Fic: Multiply (the sum of our parts) - Chapter Ten
Title: Multiply (the sum of our parts)
Author: 1electricpirate
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine
Chapter Ten - The Logical Addition of Classes
Five and a half months after Sherlock falls, John gets a call from Lestrade.
“I’ve just had a call from Mycroft,” he says as soon as John answers the phone. “He told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to let you, what was it? Ah, wallow. He also said you’ve news for me, which is somewhat terrifying but then what about that bloke isn’t slightly terrifying?”
John, sitting behind his desk at the surgery, smiles weakly. He cups the phone between his shoulder and his ear, quickly finishing up the last of his paperwork. Lestrade’s voice is comfortingly familiar, scratchy with concern on the other side of the line.
“I suppose I do have a bit of news, yeah,” he concedes.
“Do you? Alright then. Well, I didn’t really want to give Mycroft the satisfaction, but how about we meet for a pint then? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
It has been a while. John hasn’t seen Lestrade since he called him, the day after finding the note in the skull. He doesn’t really want to see Lestrade. He doesn’t really want to see anyone at all, but if this is Mycroft’s doing then he’s willing to bet that if he doesn’t go for a pint, the posh bastard will find someway to make him anyway.
Clearly it’s not enough for Mycroft to organize (if by organize you mean create) John’s family life, he has to organize his social life, as well. Shoving the last page into his out tray, John shifts the phone to the other ear and bites at his bottom lip. It’s been a long day, full of teenagers wanting excuses to skip school and pensioners imagining up diseases. He could use a drink, and frankly, anything he can do to avoid Mycroft’s sudden appearance in a black sedan is probably in his best interests.
“Yeah, alright then, go on.”
Which is how John finds himself in a busy pub in Westminster, nursing a pint, waiting for Lestrade to get back from the bar.
It has been months since he’s been around this many people all at once. He’s not sure he likes it, all the hustle and bustle; surrounded by smiling faces and laughter, all John can think is, Don’t they know he’s gone?
If the bright side of London had ever had a warrior for its cause, it would have been Sherlock Holmes.
“You look awful,” Greg says, though he is smiling as he says it. (Good old Greg. John knows why Sherlock liked him. Greg is steady, and dependable, and markedly simple. He is clever but he does not have airs above his station. He is a good man - Sherlock always prefers (preferred, god, aren’t tenses hateful?) the good men over the bad, unless the bad were particularly clever about it.)
“But you’re looking better than you were last time I saw you, so that’s something.”
John smiles at him, shrugs.
“How’s the team, then?”
“We’ve been busy, I’ll not lie. I’d have called sooner, honestly, but it’s been a madhouse.”
Shrugging off Greg’s apologies, John smiles and listens as Greg talks about how they’ve been run off their feet. Of course, what he’s not saying is how hard it is, without Sherlock; how everyone suddenly realises how much slack that one man had been picking up. What he’s not saying is that he misses Sherlock too. What Greg is not saying is what John is thinking, all day, every day: I wish, I wish, I wish.
John keeps his face close to his pint glass to hide the grimace of pain on his lips.
He laughs when Greg’s face tells him he’s expecting a laugh and smiles when Greg tells him that Anderson and Donovan have finally, finally admitted that they’re shagging to the world at large. He drinks his pint and lets himself pretend, for just four seconds, that this is normal, that this is okay, that Sherlock is just out collecting something for an experiment from Bart’s, that in a few minutes he’ll sweep through the doors of the pub with his coat tails swirling behind him and order himself a gin and tonic (with cucumber in it, the way Mummy taught him) and sit down next to John and scoff at Greg his petty stories (while enjoying himself, secretly, with one hand resting gently on John’s knee).
Greg gets up to get another round and John’s illusion shatters.
He gets a text from Mycroft: Four pints, John, no more. Enjoy yourself. Grumbling and rolling his eyes, he accepts the glass from Greg and chucks his phone on the bench beside him. Greg laughs and follows it with his eyes.
“Who was that, then?”
“Mycroft,” John moans, taking a deep drink. “Bloody interfering bastard.”
“He seems to have taken quite an interest in you.”
“Yeah well. I’m the only brother he’s got left, aren’t I?” John’s says, bitterly. Greg tries to hide his wincing, but he fails spectacularly. (Another reason Sherlock liked him so much: he’s an open book, doesn’t even try to hide his emotions, and when he does try he can’t manage it. Sherlock hates (hated) liars more than anything, especially if they are otherwise boring.)
Suddenly, John feels guilty. This is not Greg’s fault, any of it. He didn’t believe a word of the lies Moriarty had planted in his team’s head; he was just doing his job. (So was Donovan. She’s a simple-minded, resentful bitch but her job is to act on her doubts. Whatever they may be.)
Greg clearly feels responsible. That’s why he’s been distant, that’s why he’s toying with the cuff of his sleeve and keeps playing with his pint glass. John doesn’t want that. He’s not angry at Greg. This isn’t his fault.
“It wasn’t your fault.” He says it out loud before he realises. Greg freezes, eyes widening briefly before he can force them back into warm, slightly concerned neutrality.
“John...”
“No, let me speak, alright? It wasn’t your fault, you were just doing your job. I’m not... I don’t blame you. Or Sally, not really.” John shrugs, takes another sip of his drink. (The tremor in his hand resurfaces. He tries to fight it but that just makes it worse.) “Jim Moriarty was a very, very clever man and Sherlock...” John’s voice catches on his name. He puts the glass down so he doesn’t spill it. “Well. Sherlock was also very, very clever. It wasn’t your fault.”
“We should have realised what was happening sooner,” Greg protests.
Neither of them want to have this conversation, but it has to be had. (John needs his friend back.)
“So should I,” John says. (He means it. He should have seen, he should have noticed. Pointless to be thinking like this now though. Less than useless. Counter-productive, even.) “I just... I just wanted you to know. That it wasn’t your fault. That I don’t blame you.”
Greg doesn’t say anything, but he does nod, slightly, and take another drink.
John stares into his pint. He doesn’t know what to say, now that that’s been said. Maybe that was all that needed to be said, this night. They can try and rebuild a friendship another day. He’s about to get up and excuse himself when Greg suddenly blurts out, “How long were you two... I mean... When did you two get married?”
The question surprises John and he looks up from his pint sharply. Greg has the faintest hint of a blush across his cheeks.
Of course, Greg didn’t know about that until the day Sherlock fell. They’ve never talked about it, not once. John doesn’t know if he wants to talk about it now, but Greg looks worried and curious and John remembers that this is his friend, this is Sherlock’s only other friend in the world besides John himself, and thinks (despite himself) that maybe he deserves to know.
(Sherlock would never have described Lestrade as a friend, he would have drawled the word colleague out like an insult, but John knows better.)
(John always knew better when it came to the self-delusions of Sherlock Holmes.)
“Sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it...”
“No, that’s alright, you just surprised me. I forget, you know, that people didn’t ... know.”
Greg smiles (tentative, but warm. The man’s warmth could fill up a room. John is suddenly immensely grateful for him). “People at the Yard used to joke, you know, about the two of you, but I don’t think anyone actually realised...”
John shrugs. “We never told anyone. It wasn’t... we didn’t really...” John has never had to talk about his relationship with Sherlock to anyone, not even to Sherlock himself. They had never needed to talk about it, not properly. Sherlock had kissed him and John had let him and then four months later John found himself in a courtroom signing papers while Sherlock looked on, slightly impatiently (he’d left an experiment running). Their witnesses had been two of Sherlock’s favourite homeless network operators. It had been sudden and bizarre and perfect (for them).
“Remember the Carligan case?” Greg shakes his head, slowly. (It hadn’t been that interesting, the case, except that it had sent him and Sherlock chasing a murderer across Croyden by rooftop. No reason Greg would remember it. John would never forget it.)
“We’d been chasing people across roofs all day and then we came home and suddenly he was just... kissing me.” John shrugs, blushing a bit. (It hurts, to remember, but it’s not all bad pain.) “Four months later we were signing the papers. It wasn’t... it was never a big deal. Well.” He frowns. Greg is watching him like you would watch a suitcase that may or may not contain a bomb. “It was a big deal, it was... phenomenal, it was everything, but I mean, it wasn’t like some agonising decision. It was just...us. It was just him. It just happened.”
Suddenly, Greg’s hand reaches across the table and grips John’s wrist, tight. His face is twisted with pain and somehow it makes John feel marginally better (the smallest fraction of a margin), to see his own pain mirrored in someone else’s face.
(No one has mourned Sherlock, not like he deserves. Mycroft is stoic and Celeste is consummately composed and they are both too stiffly upper class to cry for their dead brother, their dead son in public (or even in front of his husband). John has cried for Sherlock but not enough, not as much as he deserves. His grief has been silent (too consuming for tears). It is somehow relieving to know that he is not the only one that is hurting in the wake of the most spectacular chaos of a man that was Sherlock Holmes.)
John gives his friend a weak smile. “It didn’t change anything, that we were married. If it weren’t for the hospital visitation rights and the...well the fairly sizeable trust fund... we probably would have just gone on as we were.”
“But you loved him?”
“I loved him, he loved me, but it wasn’t... he didn’t even tell me that until two weeks after we got married. That wasn’t the point, I mean it was but it was just .... It was just... it was just us. That’s all. We were going to be together forever. We never even talked about it, not really, it was just... understood. There was no other way it could be.”
Greg is shaking his head, his face a study in muted astonishment and curiosity (with a hint of remorse). “I should have noticed. I should have realised, I think.”
“Why should you?” John smiles at him. (It hurts.) “It’s not like he went around snogging my face off. We could have told you, if we were desperate for people to know.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“His mother made us have a reception at their manor, you know. It was awful.”
“They have a manor?”
John laughs. “Do they ever. You think Sherlock was posh, you ought to meet his mother and some of his other relatives.”
“Hard to believe anyone could be posher than him.”
