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holmesticeTitle: The First Two Lives of David Harper
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thisprettywren
Author: [to be revealed]
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/OFC; Mycroft, John, Sherlock/John (open to interpretation)
Rating:R
Warnings: Discussion of sexual violence; perhaps infidelity
Summary: Post TGG (or Reichenbach, however you choose), many things have changed. But there are fundamental principles that apply. No matter how much time passes.
The First Two Lives of David Harper
It started with a nightmare.
David jerked awake, the sweat-soaked sheets clinging to his body. His mind whirled, making frantic connections: images of fire and water and blood and a man. Beside him, Laura slept on, peaceful. She snuffled and snored: reassuringly real. David noticed there was drool on her pillow.
She's been in REM sleep for about two hours. She'll be asleep for another few hours, if this is her normal pattern. She'll start to wake when she turns onto her right side. Her hip will be hurting her if she does that – her sciatic nerve is compressed again. She needs to get that looked at. She won't, though.
He envied her those: the aches and pains of daily life. Snoring and sciatica – the detritus of normality: relaxing, in a way. Predictable.
David stared into the darkness.
When the glowing green numbers on his alarm clock showed five-ten, he rolled out of bed and pulled on his singlet and track bottoms over it.
Eschewing coffee for the river would be better for his mind, he decided; the drag of the current; the mist off the river. The smell of damp: leaf mold, decay, and life; the call of birds and the faint rumble of traffic over the Putney Bridge.
In the scull he pulled at the oars, feeling the burn and stretch of muscle, the warming of sweat, leaving the nightmare of chlorine, smoke, and red dots dancing behind him.
The nightmare always vanished with the pull of the river.
The chances are that you won't regain your memory; that you may have to accept the fact that your life starts here. Now..
On the river, life began anew.
When he returned home, sweaty, and sore, Laura embraced him and wrinkled her nose.
"You stink," she said affectionately. "Into the shower with you."
A simple act. Showering. Standing beneath the water, letting it stream into his face when his world collapsed around him.
He was standing in a shower. Naked and trembling. Bleeding from myriad cuts and scrapes. Bright lights. Shouts. Smoke. Laughter. And a name. A prayer.
John.
Laura found him, crumpled in a ball on the floor of the shower – running cold.
Later that day, in the park, he watched the man whose face haunted his dreams. He'd shaken Laura off. Promised to see Dr Harkness that afternoon. Gone to work. Stared at figures and facts blankly.
He went to see Harkness, who looked grim and went to his computer. A few moments later, he handed David a printout of a CV. Paper-clipped to it was a photograph of him and the man who haunted his dreams.
"I think maybe it's time," Harkness said. "Do you remember this man?"
"John." The word sounded odd to him. Stuck in his throat.
A wave of silence, dizziness. The breath leaving his lungs. His tongue, thick against the roof of his mouth.
In the park, the man named John Watson turned.
"Can I help you?" and then, "Sherlock?" David watched as John's eyes widened. His color faded, returned, and then faded. His mouth twisted into grimace: a pale mockery of a bitter grin. Joggers hurried past them. Together, they stood in stillness.
A dog ran up, sniffed at David's legs, and backed off, growling.
David smiled back, uncertain, and spread his hands. Somewhere in the distance, a taxi honked.
John stumped over to him.
"You didn't used to use the cane," David observed, memories flooding into his brain: PTSD, psychosomatic limp, images of sandy hair and a squared jaw. "And the tremors in your left hand are back," he finished.
"Bloody hell, Sherlock, what the hell do you think you're playing at?" John's jaw was tight – clenching and unclenching. Fury radiating from him.
"I'm sorry," David said. "I don't… Who's Sherlock?"
"What? You. You. You're Sherlock!"
Before he could respond, John doubled his fist and punched him. David stumbled back and fell to his knee.
"Oof," he managed, looking up at John.
"Bloody Hell, I ought to... Does that jog your memory?"
"I'm sorry," he managed again – stuttering, dabbing at his lip.
"You're back, and that's all you can say?" John asked. "You're supposed to be dead!"
"You called me Sherlock, I'm sorry… Let me… let me start again. My name," he said, extending his hand, "is David Harper. Let me buy you a coffee. I think we need to talk."
"So, this is what you do?" John asked over the coffee David had insisted he buy them. Coffee with John. It felt strange. Familiar, but… not. John whom he… looking at him was like looking into an abyss – flashes of familiarity sparking up from the darkness.
"Christ, Sherlock. You vanish for three years, and then return, as if by magic, with a new name, a new face, glasses, and less… less hair?" Around them, London flowed, full of life. Spring. Buds on the trees. Tulips, joggers on the footpath, the university team on the river, the shout of the coxswain, the world rejoicing in the watery sunshine.
David frowned. He didn't remember. He couldn't… couldn't process. He focused on John's hands.
"Is that what I did?" he asked.
John grimaced and set the coffee down on the bench and folded his hands, right over left.
"You're working at the surgery, still?" David asked. He had known that. So many signs. And a flash. Another flash.
"How did you know that?"
"Your nails are clipped short and neat, your shirt is clean, but the cuffs are worn, especially the one on the left sleeve indicating that you write with that hand, despite the tremors. The skin on your hands is dry, indicating you've been washing them at frequent intervals but not taking the time to moisturize them."
"Stop." John held up his hand. "You still do that, at least. Thank God."
"Do what?"
"Your deduction… thing. Your creepy act where you can tell a plumber by his belt, or whatever it was."
David frowned.
"I did it before?"
"You don't remember; of course you don't. What do you remember?"
"You're angry."
"Good deduction, that. You can't just disappear like that Sherlock! People don't just do that! They die, they leave us, we mourn, but they don't come back!"
David looked at his hands. Pale against the black trousers. He saw, from the corner of his eye, John's gaze, focusing on his hands. A sucked in breath.
"Oh, God, and they don't get married! Sherlock what did you do?"
"I died, John. They told me in the hospital that I had died. Twice, actually. In an automobile accident. I'd been hit by a drunk driver. Been ejected from the car. And Laura was there, and my brother, Michael."
"Mycroft. Not Michael. Wait… Laura?"
"She's my wife now. We… I don't think she meant to fall in love with me, but she did; I could tell from the way she kept watching me when I was doing my physiotherapy. And in those first weeks, when I didn't know my name. When Michael was a stranger to me – she was there. She was freelancing – working as a consultant for the hospital's IT department. She was fixing something in the office while I was learning to walk.
"I couldn't walk, John. And I couldn't remember who I was. They wouldn't tell me, just that I had been in an accident. There are scars now, and broken ribs. And there was one day when I wheeled myself down to the canteen. She was there. It was easy, John. We talked. It was… it was easy – not like talking with Michael. She smiled. Michael… well, you know Michael. He doesn't.
"Now I do quality checks for hospitals' computerized medical equipment. I oversee the team that effectively breaks analyzers. And then we write up what's wrong with them, which is just about everything, usually. And how they can be fixed. It's… not as boring as it sounds. Most of what I do is IT."
John jerked his head around. Stared at him.
"And now you want to know who you were?" he finally asked. "How did you find me?"
David nodded.
"I was given your CV by my doctor. He said it was time to find you. I… I had a flashback. You walk in this park every afternoon after your shift at the surgery down the street. My guess is that you're trying to tire yourself out first. So you sleep better. But it doesn't work, does it? I row. It doesn't work for me, either. It's temporary.
"I keep waking up in the night, and I hear your name. But I didn't know your name. I know the tremors of your hand. The nails. The clean nail beds. The fact that you nearly crushed your right hand in the Army, and are missing part of your right ring finger, but it didn't stop your surgical abilities. No, you lost your ability to perform emergency surgery when the tremors in your left hand started. PTSD. Right?"
John stood up, leaning on his cane.
"Right, well, this has all been very interesting," he said. "But I'll be off now. Whatever twisted little game Mycroft's playing, and why you're going along with it, doesn't matter to me. I don't play your games anymore, Sherlock, or whoever you are. Good luck."
John moved away from the bench and David squeezed his eyes shut. Facts flashed into his mind – pinwheels of fire. Emotion. No, not to feel. To remember.
"You were wounded in Afghanistan and invalided out of the army. Your limp is psychosomatic, and you didn't have it when I knew you three years ago, but it returned after whatever it was happened. Which means you were there, which means you know. You have a relationship with my brother, but it's not cordial, and you're still desperately worried about your sister Harry's drinking. You think it's wrong to giggle at crime scenes, and you once shot somebody for me." If he spoke faster and faster… maybe. Maybe John would stay.
John turned around.
"And you wake up in the middle of the night, just like I do, but instead of my name in your head, it's somebody else's," David finished.
"Moriarty," John said.
David felt, rather than saw John sit down beside him. Felt the presence of the other man – familiar, tugging at the corner of his memory.
"He's dead, we think," John said. "And so were you."
"I was dead," David said.
John stood, a rush of air. He took two steps and stood before him.
"Do you remember what I said to you right before we started giggling? That time I shot the cabbie?" he demanded. His voice was thick. David opened his eyes. John's hand was trembling against the worn denim of his jeans.
David shook his head.
"You risk your life to prove you're clever."
David smiled.
"I thought I dreamed that."
