A/N: This is a collection of situations that could have happened during Sherlock's absence. It's kind of my way of seeing our beloved characters through the breach until Sherlock can make things right again. (Fingers crossed, BBC!) Warning: these can be a bit sad. But such is the nature of the beast, eh? I don't own these characters.
Mrs. Hudson
She hadn't meant to sneak up on him. The house was so unnaturally quiet, it seemed to swallow the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.
John was in his arm chair.
Funny how they'd laid claim; she'd never seen John sit in the other.
He had his hand up to the side of his mouth, as if he'd been in the process of rubbing his jaw and had forgotten what he was doing. John was a deliberate man and seeing him arrested like that seemed wrong somehow.
But it was the eyes that had the truth of it. He looked, unseeing, at a space just beyond Sherlock's chair, near the window. He hardly blinked, and she got the impression that his eyes could not get traction. That the sight that ought to be there was burned so deeply into his mind that some part of him had halted in anticipation of its arrival. Waiting to see something that would never appear.
John is looking for his life.
The thought knocked the wind out of her, and she stepped back onto the landing, trying to catch her breath. She pressed a hand to her own mouth, emotion bowing her shoulders and tightening her face.
This would cost her both her boys, she knew. This hateful, hateful turn of events had taken one and would drive away the other. Because John Watson was strong, but he had been uncoupled and left behind, and she could see plainly in his stillness and silence that the loss was burning him from the inside out.
Sherlock Holmes, she scolded silently, we needed you. You were lucky to find him; we both knew that. So lucky to have such a heart. She shook her head, quietly starting back down the stairs. I never thought I'd see the day you would leave that man behind.
