Fic: Charades: Teen

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Title: Charades
Rating: Teen (one smooch and mention of a bit of cruel teasing and murder)
Length: 500
Notes: Retirement!lock; a bit angsty, takes place right after the Snow fic, which Holmes & Watson get back inside after digging the bees out of the snow.
Summary: Holmes recounts a Christmas memory from his childhood.
Author's Note: This is the final chapter of my ACD Christmas ficlet collection for this year:  The Longest Night & Other Yuletide Stories. Two of the other ficlets I have posted here, but the other one I didn't (because it was too long) is called The Longest Night and it is set during the Hiatus of Holmes watching the premiere of The Nutcracker in St. Petersburg and pining for Watson.


Holmes tasted warm port as well as cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and mace in Watson’s kiss.

“Mulled wine and charades,” he mused as he extended his arm. Watson, after setting his mug aside, returned to his rightful place, that is, curled next to Holmes beneath the blankets. “Mulled wine and charades. It was my first Christmas Eve of memory. The old family manor. I was five years old. Mycroft was twelve. Long after we were supposed to be in our beds upstairs, he and I had crept out to watch the gathering of adults below through the railings. They were playing charades and drinking mulled wine by an enormous tree decorated in full Dickensian fashion. Mycroft and I were guessing the charades, mouthing the answers to each other, often before the player’s pantomime had even commenced.”

“My Uncle Henry was big, rough, red-faced man. Always very fond of his jokes, but always with a tendency to go too far. When he set about miming ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream,’ he made a quite spectacle of himself. His wife, my Aunt Violet, was a quiet, demure woman. Her only passion was her flowers and, it wildly was known, though never mentioned publicly until Uncle Henry’s charade, that she believed in fairies and built small houses out of sticks and straw which she left about the garden for the fairies’ use.  The men howled at Uncle Henry’s jesting about the fairies and how he pointed to his wife and mimed her little houses. The women laughed, even Aunt Violet herself, but in the latter’s case and two others’, the mirth never reached their eyes. I looked at Mycroft and he looked at me. We weren’t laughing. And it was then, by mutual and mute agreement, we stole back to our beds. That night that we invented our own ‘Deduction Game,’ ostensibly because we couldn’t be bothered with simpleton amusements, but also because I think we were put-off by Uncle Henry’s display of cruelty.”

“It is extraordinary,” said Watson, “what children perceive. And you, my dear man, were an extraordinary child, of that, I am certain.”

“Not that extraordinary and not that perceptive, my dear Watson. To this day, I remain ignorant of what precisely happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“By Twelfth Night, Uncle Henry was dead. And I do not know which one of them killed him.”

“What, do you think your Aunt Violet—?”

“Or perhaps my grandmother—”

“Not she of the Barbary-pirate-throat-slashing?”

Holmes nodded, smiling.  “The very same. Or my mother. She, fantastic creature that she was, told me that the fairies got Uncle Henry.  Grandmother said matter-of-factly that his heart gave out. But I remember the look in Aunt Violet’s eyes the night of the mulled wine and charades.  And I now I suppose I’ll never know.” He sighed and kissed the top of Watson’s head. “Inscrutable, my dear man.”

Watson shuddered in his arms. “I’ll never make mulled wine again,” he vowed. “I much prefer cocoa anyway.”

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Make fun of the fairies and you never know what might happen. Holmes' mother was right - they did get to Uncle Henry, even if they had a little assistance.

Lovely ending to your ficlet collection.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I have been listening to a bit too much Agatha Christie and that got mixed with Hopkins' fairies in the snow. Yes, Uncle Henry told one joke too many.

Thank you! They've been good prompts.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Oo, nicely sinister ^^"

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I've been overdosing on my Agatha Christie and it shows.

[debriswoman]

Suitably chilling and uncertain. And a deft description of the type of cruelty which really hits home.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yes, that subtle cruelty is sometimes more injurious than the brash kind.