Sorry if you don't like my writing style, the way I write borders on obsessive compulsive and I have to write in a certain way that I know some people may not like. But that being said, I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters.
Chapter One: Three Days
He loved Mary. He loved his daughter and his son. He loved his house, and his job, and his friends. But never as much as he had loved his old life. He felt like he was not the same John Watson who had lived with Sherlock Holmes, felt like that John was a character, like he had read a bibliography or seen a movie about that John long ago, and almost forgotten. But he hadn't forgotten. If he wanted to remember, he could, like he read the cover of the bibliography, or turned on the first few scenes of the movie. The smell of cigarettes and raspberry and apple tea. The taste of jam on toast and mashed potato accidentally combined with chemicals. The sight of cuts along his fingertips and the swelling around his ankle. The feel of the trigger of the revolver and harpoon handle. But when he didn't want to remember, he could easily put the book back on the shelf, or eject the movie from the DVD player.
He lived out of London. He didn't know if he'd wanted to stay or leave, but Mary insisted the children grow up in a regional area, so they had left. Every few months, John would pack a suitcase and catch a train to London. Mary had been told he was going to visit his sister in in an alcohol rehabilitation centre in Cardiff, but what she hadn't been told was that he was actually going to visit Sherlock Holmes in London. He would stay for three days, and visit Sherlock's grave each day.
He stayed in average hotels, and didn't eat very much whilst there. He would avoid anything that would remind him of his old life, an alleyway, a Chinese restaurant, a police station, a theatre, a parking lot. When he wasn't at Sherlock's grave, he stayed inside the hotel, reading or watching TV.
Sometimes he would bring flowers, sometimes he would bring newspaper cut outs and sometimes he'd stop at the café down the road from the cemetery and order two take-away coffees, one with sugar, one without. Sometimes he would talk about his life, sometimes he would sit in silence, and sometimes he would cry.
The first day, he had in his bag a collection of newspapers regarding the recent murders of seven teenage girls and a bunch of daisies he'd picked from Mary's front garden. He sat for a while, not talking. A young woman was the only other person in the cemetery, but left shortly after John arrived. In the four years since Sherlock had died, the cemetery had been populated significantly, but Sherlock's grave still stood alone. The grass had grown over the dirt, and wild flowers of an array of colours had grown at his headstone. John considered pulling them from the earth; Sherlock would have hated the yellow, purple and pink flowers. After deciding against it – perhaps it was a sign of hope, John thought - he began to talk. About how he knew Sherlock would hate the flowers, about the murders, about the train, about Mary, about his daughter's pre-school.
The second day, he had nothing for Sherlock. The flowers he had brought a day earlier were dying. John took the daisies in his hands and then pulled out the flowers he had seen yesterday. No, they were not a sign of hope, he thought. He took the handful of flowers and put them behind the headstone, where he did not have to look at them dying. There were a few more people in the cemetery today, a middle aged couple with a small daughter, an elderly man, a teenage boy. He wasn't going to wait for them to leave as he had the young woman the day before, and sat down next to the headstone, absentmindedly running his fingertips along Sherlock's name engraved on the stone. He talked about packeted coffee, about his blog, about wifi, about dying flowers, about the eggs and bacon he was hungry for.
The third day, he took along a newspaper articles about a missing businessman and a packet of the cigarettes Sherlock had always loved. No one was around that day, so he took one from the packet and lit it, bringing it to his lips once, then remembering the medical complications that came with tobacco use he let it sit it his hand. He didn't talk much at all in comparison to the other days, just sat, after a while, leaning against Sherlock's head stone. He talked about cigarettes, about tickets on the train home, about his sleep the previous night, about his breakfast of toast and butter.
The evening of the third day, John was on his way back to the hotel. He had a ticket for the late train, and needed to collect his suit case from the hotel. He'd stopped at a cheap restaurant open late and sat at a table in the shadows of the back wall, and eaten spaghetti. He could have gone to Angelo's, and sat at the table next to the fire place and eaten for a discount price, but everything there held too many memories.
He arrived at the hotel, collected his suit case, checked out. Took a cab to the train station, walked through the terminal, took a seat at the empty platform. He'd arrived early, because there was no point in doing anything else. The air was cold, biting at his exposed fingers and face, making his cheeks pink. He could smell petrol fumes, and olive oil from the forkful of spaghetti that had fallen onto his collar. He pulled The Great Gatsby from his suitcase, a book Mary had read in collage and encouraged him to read.
Halfway through the first paragraph, he noticed a change in the air. It was still cold, and the smell of petrol and oil still present, but something else. Someone else was there, he could feel it, and he could smell it. A man stood at the end of the platform, and a lady with a small child in her lap sat in a chair a few metres from him. John put his book back inside his suitcase and pulled it closer to his side. Someone was closer to him than the family down the platform.
After three minutes, John could hear the train in the distance, and with the other people spread along the platform, began to walk towards the white line separating the tracks from the platform. The man and the lady with the child were standing together down the platform, close to them were a family of four, and a couple of metres from them were two teenagers. For the first time in three days, he longed for his family. Longed to be standing there not with his memories, but with his wife and children.
He could see the lights of the train. It was dark now. John stood out of the ring of light cast by the light closest to him, and waited. The train's first carriages moved past quickly, blowing the flaps of his coat up around his wrists. The train slowed to a stop, and the doors automatically opened, letting out what he could only describe as a cloud of warm air. John moved his hand to his suitcase's handle, but instead of plastic, felt a hand.
In his mind, he had recognised the potential danger, furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. In reality he jumped as one would when given an electric shock. In his mind, he had turned as he had when he did boxing during high school, fists raised and feet shoulder width apart. In reality, he turned as one would when told they had a spider on their back. In his mind, he dealt with the person standing opposite him in a mature and clever way. In reality, he fainted.