sherlock - millennia
Feb. 14th, 2014 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
augustbirdTitle: Millennia
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,195
Characters/Pairing: John/Sherlock
Summary: “How do you keep finding me?” John asks. / Sherlock bends his head so that his lips are close to John’s. He has John’s wrists pinned up over his head and his whispered breath seeps into John’s open mouth. “How do you keep forgetting?”
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Author's Note: This is not the fic I've been wanting to write for months. This is the fic that slapped me across the face after I was too lazy to change the channel from Hancock. Several borrowed elements are pretty obvious here. This isn't quite my normal writing style? It also hasn't undergone any external editing. I really feel like I ought to apologize for how ~artsy~ it is?? SORRY GUYS.
He crushes basil between his fingertips. The ocean breeze tucks itself into the low-hanging branches of the olive tree with a rustle of leaves. Seabirds spread their wings and rise into the pre-dawn light.
Sherlock touches his forehead against the back of John’s neck. John lifts his chin and breathes in the clean air. It had rained for the majority of the night.
There is a bruise on his hip in the shape of Sherlock’s hand. Tomorrow he will walk away and it will fade with each step he takes. And then he won’t remember.
_____
He walks into bulletfire. He uses his body as a shield.
He gathers up bloodied limbs and half dead men and he walks out again. The bullets strike the side of his cheek, rip holes into his uniform. They clink in his clothing with every step he takes.
He never uses his gun. He wields only bandages and morphine. Mortars fling the frozen earth up around him but his step is steady.
_____
The gas lantern flickers as a draft pushes in under the back door. It’s warm in the small space despite the snowstorm outside. Somebody knocks at the front door.
A tall man with dark hair stands on the two wooden steps John calls his porch. There are snowflakes on his shoulders and in his hair. His skin is pale against the dark fabric of his upturned collar. John has only met him twice before, both times in the city when John delivered his extra produce. They’ve never spoken but John still knows who he is.
“Pardon me for the intrusion,” the man says without taking his eyes off John’s face. John opens the door wider in invitation. The warmth leaves and the man enters.
John puts the man’s horse in the empty stall next to the pigpen, feeling foolish as he hangs the finely made saddle next to his cracked plough. He hurries back inside to light the stove with a match and puts the kettle on. The stranger puts another log into the fire and takes his coat off.
The man sits at the table and watches John pour boiling water into tin cups. A few tea leaves rise to the surface and sink again. The man wraps his hands around the hot cup when John sets it in front of him. If it is burning his skin, he shows no indication.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asks.
_____
Something a long time ago must have put its palms together and pulled them apart again.
Something a long time ago must have taken one flesh and pulled it in half.
There’s a lopsided bird with half its feathers torn out. It leans towards the sky and fails to catch air. There’s a cypress tree with no roots, branches spreading and shrivelling. There’s a word in some long-forgotten language where me and mine are wrapped into the same.
_____
John slides his callused fingers into the softness of Sherlock’s hair. Their legs are tangled beneath the thick woollen blanket.
The winds whip the fallen snow up against the back door. Sherlock’s cheek is on his chest, right over his heart.
_____
The late summer sun sinks into his wheat fields and turns them to gold. John wipes his forehead with his arm and carries the dairy cow into the stable for the night when she refuses to budge. The wolves slip under his fences at night. They’ve already made off with one of his lambs this spring.
It’s dark outside and his lamp touches the corners of his house with flickering light when someone knocks on his door.
_____
“You butcher those animals,” Sherlock says. A scalpel gleams on the table. John can’t look away from it. “It wouldn’t be much of a difference.”
“You can’t ask me to do this.”
Sherlock’s voice is quiet. “You won’t say no, though.”
Later, John presses the blade into Sherlock’s pale skin. He watches the blood spill from the cut.
“Deeper,” Sherlock murmurs without a trace of pain. John cuts deeper. Sherlock closes his eyes and his voice is calm. “I must see it. You’ll have to work faster.”
John breaks Sherlock’s ribs with trembling hands. He saws through muscle and bone. He pries open Sherlock’s ribcage, his fingers slippery with Sherlock’s blood. Sherlock’s breathing is laboured as he struggles to prop himself up on one elbow to take a look himself.
Sherlock’s heart beats before his eyes. John’s own heart is beating in time. There is a phantom pain in his chest.
“Ah,” Sherlock says.
“You’re dying.”
Sherlock meets his eyes and says nothing.
