I

"Look at the nettle that I hold in my hand! Around the cave where you are sleeping grow many of them; only those nettles, or the ones found in churchyards may you use. You must pick them, even though they blister and burn your hands; then you must stamp on them with your bare feet until they become like flax. And from that you must twine thread with which to knit eleven shirts with long sleeves. If you cast one of these shirts over each of the eleven swans, the spell will be broken..."

-Hans Christian Anderson

Sherlock jumped.

John did not speak—he raced forward to identify the body, he was pushed back, he watched Sherlock being carried away. Later he identified and gave a statement and wept but he did not speak and that night he returned to Baker Street. He put Mrs. Hudson to bed with a handful of soothers, tucked the blanket tight around her, and when she begged him not to disappear as well he bent over and kissed her on the forehead but he did not speak.

When she had passed out wrapped in an ancient quilt on Sherlock's bed John went upstairs, grabbed his gun, spare bullets, a bottle of water, three pairs of pants, a clean jumper, and a field surgeon's kit, put them in an ancient rucksack, and slipped out the front door.

In the morning when Mrs. Hudson woke up it was still dark except for a grey winter light that seeped in from the window. She turned and found a note on the pillow next to her.

Gone to see a man about a bird. Keep the candle burning for us. -John

Mrs. Hudson smoothed her hand over the crinkles in the paper.

"My boys," she murmured. She sat up, neatened the covers on his bed, and left the room. A moment later she returned with a tall white candle and a small clay dish. She placed the candle on the dish and put them both in the window, lit a match with a quiet hiss and held it to the wick. Fire bloomed, filling the room with dancing orange light that cast strange shadows over her face. Mrs. Hudson looked hopeful but mostly tired and if someone had looked up from the street they would have seen only the light from the candle.

It was still dark. On his walk through London John kept his eyes glued to the pavement, searching for something. He found it on the corner of a disreputable street where Sherlock had often met with members of his homeless network. The feather was black as tar, too big to be from a crow, had to be a raven or a swan or some other large and intractable bird. John picked it up and twirled it gently, ran one blunt finger down its edge, a soft sigh on his lips. There was a name there, too, a name he did not speak. He slipped the feather inside his jumper, replaced it with a thick white envelope, and continued walking until he reached the graveyard where Sherlock was going to be buried. Sherlock's grave was far away from the entrance. There was already a long rectangular hole splitting the damp soil, waiting for his coffin.

John knelt in the frozen mud, the night pressing down against his shoulders. He reached into his jumper and pulled out the black feather, ran it over his lips with another sigh. Closed his eyes in momentary indulgence before dropping the feather into the grave. It sifted to the ground before landing on the dirt, just where Sherlock's head would lie. John tightened his lips and stood. He found a stand of trees close by and hid himself beneath their branches to keep vigil until the body arrived.

The next day it rained, and the feather grew thick with mud. John cleaned it as best he could and put it back onto the icy soil before returning to the trees. Nobody visited the graveyard in the cold rain and he was left unmolested as water carved new pathways down his back. The day after that was Sherlock's funeral.

John hid, just distant enough that Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft and Lestrade would not see him, close enough that he could see the coffin carried in, could see it lowered slowly into the ground until it hit the dirt with a heavy thump. He didn't turn away until they began to rain earth upon the wood. Mrs. Hudson, he noted, did not lean on Mycroft. The weakness she'd shown when she asked John to stay had passed. She held herself tall and strong, as if she were not a lady but Britain herself, standing watch over the body, ready to guard it until she was no longer needed. John turned then and went further into the woods around the gravesite, hoisting his bag higher on his shoulders, making his way towards the small brick chapel that sat forgotten on the farthest edge of the property. In the distance he could hear the muffled sound of cars and the busy streets of London, and then he heard a twig crack at the edge of the woods.

The youngest member of Sherlock's homeless network stood staring at him, John's white envelope clutched in one hand. When John had left it in the street it had been filled with a letter and twenty pound notes. Now the boy handed it to him, and John felt the unmistakable shapes of a needle and a wooden comb beneath the paper. As soon as he took it the dirty boy retreated to a safer distance. The boy paused at the edge of the woods, looking around nervously, feeling the exposure that came from standing beside an abandoned church where the eye of God is strongest.

"Good luck, Dr. Watson," the boy said, and met his eyes before darting away. John nodded at his retreating back, placed the envelope carefully into his jumper, and turned back towards the woods.

"Where is John, Mrs. Hudson?"

Mycroft's tone was weary. She put her hand on his shoulder, frowning as she read the lines of guilt and sorrow on his face, which was thinner and grayer than she was used to.

"I'll make you a cup of tea, Mycroft," she said, her hand tightening. "And then you can tell me what happened with Sherlock."

