What The House Forgot

Three Parts to a Whole

Perhaps John was better at directions than any teacher had ever given him credit for. All at once, the body convulsed. As if every muscle in that short stature was dedicated to the purpose, the entire thing shifted and bent upon itself, heaving up water in a volcanic eruption spurring from his lips. A torrent flowed from his mouth, John's entire body shivering and vomiting as he anxiously purged his stomach and lungs of any foul, unwanted presence. As the water left he was able to gasp struggling breaths, his lungs rattling with the effort of forcing air in the place of water. Slowly the body reanimated, the boy seemed to gain control of his muscles once more, his fingers, his knees. Slowly he moved to tilt himself over the surface of the water, collapsed into the mud and pressing his face close to the ground, heaving and retching the last of his stomach's contents.
"John..." Sherlock whispered, a word which thankfully addressed a person, not an idea. Still a name, and not a memorial.
"What happened, why were you in the pond?" Victor demanded, going the more hostile route as soon as he thought John could handle a response. Suddenly he was blinded with rage, wondering why on earth John had demanded such physical exertion from two boys who had never known a day's work in their life. Sherlock seemed overwhelmingly relieved to see his lover back to good health, though Victor attempted to be more logical in his approach. He was angry, angry for this scare, angry for the headache, angry that he had to be the one to save his best friend's life.
"You..." John could hardly hold up the finger to point towards Victor, he could hardly hold any accusing power from position on the ground. "I'm supposed..."
"Victor, maybe we should get out of this water," Sherlock whispered, seemingly without reason. His voice was quiet and cloudy, still raspy with the droplets harbored within his lungs. Sherlock followed his own advice, pushing himself up with his arms and sitting back upon his feet. Victor hesitated, grabbing hold of the side of John's face to allow his neck the rest it needed, all the while disallowing his head from wallowing in the mud any longer. He wanted an answer, though he was coming to accept that it would not be so quick.
"Victor, you need to run," John whispered weakly, coughing up the last couple of syllables as he choked upon both words and water. Sherlock rose to his feet, splashing towards the shoreline and planting his foot definitively upon the grass. He was already shivering, looking towards the car as if he missed what was left of his bedsheet toga.
"We'll all run, John," Victor offered. "I'll get you up, get you..."
"No, no! You need to run from me," John demanded, his voice getting all the more assertive as his strength returned. He was even able to swat the hand away from his cheek, pushing Victor's touch aside as if to denounce his friend and his care. Victor hesitated, holding his hands carefully in the air, hovering them right alongside of John's skin so as not to scare him. Though he wanted to send a message, one which insisted to the house and its spokesperson that fate would not get its way tonight. He wanted to ensure that, no matter how terrified John may be, the house was not going to win.
"I'm taking you with me, either way. I'm not going to let you drown again," Victor promised.
"It's not me. It's us," John whispered in a panic.
"You and Sherlock?" Victor laughed, looking towards the shivering shell of a boy who had once radiated so much confidence. A boy who had once had control of the whole stage. A broken thing, a casualty of the evening in its own right. He didn't look able to kill a fly, much less cast a hand upon Victor.
"My past lives," John corrected miserably. "They want you to die." As if on cue, Victor felt a pair of fingers curl around his ankle and pull. Much like the grip which had torn Sherlock from his arms just hours before, Victor felt himself being pulled progressively towards the depths of the pond which they had just escaped. It was much more immediate than was Sherlock's; as the strength from the bottom of the pond was almost double that of the crippled old man at the foot of the bed. Before he was able to fight, and before he was able to understand just what he would be tasked with defeating, Victor felt his feet slip rom beneath him. He was being dragged...dragged into the depths. In a moment his chest submerged, his hands clawing at the weeds and unrooting them in his struggles to anchor himself to shore. With one last gasp of air that was taken upon realizing he would not have another chance, Victor was submerged by a force much stronger than he. One that would keep him below the water until he died if it was decided necessary. With two exhausted boys above, both nearly having met their ends by the same fate, certainly Victor could not count on his friends coming to his aid. He hoped they would not so stupid as to attempt a rescue attempt, he hoped this pond would not be the sole killer of the entire repeating trio. As he stared upon the dying moon above, the shimmering light that would soon be overtaken by the sun, Victor began to wonder if that would really be his last time appreciating it. The way it glistened on the other side of the water, like staring through a water glass and laughing at the distortions it cast upon the real world, so too did the moon wobble and bend from this perspective. Victor could see the house, too. He could see the roof, though from here, even with the ripples, it appeared normal. Growing tired of the outside world and frankly too hopeless to care, Victor turned his head down, towards the depths, towards the hand which was anchoring him underwater...and saw a friend.
