Hello everyone! Thank you for reading despite the fact that we already have season three and asdjhgahjgdjajhasd wedding... okay... too soon.

Anyway, thank you again and, please enjoy the reading.

The Third Law

Chapter Two

Two and a half years later

Sometimes there was too much noise around John and he wasn't able to think clearly.

That's why he liked the waiting room of the hospital where he was currently working. All the conversations, the complains and the cries of the babies, helped him to clear his thoughts and gave him long instants of unconsciousness in which he was only concerned about keep breathing and drink his coffee.

He had got that job thanks to Molly, the only one of the old friends with whom he chose to keep in touch even if it was just because she called him once a week, every week.

Thanks to that job he had met Mary, a young and petite woman with a soft round face, big green eyes and blond hair. She was the embodiment of everything he never liked in a woman but now, for some reason, all those details about her were somehow comforting.

She was a nursery school teacher in a small school near the hospital. They met while John was stitching the forehead of a five years old toddler who had been daring enough to jump from the swing to the sand box. (He failed, but that wasn't importan, if you ask him.)

Mary was smart and nice, and kind, and good with kids, but John had passed the last few weeks trying to identify what exactly he liked about her, beyond all that.

He couldn't reach any conclusion.

It was the way she used to giggle when they were talking? Her skin? The fact that she was the first woman that seemed interested in him after a long time and the only woman who had had a real chance to know him?
No, none of the above.

But thanks to Mary, John passed his first day without thinking about Sherlock and when he realized, he locked himself in his flat, cried for three hours straight and then he fell asleep.

John put the paper cup next to him in the bench and then he spent the next five minutes looking at the people passing by.

It was 7:20 in the morning, his shift had ended twenty minutes ago but he was still there, listening but not listening really. To leave his mind free and not elaborate any thought was a blessing.

Then Mary appeared at the door. She was wearing the blue dress John liked and her blonde hair was braided in a short, simple teacher-of-young-kids kind of style, practical and comfortable.

John didn't get up, he didn't even made a sign, he just enjoyed for a second the sight of Mary trying to find him in that crowded room, without succeeding. But Mary's eyes eventually found his and when that happened, she smiled.

And in that moment, in that noisy room filled with crying kids that were playing and shouting while their mothers were paying no attention to them, John finally realized why he liked Mary so much.

Because there was nothing of her that could ever reminded him of Sherlock.

And finally, he did the same thing that every single person in this world does when they end up a relationship and begin another: compare.

Although, instead of comparing Mary with his other girlfriends, he compared her with Sherlock.

Mary was smart indeed, but she wasn't Sherlock and his massive intellect.

Mary smiled every time she saw him, but that smile wasn't as satisfactory as Sherlock's smirk full of pride when John did something right.

Mary was kind but she wasn't Sherlock and his chronic need of ridicule the world.

They always chatted for hours on end and there was always something different in each conversation. But she wasn't Sherlock and his silent moments that were much more meaningful than his words.

The conversations with Mary were empty chatting, normal, something everyone could have with everyone else, about kids and work and trivial subjects going from the birth place to their favourite colours, music, etc. They never chatted about corpses or mysterious murders or criminal masterminds threatening their lives with complex deductions and games, made only from the way in which someone tied his shoelaces and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

Mary could rise his pulse when she was close, but Sherlock had stopped his heart by saying goodbye.

John tried not to think about all that. Comparisons are always odious and, deep down he knew that nothing in his future, nothing that his fate had prepared for him, could never compare to what he had lived with Sherlock and he had to accept it. The decision was made and the worst had passed.

The first horrible months after Sherlock's death had been overcome with relative success and he had gone back to a daily routine, just adding an extra burden of responsibilities that had kept him thinking about many other things, but not of his dead friend for most of the day.

The guilt and the anger that had dominated his life for so long in equal parts had remitted and now he felt empty. Not good, not bad, just empty.

John finally stood up and walked toward Mary.

- Are you ready? You're not tired?
- Not at all.

John had promised to help her to find a new flat, Mary had been having some troubles with her former landlady and, since he knew every single empty flat and house in London due to his old adventures looking for a place to live, after trying to throw himself from a rooftop, he offered her his help in the matter.

Luckily, he wouldn't be back at his flat until late at night.

Mary loved all the flats and all the houses. She was one of those people who look at the glass half full and goes through life thinking the best of everyone, but not in a naive way. She just chose to be like that: be kind and expect the best. But then John pointed something about the flat or the house that no one else had seen until then, and he took her to the next place.

- What do you think? This is quite comfy and it's near the centre of the city…
- Look at the roof. Do you see that spot? The one that looks clearer than the rest? Someone covered that spot with paster recently and they painted it with something similar to the old painting, but I assure you that there you'll have a wet spot that will make your life miserable…

Next flat.

- What about this one? It's well lit and…
- The neighbor upstairs practices cello until four in the morning, you won't be able to sleep properly.
- How do you know?
- I don't know, I noticed.
- What did you notice?
- His fingers, Mary.

Next flat.

- And this one?
- The neighbour's kids are going to drive you crazy. Said John, loking at the marks of dirty fingers at waist height on the wall.
- I like kids.
- Fat and spoiled kids. Said John, ignoring that comment and shaking his head slowly.

Next flat.

- Last address, 221 Baker Street.

John made no comment, he put his hands together and looked out the window while the cab drove them straight to that street where he had had so many suicidal thoughts the last time he was there.

Mrs. Hudson had promised him that she wasn't going to rent the flat for a while. Obviously it was a great effort for an old lady whose only income of money were the two for-rent flats at her disposal (one of which was more like a WW2 bunker than a proper flat) but no matter what, a part of John was hoping that Mrs Hudson would also like to leave everything as it was before, just to pretend.

