A/N: I have been dabbling with this idea for a while, seeing as it has been many years since I penned my last fanfic. Set Post-Reichenbach, I wanted to compose the story of Sherlock and John to tide myself over until series three.
I have reread this many times, but alas, I am almost positive it will be rife with errors, so please feel free to help me catch the errors of late night writing.
Faint stains upon lapel. Crumbs collected on trousers. A faint scent: fruity, hint of tart - most likely raspberry. Viscosity of leftovers on china indicates jam. A tenacious scent of sweetness, certainly not sugar free, then.
"The diet is failing miserably, I see." Sherlock smirked at his older brother who, in the early morning hours, refused to dignify him with a response. Mycroft offered only a cursory glare over the top of his folio before returning to whatever business had awoken him early. Dramatically, throwing his arms out and bending back over the edge of the posh chaise lounge, Sherlock held his hand out for the folio.
Begrudgingly, Mycroft handed it over, moving to dust himself off while Sherlock read through the file - A despot on the run then? Central Africa judging by the terrain and the thick foliage. Aided by those who feared him, obviously: vacant stares, evidence of nervous movement and patterns amongst the men, the wide berth given to their seemingly invisible captor. Except for one...
"He's dressing like them then? Disturbing the feeble minds of the morally responsible. I take it your men are unwilling to shoot all of them? Boring." Sherlock laid the folio on the table, nodding toward Mycroft in the ornate golden mirror upon the mahogany walls.
"Yes, well, diplomacy was never your strong suit, was it? When you do my job, Sherlock," Sherlock produced a splendidly sour look at the very thought. "you're tasked with working both efficiently and...favorably. To appease the commoners."
A noise of disgust rumbled low in Sherlock's throat. As Mycroft turned to leave the room, Sherlock swung himself upright and directed his words at his brother's back, "I'm bored."
Tutting audibly, Mycroft turned around, producing a knowing smile, "I'd suggest you become more helpful then."
Two years had passed since Sherlock removed himself from public light, feigning his suicide from the top of St. Bartholomew's. He moved frequently in the previous years, getting into spots of trouble in Central America and the Pacific Islands, awaiting his return to England and normalcy of sorts. It didn't take long to realize he lacked the resources to dispose of Moriarty's men, and much to his displeasure, he informed Mycroft of his ruse. Mycroft then busied himself with the decimation of Moriarty's criminal network, claiming rather brightly that it had been a boost in his already esteemed career. Sherlock returned to England six months previously, hoping to rekindle a new sort of life in the shadows.
However, Mycroft seemed intent on locking him up in his upscale country estate. The fresh scent of the wild moors strangled Sherlock's ingenuity at every turn, so he had taken to prowling around the house at all hours of the night. He spent the first few weeks stripping his fully furnished room bare, leaving only the bed with the expensive Egyptian cotton sheets, a rather pedestrian bookshelf, and a battered old desk belonging to their grandfather. At first, Mycroft expressed his frustration openly with Sherlock's disdain - "Now really, Sherlock, those are perfectly nice drapes, imported from the heart of the Persian market itself!" - but even that ceased when he came home one evening to find bullet holes in a hand carved antique cupboard dating to the Victorian era. Since then, Sherlock busied himself constantly with research and experimentation, but it was a far cry from the thrill of deduction, the dangerous chase of the unknown, the hearty, breathy laugher of John...
John persisted in his mind like a black hole, sucking all quick and reasonable deductions down the drain. Once, he found himself backed into the corner by a particularly vicious cocaine dealer with whom he was attempting to settle a gambling score. How was he supposed to know that counting the cards was illegal? It appeared to be the reasonable approach to the situation. He supposed now he should have paid more notice to the knife in his hand, but John was a quick enough shot to negate the problem efficiently.
Except there was no John and his escape slowed significantly from a superficial knife wound to the shoulder. He left Colombia the next day with one of Mycroft's henchmen for sunny Panama.
