Notes: This is (in the process of being) written for the Let's Write Sherlock, Challenge 2: Choose a favorite fairy tale and rewrite it with characters from Sherlock.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, just borrowed a few characters from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the makers of BBC Sherlock. I mean no disrespect to either parties and I promise to put them right back where I found them.

A skull sat on the cocktail table, staring at the man lying on his back, stretched across the couch. He was resting impossibly still but for his mouth, which was moving at rapid speed as he spelled out his thought process for the skull's discernment.

"See, that wouldn't make sense. He doesn't keep pictures in his house besides photographed scenery or modern art and he auctioned off all of his heirlooms that didn't pose any practical use or match with his decor. Not exactly what you'd call nostalgic."

Sherlock paused, glancing back at the skull sitting on the cocktail table. It stared right back at him, waiting patiently for him to continue.

"If not for nostalgic purposes, there would have been no rational explanation for him to take a trophy from the victim. He didn't need the money. His suit and sports car say more than enough about his abundance in wealth. But a ring was definitely missing from the body, and she was clearly wearing it, according to the wedding photos prior to the incident –"

"That. Is. It. I've had it with you!"

Sherlock looked up to see his flatmate stalking into the room, still dressed in the clothes she had worn when she had left a few hours earlier, but now sopping wet and soaking the carpet.

Forgot her umbrella at Ryan's, Sherlock thought.

He hadn't noticed her coming in through the front door, and she was trailing water from the kitchen. Climbed in through the kitchen window? Should probably check on how secure the latch is. She was positively glowering at him, her hair and her expression wild with wrath. But her agitation was not uncommon, so he glanced back at the skull, intending to continue their conversation.

"You ought to come with a warning label, you absolute wanker! I put up with your annoying violin screeching, you moping about in silence, I even tolerate you keeping body parts in the fridge!"

He wasn't sure yelling or complaining every single time she discovered one of his more unusual habits could be considered 'tolerating.'

"You put body parts in the fridge all the time, Susan."

"I'm talking about human body parts, Sherlock, not a bloody turkey leg!"

Sherlock failed to understand why that would be any different. Both were made from organic material. Both needed to be kept from decomposing as slowly as possible. If anything, his were technically safer since they weren't intended for consumption. But he refrained himself from making these points, Knowing his flatmate's current emotional state did not bode well for logical reasoning.

"Fine, I'll take the arm back to Barts first thing in the morning."

"That's not what I'm mad about right now!"

"Then enlighten me."

She looked as if she was one more sardonic response away from strangling the man.

Gritting her teeth, partly because she was freezing and needed to stop them from chattering, but mostly out of anger, she let out, "I have been outside for nearly an hour. How can you not have heard me? I rang the buzzer about a million times, and I nearly ripped the sodding knocker off its hinge! I knew Mrs. Hudson was out, and I assumed you were home, but when no one opened the door I had to climb through the back and break in through the kitchen window. But here you are, just lying there, talking to your fucking skull!"

Sherlock sighed heavily. "I always disassemble the doorbell whenever I'm in my mind palace. I normally tune out noise outside of my consciousness anyways, but I always take precautions to remove any sort of potential distraction. At any rate, I assumed you'd be staying at Ryan's tonight." Sherlock frowned. "Didn't you bring your keys with you?"

Her face fell suddenly. "I left them at... at his place."

"Forget something then?" Sherlock said offhandedly.

He was slightly perturbed by Susan's abrupt mood change, but was relieved that she seemed to have calmed down. He rested his eyes and waited for her to leave. But a thud and a sob made him look up at her abruptly.

She had collapsed on the floor, her head buried in her lap, her shoulders shuddering turbulently. This made him far more uncomfortable than the instances where she would scream at him, complaining about one thing or another.

Sherlock didn't have the slightest clue what to do. Lestrade sometimes placed a reassuring hand on the shoulders of the especially disturbed witnesses or loved ones at crime scenes. Would that be appropriate in this sort of situation? She did exhibit similar characteristics: the excessive crying, the inability to speak or compose herself.

He stood up and approached her, crouching down slowly, and smoothed a hand along her back awkwardly, hoping it felt comforting.

He could feel her relaxing under his hand and her breathing slowed.

"Ryan was cheating on me."

