thesadchicken

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Title: Blind, or in death, or at the end of the world.
Author: [personal profile] thesadchicken
Rating: G.
Universe: ACD.
Characters: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes.
Summary: Watson receives a strange yet familiar patient.
Word Count: 280.

Author's note: I stole the last sentence from Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles". It's such a beautiful quote, and it works so well with Holmes and Watson.

Prompt: A Most Unusual Patient: Watson receives an unusual patient whose presence inspires today’s work.

I had rarely received so odd a patient. He knocked at the door with the urgency of a man choking, but when I asked him what ailed him he simply shrugged and said he was here to have his chest examined. I patiently welcomed the stranger in.

He wore a long burgundy coat with rusty fringed shoulder pads, brown breeches and a pair of black boots. He looked rather like an actor, or a lion tamer. I showed him inside and helped him undress. Beneath his extravagant coat was a simple shirt. He unbuttoned it, and I examined him, smiling to myself the entire time.

He had a slight cough, nothing a few days by the sea wouldn’t cure, but I prescribed a treatment all the same. He thanked me, patting his pockets – I told him not to bother, that it was my duty to heal and care for those in need. He smiled at this: an endearing half-smile that made my own chest ache. He picked up his coat and bowed like a circus performer before leaving.

I watched him stroll down the stairs and out into Baker Street. I closed the door behind him, shaking my head. He was pleased with himself! I myself had to admit that the fake nose, eyebrows and beard were very convincing. Once more he thought I hadn’t recognised him, and once more I let him believe it.

But what he didn’t know was that I could recognise him by touch alone; by smell. I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.