A Knife and a Needle
A Special Stand-Alone Oneshot Written for ThoroughlySherlocked- happy birthday, mate!
{I know the title sounds selfharmy, but this is actually rather fluffy. A knife and a needle are essential tools for a leatherworker. It's fluffymcflufffluff [dayum, lots of f's right there] interspersed with a sprinkling of angst.
{Written by a selftaught leatherworker who is pining badly for a set of knives and tanning tools so she can start tanning some deer hides she begged off of a friend.}
{I highly recommend listening to the "Hunger Games: Original Motion Picture Score" by James Newton Howard while reading this. I had it going while writing.}
One memory that John carried for the rest of his life was when he was seven.
His first major project.
"See?" his grandmother had told him gently, spreading the elkhide over the table and leaning on one hand while stretched it with the other. "You've only worked with smaller things, lighter weights, kangaroo and squirrel. The hides of animals are sacred things, John. A being with a mind just like yours wore this skin once. When we use it, we must give it the highest honors we can."
It was a summer day, happily warm, with motes of pollen floating through the air. Here, with an elkhide on the table, time stopped.
"This is bigger, a stronger animal," Grandmother murmured. "His life-force would have thrummed with vibrant energy. Feel how thick his skin is?" she asked him, and invited him to touch the edges. "See his scars, here, and here?" She indicated deep valleys in the leather, guarded on the edges by ridges. "They are dark; the skin remembers violence. A cougar's claws," she said softly, spreading her hand and tracing four long marks. "He was a survivor."
John, his eyes wide, watched her.
"Why me?" he asked, respect in every word. "Why not Harry?"
"You have a gift," Grandmother whispered. "Someday, you might be better than I am."
"Never," John disagreed. You're better than I ever could be."
Grandmother smiled sadly. "You do not see the hide for its true potential, John," she instructed. "Now, here, climb on your stepping-stool and sit beside me. You must be firm with it. The animal's spirit will respect authority, but not obey the one who is afraid. Conversely, if you are overbearing, your cuts will be jagged, your stitching uneven.
"Watch me," she said softly. She picked a knife out of her mahogany case, honing the edge on her small whetstone. She ran a finger down the sides of the blade, cleaning it, and then touched it to the leather.
"How do you free-hand it like that?" John wondered reverently.
Grandmother smiled again. "Practice," she replied gently. "Now, can you tell what I'm making yet?"
His eyebrows furrowed; when her hand, gentle as a lover, drew another curved into the leather, it dawned.
"A hawk's hood," John realized, and his eyes glowed; he leaned forward.
"Good," she approved. "Now, do you remember how to make the braces and thread them?"
"Yes," John breathed eagerly.
"You see how dark this hide is," Grandmother told him, running a hand over the chocolate-brown skin. "Go get one of the white deerhides."
He clambered off of the stool, then turned back. "Buckskin or doeskin?" he called to her.
"You're learning the difference!" she praised. "Buckskin! The doeskin is too thin!"
*
She made the hood; he made the braces.
"Hold the knife like a pen," she instructed. "Draw it over the leather, don't stab it. A sharp blade is of the utmost importance. Three-eighths of an inch wide-"
"I remember." Concentrating intently, John followed her advice.
"Eight inches long."
"I know."
"Will it to bend to you," she told him. "Once you get good enough at it, you will barely need a knife at all. You can have memories be brought into your pieces, emotions, lives. But you have to be careful. If you make something into the life of another, that object will directly affect the thing. If I made a pair of gloves about you, for example, and then they were destroyed, you would feel it and suffer."
John swallowed.
Be happiness, he wills of the leather. Be the joy of a lesson on a summer's day.
*
"Roll the end over three times, then mark the edges with a pen," Grandmother says, handing him the pen. "Unroll it, transfer the marks to the center of the brace, and then punch the holes."
John does as she says. And she's right: the leather is getting easier to handle the more he works with it.
"Take the forceps, roll it back together, and pull the end through."
Please work, John begs of the brace.
And the knot is perfect.
"Measure out an inch and three-quarters from the knot along the brace," Grandmother orders. "Mark the spot. Punch a hole. Make a slit towards the tail of the brace a fourth of an inch long- perfect! Now, go three and three-quarter's down, mark the spot. Punch the hole. A quarter of an inch's slit on both sides- perfect.
"Now, the other one. Skip the second hole. Well done.
"Do you remember how to thread them?"
"Yes," John says, stepping onto the stool. Mentally, he numbers the three slits on both sides of the back of the hood, from left to right: one, two, three. End left side; strong cut, good position. Gap. Right side, from the inside towards the out: four, five, six.
He picks up the left brace, the one without the second hole, and gently pulls it down Two until the slit hits the opening. Then he takes the tail and pulls it up One, the opening furthest to the left.
Grandmother hands him the forceps, and he threads them through the openings as if he's been doing this his entire life.
Down Three, up Two, through brace-hole. Grab tail of brace. Pull.
And it comes out perfectly.