_____
John is fifty miles away before he allows himself to drop to the ground. He heaves his dinner onto the grass. His hands are still sticky with Sherlock’s blood. He lies with his cheek pressed to the dirt, eyes unfocused.
He takes to the air again and finds a river two miles to the south. He puts his hands into the water and watches the blood leave his hands. It looks black in the moonlight.
He stays away at first because he doesn’t want to face Sherlock after what he was asked to do—what he had done. Then he forgets why he’s staying away. Then he forgets Sherlock altogether.
_____
The pathway up the mountain is paved in red dust. The bushes have dried into stunted branches, leaves faded. John carries a water pouch at his side. The water inside contains silt and tastes metallic. The wells will dry up in the next month. Half his cattle have died of heat exhaustion.
The dust settles between his toes and tints his white robes a faint pink. John is tired but he walks on.
_____
A man sits in the centre of the white temple with his eyes closed. His hair is dark and his skin is pale.
“I have heard,” John says, “That an oracle lives here.”
The oracle opens his eyes and looks at John.
“I have been waiting for you.”
“I come to ask for rain,” John says, “To end this drought.”
_____
He remembers being told, close your eyes. He remembers being told, open your hands. Show me your palms.
A thunderstorm without rain. Lightning touches the dried earth and someone is calling his name through the clouds. Wildfire crawls through the underbrush and climbs up tall grass like a serpent. It advances through the forest. It burns his house to the ground. He can hear the hooves of cows beating against the charred ground.
“My wife,” he says, “My child.” Cool hands touch his face.
“Some sacrifices have to be made,” the oracle says.
_____
The sky is cloudless. John shields his eyes against the bright glare of the sunlight. The trees are blackened but the fire is gone. It has eaten everything on this side of the mountain. There are no more songbirds, no more ferns growing in the shade, no more squirrels to chase one another up and down the scorched tree trunks.
“Is this punishment?” he asks the oracle, “Is this my punishment?”
The oracle doesn’t answer.
“Where is the rain?” John demands, “You promised me rain.”
The oracle looks at John. “That is not mine to give.”
_____
The oracle draws water from a spring at the back of the temple. He crushes mint into a stone cup and pours the sweet water over the leaves. It is the cleanest thing John has ever tasted.
“Do you know who I am?” the oracle asks.
John knows. He has known since the oracle touched the backs of his hands, since he pressed cool lips to John’s fingers. A savage wind against the sails of lost warriors, driving them farther from shore. A touch of fire on parched earth, pulling moisture from the ground. The gleam of spears in the midday sun. Blood spilled into dust.
“Do you know who you are?” the oracle asks.
John breathes in. It starts to rain.
_____
“How do you keep finding me?” John asks.
Sherlock bends his head so that his lips are close to John’s. He has John’s wrists pinned up over his head and his whispered breath seeps into John’s open mouth. “How do you keep forgetting?”
_____
In his company, he’s known for being extraordinarily stupid and extraordinarily lucky. He carries a gun that he doesn’t use and doesn’t mention that he’s been shot hundreds of times while hunched protectively over a fallen soldier.
_____
He’s on leave in London. He’s walking from the pub back to his flat when he sees a man being mugged.
“Hey!” he calls out—but the mugger takes no notice. He grabs the mugger from behind but his movements are slower than usual. The mugger turns around and lashes out.
John cries out. He’s not used to feeling pain. The mugger runs.
“I had that under control,” the victim snarls as he turns towards John, “Now I’ll have to—”
John stares at the plastic handle of the knife that’s buried beneath his ribcage.
“No,” the man says. John watches numbly as the man grasps the handle and gently pulls. John gasps in pain. He wants to tell the man to leave it, that he’s a doctor, to please call for an ambulance, but the words are frozen in his throat. This has never happened before.
The man traces John’s jaw with his fingertips—then he pulls out the knife. He’s gone before it clatters onto the ground.
When John touches the wound again, he feels only unbroken skin.
_____
There is honey on his lips. Sherlock leans down and kisses him, licking away the traces of sugar. His hands are in John’s hair, knees pressed to the inside of John’s thighs, ankle twisted in the furs.
“Come with me,” John says, breathless.
Sherlock laughs and shakes his head. He traces a scar down the length of John’s chest.
_____
He is legendary for being indestructible, for the way he walks into battle with the lightest of armor. The swords and spears bounce off his chest, metal crumpling, wooden shafts splintering. A warrior worthy of Achilles.
When he disappears, they say the gods have welcomed him among their ranks. They say he will dine and drink among the deities as one of their own, watching over men in their hour of combat.
