Considering John woke on a rooftop as the eight year old version of himself, he thought he was doing pretty well. That first night, he remembered saving Sherlock, the kick from the gun was more than he was used to, almost threw him over the back of the chair. He obviously wasn't part of Sherlock's life so he head to Harry's. She didn't know him, he had been expecting it, an instinct in the back of his head, like knowing that you were about to get sniped.
But he had hoped.
She was sober, in a smart blue black dress, neat and sharp, ages away from the Harry he had known, alone in her big fancy house, drinking too much and crying. Their relationship had eventually devolved to holding her hair out of her face while she vomited and making her eat toast and drink ginger ale and occasional phone calls and blog comments. When she hadn't recognized him he said he was sorry that he meant to ring the house a couple down. She just nodded at him distractedly and closed the door. Maybe Harry hadn't changed that much after all. If she ever thought better of leaving an eight year old child alone on her doorstep in the dark he didn't know. He left immediately, trying to think of someplace he could go.
He ended up in a public bathroom staring at himself in the mirror. Big eyes, button nose, face just losing its baby fat. It was a child's face. He was eight.
He looked like he was still in primary school. He slid his left arm out of his jumper much smoother than he had in years and bared his shoulder in the bleak florescent light. There was a faint pink where is scar should be, but not that shiny skinned star he was used to. Oddly enough however he did have a line of small scars across his ribs that looked a bit like rabbit prints in the snow. He had got those from an IED in Afghanistan. He didn't know why he had one but not the other. He didn't know why he had the body of an eight year old and his own adult mind. He didn't know how something like this could happen in the first place.
John was no Sherlock but it had to have been something about that memory. That last burst before he disappeared or was erased or whatever it was that was supposed to happen to him.
Wanting to be a doctor, he knew that was one memory in the pain. He wished he had remembered something a little older.
London was not a friend to a young boy with no past and no friends. He knew that working cases and he felt the reality of it then. He thought briefly of Raz and the other boys like him with their bikes and cans of spray paint. But they were too old to accept a child, and they all had families to go home to, they'd just leave John alone again afterward. In the end he returned to Vauxhill Arches where the Golem was hiding and snugged his back into the corner listening to someone's soft mutterings, like the flickering of moth's wings.
He spent a sprawl of nights huddled in the dark. In the dark he would read his stolen copy of Grey's Anatomy like an addict with his little flashlight.
Doorknobs, John discovered, were the new bane of his existence. He had spent thirty some odd years being able to see in windows, open the top cabinets in kitchens and most notably, reach for doorknobs without thinking. Now he was forever reaching for doorknobs straight out in front of him, at about waist level, where they had always been before. They weren't there anymore; they had all been shifted to eyelevel. It was a constant reminder that everything had changed in his life. And it kind of made him look like an idiot.
John's cards didn't work either; he had never existed after all, so he cut them up into little pieces and threw them into the Thames. It was like spreading his ashes. Highly therapeutic probably. His phone still worked, so there was probably a Harry and Clara still. Sherlock had been right about keeping things; if Harry had left Clara again he doubted she would have kept the phone. He had stopped crying pretty quick and taken up running, wearing a gray hoodie that reminded him vaguely of his days in training, his Polaroid camera heavy in his front pocket. He ran all of London, not all at the same time. He warmed up with a hard, steady jog and then tore through alleyways and short cuts and rooftops.
He was his own ambulance and liked to think that his slow memorization of the impossible twists of London's street was almost as good as Sherlock's. Except he knew it wasn't, Sherlock had Google Maps in his head.
Twice he passed Sherlock running in the opposite direction and it had cut like a knife. His nice clothes, his not-street clothes as he thought of them, were folded up neatly and stored in his knapsack. His street clothes were jeans, trainers and his hoodie with his Polaroid, most of the time though he kept it in his bag so it wouldn't break when he got into fights.
As if to emphasize the fact that he didn't exist, Sherlock, and none of the Yard, except once Anderson, ever caught him snapping pictures of Sherlock's crime scenes. He had more cases than John remembered working with him. Wasn't sure what that meant.
John wasn't sure of a lot of things.
This case had to do with fish, wasn't quite sure what, but the koi were extremely beautiful. It was so striking to see Sherlock's dark coat with the large orange and white fish in his hands as he looked lost as to where to put it that John stayed for an extra shot, giggling. He would call this one the mystery of where do I put the fish? Answer obvious: Into DI Lestrade's arms while he is gesturing, Anderson is likely to drop it and the crime scene unit is bustling around too seriously. Lestrade brings the most impact.
John laughed his eight-year-old head off and didn't even care.
His phone rang and he pulled it (he left her, or he would have kept it, people are sentimental) out of his pocket. "Speaking," he said, snapping closed the camera case and pushing it into his bag next to his Journal and Grey's.
