Every Monday, I will post a prompt. You have until the following Monday to write and reply to this post with a 100-200 word fic inspired by the prompt. All Sherlock Holmes (& adjacent) fandoms are welcome!
For an extra challenge, try to hit exactly 100 words, or write a 221B drabble.
You can reply with the full text of the drabble, or link out to another site like Ao3, Tumblr, your personal DW, etc. Feel free to post completed works to our Ao3 collection!
Fics posted to the main challenge must be SFW; you must link out if your response is NSFW. Please warn for content where appropriate.
WHAT ELSE?
Don't worry if you miss a week! You don't have to commit to this challenge and are welcome to drop in and out. You can also go back and write a late response anytime.
You may post more than one response to a single week's prompt.
If you're inspired to continue your drabbles, you're welcome to connect multiple challenge responses to each other, or expand on your fics outside of the challenge.
Characters: Mycroft & Sherlock Holmes Fandom: technically it's KAJ/Waterhouse's Mycroft Holmes, but you could wriggle this into ACD or Frogwares as well Rating: G Notes/Warnings: vague allusions to child abuse Word count: 100
"We're selling it."
"Are we, Brother Mycroft?" Sherlock steeples his fingers, a sardonic smile creeping across his angular features. "I'll have no part in navigating the bureaucratic particulars. It'll be a nightmare."
He snorts. "I assumed not." There's a pause then, and his younger brother's keen gray eyes follow his hands as Mycroft takes a sip of his tea. "I also assume you have no qualms with ridding ourselves of the family burden."
Sherlock's thin fingers lace together, as if in prayer. His expression darkens. "No," he answers, voice distant. "That house dies with us."
The Holmes parents in my head are basically good people, but they are absolute unknowns, and you have me further intrigued about KAJ. Can't wait to buy his first book later next month.
Thank you!! I tend to headcanon them as "ok to mediocre" for my own personal take, but the adaptations where they're not as great are very interesting. Hope you enjoy the book! 😎
Characters: Parker, Sebastian Moran Fandom: ACD Canon (Empty House) Rating: G Notes/Warnings: implications I guess Word count: 221 Link:https://archiveofourown.org/works/51252376
It is an odd job, but it's a steady one.
Odd jobs, they've dogged my steps this past decade and more, but for most of that the name has fit. A few hours' work, and - well - uncanny. Not sure why I was paid, more than half the time: but the rest, I found in the papers afterward. Uncanny, either way.
These days, the job's clearer, and sixty hours a week, and I'm paid like a valet for it; I've given over my old mainstay altogether. But uncanny, even now.
I've become a haunting, second-hand.
It was Kensington I haunted to start, every daylight hour dallying about to see and report when poor broken-down Dr Watson will emerge, half using his wife as a crutch, and who's got influenza in the meantime. Then it was St James, humdrum Mycroft Holmes and every last person on the block besides, and the pattern came plain enough even without Colonel Moran showing himself.
He'd ranted then, half-starved for an audience. The Professor had cared for his brother. The Professor had sure as hellfire cared for him. But Holmes, who had no heart in his chest, still walked the earth.
Perhaps Holmes does walk the earth. Regardless, the Professor dead pays me better than the Professor apparently did alive. I'm happy haunting 221B on his behalf.
Characters: John Watson Fandom: Ritchieverse Films (Takes place after Game of Shadows) Rating: G Notes/Warnings: discussion of death/funerals Word count: 221b Link:https://archiveofourown.org/works/51387676
When a loved one passes away, then the proper time must be taken to grieve, and then it is in order when a bit more time is taken to return to base-line. John Watson had spent the past week alongside Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson, arranging the affairs of Sherlock Holmes in his departure from this mortal coil. He had mourned, and he had written. He was proud of the work he had done to commemorate and immortalize the greatest and wisest man he had ever known, and now it was time for him to follow due course and take a holiday with his beautiful wife to Brighton.
Unfortunately, there was a package delivered before he had even the chance to get his suitcase ready. A package from a ghost. At first it excited him wildly, yet deeply in his heart there was also a feeling of dread. Had he really been through all that for nothing? All the days John had spent detaching himself from someone he had cared so much about, and yet it now seemed impossible to actually move on. At length, he found himself smiling- of course if there was someone Sherlock Holmes would choose to haunt in death, naturally it would be the honored veteran Dr. John Watson, for being so bloody tolerant of all his bullshit.
Characters: Holmes & Watson Fandom: 1984 Granada series Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 221(b) Notes: definitely wrote this with Brett and Hardwicke in my mind. Sort of a rewrite of that scene in Eligible Bachelor ^_^ (and assuming that The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is canon for the Granada series).
MY dearest friend had been spending an inordinate time in heavy silence. He seemed to gaze, almost longingly and unblinkingly, at our print of the Reichenbach Falls. Per his request, I always disregarded him during these periods, but his enervated form and pallid eyes could not keep my medical intuition tucked away. I asked Holmes what he was thinking about.
"I feel I am haunted."
"Haunted? By what?"
"I see it happening vividly in my mind. The Falls." He waved his hands erratically around his face, clenching his eyelids. He seemed to trail off, and I tilted my head.
"What happened to you in Switzerland was not as simple as you always made it out to me."
"No," he said simply.
