An Age of Silver (23/23)
"An Age of Silver" (23/23)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5a / Part 5b / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8a / Part 8b / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14a / Part 14b / Part 15 / Part 16 / Part 17 / Part 18 / Part 19 / Part 20 / Part 21 / Part 22
Notes: All the thanks in the world must be given to canonisrelative, who helped me whip this story into shape. It kind of took on a life of its own as I started posting it, but I never would have made it even that far without her efforts. Thanks also to everyone who stuck with all these characters to the end; it means a lot. Writing the stories in this series has been such a wonderful experience, and I enjoyed it so much. Your feedback and support along the way was most appreciated.
Epilogue
The skies over London were white and unremarkable that morning.
The world was a mix of brown and grey, and the frost-coated ground crunched underfoot. Snow had yet to make more than a brief appearance this winter, and the city suffered in its absence. Trees shed their leaves, leaving gnarled branches behind, and grass withered to reveal brown soil, as happened every autumn. But then the seasonal blanket of white had failed to appear, which left these flaws exposed to the world.
Even the usual sting of winter was absent this December morning, and Sherlock was able to forego his Belstaff coat. He arrived at the cemetery early in the morning, much earlier than its keepers, and scaled the gate to get inside.
Victor’s grave was largely unchanged, even after these sixteen years. It showed not even the slightest sign of weathering, and Sherlock had to smile at that.
“Constant Victor,” he murmured, tracing the letters of Victor’s name. “Steady Victor. As ever, my anchor. How are you, old friend?”
He was careful to crouch before the grave, not kneel, mindful as he was of his tailored suit. His shoes, polished just the night before, had acquired scuff marks in his scaling of the fence. He could not bring himself to mind all that much, but he was careful not to do further damage.
“It’s been a long winter, hasn’t it,” he said softly. “But not a hard one. Not this time. And soon it will be spring.”
The grass around the grave had become overgrown in the months since Sherlock had last visited, and he started to absent-mindedly brush it away from the edges of the headstone.
“I know you -” Sherlock started, but then he stopped abruptly. His fingers had come into contact with an anomaly on the headstone, something round and bulbous where there should only have been smooth marble, and he pressed back the dead grass.
Three perfect stones lay on Victor’s grave. They were smooth and polished, and they had been arranged in a neat row above his name. Sherlock picked one up and turned it over in his fingers, and his breath caught in his throat as his heart clenched in a fist.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Stones cannot die.
There were things in this world he could never do, and acts of kindness that would forever be beyond his capabilities.
But that was all right, because now he had Stanley. Stanley’s love was boundless where Sherlock’s was limited and imperfect. He was at once an anchor and a buoy, and Sherlock knew he would be lost without him.
Just as he had been lost once before.
“I love you,” he whispered to Victor. “I’ll always love you. You were-are-the greatest part of my life. But so is he. And I’ll try to be good to him, the way - the way you were good to me.”
He pressed his fingertips to his lips and then skimmed them over Victor’s name one last time before getting to his feet.
Dawn was breaking.
--------
They didn’t have a party.
Sherlock had conceded to everything else up until that point, and Stanley knew which battles were lost from the start. Sherlock hated crowds, and Stanley was likely to be shattered by the time twilight settled in anyway.
They had a small gathering back at Baker Street instead later that afternoon. John and Lestrade were there, of course, as were Alice and Molly. Stanley’s parents attended as well, and Donovan and Anderson showed up after their shifts, and at some point the rest of Stanley’s former team trickled in. Sherlock caught sight of Dimmock early in the evening, and he ran into Gregson in the kitchen a little while after that. Mycroft made an appearance later on with Anthea on his arm, and Sherlock had to admit by then that it was rather starting to feel like a party after all.
“You holding up all right, old man?” Stanley asked in an undertone during one of the brief moments they ran into one another whilst circulating the room.
“Always,” Sherlock said. The kiss he gave was automatic, and would have gone unnoticed at any other occasion. But the crowd was particularly aware of them tonight, and at once the room erupted into applause. Sherlock fought back a groan and Stanley flushed, and it was all-too-apparent that they weren’t exactly cut out for this.
