Fic for spacemutineer: Snapping Point, PG

[spacemutineer]

Title: Snapping Point
Recipient: spacemutineer
Author: [redacted]
Rating: PG
Characters, including any pairing(s): Holmes/Watson
Warnings: off-screen violence, heavy angst
Summary: Holmes has been avoiding this particular conversation for over a year now. Established relationship, Holmes' POV



As my train left St Pancras for Derbyshire, I had mixed feelings about my upcoming reunion with Watson. I longed to see him, yet dreaded what he might read in my face when he saw me. By the time my train passed Leicester, I had resolved to put off as long as possible the inevitable discussion of my most recent case.

It was over a week since Watson had left me in London, his destination Morton Manor, some miles outside the small market town of Upper Longton near Chesterfield. I had received two telegrams from him during his stay in Derbyshire. The first read:

PLEASE SEND EXACT WEDDING DATE WILLIAM BAILEY AND SARAH KNIGHT PROBABLY IN CHESTERFIELD OR NEARBY PARISH SPRING OR SUMMER 1851 AND BIRTH DATES ANY SUBSEQUENT CHILDREN STOP

This prompted me to visit Somerset House, taking a short break from the case Lestrade and I were working on in London. Two days later, Watson's second telegram arrived just as my own case took an unexpected turn for the horrific.

His message read:

WINCHESTER PROBLEM BROUGHT TO A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION STOP WHAT NEWS OF YOUR OWN CASE QUERY PLEASE JOIN ME IN UPPER LONGTON AS SOON AS CONVENIENT STOP

My telegrams to him had been deliberately obscure. I could not possibly tell Watson how my case was progressing -- at least, not via the Telegraph Office. During the following few days, difficult and unpleasant as they were, I carried his telegram in my inner pocket, next to my heart.

At least I had the comfort of knowing Watson's work in Derbyshire had gone well. I always looked forward to hearing the details of those cases he had handled alone, though for some reason he never chose to include them in the stories he wrote for the Strand Magazine. He claimed that the public much preferred to read about my fictional counterpart, the singular genius Sherlock Holmes, and that Dr Watson's role as Everyman and sounding board was an essential narrative device. For my own part, I would happily have devoured an entire novel starring Dr Watson the consulting detective, but I suppose I am biased.

Before Watson left London, we had arranged that I would join him in Derbyshire as soon as I should have dealt with my own case, as we were to go on to the Lake District afterwards for a long overdue walking holiday. Lestrade and I had been working around the clock over the past few days, and after the train had passed Loughborough I felt myself drifting off to sleep. My nightmares took hold of me again.

The fire was dead, neglected by a housemaid whose white face and tear-stained eyes showed the emotions I could not. On the table, set for one person, lay the breakfast Mrs Hudson had brought me some hours earlier, with a few words to encourage me to eat. I sat curled up in an armchair by the cold grate. Opposite me, Watson's chair was empty--


I jerked awake to the sound of the train's whistle and cast a quick glance out the window, afraid I had missed my stop. We were in Derby. I left the train half an hour later at the small request-only station of Upper Longton, where a man-servant met me with a gig to take me to the Winchesters' house, where Watson awaited me.

Morton Manor was a square-fronted Tudor edifice set among acres of pleasant rolling parkland. The lady of the house, Mrs Winchester, received me in the drawing room. She was a smiling middle-aged woman, somewhat tanned from her years spent in the Antipodes. I greeted her courteously, but most of my attention was on Watson, who sat to one side at a card table where he and the lady had been enjoying a game of piquet. He came forward to greet me as soon as Mrs Winchester and I had exchanged the necessary civilities.

"Good to see you, old man." He pressed my hand warmly.

I held his hand in mine for a few seconds longer than was customary, then was forced to release him as Mrs Winchester ushered me to a chair and sent the footman for refreshments. As I drank tea and ate biscuits, Mrs Winchester told me several times over how relieved she was that Watson had got to the bottom of her troubles.

