Fic Rec: Embers Series

[aprilleigh24.livejournal.com]

Title: Embers Series

Author: what_alchemy

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

Length: ~14,000 for both stories

Rating: part 1: Teen; part 2: Adult

Warnings: None

Verse: Sherlock BBC

Author's summary: Regular people, normal people, people like good, warm, tea-making, hair-stroking John, they have visible pulses, pulses that slow and quicken, pulses tied to their emotions and their brains and their life forces. Pulses attached to whatever animates them.

Reccer's comments: I adore stories that demonstrate the profound effect Sherlock and John have on the other’s lives and this series more than deliver. These stories are truly magical – one of best example of Magical Realism that I’ve ever read. The author takes the idea of Sherlock as Pinocchio type creature and perfectly weaves that into the canon verse. While the characterization for everyone is amazing throughout, I particularly enjoyed how Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationship was presented.


Excerpt: Sherlock has never told anyone about his unique physiology. He has actively hidden it from people — from John. But now he wants John to know that with his reticence he acts in mercy, not in indifference. It’s better this way. He straightens and inhales, because despite not needing the oxygen beyond the basic requirement for speech, it’s always had a steadying effect.

“The truth of it is that I don’t have a heart,” he says.

John stares long enough to need to blink, then scoffs and turns back to his desk with a shake of his head. He waves a hand in Sherlock’s direction, a wide sweeping motion made with a flick of the wrist. He hunches over his laptop looking like nothing so much as a wounded animal.

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “Sherlock Holmes is heartless. I knew that. I know that. Get out, then.”

Sherlock gets out, and no amount of replaying the conversation illuminates what went wrong. He was truthful. He was tactful. He didn’t insult anyone. Relations with John deteriorate, John gets a girlfriend of all hateful things, and then one night in a long-ago crime scene Sherlock comes face to face with his match, who implies snidely that Sherlock’s chest might not be as vacant as popular opinion would have it.

Deep in the hollow bits of himself, Sherlock starts to itch.