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Of Pirates and Presents
Title: Of Pirates and Presents
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,654
Summary: John finds an unexpected treasure while cleaning out Sherlock's room after the fall.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, unfortunately. Written for this prompt at the BBC Sherlock Kink Meme.
It was weeks before John had worked up the courage to go into Sherlock’s room, even longer before he found himself willing to clean it up a bit just in case. In case of what he didn’t actually know since he had watched the man jump, had went to his funeral and still found himself crying bitterly over his grave every so often. No one but himself actually went in the room, though Mrs. Hudson had tried. In the end she had merely shook her head and walked away, not yet brave enough to be surrounded by the presence of Sherlock’s private sanctuary.
John had found that, unlike Mrs. Hudson, he enjoyed the presence of Sherlock’s belongings. The slow process of cleaning his room made him happy, even when it made him cry because it was Sherlock’s. It was the one piece of him that John still had to hold onto and it was the definition of bittersweet. Still, on days like the one found himself drifting through, too miserable to do anything he knew that he should, out of duty or pleasure, he liked to go into Sherlock’s room and tidy up a bit.
He had just begun the task of sorting out the various things that Sherlock kept in his closet when he had stubbed his toe against something surprisingly hard. Muttering obscenities about how only Sherlock could be an annoying prat in death, he fell to his knees and pulled out the mysteriously painful object. With it out where he could clearly see it, John felt almost certain that there had to be a mistake. He would have even believed that he had been hallucinating because the idea that Sherlock Holmes kept a children’s pirate chest in his closet was simply impossible.
Or rather, improbable, since it was right there in front of him, resting safely under his hand. It wasn’t particularly large, though it was old. The wood seemed a bit worn and the metal bolts and depictions of skulls, ships and swords were tarnished. Obviously the chest hadn’t been too well cared for over the years, but John assumed that had more to do with Sherlock being Sherlock rather than it lacking importance at all.
And since it was an important treasure chest, that meant that it had to be opened to see what treasures lay inside. The amount of glee he felt as he rushed to grab Sherlock’s lock picking set was nearly embarrassing. Thankfully, Mrs. Hudson was out and he could be as childish as he wanted in the privacy of his dead friend’s room. Oh and it was childish. By time he had sat back down his hands were practically shaking with excitement as he tried to coax the lock open. It took some doing, but when it finally came undone John couldn’t resist looking around the room cautiously before opening like it was some long awaited Christmas present.
Once it was open though, contents on display, John’s excitement quickly faded into a feeling of curiosity. He knew Sherlock had wanted to be a pirate when he was younger, but he assumed that the man had grown out of it like most children do. Instead, Sherlock, because only Sherlock would, kept a treasure chest with a pirate hat inside, the odd pictures of his friend as a child pirate with someone else at his side taped to the top. There were coins from before the Euro kept in a neat little bag like precious dubloons and the occasional ‘useless’ gift like the cufflinks.
But the most interesting piece in all of it was the small books that seemed to dominate the bottom of the chest. Taking everything out, John looked over them all, surprised by the sheer multitude. There had to have been at least two dozen of them, some quite shoddily done and other’s with a more professional feel about them. It wasn’t until John noticed the name of the author of all the works that he actually stopped to look at one.
Taking what appeared to be the first judging by its worn out look, probably from years of childlike love before learned to truly take care of something valuable, John stared at the cover. It wasn’t especially thick, the book it was written in being no more than a child’s diary, but the picture glued to the front was adorable. Some terrible attempt at drawing a pirate out to conquer everything. Running his hand over the title, John smiled to himself and began to read ‘The Adventures of Captain Sherlock, Pirate King of the Golden Age’, a tale written by Mycroft Holmes for his brother’s fifth birthday, according to the inscription.
Sitting on the floor of Sherlock’s room, he went through every page of the book as though he might be tested on it. He fell in love with Captain Sherlock’s quest for the great treasure with his ragtag crew of men, those bored with the standards and propriety of the world. With Captain Sherlock to lead them, they fought and searched for this great treasure, finding all sorts of things in between. When he was done, John sat there smiling about the open ending before starting in on the next in the series.
