Chapter Text
The seventeen steps were steeper than John remembered. He’d been using his cane on and off. More on than off, to be honest. He should have brought it with him tonight, but he hadn’t wanted to listen to the inevitable commentary it would provoke from Sherlock.
Sherlock waited at the top of the stair, watching, assessing, deducing, but uncharacteristically silent as John limped by with his kit bag.
“Thanks,” said John. “It’s just for a few nights.”
Sherlock shrugged. “Mrs Hudson might not let you leave again so easily.”
They stared at each other, Sherlock of course not offering him a seat or a cup of tea or any of the small courtesies that might have made the moment easier.
“Yoo-hoo! Boys? Oh, John, you’ve come! Let me just get...” Mrs Hudson was still talking as she vanished into her kitchen.
“Baked goods,” sniffed Sherlock, and he withdrew into the flat to stand by the window.
Mrs Hudson reappeared with a plate of biscuits and negotiated the steps with hardly any more than trouble than John, who perforce moved further into the flat in order to stop blocking the doorway. Having felt that he’d finally arrived, he set his bag down. She bustled past him and set the plate on the coffee table, announcing, “I’ll just make us all some tea, shall I?”
Gratefully, John moved to assist her with bringing in mugs, spoons, milk, sugar and finally the tea pot itself. When Mrs Hudson sat down to pour, John sat as well. He’d lived in this flat once. He’d visited, later on. Mary had encouraged his friendship with Sherlock. John had come by from time to time and had never before hesitated to help himself to a seat. Never before tonight.
Mrs Hudson knew the things that needed to be said and said them. Such a shock. So sad. So soon after. And then, after a delicate pause, did John think things might have been different?
John, who’d been more or less expecting the question, drew in a breath. Let it out. “If Gloria had lived, you mean?”
Sherlock’s voice lanced across the room. “Of course they’d be different. One of us would have to sleep on the sofa.”
The acerbic pragmatism pierced the barriers John had gathered around himself to allow him to acknowledge his circumstances while keeping them at a distance. Now they gathered close around him, choking him, leaving him unable to speak.
“Sherlock, dear, even you can’t know...”
“That Mary Morstan’s past would eventually catch up with her? Do you honestly think her former associates – let alone the associates of her former victims – would be deterred by the presence of a small child? The one saving grace of this situation is that there’s not a child in the middle of it.”
“Sherlock Holmes!” Mrs Hudson rose to her feet.
So did John. “I’m going to turn in now.” If his host had been anyone else, he would have prefaced the statement with, “If you don’t mind.” If his host had been anyone else, they would have shown him to his room, told him they’d changed the sheets or at least given him fresh ones.
Sod the sheets, he needed to be alone. He limped up the stairs to his old room, kit bag in hand, the sound of Mrs Hudson giving Sherlock a piece of her mind clearly audible behind him. There was no rumbled baritone response, so Sherlock was apparently ignoring her.
The room was cool and dark and smelled as he remembered it, aged and slightly musty. Nothing like the clean, bright, modern smell of the flat he’d shared with Mary. Being alone here was different than being alone there. The silence here didn’t mock or accuse him.
Stripped to his vest and pants, John lay down on top of the coverlet, not expecting to sleep. In the strictest sense, his expectations were met. But in the darkness, his thoughts drifted here and there. He only realized he’d lost track of them entirely until sometime later, when the sound of the violin from the flat below recalled him to himself. Sherlock was, thank god, indulging in recognizable melody tonight.
John found himself chilled, so he turned back the blankets, slid down in between the uncertain sheets. He lay there listening, remembering other times when he’d watched Sherlock play. Remembering how Sherlock swayed ever so slightly with the music. Remembering how Sherlock’s head tucked down to hold his instrument, how the sleeve of his bow arm drew up just a bit, just enough to reveal the band of black pigmentation encircling his wrist.
***
When it became apparent that Mary’s latest absence was stretching beyond the usual, John hadn’t known whom to call. Sherlock, he thought, and then imagined himself sitting on the sofa like a client, yet one more client with a failing marriage and a vanished spouse. In the end, he called Greg Lestrade, who listened with kind professionalism and promised to call him back as soon as anything was known. It was only after John had hung up that it occurred to him that Sherlock would at least have conscripted him to help.
The hours trudged by. He went into work because sitting at home doing nothing would have been unbearable. Greg called from time to time to ask this or that irrelevant question, all of them really amounting to nothing more than, “Hang on, we’re working on it.”