"I gather the man claiming to be William Bailey is no longer here?" I asked.

"No, thank goodness!"

"His true name was Coates," Watson put in. "He left the house voluntarily yesterday morning."

For the moment, the details of Watson's case remained a mystery to me. I knew only what I had learnt from Mr Winchester's letter requesting our help a week earlier. He and his wife had hired Morton Manor to live in after their return from Australia, only to find upon their arrival that another occupant had recently taken possession of the house, claiming to be the long-lost son William of the late elder brother of Mr Edward Bailey, the gentleman who had let the house to them.

In which case he is the true owner of the house, not Mr Edward Bailey, Mr Winchester had written. He has proposed we live in the gatehouse instead. We have refused, and for the moment we are in uneasy cohabitation. Ordinarily we would simply leave our lawyers to sort this out, but that could take many months, and in the meantime the situation has taken a turn for the extraordinary, and living here has become unsupportable. There is talk of a curse placed on the house which strikes anyone who tries to interfere with the true line of descendence. We don't give much credence to that, but we are plagued by strange happenings: noises in the night, mysterious accidents, a dead bird pinned to the front door... I beg you will lend us your wisdom and experience in this matter.

"Dr Watson has been wonderful," Mrs Winchester exclaimed. "The way he put that scoundrel Coates on the spot! But I'm sure you want to rest after your long journey, Mr Holmes." She rose to her feet. "I shall look forward to your company at dinner."

One of the housemaids showed me up to my room. I did not remain there long, but quickly joined Watson in the adjoining room. We were alone at last.

I pulled him into my arms, feeling him warm and solid against me. He kissed my cheek, and then my lips, his moustache soft and ticklish against my skin. I breathed in the smell of his skin and the whiff of tobacco, relishing the scratchy texture of his tweed jacket under my fingertips, and feeling a small measure of relief for the first time in many days.

I tightened my arms around him, and he squeezed back. "I missed you too," he said in my ear.

We broke apart after a few moments. I stepped back.

"Well, tell me about your case," I said, forcing a brisk note into my voice. "Who is this fellow Coates? I gather he was not Mr Bailey's nephew, as he claimed?"

"A very distant cousin of Mr Edward Bailey, who owns this house. We had some uncomfortable nights of it," Watson said with a wry smile. "Coates put a great deal of effort into his scheme to drive the Winchesters from the house. Screams and screeches and other unpleasant noises in the night, a fire in the stables, more dead birds scattered around the gardens..."

"Until the Winchesters' arrival, his imposture had been accepted?"

He nodded. "None of the servants had been acquainted with the two brothers, Edward and William Bailey, but from what I could learn from the villagers, if Mr Edward Bailey's elder brother had ever had a son he was unlikely to be as old as this man claiming to be the true heir. And yet the fellow did somewhat resemble the family portraits..."

"And appear in the family Bible?" I suggested, having caught sight of the heavy tome lying on Watson's writing desk.

"Ah, yes. My piece de resistance." Smiling to himself, he picked up the Bible and handed it to me, silently inviting my deductions.

The volume's brown leather binding bore no information on the cover besides the title. The spine was worn and cracked, the corners damaged. Inside, several pages seemed to be missing, including the frontispiece and the printer's details. I flipped through the volume, noting that it was a standard Church of England version, without any Apocrypha. The flyleaf contained handwritten entries detailing the births and deaths of the Bailey family dating back to the 1750s. The most recent entries were the births of William and Edward Bailey in the 1820s, William's marriage to Sarah Knight in 1851, and the birth of his son, also William, in 1853. The inks and the variety of hand-writing styles were consistent with entries by many different persons over many decades. The paper quality and the book's condition were also potentially consistent with its age.

I glanced up at Watson. He was grinning.

"I presume this Bible does not date from the 1750s," I said, "but I feel I'm missing some essential clue."