Obviously. He waited for her to continue, but she remained quiet, as if that were explanation enough for breakdown. Perhaps she was wondering if he was listening? By way of acknowledgment, he slowly responded, "Right..."

She looked up at him sharply. "You knew?"

Sherlock scoffed. "He keeps his phone locked around you," he found himself saying. Spelling out his reasoning was second nature, and it didn't occur to him to stop and think if Susan really wanted to hear this. "He leaves the room whenever he has to take a call, watches how much he drinks around you, doesn't invite you to stay over very often but was always up for a road trip whenever you two went out, on the off chance you run into the other woman. Wasn't that difficult to figure out."

Susan shoved him away roughly at that. "Why didn't you tell me?!"

"I assumed you just chose to ignore it. It seemed pretty straightforward."

"Why on earth would I choose to ignore the fact that he's cheating on me?!"

He shrugged. "He was well to do and was generous about it. Gifts and paid dinners alone were probably not incentive enough to stay. You still had to split a flat with me, so if you stayed with him long enough, maybe he'd ask for you to move in. He was also far more attractive than you by any standard rate of beauty, so being with him would improve your social credentials by association."

Susan stared at him with cold, narrowed eyes. She slapped him hard across the face.

"Now there's two men I want to leave," she spat. "I'm moving out."

He brought a hand to his face, rubbing his sore cheek, but the impromptu announcement shook him more.

"Moving out? Why?"

"Because you're a miserable, pathetic man, that's why! And because you just assumed that I stayed with him, for what? For money? For status? Fuck you. I stayed with him because I loved him, and I left him because he clearly didn't love me the same way. Sod it – sod this."

Susan brought her hands up to cover her face and inhaled slowly in an attempt to calm herself down. "Look, I'm so grateful for you taking me in, really. I know you and Victor hadn't spoken much since uni, and it was really so generous of you to allow me to move into the spare room – "

"Well, I needed someone to split the rent with – "

"But I can't deal with you!" Susan cut him off emphatically.

Her despondency was replaced with fury. She sighed and ran her fingers through her knotted hair. Stressed, last night had only three hours –

"Stop looking at me like that," she yelped, almost manic. "You're constantly trying to study me, like I'm some human lab rat in this fucked up experiment you call life.

"You have no respect for me or my belongings. You throw away any of my things that pose an inconvenience to you, and use whatever else without my permission. The kitchen always smells of chemicals, but you won't even let me keep fresh roses in a vase because 'the smell throws you off.' And just now you wouldn't even bother to shut off for a second and remember there are other people to consider. Just because you were in your mind palace, whatever that's supposed to mean."

He huffed, exasperated. "It's a mnemonic device wherein you commit a location to memory and deposit recollections and data in order to be able to go back and find them easily. I've already explained this to you at length. Even for someone as simpleminded as you, how difficult must it be to understand?"

"That too! You think everyone's an idiot and you're above them all, sitting so high and mighty on your throne in your precious palace," she spat, the last word laced with malice.

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the misused metaphor but kept himself from responding to it.

She breathed slowly and looked at him, trying to relax.

"You're brilliant, there's no doubt about that. But you know fuck all about people. Sure, you understand anatomy or physiology, but you don't have a clue what's actually going on in our 'insignificant little brains.' All you care about is the data you observe, and that's all you'll ever know. Data. Cold, empty information."

She disappeared into her room for a few moments, and he heard the indicative sounds of her dresser drawers opening and slamming closed, and of clothes being thrown into a bag. She walked back out with her packed handbag.

"I can't stay here anymore. I'll see if I can crash at a friend's place. I know it's only been three weeks, but I'll leave you my month's share when I come to pack up the rest of my things tomorrow morning. Please don't be here when I do."

Sherlock didn't know what to say and wasn't sure there was anything left to be said.

Susan had her hand on the doorknob, ready to close it behind her, but stopped and turned. The previous sadness and anger were still present in her expression, but her eyes were full of sympathy and the sharpness of her voice was subdued.

"Sherlock?"

His head jerked up in response.

"Don't... don't stay like this. I may not have the patience to live with you, but I hope you find someone who does. But you're not going to find anyone unless you're open to accepting that person, and letting them accept you."

Sherlock's face hardened. He resented being told he needed to form a sort of emotional attachment with anybody. Relationships of any sort were complicated, and it was far preferable to keep them to a minimum. He was more than comfortable with being alone.