It was amazing to see Captain Sherlock change and progress with every story. To go from a silly little captain, only out for treasure to something more. A man who had negotiated with Indians in America and had been hunted in the jungles of Africa by man and beast alike. It wasn’t until the eighth book did John begin to think of the Captain as someone he knew.
That had been the book where, when stopped at some island to rest and fix the ship from the damage sustained with his battle against Navy Admiral Holmes in book seven, Captain Sherlock and the Year of Suffering, the captain began to lose his men to what Sherlock had dubbed sirens. They lured the men away in the depths of the island one by one to never be seen again. By time the captain had found out about these treacherous women, it was too late. Most of his men had been killed by the females for their weapons and guns. One of them happened to be Captain Sherlock’s first mate, a man who had been drifting away from Sherlock since the sixth book. It broke John’s heart that the man was gone, and though the Captain never said a word of it, he was certain that it had broken Sherlock’s as well.
Days went by with John becoming more and more enthralled by the Captain’s adventures. His dwindling crew, as more men were lost to the world around them and death, made John wish that he had been there for Captain Sherlock in his adventures. The tenth and eleventh books drove home the fact that he was unlike anyone else in the world, except, perhaps, for his once beloved brother, the Admiral.
Upon reaching what John would come to dub ‘the China years’, he had to stop. It was fine, at first, when Captain Sherlock first landed in the country for goods and curiosity soothing, but then the man discovered opium and the great Captain became less great. Everything he did centred around the country, never venturing off too far from his drug source. For three painfully long books, Captain Sherlock wasn’t a man for adventure and wonder, he was a man painfully addicted and willing to blur the lines of true criminal behavior for it. From book twelve to sixteen, Captain Sherlcok wasn’t great, but merely a man possessed and John was bitterly happy when the Captain had been forced to flee China for fear of arrest, very nearly meeting his own end through withdrawal in the sixteenth book.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before it had all started to resemble something that he understood by the next book. Seventeen wasn’t much of an improvement from the China years as Captain Sherlock had sailed all the way to South America only to find coca leaves and a French Privateer, caught between the service of two countries that desperately wanted to see the end of the great captain, Lestrade. Once a corsair out to seek vengeance against the Captain for a slight in Bermuda, he had made a deal with Admiral Holmes after his initial loss. The Admiral would provide him with money, a new ship and crew in the name of Queen and country if the corsair could capture Sherlock and turn him over to the Admiral.
Lestrade never actually made good on his deal, though, and by the twentieth book, it would seem as though he was seeking the help of the great Captain Sherlock for assistance with his many duties to France and Britain, as the Corsair was playing a dangerous game of his own as his life seemed to be rising to new heights and falling to pieces at the same time. But with every book came more familiar faces and a world that John could almost lead himself to believe he inhabited. From Sub-lieutenant Anderson, an obnoxious little Englishman who’d be given to the corsair for his obedient service who Captain Sherlock despised, to Mrs. Hudson, a woman who had taken a kind liking to Sherlock after the mysterious drowning of her former husband.
It was enough to bring tears to John’s eyes and when he reached the last book, he started it immediately before tossing it aside. Captain John Watson, a soldier back from the third Anglo-Dutch war and captured by Captain Sherlock, in need of a medic for his ship, made the real John Watson angry enough to take up the habit of reading and discarding the book over and over again. It would seem that every time he found it in him to appreciate the portrayal of the two Captains, through their work with Lestrade and the occasional run in with the British Navy himself, Admiral Holmes, there was something in return to make him sick. The strange little Englishman that nearly got Sherlock hung, the Chinese and the multitude of failings that seemed to come from that, the Woman and most importantly of all, the very cross and sadistically cruel Captain Moriarty, a man who sailed for Ireland and rivaled the skill of Captain Holmes.
