Dedicated to Jon who listened, and is listening still.
Thank you.
I'm sure that you don't ship Sherlock or John, or are even on this, but I feel that I owe you.
Edit: Authors' Notes see bottom
I Wish a Thousand Little Things
I wish…It was no use. He threw down his pen. No use at all. What was the point in a diary anyway? He had filled his details in on the front inside cover. Sherlock Holmes, age 12, it was a Christmas present from my father… It was father, that was the root of the problem. If it was anybody else he would have left the little leather book, maybe burnt it or experimented with chemicals on the leather cover. But he was trying so hard to impress his father. Typically, as fitting all the Sherlock did, his father would not notice. He would only notice the bad, the strange.
But still.
I wish a thousand little things but they never ever come true, so there is no point in me wishing that they will happen. But still. He frowns. That wasn't supposed to slip in. So I have to make my own wishes, I have to make my own things happen. There is no point wishing on other people, hoping on them. I have to make my own happenings. This, he frowns, trying to think of the right word, This is my policy, my manifesto. This is my system of beliefs. Just me.
He burnt the book, and never wanted to see it again. Those words hurt him, surprisingly much considering that he had written them. They had blossomed out and he hadn't meant them to. They had annoying, sad, deep dark emotional connotations, which Sherlock didn't want. But as he stabbed the last of book in the fire with a poker, he could remember every single word. He was becoming those words, no longer believing in abstract concepts. In hope, in wishes, in dreams.
He didn't want to believe in them because they didn't work, at least not for him.
He remembered them every time people failed him, or ignored him. But he remembered them more when people didn't fail him, didn't give up on him. He could list them, the seven of them. Some part of him thought of superstition and magic at the number seven, but that part of him had withered and died, long long ago. When he was twelve, in front of a fire on Christmas Day. But now, seven is a number. He could list them:
One: John Watson
Two: [Greg] Lestrade
Three: Mrs Hudson
Four: Mycroft [Holmes]
Five: Molly Hooper
Six: Irene Adler
Seven: [query:Jim_Moriarty?]
Moriarty had believed in him, he hadn't give up on him. And Sherlock respected him for that. Didn't like him, no, just respected him.
It's Christmas again, and he doesn't know what to do, and Mycroft has sent him a book. A small leather book. He writes his name on the front inside cover. Sherlock Holmes, age doesn't matter, given to me by my brother Mycroft, he pauses, In Siberia where I am currently hunting down criminals, The next words come out and he doesn't mean them to. John Watson thinks I am dead. So does London.
He leaves it because that pen won't come out, and turns to the first page.
So he writes the first thing that blossoms into his mind.
Hope.
Wishes.
Dreams.
I wish a thousand little things and maybe, one day, one of them might just come true.
He burnt that book too, but he remembered every single word.
With thanks to ongreenergrasses for her nice PMs [again]. And Sky [Skyfullofstars] too.
Lots of people seem to think that a kind of, weakness, issue with Sherlock's past and his character is his father, especially his untimely/dodgy death. I'm trying to explore that.
This is as close to a Reichenbach Fall story as I will ever get, mainly because I don't like them very much.
I feel kind of like they have an expiry date.
This story is best read in the "Serif" option on the bar at the top, two sizes too big.
Note: The letter on the "cover" is called "eth" – and it is lower case. It is an Old English Letter and a rune. It has nothing to do with the story; I just thought it looked pretty. XD
...and Jon is still listening, in between hiking in the Peak district (in rain and a little hail, apparently), so cheers.
