sherlockbbc_fic | Prompting Part XXXV

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Prompting Part XXXV

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John Watson's disappearance.

+1!!!!

Thirding!!!!

Just break my heart..

+1

I can't wait to see that Sir Ian adaptation either, Nonnie!
Someone make this happen

o:

-pitches tent and gets tissues-

If this is really why the film was retitled "Mr. Holmes" instead of "A Slight Trick of the Mind," then - I'm done.

Seconding this anyway.

Not sure if this is going anywhere, but I started something:
---
“Afghanistan or Iraq?” the weathered voice asks.
“Sorry?” Robbie replies, confused.
“Oh come now, your posture clearly says military, so where were you stationed Afghanistan or Iraq?”
It takes Robbie a minute of startled amazement before he can respond “Neither, we haven’t had troops in either of those places for decades. I was part of a peace keeping mission in North Korea.”
“Really? Damn. I am getting old” Mr. Holmes grumbles
“Pardon me for saying sir, but I think you passed ‘getting’ a long time ago” Robbie says, then immediately regrets it. But Mr. Holmes looks up at him with his clouded eyes and a wry smile.
“I suppose you’re right” he sighs “you look so much like him” he says more to himself than to Robbie.
“Like who, sir?” Robbie asks.
“Whom.” Is the only response he gets, and Mr. Holmes turns to pick at the tray Robbie had set in front of him with his fork. Robbie can see that the conversation is over, and he has other meals to dole out, so he leaves Mr. Holmes starting sadly at his plate of what amounts to little more than mush.
Later he asks one of the nurses about Mr. Holmes.
“He talked to you?” she says, nonplussed.
“Yeah” Robbie replies “I suppose he doesn’t do that much”
“Well,” the nurse “he doesn’t suffer in silence that’s for sure. Most people don’t take the ‘Let us know if there’s anything at all we can do to make your stay more pleasant’ quite so literally, but, I mean, never heard of him talking to anyone voluntarily if it’s not a demand.”
“Do you know who he was, before…” Robbie gestures at the elderly milling about the nursing home.
“Not really” she says “I think he was some kind of detective, worked for the police or something, but that’s about the extent of it.”
“Thanks” Robbie says, and decides to ask Mr. Holmes about it when supper roles around.

To his surprise, Mr. Holmes does answer when Robbie asks “So I heard from a nurse that you used to be a detective, did you work for Scotland yard? My cousin works there.”
Mr. Holmes snorts “I was a consulting detective, only one in the world, I invented the job”
“So like a private eye?” Robbie presses
“No, no I was brought in for the cases they were too thick to solve on their own.” Mr. Holmes says
“But the police don’t consult amateurs.” Robbie retorts. Mr. Holmes turns his head to look at Robbie sharply and stares at him a long while replying sternly “I was no amateur” before turning to his tray in a way that clearly indicates that Robbie should leave.

I certainly hope this goes somewhere cause it's lovely so far.

Thank you.

Robbie does not see Mr. Holmes the next day, nor the day after. Had he not known the nursing home was in high demand and they would have cleaned out the room by now, Robbie would have feared the worst right away. A day later, when Robbie makes his morning rounds, he’s please to see the door to Mr. Holmes’ room is open signaling his return. He knock’s twice before entering as is the nursing home’s policy, and is carful to avoid the IV as he moves to set up the tray over Mr. Holmes’ bed. It is only when he set the bowl of porridge on the tray, that Mr. Holmes looks at him with glazed, unfocused eyes.
“John?” he whispers “My dear John. It’s been so long.” He slowly brings a shaking hand to cup Robbie’s cheek “I’ve missed you so much.”
Robbie is startled to see the beginnings of tears forming in Mr. Holmes’ eye. Mr. Holmes wets his lips “Where have you been all these years?”
Robbie gently removes the hand from his face “Mr. Holmes, I’m not John, I’m Robbie the new volunteer. We spoke yesterday, do you remember?”
But Mr. Holmes does not seem to hear him, and to Robbie’s alarm, appears to be getting increasingly agitated.
“Where were you?” he demands, voice no longer a whisper “what happened to you? Where did you go!”
With surprising strength, he reaches out to grab Robbie’s face again, this time with both hands, and in doing so, he dislodges the IV.
“I looked for so long, John!” he shouts “I tried so hard to find you!”
Robbie, frightened, stumbles backward, and slams the nurse call button. Mr. Holmes makes a feeble lunge after him, but gets stuck part way over the guard rail. He’s sobbing in earnest now tears and snot running down his wrinkled face “Please, John!” he cries
To Robbie’s relief, two nurses appear before he has to respond and shepherd him out of the room. Shaken, he walks down the hall away from Mr. Holmes’ pitiful calls for John.

;__________________;...

Poor Sherlock...
Maybe John's blog is still there, so Robbie can make a research. Clearly, he's intrigued.
Can't wait to read more of this!

It's just raining on my face. Thanks.

