A/N: Thank you to EVERYBODY, by the way, for all the lovely comments and kind words! I really appreciate it! Back in the day, I'd respond to everybody (usually actually on the next installment!), but these days, it's as much as I can do to keep up with the writing and try to keep tabs on the fics, sorry. But you're all lovely and I love you and I've missed you and it's really great being back!
Anyhoo, ho boy this was a lot, and late, oops.
From Domina Temporis: Write a story about Watson before Holmes
Day 4: Like Father, Like Son
Dr. Watson watched his son tend to one of the lads in the neighborhood, a greenstick fracture. John moved calmly and confidently, keeping the wee one distracted with a steady stream of talk, as gentle as any other doctor his father had ever known.
Harold Watson could not have been more proud. The pride, however, came with the taint of regret, regret that it had taken so long for him to correct his mistakes.
His dear wife Isla had not survived giving birth to their second child, despite Harold's best and most frenzied efforts. And in the aftermath, he resented the son whose life had been traded for his mother's. If not for John, Isla would still be alive.
If Harold had taken better care of Isla, she would still be alive.
And so resentment of his son and loathing of himself went hand-in-hand for years. But from the time John was old enough to begin considering a profession, he wanted to be a doctor. He tended to animals, in lieu of human patients, with a tenderness his mother would have thrilled to see. And gradually, his earnestness and steadfast resolve thawed the ice in his father's heart. Harold began to allow the lad into the office during consultations, and he was as quiet and diligent as any good nurse.
Harold began to save money to send his second-born to medical school, and made an amendment to his will, should the worst befall him, to leave John both the practice and enough money to see him straight through to an M.D.
As they left their young patient's home, Harold clapped his son on the back. "You did well, John."
John beamed, and did not know how the light in his eyes was like a knife in his father's chest. All the lad had ever really wanted was his father's love… "I learned from the best."
"Hmmph. Ye havenae learned from the best until ye've learned in Edinburgh."
"Someday," John grinned.
"Aye, someday. Someday, you'll be Doctor Watson, and then I can retire."
John laughed. "And what would you be doing retiring, Da?"
"I could take up golf."
"You said golf is ridiculous."
"Aye, well, your old man is ridiculous. Never mind about me. Worry about your studies."
"Yessir."
Less than three years and the lad could start university. About a dozen years and he could become a junior partner at his father's practice. Harold had no way of knowing that their dreams would be cut short in just a few months, and that his sons would have to sell his practice long before John could take it over, and that Harry and John would fall out somewhere in the Australian colonies, and John would join the Army.
And he would have no way to tell his son that he was proud of the man he'd become, the bravest and most famous doctor in all of literature, but he was. And when John looked at the watch that had passed from his father to his brother to him, sometimes he wouldn't think of the way it had all ended. Sometimes, he would only remember the warm glow of his father's pride, and it was enough.