_____
The truth is: he throws away the spear. He trades his golden brooch for two cows. He forgets everything. He carries on.
_____
“How many lives?” John asks.
“Hundreds,” Sherlock says, “A thousand.”
“How do you stand it?”
Sherlock closes his eyes.
_____
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, “I can’t stay away.”
_____
The thunder shakes the floorboards and rattles the pans John’s hung up to dry. If he listens closely, it sounds like somebody calling his name.
_____
He is the scent after the storm, of loam and wet sand. He is the flare of fluorescence in the seas, a million living things lighting up in the dark. He spreads branches into the sky and hopes to net lightning.
_____
It starts as an ache beneath his sternum. He takes aspirin first, then nitroglycerine. The pain spreads to his back, hollows of pain beneath his shoulderblades, nestling in behind his ribs. There’s no medicine that will relieve it.
He still pulls bullets from his clothes and flings them far away when nobody’s looking. It’s cold at night but John doesn’t mind. He takes off his shoes and then his socks and sinks his toes into the desert sand. The layers beneath the surface are still warm. How many miles down would they have to dig through this sand and dirt to find water?
“Watson!” someone calls. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He feels like he’s going mad.
“Coming,” he calls back.
_____
He’s served for six years when they discharge him. They say he’s stressed, that he needs a break from the front lines. They don’t mention the last firefight to his face, but John’s certain that it’s all over the paperwork recommending his release.
The pain in his chest worsens.
_____
He can hear the blood pumping in his ears when he aims. The cabbie crumples and the pressure in his lungs eases.
_____
“I know who you are,” John tells Sherlock.
“Do you,” Sherlock replies but it’s not a question.
“I met you in an alleyway once,” John says, “And before that, a hundred years ago.”
Sherlock says, “I think I should stay away.”
_____
Forever is the same, no matter if time runs backwards or forward.
Inevitability is just that.
_____
John touches the twisted scar beneath Sherlock’s ribcage, the surgical line along Sherlock’s sternum. He only faintly remembers that night.
Sherlock is a thousand year old firestorm with the promise of war humming low in his veins. He is retribution prowling the streets of London, surrendered to his destructive identity. He never forgets.
_____
“Would it be so terrible?” John asks. The morning sunlight paints gold across the rooftops of the city.
Sherlock slips his hand into John’s. They move forward into a mortal life.
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,195
Characters/Pairing: John/Sherlock
Summary: “How do you keep finding me?” John asks. / Sherlock bends his head so that his lips are close to John’s. He has John’s wrists pinned up over his head and his whispered breath seeps into John’s open mouth. “How do you keep forgetting?”
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Author's Note: This is not the fic I've been wanting to write for months. This is the fic that slapped me across the face after I was too lazy to change the channel from Hancock. Several borrowed elements are pretty obvious here. This isn't quite my normal writing style? It also hasn't undergone any external editing. I really feel like I ought to apologize for how ~artsy~ it is?? SORRY GUYS.
i.
He crushes basil between his fingertips. The ocean breeze tucks itself into the low-hanging branches of the olive tree with a rustle of leaves. Seabirds spread their wings and rise into the pre-dawn light.
Sherlock touches his forehead against the back of John’s neck. John lifts his chin and breathes in the clean air. It had rained for the majority of the night.
There is a bruise on his hip in the shape of Sherlock’s hand. Tomorrow he will walk away and it will fade with each step he takes. And then he won’t remember.
ii.
He walks into bulletfire. He uses his body as a shield.
He gathers up bloodied limbs and half dead men and he walks out again. The bullets strike the side of his cheek, rip holes into his uniform. They clink in his clothing with every step he takes.
He never uses his gun. He wields only bandages and morphine. Mortars fling the frozen earth up around him but his step is steady.
iii.
The gas lantern flickers as a draft pushes in under the back door. It’s warm in the small space despite the snowstorm outside. Somebody knocks at the front door.
A tall man with dark hair stands on the two wooden steps John calls his porch. There are snowflakes on his shoulders and in his hair. His skin is pale against the dark fabric of his upturned collar. John has only met him twice before, both times in the city when John delivered his extra produce. They’ve never spoken but John still knows who he is.
“Pardon me for the intrusion,” the man says without taking his eyes off John’s face. John opens the door wider in invitation. The warmth leaves and the man enters.
John puts the man’s horse in the empty stall next to the pigpen, feeling foolish as he hangs the finely made saddle next to his cracked plough. He hurries back inside to light the stove with a match and puts the kettle on. The stranger puts another log into the fire and takes his coat off.
