ext_12197 ([identity profile] gardnerhill.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] sherlock60 2016-02-08 07:47 am (UTC)

Good Lord, I've done a dozen variations on this story all by itself. I even did one really far-out AU where Holmes reacts with reserve when Watson's hit ("Watson?" "It's nothing, Holmes." "Good," and Holmes continues handcuffing Evans).

Frankly, Evans getting sprung from jail by knowing the right politicians is the sort of thing that's still going on today in Chicago - if he did a favor to a corrupt cop or two they'd look the other way while he lined up an escape plan.

If we're to take ACD's goofy-ass dates as gospel, the idea that Watson moved out to live in other rooms within months of this case could have been triggered by that attack. Perhaps things got awkward between them after such a naked revelation, and one or the other party couldn't handle the change. Or they may have had a fight over Holmes ordering Watson not to come with him on the next case and Watson telling Holmes where he could stick his sudden protectiveness.

(In the BBC Radio adaptation of 3GAR Watson tells Holmes he's getting remarried, during the scene where Watson is bandaging his own bullet wound; it's their explanation of the move to Queen Anne St. While it does fit in with the arc of the stories done at that time, it also feels like a frantic bout of backpedaling heteronormativity to counteract Holmes' outburst - the way a "Starsky & Hutch" episode could have the two men very emotionally intimate with each other and then end with them dating two forgettable and interchangeable young women to reassure the viewers that They're Not That Way.)

As for Holmes' threat to Evans? I really, truly believe that something bad happening to Watson is Holmes' Berserk Button - the one thing that could make him commit murder in the hot blood of revenge. He'd turn himself in to face prison or the rope afterward, but with no remorse.

Nathan's own fate is far unhappier. But perhaps it wasn't the case itself but an ongoing inability to function in the outside world that sent him to a nursing home, or a gradual bout of dementia exacerbated by the shock of throwing him into a stressful few days out of his routine.

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