Lest We Forget
Part one of 'The Taker' series
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Chapter 1 – Routine is the Game
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'I'm a fake.'
'Sherlock...'
'The newspapers where right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly... in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.'
'Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met... the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?'
'Nobody could be that clever.'
'You could.'
'I researched you. Before we met I discovered everything that I could to impress you. It's a trick. Just a magic trick.'
'No. Alright, stop it.'
'No! Stay exactly where you are. Don't move.'
'A-alright.'
'Keep your eyes fixed on me. P-please, will you do this for me?'
'Do what?'
'This phone call – it's, er... it's my note. It's what people do, don't they- leave a note?'
...
'Leave a note when?'
'Goodbye, John.'
'No. Don't!'
Falling is just like flying, except there is a more permanent destination...
'No! SHERLOCK!'
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"No!" yelled the ex-army doctor, jumping up in his seat, his desk rattling from the impact of his knees. A startled nurse jumped back from him, her hand still reaching out from her attempt at waking the poor doctor from his nightmare.
"D-doctor? Doctor Watson?" asked the petite nurse a second time, a bit more forceful. She picked up an overturned pencil holder, trying to clean up the spilt contents as she furrowed her delicate eyebrows in concern.
Blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes, the disorientated man brought himself sluggishly into the present. "Y-yes? Sorry, I'm so sorry. I-I must have dozed off," replied Doctor Watson, shaking himself of his horrible dream. The nurse watched him in concern, but nodded, accepting it.
'No…no, it was a memory,' he reminded himself while another, and hopefully the last, shiver ran up his spine. He gave the nurse a weak smile, trying to reassure her. He was, if anything, a gentleman after all.
"Sorry doctor, but you've got an appointment scheduled in half an hour," said the nurse, smiling back softly.
"An appointment? I wasn't working with anymore today..." asked Doctor Watson, furrowing his brow in hopes of remembering the supposed appointment.
"No, sorry- It's an appointment with your therapist," replied the nurse, setting the spilt holder back on Watson's desk, settling her hands behind her back.
"R-right-" was the shaky reply.
Doctor John Watson shifted awkwardly, a wave of shame washing over him. He knew it was nothing to be abashed about, and nothing to hide, but to have a colleague remind him… it was a bit embarrassing. Especially for the ex-army man. He hated to think he needed the therapy, hated to remember that he had a weakness, but all he could do was sigh and accept it.
'Then again, if I still have these dreams, then maybe I should be there.' He thought before huffing in defeat.
Working where he did, in such a small establishment, news traveled fast. He was glad that at least the nurse wasn't judgemental about any of it. She did, though, act friendly more than anything, looking out of the poor doctor. He was glad for that.
Since that fateful day, the day of the fall, Watson had gotten a stable job at a private practice, moved out of that infamous flat and even started to occasionally contact his old friends. And yet, he just didn't feel right. It'd been a year and a half since 'the fall' and yet the poor doctor couldn't move on. John had made progress, no doubt, but he was still stuck in the memories.
'I was once plagued by memories of Afghanistan, now I can't help but think of him,' he thought before sighing again, shifting to get ready. Damn that man and what he'd done to John, for the better or not.
"Right,…uh, right," he started hesitating, "can you pass the crutch?" he asked the nurse. He shuffled out of his seat, grabbing his bag before starting to move out of his office.
"Here," said the nurse, passing Watson his cane. He would be damned if he had to live with it the rest of this miserable life but his leg was once again a crippled mess. He had no choice. He'd often tried to talk himself out of it, knowing that it was psychosomatic, but it didn't always work.
"Thanks," he mumbled out while passing the kind woman. 'Nice to know there's people like…like,' Right as he passed through the door, he remembered his manners, a feeling of guilt passing for being so glum and gruff and forgetting to ask for a name. Sucking it up, he mentally shook himself and turned to the young nurse, trying to muster one of his old, kind smiles.
"Say, um…sorry, what was your name?" he asked, feeling like an idiot. He'd seen the nurse around, it wasn't like she was a complete stranger, and she had even helped him before, but he was never in the mood to care. He could have sworn that they'd met before somewhere...maybe in uni? 'Very mannerly, you idiot.'
"Morstan, Maria Morstan. You can call me Mary, though. Ah, well... everyone does," replied Nurse Morstan, stuttering a bit. She smiled warmly at the doctor but it fell as there was no real response from the doctor who had already lost his train of thought. At least he had tried. She turned to leave, now even more concerned for her colleague. He was polite enough to hold his office door for her, but he was completely lost in thought. He had seemed reclusive to begin with, but it was obvious now that he was troubled.
As she turned around the corner, a thought hit John and he looked back up, wondering.
"Morstan..." Watson mumbled out, nodded and left, leaving finally. He seemed to be missing out on a lot these days.
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"John," greeted John's therapist as he sat down in the oddly modern-minimalistic room of Dr. Thompson, who was sitting in a white plain couch similar to his own.
An hour after work found him once again in a familiar whitewashed room. Two chairs sat in front of each other that paralleled two windows looking out into a garden with a spruce tree.
"Hello," replied John half-heartedly, not really caring for the same boring routine.
Every time he came here, Thompson would ask him about his life, his job, his friends and he would reply with the normal 'all's fine' act. He really didn't care much anymore.
"How are you doing?" asked the therapist.
"Same as always, I suppose," responded out John automatically.
'I'm a grown man for goodness sakes! An ex-soldier! I'll deal with my problems in my own way.' He thought stubbornly. But then, a little voice always nagged 'He was the way you dealt. All those adventures and mysteries; remember what Mycroft told you.' John sighed again, shaking himself so he could get the session over with. John was having an 'off' day again and he didn't have much patience. His mind was still wandering back to Miss Morstan, flinching at how he had acted.