“Well. Let me tell you about his Aunt Janine.” Greg sits back and listens, smiling, while John tells him about the reception, and the people he’d seen there, and the way Sherlock had actually refrained from taunting them. He and Greg are laughing, by the end, when he tells him about the four men who had been at school with Sherlock, the ones John had menaced to save Sherlock from humiliation.
It is good to laugh, and it is good to talk about Sherlock and remember the good times they had, the times when they were breathless with giggling at each other, the times when they had acted as a seamless, effortless team. Greg shares some stories as well, telling about Sherlock’s first few cases on the force, a gangly young man kicking a drug habit, awkward and uncoordinated, knocking things over and missing things out. He tells John about the first time Sherlock ever met Anderson, and how he’d managed to make the man look a fool within five minutes. He tells John about the crush Sally had had on him the minute she joined the team and how he’d been appalled and terrified to hear about it (from Greg himself. He’d apparently squawked and flailed and refused to come to work for days until he figured out some way to deter her advances).
By the end, they are at the bottom of their third pints and John is laughing so hard his sides hurt. (It hurts in his chest, too, and not from laughing but from longing, but it is less suffocating, somehow.)
This is good, John thinks. It has been good. It’s also been incredibly painful, and he hates it with the very bottom of his soul that they have to do this, two friends who are all but strangers now, reminiscing on times gone past, but if he has to do this with anyone he’d rather it be Lestrade (the only other person who ever saw Sherlock for who he really was, a scared confused young man trying to make sense of the world and, in his own way, make it better).
He has to get past this, this all consuming grief. He will probably always grieve for Sherlock; he is fairly certain he will never fall for anyone else (he has been blinded for all other people; Sherlock shone too bright, like a star, like the sun, and John looked right at him; his retinas have been burned, scarred, wiped blank). But he is, somehow, still alive (though Sherlock is not) and he is about to bring an entire life onto the planet. He owes it to his child, to Sherlock’s child, to get better (as best he can).
Greg wipes the corners of his eyes with the side of his thumb and takes another long sip of his drink. The laughter dies of its own accord, settling down into calm, comfortable silence between them. “You must miss him desperately,” Greg says, finally.
John just nods, looking down at his hands for a long second before squinting up at Greg again. “It’s like I can’t breathe, sometimes.”
Once more, Greg’s hand finds his wrist and squeezes.
They sit like that for a long moment before Greg takes his hand back, drains the rest of his drink, and stands up to go to the bar once more (an unspoken agreement; one last round).
John finishes his drink and thinks about how much Sherlock would have hated this night, and that helps too.
“Mycroft said you had news,” Greg reminds him, on his return from the bar.
“Oh, right.” John winces, shifting in his chair. “Yeah, I do, rather. It’s er ... It’s sort of difficult to explain.” (How do you explain this to a stranger?; To someone who is normal, who hasn’t been initiated into the weird, twisted morality that seems to guide every social interaction in which the Holmes clan engages.)
Greg is used to Sherlock and his bizarre ethics, but this is sort of above and beyond the pale of what is expected.
“I er ... I wanted to ask you something, first,” John says, choosing his tactic carefully. (Can’t just announce this out of the blue, need to lead up to it somehow.) “How would you feel about being Godfather to Sherlock’s child?”
Lestrade nearly spills his drink all over the table.
--------------------
John has staged a coup.
Or, perhaps, less a coup, and more a jailbreak.
Sherlock was nowhere in sight when morning came. The only evidence he was there at all was the harpoon on the floor of the nursery and the distasteful, slightly crusty patch on John’s sheets. (Not to mention the spinning, churning, heaving state of John’s mind).
He leaves the twins with Annette after breakfast and tells her he is going for a walk.
It’s not a lie; he walks, and walks, and walks, until he is off the Holmes estate and on the main road. Then it’s just the case of phoning a cab and getting on the train. He is in London within three hours and it is inordinately good to be back.
The whirling dervish that is Westminster at lunch hour is like a balm to his reeling mind (he wonders if this is why Sherlock loves it so much; if it is because of the chaos and the rush, the turmoil of people and cars and busses and tourists and cameras and dogs and drunks and shouting and laughter and crying - if this spinning, dazzling, grinding, ghastly mess of a city is somehow able to make the calamitous tumult of his restless mind more bearable.)
Squaring his shoulders, John sets off through the throngs of tourists (infuriating) and business men (intimidating) and students (grubby), all but battling his way to Mycroft’s office. (It is fabulous. It is like being home. He forgot, in the mayhem of child-raising, what it was like to be in London.)
Anthea (Leanne) is expecting him. (Of course.)
“Mr. Holmes is in a meeting just now, Mr. Watson, but he’ll be with you in half an hour. Would you care to wait in his office?”
John has been in Mycroft’s office before but it has been months. He takes a seat in one of the overstuffed burnished leather armchairs around the coffee table and lets the opulence sink in.
It is an office worthy of something out of an eighties BBC sitcom; something like Rumpole of the Bailey, or Yes Minister, perhaps. Dark wood furniture, leather-bound tomes adorning towering book cases; a lazy susan with cut crystal decanters of amber liquids. John, if he weren’t so busy hating everything about his brother-in-law that he can find to hate, would be amused. (Mycroft is a 41-year-old masquerading as a 60-year-old. John suspects he has been that way since the age of 16.)
Everything is very much the same as the last time he was here - except for one thing. John’s eye catches on one of the books lying on the coffee table next to the chair he’s in. It’s a massive thing, bound with padded leather and embossed with gold. It’s not that that catches his eye, though; it’s the title of the thing, etched deep in elegant, curling golden script.
Rosie, it says (might as well scream).
John frowns, and gingerly picks the book up. The binding creaks as he opens it to the first page. He is surprised to find a handwritten title page (straight lines of text in a neat, elegant script), and as he skims over it he begins to realise that his gut instinct was right: this book was left here for a reason. It was left here for him.
The inscription reads:
Rosalyn Cordelia Holmes.
April 4, 1978 - September 2, 1981
And she was as fair as the rose in May..
The pages of the book are thick and heavy. John turns the page and his breath leaves him in a shuddery puff.
On the right hand page is a grainy, yellowing picture of a newborn baby wrapped in pink. The facing page is an orderly collage of memorabilia (birth certificate, plastic bracelet, inked foot and hand prints on cream paper).
Underneath the picture, some more writing in the same elegant hand that wrote the title page. You were born on the 4th of April, 1978, and on that day it snowed, most unseasonably. The nurses said it was a blessing. You opened your eyes and we fell in love.
John knows what he will see before he even turns the page.
There are four pictures, two on each page, also grainy and yellowing. An exhausted woman propped up in a hospital bed, cradling a bundle of blankets. A handsome man with twinkling eyes, sitting in a chair with legs crossed, grinning at a sleeping newborn baby. A teenaged boy in his school uniform, sitting (washboard straight) on the same chair, holding the baby as if it might explode at any moment. And a younger child, once more on the same chair, in a ruffled uniform with leaves stuck in his unruly brown curls, staring at the baby in his arms with unbridled fascination and achingly familiar eyes.
He has never seen a picture of Sherlock as a young boy. Eastwell Manor may have been Sherlock’s childhood home but if there are pictures of him and Mycroft as children, Celeste must keep them under lock and key. (Perhaps she finds the sentimentality offensive. John had somehow assumed that there wouldn’t be any pictures.) Nor has he ever seen (or heard mention of, except in the vaguest sense) Sherlock’s father. Or his sister.
Despite himself, John turns the page again. And then again. And again.
They are, essentially, normal family pictures (though coming from the Holmes family, that seems somehow extraordinary). Celeste and the baby coming home. Mycroft attempting to give his sister a bottle. Sherlock holding her at arms length, his starched shirt covered in puke. The baby asleep in a familiar crib (the one that even this minute holds his own babies). The father (what was his name? John has no idea.) lying on his back in the grass, the baby on his stomach, both fast asleep in the sun.
Pictures of Sherlock (young and gangly, keen eyed, too skinny by halves), holding her. Pictures of Sherlock feeding her. A picture of Sherlock unwrapping present after present for her on her first birthday. A picture of Sherlock lying on his stomach in front of the fireplace in the sitting room with the baby on her stomach next to him, pointing at something or other in what appears to be a biology text. A picture of Sherlock with a measuring tape clutched between his teeth, a pencil wedged firmly behind his ear, clearly trying to get a wriggly one year old to lie flat and straight so he can measure her. Pictures of Sherlock swinging her around in the air, both of them laughing, matched curly brown hair flying around their heads in a blur. Picture after picture after picture of Sherlock Holmes as a young boy, obviously completely and utterly smitten with his tiny baby sister. The baby sister he has never, ever mentioned.
The baby sister who shares her name, now, with his daughter.
(John’s stomach lurches at the thought.)
Mycroft is in a grand total of six of the pictures, all at Christmas or during the summer. Celeste is in ten, their father in about twelve. There are nearly one hundred pictures in the album, and only about twenty of them are of the baby alone.
By the time the baby has reached about the age of three, Sherlock has grown leaps and bounds, but he is still a child (ten years old, eleven at most). John drinks the pictures in greedily. (It has never occurred to him, really, to think of Sherlock as a child. Not much. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the the image of Sherlock as a messy, laughing young boy, nearly always with a smile on his face, with the Sherlock he knows (and loves, desperately) - serious and dark and sometimes menacing. The Sherlock he knows can giggle, loves to run and chase and jump and climb, but the Sherlock he knows would never sit on a swing at a playground and grin at a camera for no good reason.)
John had read the inscription, he knows what is coming by the time he reaches the end of the album (and even if it hadn’t been written there, in black and white, he would have guessed).
First, though, there is a page to which an open-topped envelope has been pasted; John reaches in and pulls out page after page of paintings and drawings and scribbles (co-created, the spiky writing at the bottom corner of each tells him, by Sherlock and Rosie Holmes, each one with the date and time meticulously recorded). One page has two hand prints: a larger, blue one, under which Sherlock has written his name, the date, his age (9 and 3/4), and a smaller, pink one - under which is written Rosie, aged 2 and 3/4.