"This isn't you, Sherlock. And I don't know if I can…"
Whatever John was about to say was interrupted by the chirp of his mobile.
"Do you know anything about this?" John asked, scowling at his phone.
"No. What?"
David looked around the park.
"There," John said, nodding to the road.
David followed his gaze. He watched a panda car screech to a halt and a silver-haired man hurl himself out of it, striding towards them.
"John!" he shouted. "John… Anderson's been arrested."
"What?" John asked.
"Can you help? Please?"
"Me?"
"You… you were the last one to see him. At darts night last night. His wife… his wife's dead. I need to talk to you." The man stopped suddenly. Stared at David.
"Bloody hell…" he ejaculated.
"It's not," John said quickly. "It's not what you think."
The man seemed to shake himself.
"Anderson," he said. "Can you help?"
"Violent death?" John asked. “What can I do?"
"Ah, John, it's all fucked up. I'm about three steps away from losing Donovan, too. You're a witness, of a sort. An alibi, at least? Will you come? Give a statement? Unofficially, of course, you'd be… helping."
A grin tugged at the corner of John's lips.
"Fucked up?" he asked
"Yeah, could be dangerous."
John had straightened, and was playing with the handle of his cane. He turned to David. "You used to see quite a bit of violent death, back in the day." The tremor was gone. "Want to see some more?"
He felt a rush of warmth. A tingling at the back of his neck. A flash of this, this, this.
David grinned.
"Oh, God, yes."
"Where have you been?" Laura asked hours later. Her pale blonde hair was tied back. Her hands were clasped around her tea mug. The tea had been cold for about three hours. The lines around her mouth suggested that she was about to menstruate – that she had cramps. Or was angry. Or both.
"I… out." David stood in the door to the kitchen. The house smelled of sausage and Yorkshire pudding. She'd been waiting.
"It's after midnight, David! It was… you were supposed to come home. And I almost called the police. And Michael was worried sick. He said he'd look for you. Have you called him yet?"
"I'm sorry. I ran into a friend. We lost track of time."
"So you went on a bender? David, you don't drink. And an old friend? Did you remember something?"
"No, we weren't drinking. And yes, I did. I saw Harkness, and he gave me a name and an address." Laura jerked her head up. David could see the tension in her jaw. The streaks of tears on her face.
"Where's your jacket?" She asked. "Why didn't you call? What did you find?"
The mud on his trousers and the stains on his white shirt would have told her, if she'd looked carefully, where he'd been: all over south London, leaping onto a stopped train's roof, chasing a man who'd killed a woman, had tried to frame her husband's one-time mistress, and had almost killed them. DCI Lestrade had been stabbed and almost bled out in the alley, but David had held his jacket to his side, up underneath the imperfectly fastened stab vest while John had tackled the killer and cuffed him.
David had waited, pressing hard, harder, listening to the blood bubble with every breath Lestrade tried to take, talking, babbling, begging him to live, not to die, to…
"In the car. I… spilled coffee on it. I'll take it to the cleaners tomorrow."
The sound of sirens and John's triumphant shout.
Lestrade good naturedly cursing them as the paramedics loaded him, stabilized, into the ambulance.
John's feeble joke about him still being an idiot.
David's response: "I'm not the one who chased down an armed criminal in the dark."
"It was your idea to go into Dirkson's garden shed and find the bloodstained trimmer," John had countered.
"Not the recommended use for one, certainly. Murdering someone."
John had started to giggle.
"Oh, you know that, do you?" he'd asked.
"Our lawn's edges are always straight," David said with some effrontery.
Which was when John had burst out laughing, leaning up against the building, clutching his sides. David couldn't help but join in.
"I'm starving," John said, finally. "Chinese?"
"What time…" David looked at his watch. Past eleven. “I should go home.”
David took a deep breath.
"His name is John Watson. And I knew him once. Before."
Laura's face lost its color.
"David… did Michael do this?"
"N… no. But the flashback… it was John. From… before."
Laura looked back to her tea. Her hands clenched tighter around the mug, her knuckles white. She'd nicked her left index finger with the paring knife. There was ink on the tips of the fingers of her right hand. Red. She'd been editing reports earlier – the felt tips she used always got on her hands. She was trying not to cry.
"From before," David said again.
Laura sniffed. Let go of the mug. Pushed it away. Cold tea slopped onto the scrubbed pine table.
"I had to think. I wanted to talk to him; we lost track of time."
"What did you find out?"
David spread his hands.
"Laura, I… I'm sorry. I lost track of time."
"If you apologize one more time… No. I don't rate a phone call. No. You couldn't tell me what you were doing. What happened. Where you ran off to. Why, David? Why couldn’t you come home? Tell me? Does Michael know? Did you tell him what happened?
"Did you even think about how frightened I was? Thinking you were in an alley somewhere? After this morning? What did you find out? What do you remember?"
The words clung in his throat. The stories. The tide of memory and sensation that threatened to overwhelm him, wearing away at the cliffs that seemed to surround him.
"I… nothing. Nothing important. John didn't know much. He was just a colleague." The lie came too easily to him. It was… freeing. She doesn't need to know. She wouldn't understand. Nobody understands.
Laura pressed her hands to her face, tears springing into her eyes.
"God, David. Please… I'm scared for you. I want you to… to be whole. But God… please, please be careful."
David stood and said nothing. Watched the pool of tea on the kitchen table. Drip. Drip. Drip to the stone floor.
Wait long enough, he thought, the liquid creates a basin, a bowl. Even the soft water hollows out the hard rock - Ovid.
You risk your life to prove you're clever… you're an idiot. - John Watson.
Laura felt the bed shift hours later. Squeezed her eyes shut. Feigned sleep.
"If you take up with my brother, there may come a time where you and he will have to choose."
Michael's warning in her ears. She'd known, she told herself. Understood the risks involved. That David's memory would come back. That he'd remember the time … before. The time that Michael seemed so… afraid of. And it was the fear that struck her the most. Whatever David had been, Michael didn't want him to know about it.
Laura grasped the pillow. She'd picked up on Michael's fear – that the past was something to be avoided.
"But you could, in fact, be the best thing that has ever happened to him. I couldn't keep him safe. Perhaps you… you and I will be able to.
And she loved David. It was stupid, she knew. A man who barely knew himself. What could he give her, her mum had asked. But when he'd looked at her, he had seemed to look right through her—he had known. Just known that it was right. That he needed her, just as she needed him. Needed to care for him, to show him that he was whole. All of a man. To teach him to carry himself. To be proud.
Beside her, in the dark, David's breathing had evened out. Asleep. Okay. She could do this. She'd vowed to be with him – as he had done to be with her. They loved each other. They'd get through this.
Together.
Right?
Laura wasn't asleep. Her breathing wasn't nearly as regular as it should have been if she were.
She was waiting for him.
Hoping for him to leave? No. She wanted him to stay.
She's angry.
No.
Afraid.
Michael must have told her something.
Damn him! Obviously he didn't call her today; she wouldn't have been worried if he had. No, he'd warned her a while ago.
"We'll reach the past when we get there, David. You can't rush things."
The semblance of control. David had clung to it. He knew a few things – was certain of a few facts:
His name: David Harper.
His age: Thirty-five.
His brother: Michael Harper.
His parents: Deceased.
His wife: Laura Harper.
The three of them: Laura, Michael and David – against the world, for David. His strength, and his support. The last three years had been bewildering: the violence of his injuries, the trauma, the therapy, the learning. How he'd learned his name. Recalled the skills of driving and eating and walking. Walking had been the biggest one.
And then learned systems. Computer systems. Systems of the body. Blood. Bone. Digestive. Life. How Michael had suggested he do some private training. How Laura had suggested to her boss that his boss take a look at what David could do.
Laura had been there, and now she was afraid.
"What happened to me, Michael. Why won't you say?"
"David, please… believe me. It was a car accident. Before that, nothing happened to you."
Then why did Michael's lips thin every time they had this argument?
David rolled over and stared into the darkness. Sleep… sleep was elusive. Always had been. His brain, never stopping to whirl – thoughts surging, foaming. How many nights had he lain like this, watching the fiery windmills dance before his eyes – numbers, letters, facts, maps, place names.
When he did sleep… he remembered dreams of fire and water and pernicious red dots – laser lights. Mosquitoes.
He bunched up the pillow beneath his head. Took a deep breath. Calm. Be calm. Waited for morning. In the morning he would go to the river. Take out a scull.
Smell the tide and the spring and the life that surged around them. Feel the power of the ancient river. Watch the birds. The mist rising from the banks. Hear the rumble of traffic in the distance.
And row. Stroke after stroke. Feeling the jerk and pull of the scull. The sway of the oars. Hear the creak of the oars in the locks. Be one with the boat. Whole. Organic. The thought soothed him. Lulled him into an uneasy sleep.
David gave up trying to sleep at four. Laura had drifted off about two hours before.
"Was I a good friend, John"?
Silence. A short laugh.
"Well… you were a mad flatmate. And…"
John hadn't said any more. After that, it had been a fight, and a chase, and blood and Lestrade, and sirens…
David shook his head. Pulled on a pair of track bottoms and a t-shirt. Glasses.
In the kitchen, his routine was automatic: kettle. Water. Plug. Tea. Watch for the dawn to creep over the back garden wall. Not this morning. This morning, he mopped up the tea, spilled on the floor and the table. Scrubbed at the stains.
