Where We Started

Servant's Labor

When John woke up the oil lamp was sputtering out, but there was sunlight streaming in through the dusty window and through cracks in the wooden ceiling. He groaned, every muscle feeling tight and stiff and his back feeling like he had aged fifty years. John struggled to his feet, stretching out a bit and cracking his knuckles and neck, which made the stiff pain dull a little bit. He was brushing the stray bits of hay off of his clothes when he heard the door downstairs open and someone walk in. John froze, remembering what Sherlock had said about Mr. Hudson shooting him, and suddenly felt the urged to hide the best he could. But when that someone climbed up the ladder the first thing he saw of this 'intruder' was the top of a curly head and a radiating smile.
"Good morning." Sherlock said, pulling himself up the last couple of rungs and standing on the loft. He was dressed for work, with a pair of ripped up faded jeans and a sun-bleached tee shirt. It was really odd to see him look so normal, compared to the old man slacks and jacket he looked like a normalish teenager.
"Morning." John agreed.
"How'd you sleep then?" Sherlock asked, leaning against the wooden fence and crossing his arms.
"Fine, ya, thanks again." John assured.
"No problem John, I've got some breakfast down there on the hay, didn't want to climb the ladder with it." Sherlock decided. At the mention of breakfast John's stomach growled, he hadn't had much of a dinner the night before and he had only drank five or so glasses of water during the whole pub experience. Sherlock just smiled, dropping back onto the ladder and climbing down. When John followed he saw that Sherlock wasn't lying about breakfast, there were eggs, bacon, and two slices of toast on a chipped plate.
"Thank you." John said happily, sitting on a stray bale of hay and starting to eat hungrily. While John ate Sherlock fed the animals, which seemed like a bit of a burden. Each pen got a cube of hay, and every different animal got a scoop of special grain food or something. Then he had to scoop water out of a large tub with a bucket and fill the waters in every individual pen, so that by the time he was done John's plate had been scraped clean for a while. John had wanted to help but didn't see how he could, considering he didn't know what Sherlock was even doing. So he just watched, doing his best to ignore Sherlock's exposed arms, which were flexed as he carried the water over. For a thin straggly type boy he was actually muscular, probably just built up after all these gruesome chores he had to do.
"So, I'm going into town to run some errands for the Hudsons, thought you'd like to come, maybe stop at the library to track down your stone angel." Sherlock decided as he tossed the bucket into the water pail, done with feeding the animal's breakfast.
"Ya alright." John agreed. "I can help you though, with your work if you want, I've got nothing else to really do."
"I doubt you'll want to, it's pretty rubbish work." Sherlock pointed out, but John just shrugged.
"I do chores at my house too, we don't have animals but I've got an older sister, she's probably worse." John guessed. Sherlock laughed, a charming sound that could probably make the birds start singing.
"They don't have kids, I guess I lucked out on that one." he guessed.
"Apparently so." John agreed.
"So I've got a list here, I'll take your plate and we'll be on our way." Sherlock decided, holding up a piece of folded parchment from his pocket and walked up to John, taking the now empty plate from him and started to walk over to the little hut. John followed, watching the windows of the house nervously, as if Mr. Hudson had a sniper on the roof or something. Sherlock just stuck the plate through an open window and John heard some water splashing, probably a sink, or, since it was 1665, a tub of water.
"Off we go then." Sherlock decided, walking out towards the driveway once more. John followed, jogging to catch up to Sherlock's long stride and already feeling his forehead start to sweat a bit. Now that the sun was out the once warm air was hot, the sun beating down on them without shadows or anything to protect them from its rays. If John's mother were here she'd deck him out in enough sunscreen to drown someone in. They walked through the dirt road once again, lined with fields of grasses and some crops that John didn't recognize. There were cicadas chirping in the plants, bugs flying around, and birds hopping around, picking at the seeds. The sun was shining through a cloudless, bright blue sky that was undisturbed by airplane exhaust or gasses from global warming. It was like summer in his hometown, but it was also a lot different. There were no cars, no distant yells of neighborhood kids, no grandmothers watering their plants; it was so much more peaceful.
"You walk this every day?" John asked in amazement.
"Once, maybe twice here and back yes. You get used to it really." Sherlock shrugged.
"And you have to carry bags and stuff too, that sounds horrid." John pointed out.
"How do you get around in your future?" Sherlock asked.
"Cars. Four wheeled driving machines."
"Fascinating." Sherlock muttered.
"Do you have horses or something?" John asked.
Of course, but usually I walk." Sherlock shrugged. "I'm not the wealthiest."
"That's totally fine, our town doesn't really have all that much money either." John assured.
"I used to have servants of my own actually, my parents did have some money, but their business crashed and they resorted to bad people to keep themselves rich, gambling, smuggling, in the end the bottoms fell out of the banks and the people caught up to them, two shots, two bullets, and no parents." Sherlock sighed, kicking a stone off of the road to go crashing into a bed of blue wildflowers.
"I'm sorry to hear that." John muttered. He could never imagine losing both his parents at once. "My aunt died when I was little, car crash, but that doesn't really compare I suppose."
