My first, and possibly last, Sherlock fic – if you could just imagine that the last 35 minutes or so of The Great Game never took place, that would be excellent.
Enjoy!
He had planted the sunflower on a rainy Thursday afternoon. In a tiny terracotta pot he buried the striped seed in a bed of soil, and tried desperately not to think of unmarked graves. He drenched the soil with tap water until it overflowed, and the windowsill glistened with May sunlight.
And then he waited.
Because sometimes, in those darkest of hours, just a flash of colour and life are worth the days, weeks, months of waiting.
"I didn't know you had a green thumb" Lestrade commented, fondling one of the rough, immature leaves. John just smiled as raindrops clung to the window pane, casting the distorted orange light of streetlamps across the Detective Inspector's face.
"Never used to" he replied "It just sort of … happened…"
Lestrade turned to look at John Watson, curled up in the armchair, picking at a loose thread of this jumper's sleeve. Something in his voice unsettled the DI – he wasn't even sure Watson was talking to him. He wasn't even sure it had been an answer to his question.
An awkward silence crept into the room, and sat between the two men. Lestrade searched from something to say to banish it.
"He'll come back you know" was the only thing which made any sense, so he said it, leaning back against the windowsill- long dry, weeks of sunlight having dried the puddle of water.
"Yeah… yeah, of course" The doctor smiled at the officer's silhouette. A smile which didn't reach his tired eyes. Lestrade decided it was close enough, and tried to ignore the tiny flickers of anger and frustration playing just below his calm exterior.
John Watson was not a happy man.
Why was Lestrade here? Why weren't they doing something useful?
"I don't like it any more than you do" Lestrade chimed in, guessing John's train of thought with devastating accuracy.
"Then why are you in here and not out there?" He demanded sharply, before immediately apologising and passing a hand wearily over his face. It wasn't his fault, not really – but in lieu of a more fitting target, the inspector would do.
"Sherlock is clever, and tough and-"
"He's a bloody idiot" John interjected, as though this should be startlingly obvious.
"He's a clever idiot, if you'd believe it. This man is dangerous John, and if it takes Sherlock Holmes going AWOL to get him, then that is what will happen" He finished firmly, before adding more softly "We need him, John. If you don't trust me, then at least trust him"
And that was the problem. Trust. He would never admit, not even to himself without a struggle, but the overriding fear niggling away at him wasn't that Sherlock had gone after a dangerous madman. It was the fact that Sherlock had gone after a madman without John- and that hurt in a way he had never expected.
How could he trust someone like Sherlock? Impossible to figure out, irritatingly childish, thoroughly reckless and yet still, he had trusted him- only to find himself left behind, having made that man the absolute centre of his universe for the past few months. He felt cheated and angry. But mostly he just felt foolish.
"Mycroft has his 'people' looking for him" John said, voice hollow "if he finds Sherlock, will you go after him?" He knew the answer, but he wanted the inspector to look him in the eyes when he decided Sherlock's fate.
"He told us not to. He told me to let him go…" he trailed off.
"And you're going to let him? He's too stubborn to ask for help, of course he told you stay away!"
Lestrade sighed, recognising another circular argument in which no one got their answer.
"It's more than stubbornness. Those two are so much alike" he said, pushing himself away from the window and walking across the room.
"Sherlock and Moriarty" he mused, standing level with John's armchair "I'd hate to be around when they collide"
He'd left in the night. When John was sleeping and the police force had their backs turned, he had left Baker Street and simply walked away. It was all getting too personal, John had reasoned – the victims didn't matter, it was Sherlock he wanted to destroy. Then Moriarty had done the most dangerous thing of all. He had coaxed Sherlock into proving his intelligence, to prove his worth. He had suggested he was boring.
Sherlock had been gone for weeks, leaving nothing behind but a message to Lestrade telling him to leave Moriarty alone. To let him deal with it.
He had left nothing for John.
It was during those weeks that he became fixated on a little red light.
The little red light that would tell him that Sherlock was okay.
But no matter how much he willed it, his Blackberry never flashed the name 'Sherlock.' He'd lain awake some nights, just staring at the tiny black device, waiting for a text -just waiting for the light to flash.
Until Sherlock had left, John had never realised how right it was to have him there. It wasn't until he woke up in the morning, knowing he wouldn't find the consulting detective sprawled across the sofa that he realised how much he had taken his presence for granted.
Now he found himself waking in the early hours of the morning to absolute silence, where before there would have been the screech of a mistreated violin – or just every so often the same violin, the same man, produced a much different sound.
Every once in a while, it was beautiful.
Every once in a while, mixed in with the havoc, the crisis and the chaos was a small measure of beauty that hadn't been there before.
The constant cycle of work, eat, sleep was never ending. Work, eat, sleep. Workeatsleep. With every rotation he found his anger ebbing into worry, then into longing and then into hatred. Repeat.
He couldn't deny that life was boring, that he missed racing around London with his heart pounding in his ears. But really, he could live without that. He missed being useful, he missed having someone to look after. He missed sly, sideways smiles and sharing the first and last cups of tea of the day.
He missed Sherlock Holmes.
And he hated him so, so much. Because Sherlock was meant to be there when John figured it out. When John realised that this was what his life had been missing. When the ex-army soldier finally employed the science of deduction to work it out, Sherlock was meant to be there to give him a lopsided smile and say 'Very good John' completely free of sarcasm, with just a dash of surprise. Sherlock was meant to be there when he figured out the impossible.
That this was not what normal friends did. That this was something different. That really, John never stood a chance.
The sunflower bud made itself known on a surprisingly chilly June morning, green leaves closed tightly over the hidden yellow flower. It wouldn't be long before the sunlight coaxed it into bloom, the petals unfurling and the plant reaching blindly for the light.
Not long at all now.
He just had to wait.
Well, there you have it. This started life as a Harry Potter story, and for some unknown reason before I got it down on paper, John Watson hijacked it, awkward bugger that he is. There is a theoretical second chapter in the works, in which our favourite detective returns, but I am notoriously bad at updating – so it'll have to wait until I find some motivation.
Constructive criticism and reviews of all kind are loved more than life itself – I'd love to know where you think I could improve.
Ta ta for now!