Took a chicken from the deep freeze. He'd roast it tonight for them. He liked to cook. Outside the rain drizzled down as dawn broke.
He'd meant to go to the river this morning. But now, staring out at the grey dawn, he realized that, no… Laura could not wake up to find him missing. He needed to stay.
For her.
For them.
At six, he made toast. Fried an egg.
Upstairs, the shower turned on.
At six-thirty, he sat staring at the egg and toast, as yet untouched on his plate.
The doorbell rang. David sat, frozen in his seat.
Laura answered it, coming downstairs, hair wet, wrapped in her dressing gown.
"Michael…," she said.
David looked up from the table as they entered.
"I heard you had quite the adventure last night, brother mine."
David watched Laura stiffen behind Michael.
"Tea?" he asked.
"No, thank you."
"Of course not. Is that tooth still bothering you?" David asked acerbically.
"Yes."
"And how's the diet? Still going well?"
"It's fine Sh-, David."
"Michael," Laura said, stepping out from behind him, sitting beside David at the table.
David felt a surge of relief.
"Michael, what happened to my husband?"
Michael suddenly found the tip of his umbrella fascinating.
"Did something happen? Or did you just hare off on some ridiculous adventure? What did possess you, David?" Michael asked.
Michael sat carefully folding his legs. Pulling out his cuffs. Setting his umbrella down.
"Let me begin," he said, "by assuring you both that I acted in your best interests. You too, Laura. What David was… before he was David, was not… not safe. To understand and to know who he was – to see the battlefield – to reengage with the man that you had come – it would have cost lives." Michael took a deep breath. Spread his hands on the table.
"We had been given a second chance, a chance for you to live, to be safe."
"Michael… Before I was David?" David asked. It was suddenly cold in the room.
"My name," Michael said slowly, "is Mycroft Holmes. And you are my brother, Sherlock."
At first he didn't want to believe it. Couldn't believe it.
Cocaine.
Sex.
Boredom – wait, wasn't he bored? Hadn't there always been a welling sense of panic, choking him? Hadn't he felt like he was drowning in his life? Trapped? Suffocating? He'd resolved never to tell Laura that, never to hurt her after she'd given so much for him.
Boredom.
Cocaine.
Cigarettes.
Sex. For drugs. Money. In alleys, toilets.
Being evicted from flat after flat. Bedsit after bedsit.
A crash. Hard.
Rehabilitation. Twice.
A moment. A light. In a filthy attic in a shared house in Montague Street.
The Science of Deduction.
"You and I have always been able to do that. When other people live their busy little lives – so many ants, plodding from chore to chore. When they ignore what is before them, when they see but do not observe. You and I, Sherlock… we observe. We learn. We…"
"Wait. Sherlock? You took my name? What else did you take, Michael – Mycroft? What else did you take from me?" David sprang up. The chair clattered to the floor. He grabbed Michael – Mycroft's shirt, dragged him forward.
Laura gave a frightened shriek.
Mycroft glanced down, almost contemptuously. A twist of the wrist freed him. A shove sent David stumbling back across the table. Crockery shattered.
"I promise you, Sherlock. Your name was… was to keep you safe."
"You keep saying safe. Why?" David righted the chair, sat down, clutching his wrist.
"David…"
"An ex-junkie? What, did I knife my dealer?"
Mycroft, Michael, whatever his name was, looked uncomfortable. Laura squeezed David's shoulder. Came to stand behind him.
David waited.
"It was eight years ago. He … he beat you, Sherlock. I found you chained to a radiator, your cheek split open. The internal injuries… you almost died. You were blown when I found you. When the team found you. Blown wide open, high as a kite. You'd been raped. Sherlock. My baby brother."
Laura gave a gasp and a sob. Her wedding ring digging into the skin of David's neck. An indent.
"How…"
"Weeks, months, a year of rehabilitation and withdrawal. Two. And then, barely clean, you became the world's only Consulting Detective."
"Consulting Detective."
"When the police were out of their depth, which, as you may have seen from your little adventure yesterday, is always, they came to you. You had a pet DI. Greg Lestrade. The one whose life you saved last night. And then you met Dr Watson."
"My… flat mate?"
Michael sniffed.
"He was the closest thing to a friend I'd ever seen you with, Sherlock. Closest since you were four and decided that Cedric-the-bear was no longer a fitting companion. The year I went to school. Left you and mummy. And you became the man of the house."
"Friend."
"Perhaps… more? I didn't enquire too much. He was very protective of you, Sherlock. Protective where I… where I failed to be."
"Where are you going?" Laura demanded.
"Out." Coat. Laura's voice froze him. He felt her behind him.
"David…" Her arms around him. He stiffened.
"That's not my name."
"It is your name. It is you. What proof to do we have? What do we actually know? David, wait."
"Laura, I have to… I have to know." He felt her sag against him.
"I know."
"I… there's a hole. A darkness. And I have to find out, Laura."
A long silence.
"I know. But…" Her voice faltered. He turned. Felt the rush of guilt. Longing. She had protected him – held him close. Taught him to live. And now, if he left, would he come back? Was he ready for this?
"I promise you, Laura. I will come back," he said. Took her face in his hands. Wiped the tears from her cheeks. "You can't ignore the evidence. And… whatever remains… as improbable as it may be… might be the truth."
"Where are you going?"
"Out. For a walk. A row. Something."
"Oh, David…"
He stepped closer. Pressed his lips to hers. Kissed her. Their lips moving against each other's. Breathing her breath. Tasting the tea in her mouth. The tenderness. The bond. A promise.
He would come back.
He went home that night. Home to Laura. He kissed her when he walked in the door. Kissed her hard.
Forgive me. For I do not know what I am doing.
He tried to ground himself. Used the tricks the therapist had taught him.
He made love to his wife. Buried himself in her warmth. Wrung an orgasm from her with his lips and tongue and fingers. Gasped her name as he came, shuddering over her, grasping her to him. Pleading, begging.
Grounding. Focusing.
This is who I am now. This is who I'm supposed to be.
And then, like the night before, he lay awake. Watching the fireworks behind his eyes – the pinwheels and comets of thought – ideas – tossed, turbulent. He was falling.
Laura lay in the dark. David slept.
Michael had called her at work while David had been out, looking for John.
"You need to choose. Sherlock needs to choose."
"Why do you keep calling him that?"
"It's his name. And now that he's found John again… The game, Laura, is on."
"What does that even mean? Are you even really his brother?"
"Yes, I am. Believe me. Nobody else would claim him."
"Ha. Ha. Michael, what is going on? If he's recovering his memory, why is it so bad?"
"You heard me last night."
"The drugs? Surely that's…"
"Believe it, Laura. Ignore it at your own peril. If Sherlock Holmes returns, so will the battle rage again. And lives will be lost."
"I don't believe you."
"You have a choice. If he remains as David, with you, he will live. Perhaps you will have children. But if he discovers who he was, becomes Sherlock… you, John, and he will be in danger."
"Danger…"
"When you lie with David Harper, you are two ordinary people: man and wife. Living your quiet lives, doing your quiet jobs. Never once seeing the battlefield. But when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield.
"John Watson is a soldier. A friend to my brother. Perhaps more. And he saw the battlefield. And killed on it. If Sherlock goes back to that life – goes back to John…"
She hung up the phone, hands shaking.
Lying in the dark beside David – she clung to his name like a drowning man – the conversation rang in her head. Echoes of the earlier warnings Michael had given her.
Michael. So protective of his younger brother. The hurt that she'd seen in his eyes when he'd told them the story of Sherlock. The frustration as David had jibed at him. The way he'd created them: David, Laura, and himself against the world, fighting for David's recovery, just as she had.
How he'd taken David down to the river. Taught him to row. Brought him into the club. How almost every Saturday morning, they'd be down there, speeding past her on the bank. Moving as one unit.
That was when it struck her. The job she'd found for David. The hobby his brother had found for him. The life they'd constructed around him. The life they'd constructed. Built. A prison for a man who couldn’t remember the life he’d lived before.
What was the old adage, she wondered. If you love something, set it free?
"If you set him free, people will die, Laura. I am depending on you. Keep him safe, Keep him whole where I cannot."
"David," she whispered in the dark.
He stiffened next to her.
"Yes?"
"David, you need to… you need to find… you need to talk to John."
He turned to her, his hand finding hers. Squeezing.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"You have to know."
A moment. The ticking of a clock. A car starting in the street.
"I'll always come back to you," he said.
She accepted the statement and prayed it was not a lie.
Only time would tell.
"You fell," John said shortly, sinking into a chair opposite him. "There was an explosion. You and Moriarty fell. I tried to catch you, but you slipped from my hands. I fell, too, though not as far. I was trapped beneath a fallen beam. Broke my shoulder."
"Left clavicle."
"How? Oh, God, never mind." Sunlight streamed in through the dusty windows. The flat was neat. Tidy. Sparse. Empty of books, papers. In a corner, a flat-screen television squatted, ready to spring from the recesses of the shelves next to the fireplace. Summer-cold.
It felt odd. Off. Imbalanced.
