Chapter Text
By time The Skull reaches Bakerstown, John is thoroughly convinced that he has no chance of escaping. If he wishes to leave the ship it is in the company of Sherlock Holmes only, otherwise he is to be locked in Holmes’s cabin—neither of which facilitate flight. The only hope he has is in relaying what little information he has to a reliable messenger to the British Navy, which is unlikely in itself.
It is with a sigh that John disembarks The Skull with Sherlock at his side. The captain tugs John along the busy streets of Bakerstown, pulling him from shop to shop on a disorganized search for some elusive item.
“The blacksmith should have a sword that may be of use,” Sherlock mutters as he leads John towards a homely building with smoke billowing from its chimney. “Walk faster.”
John is hit with a wave of heat as he steps into the smithy at Sherlock’s insistent nudging. The air tastes of iron and fire and sweat and it overwhelms John, sending his head spinning.
Sherlock’s eyes spark with awareness, and he pulls John to a corner towards the front of the shop. “Stay here,” he commands, then flits off into towards the forge to harass the smith.
John takes the moment to drown out his scrambled head with information. His eyes graze across the shop, taking in anything and everything. Sword, gun, Sherlock, poker, prod, Sherlock, pin, shoe, saber, Sherlock—the images register but remain separate from John’s thoughts. His gaze slides across a particularly ornate sword, and he wanders over to it with a frown. He lifts the sword carefully, analyzing the carefully crafted hilt. The sight fills John with a strange sense of nostalgia, but only when he sees the insignia on the pommel does he recognize what is so familiar about the sword.
“Um, excuse me?” John waves over a woman in an apron. “Do you think you could do me a favor?”
By the time the pair return to The Skull, the sun is about to make contact with the ocean and the crew is antsy to leave.
Fire and water come together the moment The Skull sinks out of view of Bakerstown.
--
The clang of metal wakes John, sending him shooting out of the cot in Sherlock’s cabin in surprise. The Captain sits at his desk, an amused smirk blatant across his face.
“Good morning,” Sherlock hums, amusement in his voice, “did you sleep well?”
John raises an eyebrow at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s the polite thing to do, isn’t it?” Sherlock cocks his head. “It’s what polite people do.”
“Well, you’re hardly polite,” John says, arms stretched above his head. “I slept well, as far as sleeping on a pirate ship goes. You?”
“Didn’t,” Sherlock replies simply.
John stops stretching and lets his arms flop to his sides. “You didn’t sleep?”
“No,” Sherlock confirms, “sleep is boring.”
John glances down then shrugs. If Sherlock wants to ruin himself then it is none of John’s concern.
Sherlock observes John with a dispassionate expression. After a moment, he gives a terse smile and asks: “breakfast?”
Unsurprisingly, breakfast on a pirate ship is disappointing at best. Dried meat scratches its way down John’s throat, chased with a gulp of bitter water, soon spat out in favor of stale beer.
It is no wonder that Sherlock is so skinny.
With a disgusted gulp of bitter beer, John sets down the hard piece of bread he had been gnawing on. “So, how long will this trip take?” He asks Sherlock hoarsely.
“Two months,” the captain replies, “at minimum. It will likely take in the vicinity of 50 to 90 days.”
John groans. “I forgot how agonizing trips to the colonies can be. Which colony are we going to?”
“Georgia,” Sherlock states, “I have an acquaintance there that could be of some use.”
“An acquaintance?” John parrots, “And they’re worth visiting a British colony for?”
“She will know where Moriarty is going, so yes.” Sherlock rests his fingertips against one another gently in a prayer-like motion.
“‘She?’” John raises an eyebrow. “What kind of ‘she?’”
Sherlock glances towards the door to his cabin with a strange look. “There’s something I have to do,” he mumbles, then pushes himself out of his chair and out the door, leaving John alone with his stale bread.
John does not see Sherlock again for the rest of the day.
--
The same clang as the day before is what greets John the next morning. He sits up straight in the cot with the sudden noise.
Sherlock stands impassively at the window, staring out across the sea. John smirks at the sight.
“Enjoying the view?” He asks, pushing himself up from the mattress.
Sherlock only hums in response and keeps his eyes on the rolling water. Then, without any sort of warning, he breezes out of the cabin.
