Sherlock Fanfiction: You Follow Me Down Other Roads

[saki101]

Title: You Follow Me Down Other Roads
Author: Saki101
Genre: open to interpretation
Rating: PG
Length: ~500 words
Warning: Spoilers for second season.
Disclaimer: I don't own BBC's Sherlock and no money is being made.
Author's note: Episode-related, The Hounds of Baskerville.
(Link also posted on sherlockbbc and AO3.) You Follow Me Down Other Roads follows Zygomata.

Excerpt: “You can’t keep up with my mind,” Sherlock said. He glanced over his steepled fingers towards the armchair next to which John stood. “You are getting faster though.”




You Follow Me Down Other Roads

“You can’t keep up with my mind,” Sherlock said. He glanced over his steepled fingers towards the armchair next to which John stood. “You are getting faster though.”

John tilted his head, raised an eyebrow at that. The kettle switched off. He turned his back on Sherlock and walked into the kitchen. Knowing Sherlock had chosen to experiment upon him had left a deeper mark than the terror itself. Knowing John fought other terrors almost every night hadn’t stopped Sherlock. In the dark place where those realisations crouched, Sally’s scathing words echoed, He doesn’t have friends...stay away from Sherlock Holmes.

John took two mugs from the cupboard, checked inside them before setting them on the counter.

In the village churchyard, Sherlock had called after him. John listened even when Sherlock mumbled, drawn to his voice, rich in undertones, revelations. John always listened, even when he was trying not to.

I don’t have friends. I've just got one, Sherlock had admitted and the tone of his voice had hooked into John more than the words. It had made him hesitate.

John got out the milk, his eyes flicking towards the sitting room. Sherlock had fallen silent, gaze directed across the room, fingers pressed lightly against his lips.

John aimed the arcs of scalding water into the cups. He settled the kettle back on its base.

Sherlock spoke softly into his hands, “And you follow me down other roads...”

John put a steaming mug on the coffee table in front of Sherlock.

Sherlock’s voice dropped lower. “...that I don’t know so well.” Sherlock’s brows drew together. On the street outside, a motorcyclist gunned his engine, resentful of a stop light's authority.

Without flinching, John straightened up, moved back to the armchair and sat. He held his cup over his lap with both hands, let the steam warm his face, relax some of the tightness in the muscles there. The vapour swirled steadily upwards.

“And if I get lost,” Sherlock continued briskly, voice more conversational, eyebrows lifting, long arm reaching out for the tea.

John’s eyes stayed trained on Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock’s head turned. He looked at John over his raised cup, the corners of his lips quirking upwards. “You lead me back,” he concluded and took a sip of tea. It was precisely as he liked it. His smile broadened.

John held Sherlock’s eyes, remembering the dim laboratory, the stalking shadow, speaking to his tormentor from inside a metal cage. Even over a phone, the sound of Sherlock’s voice had reassured him, holding the terror at bay as Sherlock had known it would. Sherlock probably saw him remembering it now. Could it be you’ve chosen to trust Sherlock Holmes, of all people? John heard Mycroft's softly-spoken, ironic question again. The answer was short, but not easy to explain, even less so now. However, there was no one to whom John needed to explain, and it was hard not to be pleased that Sherlock had worked it out, about the leading and the following. John smiled back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The next ficlet in the series may be found here.

Comments

[saki101.livejournal.com]

...I suspect he will not be happy about his agency being removed.

It was the quandary in THoB; my brain was trapped in the puzzle of it, and the situation in Hounds only lasted a very short while. I don't think duration matters though; it was, as you say, the taking away of agency, and without consent, that is at the heart of it.

...something John does with great difficulty, if we consider the "trust issues" referenced in ASiP

I think it is the lack of difficulty which poses the greatest challenge for John. Trusting Sherlock, following him seemed to just happen to him and when he stops to consider it, he finds it hard to explain to himself. It is something he feels, strongly. So I think with John we also have the battle between thought and emotion and between different emotions.

I accepted the drugging, though it was hard to watch...

So very hard to watch, and for me that was mostly because of what I feared it was going to do to their relationship which was already experiencing stresses. That was Sherlock's sacrifice for the Hounds experiment as it was he that was fearing John's withdrawal, rejection and still, to solve the mystery, he risked that. Maybe Sherlock had some small hope that John wouldn't figure it out, but I don't think he could have considered that very likely.

I like the quotation Sherlock chose (what is its source?)...

If you mean the title phrase, then, as far as I know, I made it up. The whole story began with the title. It kept echoing in my head once I thought of Sherlock saying it to John and seemed a good description for what they were doing together. However, the imagery for the phrase is from two places, one being Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken. In that poem, the narrator is alone whereas I pictured John behind Sherlock on the many less-travelled roads where Sherlock ventures, some of which John needs to lead Sherlock back from. The cadence of the phrase (and a lot of what I write) as well as more of the imagery has been influenced by Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the fifth edition, especially. Relevant to the title phrase, these two verses (47 and 64):

When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.

and

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the Door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.

YFMDOR was written first, although I went backwards and wrote Zygomata which precedes it in time and needs to be read first, I think. Still the whole question of what on earth was going on between them in Hounds and just generally, began to be solved in my mind when I came up with that way to phrase Sherlock's explanation (which is really an apology and a plea) to John.

[chapbook.livejournal.com]

The imagery in the poems you chose and in this part of the series remind me of Stephen Crane's "The Wayfarer":

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

Considering the pain they go through in the search for truth (whatever that truth may be at that moment), the image of truth's path consisting of "singular kni[ves]" resonates with me.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Yes. That's a harsh and vivid image (very vivid, I can picture the light glancing off the blades) and fits very well. I've never read that poem. Thank you!

[chapbook.livejournal.com]

I'm having fun with our conversations as well! You might have changed your mind by the end of this reply, once you've read the Crane poem below. ;-)

I hereby thank my wonderful high-school English teacher, who loved Stephen Crane (or so I guess, as we went through a number of his poems).

Yes, Crane is brutal. I still remember this one:

Many workmen
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountaintop.
Then they went to the valley below,
And turned to behold their work.
"It is grand," they said;
They loved the thing.

Of a sudden, it moved.
It came upon them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had opportunity to squeal.
----

If SC and Poe had lived at the same time they would have had the most terrifying conversations.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

But there is a dark humour in this, grim though it is. I may have forgotten something funny in Poe (I suppose there is a bit in "The Murders at Rue Morgue"), but mainly he seemed to take his darkness very seriously.

The SC and Poe conversations would have been brilliant and dire for sure. Imagine a collaboration!