Norbury 21: Wisdom

Rosie Watson's first word was 'dull.' Honestly, Mary wasn't surprised. Though he'd only been with her for a few months, Sherlock had left a lasting impression that she hoped would continue to manifest throughout the years. She hadn't intended to say something was dull, but she had been addressing the human skull that was her favorite toy. She would engage with other things, but never for very long and she always reached for the skull if given the choice. Mary chose to equate it to her first baby doll.

When they heard that word cross their daughter's lips, Mary and John met eyes and smiled. This was a rare happy moment, although it was made distinctly less happy by the absence of the person who would've enjoyed it the most. Mary would've given her right arm to see Sherlock's reaction to this. She wondered if he somehow knew just how much Rosie loved his posthumous gift. She hoped he did.

At Scott's suggestion, John wrote a letter to Sherlock about Rosie's accomplishment. He'd told her about the therapist's advice, and she thought it a wonderful way to maintain a connection. He may not be able to update Sherlock in real time, but this was a close second. For a while, she feared that he would write about every little thing to the point of being inane, but he saved those efforts for the important stuff. Of course she should have trusted John to be responsible with something like that. He wasn't going to sequester himself away with a pencil and notepad and scribble endlessly to a man who would never really read his letters.

Scott hadn't given her any concrete advice for handling grief as he had for John. Maybe that was because he didn't think mechanisms like that would help her. While their grief stemmed from the same issue, Mary and John had very different emotions associated with this tragedy. But a part of her wished that she, too, could write letters to the detective. First and foremost, she wanted to apologize for endangering him and ultimately ending his life. Secondly, she wanted to thank him for everything he'd done for John. She saw the impact that his presence had on the doctor, and it bordered on magic. Thirdly—alas, impossibly—she wanted to grab him by the wrist and drag him back here from wherever-he-was.

John didn't ask if she wanted to read his letter, and she didn't pry. Of course she wanted to read it, but she understood that its contents were between Sherlock and John and not for her eyes. She suspected he deleted them once they were finished. If it stayed on the computer, it'd be all too easy to find.

The letters weren't the only way in which they were keeping Sherlock's spirit alive in 221B. When Mary put Rosie to bed, she talked or sung to her like most mothers did, but John had a different method. In lieu of bedtime stories, he brought up the blog and read old cases to Rosie. Mary remembered wandering past the bedroom door and listening to John speak to their daughter. It took a moment for her brain to register what he was reading; she recognized the description of a Study in Pink, which she herself had read more times than she could count.

At first, she was slightly alarmed that their infant daughter was being exposed to tales of murder this early in life. She wasn't sure what that could do to a child's psychology. She took a step towards the door, fully intending to put a stop to this, when she listened a little more closely to John's voice. For the first time in a long time, he sounded content. Passing on Sherlock's legacy to their daughter was the only thing she'd seen that could bring her husband joy. Under no circumstances would she allow that to come to an end.

Instead of bursting in, she sat down against the door and listened to John tell the tale of Sherlock's genius and his own amazement at his new friend. She snuck away before he finished so he wouldn't find her listening in, but she did tell him she was aware of what he was doing.

"You're okay with it?" he'd sounded doubtful.

"Of course I'm okay with it."

When Rosie was old enough to actually understand the stories, Mary wondered if she would enjoy them or if she would prefer traditional children's books. She hoped it was the former. Rosie loved a human skull, so it wasn't all that far-fetched.

~0~

When Molly Hooper asked for an opportunity to visit with her goddaughter, Mary was all too happy to oblige. She said goodbye to John and headed to the pathologist's place. Sometimes, John was in a mood that clearly expressed he wanted to be alone. Today was one of those days, and she was glad their planned departure coincided with it.

Molly was overjoyed to see Rosie, cooing about how big she'd gotten. The two women made small talk for a few minutes while watching Rosie explore around the floor of the living room.

"How are you?" Mary asked Molly.

"Alright, considering. I have work to keep me busy," she explained.

"How much are you working?"

Molly hesitated, and Mary immediately concluded that the pathologist had been racking up obscene amounts of hours. Could she blame her? She missed Sherlock too, and if work was what helped take her mind off it, how was that a bad thing? "You don't have to say," Mary added. Molly's expression had provided all the answer Mary needed.

"How have you been?" Molly returned. Why did they have to go through the motions of having a normal conversation? They both knew that neither of them were doing that great, so why did it have to be discussed aloud?