Something clenches in John’s heart and stomach. He places the pages carefully back in the envelope, and turns to the last page.
There is just one picture on this page; a large, black and white print of Sherlock and Rosie, curled around one another on Sherlock’s overly large bed. They are surrounded by a vast amount of detritus, ranging from anatomy text books to the beginnings of a butterfly collection; there are snail shells and bird feathers, chestnuts and pebbles, and a well-loved copy of Treasure Island, left open at one of the richly illustrated plates. Sherlock has a pirate hat on, made of paper, crushed under the weight of his sleeping head, his curls spreading across the pillow. Rosie has an eyepatch on but it has been pushed up to her forehead and she is fast asleep, her arms wrapped around one of Sherlock’s hands. Her hair is long, now, forming perfect dark ringlets that drop down her back.
The inscription on this photo has not been written in the perfect elegant script of the rest of the book but in handwriting that John is all too familiar with (he is used to seeing it ordering him to buy milk or labelling body parts or announcing its owner’s fake suicide). It says, simply, Even pirates need to nap. September 1, 1981. A perfect day..
John’s eyes swim with the weight of what he’s just learned.
A small noise alerts him to the fact that he is no longer alone. He looks up from the book and sees Mycroft, seated across from him, watching him intently.
John had come here ready to punch him, shout at him, make him hurt but suddenly he can’t even find words enough to form a single sentence.
He shakes his head slightly, and turns back to the book in his lap. He traces the line of Sherlock’s back with his index finger. Sherlock has clearly ripped one of his sleeves to make it look like the pirate in the picture book. There is a smudge of dirt across his face. The toddler has a smile on her face, even in sleep.
“What happened?” he asks, without looking up at Mycroft. The way Sherlock’s hair splays across his young face, still so recognisable to John who would probably recognise his husband even if he were blind and it were dark, is entrancing.
“To Rosalyn?” Mycroft’s voice is quiet, not nearly as demanding as John is used to it being. it makes him look up and study his brother-in-law carefully. (Not much to study. His voice may have changed, minutely, but he is still the same unflappably calm and unruffled Mycroft Holmes as he always has been. John sets aside a few seconds to hate him abjectly for being able to talk about things like this without showing a shred of emotion.)
“I’m afraid,” Mycroft continues, one infuriatingly cool eyebrow raising, “that’s rather a long story, Doctor Watson, and I was under the impression that you came here to shout at me.”
“The shouting can wait,” John retorts, as if butter wouldn’t melt. Carefully, he closes the photo album, but he keeps it in his lap, idly tracing the name on the front cover with his fingers. “You obviously wanted me to see this, to find out about her, so I think you should probably start explaining. I’ve got all day, and I rather think you owe me the time.”
Mycroft’s only sign of acquiescence to John’s terms is a slight dip of his head. At that moment, Leanne bustles through the door with a tea tray, but John does not let his expectant gaze fall from Mycroft’s carefully blank face. Leanne succeeds in the monumental task of serving them each a cup of tea while simultaneously texting furiously on her blackberry, and then swoops out of the room once more.
Mycroft sits back in the arm chair, stirring his tea delicately with a spoon. He is stalling, waiting for John to break (but John is an immovable force, and he can sit here and wait all day, whereas Mycroft probably has World War III to prevent by teatime).
Finally, finally Mycroft begins to talk. John sits back and lets him.
------------------------------
“You are here, of course, to berate me for my actions of the past eighteen months and to gain some sort of understanding of my decisions regarding Sherlock’s disappearance, yourself, and your children. You feel wronged; you are angry that we let you suffer while knowing full well that Sherlock was, in fact, alive. In addition to which, you are no doubt feeling conflicted and guilty about my suggestion to you, fifteen months ago, which resulted in the birth of your children, as you believe it to have been solely motivated by some sort of crass power-play between my brother and myself.
“I think, John, that in order to fully understand, you must be willing to more fully understand our family history. It is a rather taboo subject between us, as I think you have gathered, and we are not among the more demonstrative of people. Our family home was happy, and loving, after our own fashion, for a very long time, but we are all peculiar creatures, any one of us will tell you that, and I believe, regrettably, that some of this familial spirit has gone by the wayside in recent years.
“You will have to imagine what it is like to grow up in a house where everyone is incredibly, extraordinarily intelligent. I don’t think anyone really does understand what that’s like, especially when it is combined with the pressures of the upper echelons of polite society and certain anti-social tendencies that we all possess. Our parents married for love but my mother had to fight her way to being accepted by the rest of their social circle. Our Father - his name was Terrence, I can see you wanted to ask - was very, very, very clever, but Sherlock and I were more intelligent than he was by the age of seven. Rosie would have been smarter than all of us, I believe, given her early displays of intelligence, but it does not do to dwell on that.
“I do not think, John, that you have fully grasped just how intelligent Sherlock is. Don’t look at me like that, it’s a simple fact. You cannot grasp it because you are not a genius. He has a nearly photographic memory and, yes, he probably has a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome; nothing as severe as autism, but it is certainly a way of functioning, of thinking, that is vastly different from that of other people. He is not a sociopath, much as he likes to paint himself as such, but he is not fond of other people and he has a problem with traditional ideas of morality - but that is as much a result of his upbringing than anything.
“Yes, I’m sure you had already figured that all out for yourself, but it helps to have it reinforced, does it not?
“More tea? If you’re sure then. Let’s see. Our parents were incredibly smart but they were also quite often absent. I believe they worked for departments of the government that have technically never existed, as well as for various private contractors across the world. Sherlock has, if you like, taken up the family business, though he’s given it a name for the first time. They helped to catch criminals - but they were also very involved in the espionage that was rife throughout Europe in the seventies and eighties.
“We were mostly raised by nannies of negligible intellect, and none of them lasted very long. Sherlock is seven years my junior and when I went off to boarding school at eleven he was more often than not alone. He was always difficult: curious and loud and prone to throwing tantrums, and no one really knew how to handle him. He was a strange child and of course he was taunted and teased from a very young age by his peers. The difference was that he cared what they were saying about him. It made him volatile and upset. He desperately wanted to be accepted but he didn’t know how to go about doing it; he didn’t have the facilities in place to cultivate proper friendships with his peers.
“Rosie was born when Sherlock was seven and it was pretty much love at first sight. She adored him and he was fascinated by her, by the possibility of her, but also by the person she was. I was fourteen and more often than not at school; I barely knew her, though she was certainly a joy. She liked everyone, she was sunny and happy and very quickly she became incredibly astute for a baby. Sherlock spent all day with her; when a new nanny came in he would even insist on caring for her instead of letting the nanny do it. He was fiercely protective of her. I think that is something that is very important for you to understand. From the moment he saw her he decided that he would do anything to keep her safe, because he loved her.
“I believe he had already come to understand that he would never fit in to society at large. Preschool had been enough to show him that. He was alone and he felt like what they called him; like a freak. Rosie didn’t see him like that, though, and of course she didn’t treat him like a child, which he hated more than anything. It didn’t matter that she was only a baby - I think that Sherlock convinced himself that only she would ever understand him and take him as he was, rather than at face value.
“I was quite often jealous of them. I felt left out, and also a little jilted. Sherlock had somewhat worshipped me, until I went to school. It will no doubt surprise you to learn that we were very close. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for leaving him.
“Yes, well, anyway. Be that as it may. When you asked what happened to her, I believe you meant how did she die? Yes, I thought so. That’s Sherlock’s story to tell, if you ever want the details. It is not necessary to know the full circumstances to understand the implications of the event. Sherlock was protecting her against certain danger from intruders who wished to kidnap them. He had formulated a plan to keep Rosie safe but he was only ten years old, facing against three fully grown men. Rosie was scared, she was only three; she fell down the stairs while Sherlock was trying to defend them both. We believe it was very quick for her.
“Her death destroyed Sherlock. He succeeded in evading kidnaping by managing to knock the men out using several booby traps but when he discovered that Rosie had fallen... I was the one to find them, I had gone into the village with the chauffeur to buy dinner for us all as our parents were abroad. Sherlock ... Pardon me. Sherlock was just clutching her to his chest and screaming. They were sitting in a puddle of one of the men’s blood. It... I remember it was even in his hair, but he didn’t care. It took three of us to pry her away from him.
“After he stopped crying, he didn’t talk to anyone for months. I mean, not a word. Mummy sent him to the best psychologists she could find but he did nothing except sit and stare at the wall and play violin for nearly six months. During those six months, our father was assassinated while abroad on a contracted mission in Estonia. He had amassed rather a lot of enemies. After his funeral, Sherlock began to talk again, but he has never been the same.
“He blamed himself, you see. He still does. He feels that it was his fault that his plan was unsuccessful, that he had been too busy fending off three trained assassins to realise that one of them had pushed her down the stairs. During those six months, I think he decided that his best option was never to let anyone get close to him again, because then he could never be responsible for them getting hurt.
“Of course, then he met you, John. I do not think you realise how momentous it is, that Sherlock even let you be his friend, much less fall in love with you.
“What’s the point? The point, John, is that when Jim Moriarty threatened to kill you, Sherlock did something he hasn’t done since he was ten years old: he panicked. He had tried and failed to save the last person he’d loved and tried to protect, and he absolutely couldn’t let that happen to you. So he was not only trying to outsmart the smartest man he’d ever met, besides me of course, he was second guessing himself the entire time. He hasn’t trusted me for many years and I admit, I have not helped myself in that regard, so he did not think to ask for my help, because he believed I would betray him.
“I worked out his stunt three weeks after his disappearance. Mummy and I decided not to tell you because it was the best way to keep both of you safe. I hope that you are not labouring under some idea that Sherlock has been on an extended holiday. He has single handedly brought down some of the most nefarious criminals across the globe, and he has done it all to keep you safe.
