The Last Romantics

Forgotten Names Reunited

Sherlock didn't wake in time for breakfast, though he was awake in time to hear the door closing, announcing the Doctor's departure. It wasn't as if he had deliberately avoided poor Musgrave, though Sherlock did have it in his mind to at least avert any conversation. He wasn't particularly and at Musgrave considering his kindness in the matter, though the fact that Victor was lurking around the halls of this should be safe haven meant of course the conflict was well on its way. Sherlock knew full well that the Doctor's insistence of reuniting again with glad hearts and happy smiles was nearly impossible, despite however victor chose to kiss up to him during the duration of his stay.
"Sherlock, are you awake yet?" called Victor's voice from the doorway of the sitting room, peeking his head in to make sure that he wasn't doing the injustice of waking the poor invalid. Sherlock wasn't entirely sure how to treat Victor yet, and more so he didn't know how Victor was going to treat him. He knew that the man still had it settled in his heart that he was going to help out; he wanted to redeem himself as caretaker though his services were long since useless. Sherlock was too old to need a guardian, and through the years he had found that he should never trust Victor Trevor, no matter what the man tried to put into his mind. He was a man with a cold heart and a rotten soul, and before long he would play the cards to help himself over others, every single time.
"I'm awake." Sherlock grumbled, allowing his eyes to open into the sunlit sitting room, making them feel quite like they had been set on fire. For a while he groaned, blinking rapidly to adjust to the harsh light, though in the end he was finally able to set his sights on where Victor was lingering in the entry way, as if he wasn't sure how welcomed he was into the room itself.
"Do you need a hand getting up?" he offered.
"What's got you feeling all charitable?" Sherlock growled, for a direct denial of the need for assistance would leave him lying miserably on this couch for a long while. The Doctor had gone, leaving only this foul creature at his disposal. As much as he despised the man, Sherlock would have to consider Victor's usefulness throughout these lonely days.
"Reginald said you needed a nurse, and well he rather designated that position to me." Victor admitted with a bit of a regretful sigh. He didn't seem to like that particular title, though it looked as though is hand was forced in the matter.
"You'd make a pathetic nurse." Sherlock decided.
"Well, pathetic or not you need my help. And so, unless you want to die of starvation upon that couch I suggest you allow me to settle you in your little wheelchair, and we'll get you to the breakfast table unscathed." Victor suggested.
"Unscathed? And what particular injury are we directly avoiding with this plan of action?" Sherlock wondered.
"The injury that you would sustain should I hit you on the head with the dinner plate." Victor muttered. Sherlock nodded, using what little strength he had to pull himself into a sitting position. Well he would probably rather attack his breakfast, rather than the other way around, and so he allowed himself to be helped into the chair by Victor's rather incapable hands. Before long he was plopped rather agressivley into the wheelchair, though Sherlock was feeling confident enough to drive it himself. He therefore followed Victor, who was walking considerably slowly, to where the kitchen table was set up with a nice plate of fried eggs and toast. It was a breakfast considerably more attractive than the slob he was fed in the hospital, and so that little plate really didn't stand a chance against his suddenly massive appetite. Before long he had cleared the thing, and was at last looking up to Victor to see if there was any more food hidden in the Doctor's kitchen.
"Finished?" Victor presumed.
"If I have to be." Sherlock agreed rather bitterly, to which Victor just chuckled.
"You're here on Musgrave's considered generosity. We will not be punishing him with a ridiculous grocery bill." Victor insisted. Sherlock nodded, leaning back in his chair and wagging his single foot about in thought, looking up towards his strange companion.
"Yes, I'm here on generosity. You, I suppose, are here on your own bidding? He couldn't get rid of you so he just let you stay." Sherlock presumed. Victor smiled, though there was some malice in his should be carefree grin.
"I never asked to stay, he never told me to go." Victor admitted.
"You're nomadic these days, I presume?" Sherlock muttered, remembering the surprising lack of good poetry in the newspapers these days. Neither he nor Victor had taken up any publishing since their separation, and in consequence their income had decreased dramatically.
"No more than you." Victor snapped, his own way of agreeing to a statement that he didn't want to admit to. He really couldn't hold a conversation without snapping at people, could he? So terribly unpleasant these days.
"You are quite the grumpy old man." Sherlock decided with a little snigger, to which Victor just hissed in return.
