A few months after... well. The fall. Yes, let's call it the fall. Let's just take the most traumatic event of John Watson's life and cut it down into two words. The fall. Well, a few months after the fall... actually, no. Let's start earlier. About two weeks after the fall, John began seeing his therapist again, at Greg's insistance. His limp was back. So were the nightmares, the ones from Afghanistan, and from Baskerville. Suffice it to say, John Hamish Watson was not a happy bloke. It was bit not good.
A few months after the publication of the awful, deceitful story in the papers, John began to notice things. He was sitting in a cafe and something caught his eye. Someone had scrawled something on a napkin. Normally this wouldn't have set off a red blinking light in John's mind, but there was one word there, scratched into the whipe paper.
Moriarty.
John froze, something cold slipping down his spine. He looked around the cafe, and, deciding it was safe, slid the napkin out from under the salt and pepper shakers to read the rest of the message. It read,
Moriarty was real.
Well. That was peculiar. Still, it was good that at least one person out there believed Sherlock wasn't a fraud.
John forgot about the note on the napkin; stored it away in his mind palace, if you will.
(Though with John it was more of a mind cottage.)
He forgot it until he noticed a piece of graffiti sprayed onto a bus station. Again, normally this would not have caught his attention, but for one word.
Sherlock.
John moved to look at the graffiti a little closer, reading the message,
I believe in Sherlock Holmes.
So it was more than one person. John felt his eyes begin to fill, and with a manly sniff and clearing-of-the-throat, kept a stiff upper lip until he reached 221B.
Then he bawled like an infant because he had started to doubt himself, convinced that he hallucinated Sherlock's brilliant deductions. Thanks to a few instances of vandalism, however, he was able to take comfort in the fact that that he, too, believed in Sherlock Holmes.