“Few more hours,” Stanley said bracingly in the moments before they were separated again by the press of people. Sherlock gripped his hand and offered him a private smile before they parted, and no one-thankfully-saw it pass between them.
But a few more hours turned into five, and when Sherlock next became aware of the time it was one in the morning. There were only a few people left in the flat, and Stanley had them in deep conversation over by the fireplace. None of them noticed when Sherlock grabbed a packet of cigarettes and stole up to the rooftop for a smoke.
The air was sharper at midnight than it had been at dawn, and Sherlock lamented for a moment having left his coat downstairs. But his suit jacket was adequate for now, and when he looked up, he found that he couldn’t really be bothered to care much about the cold.
The stars were particularly bright tonight, sharpened by the brisk winter air, and the sight of them struck him momentarily breathless. He tilted his head so that he faced the sky completely, with no horizon or silhouette of a building in his periphery, and all he could see were stars and utter darkness. It was overwhelming and dizzying, and he stared for so long that his cigarette burned all the way to the end without him having taken a single draw on it.
Sometimes all that matters is that we perceive it to be real.
A minute or an hour later, the door to the roof creaked open again. Sherlock didn’t need to look to know who it was.
“I was wondering where you’d got to.” Stanley said, a warm smile in his voice. “John and Greg are just leaving. Come say goodbye.”
Sherlock finally brought his gaze back down to Earth, and to Stanley. “They can wait.”
Stanley gave him an exasperated look. “Sherlock...”
“They can wait,” Sherlock repeated quietly. “Come here.”
Stanley hesitated, and then shook his head. “I should really get back downstairs. We’ve got to see John and Greg off, and there’s all that food we need to clean up, and -”
“Come here,” Sherlock said again. He held out his hand and added, softly, “We got married today, and I haven’t had a moment alone with you yet.”
Stanley paused, and then he gave a disbelieving huff of laughter.
“God, you’re absolutely right.” He stepped out onto the roof and shut the door behind him. “Have you been up here long? I didn’t notice you leave.”
Sherlock smirked as Stanley approached. “Of course you didn’t. No, not long. Perhaps an hour.”
Stanley took his hand. Sherlock laced their fingers together and pulled him close enough to kiss. Stanley tasted of cinnamon and champagne, and Sherlock felt his lips curve into a smile.
“Been wanting to do that for a while, old man?” Stanley asked when they parted. Sherlock brushed a strand of hair from Stanley’s forehead.
“All night,” he admitted. Their hands remained linked, and Sherlock felt the unusual pressure of Stanley’s ring pressed between his fingers. The ring on his own left hand was an unfamiliar weight, and he found that he kept brushing his thumb across it absently.
Stanley looked up at the sky.
“So what’s up there?” he asked. Sherlock squeezed his hand.
“So many things,” he answered. He pointed to the southeast, at the distinctive three stars that sat in a row, and said, “Orion. If you follow Orion’s Belt to the left, you’ll see Sirius - it’s the brightest star in the sky. Sirius makes up the head of Canis Major, and directly above Canis Major is Canis Minor. They’re his hunting dogs.”
“And just above that is… Gemini?”
Sherlock looked to where Stanley was pointing and nodded. “And just beyond that is Jupiter.”
Stanley dropped his hand, though he kept staring at the sky. “They look different here.”
Sherlock suppressed a smile. They had gone to the country not long after Stanley’s release from the hospital, once he was well enough to move about on his own and not in constant pain anymore. The retreat to the Sussex Downs cottage had revitalized him in ways Sherlock hadn’t even considered were possible, and in a week Stanley had morphed from a haggard detective to the man Sherlock had last seen a year ago, before the weight of this case chased him away. Stanley had put on five pounds in that week and started to regain some of his colour and most of his dry wit. They returned to London for a time, but both men had come to an unspoken understanding that it wouldn’t be for long.
The stars were brighter in the South Downs.