"Not yet fifty, Sherlock dear." Victor reminded in a sort of sing song voice.
"And so well over half way." Sherlock agreed. "And considering your dependence, that laudanum will kill you well before you should have died. I give you ten years."
"And I give you less than that. Consider, Sherlock, that you have sustained trauma. Tremendous trauma." Victor reminded him, as if that was in any way going to extend his own lifespan.
"Neither of us will be satisfied until the other dies, I can only imagine." Sherlock grumbled.
"I will mourn you." Victor assured.
"I won't give you the chance. And I'll have you dug two feet under in a cardboard box." Sherlock insisted.
"Musgrave wouldn't have that." Victor sighed.
"Musgrave is nothing but a temporary companion. Do you sincerely mean to keep him around the rest of your life?" Sherlock scoffed.
"I can't imagine what other choice I have." The man admitted. "I do admire him, though I need him much more than I could ever love him."
"Precisely my point. You are so self-concerned that one does wonder how you've not already married your alter ego." Sherlock snarled.
"You had that one rehearsed, didn't you?" Victor presumed. Sherlock stiffened up in his wheelchair, too proud to admit that he had thought of that long before the moment came to announce it. The hospital bed left little to do, rather than to win arguments in your head. He might as well have wallowed in his grudges while Victor sat careless and high in Musgrave's lavish sitting room.
"And a great many others, that I may sprinkle in throughout our involuntary conversations." Sherlock decided at last, to which Victor just chuckled.
"You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to." Victor reminded him, to which Sherlock managed a smile.
"Oh good, well in that case..." he began to back his chair up, so as to help maneuver himself back towards the siting room. Before he could get very far, however, he found his way blocked. Victor had shoved one of his feet right next to the wheel, preventing the chair from rolling any more forward.
"I'll run you over." Sherlock threatened, though even as he attempted such a violent act he found that his arms were no longer equipped with the strength to roll over top of a sizable speed bump.
"You'll try, certainly." Victor agreed with a smirk. "But while I've got you here I figured I may as well ask what has been on my mind these past couple of days. That being of course how you ended up in a war hospital in the first place, being all together ineligible and unwilling to be deployed."
"You act as though a civilian cannot just walk into a trench, wishing to aid." Sherlock muttered.
"I am not only acting like it, I know that to be a fact." Victor pointed out in return, to which Sherlock only managed a smile and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well half of the idea was to document the effort in a book of poetry. I figured a war like this, of such magnitude; well it hadn't been attempted before. We best make sure we remember it in all forms, so that we don't have to set off another great war to remind ourselves of the more artistic angles." Sherlock muttered quietly.
"And the other half?" Victor presumed. Sherlock sighed heavily, tapping the arms of his chair in some exasperation and pursing his lips. He didn't seem to want to speak of the other half of his motivations, especially not to the very villain of his story.
"Well, I figured that if he was in France he may have joined the war." Sherlock muttered at last.
"He's not in France." Victor said in quick response.
"How the h*ll would you know for sure, Victor?" Sherlock growled, rolling back with his wheelchair only to give a great heave forward. He knew he could not truly roll over top of Victor's foot, though he could hopeful inflict some pain onto the well deserving monster.
"I don't know for sure, I don't know anything for sure. Though perhaps we can use the evidence to narrow down the possibilities. If he were in France he would've written, yes?" Victor presumed.
"Who knows if he had not tried? I've not been in a stable address for long enough; no one would be able to trace a letter in my name back towards me." Sherlock insisted. "Half the time I use an alias, to make sure I don't have to sign any more autographs."
"Still so popular, are you?" Victor chuckled doubtfully.
"I imagine I'm more popular than you." Sherlock snapped.
"Imagine all you'd like. The difference between our followers may very well be a single person, separating two faithful readers from three." Victor grumbled. "We are old, Sherlock. Decrepit. Incompetent. And most regretfully we are forgotten."
"Never one of the greats, were we?" Sherlock agreed quietly.
"In our time, perhaps. In our short time." Victor muttered, and with that he grabbed his cigarette case from his jacket pocket and produced two cigarettes. One he stuck in his own mouth and the other he handed off to Sherlock. Without a word the two men raised their paper to the flame, ignoring the tips and going on watching the smoke erupt from their mouths, mingling together for a moment before vanishing into the air of Musgrave's home.