In the end, John knew he should’ve been happy that it was over. That the series ended not with the death of his Captain, but with the disappearance of Irene. It was better that way, surely, but it didn’t stop John from rushing out to the Diogenes club the next day and waiting impatiently for Mycroft’s arrival. The fact that he was there waiting was a clear surprise to the man, but he pulled John off to the one area they’d be allowed to speak, curiosity in his eyes the entire time.
As soon as they were alone, Mycroft said, “It’s a pleasure to see you, John, even if it is a bit of a surprise.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve become my favorite author of sorts, Admiral Holmes.”
The way the man stiffened was surely as close as John would ever get to making the other man blush. Clearing his throat, Mycroft nodded in acknowledgement before gesturing for John to take a seat.
“So I take it you’ve been in Sherlock’s room.”
“You write pirate stories,” John said with a grin as he sat down.
“They were presents. Something we could take pleasure in together,” Mycroft explained, taking his own seat.
It was clear to anyone with eyes that he was a bit embarrassed by the fact, but John didn’t care. After everything the man before him had done and been rumored to do, after the strange relationship he had always shared with Sherlock, it was pleasant to know that the two of them weren’t so different from any other sibling. That they had a way of expressing their affection that didn’t involve barbed comments and using him as a run between.
“I’m in them,” he blurted out, still unsure of how he felt about it all.
“You are an important figure in his life.”
“Was,” John corrected a bit bitterly.
He regretted saying it almost immediately and not just for the awful taste it left if his own mouth. It was the way Mycroft nodded. Not his usual nod of agreement, but one that spoke of the guilt and defeat that had come from the fact that Sherlock simply wasn’t around anymore. The great pirate captain had met his end in the fiendish Irishman.
And for the first time, the silence in the Diogenes club wasn’t another fact like the soft floors or the men in suits. It was tight and oppressive, thick in a way that it had likely never been. Certainly never between John and Mycroft for all the times they had met there for one reason or another. An elephant that he had inadvertently let into the room.
Pulling out the small book he’d been carrying about, John handed it over to Mycroft. When the man merely looked between him and the new diary, John said, “Finish it.”
“I did that for Sherlock as a present.”
“And you think he wouldn’t want it finished?”
Mycroft looked away, hand still clutching at the book. “I don’t have the time.”
“You seem to have managed every other part of the past year just fine. Just… finish it. I want to know what happens to Captain Watson and Admiral Holmes in the end.”
Clenching his jaw, Mycroft stared him down with tired eyes. “You know what happens.”
“I know what happened to my Sherlock, to your little brother,” he argued. “Not what happened to Captain Sherlock.”
“John—“
“Just do it. You have to. It will always be hanging over their heads if you don’t.”
With that said, he got up and headed for the door. He couldn’t stay there with Mycroft. He couldn’t, no, he wouldn’t beg on the behalf of a fictional character and dead man. He should’ve never went in Sherlock’s room or his things because he felt worse off than before. At least then he was only left with the misery of knowing that his friend was dead. To want to know the obvious fate of a character was just sick and twisted and wasn’t going to keep torturing himself like that.
“What if I don’t want it to end?” Mycroft asked.
Pausing at the door, John frowned at it. He had a pretty solid idea of what he would see when he turned around, but it didn’t stop him. Looking back at Mycroft, the man seemed like just that, a man. Gone was the imposing figure that John had come to think of as the British Government, a strict agent of the Queen who had a soft spot for his little brother and in his place sat a man who was guilt ridden, cloaked in a sadness that John wanted to help fix if only he could. Not that he thought Mycroft wouldn’t let him, he knew that the man might put up with the vague effort, but that would mean John would have to have found a cure for his own sadness first and he hadn’t. There wasn’t a night that went by that he wasn’t left with the hollowness in his chest left by the death of Sherlock.
So with a deep breath, John shrugged and shook his head helplessly. “Don’t let him die. Don’t let Admiral Holmes fall into Moriarty’s trap. Please, I know… I know you can save him. You can save, Captain Sherlock.”
“Right. It was a pleasure seeing you, John.”
“Of course. I’ll be waiting on that book,” he said before leaving, praying the entire way home that maybe, if he was lucky, Captain Watson would be spared the suffering that came with losing the great Sherlock Holmes.
