A/N: Still not British, a writer, and a lot of other things for that matter. -csf


6.

Throughout his life, John has found out that sharing a load is not necessarily halving the load, as the saying goes. Sometimes in the immediate aftermath, the load feels doubled. And tremulously he wonders if sharing an episode clipped from his childhood – and not even an episode representative of the whole of it, he has had a happy childhood, thank you – has been a wrong move. Even more so, a burden on Sherlock; the special genius who gets emotions so incredibly right when he follows his instincts, and so catastrophically wrong when he overthinks it, something insecure geniuses are prone to do.

It's out there now, and John can feel a heavy laden weight in his stomach, as he wonders if he has messed it up, if he has changed the precious friendship balance between them two, if he spoiled the magic bond that happened beyond any rational understanding.

He glances shyly at Sherlock, and Sherlock cocks an impervious eyebrow, daring him to talk, to try to take back this new knowledge of John Watson he is now so smug to possess. The doctor smirks; it figures Sherlock wouldn't make it easy on him, pretend nothing had passed – because that would be treating John differently, like something weak or vulnerable, instead of the same person he has jumped off a building for, as the only means to save.

That metaphorical load disintegrates to smithereens, strewn along a war torn path. Feeling a wave of relieved gratitude, a blushing former army doctor quickly changes the subject:

'Well, go on.' His voice acquiring a military, steely edge. 'Dazzle me with your deductions on that cypher, Sherlock.'

Sherlock beams, an honest and bright smile that by habit he tries to repress. He really shouldn't, John thinks.

'Not a cypher, John, but given your recent emotional roller coaster I will let that pass', Sherlock slips it in, magnanimously.

Git, John mentally calls him, fondly. He is only too sure that the tall consulting detective can easily read his mind at times like these.

Sherlock carries on unperturbed: 'Four sets of letters and numbers, a bit short for a message don't you think? Unless it spelled out s-t-o-p, in which case the very necessity of transposing the code would inevitably delay the rendering of the message.'

'I can think of other four letter words, Sherlock.'

'So your basal sort of imagination would, John.'

Oi, John sends out telepathically. For good measure he swats Sherlock's arm, just in case of weird magnetic interferences in the atmospheric air between them. Sherlock beams again.

'Letters and numbers, John. But if you look closely at the letters, you realise they are actually numbers too.'

'Roman numerals', John remembers vaguely from school.

'You are in sharp form today, John.'

Idiot, he further broadcasts, alongside a less than heartfelt glare.

Sherlock endures all these cranky soldier messages smugly, with the warmth of familiar ground.

'No, wait, show me that', John reaches for the wool coat's pocket of his friend as if it belonged to him also. A piece of scribbled paper comes out into the daylight, and John studies the random numbers and letters again.

ixo6 vi13 xv12 v09

'That's mine, by the way.'

'Hardly. You don't need notes, you've got a perfect memory, mate.'

Sherlock doesn't seem to know how to respond to that. He shrugs. Maybe he really takes notes for John, anyway.

'There, the first one, "ixo", is not roman numeral.'

The detective chuckles. 'Not an o but a zero. Easy to misread. Balance of probabilities. That makes it 9,6 – 6,13 – 15,12 – 5,9. And those are rows and lines of a cemetery plot grid. A modern one, and a big enough one, where there can be found at least 15 rows. This seems the only logical option within the geographical area.'

'Figures you'd think of cemeteries, though, but...'

'Roman numerals aren't exactly the latest trend, that limited the possibilities considerably.'

'I guess.'

'And then there's your grandfather, John.'

'What about him?'

'It's a damned witch hunt, I believe you said. Care to elaborate on that, John?'

The soldier kicks a loose bit of gravel at his feet. The meaning is not lost on his friend. Recalcitrant, still holding something back.

John will never cease to be an endless pit of surprises for Sherlock to unravel, the detective concludes, and smiles.

'When you're ready, John!' he finally says.

The army doctor follows his gaze to an abandoned spade, propped against a stone wall. He groans. How come he's always the one digging up the graves?

.