But it wasn't the B flat the one for rent, it was the C. With the same moist ambience.

When Mrs. Hudson opened the door her eyes filled with tears and she ran to hug him. They hadn't seen each other in almost a year.

- You know her?
Asked Mary while looking around.
- I lived here for a while.
- Then you could ask her to lower the price, eh? – joked mary, but John looked away, sadly. He couldn't ask something like that, when poor Mrs. Hudson was keeping alive Sherlock's memory by maintaining untouched a flat she could been renting.
- I couldn't ask that, it's a flat in a very good location… - he said, wincing.

Mary looked around the small flat and examined everything, just like John had told her to do.
Mrs. Hudson approached to John and took his arm.

- When are you going to come over for tea?
- I've been busy, Mrs H. With work. I'm sorry, I'll come as soon as I have the time.
- Is everything okay?
- Yes.

John lied quickly, he was getting more and more expert at lying.

- She's pretty… and she likes you, I can tell.
- Has someone come? – obviously John was referring to his former flat and not to 221C
- Mycroft, a few weeks ago. But he didn't even say hello, he took a couple of things and left in a hurry.
- How's he? How's he doing?
- Chubby, losing a brother is not easy.
- Mmm... May I ask you a favor?

John looked at his shoes.

- Of course.
- Could you… could you add a couple of zeros to the price? I really don't want to come here every time I want to visit Mary…

Of course it was an unfair requirement and John knew it. Mrs. Hudson needed the money.

- Alright. After all, Mycroft still pays for the flat.
- I'd imagined something like that…

The adorable old lady put a finger on her lips and smiled, then she went to speak with Mary.

- She's crazy! No one is going to pay that much for a flat like that! – said Mary once they were outside.
- Yes… I think the years are taking their toll…
- I'll just continue with my flatmate for now.
- I think that would be the best… fancy a coffee?

After the incident with the flats, John decided that being with Mary was good for him. She distracted him and gave him the perfect opportunity to come back, little by little, to the real world. To the world of people who breathe and work under the sun and who leave all the bad things behind, like the past and the pain.

"We all suffer about something" thought John "We all had lost someone and we all have to carry on with our lives, I know, I've been there before." How many of his comrades, of his soldier partners he had seen dying in the battle field and he continued because his life was at stake.

It was the same with Sherlock. Sherlock had been his war and the consequence of his loss was the horrible monotony of normality. A tragedy that, until that moment, he had to face all by himself. But now he had Mary and everything looked a bit better.

There was no point of comparison between them and that wasn't good nor bad.

With Mary he spent the quietest months of his life. Normal, peaceful and also the most boring months, but in a good way.

It reminded him of the life at his parent's house. The quiet afternoons, watching telly and playing stupid board games. He had left that life to enroll in the army (escaping, really, because, to that point, the arguments with Harry were almost uncontrollable) and then he had gone back to normal.

Then Sherlock.

Then Mary.

John could almost draw a line along his life and label the different stages.

During those days, it was the second anniversary of Sherlock's death and John had a date with Mary.

He got up early in the morning and went to the cemetery. He stood in front of Sherlock's grave for a couple of hours, as always, just talking from time to time and then he left.

He put next to the grave the flowers he had bought for Mary

Their relationship had progressed more than John had thought it could in such short period of time, so only a few months had passed since the formalization of their going-out state, they rented a flat together (a lot closer to Baker Street than he had thought he was going to be able to bear) and started to share a life.

In a couple of weeks John started doing things he hadn't done in a long time, like visiting Mrs. Hudson for instance, and call Molly (the poor girl almost cried when he said hello) and other things he had never done before, like buying curtains and furniture and begin to build a "home".

But there was something familiar in all that "living with something" affair, of course he couldn't say that it was the same. Sherlock had never given a thought to the color of the curtains and to the fact that the floor of the parlor was so cluttered with papers and stuff that you could hardly see which color the carpet was.

Everything was different except one thing, one little detail that was the only thing that linked his previous life with the present, and just because of that John could tell that he was the same person, despite all the changes: he never stopped visiting Sherlock's grave.

The first anniversary of Sherlock's death John spent it on the streets, hiding. Everyone knew that he wasn't completely alright and even Lestrade had called him with serious thoughts of lock him in a dungeon just to be sure that he wasn't going to do something stupid. But John showed them that, even when sometimes the sadness was too much to live with, he had no intentions of leaving this world anymore.

The third anniversary of Sherlock's death was a bit "cheerful" he spent it at Bart with Molly and Lestrade.
The normal thing to do in those situations would have been going to a bar, drink something in the name of the companion who isn't there anymore and, even when he would have loved to go to Baker Street to continue recalling, laugh until cry and pass out behind the sofa as he had done a couple of times before. He couldn't do that anymore, though. Now he had other responsibilities.

The days with Mary passed by with the naturalness and happiness of a couple at the beginning of a new life together, with the small details that sometimes are huge moments of happiness, like when they discovered they liked the same movie or the same book or when Mary appeared all of a sudden to pick up John at the hospital or when the kids at the nursery jumped around him, laughing and asking him if he was a real-real soldier for real.

The day to day of a happy couple, but nothing worth to be conveyed in a blog.

Two years and a half passed. John and Mary got married in spring and all their friends were there. Even Molly, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Sarah, Harriet and her new girlfriend.

Until finally the days came when the only moment in which John thought about Sherlock was at night, when he turned off the lights.

And in his dreams he always came back.

Thank you for reading! Leave a comment if you like it!
I'll upload chapter two in a couple of days.

Cheers!

Liz.