"Anyway," John said, sipping his tea. "When I woke up, Mycroft said you'd gone. Vanished after Moriarty. Something. I don't know. But he wouldn't… wouldn't say you were dead. And… it's stupid, really, but I began to hope. That after a while you'd come back. That we'd pick up where we left off. Be charging about London."
He shifted and watched John. In the light, the steam curled off the tea. Delicate. Fragile.
"But you never came home. And… after a while… I guess I gave up. Realized that you were… wherever you were. Dead. Mycroft wouldn't say, but I felt… it was easier to believe you were."
Silence. The creaking of an old building. The roar of traffic. The city throbbing around them. The television from next door.
"Let me see," he said suddenly.
"See what?" John asked. Startled. Yes. Startled. His eyes widened – he licked his lips. Twice. Tremors in the left hand stopped.
"Let me see the scars, John. Please."
"You're joking."
"John."
John sighed and stood. Peeled off the jumper. Unbuttoned his shirt. It slid from his shoulders. He grabbed the plain white vest beneath and pulled it over his head. Turned his back.
He rose from the chair. To look. To touch. To know.
Angry scar tissue on the shoulder. Pattern of damage more akin to a bullet wound. Perhaps improperly treated. Overlaid with burn scars. The whitened skin of dead flesh, pink and shiny. A wound further down. A puncture wound. A knife? Small bladed. Like a woman might carry. Not serious, not deep enough to touch a kidney. A close shave, though.
Scar tissue on the back of the head. Multiple blows, most likely with the butt of a gun. Smallish caliber. Nine, probably.
He was close enough to smell him. To touch him. The familiar, safe scent of John.
If he leaned forward just a bit more, he'd have his lips against John's shoulder. The injured one. His hands involuntarily traced the clean lines of the uninjured shoulder. down the spine. He had the urge to press his lips to it, to beg forgiveness.
Beneath his touch, John was tense.
Had they done this before? Were they lovers? Had they lain together?
Lain together. Like Romeo and Juliet.
"Sin from my lips. O trespass sweetly urged."
"You know Shakespeare now?" John sounded strained. He turned.
And there they were. Together. Close.
The huff of John's breath on his skin. His hand traced down John's chest.
"Were you… did we?"
John closed his eyes. Shook his head.
"Never. We… you weren't… you always said it was just transport. And I was… I am… I'm not. I had – have. Have girlfriends. A girlfriend."
John's hands were on his face, grasping his cheeks.
Left hand trembling. Right hand steady. Warm.
Breath.
Life.
Pulse.
"We can't go back," he said. "We can't be what we were."
"No," John agreed. "Only forward."
It was funny, Laura thought, how life just went on after that.
David came home from work, every day. Made dinner. Watched television with her.
But he also took up smoking.
Would sit for hours in the back garden. Cigarette after cigarette.
Laura tried not to complain, tried not to nag.
"That's bad for you," she said.
David had shrugged. He'd been more and more silent over the weeks. Ever since ….
And then one day John Watson came by.
David was in the garden.
"Bad for breathing," John said without preamble. Laura listened from the doorway. The warm summer night enveloped them, filled with the scent of honeysuckle and cigarette smoke.
"Breathing's boring," David mumbled around his cigarette.
John shifted on his cane.
"Lestrade phoned me," he said. "He wanted to know if you were… back."
A cold weight dropped into Laura's stomach. Her palms began to sweat.
"He walked in a battlefield, Laura. It almost killed him. If he remembers that, I… I fear we may lose him to it again. If you love him, Laura, you will keep him safe."
Michael's warning in her ears.
David's silence over the weeks.
Laura squeezed her eyes shut.
"…keep him safe, Laura."
David didn’t answer.
John continued.
"There's a body," he said. "Dead for three days. Found on the banks of the Thames. Not a jumper. She was strangled before she was put in the water – so, murder, it looks like. It's a funny one, though."
"Boring."
"Try this on: the word 'carousel' is carved across her forehead."
Laura watched as the cigarette froze, halfway to David's mouth.
"Anything else?"
"Nope."
"Interesting. Why's that interesting? He knew something. Something about her? In performance, right? She had to have been. Carnival. No. Magic show. No. Panto? Wrong time of year. Musical theatre. Come on, John!" David cast aside the cigarette.
Laura stepped from the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Murder!" David's eyes lit up. "Don't you see, Laura! Something interesting! Finally!"
The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet.
"This is how… of course it is. This is how you were," Laura whispered. Her eyes sought John. He nodded.
A moment. A breath. David looked as if he was going to jump out of his skin. Energy was radiating from him. She’d never seen him like this. All lit up, as if the universe was trapped within him. As if his mind was screaming for release.
It made sense. It was so clear. And she knew in her heart that if she let him go now… David wouldn't come back. Oh, he'd come home, sure. But he wouldn't be the David that she knew.
Laura wanted to cry. To howl. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He was her husband. Hers. She felt the metal of her ring dig into her palm. Unclenched her hand.
But you can't keep someone that doesn't want to be kept.
"Oh, Laura...," David stopped, grasped her face in his hands.
Tears in her eyes.
The disintegration of a life, built carefully. Piece by piece.
Three years.
He is worth fighting for.
You don't know who he is anymore, her mind screamed at her.
"David." His name. The name Michael had chosen for him.
"I'll stay if you want me to," he said. The light in his eyes flickered out.
Laura drew a shaky breath.
Nausea.
Grief.
You'll die out there. On the battlefield. Where Michael was so afraid for you. And you'll waste away and die here. Not at first. But slowly. Centimeter by centimeter. Until all that's left is a husk of the man I love. Dying of lung cancer and grief.
"Go."
Dawn over the river. One year later.
Sherlock loves the peace of the river in the morning. The mist that surrounds the boathouse and cloaks the banks in veils of grey. The feeling of peace – once so hateful (yes, he remembers), but the feeling of a peace about to be broken. The rising anticipation of chaos: a body, a murder, a theft. The deepest parts of human iniquity – the really interesting things.
It's the anticipation that he loves as he guides the scull through the water. Feels the pull of the current against the oars. The push-me-pull-you force of the oars in their locks. Hears the creak of wood and metal and plastic. The muted roar of traffic over Putney Bridge. Further up and further in he pulls.
Feels the burn of muscle and tendon. The sweat in the chill morning.
As he glides back to the dock, a figure swims from the mist. Sherlock smiles as the scull comes to rest. He catches the dock and the figure walks toward him.
"Does this mean you'll take me out on the lake this summer and read bad poetry to me?"
"Boring," Sherlock quips, shipping the oars, climbing out of the boat. "Help me."
Together they wrestle the scull onto its rack.
"Or shall I read to you?"
Sherlock smiles.
"Case reports, maybe. I have a fascinating file on decomposition rates."
"How romantic. Is that how you convinced Laura to marry you?"
They freeze. A moment crystallized.
A shadow flickers across his face. She's fine. It's fine. It's all… it's not his… she's not… A year, and he still feels like part of him is missing. She won't answer his calls. Emails one and two sentence replies. He'd come home three days later and they'd talked.
She'd been frightfully decent about it – less argumentative than Michael- no, Mycroft. She'd let him go. Suggested they stay married for at least another year, that when they were ready, they'd divorce amicably. Split everything evenly.
He doesn't like it. Wishes he remembers what it was like not to care so bloody much. Because he misses her sometimes. Misses her drooling and snoring next to him in the small hours of the morning when he can't sleep for the voices ringing in his mind – the whirlwind of facts and ideas. The sparks of memory that seem to prickle through his skin.
"Bollocks," Sherlock finally answers. "She doesn't like punting. We'd shop for antiques instead."
"And you'd deduce the history of each object."
"Naturally."
"Sherlock, I'm… I'm sorry."
"It's not… it's not relevant, John. You weren't the cause… And she's not…"
"No. It was you. Your life. Still is, in a way."
The call of a bird. The rumble of traffic over the Putney Bridge.
A mobile phone chirps. John digs in his pocket. The tension seems to dissolve as he reads the text.
"Lestrade?" Sherlock asks.
"Yes. Black male, mid-sixties. Skull bashed in. Found in a room locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry."
"That old trick."
"But this time, there's a note."
"Suicide?"
"No. A note for you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Lestrade took a picture of it."
Sherlock takes the phone.
Ready or not, Sherlock… here I come.
It's smeared on the wall behind the corpse.
"Not the victim's blood," he says.
"Are you coming?"
A surge of adrenalin. It's not perfect. Not the way he thinks it was before.
But it's a near thing.
Sherlock claps his hands together. "Of course."
"It could be dangerous."
"Yes," he agrees. "I certainly hope so. Come on, John!"
Additional AN: Please watch This video first It was not created by me, but served as the inspiration for this story.
Thanks go to the myriad of writers, editors and friends who made this possible.
Recipient:
thisprettywrenAuthor: [to be revealed]
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/OFC; Mycroft, John, Sherlock/John (open to interpretation)
Rating:R
Warnings: Discussion of sexual violence; perhaps infidelity
Summary: Post TGG (or Reichenbach, however you choose), many things have changed. But there are fundamental principles that apply. No matter how much time passes.
It started with a nightmare.
David jerked awake, the sweat-soaked sheets clinging to his body. His mind whirled, making frantic connections: images of fire and water and blood and a man. Beside him, Laura slept on, peaceful. She snuffled and snored: reassuringly real. David noticed there was drool on her pillow.