"The text is Webster's revision of the King James Bible," he said. "You'll see that why has replaced the word wherefore, three score has been replaced by sixty, and so on. And that means the volume is less than seventy years old. Webster published his translation in the '20s or '30s, as far as I remember. Once confronted with that fact, Coates readily confessed to the rest of his elaborate hoax."

"My sharp-eyed Watson," I said softly. "My sharp-eyed, well-read Watson." My definition of the scope of knowledge needed by a consulting detective was now somewhat larger than it had been when we first moved in together, but Watson still outshone me with his voracious reading and large store of general knowledge. I put the Bible down and leaned in to kiss him. "Biblical scholarship is all very well at the right time and place, but I believe we have less than an hour before dinner, and I propose we spend it on something else. Does the door lock?"

He held me off, laughing. "But what about your own case, Holmes? You told me nothing about it in your telegrams. I trust it has been satisfactorily concluded?"

It was a dousing of cold water, recalling me to reality. My stomach clenched over cold and bitter bile.

"There were no points of interest," I said lightly. "I'll tell you about it later. In the meantime, I think we can occupy our time in a more pleasant manner."

He cast me a sharp look, but did not try to press his point, letting me draw him into another kiss. My hands, roaming over his head, encountered a bump and what felt like a wound, scabbed over and perhaps a day or two old. He winced, and I froze.

"I forgot about that," he said, putting his hand to the wound, his expression sheepish. "I hit my head on a rock in the stream that runs through the manor grounds. I was soaked through, as you may imagine."

"But what happened? Did Coates turn violent--?"

He stared at me in surprise, no doubt wondering why on earth my mind had jumped to that conclusion. "No, I slipped on a wet stone," he said after a pause. "As for Coates, he left without a murmur as soon as he had been definitively exposed. He wasn't even there when I had my stupid accident, yesterday afternoon."

I found I was trembling.

"Holmes?" Watson's voice seemed to come from afar. "Holmes?"

I pressed my hands together to still their shaking. "I see," I said, pleased with how calm and even my voice sounded. "A simple accident. Of course."

Watson was not fooled. After a moment's long hard stare at me, he said pointedly, "Holmes, tell me about your case in London."

I shrugged. "As I said, there were no points of interest." Seeing his frown, I added hurriedly, "At least not in the case itself. But when Lestrade and I confronted the counterfeiters in their lair, we encountered... an old friend." My heart was beating faster than I should have liked. I wondered if Watson could hear it. "Jed Radcliffe."

As I said the name aloud, it seemed to conjure up the nightmare of that horrific time almost a year ago -- the nightmare I had spent the last three days trying not to think about.

Watson had changed colour. He took my hand, pressing it between both of his. "My dear Holmes, I'm so sorry. I wish I had been there for you."

"For me? It was you whom he kidnapped and held imprisoned!"

He shook his head. "I was unconscious the whole time. The name Jed Radcliffe does not evoke any bad memories for me." He paused. "For you, I think, it is otherwise."

I shook off his hands. "Nonsense, Watson."

We hadn't ever spoken of this. Watson had tried, once or twice, to encourage me to talk about what I had endured during those four dreadful days he had been missing, but I had avoided the conversation every time.

How could it be preferable to dwell on past misery, instead of tamping it down and moving on with life?

I cleared my throat. "This is excellent news, of course," I said evenly. "Radcliffe is finally under lock and key. I confess I had begun to fear he never would be."

Watson watched me closely, his eyes warm and understanding. I could not meet his gaze. I turned away, glancing out the window at the well-tended green lawns outside. "Where is this stream you fell into? Can it be seen from this window?"

"I don't think we should change the subject, Holmes."

I rounded on him. "Why are you forcing me to dwell on this? Why do you insist on going through this damnably pointless exercise?"

His eyes widened. My voice had come out much louder and more harshly than I had intended.

I took a deep breath around the peculiar lump I seemed to have developed in my throat. How ridiculous that something that had happened almost a year ago should still have the power to disturb me.

Watson stood opposite me. Solid, faithful, constant. My dearest Watson. Waiting for me for as long as I needed.

