Farnborough. Family, flaxen, farm, frogs.
Father, firewater. Fourteen. Fag.
Foxglove. Field, femur, fracture. Fortemente, French.
Fuck, fiancee, fiasco. Frederick, failure.
Forward.
Fatigues. Fifth (Northumberland Fusiliers). Fight, fix, fire. Fear. Fever.
Fade... (Fuck you, Freud.)
Fate.
Florida. Freak. Flatter. (Flirt.) Firearm. Flatmate, friend. Felons, first-aid, forensics, fettuccini, financials. Follow. Films, formulae, fun, fidget, feed. Flippancy, frustration.
Fusion. Fondness.
Fulfillment. (Falter.)
Fame. Fiend. Fraud.
Faith.
Fly. Fall. Falling. Fallen.
Funeral. Fact. (Fallacy, falsehood.)
Fragile. Filament.
Forsaken. Forty. Fray.
Forget .
Fury. Fists.
Forgive.
Feelings. (fuck!)
Flawed. Flawless.
John feels haunted by words that begin with the letter F. In fact, it seems his whole life can be explained with that one letter.
Farnborough. Hampshire, born and raised. It's a decently large city, with a population nearing sixty thousand. Even with its size, it retains a sort of homegrown feel from which you'd expect a doctor and war hero to hail.
Family, flaxen, farm, frogs. The Watsons are a fair headed group, parents and daughter and son. Harriet trends towards strawberry blonde, like Mrs. Watson, and John trends towards dishwater, like his grandfather when he was young. Mr. Watson is lighter than the rest, but John has his blue eyes. Grandma Watson has a farm out a few miles from town. John remembers playing with barn cats and running, always running. It's the first place Harriet ever sees a frog in the wild, tucked beside an old gray stone beside Grandma Watson's house. She sneaks out after dark to go hunting for them, armed with only a torch and her rain boots. Sometimes, John goes with her, but he is more interested in the stars.
Father, firewater. John to this day can't pinpoint where it started, his mother's drinking, or what caused it. Perhaps a life of trying to make ends meet with little avail, or perhaps his mother had been one of those idealistic youths. Perhaps she once had grand plans for her life that never panned out. John didn't know then; he doesn't know now. Childhood just reached a point when he'd come home from school, and his father would sigh and say, "Your mother's out again," as if he could do nothing about it. Perhaps he couldn't, and the realization twists childhood into something unrecognizable. Soon after, John and Harriet's relationship begins to crumble. Nowadays, when John claims he and Harry never got on, what he really means to say is they haven't recovered from childhood traumas, and can never forgive each other for it.
Fourteen. Harriet is twelve when she starts going by Harry. She comes out at thirteen, but only to John. He's fourteen at the time, and thinks, maybe, if he comes out, too, it will bridge the growing gap between he and his sister. When he tells his parents about his bisexuality, all his father utters is: Fag.
Foxglove. Digitalis, the genus name of the foxglove plant, is often used in treating congenital heart failure. It's prescribed to Mrs. Watson for this very reason. Even now, years after her death, John still thinks of her whenever he sees foxgloves.
Field, femur, fracture. It rained the night before, and the rugby field is muddy and wet. No one wants to be here, really. It's cold and miserable and John overhears Roger say it's going to rain again, and soon. Sixteen-year-old John glances at the slick field and watches as one teammate slips and falls on another's leg, breaking it a few inches above the knee. In the back of John's mind, as he runs to the nearest telephone, he recalls that the femur is the most difficult bone to break in the human body. (Why do I know this? he asks himself. Because you've been reading the medical journals in the library—grab your coat on the way back, James might be going into shock.) The choice to become a doctor isn't a sudden revelation. It is... something that happened. Something John doesn't feel he has a choice in, because he's been compelled to it for what seems like forever.
Fortemente, French. The ability to speak another language is beyond John in more than one way. In the dusty, unvisited edges of his memory reside the few words in French he remembers from secondary school—mostly swears or come-ons. In the dusty, unvisited corner of his closet sits his clarinet in its case, sentiment cementing it into place.