She's been in REM sleep for about two hours. She'll be asleep for another few hours, if this is her normal pattern. She'll start to wake when she turns onto her right side. Her hip will be hurting her if she does that – her sciatic nerve is compressed again. She needs to get that looked at. She won't, though.
He envied her those: the aches and pains of daily life. Snoring and sciatica – the detritus of normality: relaxing, in a way. Predictable.
David stared into the darkness.
When the glowing green numbers on his alarm clock showed five-ten, he rolled out of bed and pulled on his singlet and track bottoms over it.
Eschewing coffee for the river would be better for his mind, he decided; the drag of the current; the mist off the river. The smell of damp: leaf mold, decay, and life; the call of birds and the faint rumble of traffic over the Putney Bridge.
In the scull he pulled at the oars, feeling the burn and stretch of muscle, the warming of sweat, leaving the nightmare of chlorine, smoke, and red dots dancing behind him.
The nightmare always vanished with the pull of the river.
The chances are that you won't regain your memory; that you may have to accept the fact that your life starts here. Now..
On the river, life began anew.
When he returned home, sweaty, and sore, Laura embraced him and wrinkled her nose.
"You stink," she said affectionately. "Into the shower with you."
A simple act. Showering. Standing beneath the water, letting it stream into his face when his world collapsed around him.
He was standing in a shower. Naked and trembling. Bleeding from myriad cuts and scrapes. Bright lights. Shouts. Smoke. Laughter. And a name. A prayer.
John.
Laura found him, crumpled in a ball on the floor of the shower – running cold.
Later that day, in the park, he watched the man whose face haunted his dreams. He'd shaken Laura off. Promised to see Dr Harkness that afternoon. Gone to work. Stared at figures and facts blankly.
He went to see Harkness, who looked grim and went to his computer. A few moments later, he handed David a printout of a CV. Paper-clipped to it was a photograph of him and the man who haunted his dreams.
"I think maybe it's time," Harkness said. "Do you remember this man?"
"John." The word sounded odd to him. Stuck in his throat.
A wave of silence, dizziness. The breath leaving his lungs. His tongue, thick against the roof of his mouth.
In the park, the man named John Watson turned.
"Can I help you?" and then, "Sherlock?" David watched as John's eyes widened. His color faded, returned, and then faded. His mouth twisted into grimace: a pale mockery of a bitter grin. Joggers hurried past them. Together, they stood in stillness.
A dog ran up, sniffed at David's legs, and backed off, growling.
David smiled back, uncertain, and spread his hands. Somewhere in the distance, a taxi honked.
John stumped over to him.
"You didn't used to use the cane," David observed, memories flooding into his brain: PTSD, psychosomatic limp, images of sandy hair and a squared jaw. "And the tremors in your left hand are back," he finished.
"Bloody hell, Sherlock, what the hell do you think you're playing at?" John's jaw was tight – clenching and unclenching. Fury radiating from him.
"I'm sorry," David said. "I don't… Who's Sherlock?"
"What? You. You. You're Sherlock!"
Before he could respond, John doubled his fist and punched him. David stumbled back and fell to his knee.
"Oof," he managed, looking up at John.
"Bloody Hell, I ought to... Does that jog your memory?"
"I'm sorry," he managed again – stuttering, dabbing at his lip.
"You're back, and that's all you can say?" John asked. "You're supposed to be dead!"
"You called me Sherlock, I'm sorry… Let me… let me start again. My name," he said, extending his hand, "is David Harper. Let me buy you a coffee. I think we need to talk."
"So, this is what you do?" John asked over the coffee David had insisted he buy them. Coffee with John. It felt strange. Familiar, but… not. John whom he… looking at him was like looking into an abyss – flashes of familiarity sparking up from the darkness.
"Christ, Sherlock. You vanish for three years, and then return, as if by magic, with a new name, a new face, glasses, and less… less hair?" Around them, London flowed, full of life. Spring. Buds on the trees. Tulips, joggers on the footpath, the university team on the river, the shout of the coxswain, the world rejoicing in the watery sunshine.
David frowned. He didn't remember. He couldn't… couldn't process. He focused on John's hands.
"Is that what I did?" he asked.
John grimaced and set the coffee down on the bench and folded his hands, right over left.
"You're working at the surgery, still?" David asked. He had known that. So many signs. And a flash. Another flash.
"How did you know that?"
"Your nails are clipped short and neat, your shirt is clean, but the cuffs are worn, especially the one on the left sleeve indicating that you write with that hand, despite the tremors. The skin on your hands is dry, indicating you've been washing them at frequent intervals but not taking the time to moisturize them."
"Stop." John held up his hand. "You still do that, at least. Thank God."
"Do what?"
"Your deduction… thing. Your creepy act where you can tell a plumber by his belt, or whatever it was."
David frowned.
"I did it before?"
"You don't remember; of course you don't. What do you remember?"
"You're angry."
"Good deduction, that. You can't just disappear like that Sherlock! People don't just do that! They die, they leave us, we mourn, but they don't come back!"
David looked at his hands. Pale against the black trousers. He saw, from the corner of his eye, John's gaze, focusing on his hands. A sucked in breath.
"Oh, God, and they don't get married! Sherlock what did you do?"
"I died, John. They told me in the hospital that I had died. Twice, actually. In an automobile accident. I'd been hit by a drunk driver. Been ejected from the car. And Laura was there, and my brother, Michael."
"Mycroft. Not Michael. Wait… Laura?"
"She's my wife now. We… I don't think she meant to fall in love with me, but she did; I could tell from the way she kept watching me when I was doing my physiotherapy. And in those first weeks, when I didn't know my name. When Michael was a stranger to me – she was there. She was freelancing – working as a consultant for the hospital's IT department. She was fixing something in the office while I was learning to walk.
"I couldn't walk, John. And I couldn't remember who I was. They wouldn't tell me, just that I had been in an accident. There are scars now, and broken ribs. And there was one day when I wheeled myself down to the canteen. She was there. It was easy, John. We talked. It was… it was easy – not like talking with Michael. She smiled. Michael… well, you know Michael. He doesn't.
"Now I do quality checks for hospitals' computerized medical equipment. I oversee the team that effectively breaks analyzers. And then we write up what's wrong with them, which is just about everything, usually. And how they can be fixed. It's… not as boring as it sounds. Most of what I do is IT."
John jerked his head around. Stared at him.
"And now you want to know who you were?" he finally asked. "How did you find me?"
David nodded.
"I was given your CV by my doctor. He said it was time to find you. I… I had a flashback. You walk in this park every afternoon after your shift at the surgery down the street. My guess is that you're trying to tire yourself out first. So you sleep better. But it doesn't work, does it? I row. It doesn't work for me, either. It's temporary.
"I keep waking up in the night, and I hear your name. But I didn't know your name. I know the tremors of your hand. The nails. The clean nail beds. The fact that you nearly crushed your right hand in the Army, and are missing part of your right ring finger, but it didn't stop your surgical abilities. No, you lost your ability to perform emergency surgery when the tremors in your left hand started. PTSD. Right?"
John stood up, leaning on his cane.
"Right, well, this has all been very interesting," he said. "But I'll be off now. Whatever twisted little game Mycroft's playing, and why you're going along with it, doesn't matter to me. I don't play your games anymore, Sherlock, or whoever you are. Good luck."
John moved away from the bench and David squeezed his eyes shut. Facts flashed into his mind – pinwheels of fire. Emotion. No, not to feel. To remember.
"You were wounded in Afghanistan and invalided out of the army. Your limp is psychosomatic, and you didn't have it when I knew you three years ago, but it returned after whatever it was happened. Which means you were there, which means you know. You have a relationship with my brother, but it's not cordial, and you're still desperately worried about your sister Harry's drinking. You think it's wrong to giggle at crime scenes, and you once shot somebody for me." If he spoke faster and faster… maybe. Maybe John would stay.
John turned around.
"And you wake up in the middle of the night, just like I do, but instead of my name in your head, it's somebody else's," David finished.
"Moriarty," John said.
David felt, rather than saw John sit down beside him. Felt the presence of the other man – familiar, tugging at the corner of his memory.
"He's dead, we think," John said. "And so were you."
"I was dead," David said.
John stood, a rush of air. He took two steps and stood before him.
"Do you remember what I said to you right before we started giggling? That time I shot the cabbie?" he demanded. His voice was thick. David opened his eyes. John's hand was trembling against the worn denim of his jeans.
David shook his head.
"You risk your life to prove you're clever."
David smiled.
"I thought I dreamed that."
"This isn't you, Sherlock. And I don't know if I can…"
Whatever John was about to say was interrupted by the chirp of his mobile.
"Do you know anything about this?" John asked, scowling at his phone.
"No. What?"
David looked around the park.
"There," John said, nodding to the road.
David followed his gaze. He watched a panda car screech to a halt and a silver-haired man hurl himself out of it, striding towards them.
"John!" he shouted. "John… Anderson's been arrested."
"What?" John asked.
"Can you help? Please?"
"Me?"
"You… you were the last one to see him. At darts night last night. His wife… his wife's dead. I need to talk to you." The man stopped suddenly. Stared at David.
"Bloody hell…" he ejaculated.
"It's not," John said quickly. "It's not what you think."
The man seemed to shake himself.
