Day 5 - John's Family
Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family and family is where life begins and love never ends.
John Watson breathed in deeply as he woke up at the beginning of another day. The light from the rising sun had just started peeking from behind the curtain.
He turned his head to the side to look at his wife. Mary was curled up next to him, her hand on his and her face towards him. In the dim light he caught the sparkle of her wedding ring. John smiled softly. He reached over to gently brush her blonde hair away from her face.
Today, the 14th of July, was the year anniversary of his arrival in The Convergence.
Not that he'd be celebrating of sorts, it was just something to ponder. He'd never expected to stay a year in this place. He hadn't expected most of the things that had happened.
It'd been a bit of a rollercoaster. Well, more than a bit if he had to be frank. From the whole process of watching himself on the screen, to finding out through a television show about Mary's past and future, to the incessant changes they went through almost every week. It wasn't easy being there, and it certainly would have been worse had he been alone.
That first day, John had been working through more than just an arrival in a convergence of realities. The bomb had been dropped that Mary was pregnant. It's not that he'd not planned on ever being a father. But he also hadn't planned on it. Medical school was one thing, then training, then Afghanistan, then suddenly he was almost forty and still single. Sherlock's 'death' didn't help the matter either.
He'd never been very good at being family. His parents were dead, his sister off drinking herself to death, no extended family worth knowing. He kept few friends and most, thanks to Sherlock's deductions, didn't even like him. People always left John Watson.
Until Mary. Mary hadn't run away when there were night terrors. She hadn't skipped out when his PTSD kicked in again. She let him hold onto Sherlock's memory and waited for him to open up about it. She listened to him talk about Sherlock and solving crimes and finding fingers in the fridge, laughing quietly along the way.
And now they were having a baby. He reckoned he was going to wait a lot longer than most fathers did to meet their child, being stuck in the Convergence.
At least Mary was here, at least Sherlock was here. As well as the slew of people that had become to him like family. Better than family really, blood wasn't a requirement. So as he swapped 'living with Sherlock' stories with Natasha, and asked questions about history with Naomi, and planned with Mycroft, and laughed with Zariah, and spent time with his best friend…he found himself blessed with a family. A unique and messed up family, but loyal and true and willing to do whatever it took to stay sane and safe. He'd keep them as long as possible.
John was long in thought for a long time, just staring at his beautiful, fierce, mysterious wife. Mary woke up, her sleepy blue eyes fluttered open. John smiled his sidewise smirk and closed the distance to steal a kiss. "Morning, love."