“But of course, the best way to keep him safe was to get him to come back home. And of course, there was always the danger, Doctor Watson, that you might succumb to the depression and give up. That was an unacceptable possibility, so I had to act in the best way I could see fit to keep both of you alive until I could get him home. The plan had the added benefit, of course, of providing Sherlock with the thing he has wanted since the age of seven but thought himself incapable and unworthy of having: a family.
“Even without recent events, Sherlock would never have asked you about children because he believed himself so unsuited to the task. You would never have brought it up because you thought he would have hated the idea. So I brought it up instead. I expect one day, you might both thank me.
“I have no regrets on this subject, John. I understand that you are angry with me, and with him, and with Mummy, for keeping this from you, but I hope that in time, you will come to understand that all of us have been acting in your best interests. Perhaps it is true, that as your husband, Sherlock ought to have consulted with you when the situation arose, but I hope that now you know more about him, you might begin to understand why he felt he could not.
“My brother is a very scared, very fragile man, John. I think you know this already, and you love him in spite of it. He and Irene are still working to catch Moran but I think they will succeed, and soon. I hope that when he has managed that, you will let him come back to you.
“He loves you, John, desperately so. It’s quite ... touching, actually. There’s no need for that expression from you. I do actually have emotions, it may surprise you to know. And I love my brother very much. I just want him to be safe and happy. I think we share that desire.
“I have also been working to stomp out Moriarty’s web and soon, I think, we will have succeeded in making it safe for you to return to London - as safe as it ever has been, at least. Until then, I hope you will remain at Eastwell, as it is most easily defensible. The threat to you and your children is very real, John, I need you to understand that. You ought not to have come here today, but I understand why you have.
“I think that just about wraps up everything I wanted to say. Do you have any questions?
“Of course, please. Feel free to take the album. Mummy will probably be wondering where it is, anyway. Now. If that’s all? I do have an urgent phone call with the Belgian prime minister that ought to be made before the lazy man goes home at four.
“Good day, John. My love to the children.”
-----------------
Mycroft leaves him in his office with an empty tea cup in one hand and Rosalyn’s photo album in the other.
John sits there for nearly ten minutes, soaking in everything he just heard. Mycroft had spoken quickly and efficiently, barely pausing for sips of tea and rarely acknowledging John’s comments. If John didn’t know better, he’d have believed the entire thing had been scripted.
He does not, now, know what to do.
He sets the tea cup in its saucer on the table (deliberately five centimetres from the elegant wooden coaster).
Photo album in hand, he stands, squares his shoulders, and walks out of the building. A familiar-looking body guard accosts him in the foyer and leads him to a fairly innocuous-looking black sedan (though John’s eye is well-trained enough to know that it is armoured and fitted with bullet-proof glass).
He does not register the drive back to Kent. His finger traces the embossing on the cover of the album and he watches the countryside fly past from behind tinted windows, and slowly processes the information he just had dumped on him.
He is not jealous of the information; he does not wish he’d known sooner, about their little sister. He has never wanted or needed Sherlock to tell him anything other than what he wanted to tell him - except in two very discrete instances: anything to do with drug use, and anything to do with faking his own death.
John has always known that Sherlock had secrets, lots of them, and he has never wanted to know them unless Sherlock particularly wanted to share them. Even now, he feels slightly uneasy knowing what Sherlock clearly didn’t want to tell him.
When he arrives back at Eastwell, the twins are freshly bathed, lying on their stomaches in their rompers, playing at throwing soft toys at each other. Annette has the TV on, and is lying on the couch next to them, but when John comes in the room and crosses immediately to the floor to scoop both of them up and hold them close, she switches it off and slides, quietly, out of the room, leaving the three of them blessedly alone.
Teddy laughs and Rosie gives a happy gurgle when John tries to cover them both in kisses. Rosie’s hand flails and lands on his nose; John kisses that too.
Later, Teddy is sitting happily in his bouncer, chewing on a piece of brightly coloured plastic. John is lying on his back with Rosie asleep on his stomach. One of his hands rests possessively on her tiny back. He closes his eyes and lets the aching seep through him.
He aches for Sherlock, for the boy he had been, and for his baby sister, snatched by evil men at far too young an age.
He hates to play right into Mycroft’s hands but the bastard is right, understanding does help. Marginally. His anger is not nearly so tumultuous and insistent, now. It is still there, but it is overshadowed by something else: love? relief? pity? longing? A strange mixture of all of these things and more.
Rosie begins to stir on his stomach and John sits up to hold her properly.
There are no excuses for what Sherlock did to him, of course. Mycroft’s story doesn’t make things better (despite the fact that it does make it slightly less bad. Less bad is not better. Not in this case.) John wants to talk to Sherlock, now, to discuss everything he’s just learned, but he knows that he should wait a while. Sherlock also has things to learn, things about being one half of a whole, things about being in a family, and John doesn’t know how else to get him to understand but by keeping him away.
Until Sherlock starts to understand what it is he did wrong, John doesn’t know what to do but wait. Perhaps it is cruel, show Sherlock how to be part of a larger entity by forcing him to feel like an empty half, but for all that Sherlock Holmes is brilliant, he can be incredibly difficult to teach.
John loves Sherlock, will always love Sherlock (no longer knows how not to love him), but that does not mean he can forgive him for eighteen months of torture and not possessing an ounce of remorse for his actions.
(He hadn’t even said ‘sorry’. John can’t remember ever hearing Sherlock apologise and while usually it wouldn’t matter, for some reason, inexplicably, it does now.)
Teddy drops his chewing toy and starts to cry, and just like that, John’s allocated introspection is cut short. He still has two tiny lives to take care of, so for now, that is what he will do.
It will be a while, before he can face Sherlock again. (Even knowing what he now knows. Even though he now understands Sherlock’s actions were born at least partially of panic, rather than from pure rationality. It helps, certainly, but it does not erase his pain. It only marginally soothes his ire.) John is still and will probably continue to be unbearably angry with Sherlock, for thinking that he could pretend to be dead and then waltz back into John’s life without a single question asked.
(It takes no small amount of determination for John to stick to his guns on this. The temptation to call Sherlock, to beg him to come back and never to leave again, is rife. John’s fingers literally ache to dial the number that will bring Sherlock back to him, but he will never forgive himself for caving, for allowing Sherlock to walk all over him, for letting himself be taken advantage of by the madman he accidentally married.)
(No accident about it, of course. No power in the universe could have kept the two of them apart. John’s fate had been sealed the second they laid eyes on each other, that fateful day at St. Bart’s.)
(It occurs to John that Mike Stamford owes him a drink or ten.)
They were like magnets. Powerful, incredibly strong magnets. The kind of magnets which, once they’ve come into contact with each other, can only be separated with exceedingly large amounts of pressure. John and Sherlock had combined to create John&Sherlock; if Sherlock’s death had not undone that combination then his resurrection wouldn’t either. It would take time, and effort, and more likely than not a great deal more pain, before they could be set to rights again.
Sherlock Holmes lives his life in a warzone, and John is a soldier, but his children are not. They are helpless and defenceless and more precious than anything in the entire sorry world. (More precious than John’s own life. More precious even than Sherlock himself. He knows, from the light he’d seen (briefly, too briefly, Christ it hurts in that Sherlock-shaped hole in his chest) in Sherlock’s eyes, that he is not alone in this assessment of affairs as they stand. John(&Sherlock) are now, of course (and not necessarily through their own agency), John(&Sherlock)&Teddy&Rosie.)
Sherlock and John live their lives (have lived their lives) in a warzone but circumstances have changed, priorities have shifted. (The difference is as great as if Australia decided to up its sticks and move in between Europe and North America. It is a seismic change in the topography of John’s instincts.) A warzone is no place to raise children.
If he could, John would pick up his two tiny children and high-tail it back to London (as far out of the clutches of the entire nefarious clan of Holmeses as he could ever reasonably hope to get) as soon as possible. He needs a break, he needs a breath of fresh air; he needs time to think and regroup. More importantly, he needs to be away from the people who had plotted and schemed and manipulated him without a single shred of compunction to be seen. Celeste Holmes was last to be seen nibbling daintily at a scone, showing not a sign of contrition as she watched John stabbing angrily at his eggs. Mycroft had emotionally compromised him into neglecting to punch him in his very punch-worthy nose. John and his blessed, perfect children had been used as bait in their twisted ploys.
(His feelings should be complicated by the very fact that their ploys seem to have been beneficial and successful - namely, in that both he and Sherlock were still alive and in possession of two delightful and un-looked-for bundles of joy. He refuses to think about this, though, and focuses very hard on his righteous and justified wrath.)
As much as he wants to escape, though, he cannot. He does not have the luxury of freedom of movement. Sherlock’s words (and, later, Mycroft’s) have made him keenly aware in a way that he hasn’t been in nearly eighteen months of the possibility that he may be being watched (and not for the purpose of keeping him out of harm‘s way).
For all that he does not trust a single member of the Holmes family as far as he could throw them in certain matters such as delicacy, adherence to social convention and moral rectitude, he does trust them implicitly when it comes to an obsessive care to detail (especially as concerns security).
Now, of course, he understands where that reflex stems from. He can think of no place better to keep his children safe than under the collectively watchful eyes of Celeste and Mycroft Holmes. He trusts no one in the world with solving puzzles and bringing criminals to justice as much as he trusts his husband (though he vehemently disapproves of his method).
For the time being, then, John is trapped. He does not have to (and will indeed continue to refuse to) talk to Sherlock’s mother in order to maintain residence in her house. He knows, in theory, that every security system is fallible, that every house has its weakness, but he is a great believer in keeping the odds as low as is reasonably possible.
Later, he will look back and realise there never was a choice. He has always been a terrible chess player, and he was up three to one against the cleverest strategic minds in the country.
He has been, since the very beginning, spectacularly out-manoeuvred. In the end, the decision to stay is not, in fact, a decision at all.