"Anderson," he said. "Can you help?"
"Violent death?" John asked. “What can I do?"
"Ah, John, it's all fucked up. I'm about three steps away from losing Donovan, too. You're a witness, of a sort. An alibi, at least? Will you come? Give a statement? Unofficially, of course, you'd be… helping."
A grin tugged at the corner of John's lips.
"Fucked up?" he asked
"Yeah, could be dangerous."
John had straightened, and was playing with the handle of his cane. He turned to David. "You used to see quite a bit of violent death, back in the day." The tremor was gone. "Want to see some more?"
He felt a rush of warmth. A tingling at the back of his neck. A flash of this, this, this.
David grinned.
"Oh, God, yes."
"Where have you been?" Laura asked hours later. Her pale blonde hair was tied back. Her hands were clasped around her tea mug. The tea had been cold for about three hours. The lines around her mouth suggested that she was about to menstruate – that she had cramps. Or was angry. Or both.
"I… out." David stood in the door to the kitchen. The house smelled of sausage and Yorkshire pudding. She'd been waiting.
"It's after midnight, David! It was… you were supposed to come home. And I almost called the police. And Michael was worried sick. He said he'd look for you. Have you called him yet?"
"I'm sorry. I ran into a friend. We lost track of time."
"So you went on a bender? David, you don't drink. And an old friend? Did you remember something?"
"No, we weren't drinking. And yes, I did. I saw Harkness, and he gave me a name and an address." Laura jerked her head up. David could see the tension in her jaw. The streaks of tears on her face.
"Where's your jacket?" She asked. "Why didn't you call? What did you find?"
The mud on his trousers and the stains on his white shirt would have told her, if she'd looked carefully, where he'd been: all over south London, leaping onto a stopped train's roof, chasing a man who'd killed a woman, had tried to frame her husband's one-time mistress, and had almost killed them. DCI Lestrade had been stabbed and almost bled out in the alley, but David had held his jacket to his side, up underneath the imperfectly fastened stab vest while John had tackled the killer and cuffed him.
David had waited, pressing hard, harder, listening to the blood bubble with every breath Lestrade tried to take, talking, babbling, begging him to live, not to die, to…
"In the car. I… spilled coffee on it. I'll take it to the cleaners tomorrow."
The sound of sirens and John's triumphant shout.
Lestrade good naturedly cursing them as the paramedics loaded him, stabilized, into the ambulance.
John's feeble joke about him still being an idiot.
David's response: "I'm not the one who chased down an armed criminal in the dark."
"It was your idea to go into Dirkson's garden shed and find the bloodstained trimmer," John had countered.
"Not the recommended use for one, certainly. Murdering someone."
John had started to giggle.
"Oh, you know that, do you?" he'd asked.
"Our lawn's edges are always straight," David said with some effrontery.
Which was when John had burst out laughing, leaning up against the building, clutching his sides. David couldn't help but join in.
"I'm starving," John said, finally. "Chinese?"
"What time…" David looked at his watch. Past eleven. “I should go home.”
David took a deep breath.
"His name is John Watson. And I knew him once. Before."
Laura's face lost its color.
"David… did Michael do this?"
"N… no. But the flashback… it was John. From… before."
Laura looked back to her tea. Her hands clenched tighter around the mug, her knuckles white. She'd nicked her left index finger with the paring knife. There was ink on the tips of the fingers of her right hand. Red. She'd been editing reports earlier – the felt tips she used always got on her hands. She was trying not to cry.
"From before," David said again.
Laura sniffed. Let go of the mug. Pushed it away. Cold tea slopped onto the scrubbed pine table.
"I had to think. I wanted to talk to him; we lost track of time."
"What did you find out?"
David spread his hands.
"Laura, I… I'm sorry. I lost track of time."
"If you apologize one more time… No. I don't rate a phone call. No. You couldn't tell me what you were doing. What happened. Where you ran off to. Why, David? Why couldn’t you come home? Tell me? Does Michael know? Did you tell him what happened?
"Did you even think about how frightened I was? Thinking you were in an alley somewhere? After this morning? What did you find out? What do you remember?"
The words clung in his throat. The stories. The tide of memory and sensation that threatened to overwhelm him, wearing away at the cliffs that seemed to surround him.
"I… nothing. Nothing important. John didn't know much. He was just a colleague." The lie came too easily to him. It was… freeing. She doesn't need to know. She wouldn't understand. Nobody understands.
Laura pressed her hands to her face, tears springing into her eyes.
"God, David. Please… I'm scared for you. I want you to… to be whole. But God… please, please be careful."
David stood and said nothing. Watched the pool of tea on the kitchen table. Drip. Drip. Drip to the stone floor.
Wait long enough, he thought, the liquid creates a basin, a bowl. Even the soft water hollows out the hard rock - Ovid.
You risk your life to prove you're clever… you're an idiot. - John Watson.
Laura felt the bed shift hours later. Squeezed her eyes shut. Feigned sleep.
"If you take up with my brother, there may come a time where you and he will have to choose."
Michael's warning in her ears. She'd known, she told herself. Understood the risks involved. That David's memory would come back. That he'd remember the time … before. The time that Michael seemed so… afraid of. And it was the fear that struck her the most. Whatever David had been, Michael didn't want him to know about it.
Laura grasped the pillow. She'd picked up on Michael's fear – that the past was something to be avoided.
"But you could, in fact, be the best thing that has ever happened to him. I couldn't keep him safe. Perhaps you… you and I will be able to.
And she loved David. It was stupid, she knew. A man who barely knew himself. What could he give her, her mum had asked. But when he'd looked at her, he had seemed to look right through her—he had known. Just known that it was right. That he needed her, just as she needed him. Needed to care for him, to show him that he was whole. All of a man. To teach him to carry himself. To be proud.
Beside her, in the dark, David's breathing had evened out. Asleep. Okay. She could do this. She'd vowed to be with him – as he had done to be with her. They loved each other. They'd get through this.
Together.
Right?
Laura wasn't asleep. Her breathing wasn't nearly as regular as it should have been if she were.
She was waiting for him.
Hoping for him to leave? No. She wanted him to stay.
She's angry.
No.
Afraid.
Michael must have told her something.
Damn him! Obviously he didn't call her today; she wouldn't have been worried if he had. No, he'd warned her a while ago.
"We'll reach the past when we get there, David. You can't rush things."
The semblance of control. David had clung to it. He knew a few things – was certain of a few facts:
His name: David Harper.
His age: Thirty-five.
His brother: Michael Harper.
His parents: Deceased.
His wife: Laura Harper.
The three of them: Laura, Michael and David – against the world, for David. His strength, and his support. The last three years had been bewildering: the violence of his injuries, the trauma, the therapy, the learning. How he'd learned his name. Recalled the skills of driving and eating and walking. Walking had been the biggest one.
And then learned systems. Computer systems. Systems of the body. Blood. Bone. Digestive. Life. How Michael had suggested he do some private training. How Laura had suggested to her boss that his boss take a look at what David could do.
Laura had been there, and now she was afraid.
"What happened to me, Michael. Why won't you say?"
"David, please… believe me. It was a car accident. Before that, nothing happened to you."
Then why did Michael's lips thin every time they had this argument?
David rolled over and stared into the darkness. Sleep… sleep was elusive. Always had been. His brain, never stopping to whirl – thoughts surging, foaming. How many nights had he lain like this, watching the fiery windmills dance before his eyes – numbers, letters, facts, maps, place names.
When he did sleep… he remembered dreams of fire and water and pernicious red dots – laser lights. Mosquitoes.
He bunched up the pillow beneath his head. Took a deep breath. Calm. Be calm. Waited for morning. In the morning he would go to the river. Take out a scull.
Smell the tide and the spring and the life that surged around them. Feel the power of the ancient river. Watch the birds. The mist rising from the banks. Hear the rumble of traffic in the distance.
And row. Stroke after stroke. Feeling the jerk and pull of the scull. The sway of the oars. Hear the creak of the oars in the locks. Be one with the boat. Whole. Organic. The thought soothed him. Lulled him into an uneasy sleep.
David gave up trying to sleep at four. Laura had drifted off about two hours before.
"Was I a good friend, John"?
Silence. A short laugh.
"Well… you were a mad flatmate. And…"
John hadn't said any more. After that, it had been a fight, and a chase, and blood and Lestrade, and sirens…
David shook his head. Pulled on a pair of track bottoms and a t-shirt. Glasses.
In the kitchen, his routine was automatic: kettle. Water. Plug. Tea. Watch for the dawn to creep over the back garden wall. Not this morning. This morning, he mopped up the tea, spilled on the floor and the table. Scrubbed at the stains.
Took a chicken from the deep freeze. He'd roast it tonight for them. He liked to cook. Outside the rain drizzled down as dawn broke.
He'd meant to go to the river this morning. But now, staring out at the grey dawn, he realized that, no… Laura could not wake up to find him missing. He needed to stay.
For her.
For them.
At six, he made toast. Fried an egg.
Upstairs, the shower turned on.
At six-thirty, he sat staring at the egg and toast, as yet untouched on his plate.
The doorbell rang. David sat, frozen in his seat.
Laura answered it, coming downstairs, hair wet, wrapped in her dressing gown.
"Michael…," she said.
David looked up from the table as they entered.