And so Stanley put in his notice at the Yard in early September and Sherlock started to pack up both their homes, shipping the essentials to the cottage and leaving the rest to be dealt with later. And that was how the following months went. They spent a few weeks at the cottage and then one or two in London, wrapping up affairs or, in Stanley’s case, visiting friends. They planned the ceremony along the way, and in October had traveled to Weymouth together for what was ostensibly an overdue visit with John and Lestrade-and also an important part of the ceremony planning.
“They did well today."
“To be fair, there wasn’t much for them to actually do,” Sherlock pointed out.
Stanley snorted.
“John had his hands full with you, trying to keep you from climbing the walls. I don’t think he got off lightly.” He sobered. “I’m glad we asked them.”
Sherlock nodded. John had been his best man while Lestrade stood up for Stanley, and Sherlock honestly wasn’t sure how he’d have got through the day without them.
“You were shaking,” Stanley went on quietly. “I could feel it. No, don’t look like that, no one else would have noticed. But I did.”
“I was terrified,” Sherlock admitted. He gave a quiet huff. “I don’t know why. It was absurd. What could I possibly have been afraid of?”
Stanley ran his fingers over the new ring on Sherlock’s finger.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But if it helps, I felt the same. I thought I was going to pass out.”
They stared at one another for a beat, and then they both broke into laughter. Sherlock gave Stanley’s hand a gentle tug, and he led him over to the ledge that ran along the nearby brick wall, the one that enclosed the door to the roof on all four sides, making it appear as though there was a tiny building on top of the roof. The ledge made an adequate bench, and they both settled on it.
“Where did you get the ring?” Stanley asked after a time. He twisted it absently on his hand. “It’s beautiful.”
“It was my father’s,” Sherlock said after a moment spent contemplating whether or not he should admit this. Stanley swallowed.
“Thank you,” he said thickly, and Sherlock kissed his temple.
“You visited his grave.”
In the silence that followed, he was aware of the traffic on the streets below and an aeroplane that passed overhead. No conversation drifted up from the flat downstairs; everyone else must have left for the evening. John and Lestrade would understand. He’d call them in the morning.
“I did,” Stanley said finally. He slid his arm under Sherlock’s and rested his hand on Sherlock’s knee. The ring on his finger glinted in the light from a neighboring building. “We had a chat.”
“What about?”
“Now, that’s between me and Victor, don’t you think?”
Sherlock covered Stanley’s hand with his own. He attempted a light tone. “I just want to make sure you’re only telling him good things, is all.”
“Oh, of course.” Stanley laced their fingers together. “I told him about how you hardly ever leave experiments lying out around the flat anymore, and that you don’t even scare small children away when you question them for a case.”
“A ringing endorsement.”
Stanley snorted. A brief silence fell between them.
“I also told him that you’re the best man I know,” Stanley said quietly. “And that you’re not always kind, but you are good. I told him that everything you are is thanks to him, and that I’m grateful for it. And that I would’ve liked to have known him.”
“Not everything,” Sherlock croaked when he could find his voice again. “What I am... is thanks to you, too.”
They sat like that for an hour longer, watching the moon advance across the sky. In the morning, they would begin the final stages of their move to the South Downs. They would finish emptying out the flat and the house and sell them both. Soon there would hives to maintain and bees to care for, and Rex would have entire fields to play in.
But all of that was for another day.
“You’re going to miss this,” Stanley murmured. He was half-asleep already.
“Not as much as you think,” Sherlock said. They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, and Stanley was a warm, solid weight against him. “There’s not much to miss about a city that doesn’t have you in it.”
“Is this what I’ve signed up for, then?” Stanley asked dryly. “You being the biggest sap in existence for the rest of my life?”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh?” Stanley attempted to sound deeply offended. “And why’s that, then?”
“Because you’re my husband.” Sherlock laughed suddenly, surprised at how the word felt on his lips, and how wonderful it sounded when said out loud. “And I don’t think I’m going to get tired of saying that for a very long time.”
Stanley smiled then, and though Sherlock wouldn’t swear by it, it appeared as though Stanley’s eyes were brighter than normal.
“‘Bout bloody time, too,” he said gruffly. “Husband. Gonna have to get used to that one.”
“Looking forward to it?”
This time, Stanley’s smile was brilliant.