"Have you yet to tell Musgrave the entire story?" Victor wondered, at last stepping out of the way to let Sherlock roll where he wanted to. However the man stayed put, looking more content with staring into the sitting room than rolling towards it.
"I'll finish it tonight." Sherlock managed at last. "So you should have your bags packed, I presume. You'll be kicked out by morning."
"So you hope." Victor responded with a rather sour taste in his mouth. He stood and smoked, hoping direly that Sherlock would at least spare Musgrave the burden of his own harsh opinion. If the facts were presented without bias they may very well be tolerable. If Sherlock introduced his own conspiracies into the mix, well then Victor was as good as gone. No self-respecting man would let such a creature into his bed. That seemed to be the end of their conversation, and save for the occasional checking in process that Victor conducted every hour, on the hour, the house had fallen into silence. Sherlock was quite content with sitting in front of the fireplace, which Victor had tended rather unwillingly (he never built fires, they were always built for him) and throughout the rest of the day the two kept to themselves. Sherlock was writing in his notebook once more, scrawling down random lines and stanzas of poetry that kept coming to him in fragments. None of them corresponded with the other and he had no general theme nor motivation for continuing them into a full sonnet or poem, though in the meantime he was quite occupied just with the simple rhyme schemes he so enjoyed. Victor sat off where he couldn't see him, though every so often Sherlock would get the distinct feeling that someone was watching him, therefore he figured that the other man had not strayed far within the house. Together they waited for the Doctor to return home, figuring that he wouldn't be much delayed as there was no longer a storyteller within the hospital to distract him from getting home on time. Instead he would be pressured to leave, longing for the company of his newfound companions rather than that of the nurses or other more boring patients. As promised the Doctor arrived around seven o'clock, a rather early hour considering he was usually leaving the hospital around eight when Sherlock was still around. Musgrave looked tired and worn from the day, and his first mission was to drop himself into a warm bath before he would either feed his guests or listen to them. It was no matter, Sherlock was just as entertained with his stagnation here as he had been in the hospital, and to be honest the ability to move his leg in more exciting directions was all the reward he needed for being in a sitting position for so long. He figured that he would be taken off for a prosthetic leg before the war was over, that way he could hobble around on his own with the aid of just a cane or something of the sort to help with the more delicate art of balance. He would not be confined in this chair for long, not if he could help it.
"Ah, the triumphant Doctor returns." came Victor's voice from the kitchen, followed by the telltale footsteps of the descending Doctor from the upstairs bathroom. When Sherlock turned to see him he looked much more refreshed, with his hair wet against his forehead and wearing a pair of comfortable looking pajamas. It was a look of informality that Sherlock was not especially used to when the Doctor was concerned, considering that he was always in his bloodied clothes or some sort of grotesque apron when he came to Sherlock's bedside in the hospital. It was an unusual change, though it was not all together scorned.
"I hope the two of you had been cooperating?" Musgrave wondered, wandering over to Sherlock's chair so as to make sure he had not been harmed the long while he had been away.
"Oh yes. We only tried to kill each other twice." Victor assured.
"A new record." Sherlock agreed with a little smile, clenching his newly lit cigarette between his teeth and wagging it around as he looked towards the Doctor once more. "What about you, Reginald, how many people did you try to kill?"
"Unfortunately I succeeded in my attempts. It was another ghastly day. There must have been some battle, for they're carrying whole truckloads of patients through my doors by the hour." Musgrave grumbled, sinking into one of the arm chairs and looking perfectly exhausted.
"Well it's a good thing I made dinner, then. You don't seem at all in the mood for cooking." Victor decided at last, going over towards the Doctor to receive a small kiss of thanks (Sherlock looked away in some distain, though did not voice his immediate disgust).
"Quite an accomplished housewife you are, Victor. Before you know it I'll even get you an apron." Musgrave suggested, to which Victor merely winced, as if he could not imagine himself degraded down to such a state. Before long the three of them had assembled around the table, finding that Victor had prepared the only thing he seemed capable of making by himself, rather lopsided sandwiches filled with ham and cheese. It was a reasonable enough meal, though when Victor had boasted about 'making' dinner, this wasn't exactly what anyone had expected.
"Lovely." Musgrave muttered, probably making a mental note to introduce his new housewife to a cookbook.
