Disclaimer.
Spoilers for BBC Sherlock Series 1+2.
Warning: Mentions of abuse, child abuse, murder, spousal abuse/murder, drugs, alcoholism...um...
Just to make it clear I have this story posted on both , under the title Back to the Beginning and Archive of our own, under the title Finger Painting, sorry for any confusion.
(February/March 2016, John is six.)
John watched with wide round eyes as the adults descended into a heated argument.
Greg was fielding an argument with Sally and Sherlock while Sally and Anderson were arguing with each other and Sherlock, while Sherlock was arguing with them all and occasionally even insulting the general population.
The other police had left; they didn't want to crowd the child, the potentially traumatised child. Sherlock wanted to speak to her to see if she saw anything. Sally, Greg, Sherlock and Anderson were arguing over the best way to tackle the problem completely ignoring both John and not noticing the nearly hyperventilating girl in the corner who was huddled into herself so as to not attract attention.
John looked at the girl carefully, she had bruises splotched all over her, especially on her arms and neck which could be seen from the inadequate t-shirt and skirt she wore and she watched the adults with poorly hidden terror shrinking into the wall and flinching with every raised voice. She looked only a little older than John's six years.
John glanced at the adults then back to the girl. Sherlock had told him not to come into the house and to stay with one of the police men outside but John had slipped past the police and entered the house after he heard raised voices. It hadn't been hard; John could even slip past Sherlock when he really tried.
John took another fleeting glance towards the adults; they would be really cross if they caught him in the crime scene but the girl looked really upset. John stood there torn with indecision. He glanced at the girl noting the tear tracks. John squared his small shoulders, he didn't care how cross the adults would be, the girl was crying! (And about to run and hide somewhere where John was sure the adults wouldn't fit.)
John silently slipped over to the girl without Sherlock, Greg, Anderson or Sally noticing.
Sherlock scowled at Donovan, Anderson and Lestrade. He was hardly going to torment the girl! He only wanted to ask a couple of questions, surely having looked after John for months meant he wasn't too bad at dealing with children?
Sherlock took a quick glance at the girl to make sure she hadn't slipped away and paused staring. His inattention and silence caught Donovan's, Anderson's and Lestrade's notice too, eventually, and they too turned to look at what he was staring at.
John was sitting with the girl their backs to the wall and in line so they could see all the available exits talking to her calmly and carefully. The girl seemed to be slightly calmer, no longer so tense and ready to bolt although her eyes flickered to the adults now and then. Greg, Sally and Anderson winced, they hadn't realised the girl was in the same room as them when they were arguing!
Sherlock, Sally, Daniel and Greg couldn't hear what was being said in Sadie and John's hushed conversation but whatever it was seemed to be doing Sadie a world of good, she had even smiled! Not much of one but it was there.
"We need to get her to tell us who hurt her." Greg said quietly, judging by John's quick glance up not quietly enough. Sherlock eyed John's expression before turning to Sally.
"Donovan, get your notepad out and a pen now, get ready to write down anything she tells John." Sherlock ordered only loud enough for Daniel, Greg and Sally to hear him. Sally turned a questioning look Sherlock's way but Greg just fiddled for his own notepad and pen.
Suddenly John's and Sadie's conversation reached a volume that while still subdued was loud enough that the adults could hear as well. Sherlock, Sally, Greg and Daniel froze, faces fixed with slight horror before melting into the stoic features a cop on a nasty case had to resort to.
John rolled up his sleeve baring an odd burn mark. "I gots this by 'accidently' knocking over the frying pan when mum was cooking." John rolled his eyes and the girl giggled.
"What really happened then?" She asked looking interested.
"Dad got drunk again and thought I'd nicked his cigarettes so he burnt me with his lighter. It was actually Harry who'd taken them; she sold them for nasty beer." John explained calmly turning gently curious eyes to Sadie.
"Do you have any scars?" John asked innocently apart from the knowing gaze and slight glint in his eyes that spoke of him pulling a prank or deceiving someone. Sadie nodded swallowing before showing him a small mark on her hip.
"I got this from falling off my bike. I had to have five stitches. It was really 'cause mum didn't like me gettin' mud on the carpet, she had a knife in her hand." Sadie explained. Greg wrote down what she and John said face stony.
John showed a faded scar on his shoulder. "I gots this from a broken beer bottle, dad got pissed again, he was alright when he didn't drink." John commented.
Sadie held out her leg rolling down her socks slightly. "I got this one 'cause mum was high an' I interrupted her and her boyfriend, he didn't like me interuptin' neither."
Sally and Greg wrote down everything they could as John and Sadie continued. Greg, Sally and Daniel's faces were fixed carefully blank. Sherlock however while his features were fixed and carefully blank there was no missing the anger, the fury practically spitting from his eyes.
When Sadie and John were finished silence filled the room and Sadie glanced nervously at the adults having remembered they were in the room too. John took her hand and pulled her up gently not letting her hand go much to Sadie's evident relief.
"These are the police, they'll get you somewhere away from your mum and she'll never find you again." John reassured her. Sadie nodded sending a weak smile in John's direction as John led her outside. "Come on; let's play in the park across the road for a few minutes until they're ready."
Once the children had left the room Greg turned to Sherlock. "That bugger. John's dammed smart." Greg breathed out scrubbing his face with the hand holding a pen. Normally it took a long while and was a slow painful process to get abused kids to open up about the abuse and they needed the information to put the abusers in jail. John had just made their job a hell of a lot easier, Greg just wished he hadn't have been able to do so like that, using actual past memories.