The tea kettle was already boiling. She poured three cups, left one steaming on the counter with milk, as John preferred it, and a healthy spiking of lemon and sugar for her Sherlock. The other cups she placed on the table in front of herself and Mycroft. He took his, lifted it to his lips, but did not drink.

"It's my fault," he said, and put the cup down with a shaking hand. "I should be punished, but there is no one to do it for me." Now that John's gone. He did not say it aloud but they both heard it nevertheless.

Mrs. Hudson smiled at him sadly, and reached out to cover his hand with her own. "You are being punished, dear. You don't get to save him this time. You have to watch and wait, like the rest of us."

He blinked twice, and a small mean part of her relished the fact that she'd just surprised Mycroft Holmes. Then, with a motherly sigh, she pushed a plate of biscuits closer to him.

"Now. How is that dear assistant of yours?"

Mycroft blinked again, then reached out to take a biscuit. "She is well. Thank you for asking." He bit into his biscuit. Swallowed past the lump in his throat.

John did not stop walking until he reached the Thames. He passed a few docks and several ambitious fishermen with their lines deep in the murky waters. On either side London stretched vibrant and alive despite the overabundance of grey. It roared at him, begged him not to go, to weep with it for its most beloved son. John pulled himself away. He continued down the bank of the river until he found a young woman wrapped in a filthy patched parka that had once been the color of a ripe tomato. She wore a baseball cap over thinning hair, and her face was almost as filthy as the jacket. When John approached she stood rapidly, her movements twitching with the restlessness of a good high.

"Here, Dr. Watson," she said, and pressed a muddy key into his hand. He pocketed it with a nod. "Yer boats down that aways. Listen, doctor…" she trailed off, her left eye twitching. She met his eyes and there was an earnestness in hers that had nothing to do with the drug. "Is it true? Is he really…"

John nodded. His expression did not change.

"Oh," she said. Then, "he was always very kind to us." She flushed, as if caught doing something she shouldn't, and quickly spun away before leading him further down the little beach. A lumpy shape covered by a tarp and seagull droppings was tucked into the sand. The girl pulled the tarp away, struggling with the weight until John took the other side and together they ripped it off in a flutter of sand to reveal a small row boat. Rickety wooden oars were piled across the top. It had once been painted white, until time and weather had peeled most of the paint away and turned the remainders a dark grey. Lining the hull of the boat were stalks of stinging nettles, their spiky green leaves the brightest thing along the beach. John slipped off his bag, dropped it into the boat, and with the help of the girl pushed it into the water. He boarded with a heavy thump, took the oars into his hands and began to row downstream. The nettles clung to his clothes and pierced his skin, and soon he was covered in tiny cuts. He shrugged off the pain and continued to row even as pinpricks of blood seeped out to dot his clothes.

The girl watched him until he disappeared in the wake of a large ferry, then sat back on the beach and pulled a syringe out of her pocket. She uncapped it and held it in her teeth as she rolled up her sleeve, then inserted the needle into the crook of her right arm and slowly pushed the plunger down.

"There was an article in the paper today about Sherlock. It wasn't flattering."

It was some time after the funeral. Mycroft was back at Baker Street, having what had become a weekly tea with Mrs. Hudson. He sat on her pink couch in the fading light and glared into his tea cup while she watched him from the edge of an ancient arm chair. In another room a fresh white candle burned in an empty window.

"And?" Mrs. Hudson asked, stirring sugar into her tea with a small spoon.

Mycroft grit his teeth. "I let it run."

"Good," she said, taking a sip of her tea with a sad smile. "You're learning."

John had a terrible fever.

He had rowed for a long time down the river Thames. The cold and the nettles in the boat had left his skin chapped and bleeding. By the time he escaped London proper and arrived at the edge of the woods and hid his boat and traveled through the forest and found the cabin and used the dirty key given to him by the girl, he was pale and sweating and starting to see colors that did not exist. The door opened with a rusty whine. Inside was an ancient cot and a dirt floor. In one corner was a pile of canned goods of indeterminable age and other food packaged to survive the end of the world. John collapsed on the cot, pulled out his water and field kit. He chugged half the bottle before fumbling open the canvas pouch and pulling out two paracetemol. He threw them back, finished his water, and fell shivering onto the cot. There was a scratchy wool blanket on the foot of the mattress. John pulled it over him and curled into a ball and almost opened his mouth to cry for help before he remembered. He clamped his jaw shut and slapped a hand over his mouth and in his head he chanted "don't speak don't speak don't speak" so that even in the height of his sickness he would keep silent.