Author: 1electricpirate
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine
Chapter Ten - The Logical Addition of Classes
Five and a half months after Sherlock falls, John gets a call from Lestrade.
“I’ve just had a call from Mycroft,” he says as soon as John answers the phone. “He told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to let you, what was it? Ah, wallow. He also said you’ve news for me, which is somewhat terrifying but then what about that bloke isn’t slightly terrifying?”
John, sitting behind his desk at the surgery, smiles weakly. He cups the phone between his shoulder and his ear, quickly finishing up the last of his paperwork. Lestrade’s voice is comfortingly familiar, scratchy with concern on the other side of the line.
“I suppose I do have a bit of news, yeah,” he concedes.
“Do you? Alright then. Well, I didn’t really want to give Mycroft the satisfaction, but how about we meet for a pint then? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
It has been a while. John hasn’t seen Lestrade since he called him, the day after finding the note in the skull. He doesn’t really want to see Lestrade. He doesn’t really want to see anyone at all, but if this is Mycroft’s doing then he’s willing to bet that if he doesn’t go for a pint, the posh bastard will find someway to make him anyway.
Clearly it’s not enough for Mycroft to organize (if by organize you mean create) John’s family life, he has to organize his social life, as well. Shoving the last page into his out tray, John shifts the phone to the other ear and bites at his bottom lip. It’s been a long day, full of teenagers wanting excuses to skip school and pensioners imagining up diseases. He could use a drink, and frankly, anything he can do to avoid Mycroft’s sudden appearance in a black sedan is probably in his best interests.
“Yeah, alright then, go on.”
Which is how John finds himself in a busy pub in Westminster, nursing a pint, waiting for Lestrade to get back from the bar.
It has been months since he’s been around this many people all at once. He’s not sure he likes it, all the hustle and bustle; surrounded by smiling faces and laughter, all John can think is, Don’t they know he’s gone?
If the bright side of London had ever had a warrior for its cause, it would have been Sherlock Holmes.
“You look awful,” Greg says, though he is smiling as he says it. (Good old Greg. John knows why Sherlock liked him. Greg is steady, and dependable, and markedly simple. He is clever but he does not have airs above his station. He is a good man - Sherlock always prefers (preferred, god, aren’t tenses hateful?) the good men over the bad, unless the bad were particularly clever about it.)
“But you’re looking better than you were last time I saw you, so that’s something.”
John smiles at him, shrugs.
“How’s the team, then?”
“We’ve been busy, I’ll not lie. I’d have called sooner, honestly, but it’s been a madhouse.”
Shrugging off Greg’s apologies, John smiles and listens as Greg talks about how they’ve been run off their feet. Of course, what he’s not saying is how hard it is, without Sherlock; how everyone suddenly realises how much slack that one man had been picking up. What he’s not saying is that he misses Sherlock too. What Greg is not saying is what John is thinking, all day, every day: I wish, I wish, I wish.
John keeps his face close to his pint glass to hide the grimace of pain on his lips.
He laughs when Greg’s face tells him he’s expecting a laugh and smiles when Greg tells him that Anderson and Donovan have finally, finally admitted that they’re shagging to the world at large. He drinks his pint and lets himself pretend, for just four seconds, that this is normal, that this is okay, that Sherlock is just out collecting something for an experiment from Bart’s, that in a few minutes he’ll sweep through the doors of the pub with his coat tails swirling behind him and order himself a gin and tonic (with cucumber in it, the way Mummy taught him) and sit down next to John and scoff at Greg his petty stories (while enjoying himself, secretly, with one hand resting gently on John’s knee).
Greg gets up to get another round and John’s illusion shatters.
He gets a text from Mycroft: Four pints, John, no more. Enjoy yourself. Grumbling and rolling his eyes, he accepts the glass from Greg and chucks his phone on the bench beside him. Greg laughs and follows it with his eyes.
“Who was that, then?”
“Mycroft,” John moans, taking a deep drink. “Bloody interfering bastard.”
“He seems to have taken quite an interest in you.”
“Yeah well. I’m the only brother he’s got left, aren’t I?” John’s says, bitterly. Greg tries to hide his wincing, but he fails spectacularly. (Another reason Sherlock liked him so much: he’s an open book, doesn’t even try to hide his emotions, and when he does try he can’t manage it. Sherlock hates (hated) liars more than anything, especially if they are otherwise boring.)
Suddenly, John feels guilty. This is not Greg’s fault, any of it. He didn’t believe a word of the lies Moriarty had planted in his team’s head; he was just doing his job. (So was Donovan. She’s a simple-minded, resentful bitch but her job is to act on her doubts. Whatever they may be.)
Greg clearly feels responsible. That’s why he’s been distant, that’s why he’s toying with the cuff of his sleeve and keeps playing with his pint glass. John doesn’t want that. He’s not angry at Greg. This isn’t his fault.
“It wasn’t your fault.” He says it out loud before he realises. Greg freezes, eyes widening briefly before he can force them back into warm, slightly concerned neutrality.
“John...”
“No, let me speak, alright? It wasn’t your fault, you were just doing your job. I’m not... I don’t blame you. Or Sally, not really.” John shrugs, takes another sip of his drink. (The tremor in his hand resurfaces. He tries to fight it but that just makes it worse.) “Jim Moriarty was a very, very clever man and Sherlock...” John’s voice catches on his name. He puts the glass down so he doesn’t spill it. “Well. Sherlock was also very, very clever. It wasn’t your fault.”
“We should have realised what was happening sooner,” Greg protests.
Neither of them want to have this conversation, but it has to be had. (John needs his friend back.)
“So should I,” John says. (He means it. He should have seen, he should have noticed. Pointless to be thinking like this now though. Less than useless. Counter-productive, even.) “I just... I just wanted you to know. That it wasn’t your fault. That I don’t blame you.”
Greg doesn’t say anything, but he does nod, slightly, and take another drink.
John stares into his pint. He doesn’t know what to say, now that that’s been said. Maybe that was all that needed to be said, this night. They can try and rebuild a friendship another day. He’s about to get up and excuse himself when Greg suddenly blurts out, “How long were you two... I mean... When did you two get married?”
The question surprises John and he looks up from his pint sharply. Greg has the faintest hint of a blush across his cheeks.
Of course, Greg didn’t know about that until the day Sherlock fell. They’ve never talked about it, not once. John doesn’t know if he wants to talk about it now, but Greg looks worried and curious and John remembers that this is his friend, this is Sherlock’s only other friend in the world besides John himself, and thinks (despite himself) that maybe he deserves to know.
(Sherlock would never have described Lestrade as a friend, he would have drawled the word colleague out like an insult, but John knows better.)
(John always knew better when it came to the self-delusions of Sherlock Holmes.)
“Sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it...”
“No, that’s alright, you just surprised me. I forget, you know, that people didn’t ... know.”
Greg smiles (tentative, but warm. The man’s warmth could fill up a room. John is suddenly immensely grateful for him). “People at the Yard used to joke, you know, about the two of you, but I don’t think anyone actually realised...”
John shrugs. “We never told anyone. It wasn’t... we didn’t really...” John has never had to talk about his relationship with Sherlock to anyone, not even to Sherlock himself. They had never needed to talk about it, not properly. Sherlock had kissed him and John had let him and then four months later John found himself in a courtroom signing papers while Sherlock looked on, slightly impatiently (he’d left an experiment running). Their witnesses had been two of Sherlock’s favourite homeless network operators. It had been sudden and bizarre and perfect (for them).
“Remember the Carligan case?” Greg shakes his head, slowly. (It hadn’t been that interesting, the case, except that it had sent him and Sherlock chasing a murderer across Croyden by rooftop. No reason Greg would remember it. John would never forget it.)
“We’d been chasing people across roofs all day and then we came home and suddenly he was just... kissing me.” John shrugs, blushing a bit. (It hurts, to remember, but it’s not all bad pain.) “Four months later we were signing the papers. It wasn’t... it was never a big deal. Well.” He frowns. Greg is watching him like you would watch a suitcase that may or may not contain a bomb. “It was a big deal, it was... phenomenal, it was everything, but I mean, it wasn’t like some agonising decision. It was just...us. It was just him. It just happened.”
Suddenly, Greg’s hand reaches across the table and grips John’s wrist, tight. His face is twisted with pain and somehow it makes John feel marginally better (the smallest fraction of a margin), to see his own pain mirrored in someone else’s face.
(No one has mourned Sherlock, not like he deserves. Mycroft is stoic and Celeste is consummately composed and they are both too stiffly upper class to cry for their dead brother, their dead son in public (or even in front of his husband). John has cried for Sherlock but not enough, not as much as he deserves. His grief has been silent (too consuming for tears). It is somehow relieving to know that he is not the only one that is hurting in the wake of the most spectacular chaos of a man that was Sherlock Holmes.)
John gives his friend a weak smile. “It didn’t change anything, that we were married. If it weren’t for the hospital visitation rights and the...well the fairly sizeable trust fund... we probably would have just gone on as we were.”
“But you loved him?”
“I loved him, he loved me, but it wasn’t... he didn’t even tell me that until two weeks after we got married. That wasn’t the point, I mean it was but it was just .... It was just... it was just us. That’s all. We were going to be together forever. We never even talked about it, not really, it was just... understood. There was no other way it could be.”
Greg is shaking his head, his face a study in muted astonishment and curiosity (with a hint of remorse). “I should have noticed. I should have realised, I think.”
“Why should you?” John smiles at him. (It hurts.) “It’s not like he went around snogging my face off. We could have told you, if we were desperate for people to know.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“His mother made us have a reception at their manor, you know. It was awful.”
“They have a manor?”
John laughs. “Do they ever. You think Sherlock was posh, you ought to meet his mother and some of his other relatives.”
“Hard to believe anyone could be posher than him.”