Four days later, John was washing his hands after seeing a patient and something changed within his field of vision. It took him a moment to realize what. The band of gold-pigmented skin around his wrist darkened slowly, the last faded colour bleeding out of it. A nurse ducking into the room in search of bandages glanced at his face, looked again, noticed his wrist and had him sit down. Breathe, doctor, in, out, in, out, steady now, steady, is there someone you can call to take you home?
His phone had rung at just that moment. It wasn’t Greg but rather Mycroft, his voice all posh reserve.
“John, I expect you already know why I’m calling, but I’m sorry to confirm the news. The authorities require someone to provide identification and I’m told that this may provide a sense of, ah, closure? If you wish, I can send a car.”
John opened his mouth. Closed it again. He couldn’t think of what to say and why should he say anything? Mycroft was a Holmes and therefore perfectly capable of conducting the entire conversation by himself.
“Or I can handle the matter myself, as you prefer. Shall I send a car to take you home?”
In due time, a car arrived. The anonymously handsome young man in the back seat asked, “Home?” John nodded because it was easier than specifying any other destination and was delivered to his own doorstep. The car waited until he’d actually gone inside before pulling away.
John sat alone in the bright flat, which was still almost clean at that point despite the days of Mary’s absence. He didn’t think about Mycroft providing identification for a woman Mycroft had met exactly twice, once at his parent’s house for Christmas and once, briefly, on an airstrip. John didn’t think about whether or not it had been Mycroft’s people who’d taken Mary down in the end. It didn’t matter. It was always going to happen. John had just never thought about it, and he wasn’t going to start now.
Greg showed up the next evening, dragged John out to a pub and bought him enough pints that John could blame it on the beer when he broke down and cried. Greg had had a few himself by then. He patted clumsily in the general direction of John’s shoulder. “Whatever I can do to help, mate, you let me know.”
Months later, it occurred to John that Mycroft’s and Greg’s intentions had been more or less the same. Both had tried to provide whatever help they could. It was hardly their fault that John didn’t know what to ask for.
***
Sherlock didn’t wait to be asked. Greg showed up again a week later, took one look at John and swore. “Sherlock’s right – you look like hell.”
“I haven’t seen Sherlock for... Hell, it’s been at least a month.”
“Well, he’s seen you and he’s right. When’s the last time you slept?”
“He’s been stalking me, you mean. Aren’t police officers meant to put a stop to that sort of thing?”
“You come see me when you’re better rested and we’ll talk about laying charges. Here. This is for you.”
Greg handed over a sealed envelope containing something small and heavy.
John sighed. “It’s not for want of trying. It’s... too quiet to sleep here, if that makes any sense.”
“The wrong sort of quiet, is it?”
“I suppose. You know what’s in this, of course?”
“Sherlock didn’t say.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a detective?” asked John, his face completely straight.
Greg grinned in what might have been relief. “Oi! Right, then. I deduce that your envelope contains access to the right sort of quiet. And I don’t mean by chemical means, it’s got the wrong sort of feel for that.”
“Christ, you don’t think even Sherlock would walk into New Scotland Yard...”
“And ask an officer to deliver drugs for him? It was at a crime scene, actually. He informed me that thanks to Yard’s incompetence, the supposed murder victim was by now happily starting a new life in Costa Rica and that Anderson would show signs of intelligence before the real owner of the corpse at our feet was reported missing. Then he handed me the envelope, told me it was for you and left. Look, I think he might have the right idea. Not just about the quiet. This flat... John, it’s getting to be a bit of tip.”
“Compared to Baker Street?”
“Well, there’s a difference between clutter and squalor.” And then, as John continued to stare, “Use the keys, John. At least think about it. Even if it’s just for a few nights.”
***
After the first couple of nights, John took it upon himself to change the sheets on his old bed at Baker Street. He went back to the flat he’d shared with Mary for a few more of his things. Nothing more than he’d need for a week. He was sleeping better at Baker Street. A few more days, a week, he’d be back on his feet.
In the meantime, John went to work each day. He stopped for groceries and take-away on the way back to Baker Street so that he’d have something to eat and if he bought a bit extra, it was only because it seemed polite. He tidied up around the flat, partly so that Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have to and partly because Greg’s tip remark had stung. He’d got out of the habit of taking care of things like that and needed practice, so he was practicing on Sherlock’s flat, that was all.
Sherlock himself came and went like some great tom cat, vanishing out the door in a swirl of coat and scarf. He’d come back eventually, triumphant or scowling as the case might be, not infrequently covered in mud, blood or, on one occasion, confetti. He did experiments in the kitchen that resulted in horrendous stenches, threw the windows open and forgot about them, so that John, returning hours later, found the flat freezing and Sherlock either gone entirely or lying motionless on the sofa with his fingers and toes turning blue.
