Fic: Old Wounds: Gen

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Title: Old Wounds
Length: 221b
Rating: Gen
Notes: Warning for mention of blood and wounds; Angst-amin Angsty with a too large tam-o-angster (that means it's angsty)
Summary: Lost at sea during the Hiatus, Holmes's old wound remerge.
Author's Notes: I saw something on Tumblr (which I can't find now) about collagen production and how wounds don't ever actually completely heal and that in cases of extreme scurvy, old wounds will reappear as if fresh. Also, for the monthly prompt.


The man in the boat tried to count on his shaking fingers the things he had been.

A detective. A violinist.

A friend.

At this, he blinked tears that he didn’t not have.

A corpse. A fugitive. An untangler of webs.

A traveler. A peregrine.

A sailor. A mutineer. A marooned castaway. A sailor again, now, captain of his own vessel, which stretched the width of his arms and length of his body.

His body.

Baked. Salted. Smoked.

He looked down and watched the scar on his knee, a faint line he’d received as a child for a foolishness he couldn’t remember, grow darker until it began to bleed afresh, like a pharaoh’s ghost spring beneath a disturbed tomb.

Then his ankle began to transform as well. Holes the shape of a Bull terrier’s incisors emerged. The skin and flesh fell apart like a strange flower in bloom, and it, too, began to bleed.

Then his chest began to throb. Then his ribs cracked of their own accord and spilt a vermillion anguish.

Of hurting Watson once. Of hurting him still.

Eyes fluttered closed, parched lips touched each other.

An orchard. A Watson, brown as a nut, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a smile.  A cool glass of lemon squash with a pair of sugared violets floating…

…floating…

…like little boats.

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

All the angst - beautifully written, but oh so sad!

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a sad notion, but a poetic one, I think.

[mafief.livejournal.com]

I'm probably misinterpreting something, but he's not dead, right? It's set during The Hiatus... So he isn't technically dead... Or is this an AU and then I get to be sad?
Or am I overthinking and he's just near death and being delusional?

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

As our friend debriswoman is fond of saying, 'it works on many levels' but my thought when I wrote it was that Holmes had, during the Hiatus, been some kind of sailor, got into some Trouble, and was marooned on an island, made himself a boat, and was near death and delusional at this point, but, yes, I imagined Something Miraculous happened after this point and he survived. It was mainly just a vehicle to give him extreme scurvy so that his old wounds would open up.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Of course Watson would be his mirage - any other dying man at sea would merely picture an idyllic island or fresh sweet water.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Yes, Watson and lemonade!

[debriswoman]

Vivid and succinct
Hope of rescue?

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yes, he makes it out of there somehow, at least that's my idea.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

It's heartbreaking, but it's also such a clever idea - the physical and emotional wounds becoming confused. I was particularly taken with Holes the shape of a Bull terrier’s incisors emerged. The skin and flesh fell apart like a strange flower in bloom, and it, too, began to bleed. And that final image of the sugared violets leading back into reality. Beautiful stuff.

I'll just give a special mention to tam-o-angster too ^___^

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It was a gruesome but poetic idea, I thought. And I do seem to have sugared violets on the brain these days.

Ha! That's all the Beatrix Potter bleeding through.