"I'm improving," Mary decided to answer. She didn't mention the fact that she was seeing a therapist or that she was getting progressively more worried about John's state of mind. In the past month or so, every time she spoke to him, this small voice in the back of her head whispered, "He's lying to you." She wanted to put it off as paranoia, but the little voice was persistent. "He's hiding something. Something big."

"And John?" Of course Molly would switch the topic to the only subject more sensitive than Mary's own coping. But John's health was the most reasonable next line of inquiry. Mary considered lying, saying that he was steadily making progress in the right direction, but she needed to get her concerns off her chest. She trusted Molly to hear her out.

"Well… to be totally honest, I'm worried about him," Mary confessed.

"Why is that?"

"He's not himself. Of course, I don't expect him to be exactly the same after what happened, but he's not just grieving. I have this sinking suspicion that he's keeping some big secret from me, but I can't make heads or tails of what it could possibly be." Molly noticeably paled when Mary said this, which only magnified her suspicions. "Do you know something?" Mary immediately questioned.

"No," Molly answered quickly. Too quickly.

"You sure?"

"Of course. Mary, I know John, and he would tell you anything he thought you deserved to know." Mary wasn't buying it. She had no idea how Molly had kept Sherlock's secret for two years; she was a bloody awful liar.

"I don't believe you," Mary stated firmly. Molly turned another shade whiter. There was definitely something she was keeping from her. Mary commended her loyalty to John, he must've asked for her discretion, but Mary always got information when she wanted it. "Molly, what did he tell you?"

"Mary, I really can't say," Molly fumbled with her words. She was struggling not to reveal any more than she already had.

"So you do know something."

Molly was cornered now. She'd all but confessed. "It doesn't matter," she tried to change the subject, but Mary was having none of it.

"Yes, it does matter, because it concerns my husband. Whatever he's keeping from me, I believe is holding him back from recovery, so by informing me of whatever this is, you'll be helping him."

"Mary, I can't. You know I can't."

"What, did you pinky swear?"

"No. I think you're being unreasonable. John's not obligated to tell you everything."

"I'm his wife! Something's keeping him down, and I deserve to know what it is. You have no right to keep it from me." Mary had no idea where this anger came from, and she felt bad for dumping it all on the pathologist, but at this point her emotions had total control over any rational part of her brain.

"Mary, you should talk to John. Maybe he'll tell you if you just ask him," Molly suggested. Mary had steeled herself to talk to John about it on multiple occasions, but every time she looked at him her confidence shattered. She still felt that she was the main reason he was in this state in the first place, and she couldn't inflict further misery by pressing him for information he didn't want to disclose.

"I've tried, Molly. I've really tried, but every time I face him, he looks at me and I can see that he doesn't trust me. And why should he, when I got his best friend killed?"

"You didn't kill Sherlock," Molly insisted. Her placations did nothing to change Mary's mind. Multiple sessions with a professional therapist hadn't changed her mind. If she really didn't kill Sherlock, Scott would have forced her to realize that by now. The only possible explanation was that she was truly at fault, a fact which she'd known all along.

"I don't believe you," Mary growled.

Then Molly presented an argument she hadn't considered before: "If it was your fault, you would've been arrested. Have you met Lestrade and Mycroft? You think they would've let you off like this if they thought you were to blame?"

"No," Mary sighed, knowing she'd been defeated. The British government would have pulled all the strings in the world to put Mary behind bars if he thought she'd been at all responsible for the death of his little brother. Instead, he'd been nothing but helpful and supportive. Even John didn't blame her. In fact, the only one who saw any fault in Mary was herself. She really owed Molly Hooper for helping her come to this realization. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. You really don't deserve it. I'm just so worried about him."

"It's okay. You're both under a ridiculous amount of stress. The important thing is that you're there for each other."

"You're right. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Molly chimed. Mary was emotionally exhausted from that conversation and didn't think she could utter another word. Fortunately, Molly didn't force her to. She spent the rest of the visit playing with Rosie while Mary watched on. When it was time to return home, she thanked Molly profusely and repeatedly.

Upon returning home, she found the flat vacant. This surprised her, because John had been here before she left and certainly hadn't been planning an outing. She only had to wait half an hour before he returned from wherever he'd been. The shopping he carried inside erased a need for her to question his whereabouts. But when he greeted her, she still felt the same sense of unease pervading her that signaled something was off.

"John, are you okay?" she asked. "You seem a little shaken up."

