Author's note: This came to me while I was reading Robert Frost's poems (feel free to mock me, I know I'm a nerd). The title of the poem simply made me think about a plot (my mind works like that), so I had to write it.
I don't own anything, please review.
He knew the night, of course he did. He'd always felt more alive at night than in daylight. At night, no one was around to judge him, at night he could be himself.
Even when he'd been a child, he'd cherished the night. He hadn't slept when he hadn't felt like it – which had been most of the time – and had instead explored the mansion he'd grown up in, as well as the grounds. To this day, he suspected Mycroft knew that he'd spent far more time outdoors than in his bed.
But all of it – his insistence to stay awake, just because he knew it would annoy his brother, the nights he'd laid awake because someone (most of the time his nanny, Mummy had been too busy to take care of her sons, and Father had never really been there to begin with, so it wasn't a great shock when he ran away) had decided he needed to sleep for once and made sure he wouldn't come out of his room even if he tried – which was necessary, since he'd learned to pick lock at an early age – and the hours spent roaming in and outside the house, had only made him appreciate the beauty of the night.
For once, the world was quiet. He could think without being interrupted. There was no one who told him what to do, he didn't have to meet any expectations.
At daytime, he had to go to school, he had to listen to his nanny or to Mycroft, he had to "behave", whatever it entailed. But at night... At night, he could be himself.
He could run around the grounds without anybody telling him to slow down. He could do his experiments (quietly, of course) in the kitchen, without anybody telling him to get out of their way.
There was one memory especially that was dear to him (although he'd buried it rather deeply in his mind palace, since he and Mycroft were supposed not to get on). He'd been seven, Mycroft fourteen years old, and he'd been on one of his strolls, when he'd seen his brother's silhouette in the pale moonlight and sighed. There was the end of tonight's excursion; Mycroft always sent him back to bed, and came looking half an hour later to make sure he hadn't snuck away. If he had, he'd tell Mummy.
Knowing that his brother had already seen him, he began to walk towards the house, only to be stopped by a hand on his arm.
"Sherlock..."
His brother's voice sounded different. Not annoyed, not angry, for once, it seemed that Mycroft was simply interested in Sherlock. It was so utterly fascinating that Sherlock stood still.
"What – " and there was another first, because he'd never hear Mycroft hesitate before.
"Sherlock, what do you see?"
The correct answer, since they were both standing on the lawn with no lamp in sight, would have been "nothing", but Sherlock, for once, could read between the lines and started talking. Talking about the night, about its beauty that no one understood, about the freedom it gave him.
Mycroft listened. He listened for hours, walking beside Sherlock, and they only returned to the house when dawn was breaking.
It was the first and last time they did something like this, but it was also the first time that Sherlock had ever felt truly connected to another human being. And, though that might have been just a coincidence, or he might have become better at hiding, Mycroft didn't catch him as often anymore as he had before that night. After a few months, his brother stopped searching for him altogether.
Since it had normally been Mycroft who'd found him, he was finally free to do what he wanted.
And he could get acquainted with the night.
There were different types of nights, he realized. Of course, everyone would know that the nights were different according to the seasons, but that was only a small part of the truth.
In truth, every night was a little bit different. But, being curious – he was interested in cataloguing the world even when he was still planning to become a pirate – just every night being different wasn't a satisfactory conclusion. So he decided that they still could belong to certain types of nights, though; Sherlock made sure to categorize them and store them in his mind palace, though he never knew why; an intimate knowledge of different nights wasn't going to be useful to him in any way, he thought.
At least until Moriarty played his game and Sherlock was forced to live the life of a dead man, always on the run, without a minute of peace, without one moment just to breathe.
By then, he had a catalogue of nights in his mind palace, the work of many years of walks when he should have been sleeping according to his nanny or Mycroft or John or Mrs. Hudson.
Naturally, his night walks hadn't stopped just because he'd grown up. Even when he'd visited university, he'd spent the nights he didn't do experiments or play his violin or (for once) sleep roaming the streets. Sometimes he'd been high, sometimes he'd been content, sometimes he'd been annoyed at the stupidity of people, but the night had always calmed him, given him something to hold on to – and the irony of that, considering how inevitable every sunrise was, wasn't lost on him.
By the time Moriarty forced him to choose between his life and that of his friends, he knew the different types of nights as well as the streets of London.
There were the summer nights that clung to his skin like velvet, comforting and mysterious, fascinating for their shortness. So fleeting, and yet they seemed to go on forever. He'd never felt alone on those nights; they were warm, and alive, and he almost thought he could feel other men enjoying it with him. Though, of course, he'd been convinced that he didn't need any human connections.