He calculated John into every move he made. For months, he tried to solve minor crimes in crime-riddled countries, always urging John to make note of something or asking him to send a text. The sudden derailment, the knowledge that he watched him lay flowers upon his own grave months previously, sucked everything from his mind leaving nothing but the grappling hole of emptiness in its wake. Eventually he moved John to the depths of his mind, never daring to quite delete him but leaving him untouched in the rear of his thoughts. The memory of him persevered more than the others - Lestrade, who he let go in a sweltering cafe to the scent of cheap cigars and sticky cologne, Mrs. Hudson, who he let go in a Indonesian market as he purchased a cherise scarf, Molly, who he let go in a morgue in Lima, Peru where a plucky young woman provided him a sample of infected digits. But John, well, John just had to stay.
Since his return to England, he steered clear of inquiring about the state of John with Mycroft, knowing full well the knowing smile that would cross his face. Even Mycroft was not immune to the powerful assumption that John was...what? His partner? Lover? Soulmate? In all his years, Sherlock loved no one, remaining entirely objective even in his own life. He viewed himself as a catalyst of a remarkable brain, unwilling to submit to humanity, doing more than the basic human could dream. That alone was reason enough to let John go, but still, he held onto the sight of him, his foolish deductions, the stern look following a kill, the smile that played over a thousand times. John eluded him, a mystery in himself, yet he would never discover how an ordinary man made him even more extraordinary.
The fall, the fall. The day he lied to save John's life, begged him to destroy the remaining vestiges of his memory. John never faltered. In the following months, he monitored British news outlets, waiting for even the least scandalous story to break. From the mouth of the sidekick, it might say, the friend. But never did a story break. Silence following his suicide. To his knowledge, John told no one about Sherlock's death bed confession.
Deciding quickly that he could not bear to sit in the house all day, he padded along behind Mycroft, making his way into the garden. He hoped to chat with a rather intriguing head gardener, Joaquim, who spoke in a soft voice riddled with the Kriol of the southern Belize, a dialect he picked up during his travels. Looking around to see no Joaquim on the cloudy day, he sat himself up the bench nearest the entryway, pulling a pocket journal chronicling his most recent experiment.
Labored breathing. Expensive cologne, applied recently for work. Scent of fresh fine clothing. The careful steps, indicating...anger? No. Nervousness is more likely. Tapping of the fingers indicates that much.
"What?" His baritone voice drawled. He quickly looked to see Mycroft standing, clad in a different suit and clearly late for his business of the day.
"I think congratulations for your dearest friend may be in order. Apparently, I received an invitation yesterday to quite the occasion three months from tomorrow." Mycroft shuffled his feet, determinedly staring across the moors.
"I have no friends, Mycroft." Sherlock returned his attention to his book of experiments, flipping the page aggressively in the hopes that Mycroft would stomp of in lieu of dealing with a temper tantrum on a busy morning. "Glad to see that you decided to change, though. Wouldn't want to seem slovenly as you restore the Empire to imperial status."
Mycroft forced a white envelope into Sherlock's fingers. Finer paper than common, still not expensive. Smells of lilac, perhaps the touch of a woman. He opened the envelope, removing the stockier paper from within. Heavy, detailed typeface. Obviously an invitation of sorts. White and lighter colors - mint green - indicates a joyous occasion of some sort.
"A wedding then? I can hardly mingle with the populace, Mycroft. You'll have to face this social charade alone, I'm afraid." Sherlock sat it beside him on the bench.
"You've missed something, Sherlock."
