Dr. John Watson

“Mary! Our friend with the human organ fetish is at it again.”

John freezes with his fingers poised on his laptop, and rethinks that particular sentence a couple times. Okay, maybe it isn’t exactly the kind of thing most people would shout at their spouse while she is putting your daughter down for a nap. But the Watsons aren’t most people. And the headline is too good to resist.

BODY FOUND IN ABANDONED FUNHOUSE. POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUES.

Below that, in smaller letters, the front page of the [newspaper] proclaims, The Butcher of Darrow strikes again. The similarities to the murder on the beach nearly a year earlier are unmistakable. As Sherlock would uncharitably have put it, even the idiots running the police station could not have failed to notice the connections. Both bodies were elaborately posed. Both crime scenes were pristine. And both victims were missing vital organs.

But if this is a serial killer, he is incredibly picky about who he kills. And incredibly good. How the hell do you catch someone like that?

In all the usual ways, this morning is like any other. It’s the week-end, but not that much past dawn; John has never been a heavy sleeper, and the first tendrils of light usually pull him from slumber. The leaves on the trees haven’t begun to turn yet, but something in the air declares that the earth has tipped on its axis towards autumn.

The only thing that’s strange, the only bit of the world that’s not quite like it was the day before, exists only in John’s mind. And while it isn’t a big thing in the grand scheme of the world, John can’t think of anything more completely bollocking insane. Nothing more important, nothing more extraordinary.

John remembers.

Bits and pieces filter up through his consciousness like a dream he’s half-forgotten, but instead of fading, the images grow stronger with each passing moment, filling with color and reality.

Gunpowder, treason, and plot.

Please, John, forgive me, for all the hurt I have caused you.

Yes, of course I forgive you.

Today you sit between the woman you have made you wife, and the man you have saved - in short, the two people who love you most in the world.

This is where you sit, and this is where we sit and listen. And then we decide if we want you or not.

The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future are my privilege.

He better wrap up warm. There’s an east wind coming.

John sits up abruptly in a bed that’s cold, in a room that’s empty save for the most basic furniture, and he buries his face in his hands, shoulder shaking with a year’s worth of emotion, brought to bear upon him all at once. His cheeks are wet, but he doesn’t care; there’s no one here to see, and maybe he deserve them, anyway. Of course I forgive you. Of course he forgave Sherlock.

Of course he forgives Mary.

Maybe she doesn’t deserve to be forgiven; maybe neither of them do. But Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan know John better than anyone he has ever met, and they’re right when they say that this is the life he wants. A life where nothing is ever steady and certain, yes, but one that’s a battlefield, with demons to be defeated: Moriarty, and Magnussen, and dozens of other less illustrious monsters. A life where he doesn’t have to traverse the battlefield alone.

When John rises from bed, he is surprisingly calm. His tears have been shed, his roiling emotions brought back into line. He showers, and dresses, and takes the key from the side table to the flat downstairs.

Maybe his new memories have given him new shape. Maybe he walks a little differently. Maybe there are new lines on his face.

When he slips into the flat, all is quiet. He doesn’t stop at the bedroom, where Mary must still be sleeping, but instead goes to the kitchen, where he beats some eggs in a bowl. Mary has always liked it when he makes breakfast.

There’s something in the air today that John just can’t shake. He’s been on edge for a couple of weeks now, and it doesn’t escape his notice that he’s driving everyone around him crazy, but today is different. Today, he woke up more than irritated; he’s angry. Today, what has been dismissible anxiety has transformed into a low buzzing in his ear that leaves him sure that something is waiting around every corner.

He knows what psychiatrists call this, and he knows he should ring Dr. Bloom. He doesn’t. It’ll go away, John tells himself as he heads to work no long after dawn, before Mary has even woken. It’ll be fine.

Work is no better. John snaps at everyone, especially the high school athletes joshing each other about their Call of Duty scores as they wait in line for physicals. And there’s a sensitive diagnosis that he mucks up completely - bad enough that Dr. Marlowe tells him to, go home already, man. I don’t know what the hell is up, but go home. We’ll cover for you.

“Fuck off,” John tells him under his breath, pushing past in the hall, and everyone avoids him for the rest of the afternoon.

He’s leaving when he sees it: one of those plain white pocket flash drives, sitting on his desk where he’s sure it wasn’t a few minutes before. Across it is A G R A, written in permanent marker block letters. “Jesse, if you’re using my computer to check your email again, I swear to God-“ John sticks his head out of his office door and glares at what’s left of the staff, but they only look at him blankly. “Anyone lose this?” he tries next, but the response is the same. Shrugging, he pockets it and head for home.

Without meaning to, the trip home takes a detour into a pub, John telling himself that he just needs a pint to take an edge off. One pint turns into two - but that’s it, just two - just enough, he insists to himself, to carry him home and into bed.

And maybe if he’s lucky, really fucking lucky, it will even carry him into dreamless sleep.

John doesn't take taxis much these days.

It had always been a little ridiculous in retrospect, the way he and Sherlock had taken London cabs everywhere. London born and bred though he might be, John had only ever stepped into one of those sleek black Fairways once or twice before meeting Sherlock. Black cabs were for tourists, toffs, and Stephen Fry. And for Sherlock Holmes, apparently, racing off on yet another adventure.

Now, John can barely look at them without flinching.

Instead, he is re-acquainting himself with the Tube - with the grime, and the press of people, and those bloody obnoxious Oyster cards that never sodding worked properly. John had had a day of it, too - a visit with Harry (never pleasant), a drink with Greg (in a faint hope of getting the Detective Inspector off his back), some very important mindless browsing to do near Picadilly in order to avoid the job interview he was supposed to be sitting in across town (his therapist would probably ask how it went, so he’d need an excuse for missing the interview by next Thursday).

At Shepard’s Bush tube station, John nudges his way through the rush hour crowd, longing for a real drink and a dreamless sleep in his new, still-bare flat. Without needing to look, he runs his Oyster card against the turnstile reader, only to have an angry beep jolt him out of his mindless march. Insufficient funds, the turnstile’s small screen informs him. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he mutters, and tries again. The beep repeats, and John kicks the barrier with all his might.

A disgruntled line is forming behind him. John tries his card again, to no avail.