John shrugs, then stretches.
After hours cooped up in a single room, John comes to a conclusion: pirate ships are shockingly boring when one is locked in a cabin. His first mode of entertainment had been tedious at worst, ineffective at best; he had watched the white wake of the ship.
Being a sailor, this gets old rather fast.
The novels on astronomy and mathematics crammed haphazardly on the bookshelf provide no release from the stifling nothingness, John then finds. They allow minutes of interest, before plunging their reader into hopeless confusion at the definitions of integrals and derivatives and series and—John shuts the Calculus book in a huff and shoves it back into the forest of literature angrily.
He tries word games and writing; nothing relieves his boredom. By the time Sherlock appears with lunch, John is sitting stiffly on the cot, staring at nothing.
Sherlock smirks. “Hungry?”
John’s neck cracks as he turns it towards the door for the first time in hours. “Starving,” he replies, then stands carefully. His muscles pull painfully from disuse.
Sherlock’s smirk slides into a smile. “You’ve been sitting here since I left,” He states, and John nods. “Hm.” Sherlock raises an eyebrow and half-shrugs. He sets down a wooden tray of bread, meat, and a few bits of cheese.
John gingerly picks up the chunk of bread. “Are you sure this is bread?” He hits it against his hand. “It doesn’t feel like bread.”
“It’s edible,” Sherlock admits, “I don’t guarantee that it’s bread though.”
“Who can?” John shrugs, taking a bite out of the bread.
Sherlock smiles, then spins and faces the door. “I’ll be back when you’re asleep. Attempt to amuse yourself with something more than rifling through my books or staring into space.” Sherlock breezes out of the room and slams the door behind him.
John blinks.
The remainder of his day is spent widdling away at the hunks of cheese, turning them into buttons.
--
On the fifth day of the strenuous trip to the Americas, Sherlock spends the entire day in his cabin, reading. He skims through novel after novel, feet propped up on his desk, fingers stroking the paper.
“Are you going to do anything but read?” John asks.
No response.
The rest of the day is silent, save for the turning of pages and continuing scrape of knife against cheese.
--
“What is that?”
The tenth day wakes John up before sunrise with the tortured squeal of something. It screams insistently, piercing John’s eardrums. He claps his hands over his ears and searches for the source.
“Sherlock!” he yells over the whining, “what are you doing?!”
The scream stops, and the captain turns to face John, revealing the source of the noise: a violin.
John stares at the instrument in disbelief. “You know that, no matter how much you torture the thing, it won’t tell you where Moriarty is, right?”
Sherlock scoffs and steadies the violin on his shoulder once more. “I wasn’t torturing it.” He plays a rapid, more palatable series of notes. “I was merely expressing my thoughts.”
“Your thoughts?” John gapes. “Do your thoughts sound like a dying animal?”
“Currently, yes,” Sherlock quips, then plays another squealing melody.
“Stop!” John cries. Sherlock ignores him. “SHERLOCK!”
The lanky man ceases his playing. His face draws into an expression of extreme annoyance as he lifts the violin from his shoulder. “This is my ship. You are my prisoner. I will play violin in my cabin on my ship in front of my prisoner if I wish.”
He plays until the sun rises.
--
Out of sheer boredom, John decides to make a tally of every day they are at sea. He snatches a quill and bottle of ink from Sherlock’s desk, then ruffles through the disorganized drawers beneath before he finds a proper piece of parchment. With twelve quick strokes he makes five tally marks across the paper. He nods, then wrenches the dagger out of Sherlock’s desk and pins the paper to the wall above the cot with it.
--
It is not until John is ignoring Sherlock’s violin in favor of making a eighteenth tally on his chart that he realizes that he has never seen the captain sleep.
“Sherlock?” John calls. The violin stops.
“Yes?” The bow in Sherlock’s spindly hand hovers just above the strings, posed to dive back into whatever melody had been interrupted.
“Where do you sleep?” John asks, then realizes the strangeness of the statement and corrects: “I mean, you would normally sleep here, yes? Where have you been sleeping since I came?”
Sherlock’s calm, grey-blue eyes lazily meet John’s. “I haven’t.”
John blinks. “What?”
“I have not slept,” Sherlock repeats, “not more than a few hours here and there, at least.”
