mithen: (Steepled Fingers)
mithen ([personal profile] mithen) wrote2013-09-03 08:22 pm

221B Drabble: Orpheus with a Violin

Title: Orpheus with a Violin
Pairing/Characters: John/Sherlock
Rating: G
Warnings/Spoilers: Post-Reichenbach
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Summary: John has the same dream again: the cave, the music, the lost soul.
Word Count: 221



The dream again (yet real, somehow): the bleak stone caves, the passage upward. There is music somewhere, a sweetly keening, desperate lament that calls him onward. The darkness is total, and yet he can see, walking in front of him--

His heart leaps and he leaps with it, but he cannot reach Sherlock for all his effort, he can only follow helplessly in his wake as they rise together.

John puts out his hand; the stones gleam through misty sinews. But it's all wrong, it's Sherlock who's dead, not him. Sherlock whose soul is lost and wandering, not his.

He calls Sherlock's name: his voice makes no sound, and yet the resolute shoulders before him stiffen, the steps falter. John sees Sherlock's hands shaking, and instead of hope, terror rises up to seize him; with a certainty cold as fangs sinking into his flesh, he knows that if Sherlock turns to look back he is lost forever.

Then the proud head lifts once more, and Sherlock strides into the dark without a backward glance, and John is saved.

When he wakes, John will remember that moment, the pain and the triumph of it together: as if Sherlock were alive and he the ghost, as if only the wild sweet music of Sherlock's mind could summon him from the empty world beyond.
mekare: Flower patterned Japanese paper (violin)

[personal profile] mekare 2013-09-04 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
*starry eyes*

Oooooh this works on so many levels! Magnificent! (And the mood somehow fits the art I just posted)
All this role reversal, and myth and dream, and death and living like you're already dead, and music and Sherlock's mind as music, and Orpheus and Euridice, wonderful!

Appropriate icon is appropriate!
mekare: Flower patterned Japanese paper (violin)

[personal profile] mekare 2013-09-05 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)
No no not at all. It is hopeful after all, we know Sherlock will return. I don't envy the writers for having to write that scene and probably disappoint half the fandom - kinda like after The Great Game. Maybe they'll choose a cop-out?

And it seems there is some transatlantic/continental synchronizing going on ;-D

Btw, I never really looked at your icon, but GUH! Sexy sexy hands... (also a big part of why I chose the reference picture, the hands have a big role)