Sherlock is testing a hypothesis.
It's a cold winter's evening, and his scarf is hitched tight against his neck, collar turned up against the wind. He stands on a corner of Oxford Street, smack bang in the middle of the pavement so the crowd spills around him like water around a stone. Christmas is in the air and on the lips of every person passing by, but it's over Sherlock's head: his mind is on other things.
His eyes dart quickly from place to place, person to person, measuring and quantifying. A group of lipsticked teenaged girls giggle and pout, hands fluttering up to faces, as his gaze slides over them. He dismisses them quickly. Superficial, silly and forgettable. Not what he's looking for.
Instead, he alights upon a father and child in front of John Lewis. The man is exhausted; fatigue clearly visible in the lines of his face and the stoop of his back. Single parent, Sherlock muses; widowed, not divorced, look at the clothes. Focus, Sherlock. The child is small and female, judging by the rather garish shade of pink she is clothed in. Her laughter billows out in white clouds as she dances around the man.
This is promising, Sherlock thinks, just as the child slips before him on the icy pavement.
The man lunges forwards, but he's too late to catch the child and her cry rises sharp and fast in the cold air.
Sherlock expels a breath he didn't even realise he was holding. He's right about his hypothesis, but he doesn't feel happy, not at all. He knows he should – it's been a long-held belief - but it makes him feel hollow, so he turns to leave while the child's still crying.
As he moves, the man hooks his arms under the child's shoulders and tosses her into the air. Her cries cease immediately. Spellbound, Sherlock freezes in place and watches the girl in the air; the arc of her hair, the way her tears sparkle on her cheeks. For an instant, a blaze of light from the shop window illuminates the pair and Sherlock can see the lines smoothed from the man's face, the way his stoop disappears as he steps forward with confidence – no, ease – to catch his falling daughter.
Even as she falls, giggling, into his arms, Sherlock can see the comprehension of his wife's death settling around his eyes and mouth and back into his posture. But it doesn't matter. Sherlock's reeling; understanding of what he's just seen overloading his mind, changing what he's thought to be true.
John was right.
I was wrong.