“I can’t wait.”
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5a / Part 5b / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8a / Part 8b / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14a / Part 14b / Part 15 / Part 16 / Part 17 / Part 18 / Part 19 / Part 20 / Part 21 / Part 22
Notes: All the thanks in the world must be given to canonisrelative, who helped me whip this story into shape. It kind of took on a life of its own as I started posting it, but I never would have made it even that far without her efforts. Thanks also to everyone who stuck with all these characters to the end; it means a lot. Writing the stories in this series has been such a wonderful experience, and I enjoyed it so much. Your feedback and support along the way was most appreciated.
Epilogue
The skies over London were white and unremarkable that morning.
The world was a mix of brown and grey, and the frost-coated ground crunched underfoot. Snow had yet to make more than a brief appearance this winter, and the city suffered in its absence. Trees shed their leaves, leaving gnarled branches behind, and grass withered to reveal brown soil, as happened every autumn. But then the seasonal blanket of white had failed to appear, which left these flaws exposed to the world.
Even the usual sting of winter was absent this December morning, and Sherlock was able to forego his Belstaff coat. He arrived at the cemetery early in the morning, much earlier than its keepers, and scaled the gate to get inside.
Victor’s grave was largely unchanged, even after these sixteen years. It showed not even the slightest sign of weathering, and Sherlock had to smile at that.
“Constant Victor,” he murmured, tracing the letters of Victor’s name. “Steady Victor. As ever, my anchor. How are you, old friend?”
He was careful to crouch before the grave, not kneel, mindful as he was of his tailored suit. His shoes, polished just the night before, had acquired scuff marks in his scaling of the fence. He could not bring himself to mind all that much, but he was careful not to do further damage.
“It’s been a long winter, hasn’t it,” he said softly. “But not a hard one. Not this time. And soon it will be spring.”
The grass around the grave had become overgrown in the months since Sherlock had last visited, and he started to absent-mindedly brush it away from the edges of the headstone.
“I know you -” Sherlock started, but then he stopped abruptly. His fingers had come into contact with an anomaly on the headstone, something round and bulbous where there should only have been smooth marble, and he pressed back the dead grass.
Three perfect stones lay on Victor’s grave. They were smooth and polished, and they had been arranged in a neat row above his name. Sherlock picked one up and turned it over in his fingers, and his breath caught in his throat as his heart clenched in a fist.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Stones cannot die.
There were things in this world he could never do, and acts of kindness that would forever be beyond his capabilities.
But that was all right, because now he had Stanley. Stanley’s love was boundless where Sherlock’s was limited and imperfect. He was at once an anchor and a buoy, and Sherlock knew he would be lost without him.
Just as he had been lost once before.
“I love you,” he whispered to Victor. “I’ll always love you. You were-are-the greatest part of my life. But so is he. And I’ll try to be good to him, the way - the way you were good to me.”
He pressed his fingertips to his lips and then skimmed them over Victor’s name one last time before getting to his feet.
Dawn was breaking.
--------
They didn’t have a party.
Sherlock had conceded to everything else up until that point, and Stanley knew which battles were lost from the start. Sherlock hated crowds, and Stanley was likely to be shattered by the time twilight settled in anyway.
They had a small gathering back at Baker Street instead later that afternoon. John and Lestrade were there, of course, as were Alice and Molly. Stanley’s parents attended as well, and Donovan and Anderson showed up after their shifts, and at some point the rest of Stanley’s former team trickled in. Sherlock caught sight of Dimmock early in the evening, and he ran into Gregson in the kitchen a little while after that. Mycroft made an appearance later on with Anthea on his arm, and Sherlock had to admit by then that it was rather starting to feel like a party after all.
“You holding up all right, old man?” Stanley asked in an undertone during one of the brief moments they ran into one another whilst circulating the room.
“Always,” Sherlock said. The kiss he gave was automatic, and would have gone unnoticed at any other occasion. But the crowd was particularly aware of them tonight, and at once the room erupted into applause. Sherlock fought back a groan and Stanley flushed, and it was all-too-apparent that they weren’t exactly cut out for this.