Victor couldn't help but smile as he sank, watching the face of John Watson concentrate on pulling him deeper and deeper into the darkness. The man was glowing in his ghostly form, his clothes still dry upon his body, still in the fashion of the late eighteen hundreds. The man had the same expression of frustration that John would wear when he was upset, his teeth clenched as his jaw swung askew, his entire face seeming to lean off to one side as he pondered the situation and pushed himself to the absolute limit. There was something comical about this expression, especially one which looked so relaxed at the bottom of a deep pond. John Water looked similar when he was taking a math test, or lingering on the line of a goal kick. Here was that same face, dedicated instead to pulling him to his death. There was something in it that made this death preferable to any other, the accompaniment of a friend.
Yet he wasn't a friend, was he? He was the first, presumably. A man on a mission to exterminate the only competition for a prize they were all fighting so tenaciously for. This John could not bear to see Sherlock go off in the arms of another man, not again. He was fighting not for himself, but for his legacy. He wanted one, just one, of his generations to succeed. Victor could feel the urgency in his pull, a strength rooted in desperation, in deep sadness. He had never won, despite the everlasting assumption of the loss of Victor Trevors. Despite all these years, and all these losses, no one had gotten to enjoy Sherlock Holmes longer than their deaths would allow. This was the key, was it not? This was the sacrifice that needed to be made. Victor was the sacrifice that two hundred years of John Watsons deserved. Perhaps that was only fair, considering in these two hundred years not a single reincarnation of John got exactly what it wanted. And yet, despite the peaceful irony, Victor still had a sense of self preservation. Despite his ever willingness to cooperate, to amuse, he still wanted to be alive to see his own success. Victor wanted to live, perhaps far more than this ghost could ever realize.
Victor cooperated, to a point. He pitied the spirit who was pulling him to the depths, he pitied the anger that was pent up in his cold heart. This was the original John Watson, the one who went unscripted, the one who made the rules as the boys knew them today. This was the first to break, the first to kill, the first to fill the bath with warm, brimming water. The first to suffer on the account of lost love. The first to receive pity, if ever there was someone to recognize how much he struggled. victor understood heartache, and he understood how it played upon John Watson's face. He could see pain, even if it was supposed to be masked in anger. Victor shifted his body, bending through the water so that his arms could propel him down, towards the man who was easing him slowly into the darkness. He swam determinedly, catching the eye of the aggressor and allowing a soft smile to appear upon his lips. Precious air bubbles escaped through the gaps in his teeth, though the last breath was not all together wasted. The ghostly John Watson sneered, perhaps too clever to be tricked by an offering of friendship. That was the disconnect, wasn't it? This generation was the first to garner cooperation between John and Victor. This mistake of birth was what undoubtedly led to their generation being the rebellious sort, the ones that would not so quickly abandon their friends or leave them to die. Or kill them, at that rate.
There was a suffering man below, one who had not felt friendship or love since the day he took his own life. He had been simmering in rage and despair for two hundred years, and lo and behold, this was the grimacing spirit he was left to be. Victor wished to change that, with the last moments of his life, he wanted to change the entire generation of John Watson's view upon the world. And so, with the last of his remaining energy, Victor swam quickly towards the ghost, figuring if the ghost could touch him then he could certainly return the favor. Catching the man's shoulders in his hands, Victor pulled the shimmering form closer, preforming a bit of a contortion to manage an embrace while his foot was still in captivity. Nevertheless, he was able to pull their bodies together. The ghostly form nearly passed through, though it solidified in the last moments, as if that was John's acceptance of the situation. There was a flicker of hesitation, a soft grumble of distrust, though as Victor huddled more of that body closer to his he began to feel the entire being relax. As if a ghost could be calm, the very essence of the spirit began to ease, allowing the whole of its girth to fall into Victor's arms.