“How can you not have slept?”
“Sleep is boring,” Sherlock states, tilting the bow across the strings of the violin once more.
“But you need it to live!” John gestures wildly.
Sherlock ignores him.
John sighs. “Fine. Don’t sleep. See what I care.” He sits back on the cot and stares defiantly at the bookshelves.
In his periphery, Sherlock smirks. “It’s difficult to storm off when you can’t leave, isn’t it?”
John glares forward.
Abruptly, the captain sets his violin down and looks intently at his captive. After a moment, he says “you may leave now if you wish.”
John’s head tilts in Sherlock’s direction and the two meet gazes. “What do you mean?”
“This.” Sherlock takes three long, graceful strides and swings the door to his cabin open.
John spends the rest of the day leaning against the bulwark, entranced by the shimmer of sapphire waves and the wind in his hair
--
“Have we really been out for only three weeks?” Sherlock’s voice is loud against John’s ear as he writes the twenty-first tally on his makeshift calendar. He jumps, sending the line skittering out of control, looping about itself to become a noose. John huffs.
“Yes, Sherlock,” he bites, “if you paid any attention to the days, you would know that.”
“I do pay attention to the days,” Sherlock replies, pulling away from the chart on the wall. “I do not pay attention to how many have passed.”
“That is, by definition, not paying attention to the days.” John turns about on the cot, sitting cross-legged, facing the desk. “Do you even know what day it is?”
Sherlock diverts attention to his desk, pulling open drawer after drawer in search of some elusive object. After a moment, he replies: “Tuesday?”
John crosses his arms. “No, Sherlock, it’s Thursday, and if you had paid any attention to whatsoever to the passing of time you would know that.”
The captain ignores him in favor of the disappearing into depths of his disorganized workspace.
John sighs. “Well, I would like to go outside,” he states, “may I?”
There is a thump, a suppressed yelp, then an affirming “mhm.” The desk shifts a few inches forward, and Sherlock mutters a curse.
The blond rolls his eyes and steps calmly out the cabin door.
The deck is practically empty, save for a few scurrying men maintaining the billowing sails. John travels unseen to the edge of the ship, leaning his elbows against the rail. Water and more water fills John’s vision in all directions.
Finding imperfections in the monotonous scenery holds John’s attention until the sun drowns in the horizon.
--
Thud.
John’s breathing hitches as he’s pulled into semi-awakeness.
Thud.
His eyes press together tighter.
Thud.
He scrunches his face.
Thud.
He flips and buries his face in the pillow.
Thud.
He presses his hands over his ears.
Thud.
He pulls the pillow on top of his head.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
John gives up and raises his head. His vision blurs as he searches for the source of his unwelcome awakening. Unsurprisingly, it’s Sherlock.
“What the hell are you doing?” John snaps.
“Entertaining myself,” Sherlock replies. He drops a bag of something onto his desk and it lands once again with yet another resounding thud.
John’s lip twitches. “How is dropping a bag entertainment?”
“Gravity.” Thud. “Studying its effect on stale cheese is quite fascinating.”
John sits in silent disbelief as Sherlock drops the bag again. Then again. Then, “no, that doesn’t interest you.”
Sherlock’s deft hands stop before they drop the bag once more. He smirks. “Oh? How do you know what does and doesn’t interest me?”
“I don’t,” John replies, “but gravity is boring because it simply exists and does nothing interesting. It’s like breathing to you.”
The pirate stares blankly at the wall, occupying his hands with turning the bag of cheese around in his fingers. “I can’t help being bored,” he drawls, then drops the bag again.
John sighs. “If you’re going to continue with that, then I’ll just have to—”
“Captain?” A cautious voice from behind the door floats into the room.
Sherlock whisks across the room and pulls the door open with a flourish. His expression shows nothing but passive boredom and contempt for being disturbed in his attempt to relieve it. “What?”
“We… We may have a slight issue, Captain.” The crewman cowers. “The wind… It ain’t blowin’ anymore.”
Sherlock’s green-gray-blue gaze flicks to the limp sails. “So it isn’t. You thought I need be informed of this why?”
“It ain’t blown all mornin’, Captain.”
Sherlock blows past the crewman. John listens to the Captain’s bounds up the stairs, then hears him curse.
