"All roads lead to Rome; all roads lead to London."
Disclaimer: Sherlock BBC does not belong to me.
London is a spiderweb, a metropolis teeming with the good, the bad, and everything in between. From the unsteady cobbled roads that lead, like veins across the labyrinth, to the never-ending Thames that slithers through the heart of an ancient city.
When John arrives home, -images of sand and blood gaping like an open wound in his memory-, London rushes up to meet him, the scents and sounds filling his senses, whispering that one of her own has returned.
He is drifting as a ghost, foreign within his own city even as London calls to him when he wakes. And while John dreams of fire and blood, London breathes a name. Sherlock. She insists.
"What are you looking for?" Stanley enquires.
Sherlock. "I don't know." John replies.
London smiles when he meets the younger Holmes, that impossible man with quicksilver-grey eyes and a mind so sharp that it makes everyone else seem dull by comparison.
"John Watson."
"I know."
Mycroft Holmes, the Guardian of London, Irene Alder, the Woman, and Moriarty, who John deems Dionysus, the drunken god of wine and ritual madness. London weaves the names and faces into her spiderweb and waits. Caution. She whispers.
When the Fall comes, John doesn't need Sherlock's powers of observation to read the look in Lestrade's eyes, and he has never been one for self-delusion.
"I believe in you Sherlock."
The black marble headstone is as cold as Sherlock's skin was against his lips in the mortuary, and London is quiet.
"Just for me, don't be dead. Please, don't be dead."
He won't ask again, because London survives, the darkened alleys hiding glittering eyes and secrets that remain shrouded in shadow. And if, John believes, there ever were a child of London, it would be Sherlock Holmes.