Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle (with appearances from various other literary characters)

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32490439

Summary: One minute, Watson is hurrying back along the path from Reichenbach Falls, afraid that Holmes has met his fate against the dreaded Professor Moriarty. The next thing he knows, he awakens in the strange Prometheus Institute, unsure whether it was all a nightmare or terrible reality. However, he quickly finds that the real nightmare has only just begun.

Watson is told that the man he knew as Sherlock Holmes is in fact a creature created by the Prometheus Institute as the next step in human evolution, which should never have been unleashed upon the world - and he is not the Institute's only creation. All Watson is sure of is that he must escape at any cost.

Warnings: Violence to and by children

Characters: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, mentioned past Victor Trevor, mentioned Mary Watson, cameos from various other literary characters

Pairings: Past Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

When I Started: This fic would not exist if not for umisabaku's epic of love and superhuman high school basketball players, Designation: Miracle. I couldn't get the idea of characters being created in a sinister lab out of my head and it got me to wondering how my favorite fictional detective might have acquired his improbable skill set. A plot naturally followed and I started planning way back in August 2017 and began writing the story proper that December (which is way earlier than I thought).

How I Lost My Shit: I don't know if I ever really had it together from the start. My first mistake was trying to "make things easier for myself" by using other literary characters with improbable skill sets as the Institute's other creations, who would serve as Holmes and Watson's fellow inmates. That meant I then had to accumulate a list of characters and read about them, which slowed things down immensely.

Then, I was about half-way through the prologue when I signed up for Holmestice 2019 and was assigned to make a gift for someone who really wanted a BBC Sherlock fic. I had just been toying around with the idea that the premise worked even better for BBC's Sherlock than the original and it basically fit their request, so I dropped everything and spent 2 weeks frantically writing a BBC Sherlock variant on the fic; Designation: S.

I finally went back to Designation: H and by summer 2020, I had finished a first draft of chapter 1 and was doing a bit of reading to find more characters to show up in the fic, when I happened upon Jeeves and Wooster - a  series about a silly rich young man and his hypercompetent manservant. Jeeves turned out to make way too much sense as a product of the Institute and the series had me hooked. By the time the summer was over, I had written The Mysterious Mr. Jeeves, a 130K sequel series to a fic I still had yet to write (a series I'm very proud of and recommend you check out if you're interested).

How I Finished My Shit: Having finally come off of my Jeeves and Wooster high, I remembered that I still hadn't entirely revealed Jeeves's mysterious origins and had a whole Sherlock Holmes story (which was now a prequel) that I was still planning on writing. So, in March of this year, I resumed work on Designation: H in earnest, encouraged by my last minute sign-up to the WIP Big Bang.

Even then, I admit this story gave me a lot of trouble. I usually write slow and steady and don't do a whole lot of rewrites, but I couldn't tell you how many times I went back through the last two chapters, arranging and rearranging until it all came together in a way that really got the ideas across. But it's finally done and out there for the world to see - along with a fanmix and chapter headers by the excellent afteriwake (pennywaltzy).

Without any further ado, I hope you enjoy it!