Fic Rec: Some Business of Her Own

[sanguinity]

Title: Some Business of Her Own
Author: amindamazed
Pairing: background Holmes/Watson, background Russell/Holmes, background Russell/other
Length: 4,692 words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: none apply
Verse: ACD Books, Mary Russell Books
Author's summary:

There are many things Holmes and I have never explicitly discussed, and the exact nature of his relationship begun with John Watson before I was born was one of them. Still, I can observe and deduce as well as the next detective, and in addition to theology and chemistry Oxford gave me an education in the wide reaches of human behavioural variability. I’ve long known that the bond between the old friends was forged from rare metals. Though perhaps not so rare as so-called polite society would admit, given Mrs. Summer’s ready assumption. Other than Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, and the occasional elderly irregular, however, I’d never had opportunity to meet someone who’d known them both so long before I did, and more to the point who knew them as the partners they were then. Her certainty as to the nature of their partnership was more data than I’d received in some time.

Reccer's comments: I hadn’t yet read the Mary Russell stories when I first encountered “Some Business of Her Own,” but I loved it for its post-canon Kitty Winter and for its depiction of the Holmes / Watson relationship: two men who loved each other well and still do, even though they retired apart. (Oh, the simile near the end of falcon and falconer...!) People unfamiliar with the Mary Russell stories might find the first five paragraphs slow, but the rest stands well enough on its own.

Now, however, that I have the first half-dozen Mary Russell novels behind me, I consider this story a very necessary fix-it for my more persistent frustrations with the series, most notably the repeated coshing of Watson. Here, amindamazed has given us a Mary Russell who is a bit older, and consequently just coming to understand how young she still is and how seriously she might have underestimated what she had no experience to value.

Mostly, though, I love this story for the deep respect it shows to its entire cast, its insistence that the value of one relationship doesn’t come at the expense of another, and its bittersweet optimism about love.

I closed my eyes and imagined soaring myself, a solitary gull perhaps, or an arctic tern on a voyage from pole to pole. The fierce pull I felt to make my own way was dear to my heart, more dear perhaps than those whom I loved. Except it wasn’t a choice I had to make. There was no dichotomy here, to be myself and to love. I was sure Holmes had found the same truth, for all he’d put it some other way. Or not put it any way, at all. Watson was his wordsmith, and I was my own. We didn’t need to speak for each other.

(Mods: may I please have character tags for Mary Russell and Kitty Winter?)

Comments

[tripleransom.livejournal.com]

I generally avoid the MR stories like the plague, for the reason you mentioned, plus she comes off as such a Mary Sue, and I find her early relationship with Holmes to be somewhat...creepy, given their age difference. But this one sounds interesting. Could you provide a link to the location of the story, please? The one at the top just goes back to here.

[sanguinity]

Sorry, fixed now! Thank you for pointing it out.