Fic Rec: After-wise

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Title: After-wise
Author: cathedral_carver
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 4958
Rating: Teen and up
Warnings: N/A
Verse: Sherlock BBC

Author's summary: My name is John Hamish Watson and I am 74 years old and I must wear clean pants every day. No exceptions.

Reccer's comments: I would imagine this fic is going to be recced everywhere. It’s a brilliant piece.

John and Sherlock have grown older together as a couple but now John has developed dementia. It’s heartbreaking - John and Sherlock have lost their shared past and their shared future and are both stuck in a permanent present in which they have to live apart. Yet this is a story you’ll want to come back to and read over and over again.

The author is, of course, a subtle and skilful writer, and has made astute choices as to how the piece is structured. We are presented with the situation as a reality from the beginning - we know John isn’t miraculously going to get better. And we haven’t had to watch his change from the John we knew to the John he is now, as poor Sherlock had to do. Also, the story is told from alternating viewpoints: John’s and Sherlock’s. We see Sherlock’s fear, guilt, loneliness and desperate hope. But we also see his strength, his love and his selflessness - his life revolves around John. With John, we see his resentment and boredom, his sense of isolation, his fear, anger and confusion but we also see some moments of peace and happiness. And because we get to see his point of view, we don’t simply pity him and mourn what he’s lost; we empathise with him and learn to accept him as he is now. As I think Sherlock eventually does.

The author has made the story bearable to read. There is even the occasional touch of rueful humour. And though there can’t be a happy ending the author is kind to us, and to her characters, and chooses as a stopping point what is a bitter-sweet moment for Sherlock, but is for John a moment of undiluted love and joy.