Robbie can privately admit to himself the next day that he’s nervous about returning to Mr. Holmes’ room. He could have easily asked to another food delivery route, but he’d managed North Korea, he could survive a 93 year old man.
“I suppose I owe you an explanation” Mr. Holmes says the moment Robbie steps into his room, and Robbie cannot contain his sigh of relief. If Mr. Holmes notices, he shows no evidence of it.
“I wouldn’t ask that of you” Robbie says. Mr. Holmes looks thoughtful at that.
“But you’d like to know.” He says, and Robbie nods. “Besides, I’m old and I’m dying. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Tell your story before you go or some rot?”
Robbie barks out a startled laugh before regaining his compose. “But why me? I’m just the newbie volunteer that brings you food. You don’t even know me.”
Mr. Holmes stares at him a long moment and Robbie has the curious sensation of being unwrapped by the man’s gaze.
“You remind me of him” Mr. Holmes says at last “Not only in appearance, though to old eyes the resemblance is striking, but I imagine that is mostly my eyes, your nose is wrong and your ears are big enough and your too tall. But the military posture, and your frankness remind me of when I first met him. And you’re wrong, I know plenty about you, enough to be going on anyway. For example, I know that your staying with a relative who has a can.”
“And how could you possibly know that?” Robbie asks indignantly.
“Easy, your gate and posture indicate that you’ve returned from your service quite recently, as does the fact that you’re volunteering here instead of getting a paying job. No job means no money outside of your pension. You could be staying with a friend, but you’re a man who volunteers to help the elderly, a necessary but undesirable task, which would indicate some generosity of spirit. You’d feel bad about leaning on a friend too long without paying any kind of rent, and most of your pension goes towards food and clothing because, but as you’ve recently taken up a volunteer position, you’re not going to be able to pay rent anytime soon which means a relative, probably a close one, sister I’d imagine. As for the cat, you show up everyday in my room with orange hair on the bottom of your trouser legs but nowhere else, dog hair doesn’t come in that shade. Cat hair on your legs where it has rubbed up against you, but nowhere else meaning you don’t have a close enough relationship to the cat to pick it up, nor do you spend enough time with it for its hair to get all over your clothes. I’d say it was just a neighbor’s cat, but the hair has been their every time I see you which would seem to imply you live with the cat.” Mr. Holmes finishes his speech with an almost endearingly smug grin.
“Wow,” Robbie says, stunned “that was… amazing.”
The grin is wiped away and replaced with wide-eyed shock, and then there’s a hint of a smile almost heartbreaking in its sincerity.
“Here.” With a trembling arthritic hand, Mr. Holmes gives him a notecard. On in, in a nearly illegible scrawl is a URL and a set of numbers.
“Go home and read everything, and tomorrow, I will tell you about John.”

---
Goodnight everyone. Thank you for the kind words. I'll try to post more tomorrow.

I absolutely love this! <3

can't wait for more

Beautiful, this is seriously great so far! One suggestion, you might want to try double spacing between paragraphs, but that's your choice. Can't wait for more!

Thank you, and you're right about that. It's so much better formatted in the document on my computer and I forget to check if it looks okay on LJ before I post it.

Hours later, Robbie sits on his bed with his laptop and types in the URL for John Watson’s blog. When It loads, he gets to a page containing only a password box with the hint: “Gave my life meaning.”. Robbie stares at the notecard in bewilderment for few moments before typing 29012010 into the box and clicks enter.

The last entry on the blog, and the one is titled simple “John” and when Robbie clicks on it, it takes him to a short entry that reads “John if you see this, please contact me. I need to know you’re alright.” there’s a phone number beneath. Robbie wonders if the number is still relevant. Given the hosting, the format, and how long it took the blog to configure, no one’s touched this place for a long time. Robbie makes his ways through the posts one by one reading everything including the (sometimes quite long) stretches of comments. Robbie enjoys reading about wild adventures these two men went on and on occasion finds himself laughing aloud. He hasn’t felt glee like this since he was a child reading adventure stories.

Robbie actually gasps allows when he encounters a post titled “Sherlock” and reads Watson’s loving proposal finishing with the self-deprecating “If you’re not interested please delete this post, and we will never talk about it.”. He scroll’s down to see Sherlock’s “Yes!” as the first comment, followed by John posting “You’ve already told me that you ridiculous man, but I suppose it’s nice to have in writing” and then a flood of congratulatory comments from friends, family, and fans alike. Robbie chuckles when he reads John’s comment complaining that he had made the post private but Sherlock had posted it to the public, and then’s Sherlock’s response that they were going to tell everyone anyway, and wasn’t this more expedient? Besides, shouldn’t he be able to brag a little? Things got pretty mushy from there.

Robbie is up until the early hours of the morning, but he finishes reading everything and goes to sleep wondering what tomorrow will bring.

This is so, SO, sad and beautiful! D': I could vividly imagine myself reading that blog with Robbie.

oh god please more, I'm so addicted to this

Re: Maybe the start of a fill (4/?)

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Re: Maybe the start of a fill (6/?)

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Correction:

kingtyrell.livejournal.com - 2014-07-28 02:34 (UTC) - Expand

Part 7/?

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Re: Part 7/?

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Re: Part 8/?

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Re: Part 8/? - Author's note

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Re: Part 8/? - Author's note

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Re: Part 9/10

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Re: Part 10/10 End!

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Re: Maybe the start of a fill (6/?)

(Anonymous) - 2014-07-28 02:34 (UTC) - Expand

“I looked for so long, John!” he shouts “I tried so hard to find you!”

Oh God, I didn't need my heart anyway and now it's broken into a thousand tiny little pieces.

Way to break my heart on the first chapter.

Hey all,
I've posted the story to ao3 where you can read it here:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/2171970/chapters/4750779

I've also added a short happy alternate ending

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