Sometimes he felt like a little stalker. Maybe he was.
The alley was rattled off so fast that John almost didn't understand it, he tore across the rooftop, fire escape, down the alley, across the way, third floor, two blocks was the quickest way. It made his brain kind of exhausted, but he was able to pick up more now, journals agreed the young brain was more malleable.
"Gotta go, bobbies running all over, itsa stabbin," the girl said with a half sob. "Gotta go, covered in blood."
She hung up quickly and John hauled down the alley, across the way, third floor, two blocks leaving the fire escape clanging behind him. That was the way to go. He slid to his knees in front of the kid, couldn't be more than fourteen, looking over his shoulder for any police, or adults really, at the mouth of the alley. He learned quickly that unless he wanted to be sat in a chair and told what to do and where to go; it was a good idea to avoid adults. A blonde child of indiscriminate sex was curled around another sporting matching eyes and ears (at least he thought matching ears, he had never quite mastered that) was holding their hands over the stab in the kid's side.
"Doctor," they hissed at him, eyes wide and blown, the kid moaning into their hand. Hands were filthy but better than nothing.
"Move," he said. "This may need surgery."
"We got crack," the indiscriminate blonde said.
"Don't want it," John said, probing the wound.
"I'm a girl," the blonde said again.
John paused and gave her a look, he wasn't sure what it looked like, but she ducked her head, pulling herself into a knot with her bloody hands on her elbows.
"Sorry sir," she whispered.
"Don't sell things like that," he ordered in his army voice. It was wrong, she was just child, looked to be just this side of twelve. And he was pretty securely prepubescent himself, so it was a strange thing to offer anyway. He hated the idea of a young girl trying to sell the only things of value she had. Cracking open his case, he pulled out supplies and on his gloves, "Hold up the light."
It looked like it had missed any important organs, scraping instead along the side of the hip. He had a time cleaning the wound he ripped the antiseptic wipes with his teeth and cleaned the jagged flesh, always looking over his shoulder. The kid cursed in little sobs that John could hardly stand.
"It's going to be okay, that was to clean the wound to prevent infection." He held the flesh together with one hand, blood slipping over the fingertips of his gloves. "I'm going to sew it together now."
He's running low on supplies. He'll have to go to St. Bart's again, see what he can snag. She's an in he can trust to get what he needs. He has a great respect for his alma mater, but it's his most reliable source, other than trades.
The stitches were neat and he put on the gauze gently, business like. "I'm going to check that again later. You've lost a lot of blood," most of the children he treated wouldn't go to a proper hospital. They had warrants out, or were dodging the system or a thousand different reasons. He stopped fighting them about it.
"You need to keep the wound clean; that means not to remove the dressing before its ready. Make sure he rests and takes it slow. Have him drink some juice, eat something. If you can, go to the hospital."
"Didn't you fix me?" the kid asked.
"They'll have medicine I don't, and you'll be able to have a blood transfusion. You'll heal quicker and won't be as sick."
The two children looked at each other for a long time and finally the kid shook his head at his sister. "We can't, last time they split us up and…" he let the rest of his sentence die out in the air between them. "We got no family. Just waiting til I'm legal and then we'll be okay."
"Be careful," John said closing up his first aide kit, pulling off his gloves. "You're body's in a weakened state. I don't carry pain medicine, it's too dangerous or I'd give you some."
"I'd like some," the kid said in a small voice, holding on really well considering.
"Something else a hospital has that I don't," he sighed. "Do you know Bad Davey?"
The girl nodded; eyes big.
John scribbled the prescription on the back of a ripped bit of poster. "You'll want four, one - one - every six hours as needed, no more than that. Tell him not to charge you recreational prices, I'll be checking."
She nodded again, taking the slip of paper and staring at it seriously. "We don't have a lot of money. We don't have any money."
"He should give it to you," a close and personal relationship with a drug dealer wasn't something that John ever imagined maintaining. He changed so much in so few months. He grieved for so much loss. Everything he had ever done, every single breath he had ever taken didn't mean a single thing. He had nothing but memories of a world that existed.
"Okay," the girl said nodding.
She was going to nod her head off.
John had never considered himself a bad man, had tried not to be. But if he ever saw the man that did this to him he was going to empty three clips into his chest. There was nothing now, that he had, except being a doctor. It was what saved him so maybe it was enough.
After he got them to agree to stay tight and to go see Bad Davey he hitched his bag onto his back. Nearly everything in it had come as a result of theft, except some of the supplies he had begged or bought off Bad Davey. Theft was not something he normally supported, but his whole life had been stolen from him, he was just stealing it back.
Science of Deduction:
Fish will swallow almost anything if it shines convincingly. Smithwaite Pearls discovered.