Fuck, fiancée, fiasco. Frederick, failure. There have been three serious relationships in John's life. The first is with a woman named Mary. They meet in uni, and hit it off immediately. John can't believe his luck. She feels like his second half, his partner in crime, his sunlight and rain. They have been engaged for just over a year when she ends it. Her explanation is nothing more than, "It just isn't working for me anymore, John." Sometimes he hates his own name, just because of the way it reminds him of her, and how she said it. Most of the time, though, he carries on. What else was there to do? John isn't one for prolonged moping, and he's young, so he tells himself there are plenty more fish in the sea.
Just out of school, he quite literally runs into Frederick (called Freddie by his friends) on the street. Freddie is devastatingly handsome, with a classic sort of face that makes John's heart skip a beat. And they work, for awhile At least, for nearly two years, for enough time that John thinks they are settled, and enough time for Freddie to move on to a new boyfriend. John looks back and wonders why he imagines things to be one way, when really the other person is completely out of sync with him. He wonders if he has communication problems. He doesn't, in fact, he just finds himself saddled to people who have a knack for misunderstandings. (The third and final relationship, the one that works despite massive communication gaps and misunderstandings, doesn't come along until after John Watson travels through Hell.)
Forward. When John feels that life has left him without options, he knows he's just looking in the wrong place.
Fatigues. They fit like a second skin. Fifth (Northumberland Fusiliers). In the army, nothing else from civilian life matters, which appeals to John's sense of duty. It also appeals to the part of him that's closed off and unwilling to trust again. (He muses now on whether he was more messed up before or after the war, and if such a thing can be quantified.)
Fight, fix, fire. Hands are truly one of the most miraculous things about humans. They're dexterous, capable of fulfilling what the brain can imagine. Capable of pulling triggers, ending lives in a single bright moment, like the snapping of violin strings. Capable of fishing drifting lives back from the edge, of dragging fragmented parts together after what seems like a final absolution.
It's in Afghanistan that John realizes he fixes things, and if he can't he tries anyway. It's what he does, what he's always done. Trying to fix birds with broken wings, cabinet doors that won't close correctly, his family, his relationships, the bruised and bleeding soldiers under his hands... He also realizes in Afghanistan that he doesn't know how to fix himself. The irony strikes him humorlessly as he lies on burning sand, a bullet hole torn through his shoulder.
Fear. Fever. After being shot, John feels like some wasted thing, a shadow of festering fiber shoved into a human-shaped vessel. There is pain, splintering across nerves that feel like they should have died a hundred years ago, and then nothing. Fever follows the void, turning his years of scarlet and sand into dimorphous nightmares. He can't tell if he's afraid of what he's faced, or that he'll never face it again, because it has beaten him. After the fever, after nightmares, is when he is most empty. Eviscerated.
Fade... (Fuck you, Freud.) John doesn't talk much about his years in the army, not outside his therapy sessions.
Then again, there really isn't anyone else to tell.
Fate. Thank you, Mike Stamford.
Florida. Mr. Hudson was very nearly not indicted for first degree murder. Sherlock put a stop to that nonsense. John has mixed feelings about capital punishment, but 221b is a very nice flat. Freak. Donovan bothers John from the start. Hell, Sherlock wasn't exactly kind to either her or Anderson, but nothing about his words screamed 'bully' to John. It's others who retaliate against Sherlock's brilliance, and who precipitate his attacks through sheer intolerance. John's instinct to protect Sherlock starts before he ever shoots a man for him. Several hours before, in fact. John's never been one for half measures.Flatter. (Flirt.) He honestly doesn't mean to... sound like he's propositioning Sherlock at Angelo's. Really, that's the very last thing on his mind! Later, when they're giggling over "Welcome to London!" and musing at shared madness, the whole flirting with Sherlock thing is bumped up a few places in John's mind. Not that he knows it. Call it... a psychosomatic limp of the heart. Firearm. It's first kept in the top desk drawer in his bedsit—he still has the desk, but in 221b, his gun is kept in the small nightstand cabinet. Easy to reach, in case he's called out of bed. Flatmate, friend. Everything's a process, John has always believed, and becoming Sherlock's friend is no different.This is what happens before, during, and in between: Felons, first-aid, forensics, fettuccini, financials. Follow. Films, formulae, fun, fidget, feed. Flippancy, frustration. Wash, rinse, repeat, throw in a few crazy chases, and voila! you have John's first few months at 221b.