The man sits at the table and watches John pour boiling water into tin cups. A few tea leaves rise to the surface and sink again. The man wraps his hands around the hot cup when John sets it in front of him. If it is burning his skin, he shows no indication.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asks.
Something a long time ago must have put its palms together and pulled them apart again.
Something a long time ago must have taken one flesh and pulled it in half.
There’s a lopsided bird with half its feathers torn out. It leans towards the sky and fails to catch air. There’s a cypress tree with no roots, branches spreading and shrivelling. There’s a word in some long-forgotten language where me and mine are wrapped into the same.
John slides his callused fingers into the softness of Sherlock’s hair. Their legs are tangled beneath the thick woollen blanket.
The winds whip the fallen snow up against the back door. Sherlock’s cheek is on his chest, right over his heart.
The late summer sun sinks into his wheat fields and turns them to gold. John wipes his forehead with his arm and carries the dairy cow into the stable for the night when she refuses to budge. The wolves slip under his fences at night. They’ve already made off with one of his lambs this spring.
It’s dark outside and his lamp touches the corners of his house with flickering light when someone knocks on his door.
“You butcher those animals,” Sherlock says. A scalpel gleams on the table. John can’t look away from it. “It wouldn’t be much of a difference.”
“You can’t ask me to do this.”
Sherlock’s voice is quiet. “You won’t say no, though.”
Later, John presses the blade into Sherlock’s pale skin. He watches the blood spill from the cut.
“Deeper,” Sherlock murmurs without a trace of pain. John cuts deeper. Sherlock closes his eyes and his voice is calm. “I must see it. You’ll have to work faster.”
John breaks Sherlock’s ribs with trembling hands. He saws through muscle and bone. He pries open Sherlock’s ribcage, his fingers slippery with Sherlock’s blood. Sherlock’s breathing is laboured as he struggles to prop himself up on one elbow to take a look himself.
Sherlock’s heart beats before his eyes. John’s own heart is beating in time. There is a phantom pain in his chest.
“Ah,” Sherlock says.
“You’re dying.”
Sherlock meets his eyes and says nothing.
John is fifty miles away before he allows himself to drop to the ground. He heaves his dinner onto the grass. His hands are still sticky with Sherlock’s blood. He lies with his cheek pressed to the dirt, eyes unfocused.
He takes to the air again and finds a river two miles to the south. He puts his hands into the water and watches the blood leave his hands. It looks black in the moonlight.
He stays away at first because he doesn’t want to face Sherlock after what he was asked to do—what he had done. Then he forgets why he’s staying away. Then he forgets Sherlock altogether.
iv.
The pathway up the mountain is paved in red dust. The bushes have dried into stunted branches, leaves faded. John carries a water pouch at his side. The water inside contains silt and tastes metallic. The wells will dry up in the next month. Half his cattle have died of heat exhaustion.
The dust settles between his toes and tints his white robes a faint pink. John is tired but he walks on.
A man sits in the centre of the white temple with his eyes closed. His hair is dark and his skin is pale.
“I have heard,” John says, “That an oracle lives here.”
The oracle opens his eyes and looks at John.
“I have been waiting for you.”
“I come to ask for rain,” John says, “To end this drought.”
He remembers being told, close your eyes. He remembers being told, open your hands. Show me your palms.
A thunderstorm without rain. Lightning touches the dried earth and someone is calling his name through the clouds. Wildfire crawls through the underbrush and climbs up tall grass like a serpent. It advances through the forest. It burns his house to the ground. He can hear the hooves of cows beating against the charred ground.
“My wife,” he says, “My child.” Cool hands touch his face.
“Some sacrifices have to be made,” the oracle says.
The sky is cloudless. John shields his eyes against the bright glare of the sunlight. The trees are blackened but the fire is gone. It has eaten everything on this side of the mountain. There are no more songbirds, no more ferns growing in the shade, no more squirrels to chase one another up and down the scorched tree trunks.
“Is this punishment?” he asks the oracle, “Is this my punishment?”
The oracle doesn’t answer.
“Where is the rain?” John demands, “You promised me rain.”
The oracle looks at John. “That is not mine to give.”
The oracle draws water from a spring at the back of the temple. He crushes mint into a stone cup and pours the sweet water over the leaves. It is the cleanest thing John has ever tasted.
“Do you know who I am?” the oracle asks.