It was on one of those nights that he'd met Mrs. Hudson. He'd been high, of course, and in Florida because he'd had enough of Mycroft's insistence that he quit cocaine and went back to university, and at 27, he felt he was old enough to make his own decisions. The night had been warm, and there had been a warm ocean breeze, and he hadn't been able to resist the wild call of the night.
Mrs. Hudson had sat on a bench in a park, in a rather dark corner, so still that at first he hadn't really seen her. He'd only realized that someone else was in the park when she'd flinched as he passed her, and he'd squinted in the darkness and been quite surprised when he' heard her wish him a "Good Evening". People weren't polite to him, and nice little elderly ladies shouldn't be sitting on park benches in the darkest corner they could find after nightfall. Even Sherlock, with his limited experience in human interaction, knew that.
So he'd brought her home while she had been chattering on and on about her husband, and he'd very soon understood that she'd actually be happy to see him executed. Or at least locked away for life.
Because she insisted that he stay the night and made him dinner, he decided to help her. He ensured her husband's death. Had he been more human, he might have wondered about his new acquaintance, but he didn't. She'd been nice to him, and that was enough reason to help her. Of course, he hadn't known then what she would come to mean to him.
The first time Lestrade had come looking for him had been on a cold winter night. It was one of those nights where you could feel the cold seep into your very bones, hear every noise, no matter how far away, and see for miles; a clear, crisp, absurdly beautiful night, and Sherlock, high, of course, had wondered why the policeman who'd arrested him the week before and let him go after he'd solved the murder within five minutes – really, anyone could have seen that he hadn't done it, he'd just wanted to look at the body – would wait in front of the run-down apartment building he lived in when he returned from one of his strolls.
Lestrade had shivered, so he must have stood there a while.
"Sherlock".
"Inspector".
And then, he'd told Sherlock that he'd like him to help them, but only if he got off the drugs.
And, after the Inspector had left, he still stood in front of the building, staring up into the cold, so strangely transparent, so very clear air and realized that maybe he wouldn't need the drugs anymore.
So, in the course of his life, night followed night; the mild spring nights with their promise of summer; the hot summer nights in which you could barely move; the nights of late summer when you could already tell that the cold nights were coming.
Even when he was running after a criminal with John, feeling more alive than ever, he always remembered to put the night in one of his categories. John didn't know, of course, how much he cherished the nights; only once did he tell him, and then his doctor didn't understand how he could appreciate the stars after having declared that the solar system "didn't matter". But, still, John was there every step of the way, for one and a half years, where his life suddenly turned into something he'd never expected, and then –
He had never thought that his catalogue of nights would safe him.
And then he was alone in Singapore, spending the night in an abandoned building, slowly collecting information about the part of Moriarty's web that had his base in this country, and he looked out of the window and realized what he had to do.
Walking around feeling the night on his skin, he felt more like himself, not like the vigilante, the murderer, he had become. Walking around like that, he felt like himself again, and he found a strength he'd thought he'd left behind in London.
He went out whenever he could at night after this, whenever he didn't have to hide or track down Moriarty's web, whenever he felt like he was suffocating.
He even returned at night.
It had been three years, three long years, and it was a summer night, like the one so many years ago his brother had finally begun to understand him.
He hadn't thought John would understand, he hadn't hoped the doctor would welcome him back.
But he did.
He hit him, he shouted at him, and then he grabbed his jacket and they were off to catch Moran.
Two days later John moved back into 221B, and life was good, wonderful, perfect again, and there was only one way to celebrate.
There were a few clouds in the sky, but not enough to hide the full moon, and he slipped out quietly, he didn't want to disturb John.
A moment later, the doctor was standing beside him on the pavement and asked, slowly, "Where are you going?"
Sherlock could feel the worry in his words and replied "For a walk. I often go for a walk at nights".
"So that's what you do when you're not in the flat and there's no case" John answered, and he realized that his friend had known all along that he didn't spend many nights at their home. Then his doctor smiled. "Mind if I join?"
"Not at all".
And, from this day on, more often than not, John would walk beside him, sometimes silent, sometimes talking, and he had someone to share the beauty of the night with him.
Author's note: Barely made it in time – I'm busy for the rest of the day, but I wanted to give you something.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas – now we have New Year's to look forward to.
This was inspired by Robert Frost's poem "I have been acquainted with the night" because I read too much. And am obsessed with Sherlock. And love nights, obviously – though I'm not sure if this works. I'll let you be the judge of that.
I hope you liked, and please review.