"I heard you had quite the adventure last night, brother mine."
David watched Laura stiffen behind Michael.
"Tea?" he asked.
"No, thank you."
"Of course not. Is that tooth still bothering you?" David asked acerbically.
"Yes."
"And how's the diet? Still going well?"
"It's fine Sh-, David."
"Michael," Laura said, stepping out from behind him, sitting beside David at the table.
David felt a surge of relief.
"Michael, what happened to my husband?"
Michael suddenly found the tip of his umbrella fascinating.
"Did something happen? Or did you just hare off on some ridiculous adventure? What did possess you, David?" Michael asked.
Michael sat carefully folding his legs. Pulling out his cuffs. Setting his umbrella down.
"Let me begin," he said, "by assuring you both that I acted in your best interests. You too, Laura. What David was… before he was David, was not… not safe. To understand and to know who he was – to see the battlefield – to reengage with the man that you had come – it would have cost lives." Michael took a deep breath. Spread his hands on the table.
"We had been given a second chance, a chance for you to live, to be safe."
"Michael… Before I was David?" David asked. It was suddenly cold in the room.
"My name," Michael said slowly, "is Mycroft Holmes. And you are my brother, Sherlock."
At first he didn't want to believe it. Couldn't believe it.
Cocaine.
Sex.
Boredom – wait, wasn't he bored? Hadn't there always been a welling sense of panic, choking him? Hadn't he felt like he was drowning in his life? Trapped? Suffocating? He'd resolved never to tell Laura that, never to hurt her after she'd given so much for him.
Boredom.
Cocaine.
Cigarettes.
Sex. For drugs. Money. In alleys, toilets.
Being evicted from flat after flat. Bedsit after bedsit.
A crash. Hard.
Rehabilitation. Twice.
A moment. A light. In a filthy attic in a shared house in Montague Street.
The Science of Deduction.
"You and I have always been able to do that. When other people live their busy little lives – so many ants, plodding from chore to chore. When they ignore what is before them, when they see but do not observe. You and I, Sherlock… we observe. We learn. We…"
"Wait. Sherlock? You took my name? What else did you take, Michael – Mycroft? What else did you take from me?" David sprang up. The chair clattered to the floor. He grabbed Michael – Mycroft's shirt, dragged him forward.
Laura gave a frightened shriek.
Mycroft glanced down, almost contemptuously. A twist of the wrist freed him. A shove sent David stumbling back across the table. Crockery shattered.
"I promise you, Sherlock. Your name was… was to keep you safe."
"You keep saying safe. Why?" David righted the chair, sat down, clutching his wrist.
"David…"
"An ex-junkie? What, did I knife my dealer?"
Mycroft, Michael, whatever his name was, looked uncomfortable. Laura squeezed David's shoulder. Came to stand behind him.
David waited.
"It was eight years ago. He … he beat you, Sherlock. I found you chained to a radiator, your cheek split open. The internal injuries… you almost died. You were blown when I found you. When the team found you. Blown wide open, high as a kite. You'd been raped. Sherlock. My baby brother."
Laura gave a gasp and a sob. Her wedding ring digging into the skin of David's neck. An indent.
"How…"
"Weeks, months, a year of rehabilitation and withdrawal. Two. And then, barely clean, you became the world's only Consulting Detective."
"Consulting Detective."
"When the police were out of their depth, which, as you may have seen from your little adventure yesterday, is always, they came to you. You had a pet DI. Greg Lestrade. The one whose life you saved last night. And then you met Dr Watson."
"My… flat mate?"
Michael sniffed.
"He was the closest thing to a friend I'd ever seen you with, Sherlock. Closest since you were four and decided that Cedric-the-bear was no longer a fitting companion. The year I went to school. Left you and mummy. And you became the man of the house."
"Friend."
"Perhaps… more? I didn't enquire too much. He was very protective of you, Sherlock. Protective where I… where I failed to be."
"Where are you going?" Laura demanded.
"Out." Coat. Laura's voice froze him. He felt her behind him.
"David…" Her arms around him. He stiffened.
"That's not my name."
"It is your name. It is you. What proof to do we have? What do we actually know? David, wait."
"Laura, I have to… I have to know." He felt her sag against him.
"I know."
"I… there's a hole. A darkness. And I have to find out, Laura."
A long silence.
"I know. But…" Her voice faltered. He turned. Felt the rush of guilt. Longing. She had protected him – held him close. Taught him to live. And now, if he left, would he come back? Was he ready for this?
"I promise you, Laura. I will come back," he said. Took her face in his hands. Wiped the tears from her cheeks. "You can't ignore the evidence. And… whatever remains… as improbable as it may be… might be the truth."
"Where are you going?"
"Out. For a walk. A row. Something."
"Oh, David…"
He stepped closer. Pressed his lips to hers. Kissed her. Their lips moving against each other's. Breathing her breath. Tasting the tea in her mouth. The tenderness. The bond. A promise.
He would come back.
He went home that night. Home to Laura. He kissed her when he walked in the door. Kissed her hard.
Forgive me. For I do not know what I am doing.
He tried to ground himself. Used the tricks the therapist had taught him.
He made love to his wife. Buried himself in her warmth. Wrung an orgasm from her with his lips and tongue and fingers. Gasped her name as he came, shuddering over her, grasping her to him. Pleading, begging.
Grounding. Focusing.
This is who I am now. This is who I'm supposed to be.
And then, like the night before, he lay awake. Watching the fireworks behind his eyes – the pinwheels and comets of thought – ideas – tossed, turbulent. He was falling.
Laura lay in the dark. David slept.
Michael had called her at work while David had been out, looking for John.
"You need to choose. Sherlock needs to choose."
"Why do you keep calling him that?"
"It's his name. And now that he's found John again… The game, Laura, is on."
"What does that even mean? Are you even really his brother?"
"Yes, I am. Believe me. Nobody else would claim him."
"Ha. Ha. Michael, what is going on? If he's recovering his memory, why is it so bad?"
"You heard me last night."
"The drugs? Surely that's…"
"Believe it, Laura. Ignore it at your own peril. If Sherlock Holmes returns, so will the battle rage again. And lives will be lost."
"I don't believe you."
"You have a choice. If he remains as David, with you, he will live. Perhaps you will have children. But if he discovers who he was, becomes Sherlock… you, John, and he will be in danger."
"Danger…"
"When you lie with David Harper, you are two ordinary people: man and wife. Living your quiet lives, doing your quiet jobs. Never once seeing the battlefield. But when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield.
"John Watson is a soldier. A friend to my brother. Perhaps more. And he saw the battlefield. And killed on it. If Sherlock goes back to that life – goes back to John…"
She hung up the phone, hands shaking.
Lying in the dark beside David – she clung to his name like a drowning man – the conversation rang in her head. Echoes of the earlier warnings Michael had given her.
Michael. So protective of his younger brother. The hurt that she'd seen in his eyes when he'd told them the story of Sherlock. The frustration as David had jibed at him. The way he'd created them: David, Laura, and himself against the world, fighting for David's recovery, just as she had.
How he'd taken David down to the river. Taught him to row. Brought him into the club. How almost every Saturday morning, they'd be down there, speeding past her on the bank. Moving as one unit.
That was when it struck her. The job she'd found for David. The hobby his brother had found for him. The life they'd constructed around him. The life they'd constructed. Built. A prison for a man who couldn’t remember the life he’d lived before.
What was the old adage, she wondered. If you love something, set it free?
"If you set him free, people will die, Laura. I am depending on you. Keep him safe, Keep him whole where I cannot."
"David," she whispered in the dark.
He stiffened next to her.
"Yes?"
"David, you need to… you need to find… you need to talk to John."
He turned to her, his hand finding hers. Squeezing.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"You have to know."
A moment. The ticking of a clock. A car starting in the street.
"I'll always come back to you," he said.
She accepted the statement and prayed it was not a lie.
Only time would tell.
"You fell," John said shortly, sinking into a chair opposite him. "There was an explosion. You and Moriarty fell. I tried to catch you, but you slipped from my hands. I fell, too, though not as far. I was trapped beneath a fallen beam. Broke my shoulder."
"Left clavicle."
"How? Oh, God, never mind." Sunlight streamed in through the dusty windows. The flat was neat. Tidy. Sparse. Empty of books, papers. In a corner, a flat-screen television squatted, ready to spring from the recesses of the shelves next to the fireplace. Summer-cold.
It felt odd. Off. Imbalanced.
"Anyway," John said, sipping his tea. "When I woke up, Mycroft said you'd gone. Vanished after Moriarty. Something. I don't know. But he wouldn't… wouldn't say you were dead. And… it's stupid, really, but I began to hope. That after a while you'd come back. That we'd pick up where we left off. Be charging about London."
He shifted and watched John. In the light, the steam curled off the tea. Delicate. Fragile.
"But you never came home. And… after a while… I guess I gave up. Realized that you were… wherever you were. Dead. Mycroft wouldn't say, but I felt… it was easier to believe you were."
Silence. The creaking of an old building. The roar of traffic. The city throbbing around them. The television from next door.
"Let me see," he said suddenly.
"See what?" John asked. Startled. Yes. Startled. His eyes widened – he licked his lips. Twice. Tremors in the left hand stopped.
"Let me see the scars, John. Please."