Just like that, his ankle was released. John Watson let go of his captive to ensure he could get a better grip around his shoulders, creating a slow current in the water as he grappled and gripped. Victor smiled softly to himself, allowing the last of his pent up air to expel through his nose, creating a stream of bubbles that surrounded his supernatural counterpart. Was this some form of redemption, a sort of reckoning to resolve the longest and most repetitive grudge of all time? He couldn't say for sure. All Victor knew for sure was that he was beginning to rise. 

John POV: It was the water itself that delivered Victor Trevor to him, a soft ripple that was propelling the floating form gently towards the shore. John was strong enough now to receive the body, wading knee deep into the muddy water and grabbing hold of Victor's shoulders, helping to ease him out of the water. The boy was conscious, but barely so. He looked a little silly, with his arms tucked around his chest and a soft smile on his face, though his eyes continually blinked and his chest went up and down, both sure signs that he would regain his full personality in a couple of moments. While John was still shaking he all the same took Victor into his arms, dragging the body onto the shore and stepping carefully out. For the first time since his arrival the water began to calm, as all of the boys had safely emerged from its depths.
"John, you haven't changed much, have you?" Victor chuckled, the first words out of his mouth and they're still a poor attempt at a joke. John coughed, a quick and unappreciated byproduct of being dead for a moment or two.
"What do you mean by that?" John clarified, his eyebrows narrowing as he tried to gauge just why Victor was smiling so stupidly.
"I met your generation down there," Victor explained. "He was pleasant, in the end."
"John?" the boy turned, looking down towards the water and catching the eye of his reflection. Oh, but it wasn't so simple as that. It could never just be his reflection.
The first John Watson stared solemnly back, his brown eyes much wider than John was used to seeing, filled with something a bit more familiar than hatred. Failure? Pity? No, more complicated still. Regret. His old clothes seemed to be hanging much looser upon his body, his eyes sunken into his skull to make him look dead for the first time in a long while. Regret. John turned his eyes away, shaking away the preliminary urge to feel sorry for that awful man. Just because he was the first did not make him anymore morally upstanding, and just because he dared to feel sorry did not mean he was forgiven. John couldn't care less if he shared a soul with the man in the pond. He would rather share his life with the boys who were scrambling upon the shore.
"Victor, you alright?" Sherlock appeared at their shoulders, draping the remainder of his bedsheet over both boys' shivering bodies as they huddled together for warmth. The night had turned cold, and their wet skin was not doing anything to conserve heat.
"I'm fine," Victor assured with a groan. He fell from John's arms into a rather precarious sitting position, digging his knees into the grass and sitting back on his heels with success. His clothes were hanging heavily from his shoulders, his entire body leaning with the effort of keeping both himself and the fabric upright.
John pursed his lips, suddenly feeling a pang of guilt for having caused this trouble in the first place. Nevertheless, it was an easier burden to carry when the three of them were still alive. If Victor had not survived his encounter with the original, well then John would have found an easier and more effective way to end it all. It was becoming ever apparent that their lives were not repeated for the sole purpose of being with Sherlock Holmes. If the house truly favored one pairing over the other it would have chosen just those two to regenerate, leaving the other behind in the centuries. They weren't supposed to be a couple...they were supposed to be together. The master of the house, his everlasting guest, and the wanderer in the night.

Sherlock was the first to pull the three together, the first to hook his arm around the two boy's shoulders. He was the first to drop his head into the middle of their little circle, the first to let loose a sob that would interrupt the silence of the steady sunrise. Victor mimicked this action, though his tears were quieter. He pulled his friends closer, allowing them to share in the most recent dosage of pond water, and his teardrops mixed cunningly with the drops that were falling from his collected bangs. John was the last to comply, the last to fully accept that this was finally over. The first to realize that they had, beyond all odds, broken the chain of time itself. He carefully settled himself within the embrace, pulling both boys closer to his chest in a careful admiration. How could he be forced to kill them? How could he be forced to pick one over the other? How could he do anything but love unconditionally, without room for jealousy in his heart? His best friends, his lovers, his soulmates in all aspect of the word. These were the people he traveled through history with. These were the souls that were along with his own, along for the ride of the centuries.