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,654
Summary: John finds an unexpected treasure while cleaning out Sherlock's room after the fall.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, unfortunately. Written for this prompt at the BBC Sherlock Kink Meme.
It was weeks before John had worked up the courage to go into Sherlock’s room, even longer before he found himself willing to clean it up a bit just in case. In case of what he didn’t actually know since he had watched the man jump, had went to his funeral and still found himself crying bitterly over his grave every so often. No one but himself actually went in the room, though Mrs. Hudson had tried. In the end she had merely shook her head and walked away, not yet brave enough to be surrounded by the presence of Sherlock’s private sanctuary.
John had found that, unlike Mrs. Hudson, he enjoyed the presence of Sherlock’s belongings. The slow process of cleaning his room made him happy, even when it made him cry because it was Sherlock’s. It was the one piece of him that John still had to hold onto and it was the definition of bittersweet. Still, on days like the one found himself drifting through, too miserable to do anything he knew that he should, out of duty or pleasure, he liked to go into Sherlock’s room and tidy up a bit.
He had just begun the task of sorting out the various things that Sherlock kept in his closet when he had stubbed his toe against something surprisingly hard. Muttering obscenities about how only Sherlock could be an annoying prat in death, he fell to his knees and pulled out the mysteriously painful object. With it out where he could clearly see it, John felt almost certain that there had to be a mistake. He would have even believed that he had been hallucinating because the idea that Sherlock Holmes kept a children’s pirate chest in his closet was simply impossible.
Or rather, improbable, since it was right there in front of him, resting safely under his hand. It wasn’t particularly large, though it was old. The wood seemed a bit worn and the metal bolts and depictions of skulls, ships and swords were tarnished. Obviously the chest hadn’t been too well cared for over the years, but John assumed that had more to do with Sherlock being Sherlock rather than it lacking importance at all.
And since it was an important treasure chest, that meant that it had to be opened to see what treasures lay inside. The amount of glee he felt as he rushed to grab Sherlock’s lock picking set was nearly embarrassing. Thankfully, Mrs. Hudson was out and he could be as childish as he wanted in the privacy of his dead friend’s room. Oh and it was childish. By time he had sat back down his hands were practically shaking with excitement as he tried to coax the lock open. It took some doing, but when it finally came undone John couldn’t resist looking around the room cautiously before opening like it was some long awaited Christmas present.
Once it was open though, contents on display, John’s excitement quickly faded into a feeling of curiosity. He knew Sherlock had wanted to be a pirate when he was younger, but he assumed that the man had grown out of it like most children do. Instead, Sherlock, because only Sherlock would, kept a treasure chest with a pirate hat inside, the odd pictures of his friend as a child pirate with someone else at his side taped to the top. There were coins from before the Euro kept in a neat little bag like precious dubloons and the occasional ‘useless’ gift like the cufflinks.
But the most interesting piece in all of it was the small books that seemed to dominate the bottom of the chest. Taking everything out, John looked over them all, surprised by the sheer multitude. There had to have been at least two dozen of them, some quite shoddily done and other’s with a more professional feel about them. It wasn’t until John noticed the name of the author of all the works that he actually stopped to look at one.
Taking what appeared to be the first judging by its worn out look, probably from years of childlike love before learned to truly take care of something valuable, John stared at the cover. It wasn’t especially thick, the book it was written in being no more than a child’s diary, but the picture glued to the front was adorable. Some terrible attempt at drawing a pirate out to conquer everything. Running his hand over the title, John smiled to himself and began to read ‘The Adventures of Captain Sherlock, Pirate King of the Golden Age’, a tale written by Mycroft Holmes for his brother’s fifth birthday, according to the inscription.
Sitting on the floor of Sherlock’s room, he went through every page of the book as though he might be tested on it. He fell in love with Captain Sherlock’s quest for the great treasure with his ragtag crew of men, those bored with the standards and propriety of the world. With Captain Sherlock to lead them, they fought and searched for this great treasure, finding all sorts of things in between. When he was done, John sat there smiling about the open ending before starting in on the next in the series.