Sally looked slightly shaken face paler. Daniel scrubbed his face rubbing his eyes wearily much in the same way as Greg.
Sherlock twitched drawing out his phone and for once calling someone instead of texting.
"...Mycroft I need information on John's father, the whole family and who he grew up with." There was a pause and then..."Please." Sherlock spoke almost too softly for them to hear but Sally's eyebrows rose and Greg and Daniel froze shock covering their faces.
Sherlock finished the call putting his phone in his pocket with a curt efficiency that meant he was containing and controlling his anger so he didn't inadvertently scare John.
"Did you know?" Sally asked Sherlock numbly.
"Know what?" Sherlock snapped not even attempting to control his simmering rage or modulate his voice. Sally took a deep breath, Sherlock could certainly be intimidating when he was angry but she had dealt with people far more likely to attack her than Sherlock whom she had never really seen actually assault someone who hadn't attacked him or John or Mrs Hudson first.
"Did you know about John and..." Sally trailed off, she was alright dealing with crime scenes because more often than not the victim was already dead and they just had to find the perpetrator, serial killers were rare. And it may sound callous but Sally far preferred to work to bring down a killer rather than finding a kidnapping victim or actually dealing with the traumatised people. She could but she didn't like dealing with the recently bereaved or those vulnerable, Sally personally didn't think she had the right maternal or soothing air to her to inspire confidence or to put the victim at ease.
It irked her that Sherlock actually could act like he cared so easily, he could pretend to put the victim at ease yet he rarely did so because it would 'waste his time' when harsher tactics worked faster and were much more informative. The harsher tactics weren't pleasant for the people involved though.
Sherlock twitched mouth pursing unhappily.
"I should have. I was blind to what was in front of me. I knew his father had been in prison for the murder of his wife, John's mother, and that John witnessed it but I...There wasn't much in John's behaviour to suggest abuse...he doesn't flinch at sudden movements, doesn't cower- in fact he matches people when they get angry, usually, with calm and collected anger, he is only as wary of others anger as one might expect from a normal child, he did hint towards a rather substandard Christmas, he had never celebrated it properly before..." Sherlock trailed off. "I thought it was more neglect, damaging enough as that is it seems there was more to it. Harry was oddly cagey about their youth too." Sherlock actually looked lost, as though the ground had been shaken from under his feet.
"It isn't always easy to notice, especially from someone you care about." Sally said painfully, fully aware of the similarities between this situation and the one with her cousin, she had only been sixteen when her uncle was arrested for abuse and before then Sally had had no idea her cousin had suffered.
Sherlock looked at her and she braced herself for one of his striking deductions that hit far too close to home to be comfortable. But Sherlock only nodded at her, in slight thanks for her comment, he didn't cut her to the quick with some carefully placed cutting words (it may have been the truth but that just made it all the more cutting).
Sally looked at Sherlock, she might have thought he was just too shocked by the recent revelations before but now...now, she knew Sherlock had held back his instinctive response in respect for personal boundaries. It really opened her eyes in that one singular moment to the effect John Watson, by just being, had had on Sherlock.
Once a upon a time Sherlock would have sprouted forth his deductions just to vent a little of his anger, just to make someone else feel just as bad as he did but he hadn't this time, and a few times in the past as well.
Sure occasionally he slipped when utterly focused on a particularly clever crime but since John and he had moved into the same flat Sherlock had...not warmed but certainly gained an insight into human thoughts and feelings that he had been conspicuously lacking before.
(With little John it was even more obvious than usual because Sherlock had to be more obvious in his gestures, adult John may be able to translate Sherlock's subtle gestures but a child, they needed more obvious hints.)
And Sally wondered to herself that Sherlock actually didn't mind the change, or at least tolerated it in exchange for John Watson's company. It may have made him 'weaker', Sally personally didn't think strong friendships made anyone weaker, but Sherlock accepted the changes to his personality because it came in a package deal with John.
She had doubted the depth of care Sherlock could show anyone else, let alone seemingly ordinary John Watson, but she couldn't doubt that despite how sometimes rude and demanding he was that Sherlock in his own way cared for John like a friend, best friends, closer than brothers could be at times.
And the more she saw of Sherlock the more she saw their dynamic and the more she saw of John. Seemingly simple John, clever amongst the masses certainly but not bright compared the almost blinding light of Sherlock's intellect, the doctor and the soldier. The strange dichotomy that John lived by. John didn't like mayhem, death and hurt but he thrived in situations where he was needed both as a doctor and as a soldier. This was fair enough, Sally supposed, seeing as he was a great help in those situations and had trained as both before.
But the seemingly simple man was a mass of contradictions, he was more complicated to unpick than Sherlock Holmes who at heart had very simple reasons for his actions, just nobody (apart from John and Mycroft) ever worked them out.
Sherlock sighed as he watched John and Sadie playing on the swings, both rather serious children laughing and playing about with a childish glee showing no hints to the trauma they had both suffered.
It didn't really change anything, John's abuse, but it did make Sherlock respect the man just a little bit more (and he respected John more than anyone).
Not for the first time Sherlock wished John was an adult again and would make an absent quip, just so Sherlock knew everything was back to normal.
He might find little John fascinating, it was odd knowing how the man would turn out and yet seeing the boy he had been, but he missed his best friend, he missed John.