Happy birthday, Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle! And as a birthday present and respect to you, sir, this shall be a day where I won’t say a peep about Sherlock Holmes :)
The most ironic lie ever told is that soldiers are prepared for battle knowing that they might die.
Nonsense. They may know, but they never truly bevieve in it. At least not completely, not in the depths of their souls, of their hearts. Even the most skeptical maintains that spark of faith, that animal instinct of survival as such as the human instinct of hope. The human being is, after all, a hopeless optimist. Everyone thinks they will be the exception, and it’s not until they feel the bullet piercing the skin, digging deep into the flesh and breaking the bones, or the bayonet digging into their lungs, that the penny drops.
With the blond medical officer it was different. He held out hope when the lead bullet had pierced his collarbone — even as he landed from the impact on a slashed rib from the chest of the soldier he was trying to mend; Even when the bone ruptured his femoral artery. The pain hadn’t been enough to knock him unconscious, and he’d been grateful for that. That way he could stake the blood until Murray arrived, he thought dizzily.
He knew he would make it through. He had to.
His ordinance arrived far too late.
They found the body leaning against a trench. It was already cold — they had to retreat, and were not able to return until days later. Flies surrounded it, attracted by the putrid smell of old blood, and the soldier hardly recognized him, so disfigured was his face, eternally anguished.
He had never seen him like this. The doctor had been always in a good mood, smiling or playing around. But that cerulean blue left no doubt.
They dug a shallow grave — Murray insisted he be buried alone, not roughly dumped in a communal grave, left to rot with dozens of other corpses. The commanders checked his credentials – an officer. They allowed it.
They wanted to break his fingers. His right hand was faithfully brandishing the scalpel with force. He had done his duty to the very end.
Murray did not allow it — let him be buried with it. The doctor in his element, he had said softly to the churned earth.
There were no honors, and the ordinance was the only one who prostrated beside the grave until he had finished the inscriptions on the makeshift wooden headstone. Then he got up, chased away the tears and left.
“Dr. John H. Watson
1851 - 1880
The kindest and bravest man I have ever known
Beloved comrade and illustrious doctor
May the Lord receive his soul”
——————————
Many miles away from that miserable place, an unremarkable consulting detective finishes a melancholy, pained tune. He was in his darkest mood, brooding and downcast. He had been like this for a few days, the housekeeper would tell his brother hours later, as a doctor carried a slender, unconscious, convulsing body into a hansom.
The young man gently lowers his violin into the comfortable armchair opposite to his — the one that had always been unoccupied. And, somehow he knew, would always remain that way.
He then picks up the syringe and draws the liquid up to the plunger.
———
Ways to die is a Sherlock Holmes fanfic of short — or not-so-short — one shots of some scenarios where either Mr. Sherlock Holmes or Dr. John Watson could have departed from this world.
Most fit in the canon context, but there will be exceptions. Each chapter will be a different scenario. Also on Ao3.
You know, the more I reread the canon, the more I have a hard time convincing myself that all the queer subtext was not deliberately written as so.
By God, there are more romantic passages than Basil confessing to have romantic feelings for Dorian in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, an explicitly queer book – or as explicit as a book could be in the XIX century – that was used as “evidence” at Oscar Wilde’s trial for ‘gross indecency’.
The story itself was written by ACD from the point of view, mainly, of a military doctor discharged with honors (who subsequently share rooms with his found companion for at least 7 uninterrupted years), and writes 60 stories to give justice to his genius detective.
If this isn’t a love letter itself, I don’t know what it is.
Note: please, this is MY interpretation of the canon, and as many other Holmesians may share this view, I would like to expose it. If you see them as just intimate, good friends, go for it. This was not written as an attack if your view of the stories is different.