Unable to withstand the challenge, he grabbed the invitation again, taking it in deeply with his eyes, "The hand which filled the envelopes was light, yet deft. Obviously accustomed to moving with some technical skill, yet, hesitancy where the envelope was closed as if the sender was unsure whether to send it to you. I doubt the mark appears on the others." He smirked at Mycroft who waved him off again. Returning to the envelope, "It smells of lilac but not strongly, indicating a dubious groom pulled into wedding preparation, perhaps unwilling to smell of lilac on his way out. Mark on the envelope leads us to a post box, I'm sure, in the middle of London. There is no indication it was mailed with the others. Perhaps mailed in secrecy?" A rough laugh, "Oh, Mycroft, you naughty boy, you should probably stay away from the wedding of a certain," he addressed the first name of the young lady, "a Miss Mary Morstan and..." He consulted the envelope again, "a Mr. John Watson."
The glee slid from his face suddenly; he began to run his fingers over the surface where John's fingers had fumbled so recently with the envelope. He studied it, gathering no further information from it. "How did this come to be, exactly?"
Mycroft looked taken aback at the affrontation, "And how am I supposed to know? I have made sure your...partner...was watched, but I maintain little to no contact with him. After all, I'm sure he blamed me for your demise. Hence the hesitancy about sending the invitation to the brother of his dearly deceased best friend."
Sherlock stood, suddenly a whirl of confusion, yelling at Mycroft, "I need more data! Who is this," consulting the invitation again, having already deleted her name, "Mary Morstan? Where did John meet her? John dates; that's it. A bachelor of sorts. You can't have danger with marriage and children. Oh, John, what have you done?" His irritation evident, Mycroft attempted to lay a gentle hand upon his shoulder which Sherlock immediately shrugged off.
"If, and this is placing an extraordinary amount of faith in him, he figured out that I defeated my own fate, this could be entrapment, his way of discerning from you whether his deductions are correct or incorrect." Sherlock shook his head, "But that's wasteful and sloppy. Far too many steps. Perhaps I should just go by myself. Eliminate the middleman."
"Sherlock!" Mycroft grabbed him by the narrow shoulders forcing him to look him in the eyes, "Don't be unreasonable just because you wish to return to your old life. Look at this invite. He's reaching out to me in his time of joy. He's saying that he has forgiven me. He moved on, Sherlock. The work you did together is in the past now. We will find you a new place here, but leave him be."
Turning from his brother to the door, he flashed a smile, acknowledging that he had not comprehended a single piece of advice offered to him, "We'll let him make that decision."
John Watson placed a kettle onto boil, preparing his evening tea. He hoped the effects of returning to regular work on his feet would abate eventually. After the late night with Mary the previous evening, he could feel the bed calling him but could not concede without a nice cup of tea to settle the anxiety in his chest.
There had been a certain type of finality as he placed an invitation to Mycroft in the mail onto work yesterday morning. Knowing his penchant for snooping around, he figured a mysterious black sedan would show up one evening on his doorstep, sweeping him away to an undisclosed location where Mycroft would demand to know the details of his impending nuptials. Even worse, he would turn up to the wedding, knowing he'd never be turned away and ruining all of Mary's hard work.
John rubbed his fingers across his face. Mary. Sweet, beautiful Mary, a governess to an affluent family in central London. She thought the world of him, pontificating his skill, bravery, and intellect to everyone to whom she had introduced him. Mary tolerated, very patiently he thought, his fascination with that last adventure with Sherlock Holmes. Try as he might, he knew he would never figure out the causes behind Sherlock's decision to end his life that fateful day, but he searched through every avenue and possibility in the days following.
And when he was ready, there was Mary, blond locks shining on a rare sunny London day outside of a newspaper kiosk. They reached for the same paper with a ridiculously sensationalist headline concerning the jubilee for the Queen. Somehow, they ended up in a small coffeeshop that one would most likely pass by on an ordinary day, but the day was extraordinary and there was Mary. Sweet Mary who stunned him with her wit and brilliance as they talked late into the evening.
Six months of dating had followed, and gradually, her stuff found a place in his new flat. She breathed life into it, turning it into a home for them both. Slowly, he shoved Sherlock and his previous life at 221B Baker Street to the back of his mind, never quite forgetting it but closing the hole left in his life all the same. One evening with Mary in a particularly stunning beige lace dress, John took her to revisit their hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, and he proposed. She gleefully accepted, and their life together began.