The dark-haired pirate slams his cabin door and sits roughly in his chair.
John lets Sherlock glare at nothing for a while before asking “what seems to be the problem?”
“Doldrums” is the sulking man’s reply. “We could be stuck in the middle of nothingness for weeks.”
John sighs. This trip is going to take longer than expected.
--
The only sound their twenty-fifth day at sea is the drumming of Sherlock’s fingers against his desk and the occasional shrieking of his violin. John spends the majority of that day whittling at his lump of cheese.
--
Sherlock is crouching by John when he awakes. The pirate’s fingers are steepled as his cat-like, peridot eyes study his captive’s sleeping form. The moment John’s blue gaze connects with his, the captain stands up and leaves the cabin.
John doesn’t see him for the rest of the day.
--
There are no words to describe properly John Watson’s shock at the sight of the cabin door slamming open to reveal a heavily-breathing Sherlock, covered in blood, carrying a harpoon.
After a pause, the captain sighs: “well that was tedious.”
“You were out there like that?” John stares at his (friend? Roommate? Captor?), astonished.
“I had to have been out there in order to have gotten here. What do you expect, for me to fly?”Sherlock bites in response, “or perhaps you’d have like me to magically appear here, like a fairy?”
John gives him an incredulous look from underneath his eyebrows. “A fairy?”
Sherlock ignores John’s parroting and throws down his harpoon onto the desk, sending papers flying to the floor. “I need something to occupy my mind. This tedium is unbearable.”
“We’ve only been here for four days.” John shakes his head. “How will you manage if we’re stuck here for weeks?”
“I won’t,” Sherlock states, “if we remain in a single place for weeks, Moriarty will undoubtedly reach the second half of the map before us.”
“We can’t do anything about that,” John sighs. “Just find something to occupy yourself.”
“I’ve tried!” Sherlock throws his hands up and flops into his desk chair. “I need something stimulating! Something—”
Two knocks sound at the door.
John’s eyebrows raise. “Two knocks.”
Sherlock tilts his head. “Half second between.”
“Problem.” The two say in unison.
The time it takes for the crewman to explain his issue is the time it takes for Sherlock to consider his query, disregard him as a lunatic, and decide that his simple “lunatic” problem is worthy of his time.
“It was under my bed,” Henry Knight recounts, “I could hear it scratching. It’s come to get me, I just know it!”
“Yes, yes, I heard. Thank you. We will look into it immediately.” Sherlock pushes the shipman out of the cabin door, then turns to face John with an excited expression. “We have a case!”
“We?” John smirks.
“Well, unless you don’t want to get out of sitting and staring at things all day. You’re a military man, wounded in America. You’re unlikely to be content to sit and watch the waves after so eagerly jumping at a chance to rejoin the action. So, are you coming or not?”
“Oh God yes.”
--
The so-called “mystery” of the hound stalking Henry Knight is not a complex one, nor does it take more than two days to unravel. By the time night had fallen for the second time since they received Knight’s plea for help, Sherlock had completely untangled the knot surrounding Knight’s restlessness.
“How did you know about his father?” John asks as he removes his boots. “I mean, the attacking I could get, but how could you have possibly known that it was the result of his father’s death?”
“Trauma.” Sherlock sets a ball of yarn down amidst the papers amassed on his desk. “That’s the simplest way to put it. He had fantasies of being stalked by a hound that would rip him up—there must be some reason behind that. If he had been attacked as a child, he would have generalized the account and been terrified by seeing even a picture of a dog that looked nothing like the one which had been involved. He, however, only reacted to seeing the sketch of the one which looked like the attacker, ergo someone close. When I had mentioned his family he avoided the topic of his father other than the fact that he was dead, therefore it was likely his father. Therefore, witnessed his father’s violent death at the jaws of a feral dog, and now convinced that dog would come for him. That there was a cat on board, however, I missed entirely. I’m getting slow.”
“That was completely brilliant,” John remarks, shaking his head, “how you come up with such elaborate stories based upon tiny details is beyond me.”
“It is not the large things that one should pay attention to—quite on the contrary. It is the tiny ones which prove too be most intriguing.”
John scoffs and looks down at his cuffs. “Well, if that works for you, I suppose I’ll simply have to accept it.”
