BBCSH 'Superstition'

Parts and Bits and Pieces; Magic realism?

Sherlock and John make an effort to read the runes on the wind and to send smoke signals to each other, across the Great Divide.

John counts crows…well, pies, really. Magpies, specifically. Harlequin colours, like Sherlock. At Sherlock's funeral there are first one (sorrow), then two (for… joy? Wait, what?), then four (for a boy) and then seven (secret), eight (wish), nine (kiss) and finally a whole bloody murder.

His hat's already doffed in deference; the intermittent rain trickles down his collar as they clatter and cry in the distance. This is his misery and even the birds—secret, wish, kiss—cannot cure that pervasively stone-grey feeling.

For a week after the service, held at the Holmes estate, John is terribly, horribly angry and Mycroft keeps him sequestered amidst tall quiet pines and stately withdrawing rooms. Keeps him awake at night, it does. Then it passes—the birds were nothing more than birds, alright?—and he begins to grieve for real. He has returned to 221B at Mrs Hudson's weepy insistence (she's suddenly at least a decade older, poor thing) and spends his time sitting in his chair, often in utter darkness.

When he finally ventures out one day, it's to meet up with Lestrade, for a chat and a pint, and that's odd enough to feel as though he's fallen down a rabbit hole. On the way home, Mycroft kidnaps him. Mouths a few—very few—platitudes at him, Anthea thumbs away like a mad thing, tea is offered, refused, and then he's released, thankfully, at a nearby tube stop. And when he arrives back at the familiar old door, there's a horseshoe tacked over it, high up, nearly invisible. It must've been a very small horse, perhaps even a pony, but it's there, undeniable.

Because of this, John ceases to truly grieve before he ever arrives at 'bargaining'. Or perhaps this is bargaining, because he no longer fully believes Sherlock is gone. Whichever stage it is, he doesn't wish to believe, so he simply doesn't. With the exact same power and stubborn determination he believes—no, knows, Sherlock is innocent. Transcendently 'good', like Lucifer (carrying the battle to heaven's gates) or perhaps that mouldy old Greek fellow, the fire-bearer.

Sherlock, of course, is responsible for the horseshoe; the magpies were fortuitously coincidental. He knows John is prey to the same superstitions of every other English gentleman of his years. His own personal wish is to provide his best mate, his friend, a mite of comfort in his absence. Moriarty has damaged John Watson far more than Sherlock will tolerate. He may require to be covert in order to efficiently hunt but John shouldn't suffer. So…

There's a much folded over, quite hefty cheque tucked in the waistcoat pocket of John's new black suiting, along with a worn-out, worse for wear pound note, both done up to resemble rosebuds. From Mycroft's fine hand the cheque, naturally, with the memo 'o/b/o SH' noted precisely in blue ink. He'd not have noticed them for ages but the suit has a bit of mud from the graveyard and while he's puttering around the flat trying to come up with ways of simultaneously believing in Sherlock and acting the freshly widowed soul everyone assumes he is, he finds it. Off to the drycleaners goes the suit, into his desk drawer—by his gun—go the flowers of funds. Safe for a rainy day.

It's the first decent laugh John's had in three weeks, the paper flowers, the wish for wealth stashed discreetly in new garb. And he's only a bit irritated. If Sherlock were about, he'd have a few words with him about the nature of money and how it can't buy love—or loyalty. But he ends up depositing it anyway, come a pouring down Monday when his ancient laptop finally goes arse-up.

Sherlock comes across a rare first-edition of Lewis Carroll in a street stall in Amsterdam. He's there because Moran is there, per his reconnoitering. Soon Moran shan't be anywhere on Earth, thanks to Mycroft's marksmen. In the meantime he conveys the book to a member of the local homeless network and is assured John will awake to an express packet delivery some days hence. He hopes John can sort out his unwrit message and remember to utter aloud those familiar words come the first of the next month: 'white rabbit, white rabbit, white rabbit'. Knowing John as he does, John will do.

It's a joy and a puzzle, both, finding Alice. Sherlock didn't expect to need comfort; it pleases him in an odd way that his attempts to provide solace to John seem to paradoxically alleviate his own loneliness.

John, for his part, has a bit of struggle with his own instinct. He knows Sherlock knows that he knows, but he still really very much wishes to make contact. It's the thing he's missed most—the touch-and-go, awkward-but0effective communication. They've always manage to sort out some way of getting through to one another before, even when they are directly in opposition over minor matters. This, to John, is no different.

But he's a grief-stricken widower, right? So it shan't be easy and it can't be overt.

He takes to feeding the black-furred feline stray that sometimes yowls at Mrs Hudson's rear door. It's very much a stretch but he's fairly sure there's a CCTV camera trained upon it and he's very sure Mycroft will tell Sherlock everything he sees there. Black cats are quite fortunate; with every long soothing stroke to the feral creature he's wishing luck to his absent mate. With every pet to the angular skull and ruffle of the scarred ears, he's thinking 'love' and 'you brilliant arse' and 'how long now?' and sometimes 'wouldn't this have been easier some other way?'

Sherlock, in Munich, is landed upon by a stray bee and 'visited with' for a little while as he drinks his late-morning coffee. He whistles under his breath for the remainder of the day, recalling the fuzzy buzzing rumble and the solid sense of John that permeates him to his core. By the end of day, he's managed to clue Mycroft's information machine into the location of several of Moriarty's compatriots. It's a decent day, work-wise, and he consents to sleep at last in the nearby youth hostel, clutching a raggedy elderly feather pillow and dreaming of John moving quietly amongst hives upon hives, humming.