13 months after the death of Sherlock Holmes, John Watson finds himself moving on.
The shock of it sweeps him of his not-so-well-planted feet.
He meets her in the cemetery, John is standing at Sherlock's grave, he's crying again, not the heart wrenching sobs that used to be, but still tears. Heart-felt, pain-filled tears. Absolutely silent and absolutely private. Tears that no-one else intrudes on.
Until her, apparently.
She notices him crying, notices what is private. She knows what this is.
She walks over to him anyway. She places a hand on his shoulder and tells him that it eventually gets better - that's what things do y'see, they get better. John stares at her for a moment, thinking he should resent the intrusion. He doesn't. Instead, he stops crying –after a while- and lets this woman hug him. It makes things feel better, so he doesn't push her away, though he thinks he probably should.
John doesn't really understand why he trusts her to get this close to him. He doesn't really trust anyone, especially not after everything, but something about this woman sets him at a kind of peace. He thinks it might be her eyes, blue, filled with understanding and totally without that infuriating pity. He thinks that it maybe it's the odd compassion; coming over to a man she doesn't know simply because he looked a silent kind of heart-broken.
Mostly he thinks that it's because of the five-year-old blonde boy hanging off her hand, staring at him. John stares back for a while, he doesn't know how long he stares but, eventually, the boy smiles. The boy tells John that being sad is fine, that mummy is sad sometimes but she always stops when she gets a hug, makes sure she's not sad for Too Long, y'see, because that is Not A Good Thing. The boy tells John that he looks like he's been sad for Too Long, he says John should stop now. And then the boy hugs him. The small boy hugs the broken soldier tightly round the middle.
And John smiles.
John smiles a real, heart-lifting, head-splitting-til-you-almost-laugh smile. The first proper one in over a year... John smiles the smile that was needed. The boy hugs the hug that was needed. And life shifts back into a life that can be lived.
He pats the boy on the head as the child pulls away. John is still smiling. Crying as well, he realises, but mostly smiling. He feels... lighter... the concrete filled void in his chest no longer drags him to his knees. It's still heavy, yes, but it no longer pulls him down to the breaking.
The boy's mother smiles at John, John starts to smile back. Smiling feels so much easier now, easier than it has in a long, long time.
Before the two can leave, John stops them. He asks the woman if she would like some coffee and, if she would, would she like to get it with him? She says yes. She says yes and she becomes important.
Mary and Thomas Morstan become oh so very important indeed.
Smiling feels so much easier now.