"You're joking."
"John."
John sighed and stood. Peeled off the jumper. Unbuttoned his shirt. It slid from his shoulders. He grabbed the plain white vest beneath and pulled it over his head. Turned his back.
He rose from the chair. To look. To touch. To know.
Angry scar tissue on the shoulder. Pattern of damage more akin to a bullet wound. Perhaps improperly treated. Overlaid with burn scars. The whitened skin of dead flesh, pink and shiny. A wound further down. A puncture wound. A knife? Small bladed. Like a woman might carry. Not serious, not deep enough to touch a kidney. A close shave, though.
Scar tissue on the back of the head. Multiple blows, most likely with the butt of a gun. Smallish caliber. Nine, probably.
He was close enough to smell him. To touch him. The familiar, safe scent of John.
If he leaned forward just a bit more, he'd have his lips against John's shoulder. The injured one. His hands involuntarily traced the clean lines of the uninjured shoulder. down the spine. He had the urge to press his lips to it, to beg forgiveness.
Beneath his touch, John was tense.
Had they done this before? Were they lovers? Had they lain together?
Lain together. Like Romeo and Juliet.
"Sin from my lips. O trespass sweetly urged."
"You know Shakespeare now?" John sounded strained. He turned.
And there they were. Together. Close.
The huff of John's breath on his skin. His hand traced down John's chest.
"Were you… did we?"
John closed his eyes. Shook his head.
"Never. We… you weren't… you always said it was just transport. And I was… I am… I'm not. I had – have. Have girlfriends. A girlfriend."
John's hands were on his face, grasping his cheeks.
Left hand trembling. Right hand steady. Warm.
Breath.
Life.
Pulse.
"We can't go back," he said. "We can't be what we were."
"No," John agreed. "Only forward."
It was funny, Laura thought, how life just went on after that.
David came home from work, every day. Made dinner. Watched television with her.
But he also took up smoking.
Would sit for hours in the back garden. Cigarette after cigarette.
Laura tried not to complain, tried not to nag.
"That's bad for you," she said.
David had shrugged. He'd been more and more silent over the weeks. Ever since ….
And then one day John Watson came by.
David was in the garden.
"Bad for breathing," John said without preamble. Laura listened from the doorway. The warm summer night enveloped them, filled with the scent of honeysuckle and cigarette smoke.
"Breathing's boring," David mumbled around his cigarette.
John shifted on his cane.
"Lestrade phoned me," he said. "He wanted to know if you were… back."
A cold weight dropped into Laura's stomach. Her palms began to sweat.
"He walked in a battlefield, Laura. It almost killed him. If he remembers that, I… I fear we may lose him to it again. If you love him, Laura, you will keep him safe."
Michael's warning in her ears.
David's silence over the weeks.
Laura squeezed her eyes shut.
"…keep him safe, Laura."
David didn’t answer.
John continued.
"There's a body," he said. "Dead for three days. Found on the banks of the Thames. Not a jumper. She was strangled before she was put in the water – so, murder, it looks like. It's a funny one, though."
"Boring."
"Try this on: the word 'carousel' is carved across her forehead."
Laura watched as the cigarette froze, halfway to David's mouth.
"Anything else?"
"Nope."
"Interesting. Why's that interesting? He knew something. Something about her? In performance, right? She had to have been. Carnival. No. Magic show. No. Panto? Wrong time of year. Musical theatre. Come on, John!" David cast aside the cigarette.
Laura stepped from the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Murder!" David's eyes lit up. "Don't you see, Laura! Something interesting! Finally!"
The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet.
"This is how… of course it is. This is how you were," Laura whispered. Her eyes sought John. He nodded.
A moment. A breath. David looked as if he was going to jump out of his skin. Energy was radiating from him. She’d never seen him like this. All lit up, as if the universe was trapped within him. As if his mind was screaming for release.
It made sense. It was so clear. And she knew in her heart that if she let him go now… David wouldn't come back. Oh, he'd come home, sure. But he wouldn't be the David that she knew.
Laura wanted to cry. To howl. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He was her husband. Hers. She felt the metal of her ring dig into her palm. Unclenched her hand.
But you can't keep someone that doesn't want to be kept.
"Oh, Laura...," David stopped, grasped her face in his hands.
Tears in her eyes.
The disintegration of a life, built carefully. Piece by piece.
Three years.
He is worth fighting for.
You don't know who he is anymore, her mind screamed at her.
"David." His name. The name Michael had chosen for him.
"I'll stay if you want me to," he said. The light in his eyes flickered out.
Laura drew a shaky breath.
Nausea.
Grief.
You'll die out there. On the battlefield. Where Michael was so afraid for you. And you'll waste away and die here. Not at first. But slowly. Centimeter by centimeter. Until all that's left is a husk of the man I love. Dying of lung cancer and grief.
"Go."
Dawn over the river. One year later.
Sherlock loves the peace of the river in the morning. The mist that surrounds the boathouse and cloaks the banks in veils of grey. The feeling of peace – once so hateful (yes, he remembers), but the feeling of a peace about to be broken. The rising anticipation of chaos: a body, a murder, a theft. The deepest parts of human iniquity – the really interesting things.
It's the anticipation that he loves as he guides the scull through the water. Feels the pull of the current against the oars. The push-me-pull-you force of the oars in their locks. Hears the creak of wood and metal and plastic. The muted roar of traffic over Putney Bridge. Further up and further in he pulls.
Feels the burn of muscle and tendon. The sweat in the chill morning.
As he glides back to the dock, a figure swims from the mist. Sherlock smiles as the scull comes to rest. He catches the dock and the figure walks toward him.
"Does this mean you'll take me out on the lake this summer and read bad poetry to me?"
"Boring," Sherlock quips, shipping the oars, climbing out of the boat. "Help me."
Together they wrestle the scull onto its rack.
"Or shall I read to you?"
Sherlock smiles.
"Case reports, maybe. I have a fascinating file on decomposition rates."
"How romantic. Is that how you convinced Laura to marry you?"
They freeze. A moment crystallized.
A shadow flickers across his face. She's fine. It's fine. It's all… it's not his… she's not… A year, and he still feels like part of him is missing. She won't answer his calls. Emails one and two sentence replies. He'd come home three days later and they'd talked.
She'd been frightfully decent about it – less argumentative than Michael- no, Mycroft. She'd let him go. Suggested they stay married for at least another year, that when they were ready, they'd divorce amicably. Split everything evenly.
He doesn't like it. Wishes he remembers what it was like not to care so bloody much. Because he misses her sometimes. Misses her drooling and snoring next to him in the small hours of the morning when he can't sleep for the voices ringing in his mind – the whirlwind of facts and ideas. The sparks of memory that seem to prickle through his skin.
"Bollocks," Sherlock finally answers. "She doesn't like punting. We'd shop for antiques instead."
"And you'd deduce the history of each object."
"Naturally."
"Sherlock, I'm… I'm sorry."
"It's not… it's not relevant, John. You weren't the cause… And she's not…"
"No. It was you. Your life. Still is, in a way."
The call of a bird. The rumble of traffic over the Putney Bridge.
A mobile phone chirps. John digs in his pocket. The tension seems to dissolve as he reads the text.
"Lestrade?" Sherlock asks.
"Yes. Black male, mid-sixties. Skull bashed in. Found in a room locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry."
"That old trick."
"But this time, there's a note."
"Suicide?"
"No. A note for you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Lestrade took a picture of it."
Sherlock takes the phone.
Ready or not, Sherlock… here I come.
It's smeared on the wall behind the corpse.
"Not the victim's blood," he says.
"Are you coming?"
A surge of adrenalin. It's not perfect. Not the way he thinks it was before.
But it's a near thing.
Sherlock claps his hands together. "Of course."
"It could be dangerous."
"Yes," he agrees. "I certainly hope so. Come on, John!"
Additional AN: Please watch This video first It was not created by me, but served as the inspiration for this story.
Thanks go to the myriad of writers, editors and friends who made this possible.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 07:57 pm (UTC)The scene where Sherlock cups John's face, and "We can't go back to what we were." - "No. Only forward." <3
I really felt for Laura, and the way you've captured Sherlock and John at the end there is so bittersweet. Whichever way this went, it was going to be a hollow victory.
Thank you for some most exquisite pain.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-19 11:37 pm (UTC)Bravo. Bravo. <3
no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 03:52 am (UTC)First of all, you've written an incredibly evocative Original character. Wow. I can totally feel Laura's longing and her fear and her pain. She knew that she might not have David forever, but how could she not hope? And David, he wants to be David and not Sherlock, but he just can't. The whole situation is so tragic and we feel every bit of it. :(
What a beautiful job going for the intensity and not shying away from the complexity. Brava!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 10:20 am (UTC)And the new bonds - old and new. I love how you flesh them out: The three of them: Laura, Michael and David – against the world, for David. His strength, and his support.
The comfort of the current situation, and the unknown of the old. How easily David settles and isn't as bored - I love the details of this.
I don't get why Harkness decided to tell David about John - wouldn't Mycroft have stopped him? But otherwise, this is brilliant. The emotions - the relationships between the characters - how David-Sherlock is torn, and there's only, like John says: "Only forward". Gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-21 01:17 am (UTC)Really, just so very lovely. Thank you.