It was amazing to see Captain Sherlock change and progress with every story. To go from a silly little captain, only out for treasure to something more. A man who had negotiated with Indians in America and had been hunted in the jungles of Africa by man and beast alike. It wasn’t until the eighth book did John begin to think of the Captain as someone he knew.
That had been the book where, when stopped at some island to rest and fix the ship from the damage sustained with his battle against Navy Admiral Holmes in book seven, Captain Sherlock and the Year of Suffering, the captain began to lose his men to what Sherlock had dubbed sirens. They lured the men away in the depths of the island one by one to never be seen again. By time the captain had found out about these treacherous women, it was too late. Most of his men had been killed by the females for their weapons and guns. One of them happened to be Captain Sherlock’s first mate, a man who had been drifting away from Sherlock since the sixth book. It broke John’s heart that the man was gone, and though the Captain never said a word of it, he was certain that it had broken Sherlock’s as well.
Days went by with John becoming more and more enthralled by the Captain’s adventures. His dwindling crew, as more men were lost to the world around them and death, made John wish that he had been there for Captain Sherlock in his adventures. The tenth and eleventh books drove home the fact that he was unlike anyone else in the world, except, perhaps, for his once beloved brother, the Admiral.
Upon reaching what John would come to dub ‘the China years’, he had to stop. It was fine, at first, when Captain Sherlock first landed in the country for goods and curiosity soothing, but then the man discovered opium and the great Captain became less great. Everything he did centred around the country, never venturing off too far from his drug source. For three painfully long books, Captain Sherlock wasn’t a man for adventure and wonder, he was a man painfully addicted and willing to blur the lines of true criminal behavior for it. From book twelve to sixteen, Captain Sherlcok wasn’t great, but merely a man possessed and John was bitterly happy when the Captain had been forced to flee China for fear of arrest, very nearly meeting his own end through withdrawal in the sixteenth book.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before it had all started to resemble something that he understood by the next book. Seventeen wasn’t much of an improvement from the China years as Captain Sherlock had sailed all the way to South America only to find coca leaves and a French Privateer, caught between the service of two countries that desperately wanted to see the end of the great captain, Lestrade. Once a corsair out to seek vengeance against the Captain for a slight in Bermuda, he had made a deal with Admiral Holmes after his initial loss. The Admiral would provide him with money, a new ship and crew in the name of Queen and country if the corsair could capture Sherlock and turn him over to the Admiral.
Lestrade never actually made good on his deal, though, and by the twentieth book, it would seem as though he was seeking the help of the great Captain Sherlock for assistance with his many duties to France and Britain, as the Corsair was playing a dangerous game of his own as his life seemed to be rising to new heights and falling to pieces at the same time. But with every book came more familiar faces and a world that John could almost lead himself to believe he inhabited. From Sub-lieutenant Anderson, an obnoxious little Englishman who’d be given to the corsair for his obedient service who Captain Sherlock despised, to Mrs. Hudson, a woman who had taken a kind liking to Sherlock after the mysterious drowning of her former husband.
It was enough to bring tears to John’s eyes and when he reached the last book, he started it immediately before tossing it aside. Captain John Watson, a soldier back from the third Anglo-Dutch war and captured by Captain Sherlock, in need of a medic for his ship, made the real John Watson angry enough to take up the habit of reading and discarding the book over and over again. It would seem that every time he found it in him to appreciate the portrayal of the two Captains, through their work with Lestrade and the occasional run in with the British Navy himself, Admiral Holmes, there was something in return to make him sick. The strange little Englishman that nearly got Sherlock hung, the Chinese and the multitude of failings that seemed to come from that, the Woman and most importantly of all, the very cross and sadistically cruel Captain Moriarty, a man who sailed for Ireland and rivaled the skill of Captain Holmes.
In the end, John knew he should’ve been happy that it was over. That the series ended not with the death of his Captain, but with the disappearance of Irene. It was better that way, surely, but it didn’t stop John from rushing out to the Diogenes club the next day and waiting impatiently for Mycroft’s arrival. The fact that he was there waiting was a clear surprise to the man, but he pulled John off to the one area they’d be allowed to speak, curiosity in his eyes the entire time.