“Few more hours,” Stanley said bracingly in the moments before they were separated again by the press of people. Sherlock gripped his hand and offered him a private smile before they parted, and no one-thankfully-saw it pass between them.
But a few more hours turned into five, and when Sherlock next became aware of the time it was one in the morning. There were only a few people left in the flat, and Stanley had them in deep conversation over by the fireplace. None of them noticed when Sherlock grabbed a packet of cigarettes and stole up to the rooftop for a smoke.
The air was sharper at midnight than it had been at dawn, and Sherlock lamented for a moment having left his coat downstairs. But his suit jacket was adequate for now, and when he looked up, he found that he couldn’t really be bothered to care much about the cold.
The stars were particularly bright tonight, sharpened by the brisk winter air, and the sight of them struck him momentarily breathless. He tilted his head so that he faced the sky completely, with no horizon or silhouette of a building in his periphery, and all he could see were stars and utter darkness. It was overwhelming and dizzying, and he stared for so long that his cigarette burned all the way to the end without him having taken a single draw on it.
Sometimes all that matters is that we perceive it to be real.
A minute or an hour later, the door to the roof creaked open again. Sherlock didn’t need to look to know who it was.
“I was wondering where you’d got to.” Stanley said, a warm smile in his voice. “John and Greg are just leaving. Come say goodbye.”
Sherlock finally brought his gaze back down to Earth, and to Stanley. “They can wait.”
Stanley gave him an exasperated look. “Sherlock...”
“They can wait,” Sherlock repeated quietly. “Come here.”
Stanley hesitated, and then shook his head. “I should really get back downstairs. We’ve got to see John and Greg off, and there’s all that food we need to clean up, and -”
“Come here,” Sherlock said again. He held out his hand and added, softly, “We got married today, and I haven’t had a moment alone with you yet.”
Stanley paused, and then he gave a disbelieving huff of laughter.
“God, you’re absolutely right.” He stepped out onto the roof and shut the door behind him. “Have you been up here long? I didn’t notice you leave.”
Sherlock smirked as Stanley approached. “Of course you didn’t. No, not long. Perhaps an hour.”
Stanley took his hand. Sherlock laced their fingers together and pulled him close enough to kiss. Stanley tasted of cinnamon and champagne, and Sherlock felt his lips curve into a smile.
“Been wanting to do that for a while, old man?” Stanley asked when they parted. Sherlock brushed a strand of hair from Stanley’s forehead.
“All night,” he admitted. Their hands remained linked, and Sherlock felt the unusual pressure of Stanley’s ring pressed between his fingers. The ring on his own left hand was an unfamiliar weight, and he found that he kept brushing his thumb across it absently.
Stanley looked up at the sky.
“So what’s up there?” he asked. Sherlock squeezed his hand.
“So many things,” he answered. He pointed to the southeast, at the distinctive three stars that sat in a row, and said, “Orion. If you follow Orion’s Belt to the left, you’ll see Sirius - it’s the brightest star in the sky. Sirius makes up the head of Canis Major, and directly above Canis Major is Canis Minor. They’re his hunting dogs.”
“And just above that is… Gemini?”
Sherlock looked to where Stanley was pointing and nodded. “And just beyond that is Jupiter.”
Stanley dropped his hand, though he kept staring at the sky. “They look different here.”
Sherlock suppressed a smile. They had gone to the country not long after Stanley’s release from the hospital, once he was well enough to move about on his own and not in constant pain anymore. The retreat to the Sussex Downs cottage had revitalized him in ways Sherlock hadn’t even considered were possible, and in a week Stanley had morphed from a haggard detective to the man Sherlock had last seen a year ago, before the weight of this case chased him away. Stanley had put on five pounds in that week and started to regain some of his colour and most of his dry wit. They returned to London for a time, but both men had come to an unspoken understanding that it wouldn’t be for long.
The stars were brighter in the South Downs.