John's attention was waning; it was something intolerable to the consulting detective. In typical John Watson adrenaline crash, the blond doctor is quickly losing focus and gaining general apathy. Only the case can demand that essential link to the Here and Now, so Sherlock deems necessary to explain his deductions straight away. It's really quite simple. There are specific graves listed on a piece of paper carried by one of the men seeking posthumous revenge on John's grandfather and misdirecting it to the only Watson available. These graves are likely linked to the secret John carries about his grandfather. That secret that John both cannot quite remember and doesn't fully want to acknowledge from the depths of his memories. It pertains an unknown child in a dingy shed, and a retired doctor who had no business operating on that child (much in the least covertly, with no family of the child about). Sherlock actually suspects more. It may be an occupational hazard, but Sherlock immediately suspects that even a possibly senile retired old doctor would know better than to do homely surgical interventions on a living child in such unsanitary conditions, much in the least John's ancestor, the man who insists that different mugs must be used for beverage than the ones Sherlock uses for diluted acids (as if the latter ones wouldn't be acid cleaned, as clean as they get). No, Sherlock suspects the shed may have been an impromptu, homely version, covert morgue. And that, more than anything else, has Sherlock appreciate the genius of Hamish and the beauty of John's genetic lineage.

But why autopsy anyone without the knowledge of the competent authorities? Sherlock snorts at that. The competent authorities only bungle a perfectly easy job with forms, and health and safety, and sanitary regulations, and other minutiae... John's grandfather is turning out to be quite the rebel. Sherlock really approves of that too. Or maybe he just suspects that selfless heroism runs in John's family lineage, and Hamish will have had good reason to commit one of the most heinous crimes, desecration and disturbing of the dead.

Sherlock really hopes his guess is right. John's self-image is intrinsically linked to his family and upbringing to this day. It would come as quite the blow if John was to find himself the beloved grandson of a modern twist on Jack the Ripper. Disheartening for John, but Sherlock himself would be quite unperturbed. To Sherlock, John is an amazing, kind, brilliant entity all by himself, no matter his strange grandfather or his drunk sister. Sherlock doesn't believe he could think less of John, that wonderful, highly self-critic and gregarious optimist, smallish army doctor.

Sherlock may have said all this out loud in a blur of emanating deductions, or he may have told it by a strictly speaking imaginary fireplace in his mind palace, or it may be penciled in for an upcoming Tuesday. He's not entirely sure. Sometimes his conscious focus zeroes in on one thing alone and his mind spurts out deductions to those he will always trust to receive them right, like John or Mrs Hudson. And, right now, his focus is on a forgotten cemetery plot being reluctantly dug up. The gravel scratches the metal spade as it bites into the cold soil. John has long stopped voicing his paper thin objections, mere projections of what society is supposed to accept or disregard in its collective consciousness. John eagerly puts his back into the job, either to hurry along to another vital piece of the mystery or to dissipate that edgy, anxious energy that resides in him now. But his eyes are dimmed from their usual depths.

Sherlock promises to stop indulging John in coffee. Tea is much more suited to his friend's temperament.

Apparently he has just said that last little bit out loud. John smirks and mocks, through uneven, laboured breaths:

'Back with us, are you? To forbid me of coffee? I wonder what flipped that mute switch off.'

Sherlock snaps easily: 'Do hurry along, John. Do I need to find you a helper?'

John blinks owlishly, his blue eyes looking absolutely shocked. After a few moments' pondering, he answers: 'This is a two men's operation, mate. I don't want you calling Lestrade.'

'I could call Mrs Hudson, then.'

'What? To dig up a grave?'

'I'm sure she'd be amenable. She's surprisingly at ease with clearing decaying body parts after my experiments.'

'That's me, you idiot! She just moves everything back into the fridge.'

'Give it time, John, you will learn not to be so wasteful too... Hey! Cut that out!'

John giggles happily as Sherlock runs his fingers through his luxurious mop of curl, trying to sieve through the soil clumps. Sherlock, without a hint of resentment, chuckles along, their two voices intermingling in the quiet, frozen landscape, warming it as the sun shines through.

.