“Well. Let me tell you about his Aunt Janine.” Greg sits back and listens, smiling, while John tells him about the reception, and the people he’d seen there, and the way Sherlock had actually refrained from taunting them. He and Greg are laughing, by the end, when he tells him about the four men who had been at school with Sherlock, the ones John had menaced to save Sherlock from humiliation.
It is good to laugh, and it is good to talk about Sherlock and remember the good times they had, the times when they were breathless with giggling at each other, the times when they had acted as a seamless, effortless team. Greg shares some stories as well, telling about Sherlock’s first few cases on the force, a gangly young man kicking a drug habit, awkward and uncoordinated, knocking things over and missing things out. He tells John about the first time Sherlock ever met Anderson, and how he’d managed to make the man look a fool within five minutes. He tells John about the crush Sally had had on him the minute she joined the team and how he’d been appalled and terrified to hear about it (from Greg himself. He’d apparently squawked and flailed and refused to come to work for days until he figured out some way to deter her advances).
By the end, they are at the bottom of their third pints and John is laughing so hard his sides hurt. (It hurts in his chest, too, and not from laughing but from longing, but it is less suffocating, somehow.)
This is good, John thinks. It has been good. It’s also been incredibly painful, and he hates it with the very bottom of his soul that they have to do this, two friends who are all but strangers now, reminiscing on times gone past, but if he has to do this with anyone he’d rather it be Lestrade (the only other person who ever saw Sherlock for who he really was, a scared confused young man trying to make sense of the world and, in his own way, make it better).
He has to get past this, this all consuming grief. He will probably always grieve for Sherlock; he is fairly certain he will never fall for anyone else (he has been blinded for all other people; Sherlock shone too bright, like a star, like the sun, and John looked right at him; his retinas have been burned, scarred, wiped blank). But he is, somehow, still alive (though Sherlock is not) and he is about to bring an entire life onto the planet. He owes it to his child, to Sherlock’s child, to get better (as best he can).
Greg wipes the corners of his eyes with the side of his thumb and takes another long sip of his drink. The laughter dies of its own accord, settling down into calm, comfortable silence between them. “You must miss him desperately,” Greg says, finally.
John just nods, looking down at his hands for a long second before squinting up at Greg again. “It’s like I can’t breathe, sometimes.”
Once more, Greg’s hand finds his wrist and squeezes.
They sit like that for a long moment before Greg takes his hand back, drains the rest of his drink, and stands up to go to the bar once more (an unspoken agreement; one last round).
John finishes his drink and thinks about how much Sherlock would have hated this night, and that helps too.
“Mycroft said you had news,” Greg reminds him, on his return from the bar.
“Oh, right.” John winces, shifting in his chair. “Yeah, I do, rather. It’s er ... It’s sort of difficult to explain.” (How do you explain this to a stranger?; To someone who is normal, who hasn’t been initiated into the weird, twisted morality that seems to guide every social interaction in which the Holmes clan engages.)
Greg is used to Sherlock and his bizarre ethics, but this is sort of above and beyond the pale of what is expected.
“I er ... I wanted to ask you something, first,” John says, choosing his tactic carefully. (Can’t just announce this out of the blue, need to lead up to it somehow.) “How would you feel about being Godfather to Sherlock’s child?”
Lestrade nearly spills his drink all over the table.
--------------------
John has staged a coup.
Or, perhaps, less a coup, and more a jailbreak.
Sherlock was nowhere in sight when morning came. The only evidence he was there at all was the harpoon on the floor of the nursery and the distasteful, slightly crusty patch on John’s sheets. (Not to mention the spinning, churning, heaving state of John’s mind).
He leaves the twins with Annette after breakfast and tells her he is going for a walk.
It’s not a lie; he walks, and walks, and walks, until he is off the Holmes estate and on the main road. Then it’s just the case of phoning a cab and getting on the train. He is in London within three hours and it is inordinately good to be back.
The whirling dervish that is Westminster at lunch hour is like a balm to his reeling mind (he wonders if this is why Sherlock loves it so much; if it is because of the chaos and the rush, the turmoil of people and cars and busses and tourists and cameras and dogs and drunks and shouting and laughter and crying - if this spinning, dazzling, grinding, ghastly mess of a city is somehow able to make the calamitous tumult of his restless mind more bearable.)
Squaring his shoulders, John sets off through the throngs of tourists (infuriating) and business men (intimidating) and students (grubby), all but battling his way to Mycroft’s office. (It is fabulous. It is like being home. He forgot, in the mayhem of child-raising, what it was like to be in London.)
Anthea (Leanne) is expecting him. (Of course.)
“Mr. Holmes is in a meeting just now, Mr. Watson, but he’ll be with you in half an hour. Would you care to wait in his office?”
John has been in Mycroft’s office before but it has been months. He takes a seat in one of the overstuffed burnished leather armchairs around the coffee table and lets the opulence sink in.
It is an office worthy of something out of an eighties BBC sitcom; something like Rumpole of the Bailey, or Yes Minister, perhaps. Dark wood furniture, leather-bound tomes adorning towering book cases; a lazy susan with cut crystal decanters of amber liquids. John, if he weren’t so busy hating everything about his brother-in-law that he can find to hate, would be amused. (Mycroft is a 41-year-old masquerading as a 60-year-old. John suspects he has been that way since the age of 16.)
Everything is very much the same as the last time he was here - except for one thing. John’s eye catches on one of the books lying on the coffee table next to the chair he’s in. It’s a massive thing, bound with padded leather and embossed with gold. It’s not that that catches his eye, though; it’s the title of the thing, etched deep in elegant, curling golden script.
Rosie, it says (might as well scream).
John frowns, and gingerly picks the book up. The binding creaks as he opens it to the first page. He is surprised to find a handwritten title page (straight lines of text in a neat, elegant script), and as he skims over it he begins to realise that his gut instinct was right: this book was left here for a reason. It was left here for him.
The inscription reads:
Rosalyn Cordelia Holmes.
April 4, 1978 - September 2, 1981
And she was as fair as the rose in May..
The pages of the book are thick and heavy. John turns the page and his breath leaves him in a shuddery puff.
On the right hand page is a grainy, yellowing picture of a newborn baby wrapped in pink. The facing page is an orderly collage of memorabilia (birth certificate, plastic bracelet, inked foot and hand prints on cream paper).
Underneath the picture, some more writing in the same elegant hand that wrote the title page. You were born on the 4th of April, 1978, and on that day it snowed, most unseasonably. The nurses said it was a blessing. You opened your eyes and we fell in love.
John knows what he will see before he even turns the page.
There are four pictures, two on each page, also grainy and yellowing. An exhausted woman propped up in a hospital bed, cradling a bundle of blankets. A handsome man with twinkling eyes, sitting in a chair with legs crossed, grinning at a sleeping newborn baby. A teenaged boy in his school uniform, sitting (washboard straight) on the same chair, holding the baby as if it might explode at any moment. And a younger child, once more on the same chair, in a ruffled uniform with leaves stuck in his unruly brown curls, staring at the baby in his arms with unbridled fascination and achingly familiar eyes.
He has never seen a picture of Sherlock as a young boy. Eastwell Manor may have been Sherlock’s childhood home but if there are pictures of him and Mycroft as children, Celeste must keep them under lock and key. (Perhaps she finds the sentimentality offensive. John had somehow assumed that there wouldn’t be any pictures.) Nor has he ever seen (or heard mention of, except in the vaguest sense) Sherlock’s father. Or his sister.
Despite himself, John turns the page again. And then again. And again.
They are, essentially, normal family pictures (though coming from the Holmes family, that seems somehow extraordinary). Celeste and the baby coming home. Mycroft attempting to give his sister a bottle. Sherlock holding her at arms length, his starched shirt covered in puke. The baby asleep in a familiar crib (the one that even this minute holds his own babies). The father (what was his name? John has no idea.) lying on his back in the grass, the baby on his stomach, both fast asleep in the sun.
Pictures of Sherlock (young and gangly, keen eyed, too skinny by halves), holding her. Pictures of Sherlock feeding her. A picture of Sherlock unwrapping present after present for her on her first birthday. A picture of Sherlock lying on his stomach in front of the fireplace in the sitting room with the baby on her stomach next to him, pointing at something or other in what appears to be a biology text. A picture of Sherlock with a measuring tape clutched between his teeth, a pencil wedged firmly behind his ear, clearly trying to get a wriggly one year old to lie flat and straight so he can measure her. Pictures of Sherlock swinging her around in the air, both of them laughing, matched curly brown hair flying around their heads in a blur. Picture after picture after picture of Sherlock Holmes as a young boy, obviously completely and utterly smitten with his tiny baby sister. The baby sister he has never, ever mentioned.
The baby sister who shares her name, now, with his daughter.
(John’s stomach lurches at the thought.)
Mycroft is in a grand total of six of the pictures, all at Christmas or during the summer. Celeste is in ten, their father in about twelve. There are nearly one hundred pictures in the album, and only about twenty of them are of the baby alone.
By the time the baby has reached about the age of three, Sherlock has grown leaps and bounds, but he is still a child (ten years old, eleven at most). John drinks the pictures in greedily. (It has never occurred to him, really, to think of Sherlock as a child. Not much. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the the image of Sherlock as a messy, laughing young boy, nearly always with a smile on his face, with the Sherlock he knows (and loves, desperately) - serious and dark and sometimes menacing. The Sherlock he knows can giggle, loves to run and chase and jump and climb, but the Sherlock he knows would never sit on a swing at a playground and grin at a camera for no good reason.)
John had read the inscription, he knows what is coming by the time he reaches the end of the album (and even if it hadn’t been written there, in black and white, he would have guessed).
First, though, there is a page to which an open-topped envelope has been pasted; John reaches in and pulls out page after page of paintings and drawings and scribbles (co-created, the spiky writing at the bottom corner of each tells him, by Sherlock and Rosie Holmes, each one with the date and time meticulously recorded). One page has two hand prints: a larger, blue one, under which Sherlock has written his name, the date, his age (9 and 3/4), and a smaller, pink one - under which is written Rosie, aged 2 and 3/4.
