A/N: Originally titled 'big yellow taxi'. I like it, but chapter 3 still rocks. I'm kinda-sorta maybe getting the hang of this. Oh and I know that some of the things in here don't exactly line up with the time-set of the canon. So sue me.(please don't)
They comfort me, the bees, now that I am without my Watson. They buzz back and forth, humming, busy with their little chores. Sometimes when I am completely absorbed in them I do not realize that he isn't there.
I suppose it is because the bees and I are like Watson and I in the beginning, observant of each other, cautious, but not to the point of avoidance.
And I suppose the bees are even more like Watson in the respect that they do not see me as their master but are not mine either. There is a mutual respect, but always a reverence for me that is as substantial in its basis as is a palace built on air.
If they got their act together they could surely rid themselves of me, and when it's cut down to the quick I need them more than they need me. Still, they stay, but surely not for the same reasons that dear Watson stayed as long as he did.
I do wonder why I am thinking of him so much today. More than usual, anyway.
Oh dear, dear John Watson. So essential to everything stable in my little universe. Like the flowers are to the bees, without them they cannot eat, they cannot sleep, they cannot possibly exist. I suppose at some point and time, if Darwinian Theory pulls through, we will find that long ago bees could exist without flowers, but the could not now that they are so dependent on them.
Just as now I struggle to exist without him.
I am sure that if he were here he would not be the pathetic sod I've become from our separation… But he would still care.
He's always cared. From the beginning he worried over me, in the smallest of ways.
I always look at the smallest things first, don't I? Perhaps that is the reason I could never see the big picture.
Doesn't it always seem to happen that I never know what I have until it's gone? I suppose I shall go back one day, if I last long enough to gain the strength, and in the place of 221 Baker Street will be some confounded hotel or something ridiculous like a tree museum. As if anyone would pay to see that.
And Watson may not even be in London. He may not be anywhere.
I remember the night I left London. I hailed a large cab with the most ridiculous yellow wheels. Watson, bless him, is so much stronger than I. He laughed about my 'big yellow taxi' and waved me off.
Oh dear god, I know why I am thinking of him today. Today is the anniversary of the day we met. I remember one year in which he took me out to dinner to celebrate it.
"Hello! Mr. Holmes? Anyone in?"
A young, round face dappled with freckles dipped round the corner of the house, and the package boy Billy Nelson appeared carrying what I deduced was my latest delivery of jars, I would have to start jarring the honey soon and packages were arriving almost daily from companies in the city. I was seeing a lot of Billy Nelson lately.
"Sorry, Nelson. For a fleeting second I thought you were- well, it isn't important. You may leave those jars where you stand now, I know they're heavy."
"Aow no, sir, these ain't ya jars. You gots TWO packages to-day, sir. I left your jars at the Post seeing as my bicycle can only carry one package at a time and you was all that I had to deliver to to-day so far, I figured I'd make two trips. Thissun is from a Mr. John H. Watson. It's not at all heavy, sir, so I'll just carry it to you."
It wasn't heavy. It was post marked two days previously, and it lay in my lap for some time after the boy had left. Stunning, how things can happen exactly at the times they need to. I wonder why that is?
I opened the package. Inside was simply a note.
"Why it is elementary, my dear Holmes. Happy Anniversary."