Grandmother hands him the other one; he threads the right brace like the other one, and then coaxes the forceps through the now-smaller openings and slit, and down through the middle in the right brace.
He grabs the left brace and pulls it through.
He pulls the tail of the right through the openings and slits of the left.
And it is utterly perfect.
*
Sometime during the decoration, when he's making a top-knot of loon's feathers and they're working on beading it together, the colors slowly change.
The braces go from gentle ivory to bright, snow white.
The elkhide goes from chocolate to pitch black.
John wills hope, happiness and health into his part; Grandmother makes hers experience, love and safety.
The hood is complimented by a magnificent plume of loon's feathers, and a mosaic of multicolored beads, vibrant and iridescent.
John keeps it for the rest of his life.
*
{Every step detailed is from my experience. Down Two, up One, forceps down Three, up Two, through hole A, grab brace end and pull through. As soon as I get a hide tanned, I'll try my hand at gloves, and will quite possibly take requests.}
{If anything doesn't make sense, please review/email/PM/tumblr (thatinsanefanficauthor) and I will most definitely get back to you.}
As he grows, he gets better.
He made an experiment one day, out of a hare that had been roaming close to the house. He makes an armguard, and thinks intensely of it while making it.
He damages it.
And the next day, the hare is nearly mauled to death by a fox.
He takes the hare in the house secretly, hides it in his room. And he patches the armguard, and does it properly, stitch by stitch.
His stitches are always dead even, Grandmother says. Harry uses a marker; he's never touched one.
And the hare heals.
He sets it free, and when he does, it looks back at him. It touches a paw to his hand.
And he knows what it means.
Don't forget.
**
When he gets older, when he moves away, Harry sometimes sends him things.
He never wears them.
They are unsightly; her stitches, even with the marker, are uneven. Her cuts are jagged, and her seams do not block out light even when they're glued.
Glue has always seemed to be a coward's option, to John.
Her things are always grey, or dark grey.
Not only are they unsightly, but her addiction is in every fiber.
And he burns them, trying in some way to set her free.
**
When he goes to Afghanistan, he doesn't often get a chance to work a hide.
But when he does- and when he is set, God himself will not stop John Hamish Watson from doing what he needs to- John works miracles.
He is the paradox: the healer who kills, the doctor who is a soldier.
Every single soul in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers knows of how he saved a man whose legs had been stripped to the bone by an IED by the means of a needle and a knife, with only stopping the external bleeding before picking up the leatherworker's tools.
They spoke of how he had worked nonstop for twelve hours straight, cutting his hands with the knives and not so much as flinching. How as energy was sapped from his limbs by the intensity of his work, he stabbed himself with the needle too many times to count.
When he'd finished, the leather had changed color before their very eyes.
And the man had been on his feet inside of a month.
When he's shot, he takes Grandmother's hood out from under his armor with a shaking hand as soon as he awakens. The leather has never lost its color in the slightest, and even though he's soaked with it, there is no blood on it. They had only taken him back to the basecamp, hadn't had a chance to take the bullet out because he was the best one in the company.
He runs a finger over the eye-panel of the hawk's hood. The beads glimmer under his hand. But they do not become bloodstained.
When he slowly begins picking pieces of metal out of his shoulder, everything that could go wrong, doesn't.
**
When he meets Mike Stamford in the park, he's wearing a small band around his right elbow, under his shirt, that Grandmother pressed into his hand when he'd come to see her before leaving for Afghanistan.
"For luck," she'd told him.
And luck is what happens.
**
After the Pool, with Moriarty, John does something.
He makes warm armguards, that covers the entirety of the forearm, from wrist to elbow. It is wolfskin, and the soul of the predator is still inside the hide.
It is a sharp-minded creature, wild, but incredibly loyal, to its last breath.
Protection, he roars into every stitch, every cut. Protect him.
It's the strongest work he's ever done.
And it works.
**
Sherlock doesn't wear the armguards to Saint Bartholomew's.
And he falls.
**
Six months after the fall, he considers it.
And a year after, he's literally got his hand on the gun.
But the light shifts, just a shard of a degree. The sun filters through the window, and the beams hit the beads on Grandmother's hood.
And they shine like diamonds.
No, John decides. Not yet.
And no more than an hour later, Sherlock comes home.
**
The next day, when Sherlock gets out of bed, it's quite subtle. He doesn't notice until he picks up his coat.
He notices the extra heft, the sudden weight that didn't use to be there as John shrugs into his favorite bomber jacket.
Their eyes meet.
John dares him to challenge it.
Sherlock doesn't.
When he puts it on, his eyes widen, showing the whites: his pupils dilate so that they're only just framed by a narrow rim of pale green.
The leather liner is solid, present, and it is as warm as if he'd been wearing it for hours.
The feeling smashes into his mind again. Protection. Safety. Love.
Sherlock instincts say that not even the devil himself could undo the power that has been put into his coat.
And the message is clear, from the intense, overpowering strength he can feel from it: I love you.
He meets John's eyes.
"Same here," Sherlock manages, and he knows exactly how John feels, because John has put everything he had into this.
John smiles for the first time in a year.