Also, Fusion. Fondness. It's when Sherlock's at his most ridiculous (hijacking buses, fighting in ninja garb, parading about in a bedsheet, shooting doorbells, texting while John is on a date) that John knows the full extent of his warmness for Sherlock. This doesn't make the madman's histrionics any less irritating, but emotion softens John enough to grant him patience.
Fulfillment. He was lonely. He isn't anymore. (Falter.) That psychosomatic limp of the heart acts up sometimes. It keeps him from following impulses he would have done without hesitation years ago. Afghanistan left more than just an ugly scar on his shoulder.
Fame. Fiend. Fraud. It feels like the end times, and John grows anxious. Sherlock doesn't really understand the extent of John's concern, nor its reason. John doesn't really think he can explain in ways Sherlock could comprehend.
Faith. John's never been a religious person, but he knows more about faith than most people.
Fly. Fall. Falling. Fallen. His heart plummets from his chest, and breaks open on the pavement, visible to the entire world.
Funeral. He can't think during the funeral. He wonders if that's more the concussion the biker outside Bart's gave him, or if it's from grief. Probably both. Fact. He can't fix this. This isn't something that can be fixed. It's unfixable. No matter how he words it, one thing remains unchangeable: Sherlock is dead, and John can do nothing but stare at the stark reality of his tombstone. (Fallacy, falsehood.) (He doesn't know he's come a hair's breadth away from death again. He doesn't know a great deal, and the worse of it is that he can't know what he doesn't know. Not yet.)
Fragile. Filament. For the longest time, John drifts. He becomes a strip of nothing, stretched into transparency.
Forsaken. Forty. Fray. Time passes, as is its wont. He gets a job, pays bills, goes through the motions, but the world's gone a bit gray around the edges. It feels like the gray, the colorlessness, is increasing, like his life is leeching into the London environs.
Forget. He tries to do this. He finds he cannot.
And that miracle he asked for? Sherlock defies God and returns, beyond all reason and belief. Fury. Fists. Of course Sherlock comes back, because that's always been the plan. The plan John staunchly believes he should have been included in on, but since when has Sherlock ever not been an idiot? He gets a black eye for it, and that makes John feel both better and worse. He fetches an ice pack for Sherlock as a pseudo-apology. It's Sherlock who's doing the actual apologies.
Forgive. He does it for Sherlock as much as for himself. How can he be angry forever, when he needs Sherlock, and when it's becoming apparent how much Sherlock needs him?
Feelings. (fuck!) It happens soon after: That very moment, hung up against the wall like fairy lights and tinsel, bright and obvious, when John realizes he can't—can't can't will not ever again—live without Sherlock in his life. Immediate. Nearby. Within arms reach. His heart-limp is gone now, and he has no reason to let it return. So he runs, after London's criminals. (Give me your thieves, your murderers, your horrible masses yearning to bleed, the wretched psychos of your polluted shores—send these, the violent, clever-minded to me!) He runs, fingers grasping for purchase on Sherlock's quicksilver world, unwilling to let it slip away again. He runs, most importantly, after Sherlock himself. Sherlock lets him, and the immovable object meets an unstoppable force. It feels weird as much as it makes sense, but so does everything when Sherlock's involved. Besides, now Sherlock has a new smile, one reserved only for John.
Flawed. Flawless. For all the imperfections and insanity, for all the suffering and strife, for all the times John nearly punches Sherlock in the face, he loves his madman. And if that makes him crazy too, then that's just fine with John.