The Solstice Suite: Part Four
Nov. 19th, 2010 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantcommentTitle: The Solstice Suite: Poppies.
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Pairing: Gen, UST if you tilt your head and squint.
Rating: G.
Word Count: 1,400
Summary: Gonna try and do a fic a week based around the weeks leading up to Christmas for our two favourite boys. If you have any particular requests, go for it, I'll try to work it in.
Notes/Warnings: Fluff, basically. Technically for Rememberance Sunday, but I didn't get it up in time. Oh well. Close enough.
John left the house on Remembrance Sunday in a temper. How could a person be so brilliant, yet so dense?
“I don’t see how one day of mouthing platitudes in the cold will help, is all,” Sherlock didn’t look up from his typing.
“Mouthing- people died. Are dying. We have to remember them.” John spluttered.
“Why? Will it bring them back? People die every day. Do we put up memorials to them? Will one day and a cheap paper flower really help?” Then he did look at John and his eyes showed nothing except the usual boredom at the world’s idiocy. Somehow that apparent lack of feeling hurt the most.
“It’s all we can do. They died- I almost- It was-,” John gave up. There was no point. How did you explain almost a hundred years of blood and tears to someone like Sherlock Holmes?
He was so intent on getting out the house he didn’t notice Sherlock watching him curiously as he almost tripped over the rug leaving the flat.
He’d already decided not to go to the ceremony at the Cenotaph- he’d tried last year, but it... It hadn’t been good. So he took the train to the suburbs. A little church with the memorial nearby. There were a fair number of people- the local Scout and Guide groups stood in formation with the Union Jack, uncomfortable in the unaccustomed gravity of the situation.
There were old men there, wearing in their best dress uniform with medals pinned on chests that no longer quite filled out the shirt, surrounded by worried-looking adult children and bemused grandchildren who didn’t quite understand why they had to stay next to Mummy and Daddy when there was all that grass to run on. Next year there would be fewer old men, and their children would stand looking a little less worried, and another generation would learn to associate the poppy with sorrow and loss. John tried not to think of himself in sixty years time- would he have proud children and grandchildren to remember him?
There were old ladies too, proudly wearing a uniform jacket or medals commemorating departed brothers, husbands, sons. John’s hand trembled as he pinned on his own medals (remembering the original awards ceremony as he did so, their weight on his chest still didn’t feel like glory to him), with the poppy beside them, and then stood almost unconsciously to attention, trying to ignore the twinge in his leg, bunching his treacherous left hand into a fist by his side.
Inside the church, the vicar, aware of his expanded audience, delivered a short homily giving generic thanks to whoever might be listening. They stood and sang a hymn, (John’s leg complained again, it was seizing up and he tried not to grunt when he sat again) and a short nervous Guide read ‘Anthem to Doomed Youth’ in a clear monotone. The old woman in front of him dabbed her eyes, her son’s hand over hers. Another hymn. John tried to lean on his unaffected leg. He was looking at his lap when he felt a late-comer sit next to him. He didn’t look up, not quite trusting himself, his knuckles white on the hymn book as an ancient veteran read some Bible verse or other.
The vicar led the way outside to the memorial, which stood at the highest point of the grave-yard. The person next to John stood and handed him his cane, which he had left in the umbrella stand at home, kept company by a deconstructed umbrella and a spirit level. John hadn’t brought it himself, thought he wouldn’t need it.
“Your leg is playing up; you’ll never get up there without it,” said the late-comer.
Sherlock had a poppy tucked into the red buttonhole in his coat. He was smiling a secret smile at John, which John didn’t (couldn’t) quite return. Instead he took the cane and used it to haul himself upright, hating the phantom weakness.
At the memorial, people laid wreaths, and the vicar said a few words. One or two of the old men stared upwards, with red-rimmed eyes. The Guides and Scouts looked solemn, trying not to shift position as the clock-tower struck eleven and the vicar said,
“We shall now have the two minute’s silence. Lest we forget,”
In the pregnant silence, John remembered sand and blood and screaming, smiling faces turned still and pale, gunfire tap-tapping and abrupt explosions. He rested on his cane, and fought to keep his face blank. He didn’t look at the taller man beside him, he didn’t want to see the incomprehension on Sherlock’s face- sure he came (and he doesn’t even begin to guess how he knew where to come), but does he know why? He tucked his other hand in his pocket as the minute ticked by. Sherlock was immobile next to him, barely seeming to breathe in the eleven o’ clock hush- even the cars and birds seem to have stopped to mourn the dead and injured and gone. John feels the weight of the medals on his chest and remembered, dry-eyed and stony-faced.
