Just Close Your Eyes
The only time his mother had ever slapped him was when he had gone home from school, 15 years old, bruised and trying his hardest not to cry. At first, his mother dropped everything to come to his aid, but he pushed her away, humiliated at once again being bullied by the "idiots" he calls his classmates. She looked hurt, but she didn't get angry. That is, until he went on a rant about how everyone had their father to look up to for strength and protection, and he couldn't even have that because his father didn't have the guts to give up his dangerous life for his family and had gotten himself killed before his son was old enough to even have the chance to know him.
He was just about to say how much he hated living in an incomplete family when a hand flies to his face, making him step back from the intensity. His cheek red and stinging, he looks at his mother, a small woman with the strength of a thousand men, and he had never seen so much pain in a person's eyes than he did in his mother's at the moment.
"Your father died to save you." she says, her tears slowly streaming down her face and her voice barely controlling her own anger. She's not shouting, and it made her words all the more powerful. "He's not the person who needs to prove anything to deserve to be your father. You're the one who needs to prove you deserve to be his son."
He could remember that moment like it was just yesterday, when in fact it had been three years ago. He has never regretted anything as much as he regrets what he said that day, and although he still sometimes somehow gets angry at his father for forcing him to grow up without a dad, he's always kept his mouth shut, because he knows his father was a good man.
He's never actually quite realized how much of a good man his father was until the first Christmas holiday he takes from university. He hasn't seen his mum for more than nine months (he had started a summer university program before the actual school year) and as much fun as he's having being on his own, he does look forward to going home again and eating his mother's food and hanging out with the Watsons.
He arrives late at night, and he doesn't think he'd catch his mother awake so he tiptoes around the house to avoid disturbing her. He's surprised to see her snuggled with a blanket on the couch, the telly silently playing what seems like an old film. A man that looked astonishingly like him is dancing with a woman who's definitely a younger version of his mum, and with the first sniff that he hears from his mother he knows what it is: his parents' wedding video.
His heart breaks at the sight and sound of his mum crying so he drops his bags and sits beside her on the couch. She jumps, but relaxes immediately as she envelops him in a hug. A hug that makes him feel just how lonely she is, to have lost the three most important men in her life so prematurely: his father and her father, and now him. He hugs her back, silently telling her that he's just in uni, that she still has him.
After the dance on the video, she turns the telly off and wipes off her tears, smiling at him and asking him what he wants to eat. They converse, her telling him that she thought he wasn't going to come home until Tuesday, him telling her that he wanted to surprise her so he came home early. She watches him as he eats, and when he frowns at her and tells her her stare is unsettling, she merely chuckles and pours them both a glass of iced tea.
"You look just like your dad, you know? You sound a lot like him too." she says, her voice a mixture of wonder and longing and joy, which he could only assume is because she at least still has a souvenir of the man she loved.
That night, he lays in bed awake, wondering if God ever made exceptions for good people. His mother is the best, kindest, strongest person he's ever known, and while knows that He never brings people back from the afterlife to the world they once lived in, he wonders if He'd do it just this once if he asked hard enough. For his mum.
So many years pass, so many milestones come and go and soon, it's time for him to metaphorically let go of his mother's hand and hold on to his wife's. His mother fusses over him, she fusses over his bride, she fusses over every single thing she could fuss over and he knows it's because it's her way of dealing with letting go. Just like what Uncle John had once told him.
"When your father died, Molly did everything for everyone. For Mary and me, for the Lestrades, for the hospital, and especially for you. She didn't want to be idle and wallow in her loss, instead she wanted to concentrate on what she still had."
The ceremony goes off without a hitch, and his mother's happy tears dry during the festive reception. He wrings his hand nervously under the table, and his new wife looks at him encouragingly. With one last deep breath, and a prayer for his voice to cooperate with him, he stands up and climbs the stage, standing there until everyone's attention is on him.
He doesn't say anything as an introduction, and he waits until the hall is quiet as quiet can be, before he speaks. "Mum, please close your eyes." he says nervously into the microphone, hoping that she would do as he says and not let there be an awkward silence between them. After a look of inquiry from her from across the room, she nods, closing her eyes and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
He takes out a piece of paper from his pocket, and starts reading it in the deepest voice he could manage, hoping it would be a good enough imitation.
"There are very few things in this world that could confuse me, and there are fewer things still that could make me admit that I was wrong. There are very few things that could make me change my mind about something I've already considered to be true, even fewer things could make me willingly prefer sentiment over logic. I've long since thought that no one would ever willingly work with someone like me, and Greg Lestrade of the Yard has proven me wrong. I've long since thought that a person cannot do anything good or kind for someone else unless they're related by blood or they have something to gain from it, but then Mrs. Hudson showed me that yes, a person could. Friends, for me, were something childish, something I didn't need, something that is naïve and a product of people deluding themselves that there are people who would stand by them through whatever. I didn't think I would be proven wrong at that, but John Watson came and I couldn't keep on claiming that friendships don't exist, not when I had his, and he had mine. I was so sure that that was it for me, that my sentiment would only go to the point, because romance is definitely something only idiots could believe in. Mary came and I had a choice between accepting that what they had was real or calling my best friend an idiot. I resorted to believing that maybe there is such a thing, but I never wanted such a thing for me."
There is a pause, and he could see tears coming out from behind his mother's closed eyes. His uncle John wraps his arm around her in a comforting manner, and knowing that his mother has enough strength in her heart to hear the rest, he continues.
"What I didn't realize, is that through all of that, there was someone who was content enough to live just outside my world, just outside my circle, and it took me far too long to realize that she embodied every single thing that changed my life. All behind humble clothes and stutters and cups of horrid coffee. A seemingly insignificant person who would go on to define significance for me, a person who didn't think she counted but in truth have always had. She didn't realize just how much she counted because I didn't, but now I know, and hopefully she does too, that she counts the most. I couldn't explain what I feel for her, and I suppose that's why no one has ever successfully explained what romantic love was to me. It's different for every person, but for me it means one thing and one thing only."
He has to pause again, if only because tears are springing in his eyes as well, and it wouldn't be good for his voice to break now. His father's voice didn't break in the video, and he couldn't spoil the illusion.
"Molly, I love you. I would never be this romantic or this sentimental again, but rest assured that what I feel now would hold until the end of my days. And beyond, if I should be so lucky."
At this point, his mother is already crying steadily, but she doesn't open her eyes just yet, and everyone who knows her knows that she is indeed reliving the day when she originally heard those words. With a nod to the band, he walks down the stage and towards her, just as the music that he had heard from the video plays.
He guides his mother to stand, and when he sees her start opening her eyes he immediately leans down to whisper in her ear. "Just close your eyes, Mum. Just close your eyes."
They dance slowly in the middle of the dance floor, his mum's tears soaking the front of his suit but he doesn't care. After everything that she has done for him, the least he can do is give her one last dance with the only man she's ever wanted to dance with.
"Sherlock…" his mum whispers in the midst of her tears, and he could only smile because he knows that at this moment, even though she's crying, he knows that she's happy. He knows that she's happy because finally, at least for one more time, she's dancing with his father again.
Note: It's quite obvious what the inspiration for this story was.
In this wave, the author would like to dedicate every note to thanking the people who have started the challenges too, and also to those who are planning to join, and also to those who are still thinking about it. The more the merrier, as they say, and it definitely inspires her to see people express desire to participate.