Something clenches in John’s heart and stomach. He places the pages carefully back in the envelope, and turns to the last page.
There is just one picture on this page; a large, black and white print of Sherlock and Rosie, curled around one another on Sherlock’s overly large bed. They are surrounded by a vast amount of detritus, ranging from anatomy text books to the beginnings of a butterfly collection; there are snail shells and bird feathers, chestnuts and pebbles, and a well-loved copy of Treasure Island, left open at one of the richly illustrated plates. Sherlock has a pirate hat on, made of paper, crushed under the weight of his sleeping head, his curls spreading across the pillow. Rosie has an eyepatch on but it has been pushed up to her forehead and she is fast asleep, her arms wrapped around one of Sherlock’s hands. Her hair is long, now, forming perfect dark ringlets that drop down her back.
The inscription on this photo has not been written in the perfect elegant script of the rest of the book but in handwriting that John is all too familiar with (he is used to seeing it ordering him to buy milk or labelling body parts or announcing its owner’s fake suicide). It says, simply, Even pirates need to nap. September 1, 1981. A perfect day..
John’s eyes swim with the weight of what he’s just learned.
A small noise alerts him to the fact that he is no longer alone. He looks up from the book and sees Mycroft, seated across from him, watching him intently.
John had come here ready to punch him, shout at him, make him hurt but suddenly he can’t even find words enough to form a single sentence.
He shakes his head slightly, and turns back to the book in his lap. He traces the line of Sherlock’s back with his index finger. Sherlock has clearly ripped one of his sleeves to make it look like the pirate in the picture book. There is a smudge of dirt across his face. The toddler has a smile on her face, even in sleep.
“What happened?” he asks, without looking up at Mycroft. The way Sherlock’s hair splays across his young face, still so recognisable to John who would probably recognise his husband even if he were blind and it were dark, is entrancing.
“To Rosalyn?” Mycroft’s voice is quiet, not nearly as demanding as John is used to it being. it makes him look up and study his brother-in-law carefully. (Not much to study. His voice may have changed, minutely, but he is still the same unflappably calm and unruffled Mycroft Holmes as he always has been. John sets aside a few seconds to hate him abjectly for being able to talk about things like this without showing a shred of emotion.)
“I’m afraid,” Mycroft continues, one infuriatingly cool eyebrow raising, “that’s rather a long story, Doctor Watson, and I was under the impression that you came here to shout at me.”
“The shouting can wait,” John retorts, as if butter wouldn’t melt. Carefully, he closes the photo album, but he keeps it in his lap, idly tracing the name on the front cover with his fingers. “You obviously wanted me to see this, to find out about her, so I think you should probably start explaining. I’ve got all day, and I rather think you owe me the time.”
Mycroft’s only sign of acquiescence to John’s terms is a slight dip of his head. At that moment, Leanne bustles through the door with a tea tray, but John does not let his expectant gaze fall from Mycroft’s carefully blank face. Leanne succeeds in the monumental task of serving them each a cup of tea while simultaneously texting furiously on her blackberry, and then swoops out of the room once more.
Mycroft sits back in the arm chair, stirring his tea delicately with a spoon. He is stalling, waiting for John to break (but John is an immovable force, and he can sit here and wait all day, whereas Mycroft probably has World War III to prevent by teatime).
Finally, finally Mycroft begins to talk. John sits back and lets him.
------------------------------
“You are here, of course, to berate me for my actions of the past eighteen months and to gain some sort of understanding of my decisions regarding Sherlock’s disappearance, yourself, and your children. You feel wronged; you are angry that we let you suffer while knowing full well that Sherlock was, in fact, alive. In addition to which, you are no doubt feeling conflicted and guilty about my suggestion to you, fifteen months ago, which resulted in the birth of your children, as you believe it to have been solely motivated by some sort of crass power-play between my brother and myself.
“I think, John, that in order to fully understand, you must be willing to more fully understand our family history. It is a rather taboo subject between us, as I think you have gathered, and we are not among the more demonstrative of people. Our family home was happy, and loving, after our own fashion, for a very long time, but we are all peculiar creatures, any one of us will tell you that, and I believe, regrettably, that some of this familial spirit has gone by the wayside in recent years.
“You will have to imagine what it is like to grow up in a house where everyone is incredibly, extraordinarily intelligent. I don’t think anyone really does understand what that’s like, especially when it is combined with the pressures of the upper echelons of polite society and certain anti-social tendencies that we all possess. Our parents married for love but my mother had to fight her way to being accepted by the rest of their social circle. Our Father - his name was Terrence, I can see you wanted to ask - was very, very, very clever, but Sherlock and I were more intelligent than he was by the age of seven. Rosie would have been smarter than all of us, I believe, given her early displays of intelligence, but it does not do to dwell on that.
“I do not think, John, that you have fully grasped just how intelligent Sherlock is. Don’t look at me like that, it’s a simple fact. You cannot grasp it because you are not a genius. He has a nearly photographic memory and, yes, he probably has a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome; nothing as severe as autism, but it is certainly a way of functioning, of thinking, that is vastly different from that of other people. He is not a sociopath, much as he likes to paint himself as such, but he is not fond of other people and he has a problem with traditional ideas of morality - but that is as much a result of his upbringing than anything.
“Yes, I’m sure you had already figured that all out for yourself, but it helps to have it reinforced, does it not?
“More tea? If you’re sure then. Let’s see. Our parents were incredibly smart but they were also quite often absent. I believe they worked for departments of the government that have technically never existed, as well as for various private contractors across the world. Sherlock has, if you like, taken up the family business, though he’s given it a name for the first time. They helped to catch criminals - but they were also very involved in the espionage that was rife throughout Europe in the seventies and eighties.
“We were mostly raised by nannies of negligible intellect, and none of them lasted very long. Sherlock is seven years my junior and when I went off to boarding school at eleven he was more often than not alone. He was always difficult: curious and loud and prone to throwing tantrums, and no one really knew how to handle him. He was a strange child and of course he was taunted and teased from a very young age by his peers. The difference was that he cared what they were saying about him. It made him volatile and upset. He desperately wanted to be accepted but he didn’t know how to go about doing it; he didn’t have the facilities in place to cultivate proper friendships with his peers.
“Rosie was born when Sherlock was seven and it was pretty much love at first sight. She adored him and he was fascinated by her, by the possibility of her, but also by the person she was. I was fourteen and more often than not at school; I barely knew her, though she was certainly a joy. She liked everyone, she was sunny and happy and very quickly she became incredibly astute for a baby. Sherlock spent all day with her; when a new nanny came in he would even insist on caring for her instead of letting the nanny do it. He was fiercely protective of her. I think that is something that is very important for you to understand. From the moment he saw her he decided that he would do anything to keep her safe, because he loved her.
“I believe he had already come to understand that he would never fit in to society at large. Preschool had been enough to show him that. He was alone and he felt like what they called him; like a freak. Rosie didn’t see him like that, though, and of course she didn’t treat him like a child, which he hated more than anything. It didn’t matter that she was only a baby - I think that Sherlock convinced himself that only she would ever understand him and take him as he was, rather than at face value.
“I was quite often jealous of them. I felt left out, and also a little jilted. Sherlock had somewhat worshipped me, until I went to school. It will no doubt surprise you to learn that we were very close. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for leaving him.
“Yes, well, anyway. Be that as it may. When you asked what happened to her, I believe you meant how did she die? Yes, I thought so. That’s Sherlock’s story to tell, if you ever want the details. It is not necessary to know the full circumstances to understand the implications of the event. Sherlock was protecting her against certain danger from intruders who wished to kidnap them. He had formulated a plan to keep Rosie safe but he was only ten years old, facing against three fully grown men. Rosie was scared, she was only three; she fell down the stairs while Sherlock was trying to defend them both. We believe it was very quick for her.
“Her death destroyed Sherlock. He succeeded in evading kidnaping by managing to knock the men out using several booby traps but when he discovered that Rosie had fallen... I was the one to find them, I had gone into the village with the chauffeur to buy dinner for us all as our parents were abroad. Sherlock ... Pardon me. Sherlock was just clutching her to his chest and screaming. They were sitting in a puddle of one of the men’s blood. It... I remember it was even in his hair, but he didn’t care. It took three of us to pry her away from him.
“After he stopped crying, he didn’t talk to anyone for months. I mean, not a word. Mummy sent him to the best psychologists she could find but he did nothing except sit and stare at the wall and play violin for nearly six months. During those six months, our father was assassinated while abroad on a contracted mission in Estonia. He had amassed rather a lot of enemies. After his funeral, Sherlock began to talk again, but he has never been the same.
“He blamed himself, you see. He still does. He feels that it was his fault that his plan was unsuccessful, that he had been too busy fending off three trained assassins to realise that one of them had pushed her down the stairs. During those six months, I think he decided that his best option was never to let anyone get close to him again, because then he could never be responsible for them getting hurt.
“Of course, then he met you, John. I do not think you realise how momentous it is, that Sherlock even let you be his friend, much less fall in love with you.
“What’s the point? The point, John, is that when Jim Moriarty threatened to kill you, Sherlock did something he hasn’t done since he was ten years old: he panicked. He had tried and failed to save the last person he’d loved and tried to protect, and he absolutely couldn’t let that happen to you. So he was not only trying to outsmart the smartest man he’d ever met, besides me of course, he was second guessing himself the entire time. He hasn’t trusted me for many years and I admit, I have not helped myself in that regard, so he did not think to ask for my help, because he believed I would betray him.
“I worked out his stunt three weeks after his disappearance. Mummy and I decided not to tell you because it was the best way to keep both of you safe. I hope that you are not labouring under some idea that Sherlock has been on an extended holiday. He has single handedly brought down some of the most nefarious criminals across the globe, and he has done it all to keep you safe.