John knows. He has known since the oracle touched the backs of his hands, since he pressed cool lips to John’s fingers. A savage wind against the sails of lost warriors, driving them farther from shore. A touch of fire on parched earth, pulling moisture from the ground. The gleam of spears in the midday sun. Blood spilled into dust.
“Do you know who you are?” the oracle asks.
John breathes in. It starts to rain.
v.
“How do you keep finding me?” John asks.
Sherlock bends his head so that his lips are close to John’s. He has John’s wrists pinned up over his head and his whispered breath seeps into John’s open mouth. “How do you keep forgetting?”
vi.
In his company, he’s known for being extraordinarily stupid and extraordinarily lucky. He carries a gun that he doesn’t use and doesn’t mention that he’s been shot hundreds of times while hunched protectively over a fallen soldier.
He’s on leave in London. He’s walking from the pub back to his flat when he sees a man being mugged.
“Hey!” he calls out—but the mugger takes no notice. He grabs the mugger from behind but his movements are slower than usual. The mugger turns around and lashes out.
John cries out. He’s not used to feeling pain. The mugger runs.
“I had that under control,” the victim snarls as he turns towards John, “Now I’ll have to—”
John stares at the plastic handle of the knife that’s buried beneath his ribcage.
“No,” the man says. John watches numbly as the man grasps the handle and gently pulls. John gasps in pain. He wants to tell the man to leave it, that he’s a doctor, to please call for an ambulance, but the words are frozen in his throat. This has never happened before.
The man traces John’s jaw with his fingertips—then he pulls out the knife. He’s gone before it clatters onto the ground.
When John touches the wound again, he feels only unbroken skin.
vii.
There is honey on his lips. Sherlock leans down and kisses him, licking away the traces of sugar. His hands are in John’s hair, knees pressed to the inside of John’s thighs, ankle twisted in the furs.
“Come with me,” John says, breathless.
Sherlock laughs and shakes his head. He traces a scar down the length of John’s chest.
He is legendary for being indestructible, for the way he walks into battle with the lightest of armor. The swords and spears bounce off his chest, metal crumpling, wooden shafts splintering. A warrior worthy of Achilles.
When he disappears, they say the gods have welcomed him among their ranks. They say he will dine and drink among the deities as one of their own, watching over men in their hour of combat.
The truth is: he throws away the spear. He trades his golden brooch for two cows. He forgets everything. He carries on.
viii.
“How many lives?” John asks.
“Hundreds,” Sherlock says, “A thousand.”
“How do you stand it?”
Sherlock closes his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, “I can’t stay away.”
ix.
The thunder shakes the floorboards and rattles the pans John’s hung up to dry. If he listens closely, it sounds like somebody calling his name.
He is the scent after the storm, of loam and wet sand. He is the flare of fluorescence in the seas, a million living things lighting up in the dark. He spreads branches into the sky and hopes to net lightning.
x.
It starts as an ache beneath his sternum. He takes aspirin first, then nitroglycerine. The pain spreads to his back, hollows of pain beneath his shoulderblades, nestling in behind his ribs. There’s no medicine that will relieve it.
He still pulls bullets from his clothes and flings them far away when nobody’s looking. It’s cold at night but John doesn’t mind. He takes off his shoes and then his socks and sinks his toes into the desert sand. The layers beneath the surface are still warm. How many miles down would they have to dig through this sand and dirt to find water?
“Watson!” someone calls. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He feels like he’s going mad.
“Coming,” he calls back.
He’s served for six years when they discharge him. They say he’s stressed, that he needs a break from the front lines. They don’t mention the last firefight to his face, but John’s certain that it’s all over the paperwork recommending his release.
The pain in his chest worsens.
He can hear the blood pumping in his ears when he aims. The cabbie crumples and the pressure in his lungs eases.
“I know who you are,” John tells Sherlock.
“Do you,” Sherlock replies but it’s not a question.
“I met you in an alleyway once,” John says, “And before that, a hundred years ago.”
Sherlock says, “I think I should stay away.”
xi.
Forever is the same, no matter if time runs backwards or forward.
Inevitability is just that.
xii.
John touches the twisted scar beneath Sherlock’s ribcage, the surgical line along Sherlock’s sternum. He only faintly remembers that night.
Sherlock is a thousand year old firestorm with the promise of war humming low in his veins. He is retribution prowling the streets of London, surrendered to his destructive identity. He never forgets.
“Would it be so terrible?” John asks. The morning sunlight paints gold across the rooftops of the city.
Sherlock slips his hand into John’s. They move forward into a mortal life.