He fell into a fevered sleep, and he dreamed; in his dream the sky was raining black feathers, and Sherlock stood naked beneath the yellow street lamp in front of 221 Baker Street. John came up to him, put his hand on Sherlock's face, sighed when Sherlock turned to place a kiss against his palm. There was no sound in the dream but Sherlock's lips were moving and he thought that Sherlock was saying his name. Then the feathers stopped being soft. They turned to black glass and as they fell they sliced Sherlock's skin to ribbons, and then he was bleeding and John tried to cover him with his own body but the feathers fell through him as if he were the ghost, not Sherlock. Sherlock's lips moved again (John, I love you, John, it was all for you, John, John, John) and then the light left his eyes and dream Sherlock was as dead as the real one.

John woke with a start, his hand clasped across his mouth, tears streaming down his face. He looked down and saw blood on his shaking hands, and it took a moment to remember that it came from the stinging nettles. His fever had broken in his sleep. He was in Sherlock's secret cabin, the place of last resort Sherlock had shared with him just once before he died (in the unlikely event that Moriarty wins, John, or the apocalypse arrives before we are ready. Just because it is improbable does not mean it is impossible, don't be so boring, acknowledging the possibility of plagues or zombies is perfectly healthy).

John pushed off the blankets and stumbled over to the pile of supplies, looking for water. When he sat down he saw that packets of Sherlock's favorite Jammy Dodgers outweighed the tins of beans and nutritious food. He picked up a packet, turning it over in trembling hand, then crumpled around it, sobbing, holding the biscuits like a frightened child with a teddy bear.

When the sobs stopped he wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his jumper. Then he opened the crushed packet in his lap and ate the few biscuits that were still whole. When he felt stronger John stood and emptied his rucksack neatly in a spare corner. Hefting the empty bag over his shoulder, he left the cabin and began to walk back to the boat filled with stinging nettles that waited for him on the bank of the river. Along the way he passed several stands of stinging nettles. At each one he paused to pick as many stalks as he could, blood running down his hands to stain the green leaves with crimson.

Later he finds an old pot and fills it with boiling water. He soaks the nettles until the useless flesh rots from their stalks and all that is left are long fibers. They cut his hands as he lays them out to comb them into the pliant strands that he will eventually spin into thread. The next morning, and every morning after that, he gathers nettles; and every afternoon he soaks them; and in the evenings he twists them together in his ruined fingers and repeats this day in and day out until the summer ends and he has a pile of nettle thread sitting in the corner of Sherlock's cabin.

There was a dirty young man sitting next to Mrs. Hudson's front door on a square of cardboard ripped from a pizza box. An ugly dog named Trevor huddled against his side. Mrs. Hudson, on her way to a nearby park, stopped beside the man and rummaged through her purse. She pulled out a small plastic bag filled with biscuits, then dropped them in the man's lap and patted Trevor on the head before stepping into the street.

Fifteen minutes later Mrs. Hudson sat on a bench beside a pond and threw crumbs to the pigeons that gathered at her feet. When the bread was gone she sighed and thought about days past where she would have laughed at the old woman stereotypical enough to sit on a park bench and feed the birds. One of the pigeons wandered too close to her foot and she kicked at it half-heartedly, then immediately felt bad. To compensate, she pulled a biscuit out of her pocket and set it on the ground with a muttered, "Sorry, dear."

There was a loud caw from behind her, and the pigeons took off in a flutter. Mrs. Hudson sat a little straighter and tightened her hand around her pocket book as a large raven landed on the ground in front of her. There was something alarming about the bird. It tilted its head, beady eyes too intelligent and too wild to belong to the city.

"Hello, you," she murmured, and leaned forward. The bird shone even in the dull ditchwater light of London in the summer. It hopped from one foot to the other and everything in its bearing screamed wild and unbalanced and Mrs. Hudson got the sense that this bird would be an arrogant bastard if not for the insanity that seemed to leak off its glossy feathers. She stopped breathing. Trembling, she reached a hand out, snatching her fingers back when it launched itself into the sky with a violent caw. When it was out of sight Mrs. Hudson stood; and then she was running, her bag clunking against her side, her sensible shoes keeping her from tripping on the pavement. People stopped to watch the crazy old lady hobble past them, but Mrs. Hudson was panicked and took no notice. She kept going until she reached the end of Baker Street, and even then did not stop until she was in front of 221 and could look up and see the candle burning in Sherlock's window. The orange light was too small against the gray smoky air of London but it burned nonetheless. She let out a sob of relief and pressed a hand to her heart.

Across the street a raven landed on top of a lamp post. It shifted twice, its claws digging into the metal and sending flurries of black paint to land on the sidewalk below.

Note:

If you like this story, you'll really like my novel, "Path of Needles," a dark urban fantasy with a heavy fairy tale influence.

You can learn more at my website, , or follow my Tumblr ( ) for additional drabbles and other fanfic-y goodness.