As soon as they were alone, Mycroft said, “It’s a pleasure to see you, John, even if it is a bit of a surprise.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve become my favorite author of sorts, Admiral Holmes.”
The way the man stiffened was surely as close as John would ever get to making the other man blush. Clearing his throat, Mycroft nodded in acknowledgement before gesturing for John to take a seat.
“So I take it you’ve been in Sherlock’s room.”
“You write pirate stories,” John said with a grin as he sat down.
“They were presents. Something we could take pleasure in together,” Mycroft explained, taking his own seat.
It was clear to anyone with eyes that he was a bit embarrassed by the fact, but John didn’t care. After everything the man before him had done and been rumored to do, after the strange relationship he had always shared with Sherlock, it was pleasant to know that the two of them weren’t so different from any other sibling. That they had a way of expressing their affection that didn’t involve barbed comments and using him as a run between.
“I’m in them,” he blurted out, still unsure of how he felt about it all.
“You are an important figure in his life.”
“Was,” John corrected a bit bitterly.
He regretted saying it almost immediately and not just for the awful taste it left if his own mouth. It was the way Mycroft nodded. Not his usual nod of agreement, but one that spoke of the guilt and defeat that had come from the fact that Sherlock simply wasn’t around anymore. The great pirate captain had met his end in the fiendish Irishman.
And for the first time, the silence in the Diogenes club wasn’t another fact like the soft floors or the men in suits. It was tight and oppressive, thick in a way that it had likely never been. Certainly never between John and Mycroft for all the times they had met there for one reason or another. An elephant that he had inadvertently let into the room.
Pulling out the small book he’d been carrying about, John handed it over to Mycroft. When the man merely looked between him and the new diary, John said, “Finish it.”
“I did that for Sherlock as a present.”
“And you think he wouldn’t want it finished?”
Mycroft looked away, hand still clutching at the book. “I don’t have the time.”
“You seem to have managed every other part of the past year just fine. Just… finish it. I want to know what happens to Captain Watson and Admiral Holmes in the end.”
Clenching his jaw, Mycroft stared him down with tired eyes. “You know what happens.”
“I know what happened to my Sherlock, to your little brother,” he argued. “Not what happened to Captain Sherlock.”
“John—“
“Just do it. You have to. It will always be hanging over their heads if you don’t.”
With that said, he got up and headed for the door. He couldn’t stay there with Mycroft. He couldn’t, no, he wouldn’t beg on the behalf of a fictional character and dead man. He should’ve never went in Sherlock’s room or his things because he felt worse off than before. At least then he was only left with the misery of knowing that his friend was dead. To want to know the obvious fate of a character was just sick and twisted and wasn’t going to keep torturing himself like that.
“What if I don’t want it to end?” Mycroft asked.
Pausing at the door, John frowned at it. He had a pretty solid idea of what he would see when he turned around, but it didn’t stop him. Looking back at Mycroft, the man seemed like just that, a man. Gone was the imposing figure that John had come to think of as the British Government, a strict agent of the Queen who had a soft spot for his little brother and in his place sat a man who was guilt ridden, cloaked in a sadness that John wanted to help fix if only he could. Not that he thought Mycroft wouldn’t let him, he knew that the man might put up with the vague effort, but that would mean John would have to have found a cure for his own sadness first and he hadn’t. There wasn’t a night that went by that he wasn’t left with the hollowness in his chest left by the death of Sherlock.
So with a deep breath, John shrugged and shook his head helplessly. “Don’t let him die. Don’t let Admiral Holmes fall into Moriarty’s trap. Please, I know… I know you can save him. You can save, Captain Sherlock.”
“Right. It was a pleasure seeing you, John.”
“Of course. I’ll be waiting on that book,” he said before leaving, praying the entire way home that maybe, if he was lucky, Captain Watson would be spared the suffering that came with losing the great Sherlock Holmes.