"Oh Victor you really are incompetent." Sherlock sighed. "Have you never been forced to prepare your own meals before?"
"Never anything fancy." The man admitted. "I've been accustomed to having a housekeeper, if you remember correctly."
"Whatever happened to dear Mrs. Turner?" Sherlock wondered.
"She said goodbye to you, Sherlock, in her last speech." Victor snapped back. "Happy to hear that you still remember her name."
"Of course I remember her name. I had no grudge with her." Sherlock assured. "It was her master that I grew to dislike."
"You are so childish." Victor grumbled, pushing a sandwich in Sherlock's direction with some force so as to make him eat, rather than talk. Perhaps he could not take the verbal abuse any longer. Well it didn't take them long to finish their dinner, considering the complexity of the meal, and before long Musgrave and Sherlock found themselves alone in the sitting room. The Doctor seemed to sense that this was the last of the many great segments of Sherlock's story, for this time he looked almost sad to see the man begin to speak. Nonetheless this segment would be the one which contained the ultimate truth, the history that would force the Doctor to form his own opinion on the conflict between the two. This was the finale, though obviously the Doctor knew the end result. He was living through the end result, perfectly voluntarily it would seem. 

"It was the beginning of the end, if you believe in fate enacting like a timeline. I had heard John's confession and in turn offered him mine, though I felt as though we were no closer to agreeing on a course of action. Just because we had mutually fallen in love did not mean that we had a green light to get married and start a family or any such pleasures that those of the normal orientation enjoy. Instead I was left pondering my own fate, wondering if it held anything more exciting for me than a simple confession of feelings and a lifetime of following stagnation. Well the first barrier I had to cross was Victor, for I felt that he wasn't going to handle the news perfectly well at all. For whatever reason I always suspected Victor of harboring a deep dislike of John, perhaps because he knew that he would eventually be the wedge which drove the two of us apart in the end. You know what they say about self-fulfilling prophecies, don't you Doctor? Well, any ways I decided that my first plan of attack was to help John get out of the life he so despised, considering that by falling in love with me he was sacrificing all of the liberties a marriage to Mary Morstan could offer. Therefore I had to help him make his own way in the world, living off the words that he so giftedly wrote, and to do so I followed just about the same course of action as Victor gave me. the first thing I did was task him with writing more, in fact I delivered that request through a letter, and told him to find inspiration in the trees or in the water or wherever he found natural beauty to be at its best. In turn he produced three more poems, delightful things, and compiled all of his works into a folder which he would often bring to me to critique. We began passing not just our lunches together but most of our nights as well. He would begin his evening at the Morstan's, for they were still hospitable to him and did not know that he had given his heart to someone else besides their charming daughter. Mary Morstan herself was the most in the dark, in fact every time I talked to her she seemed to be expecting a proposal! Well, it was nearly pitiful, though I knew that John's charade would have to endure. Our love would not be able to support us without the accompaniment of proper poetry, and with that I knew we had to get John to be a little bit more self-sustaining. The most daunting fact came one night as we sat beside each other in the living room, enjoying two large cups of tea that had been prepared by Mrs. Turner. She seemed to realize at once that this man I continued to bring into the house was the very same I had been wailing about some days earlier, and this being deduced she seemed only too willing to offer John anything that his little heart desired. The two of us were treated like kings, which I thought was rather peculiar considering that I didn't remember Jim Moriarty getting such treatment. The answer to this little enigma must have been found within John's kindness, for Jim Moriarty had perhaps always been treated like royalty, for he practically was. John, having undoubtedly come from a family without any servants, found that he could only thank Mrs. Turner profusely for the smallest little task she did, such as adjusting the logs in the fire or adding some more sugar to our tea cups. All the same he seemed to love his time spent in this house, and though Victor's rather sour presence had made long stays rather impossible, these few moments we had together seemed to be worth more than anything General Morstan could have offered. Despite our mutual love we did not express it much; in fact I don't remember much intimacy at all. I was quite afraid to confirm what had been said on the bench, almost as if I had dreamed it in some strange fever and would ruin my chances of this reality proving true. It was a strange worry, though I held to it and continued with my hesitations. I dared not touch his hand, nor comment on how startling he looked in the fire light. I had not dreamed of anything more than a deep friendship with him, despite what we felt about each other, though I should have known that was not going to sustain. Well it was for the best, I suspect, but I shall get to that later on.