She paused, leaned against the doorway and looked at him sadly. "That's the reason why it's not going to work out with me staying here. You don't want me here. I'm just a convenient source of rent money to you.

"I know you put your work first before everything and you think you've got everything figured out, but you haven't figured out anything worth knowing until you allow yourself to be open to it."

"Open to what?" he snapped, getting thoroughly annoyed with her suddenly sympathetic demeanor. He didn't need her sympathy. Not hers or anybody else's. He was perfectly fine.

"To love," she flushed at the over-sentimental significance of her words. "Not necessarily like that. But to care about someone, enough to want to change some things in your life to make space for theirs. If you don't... at the very least, you won't be able to find a consistent flatmate. At the worst, your life will be a complete waste of existence."

The door clicked shut and left Sherlock deafened by the silence.

"Harry?"

John jerked straight up. He regretted it immediately, pain blooming through his recovering shoulder. Falling asleep in a cushion-less hospital folding chair was probably not the best idea for a recuperating gunshot victim, but John wanted to be by his father's side the minute he woke up. The ex-soldier gently massaged his shoulder as he stood up and walked over to the bed, grasping the hands that were reaching out to him.

"Harry went home to get some rest. It's me, dad. It's John."

His father's eyes screwed up, focusing on his face. John suddenly wondered how much he changed, and if he was still recognizable, even if it had only been eighteen months. But his father smiled warmly as tears ran across his face and soaked into the pillow underneath his head.

"John. You're back."

"Yeah," he said, grinning. "This time for good."

"Really?" His voice strained softly but his concern was detectable underneath it all. "Thought you were a captain now. Didn't think they'd let go of you that easily."

"Well, no, it wasn't easy." John shifted uncomfortably, unsure if he wanted to burden his sickly father with any of his more graphic experiences.

The older man gripped his hand tighter. "What happened?"

John sighed and with his foot, hooked the leg of the chair he was sitting in and dragged it closer, not wanting to let go of the hand so tightly grasped in his, clinging as if it was for the sake of John's life. He sank into his seat slowly.

"We were ambushed In Maiwand. Sustained an injury, bullet to the shoulder," he closed his eyes as the memories flooded his mind.

Comrades lying still in pools of blood and filth. Hope draining from him during what he thought were his last moments until his orderly sought him out and carried him back to safety.

His pain must have shown on his face, because when he opened his eyes, he recognized a deeply troubled look staring back at him. From what John had learned from his father's doctor, the cardiac arrest had brought about so much pain already, and his sister's marital issues and reckless vice didn't help matters.

He forced himself to relax his face and simply concluded, "But I got out safely, and I've been officially discharged."

As if he weren't himself lying in pain, recovering from his own severe health damage, John's father showed overwhelming concern for his only son. "How do you feel you now?"

John smiled sadly, feeling oddly guilty for his father's misplaced worry. "Aches every now and then, but I'm fine. Really dad, you don't have to worry with me. More importantly, how are you feeling?"

He didn't look like he exactly believed John, but resolved to not push the issue further. He let go of his grasp and returned to lay on his back with obvious fatigue.

"About the same. Except I'm getting bloody sick of staying in bed all the time. I guess that's one thing I won't miss when I'm out of here."

"Wait, what do you mean when you're 'out of here'? You're still recovering, you need at least a few more weeks of supervised care."

"Oh, I'll be fine. Anyways, it wouldn't be such an inconvenience for you to check up on me every now and then, would it?" he chortled genially.

John's face remained stern. "No, dad, you need more than a washed up army doctor looking after you. You need people familiar with your condition. Even after you've been given leave to go home, you're still going to need a visiting nurse. Anyway, I should be looking for work now that I'm staying. Don't want to become one of those homeless veterans, now do I?"

He attempted a smile, a vain effort at lightening the mood.

"You could always stay at my apartment, you know that."

"I think I need something a little more permanent than a kip on your sofa."

His father closed his eyes, looking suddenly helpless. "I have to go back to work."

"What are you talking about? Of course not. Aren't you supposed to be retiring soon? Wouldn't hurt too much to set an earlier date, considering your condition. The business must be doing well enough, they can afford letting go of you a few months early."

"John... it's gone under."

John's heart sunk, and he fought to recompose himself. "What? What happened?"