"No, I'm fine," he insisted. She could almost hear the unsaid words, the truth beneath his placating lie. She could see it in his body language that he was uncomfortable in her presence. His gaze kept flitting all over the place, to everywhere but her face. She wanted to press the issue, but it didn't seem like the right time. Molly had told her she should just talk to him, but it was like there was a physical wall between them that conversation simply couldn't pierce. She left the issue for another day.

It turned out that 'another day' came a whole month later. John had had a long day at work and was still in the shower when she finished putting Rosie down for the night. She fetched the basket of clean laundry to bring to the bedroom, where John had just finished. She'd fallen behind in the past week, and there was nothing clean for him to wear in the dresser.

When she entered the room, one would've thought she caught him there with another woman. The guilt radiating off of him was palpable. He turned around to face her, and she immediately saw what he'd been hiding. Just above the mangled scar on his shoulder, the words 'high-functioning sociopath' were inked precisely.

"When did you get a tattoo?" she asked, wondering how long he'd kept this hidden from her.

"About a month ago," he replied. She saw his discomfort levels rise as she stepped a bit closer.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't seem important."

"Well, I think it's important. Certainly more important than the more boring patients you insist on telling me about." That made up the majority of their conversations at dinner: John's patients. For the most part, Mary enjoyed hearing about his day, but there were some stories that hardly deserved to be repeated.

"I don't know. I wasn't sure how you'd react, I didn't want to upset you." Why was he so determined to keep her happy? The man had done nothing wrong, ever, in his entire life. She should be going out of her way to make him happy, not the other way around.

"John, it's your body," she told him. "I can't tell you what you can or can't do with it. And I would never get upset with you over something like this. I think it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do."

"Are you saying you want one too?" She detected a hint of jest in his tone, and allowed herself a light chuckle.

"No. Definitely not. We are not a matching tattoo type of couple." They were not a matching anything type of couple, in Mary's opinion, but the real reason she didn't want one was because she didn't deserve one. Her connection with Sherlock was nothing compared to John's.

"Agreed," John remarked.

"But why'd you choose to put it there, right over the scar?" she asked. Its proximity to the old wound must've held significance.

"So that I think about it every time my shoulder aches or twinges."

"Which is… how often?" John hadn't told her all that much about the lasting physical effects of the bullet wound. She knew it bothered him to some degree, but not the precise degree.

"Pretty much all the time," John admitted.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Too late to change it now. But yes, I do think it's a good idea. Forgetting is far worse than hanging on." She knew he spoke from experience. The first time, he'd tried to forget everything. He'd moved out of Baker Street, grown a mustache, and distanced himself from everything that reminded him of Sherlock. He'd tried to forget, and he'd been miserable. Now, he was holding on. They lived in a Baker Street that was filled to the brim with reminders of the great detective. He was a bit better off than last time, at least that Mary could tell, but she worried that he'd get too caught up in hanging on to the past.

"But there is such a thing as holding too tightly. You know that, right?" She wanted confirmation that he recognized this.

"Of course I know that. I'm working on loosening my grip. This had actually helped, because I can now let go without worrying about being able to find my way back."

"Good." His explanation made perfect sense. "Did you ask Scott before you got it?" she questioned, wondering if this had been another suggestion from the therapist.

"No. But I did tell him about it afterwards. He seemed to approve. I explained it the same way I just did to you."

"Okay. Thank you for telling me all of this. I know it's been hard, and being totally open isn't really your thing, but if there's ever anything you need to talk about, I'm here. I'm not as qualified as Scott, but I do know you and I knew him, alright?" She was secretly fishing for whatever he'd been keeping, whatever secret Molly Hooper was privy to. If he'd gotten the tattoo only a month ago, it was too recent. She'd suspected John wasn't being completely frank with her long before that.

"Alright," John replied. She threw him a clean shirt and they crawled into bed together. Mary knew she would fall asleep first, but she also knew she'd awaken first. John suffered from persistent nightmares that had him tossing and turning violently enough to shake the whole bed. When this happened, Mary simply migrated to the couch. It was easier than trying to wake him. She didn't mind all that much, and she wouldn't dare relegate John to the couch every night just so she could rest peacefully.

John wasn't the only one with bad dreams, but Mary didn't react as viscerally as he did when her subconscious decided to play games at night. She'd awaken in a cold sweat, shivering from fear and anxiety. The dreams didn't haunt her as often as they did John, but often enough that she wished they'd ease up. She reminded herself to bring it up with Scott at her next appointment.