blank cover that contains only a series of numbers at the top right.
“I know from Dr. Watson that the three of you have divined that Sherlock is alive, and that he has been at work since his presumed death in espionage activities against the Moriarty enterprise. What you do not know is why, and I believe that, going forward, you must be read into that area of the case.”
“And what is it that we have come here to read?” Watson asks, his voice hard, with a challenging edge.
“My brother tossed his mobile on the roof before he fell. He had made such preparations as he could, expecting that the odds were that he would survive the fall, but he knew that there were substantial odds that he would not be successful. The public information about the mobile that was given was that it was empty of any relevant information. However, Sherlock had recorded the last conversation he had with Moriarty using the voice memo app on the mobile."
It is now Lestrade who speaks, his voice tinged with disbelief. “So what we have here is evidence that was withheld from the investigation.”
“Yes, Detective Inspector. On national security grounds. What I am going to share with you is, in fact, beyond your authorized levels. I have granted clearances for each of you for the next 20 minutes. My brother did not intend for you to learn of this conversation, so I have not brought the actual recording; to hear about this event in his own voice is – either through this means or directly – I believe, a decision for him alone. I cannot ask him for that permission, because Dr. Watson has told me that Sherlock is not to be told that you know the truth about his death. What you have before you is an unredacted written transcript of the conversation.”
“Mycroft Holmes!” Mrs. Hudson begins, addressing him with some asperity. “I am quite sure I do not know what to do with you!"
“For now, nothing. What is to be done immediately is for you to read the transcript, if that is your wish. You do not, of course, have to do so.”
He notes that all three look stunned; but there it is, there’s nothing that can be done to mitigate that circumstance. As difficult as reading through the record of Sherlock’s “last” conversation may be, they do all have each other, the closeness amongst them having become even more so over the last month of their shared investigations. He tamps down a flare of jealousy. They will be fine.
“I shall leave you to it then,” he says, with a slight bow. Taking one last glance at them as they each turn to the first page, he quits the room, softly closing the door behind him.