His father shrugged in defeat. "All sorts of small businesses haven't been doing well ever since the plunge the economy took. We weren't immune."

John didn't know what to think. All those people, good people he'd known and treated his family well, now out of a job. He felt a sudden spike of frustration when he realized that Harry had refrained from telling him sooner.

"How about Harry? Can't she help? "

His father looked even more dejected at the mention of his daughter. "She's already having enough trouble with the divorce. And I think she needs to... she needs time to sort out her own life before she tries to support mine."

Anger surged through John. The divorce alone was enough to make John bitter, without thinking of the repercussions it brought upon the Watson family. Clara was an amazing woman, and anybody could see that she loved Harry and would have supported her throughout everything. But Harry's alcoholic haze blurred her vision and she couldn't see what was clear to everyone else. Even after hearing her side of the story, John could still see she was in the wrong. Harry was under the impression that Clara was too controlling, but John knew better than that: Harry was just too stubborn to admit she had a problem, and if she wouldn't hear it from her wife or her father, she sure wasn't going to hear it from the brother she hasn't seen in over a year.

John gathered his thoughts to the point on hand.

"This changes nothing. You're staying in care until you're checked out, and we'll hire a nurse for house visits. I just need to get a job, that's all."

The older man's eyes were brimmed with tears as he looked up at his weary but determined son. John willed him not to protest, because he didn't need his worn father trying to fight any more battles than necessary; his mind was made up. So all he did was reach for John's hand once again and whispered, "Thank you, son."

John left his father when he fell back asleep, and went searching for a vending machine. He found the visitor's center empty of visitors; a small room cluttered with a few chairs, a lounge, and two vending machines tucked into the corner, one for drinks, the other chock full of snacks. He was trying to decide between two packs of biscuits when a nurse donned in maroon scrubs walked in and sank into the seat next to him, holding change in her hand.

"Oh, go on ahead," John motioned to the machine. "I'm having difficulty deciding."

"That's alright. I've already sat down and I have no intention of ever getting back up," she said, smirking good-humouredly, as she tipped her head back and closed her eyes.

"Rough night?"

"You could say that," she stared at the ceiling and relaxed her eyelids lazily. "But what night working in A&E isn't rough?"

"Ah. I know the feeling."

She spied him analytically. "Nurse or doctor?"

"Doctor, but I haven't worked in an actual hospital in ages."

"Why's that?"

"Er," John hesitated, not exactly prepared to go into detail about his life to a total stranger. "My situation was more military based."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Looking for a bit of work now, though," he slyly tried to steer away from his history. "Think there would be any openings here? Would be really convenient, to be close to my father." Then remembering that she wasn't exactly aware of why he was here, he added, "He's a patient here, in CCU."

She looked at him thoughtfully, but didn't push the subject. "Well, I don't know if you'll have much luck here. We're short on nurse staff, but the general practitioners here are a tight knit bunch. Tough to get in without having established connections. But there's a few hospices in London I'm sure that could use a doctor who's used to a little pressure. I've a friend who works at St. Mary's, I could give her a ring."

"Really? I mean – " John hesitated, unsure. Was it normal to take these types of favors from people he didn't even know?

But she simply nodded and said, "Don't worry about it. I'll call first thing in the morning."

He felt so grateful, he had to refrain himself from hugging her aggressively, remembering that she was still a stranger, so he just said, "Thank you," and stuck out his hand. "My name's John, by the way, John Watson."

"Nadia Darley." She shook his hand with the firmness that was unexpected of a clearly exhausted worker, but she smiled at him warmly and said, "Nice to meet you, John Watson."

"You, too," John grinned back at her.

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and studied him. "So when I find out about any positions... should I just guess your number then?"

End notes:

In case you're not familiar, CCU stands for Critical Care Unit.

Even though I've got nurses for a sister and a mother, I'm not very familiar with American Health Care, much less UK Health Care, so if I portrayed anything abysmally, feel free to let me know. Otherwise, I hope it could just fall under the Artistic License trope.

Also, I'm new to the fanfiction business. If anyone is interested enough and would like to beta, please don't hesitate to let me know!

**Update**

This is the updated and beta'd version from the fantastic Liberty-In.

I know it's been a while since I posted this chapter, but I promise the second chapter is following very soon!