Part Four: The North Wind Doth Blow

There was nothing unusual about the rain on the next Wednesday night, not even if you counted John getting caught in the downpour on his way home. It was annoying, to be sure, especially since he might have avoided it if he hadn't stopped to buy milk, but it was the sort of thing you expected London weather to do. After a bit of a grumble and a nice, hot shower, John had no trouble falling asleep to the sound of raindrops tapping away on his windowpane. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, settling in for this Thursday's dream, whatever it was.

But at midnight, before he could do more than doze lightly, there arose such a fearful and tremendous noise that the earth and the heavens seemed to shake with it, never mind the thin walls of John's little flat. The doctor was jolted quite rudely out of his sleep to find that the blameless London rain had turned into an almighty storm. It was nothing short of jarring, but John had been a soldier, and before that he'd been a medical student and an intern, and if that hadn't prepared him for getting what sleep he could while he could get it, even under the most adverse conditions, he didn't know what would. So, unperturbed, he pulled the bedclothes over his head to muffle the din, and shut his eyes against the overwhelming noise and sudden, hard flashes of light.

The storm seemed to follow him into his dreams, however, filling them with sound and tempestuous fury. The landscape splintered and shifted with each mighty thunderclap, twisted eye-wateringly like the patterns in a kaleidoscope, and John had to struggle to keep up with the changes. He trudged through a blizzard, snow blowing into his open jacket and his shoes, with his hands cupped protectively around something small and warm and feathery – a bird? – nestled close against his collar. He was caught in a gale so fierce and powerful that he thought it would shatter his very bones, leaving not a single one of them whole, and scatter the bits so that he'd never be whole again. He rode the storm itself as it roared through the sky, blowing down woods and houses and power lines, and, once over the sea, sending up waves so great that they dashed against John's heels, and he could easily imagine that ships were wrecked by the hundreds in its wake.

It should have been frightening, what with the lightning making all the hair on his body stand on end and the thunder making his ears ring like hammer blows to the head, but what truly scared John was that none of it seemed to be accomplishing anything. He stayed a breath away from waking, always very much aware of the dip in the mattress, the weight of the blanket tangled about his legs, and the soft noises he made in his sleep, even as he felt the sea spray soak him to his knees. And sometimes he came all the way awake, spending several long heartbeats listening to thunder that sounded like it was being made by stone-giants hurling boulders at one another only to fall back into uneasy dreams where the thunder wasbeing made by stone-giants hurling boulders at one another.

Still, John did his best to stay asleep, because he had to, because it was necessary, because God knew what would happen if he did not dream this week, and though He was not inclined to share the details, John suspected it would not be anything good.

Yet it soon became clear that sleep was impossible. John Watson had spent a full fifteen minutes awake when there was a bright flash of lightning so close that he saw it through his eyelids. Its crash of thunder followed immediately, and that, in turn, was punctuated by a nasty pop-crackle-hiss. The streetlights he could see through the water lashing against his window winked out, and the world went completely dark.

There might, John thought, be a metaphor of some sort there, but when it became apparent that nothing more meaningful would happen, he made his way to the kitchenette by memory and by touch. He fumbled in the cupboards for matches and a candle, and spent the rest of that wild night sitting by its soft glow at the kitchen table, with his head in his hands. If the dry voice had anything to say about that, he did not hear it.

Though it had blown as if it would not stop until it reached the end of the world, eventually, after much too long, the storm began to die down, losing speed fitfully, as though it was fighting weariness every step of the way. By the time the sun came up, all that was left of it was a light, innocent drizzle.

John scrubbed his eyes, stretched, stood, and, finding that the power had come back on, he started up the kettle. He turned on the television while he waited for it to boil, half-expecting to hear that Parliament was flooded, that the Thames had risen up like an angry river god to swallow the Embankment and sweep the bridges away, but it was nothing so bad as that.

The storm had been undeniably vicious, however, and what was most alarming was that it had been entirely unexpected: It had blown in without warning from the North Sea. An alarmed Met Office put it down to climate change, and took the opportunity to remind the general population to make a serious effort to reduce their carbon footprints and energy consumption, if this wasn't the sort of thing they wanted to leave for future generations.

It seemed like the worst of it had been a few power outages and a bit of flooding, but it was still bad enough that a worried Greg phoned John to check on him, just as he was lowering his tea bag into the hot water. And John, as soon as Greg ended the call, put down his mug and rang Mrs. Hudson.

She was all right, she said lightly, and so was her flat. But 221C was flooded ("That's the trouble with basements, it's no wonder I can't get anyone interested in it"), and the windows of 221B were shattered ("Some flying debris, I expect, and the mess it's made – it's a good thing we put Sherlock's papers and things in those crates, I hate to think of the state of things if we'd left them lying around"). As always, she sounded unshaken, and because she was Mrs. Hudson, that was probably the simple truth rather than her putting on a brave face. Nevertheless, John offered to come over to help, and she thanked him, saying that she had only yesterday done some baking and that it would be nice to share the biscuits with him.

John quickly downed his tea and a slice of toast, and got ready to go out. But once he was back in his room, it was hard not to think of what had come – or what had not come – of this Thursday's dreams. After three weeks of what felt like significant progress, after three years of vivid dreams, this morning's vague and fretful impressions were worrying in the extreme. 'Worrying', in fact, was too small a word to encompass John's feelings on the matter: he felt very small and helpless and crushed in ways that were terrifyingly familiar, echoes of the state of his mind when he'd been living in that awful bedsit, before Sherlock, before everything. He had to take a moment, because it was a bit too much for him to push through with a brave face (he was not Mrs. Hudson, bless her tough little heart), and he sat on his bed with his shirt half-buttoned, reminding himself to breathe.

He stared for a long while at the microscope, the riding crop, and the apple, and he touched each of them, reassuring himself that they were not about to go anywhere, despite not having been added to this time around. His fingers lingered on the fruit, and, on impulse, he snatched it up. He kept it on the foot of the bed while he finished dressing, and he slipped it into his jacket, for security, before he left for Baker Street.

Mrs. Hudson greeted him with a quick hug, tutted over the dark circles under his red eyes, and made him sit down for a cuppa (and a couple of biscuits) before they started on the mess.

"But I understand, dear," she said. "I was shaking like an aspen leaf all night, and hardly got a wink of sleep. All that thunder!"

John gave her a wry smile over his teacup. "Yes, it was rather terrible," he agreed, though he had more than the weather on his mind.

"Well, at least some good came of it," said Mrs. Hudson lightly, dropping a lump of sugar into her herbal soother.

That took John aback. "You think so?"

"The North Wind blew you back to Baker Street, didn't it? I know I'm being silly, but it has been a while since you last came to visit. Would you like another biscuit? Don't be shy, dear, I'm not your landlady."

xxx

Notes:There isn't a particular fairy tale here: mostly it's drawn from the bit in East of the Sun and West of the Moon where the girl rides the North Wind, though I did draw on elements and wording from a few other stories. The dreams John did have were taken from Kotura, Lord of the Winds (Siberia), The Storm Fiend (Turkey), and the "Over Hill and Under Hill" chapter of The Hobbit. Some imagery was also taken from these here apocalyptic illustrations that I stumbled across while doing what passes for research. I also read The Lad Who Went to the North Wind and Aesop's The North Wind and the Sun for reference, and could not resist making a very, very small mention of hammers *coughMjolnircough*.

Oh, and the chapter title is, of course, from the nursery rhyme!