“But of course, the best way to keep him safe was to get him to come back home. And of course, there was always the danger, Doctor Watson, that you might succumb to the depression and give up. That was an unacceptable possibility, so I had to act in the best way I could see fit to keep both of you alive until I could get him home. The plan had the added benefit, of course, of providing Sherlock with the thing he has wanted since the age of seven but thought himself incapable and unworthy of having: a family.
“Even without recent events, Sherlock would never have asked you about children because he believed himself so unsuited to the task. You would never have brought it up because you thought he would have hated the idea. So I brought it up instead. I expect one day, you might both thank me.
“I have no regrets on this subject, John. I understand that you are angry with me, and with him, and with Mummy, for keeping this from you, but I hope that in time, you will come to understand that all of us have been acting in your best interests. Perhaps it is true, that as your husband, Sherlock ought to have consulted with you when the situation arose, but I hope that now you know more about him, you might begin to understand why he felt he could not.
“My brother is a very scared, very fragile man, John. I think you know this already, and you love him in spite of it. He and Irene are still working to catch Moran but I think they will succeed, and soon. I hope that when he has managed that, you will let him come back to you.
“He loves you, John, desperately so. It’s quite ... touching, actually. There’s no need for that expression from you. I do actually have emotions, it may surprise you to know. And I love my brother very much. I just want him to be safe and happy. I think we share that desire.
“I have also been working to stomp out Moriarty’s web and soon, I think, we will have succeeded in making it safe for you to return to London - as safe as it ever has been, at least. Until then, I hope you will remain at Eastwell, as it is most easily defensible. The threat to you and your children is very real, John, I need you to understand that. You ought not to have come here today, but I understand why you have.
“I think that just about wraps up everything I wanted to say. Do you have any questions?
“Of course, please. Feel free to take the album. Mummy will probably be wondering where it is, anyway. Now. If that’s all? I do have an urgent phone call with the Belgian prime minister that ought to be made before the lazy man goes home at four.
“Good day, John. My love to the children.”
-----------------
Mycroft leaves him in his office with an empty tea cup in one hand and Rosalyn’s photo album in the other.
John sits there for nearly ten minutes, soaking in everything he just heard. Mycroft had spoken quickly and efficiently, barely pausing for sips of tea and rarely acknowledging John’s comments. If John didn’t know better, he’d have believed the entire thing had been scripted.
He does not, now, know what to do.
He sets the tea cup in its saucer on the table (deliberately five centimetres from the elegant wooden coaster).
Photo album in hand, he stands, squares his shoulders, and walks out of the building. A familiar-looking body guard accosts him in the foyer and leads him to a fairly innocuous-looking black sedan (though John’s eye is well-trained enough to know that it is armoured and fitted with bullet-proof glass).
He does not register the drive back to Kent. His finger traces the embossing on the cover of the album and he watches the countryside fly past from behind tinted windows, and slowly processes the information he just had dumped on him.
He is not jealous of the information; he does not wish he’d known sooner, about their little sister. He has never wanted or needed Sherlock to tell him anything other than what he wanted to tell him - except in two very discrete instances: anything to do with drug use, and anything to do with faking his own death.
John has always known that Sherlock had secrets, lots of them, and he has never wanted to know them unless Sherlock particularly wanted to share them. Even now, he feels slightly uneasy knowing what Sherlock clearly didn’t want to tell him.
When he arrives back at Eastwell, the twins are freshly bathed, lying on their stomaches in their rompers, playing at throwing soft toys at each other. Annette has the TV on, and is lying on the couch next to them, but when John comes in the room and crosses immediately to the floor to scoop both of them up and hold them close, she switches it off and slides, quietly, out of the room, leaving the three of them blessedly alone.
Teddy laughs and Rosie gives a happy gurgle when John tries to cover them both in kisses. Rosie’s hand flails and lands on his nose; John kisses that too.
Later, Teddy is sitting happily in his bouncer, chewing on a piece of brightly coloured plastic. John is lying on his back with Rosie asleep on his stomach. One of his hands rests possessively on her tiny back. He closes his eyes and lets the aching seep through him.
He aches for Sherlock, for the boy he had been, and for his baby sister, snatched by evil men at far too young an age.
He hates to play right into Mycroft’s hands but the bastard is right, understanding does help. Marginally. His anger is not nearly so tumultuous and insistent, now. It is still there, but it is overshadowed by something else: love? relief? pity? longing? A strange mixture of all of these things and more.
Rosie begins to stir on his stomach and John sits up to hold her properly.
There are no excuses for what Sherlock did to him, of course. Mycroft’s story doesn’t make things better (despite the fact that it does make it slightly less bad. Less bad is not better. Not in this case.) John wants to talk to Sherlock, now, to discuss everything he’s just learned, but he knows that he should wait a while. Sherlock also has things to learn, things about being one half of a whole, things about being in a family, and John doesn’t know how else to get him to understand but by keeping him away.
Until Sherlock starts to understand what it is he did wrong, John doesn’t know what to do but wait. Perhaps it is cruel, show Sherlock how to be part of a larger entity by forcing him to feel like an empty half, but for all that Sherlock Holmes is brilliant, he can be incredibly difficult to teach.
John loves Sherlock, will always love Sherlock (no longer knows how not to love him), but that does not mean he can forgive him for eighteen months of torture and not possessing an ounce of remorse for his actions.
(He hadn’t even said ‘sorry’. John can’t remember ever hearing Sherlock apologise and while usually it wouldn’t matter, for some reason, inexplicably, it does now.)
Teddy drops his chewing toy and starts to cry, and just like that, John’s allocated introspection is cut short. He still has two tiny lives to take care of, so for now, that is what he will do.
It will be a while, before he can face Sherlock again. (Even knowing what he now knows. Even though he now understands Sherlock’s actions were born at least partially of panic, rather than from pure rationality. It helps, certainly, but it does not erase his pain. It only marginally soothes his ire.) John is still and will probably continue to be unbearably angry with Sherlock, for thinking that he could pretend to be dead and then waltz back into John’s life without a single question asked.
(It takes no small amount of determination for John to stick to his guns on this. The temptation to call Sherlock, to beg him to come back and never to leave again, is rife. John’s fingers literally ache to dial the number that will bring Sherlock back to him, but he will never forgive himself for caving, for allowing Sherlock to walk all over him, for letting himself be taken advantage of by the madman he accidentally married.)
(No accident about it, of course. No power in the universe could have kept the two of them apart. John’s fate had been sealed the second they laid eyes on each other, that fateful day at St. Bart’s.)
(It occurs to John that Mike Stamford owes him a drink or ten.)
They were like magnets. Powerful, incredibly strong magnets. The kind of magnets which, once they’ve come into contact with each other, can only be separated with exceedingly large amounts of pressure. John and Sherlock had combined to create John&Sherlock; if Sherlock’s death had not undone that combination then his resurrection wouldn’t either. It would take time, and effort, and more likely than not a great deal more pain, before they could be set to rights again.
Sherlock Holmes lives his life in a warzone, and John is a soldier, but his children are not. They are helpless and defenceless and more precious than anything in the entire sorry world. (More precious than John’s own life. More precious even than Sherlock himself. He knows, from the light he’d seen (briefly, too briefly, Christ it hurts in that Sherlock-shaped hole in his chest) in Sherlock’s eyes, that he is not alone in this assessment of affairs as they stand. John(&Sherlock) are now, of course (and not necessarily through their own agency), John(&Sherlock)&Teddy&Rosie.)
Sherlock and John live their lives (have lived their lives) in a warzone but circumstances have changed, priorities have shifted. (The difference is as great as if Australia decided to up its sticks and move in between Europe and North America. It is a seismic change in the topography of John’s instincts.) A warzone is no place to raise children.
If he could, John would pick up his two tiny children and high-tail it back to London (as far out of the clutches of the entire nefarious clan of Holmeses as he could ever reasonably hope to get) as soon as possible. He needs a break, he needs a breath of fresh air; he needs time to think and regroup. More importantly, he needs to be away from the people who had plotted and schemed and manipulated him without a single shred of compunction to be seen. Celeste Holmes was last to be seen nibbling daintily at a scone, showing not a sign of contrition as she watched John stabbing angrily at his eggs. Mycroft had emotionally compromised him into neglecting to punch him in his very punch-worthy nose. John and his blessed, perfect children had been used as bait in their twisted ploys.
(His feelings should be complicated by the very fact that their ploys seem to have been beneficial and successful - namely, in that both he and Sherlock were still alive and in possession of two delightful and un-looked-for bundles of joy. He refuses to think about this, though, and focuses very hard on his righteous and justified wrath.)
As much as he wants to escape, though, he cannot. He does not have the luxury of freedom of movement. Sherlock’s words (and, later, Mycroft’s) have made him keenly aware in a way that he hasn’t been in nearly eighteen months of the possibility that he may be being watched (and not for the purpose of keeping him out of harm‘s way).
For all that he does not trust a single member of the Holmes family as far as he could throw them in certain matters such as delicacy, adherence to social convention and moral rectitude, he does trust them implicitly when it comes to an obsessive care to detail (especially as concerns security).
Now, of course, he understands where that reflex stems from. He can think of no place better to keep his children safe than under the collectively watchful eyes of Celeste and Mycroft Holmes. He trusts no one in the world with solving puzzles and bringing criminals to justice as much as he trusts his husband (though he vehemently disapproves of his method).
For the time being, then, John is trapped. He does not have to (and will indeed continue to refuse to) talk to Sherlock’s mother in order to maintain residence in her house. He knows, in theory, that every security system is fallible, that every house has its weakness, but he is a great believer in keeping the odds as low as is reasonably possible.
Later, he will look back and realise there never was a choice. He has always been a terrible chess player, and he was up three to one against the cleverest strategic minds in the country.
He has been, since the very beginning, spectacularly out-manoeuvred. In the end, the decision to stay is not, in fact, a decision at all.