And so Stanley put in his notice at the Yard in early September and Sherlock started to pack up both their homes, shipping the essentials to the cottage and leaving the rest to be dealt with later. And that was how the following months went. They spent a few weeks at the cottage and then one or two in London, wrapping up affairs or, in Stanley’s case, visiting friends. They planned the ceremony along the way, and in October had traveled to Weymouth together for what was ostensibly an overdue visit with John and Lestrade-and also an important part of the ceremony planning.
“They did well today."
“To be fair, there wasn’t much for them to actually do,” Sherlock pointed out.
Stanley snorted.
“John had his hands full with you, trying to keep you from climbing the walls. I don’t think he got off lightly.” He sobered. “I’m glad we asked them.”
Sherlock nodded. John had been his best man while Lestrade stood up for Stanley, and Sherlock honestly wasn’t sure how he’d have got through the day without them.
“You were shaking,” Stanley went on quietly. “I could feel it. No, don’t look like that, no one else would have noticed. But I did.”
“I was terrified,” Sherlock admitted. He gave a quiet huff. “I don’t know why. It was absurd. What could I possibly have been afraid of?”
Stanley ran his fingers over the new ring on Sherlock’s finger.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But if it helps, I felt the same. I thought I was going to pass out.”
They stared at one another for a beat, and then they both broke into laughter. Sherlock gave Stanley’s hand a gentle tug, and he led him over to the ledge that ran along the nearby brick wall, the one that enclosed the door to the roof on all four sides, making it appear as though there was a tiny building on top of the roof. The ledge made an adequate bench, and they both settled on it.
“Where did you get the ring?” Stanley asked after a time. He twisted it absently on his hand. “It’s beautiful.”
“It was my father’s,” Sherlock said after a moment spent contemplating whether or not he should admit this. Stanley swallowed.
“Thank you,” he said thickly, and Sherlock kissed his temple.
“You visited his grave.”
In the silence that followed, he was aware of the traffic on the streets below and an aeroplane that passed overhead. No conversation drifted up from the flat downstairs; everyone else must have left for the evening. John and Lestrade would understand. He’d call them in the morning.
“I did,” Stanley said finally. He slid his arm under Sherlock’s and rested his hand on Sherlock’s knee. The ring on his finger glinted in the light from a neighboring building. “We had a chat.”
“What about?”
“Now, that’s between me and Victor, don’t you think?”
Sherlock covered Stanley’s hand with his own. He attempted a light tone. “I just want to make sure you’re only telling him good things, is all.”
“Oh, of course.” Stanley laced their fingers together. “I told him about how you hardly ever leave experiments lying out around the flat anymore, and that you don’t even scare small children away when you question them for a case.”
“A ringing endorsement.”
Stanley snorted. A brief silence fell between them.
“I also told him that you’re the best man I know,” Stanley said quietly. “And that you’re not always kind, but you are good. I told him that everything you are is thanks to him, and that I’m grateful for it. And that I would’ve liked to have known him.”
“Not everything,” Sherlock croaked when he could find his voice again. “What I am... is thanks to you, too.”
They sat like that for an hour longer, watching the moon advance across the sky. In the morning, they would begin the final stages of their move to the South Downs. They would finish emptying out the flat and the house and sell them both. Soon there would hives to maintain and bees to care for, and Rex would have entire fields to play in.
But all of that was for another day.
“You’re going to miss this,” Stanley murmured. He was half-asleep already.
“Not as much as you think,” Sherlock said. They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, and Stanley was a warm, solid weight against him. “There’s not much to miss about a city that doesn’t have you in it.”
“Is this what I’ve signed up for, then?” Stanley asked dryly. “You being the biggest sap in existence for the rest of my life?”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh?” Stanley attempted to sound deeply offended. “And why’s that, then?”
“Because you’re my husband.” Sherlock laughed suddenly, surprised at how the word felt on his lips, and how wonderful it sounded when said out loud. “And I don’t think I’m going to get tired of saying that for a very long time.”
Stanley smiled then, and though Sherlock wouldn’t swear by it, it appeared as though Stanley’s eyes were brighter than normal.
“‘Bout bloody time, too,” he said gruffly. “Husband. Gonna have to get used to that one.”
“Looking forward to it?”
This time, Stanley’s smile was brilliant.
“I can’t wait.”