That is all the thanks he needs.
*
When Lestrade is so furious, upon meeting Sherlock again, that he seizes the detective by his lapels- it was to be expected- John's eyes narrow.
And then Lestrade jumps back as if he'd been shocked, wringing his hands.
John smirks.
**
And then the day comes.
The Day, John thought later, that was bound to come. Life had been far too easy lately.
So it was that while on a mad pursuit through London, the instant the suspect was cornered, he pulled something out from under his coat, holding it in the air.
Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks; John, lagging behind, didn't see it until it was too late.
"Run, John!" Sherlock shouts, and his voice is full of terror, but it carries every note of authority he possesses.
And John steps forward. He draws his gun.
And the world is lit on fire.
*
When he wakes up, he is in the hospital.
And there is pain, barely held back by the drugs dripping into his system. John sucks in a breath, and it grates against his broken ribs. His eyes open, and he sees Mycroft.
And the elder Holmes is watching him, his own eyes wide, full of shock and horror.
"Can you move your hands?" is the first thing he asks.
John flexes them. "Yes." His hands were the most important part of him; of course he'd taken measures to ensure that they were protected.
The next question hangs in the air: are you capable of doing this?
"My brother has yet to regain consciousness," Mycroft says. "He gets worse by the day.
And John knows that if every bone in his body was broken, it would not stop him from doing this.
"A knife and a needle, Mycroft," John pleads. "That's all I need."
Mycroft dips his head. "And anything else you require will be found."
*
When he sees Sherlock, frighteningly still and freakishly pale, John's heart skips a beat.
And then he sees the table, with a full set of knives in a mahogany case. He has a selection of thread, silk, and various things for decorations.
The elkhide is massive and thick, and deep, rich earthy brown.
Slowly, John walks forward. He runs his fingers over the long, deep scar that would have stretched from the elk's neck and wrapped around its shoulder.
His mind, instead of regarding the scar as unusable, sketches out a plan to use it, to highlight it.
John picks up one of the knives, and his hand are as gentle as a lover's, his finger resting gently on the back of the handle, just behind the blade.
And he free-hands it.
He doesn't set out with a fully threshed-out plan. He thinks of Sherlock, and lets his hands do the rest.
He stitches, after the design is fully cut out, and the stitches are dead even.
The coat quickly takes shape. John cuts his hands, and instead of being careful to avoid getting blood on the leather, he uses it.
He accentuates the cuffs with gold filigree, and underlying is it a background of ruby red, making the gold seem to shine even brighter.
He has never made a proper coat before, but he watched Grandmother do it, and the memory guides him.
He thinks of Sherlock, of his Sherlock-ness. How his mind was like a flame set in a crystal, brilliant like nothing else.
He thinks of the violin, of the human side, of his magnificence and boredom and macabre obsessions and his brother and everything he can think of.
He puts himself in there, too. There is a spot, just above the heart. A small dragon hidden inside, curled protectively over the vital organ.
This is Sherlock Holmes, John says to the leather. And he is going to be just fine.
*
When John wakes up, he doesn't remember falling asleep.
His hands are wrapped up thickly enough that he can barely grab the hospital railing to pull himself up. He's hooked to an I.V., Sherlock Holmes is wearing a very intricately-detailed coat.
More importantly, Grandmother is standing in front of him.
"Try that again," she warns, "and I'll cut off your fingers and leave you soulless."
"He's fine," John breathes, looking at Sherlock's monitors. The improvements are unquestionable.
"He's also physically five to seven years younger than he used to be," Grandmother mutters. "You're too dangerous a man for large projects like that, John. Try it again, and you'll be answering to me for a very, very long time."
"Yes, Grandmother," John murmurs. Relief trickles into his veins, acting like a tranquilizer.
"I made you and your man armbands. Wear them."
"Yes," John agrees sleepily, leaning back in his chair.
He falls asleep.
*
"When I woke up," Sherlock said quietly, "I thought you were dead."
John raised his eyebrows. Companionably, they walked down the hallways in one of their frequent semi-escapades. "Why?"
"Because when I saw you, you were bloody and you looked… empty," Sherlock finished for lack of a better word. He ran a finger down a ribbon of beads on his left forearm, still wearing the coat.
It felt warm to him, like a soft embrace. It fit perfectly, holding his frame in just the right way. His skin felt like it was quietly thrumming with energy when he touched it.
And the coat, the coat, was a work of art. It was a brilliant, dusky gold, with ribbons of ruby and fire. The beads glimmered like crystal and diamond, and in the light, they looked to be aflame.
The mosaic is intricate, but the pattern makes sense to an organized mind.
It is Sherlock Holmes, the epitome of the man.
Neither of them speak of the dragon over his heart.
"Thank you," Sherlock says, very quietly.
John's lips curve.
"You're welcome."
*
Mycroft has the coat put inside a thick steel case that John is quite sure that nothing, not even a runaway train or a hundred-foot fall, could break.
It is Sherlock, after all. If it gets harmed, so does he.
And in the meantime?
Sherlock thrives.