By now, John was already answering the therapist automatically, the questions memorized long ago. 'What question was she on again?' He really didn't know why he came back.
"You've been working on your blog." It wasn't a question, it was a statement and it snapped John right out of his thoughts. 'My blog?' he thought confused. He hadn't touched the site since the last post a year or so ago. The hateful comments and memories of him had gotten too much.
"W-what? I haven't touched it." he asked, wary but curious and more than slightly confused. Doctor Thompson looked up, confused.
"The counter has been fixed and some things have been edited. It would seem that any 'anonymous' replies have been deleted, anything hateful, along with a post," answered the therapist. "You didn't do that?" She was now curious, quickly, she wrote something down again.
"No-no."
"You should look into it. There's been some reports of digital vandalism lately, normally blogs, so you should be careful."
"I- I didn't know. I'll check it."
'Who could have done that? I should be the only one with access to the blog... well, maybe Mycroft...' John's thought's trailed off again, leaving him to think aimlessly. Eventually he figured if Mycroft did do it, it would be for a good enough reason and at the moment. Not his problem.
"And how is work?" proceeded Dr Thompson, not missing a moment.
"It's going fine. I took up another shift this week; I think I might keep it." John slipped back into his mechanical rhythm.
"Why?"
"Something to do, keeps me busy, distracted," answered John, unfocused. He regretted the slip immediately as Dr Thompson scribbled something down in her book again, this time frowning. 'Brilliant,' he thought bitterly.
"John, have you been doing anything else except working since our last session?"
"...yeah," muttered out John after a pause, trying to lie. He hadn't done any socializing, but he had technically done more than just work.
'I feel like a child again, trying desperately to weasel myself out of a situation.'
"John, you need to do something productive in your life. You can't just live like a robot. You need to open up. If you shut yourself away then you're just denying what happened. What if he wasn't all that he was, you can't glorify him, he's go-"
"Stop!" proclaimed John, not wanting to listen to the ignorant therapist. "You didn't know him! I thought you believed? How can you listen to the media so blindly?" seethed John, feeling like a scar was starting to rip apart.
It seemed the doctor was on a short temper today, but then again, Dr Thompson was hitting a nerve. She hadn't even heard the news until he rejoined therapy; she hadn't even listened to him. He thought that since she had followed his blog, she might have believed…But just like everyone else she had just gone with the media, trusting them instead.
Thompson looked at him worriedly, trying to figure out what the good doctor was thinking.
"John-" said Thompson slowly, careful about what she said. She watched him for a moment, thinking about what to do next. This was an interesting case for her, never had she seen such grief and loss, even denial. She had no idea, though, about how wrong she was…again, she didn't know.
Silence stretched on for a while, Dr Thompson scribbling out a new idea as John just looked out of the window, watching the spruce tree sway in the light breeze.
"John, I want you to do something," said the therapist, flipping back on older notes, hoping that her new plan might work.
The old army doctor was a kind man, even now. He cared for people, even if his scars where too big a burden sometimes. He needed people to support him.
"What is it?" asked Watson timidly, a bit embarrassed of his outburst. He was curious though, wondering what Dr Thompson would make him do now.
The therapist hesitated, not knowing how he would react.
Finally, she spoke, "Go visit Baker Street. I know you haven't been there in over a month... at least. Just, walk the streets; visit Mrs Hudson if you want."
A silence stretched out between the two doctors; one thinking and one fretting.
"...I don't t-think…," responded John in a small voice after a moment, unsure. He didn't want to deal with the memories.
"Please John. You need condolence and to finish the grief cycle. It's been more than a year, the world is moving on. I don't want you to wake up one day and find that it's moved on without you. You need to move on," pleaded the therapist, trying to talk some sense into the army doctor.
John thought for a moment, his body still as he remembered. Thompson's sudden act of, compassion was it, confused John, but he knew she was right. He bowed his head and slumped his shoulders, tired from the day already.
'But as long as his name's tarnished, you know you can't. He was your best friend. Damn the media for making him into a fake,' said the voice in his head. 'I've got to try... it might do me some good,' he argued back.
Finally he looked back up to Dr Thompson, a hardened expression of his face. Stubbornness had won over, and John tended not to be one to back out of a challenge. This would be one of the hardest things he'd done in a long time, though. He'd avoided everything to do with him for so long, hoping to forget, but it never worked, not really.
"R-right, I'll go. I'll go soon," he promised.
"Thank you," answered Thompson, smiling at his progress. She dismissed him, trusting that all would go well.
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Author's Note: Hello there Internet! Right. So. A new story. My second attempt. I've been working on this for a while now, and I've gotten pretty far actually. I wanted to upload, though, before series 3 comes out (SO CLOSE!) just to keep a sense to it. It's my second story and I'm hoping it'll be interesting.
The story will based off of the original works of Arthur Conan Doyle, though probably in no particular order. I'll try to keep it 'after the Riechenbach fall' though, just to keep a bit of continuity. The story equivalent of 'The Empty House' is split into three parts and this is the first. Eventually this will involve a relationship between Sherlock and my Oc. She'll be introduced soon. Well, in chapter three. But don't skip to that, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. For now, though, it's about Robin and John's growing friendship and, y'know, grief and stuff. Read the story. You'll get it.
Disclaimer: I (Elleari) do not own any characters or situations pertaining to Arthur Conan Doyle's or BBC's work. Original characters and situations do, however, belong to me. This fiction is purely a fan made story for entertainment and no copyright infringement is intended.
Anyway, thank you for reading. Reviews would be greatly appreciated. They help improve and motivate my writing. Also, ask questions. I'll respond.
Cheers,
Elleari