"My parents weren't really the best parents though, especially towards the end, I was more of an orphan than a lot of actual orphans. Sure, they gave me food and pretty much all I wanted, like the violin, that coat, and some other stuff, but they never stuck around long. It was more to keep me occupied really." Sherlock shrugged, he didn't seem too shaken up by the murder of his own parents.
"Well you seem to be doing fine on your own; you've got food and a job and stuff, usually the kids without parents in my town end up in prison." John pointed out.
"They arrest orphans?" Sherlock asked with a look of disgusted shock.
"No, no, nothing like that, they just do bad stuff, they steal and one time this guy actually killed some lady, then they get arrested." John pointed out. Sherlock nodded, seeming a little bit better now. There was some comfortable silence as they walked on, and finally they seemed to be getting closer to the town.
"So I'm going to have to stop off at the market, the bookstore, the laundry mat, and the feed store." Sherlock decided.
"I can help, really, it seems impossible to carry all that at once." John assured.
"Oh I've handled worse." Sherlock pointed out with a smile. "One time I was literally carry three bags in my teeth."
"Why don't you bring a cart or something?" John asked.
"I don't see why I have to; I had gotten everything home fine that time." Sherlock shrugged.
"Wouldn't it be, more economic?" John asked.
"The economy is rubbish John; I only want to get my errands done so that maybe we can search for your angel thing." Sherlock debated.
"Not exactly what I meant, but sounds good. The sooner I can get home the better." He decided. Sherlock nodded but was silent, and suddenly John realized how mean that must have sounded.
"Not that I don't want to spend time with you, you're a really cool guy, but my parents will be worried sick, I'm sure they'll have posters everywhere, mom will be freaking out."
"Oh don't worry, I know what you meant. If I was in your shoes I'd be freaking out of my mind at the moment, I'm surprised you're so good at keeping a lid on it." Sherlock pointed out.
"I've handled, well, no actually I haven't handled worse, but I suppose this whole time travel thing could've ended up a lot worse." John decided. Just as he said it, a horse and buggy started coming down the road towards them, making the two walk off of the road and into the meadow to avoid getting hit.
"You're quite right John; you could've ended up on that." Sherlock agreed, watching as the buggy past. Even though there was a door on the back John could see right into it, bodies, piled high and thrown in with carelessness, random hands, feet, and even heads pressed against the glass. It sent a shiver up John's spine and left a terrible odor in its wake, but Sherlock just hopped back on the road as if it were totally normal.
"At least we won't be hurdling dead bodies then." He decided as John stepped back onto the beaten down dirt.
"Were those the people on the street, were they there all night?" John asked in awe as the buggy got farther and farther away.
"That's a good day, sometimes they're all half rotted, it's awful, you have to kick vultures to simply walk." Sherlock sighed, as if it were more than a nuance than a health hazard.
"Aren't you scared you'll get infected?" John asked.
"Well, yes, but I'm more focused on getting through the day than through my entire life." He pointed out, which was a good point.
"Fair enough." John decided. It was only a short stretch until they were walking back into the town, the shops just starting to open and people starting to roam around the freshly cleaned streets.
"Where do they take the bodies?" John asked as he watched a little old lady splashing water on the sidewalk in front of what must be her sewing shop, washing the drying blood into the nearest gutter.
"They burn them, don't really know where, but you can smell it when the wind blows." Sherlock shrugged, reading off his list to see what to get first. John nodded, not liking that idea very much.
"They said that they're going to quarantine the infected though, that will help a lot." He pointed out.
"So the disease doesn't spread, right?" John asked.
"We don't know how it's spread, but they're doing all they can." Sherlock said as he started off down the street. John could see the Baker Street Pub, just starting to open its doors once again. There were swaying men outside the door, smiling and singing under their breaths, obviously just awake from an alcohol induced sleep. They started by going into a small little bookstore, glass windows with peeling paint letters. Sherlock opened the door, ringing a little bell above the door. The store smelled like old leather and candle smoke, but it was a homey sort of smell that reminded John of the bookstore in his town.
"Let's see, oh dang it, Mrs. Hudson want cookbooks, that only means one thing." he muttered.
"What?" John asked.
"Mrs. Hudson's sister is coming, so she always likes to cook new stuff." Sherlock groaned.
"What's so bad about that?"
"Well not only do I have to do double the work in polishing every stair and making the bed to perfection and setting the table with all the fancy forks, Mrs. Hudson's sister has a daughter, Irene, and I've never met such a horrible girl in my life." Sherlock said, plucking his fingers along the spines of the books as he looked for the one Mrs. Hudson wanted.
"Is she stuck up?" John asked.
"Not only that, she fancies me like no other, and she's messier than the pigs." He sighed, taking a book off the shelf called Foods to Woe Your Guests.
"Sounds miserable." John guessed, but he's never really had a problem with annoying girls, usually they saw right through him.
"You really have no idea, she's awful." Sherlock sighed. "But maybe this time she'll take a liking to you instead."
"I thought none of the family could see me?"
"Not in the premises, but you can meet in the town." Sherlock pointed out, sounding hopeful.
"I'll pass, thank you." John decided, and Sherlock just laughed, going up to the counter and digging around in a leather bag thing, pulling out a couple of pieces of silver and paying for the book. They got the book in a little brown bag which Sherlock took with a smile, walking back out of the shop and back into the street.