Then the moment was broken by a soft ‘hem’ from the vicar, who invited them to tea and coffee, and headed back to the church. There was a general clearing of throats and shuffling about. The Guides and Scouts made formation and headed back to the church themselves, talking like they were in a library, trailed by a few parents. Others gathered into groups and murmured quietly together. Someone came up and shook John’s hand and thanked him, in a non-specific and slightly embarrassed way. Then another and another. Like he was a hero, not just a doctor with a knack for working under pressure, like coming home, even broken, made him special. An old man saluted him with a wry smile and just when John thought he couldn’t take another moment Sherlock took him by the elbow, smiled at the old woman with her brother’s jacket on and led him away from the poppies and memories.
“I thought you didn’t do remembering,” John said, when he’s able to speak.
“I remember lots of things John,” Sherlock replied mildly. He put his hands behind his back as they strolled along. “And I knew you wouldn’t be able to get through it without your cane,”
“Yes, well, thank you for that,” John tapped it on the pavement. His leg still hurt, but walking (away) loosened it up a bit. They walked in silence for a moment.
“I looked up your army records, you know. Well, looked up. Mycroft sent them, just after you left this morning,” Sherlock said suddenly, apropos of nothing. “And sometimes I hear you- you know, the ceiling’s really thin and I hear you wake up,” he stopped by a wrought iron fence, and looked John directly in the eye. John was always disconcerted when that happened, usually Sherlock looked all over, observing, deducing.
“And I don’t understand poppies and I don’t understand dreams but I understand the words ‘friendly fire’ even though I don’t know why you’d call it that and I understand the words ‘above and beyond the call of duty’. And it occurred to me, well, the skull helped, but it was mainly me, that perhaps I do have something to remember. Or at least, something I don’t want to delete...” his eyes dropped as the sentence trailed off, and he started to walk again, a slight flush in his cheeks. John didn’t say anything, just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
“John,” Sherlock sounded irked, like he always did when John caught him reading a trashy magazine or (Sherlock’s worst habit, in John’s humble opinion) dipping a spoon into a jar of Marmite and licking it like a demonic lollipop. “John, I think you should know... You should know you’re worth remembering,”
John stopped and looked up at his flatmate, who looked... Flustered, for want of a better word. He smiled and shifted his shoulder under the weight of his medals and memories. Somehow, at that moment, they didn’t seem as heavy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-11-18 01:44 pm (UTC)Which is exactly how it should be I guess.
Now torn between wanting to give John a big hug and wanting Sherlock to do it instead
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Date: 2010-11-18 09:15 pm (UTC)That's pretty much a hug, as far as Sherlock goes.
I wanted to give him a hug too.
This is why I write fluff, I can't be mean to the boys, at all, I feel bad.
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Date: 2010-11-18 01:44 pm (UTC)Oddly, my personal canon for John includes friendly fire as well.
Also - Marmite, urgh. (If it's better than vegemite, I might consider it, but *cringe*)
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Date: 2010-11-18 09:14 pm (UTC)I tried eating it off a spoon once.
It was vile. But I could totally imagine Sherlock doing it.
Thanks for reading.
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Date: 2010-11-18 02:05 pm (UTC)<3
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Date: 2010-11-18 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 09:17 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for reading.
^^
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Date: 2010-11-18 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-18 10:03 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading. ^^
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Date: 2010-11-18 11:25 pm (UTC)...And then I read that line about the skull helping, and I lost it a little.
And then the ending.
Bit of an emotional rollercoaster, this one. I enjoyed it very much!
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Date: 2010-11-19 01:05 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked it, I'm sorry it made you cry.
*cup of tea*
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Date: 2010-11-19 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 09:16 am (UTC)John, I think you should know... You should know you’re worth remembering,”
Lovely.
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Date: 2010-11-19 09:52 am (UTC)Sherlock is so hard to write in this sort of situation, it's a relief to know I got it right!
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Date: 2010-11-19 01:56 pm (UTC)I'm still stuck on my own Remembrance Day thingie, but this one has got me going again! Thank you!
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Date: 2010-11-19 10:31 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it. ^^
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Date: 2010-12-16 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-16 09:54 am (UTC)Love your icon, it too is adorable. ^^
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Date: 2011-12-13 11:09 pm (UTC)By happy accident really - I was listening to this song while reading: http://youtu.be/NkZJ1I1NBJs
The melody (and the words) fit in a very weird way.
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Date: 2011-12-14 02:54 am (UTC)Hope you enjoyed your archive binge. XD