Series Rec: The Same River Twice

[swissmarg]

Title: The Same River Twice
Author: PlaidAdder
Pairing: John/Sherlock, Harry/Clara, Molly/Lestrade
Length: 151,177 words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: A pair of stories based on Sherlock, beginning a month after "The Reichenbach Fall." All casefic, combining elements from more than one case. All Johnlock, though other relationships may creep in. Plot and character-driven, though not entirely devoid of other pleasures.

Reccer's comments: Yes, I've recced PlaidAdder twice before. But those were both fics based on the original ACD stories, so I feel justified in bringing something from this author to those in the fandom who don't read ACD fics. Also, this rec is really mainly for the second story in this series, The Young Men Carbuncular, but as you do need to read the first story to understand what's going on, the whole series is getting the rec. But I'm really only going to talk about the second story. :)

I read a lot of fics, and to help keep track I have all of the Sherlock fics on my Kindle sorted into four categories according to how much I liked them. This story? For this one, I seriously considered making a new category because it's just that awesome. I don't know what it would be called, but something like "Fics that make you suspect Moffat and Gatiss may have written them" but better because, you know, Johnlock slash.

Okay. So, first, there isn't any smut (see rating). I mean, sex definitely happens, but we always cut away just before (or cut back in just after). This also didn't make me swoon with emotion or give me hours of stomach flutters from the UST or make me cry buckets. (Okay, I did get choked up during the last scene. Coupla tears and sniffles.)

So what makes this one of the best Sherlock fics I've ever read? Plot, baby. Plot and backstory and the astounding depth of the characters and their interactions. Because they've all got Motivation with a capital M and boatloads of angst and skeletons in their closets. Harry in particular is the dark horse winner, coming out of fandom obscurity to own her part and do it brilliantly, effectively carrying off one of the lead roles. (The story switches among various points of view, one of them being Harry's.) She shows how a third person, a female, could be added to the pair of Sherlock and John, and work well with them.

The plot is cobbled together from many sources, including the original ACD canon stories The Blue Carbuncle, The Greek Interpreter, The Three Garridebs (really only the one iconic scene) and The Blanched Soldier. The other major influence is T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, so much so that the author says it is essentially a fusion with that poem. Now, I say 'cobbled', but what I really mean is closer to the work of a cordwainer than a cobbler. At about the half-way point, I thought the story was all wrapped up, but friends, that is where it really gets started. My jaw dropped a little further with every chapter, because, yes, everything really is connected. More than you think. More. And it all goes back to little hints and throwaway lines from the first story, and even further back than that. By the end, I was only just beginning to grasp the perfect jigsaw-puzzle way that the author put all the pieces together.

One of the things that I particularly liked is how the author lays out little bits of brilliance and lets the reader find them for themselves, like in this passage:

Searching for something to look at in the silence that followed, John’s eyes found a framed photo on Harry’s desk, next to the computer. It was of the two of them as children. He was perhaps four, Harry three years older. They had been playing with costumes. He was wearing his little soldier’s uniform, carrying his toy gun. Harry had on a nurse’s cap and apron.
John didn’t remember that photo being taken. But he remembered why it had been taken. Because he could remember that one summer day, he and Harry had been leading a special rescue mission out by the yew bushes in the back garden. Harry had on the jacket of John’s soldier uniform—she was too tall for the trousers—and John had on the cap and apron. They were rescuing pilots who had been downed behind enemy lines. John had insisted on being Florence Nightingale, and though Harry kept telling him there were no airplanes in the Crimean War, she let him do it. They had finally found the stuffed lion that Harry had hidden in the bracken, and John was wrapping its wounded paw in leaves, when they heard their father’s footsteps on the brick path behind them.

Harry sat up and slid off the bed.

“All right,” she said. “I’m over it now. Let’s go check on Sherlock before he decides to burn something.”

As this makes clear, the story of Harry and John's childhood is one of the main threads running through the story, and although little is explained overtly, much becomes clear, including how those experiences shaped them and their relationships as adults, both with each other and with other people of significance in their lives.
As for the pairings, there is some excellent Johnlock, with them going through the phase of defining what exactly they are to each other. However, this story also goes quite a lot into Lestrade's and Molly's characters, and their developing relationship. The Harry/Clara parts are more in the first story of the series, but other (OC and spoilerish) femslash pairings play a significant role in the second story as well.

As I mentioned OCs, I just want to add that there are quite a few of them, and they are all excellent. Of particular note, I think, are those whose names were taken from canon such as Inspector Jones, Inspector Gregson, and the unfortunate Ryder from The Blue Carbuncle, who were turned into vibrant, feeling, Real Boys (and Girls).