Savior
It was something that John felt like he was almost born to do, and later – when his life went horribly off track – he still couldn't shake the impression that yes, everything had a purpose, a reason, a rationale . . . God knows what it was though . . .
J/M, J/S R AU
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It might have started with the incident at school – except that it didn't.
Really started when John Watson was four and his sister Harriet was a couple of years older. She had just got her first bicycle, and John was really impressed about it being shiny and red and altogether the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. He'd figured out how to read the word 'bicycle' on the box that it came in, though the word seemed odd . . . something about the spelling – 'I's and 'y's having the same sound . . . so much so that when his dad was putting on the training wheels for her, John didn't hear the warning that she got about being careful. (In all fairness though, Harry had also got angry with John about the word; something about him 'stealing' the word from reading it on the box – that gave the adults a laugh – later to be forgotten because of what happened.)
So Harry and John were out on the sidewalk that was in the front of the block of flats that their family lived in – Harry riding her new bicycle and John sitting on his tricycle, looking at his very happy sister. Next to their apartment building was a corner beyond which the children were not allowed to ride – the sidewalk had a steep incline leading to a spot that rolled out on to the street. It didn't take a great deal of imagination or intelligence to see what could happen if a child lost control of either their tricycles or the new bicycle. Both Watson children had been warned of the danger many times before.
This particular day Harry had ridden her new bicycle to the very edge of where they were allowed and looked in the direction of the steep incline. Surely as someone who was now 'old enough' to ride a two-wheeled bicycle (although with training wheels – just a technicality), she should be allowed to venture down the path and away from younger less-advanced and noisy brothers who could 'read'. Harry did not believe her younger brother when he told her that there were stories, 'really neat stories' that you could read, and that the signs on the corners of the buildings meant that you didn't ever have to be lost.
(Currently John was working his way through a story about 'ants' – those tiny bits of life that sometimes he would sit and watch quietly, as they scurried around on the front sidewalk. Harry asked him one day what he was looking at and John tried to point them out, and show that they were alive. Harry came up and started stomping on them and he said 'Don't do that!' Harry said, 'I can do what I want!' At that moment, some of the ants got angry and crawled up on Harry's shoes and past her socks, right on her skin. They began to bite, and she ran inside to tell Mum that John had made the ants bite her.
She didn't get the response from their mother that she expected; Mum said, 'Don't be silly! John didn't tell the ants to bite you. The ants bit you because you stomped on them. They aren't happy about that!' And she told Harry not to stomp on the ants. Harry still thought the ants were being friendly with John for no good reason . . .)
So she sat on her bicycle, right at the corner, thinking about how much fun it would be to 'fly down the sidewalk really fast – a lot faster than anyone on just a tricycle could go. Harry started to round the corner, and heard John say, 'Harry! Mum and dad said we can't go down there – it's too dangerous!' 'I can go anywhere I want,' Harry said loudly, 'I have a bicycle and you don't!' And she started to roll down the inclined sidewalk . . .
(Even years later – as an adult – John Watson remembered the looked of joy on his sister's face as she felt the thrill of rolling down the hill. Of course when she got to the bottom of the hill, she stopped abruptly, and tipped forward sharply, landing on her face. John didn't even wait to hear his sister start crying and was already running to get their mum.
Her face was totally scraped up as a result, and it turned out (when she had got an x-ray as an adult – John didn't ask why . . .) that she had also broken her nose, but nobody could tell at the time. It was the earliest time that John actively remembered being worried about someone getting hurt.)
In the years to come, it became a pattern, and one day a way of life for John Watson . . .
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A.N. This is the start of a multi-part story. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (and the people around them) are not my characters – they belong to people who are much better story-tellers than I – Of course, all stories can be eventually traced back to the great story-tellers of thousands of years ago – people who first wove tales of what might have been, or could still be – and sparked imagination in their listeners and later, readers . . .
It is in stories that humanity is passed to the next generations . . .
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