The room was silent, except for my own breathing, harsh and unnatural in my ears.

"I still have nightmares," I said at last, in a sudden rush of words.

He sat on the bed and held out his arms. I came to him, letting him pull me close.

"When I first received Radcliffe's note, I simply didn't believe it." I spoke with my eyes fixed on the bedspread, his arm heavy and comforting around my shoulders. "My brain refused to accept that you were in his power. I have never felt so powerless, so helpless. Such despair."

"Such love," he said. "Such devotion. Such joy at our reunion."

"Yes."

I did remember that -- the joy I had felt when we found him after four days, whole and unharmed. In the first few hours of bliss, I almost did not care that Radcliffe had got clean away, slipping through our fingers.

"But the days before that seemed never-ending," I said with difficulty. "Never-ending, and yet flying to a close all too quickly, because every day that passed worsened the odds that we would find you alive."

He took my hand, threading his fingers through mine. "I'm here now."

"Yes." My voice cracked, becoming a sort of harsh sob. My eyes were dry, but my whole body was shaking, wracked with the emotions I had not been able to let myself feel last year.

Watson leaned back against the bed-head and pulled me with him, holding me until I felt able to raise my head again and face him more calmly.

"I suppose that was when I realised I cannot live without you," I said quietly.

He reached out to cup my face, brushing a gentle thumb along my cheekbone. "You won't have to."

We lay there in silence for some time. My head ached, as though I had been crying for hours, but I felt lighter than I had in months.

Finally, I cleared my throat. "I need some fresh air," I said, in a voice that was still raw. "Perhaps we might take a short walk before dinner?" I managed a smile. "I'm keen to see this stream where the great Dr Watson met with his ignominious accident."

He chuckled, his hand still tight on mine. "I think that can be arranged."

*** Fin ***

Comments

[mightymads]

I enjoyed so much this evocative hurt/comfort! Absolutely loved the points about Watson being an equal colleague, a full-fledged investigator in his own right, whose voracious reading and encyclopaedic knowledge complements Holmes more specific directions of study. Vulnerable Holmes is my jam in general. And I loved how patient Watson is. Solid. Faithful. Constant. This captures Watson’s essence. He is wise to wait and not to press Holmes unless it’s really necessary. He also knows when to put his foot down and clean the wound which has been festering for too long. I hope this story will be posted on AO3 because I’d like to bookmark it ;)

[ancientreader]

I really like the way you give us Holmes's anger at his own emotional distress, the way he almost resents feeling it, and then turns that anger on Watson when Watson urges him to acknowledge it.

[spacemutineer]

Author, I am delighted by this gift brimming with rich, luscious feeling and care. The relationship between Holmes and Watson here is warm and natural, lived in.

And the emotional hurt/comfort is excellent. Holmes would of course carry that pain and residual fear with him, unable to release it and unwilling to express it. I adore such a caring, intelligent, and observant Watson, seeing through Holmes and the bible at the center of his own case (!) with ease. I have a personal headcanon for this story that Watson bumped his head while doing some fishing inbetween interrogations. :)

A few details I just adored:

Holmes carrying Watson's telegram in his breast pocket to keep him close, if only in text.

And this wonderful section of dialogue, expressing my favorite thing about Holmes and Watson together, their perfect match. Watson and his optimism is exactly what Holmes in his firm logical drive needs so desperately.

"I have never felt so powerless, so helpless. Such despair."

"Such love," he said. "Such devotion. Such joy at our reunion."

Ah, thank you so much for writing this!

[saki101]

I loved Holmes's POV and learning that Watson sometimes solved cases independently. This line was a particular favourite: For my own part, I would happily have devoured an entire novel starring Dr Watson the consulting detective, but I suppose I am biased.

[capt_facepalm]

*smart*watson* is one of my kryptonites. I love it when he solves a mystery or breaks a clue before Holmes does. And in your story, Holmes appreciates that too. Nicely done!