Fic Rec: What John Knows

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Title: What John Knows
Author: Lariope
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 7,800 words
Rating: E
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: John tries to take on a case of his own. The results are not quite what he expected.

Reccer's comments: This is a very interesting and lovely post-Reichenbach fic. It does something that I'm not sure I've ever seen elsewhere: it allows Sherlock's confidence in his own planning to be so shaken, and his awareness of John's suffering to be so acute, that he can't carry out his mission. Rather than pursuing Moriarty's network, he drifts around John's periphery, nearly paralyzed. He no longer trusts himself to protect John, and he's not sure whether there really are still threats left behind by Moriarty or how to judge what they might be. He's lost and humbled. It's a version of his post-Fall character that I find tremendously empathetic and plausible.

I usually have a hard time forgiving Sherlock for leaving John in grief rather than trusting him, but this story gives Sherlock an awareness of his own mistakes and lets him show desperate and sincere concern for John's emotional well-being rather than just his physical safety. For me, that lays the groundwork for the complex but tender and loving reconciliation that closes this fic.

Comments

[ancientreader]

I don't think I've seen this shaken Sherlock elsewhere, either - almost surprising, isn't it? Because once you've seen the premise it seems entirely plausible. Moriarty's trap at the end of TRF strikes me as just exactly the sort of thing that would trash Sherlock's confidence in himself.

Off the top of my head I can think of several fics that take seriously the damage TRF and the subsequent separation do both John and Sherlock; how I wish the showrunners had done likewise! Alas, they seem determined to trivialize or at least undervalue/underexplore all the richest potential of their own show.