I cautiously moved next to him, laying a hand on his quivering back. Haunted was perhaps the best word. A feeling I shared during those years of what are referred to by my readers as a 'hiatus' - not a bereavement or an end. Holmes's eyes flicked to me in a flash.
"I don't know why I sent you away."
He had said as much before. Everything I had done at the falls preyed upon my thoughts mercilessly in those years. The same seemed to go for him.
"You know I forgive you, Holmes. I shall always be your Boswell."
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221bdrabbles2023-10-29 11:43 am
EXAMPLE & RESPONSE TEMPLATE
Fandom: Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Rating: G
Notes/Warnings: n/a
Word count: 221
Link: here
Haunting: October 30
Fandom: ACD Holmes
Rating: T
Notes/Warnings: None
Word count: 221
Link: here
no subject
Fandom: technically it's KAJ/Waterhouse's Mycroft Holmes, but you could wriggle this into ACD or Frogwares as well
Rating: G
Notes/Warnings: vague allusions to child abuse
Word count: 100
"We're selling it."
"Are we, Brother Mycroft?" Sherlock steeples his fingers, a sardonic smile creeping across his angular features. "I'll have no part in navigating the bureaucratic particulars. It'll be a nightmare."
He snorts. "I assumed not." There's a pause then, and his younger brother's keen gray eyes follow his hands as Mycroft takes a sip of his tea. "I also assume you have no qualms with ridding ourselves of the family burden."
Sherlock's thin fingers lace together, as if in prayer. His expression darkens. "No," he answers, voice distant. "That house dies with us."
"And our legacy?"
"What legacy?"
no subject
no subject
no subject
Fandom: ACD Canon (Empty House)
Rating: G
Notes/Warnings: implications I guess
Word count: 221
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51252376
It is an odd job, but it's a steady one.
Odd jobs, they've dogged my steps this past decade and more, but for most of that the name has fit. A few hours' work, and - well - uncanny. Not sure why I was paid, more than half the time: but the rest, I found in the papers afterward. Uncanny, either way.
These days, the job's clearer, and sixty hours a week, and I'm paid like a valet for it; I've given over my old mainstay altogether. But uncanny, even now.
I've become a haunting, second-hand.
It was Kensington I haunted to start, every daylight hour dallying about to see and report when poor broken-down Dr Watson will emerge, half using his wife as a crutch, and who's got influenza in the meantime. Then it was St James, humdrum Mycroft Holmes and every last person on the block besides, and the pattern came plain enough even without Colonel Moran showing himself.
He'd ranted then, half-starved for an audience. The Professor had cared for his brother. The Professor had sure as hellfire cared for him. But Holmes, who had no heart in his chest, still walked the earth.
Perhaps Holmes does walk the earth. Regardless, the Professor dead pays me better than the Professor apparently did alive. I'm happy haunting 221B on his behalf.
no subject
Haunting
Fandom: Ritchieverse Films (Takes place after Game of Shadows)
Rating: G
Notes/Warnings: discussion of death/funerals
Word count: 221b
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51387676
When a loved one passes away, then the proper time must be taken to grieve, and then it is in order when a bit more time is taken to return to base-line. John Watson had spent the past week alongside Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson, arranging the affairs of Sherlock Holmes in his departure from this mortal coil. He had mourned, and he had written. He was proud of the work he had done to commemorate and immortalize the greatest and wisest man he had ever known, and now it was time for him to follow due course and take a holiday with his beautiful wife to Brighton.
Unfortunately, there was a package delivered before he had even the chance to get his suitcase ready. A package from a ghost. At first it excited him wildly, yet deeply in his heart there was also a feeling of dread. Had he really been through all that for nothing? All the days John had spent detaching himself from someone he had cared so much about, and yet it now seemed impossible to actually move on. At length, he found himself smiling- of course if there was someone Sherlock Holmes would choose to haunt in death, naturally it would be the honored veteran Dr. John Watson, for being so bloody tolerant of all his bullshit.
Re: Haunting
no subject
Characters: Holmes & Watson
Fandom: 1984 Granada series
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 221(b)
Notes: definitely wrote this with Brett and Hardwicke in my mind. Sort of a rewrite of that scene in Eligible Bachelor ^_^ (and assuming that The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is canon for the Granada series).
MY dearest friend had been spending an inordinate time in heavy silence. He seemed to gaze, almost longingly and unblinkingly, at our print of the Reichenbach Falls. Per his request, I always disregarded him during these periods, but his enervated form and pallid eyes could not keep my medical intuition tucked away. I asked Holmes what he was thinking about.
"I feel I am haunted."
"Haunted? By what?"
"I see it happening vividly in my mind. The Falls." He waved his hands erratically around his face, clenching his eyelids. He seemed to trail off, and I tilted my head.
"What happened to you in Switzerland was not as simple as you always made it out to me."
"No," he said simply.
I cautiously moved next to him, laying a hand on his quivering back. Haunted was perhaps the best word. A feeling I shared during those years of what are referred to by my readers as a 'hiatus' - not a bereavement or an end. Holmes's eyes flicked to me in a flash.
"I don't know why I sent you away."
He had said as much before. Everything I had done at the falls preyed upon my thoughts mercilessly in those years. The same seemed to go for him.
"You know I forgive you, Holmes. I shall always be your Boswell."