The weeks following found Mary officially moving all of her possessions into his flat, and they were some of the happiest weeks of his life. Though he was no longer running around London chasing criminals and deviants of sorts, he hardly ever found himself bored with the regular life they led together. After over a year had passed since Sherlock's death, he finally managed to find purpose.
As he sat upon their new couch to drink his nightly tea, Mary padded out of their bedroom and joined him on the couch. Feeling no need to speak immediately, she ran her fingers across his scalp and down the nape of his neck for several minutes. He closed his eyes at the feeling, sipping slowly on the tea. She placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
"So, did you ever get to mail off the invitation you thought I wouldn't miss?" She shrewdly asked, drawing her lips into a knowing smile.
"Ah, Mary, I hoped I might pull the wool over those beautiful eyes for once." A quick look from her told him she would not drop the question because of a well-rehearsed line. "Alright, yes, I did. It's to an old...acquaintance. Certainly not a friend, but he's well connected. I thought it best to spare us from an uninvited guest."
"Does this guest have anything in common with Sherlock?" Sometimes there were disturbing similarities between Mary and the aforementioned consulting detective.
"Can't slip anything past you, can I? Alright, yes. This guest might be Sherlock's older brother. We had a complicated relationship, mostly revolving around handling Sherlock. His name is Mycroft. He pulls an impressive amount of leverage with the British government. I had a feeling he might be surveilling me to check on me." He placed a gentle hand on the soft skin of Mary's check. "I figured an invitation would be a definitive way of informing him myself that I am more than okay."
Mary grabbed his hand, rubbing her fingers across the top of his hand, "That's fine, John. I figured as much. You don't have to be so secretive about that time in your life. You're John because of what happened. Invite whomever you wish. Just don't try to hide it from a bride-to-be who micromanages every part of her wedding." A quick chortle, emphasizing her lack of anger with him. "You'll lose."
Mary moved toward their kitchen to grab a cup of tea for herself when she turned back toward him, an inquisitive look upon her face, "Still though."
John placed his cooling tea on the coffee table, looking to see her body framed in the doorway. "Yes?"
"There were two of them? You've told me plenty about Sherlock, and I just can't imagine it."
John thought back to his many meetings in secret with Mycroft. The tense and comical relationship between the two brothers. For the first time since Sherlock's death, he smiled at the memory of his former life.
"You don't want to."
Laying in the shadows of the evening light, Sherlock stared intensely at the tin laid ceiling in his bedroom, thinking wistfully of 221B Baker Street with its damask wall, littered with bullet holes and the smiley face for a hint of whimsy. His travels took him far away from home - for wasn't that what 221B had been? Even this luxurious estate where he spent his childhood always felt like a museum. Then boarding school with its bunk beds to maximize profit. Then university with its dull roommates, always moving to get away from him. Then flats, always similar with unwilling landlords and eviction notices. Then 221B where no one yelled because of body parts or the mess. Where no one questioned the life he led. Where there had been John with tea and a union flag pillow in his chair.
John who was now marrying a governess to an affluent family. Who shared an apartment with her in East London which they decorated together. Who stuffed lilac scented envelopes bringing the tidings of his falsified joy. Who worked in a clinic where little action occurred. Who appeared to be bored into the decision to procreate.
Sherlock grimaced at the disgusting thought of procreation - a process involving such intimate contact with the genitals of a woman was enough to make him consider other thoughts. Like quantum physics. Schrodinger's equation. Schrodinger. Schrodinger's Cats. Cats.
Did John and Mary have a cat? A pet, together? He grabbed for the file he found in Mycroft's desk (Who hides the key in a shrubbery? Other than everyone, that is?), searching through it for more information. It did not appear they owned a pet, but the knot in his chest tied itself even tighter still.
No, he thought, sinking back into the sheets of his bed, I can never quite delete John.