The Frozen Sea Within

[donutsweeper]

Title: The Frozen Sea Within
Fandom/Warning/Rating: Sherlock Holmes (ACD canon), DEPRESSING FIC WARNING, rated G
Word Count: 100 words

Summary:
 They finally found him.
Author's Note: Written for watsons_woes JWP#12. Title is from a Kafka quote.

Lestrade never thought he'd be thankful of the cold, but he'd seen the bodies pulled from the water many times before and some had bloated and swelled to the point they looked barely human.

At least Doctor Watson had been spared that.

They'd never have located him if Holmes hadn't tricked Edwards into confessing. They'd searched the river when Watson first disappeared, but not thoroughly enough to find a body hidden in its undergrowth, weighed down with stones.

"It's good we finally found him," Lestrade said to Holmes, breaking the awful silence between them.

"There is nothing good about this."

Comments

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Eeek!

(The title intrigues me. What is the full Kafka quotation? And the prompt -- was it the submerged boat?)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Yes, somehow the sunken boat picture turned into a submerged and drowned Watson in my head. Not sure exactly how.

The quote is from a letter Kafka wrote in 1904, translations vary somewhat but the one I like best is

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

TYK for giving me more of this quotation!

"A book must be the axe!" Wow, that gives me some thinky prompty thoughts about the time Fraser said to RayV "I have two axes"!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

And it would be easy to assume that Benton, a man raised by librarians, would no doubt know the Kafka quote, wouldn't it?

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

The Benton-brain yes, it is full of such things from having been raised by George and Martha.

[caffienekitty]

DDDDDD-: JOOOOOHN!!!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Sorry!!

[ascendant-angel.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful but depressing little fic the last line was the perfect finish.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[pompey01.livejournal.com]

D8

Aaaaaaaaand I'm broken now.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Sorry!!

[capt-facepalm.livejournal.com]

If I give you a virtual donut, will you stop killing the Watsons?

*offers a dozen of Tim Horton's finest*

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Errr....

*looks at open word doc*

*considers Tim Horton's*

*looks at word doc again......*