There is a shout from outside, and John looks up in time to see the ball of yarn go rolling across Sherlock’s desk.
“Is that—?”
Sherlock is out the door before John can finish.
When the blond steps onto the deck, he is met by a pleasantly salty gust of wind, billowing sails, and a beaming Sherlock at the helm of his vessel.
--
“Sherlock?”
“Mmm?”
“Why did you hold me captive rather than kill me?”
“You interested me.”
“…Is that is?”
“Yes.”
--
The forty-fifth tally scratched onto John’s calendar brings with it a question that John had long since forgotten about.
“Sherlock, who exactly are we going to see?”
The captain continues reading. John never gets a response.
--
“Irene Adler.”
“Sorry?”
It has been nearly a week since Sherlock has spoken a word, much to John’s concern. Thankfully, the brooding brunette seems to have broken his word fast with the utterance of a name.
“Who’s Irene Adler?” John asks.
Sherlock’s head jerks to face John and his eyes flash. “Who told you that name?”
“You did.”
“When?”
“Just a moment ago.”
Sherlock’s face scrunches. “Why would I do that?”
“You just said her name,” John answers, “out of nowhere. Just, ‘Irene Adler.’”
A look of recognition floods Sherlock’s face. “Ah. Well, I was answering your question.”
“My question…?”
“An hour or two ago you asked who we were going to see in America.” Sherlock swings his feet beneath him, balancing in his chair. “So I answered.”
John stared blankly at the pirate. “That was six days ago.”
“Was it?” Sherlock raises his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “Well, time certainly does fly.”
“Who is she?” John asks. “Irene Adler, I mean.”
“Of course you mean Irene Adler. Who else could you mean?” Sherlock bites. He presses his fingertips together and rests them against his lips.
Oppressive silence falls over the pair. It refuses to leave until brushed away with the creaking of the cabin door and the arrival of food.
--
“What are you making?”
John looks up from his cheese whittling to see Sherlock perched on the desk, looming over him. He looks back to his cheese nonchalantly. “Buttons.”
“What for?” Sherlock criticizes, “you have no need to replace any of yours and you aren’t the type to sew.”
“It’s a hobby, Sherlock,” John sighs.
“Why would you choose to carve cheese shapes? No, stupid question—why would I ask a stupid question? There is no point to carving cheese buttons and I fail to see how you gain any marginal happiness from it whatsoever.”
“I don’t,” John states, “I do it to occupy myself. There’s not much else to do on this godforsaken ship.”
Sherlock straightens his back and tilts his head up. “I am very proud of The Skull, and it would do you good not to insult a man’s ship.”
With that, the Captain stalked off like a wounded peacock.
--
As John is about to put the sixty-first tally on his calendar, Sherlock bursts into the cabin. The captain stands in one place for a moment, stares out the window, then storms out, slamming the door behind him.
John sighs. “Sixty-one days, John. You’re almost there.”
--
“Are you ever going to tell me who she is?”
“No.”
Needless to say, John is not expecting such a blunt answer. “Why not?”
His query is met with silence.
“Who is she, Sherlock? An old fling?”
A strange anger bubbles in John’s gut at Sherlock’s confirming silence.
“Just tell me!” John insists.
“Why?”
John freezes. “’Why?’” He parrots.
“Yes, why?” Sherlock sighs, not looking up from his book. “There has to be a reason for wanting to know who she is. Jealousy, perhaps?”
“Wha- no!” John stammers, “We’ve been on this godforsaken ship for two months—“
“Two and a quarter,” Sherlock interjects, “we’ve been here for sixty-eight days, as your calendar so astutely points out.”
“It doesn’t matter!” John shouts, “we’ve been on this ship together for two months, sixty-eight days, it doesn’t matter, and we’ve shared a cabin this entire time. Friends have a right to know what the bloody hell is going on!”
“I don’t have friends,” the captain hisses, rising from his chair to tower over his prisoner, “and you are my prisoner, not my friend. You’d best not forget that.” He props up his coat collar and stalks out of the room, leaving an angry, confused, and hurt John in his wake.
--
The next day marks a solemn end to their journey with the shout of “land ho!” from the deck.
John is the only one in the cabin before, during, and after this call.