221b_recs | Fic Rec: Homo Faber

Title: Homo Faber
Author: saki101
Pairing: pre-slash Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 13,000 words
Rating: Teen (but there is a small NSFW image at the beginning of the story, a production still from the stage production of Frankenstein which includes nudity)
Warnings: descriptions of wartime injuries and surgeries
Verse: Sherlock BBC, fusion with Frankenstein
Author's summary: In which Sherlock's mother's maiden name is Frankenstein and Dr Watson has been invalided home towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars... What if Dr Frankenstein had had Dr Watson to keep him right? Excerpt: “We are all egoists,” he said. “Every child likes to hear the story of his beginnings, the tale of his parents’ courtship, the events surrounding his birth, the parts of his story he cannot know himself.”

Reccer's comments: It's hard to pick just one of saki101's works to recommend this month, but here we go. This is a lovely variation on the Frankenstein tale which turns the novel's original themes on their head by dwelling on the wonder and beauty of Dr. Frankenstein's victory over death rather than on its unnaturalness or horror. Saki101 sets the scene on the beautiful grounds of a hospital and sanitorium where Dr. Watson joins forces with Sherlock Holmes to heal the wounded minds and bodies of traumatized veterans returning from the Napoleonic Wars. Having seen so much terrible mortality, Watson welcomes Holmes's reanimated man as a precious and worthy patient, while Holmes himself recoils in guilt from the mauled, imperfect life he created.

The story ultimately celebrates the compassion that motivates pioneers in medicine to push back against death itself, and sometimes - miraculously - win. It also shows the quiet but consuming ways that Holmes reanimates Watson himself, and is guided to greatness, acceptance and love in return. A beautiful story.