After that first evening, he never said two words to John, including the phrase, “Thank you.” He did, however, deign to accept cups of tea. And occasionally the leftover take-away that John had meant to keep for lunch the next day mysteriously vanished from the refrigerator.
***
There was, eventually, a funeral, a small graveside affair arranged by Mycroft. John attended, because there was no one else really and because he’d loved her once. Sherlock and Greg both showed up, although he’d asked neither of them and in fact hadn’t told them the date or time. The location was obvious enough. Mary was buried next to their daughter. Whatever her real name had been, her gravestone read “Mary Morstan Watson, 1974-2016.”
Next to it stood the other stone. “Gloria Scott Watson, 2014.” SIDS typically strikes infants two to four months of age.
John stopped to lay a hand on his daughter’s grave before he left. There was room for one more grave beside the child’s. His, probably, some day.
“Was Scott a family name?” asked Greg.
“Mary’s idea,” John said as he stood up again. “She claimed that by the time Gloria was a teenager, Scott would be the new Taylor.” And then in response to Greg’s puzzled look, “A boy’s name used as a girl’s name.”
“Like Meredith,” Sherlock put in, “or Joyce.”
“Go on, those used to be bloke’s names?”
“As much so as Scott is now,” replied Sherlock.
Greg was still shaking his head as they walked away from the pair of graves.
***
John stared at his room. There were... boxes. Not all that many, and on investigation they appeared to contain nothing more dangerous than the remainder of John’s things. But they had definitely not been there when he’d left Baker Street for work that morning.
He squared his shoulders and marched back downstairs.
“Want to tell me about the boxes in my room?”
Silence from the recumbent detective on the sofa.
“Right, poor phrasing. Tell me about the boxes in my room.”
Silence.
“Or I shoot the Belstaff.”
Sherlock sat up abruptly, stared at John for approximately 34 seconds and then relaxed. “No you wouldn’t. But as regards your boxes, you’ve been here almost a month. Very little of what remained in your previous flat was yours – you’d brought most of your own things over already. Everything else is in 221C. Mrs Hudson said that if you didn’t want to go through it yourself, she has a friend who volunteers with Oxfam who would take care of it for you.”
John shut his eyes. When he still opened them, he was still standing in 221B Baker Street. “Sherlock, you can’t just move people’s things...”
“I didn’t. Not personally.”
“What, you got your homeless network to do it? Or, no, wait, you called Mycroft?”
Sherlock sniffed loudly.
John doggedly carried on. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. You can’t just have people’s things moved...”
“I obviously did.”
“...without their permission! I signed a lease on that flat.”
“It’s in a popular area of the city, the landlord will find new tenants almost immediately.”
“You told my landlord to let my flat out?”
“Previous landlord. Former flat. This one is more convenient to your clinic and to the Yard when you want to meet Graham for a pint. You’ve already been living here for almost a month...”
“And this is the first time in almost a month that you’ve spoken to me!”
Sherlock frowned slightly, obviously not seeing why this would be an issue. “You never said anything worth responding to.”
“I offered you tea!”
“And then brought it to me despite my lack of response. I thought you...” Sherlock bit his lip. “George said to give you space.”
“Greg.”
“Lestrade. And Mrs Hudson said the same thing.”
John’s temper deflated abruptly. “Not that much space, you berk. Look, I, ah... I’ll let you know about the stuff in 221C. Thanks for, well, not just pitching it out. I’m – I’m going to make tea, would you like some?”
He waited.
“Sherlock! Do. You. Want. Some. Tea?”
Sherlock refocused on John from whatever corner of his mind palace he’d begun to retreat to. “Yes. Of course. I always want tea when you make it.”
***
After that their relationship began to regain something like its old ease. Sherlock started texting John during working hours to ask him his medical opinion on this or that. Then the texts began arriving with lurid photos attached.
Point of sending photo of severed finger inserted in eye socket = ???
Finger and eye socket not from same individual. – SH
Right. Here I was thinking the victim had stuck his own finger in his eye and died of it, the poor sod.
Owner of eye socket was female. Note bone structure. Also, owner of finger suspect not victim. – SH
Eventually Sherlock tired of sending photos and began demanding John’s presence at crime scenes.
23 Frith Street. Take cab not Tube. – SH
Now. – SH
Why aren’t you here yet? – SH
In middle of pelvic exam when texts arrived.
Giving or receiving? – SH
Inquiring in order to express interest in your health. – SH
Ta. Giving, not receiving.
16 Lisle Street. Take cab and offer extra fare for speed. – SH
Also, bring gun. – SH