'Very thorough', John comments, a good while later. He tries to disguise as he leans back, hands pressed over the small of his back, his muscles reminding him that uplifting graves is not a common use for his back muscles. 'We've been through all four graves, surprisingly without being caught and thrown into jail—'

'I wouldn't mind now, I need to think.'

'—and all we got is four empty coffins. No, wait, let me correct that. All we had were four empty coffins, as we put them back, buried them again.'

'Of course, John, what would the mourning families think?'

'That we stole four rotting corpses?'

'John, you may have got nothing out of it, but I have samples from any traces left in those coffins. And I can tell you, those coffins had been used.'

John sighs at last. That, more than anything, seems to spur determination into the consulting detective. Laser focusing on the tired, dusty army doctor, Sherlock decides: 'We are reconvening at the B&B, John. You need a shower.'

'I'm fine', comes the mechanic answer.

'Nonsense! I'll be the judge of that!'

.

John is Sherlock's necessity, and Sherlock needs him like a moth is attracted to light. The taller man has long stopped fighting John's intense pull, it's embedded deep within his coding now.

For a long time Sherlock warily tried to keep himself independent, distant, unreachable, relying only on cold, measurable facts, dismissing his emotions, premonitions, even instincts. Only to recognise that John saw right through his restrained exterior and read him like a book. Where the detective should have been incredibly vulnerable – no one else ever saw past his defences, his misdirections, his grandiose personality so easily – John seemed to enjoy the exaggeration of Sherlock's crafted persona the more because John saw the man underneath. A breach in his defences like Sherlock never experienced before. And then John dared to do more. John took the turmoil of his excessive emotions and ordered them neatly, returning them carefully to the detective, explained and reasoned with. Sherlock cannot but appreciate the conundrum. John is himself too stiff, serious and controlled. He is not a man comfortable with talking about his own vulnerabilities, such as the traumatic parts of his past, but when it comes to Sherlock, he accepts the other man's burdens and tries to shape Sherlock's own monsters into virtues he's much too willing to praise. He really sees the best in Sherlock, when Sherlock does not feel at his best. John's unwavering faith in his best friend is John's greatest friendship gift to Sherlock, and Sherlock cannot have enough.

However, here and now, his John is shining less than the usual bright beacon of light. His shine is dulling, like a brass piece oxidising in the elements. His light extinguishing, he looks small, worn, and haggard. His features are drawn, his wrinkles cut deep into his expressive face by the dust trail from the grave digging. He's lost easily two pounds in the last couple of days and his jacket suddenly hangs looser, the elbow creases duplicated in new places, making it look shabbier than ever. When has John last had a proper meal? Sherlock can't remember. In fact, he himself is a bit peckish, come to think of it. The detective counts on John to keep an eye on these things for him. A surge of righteous anger comes to him as he thinks of the knowing doctor neglecting himself, when he lectures his friend about healthy habits and positive routines—

No, he will not blame John. He will instead steer him back to his light and a healthy glow. He'll be the alchemist returning dulled brass into polished gold. Good grief, he will mother John if he has to. Starting with insisting John has a proper scrub once at their rented room. This grave dust covered look is only half appealing to the detective. And maybe get John some balloons. John likes balloons, Sherlock thinks. Does he? He probably does. What kind of balloons? Animal shaped, bright colours, blown up latex gloves? Breath filled, helium filled, hydrogen filled? So many choices, Sherlock vows to think this through properly, for John.

He doesn't hear John calling his name, amused by the intense concentration in Sherlock's face.

.

John fidgets at the shadowy corner of the local Bed and Breakfast's rented room. He watches Sherlock work by the window, with a travelling microscope set to study a veritable collection of samples laid out. There are also bottled solutions of all sorts - unlabelled, as the consulting scientist finds this useless, he knows them by sight, sniff or something else, and allows no one else access. They are the reagents for a vast array of mysterious reactions to determine the qualitative content of the samples. Sherlock looks at ease among the gaudy wallpaper and commonplace curtains, and John recognises a certain homeliness that emanates from the detective himself, his studious activities and familiar clinking of glass on the microscope's stage.

To John befell the task of trawling the local archives, for anything that Sherlock may have missed after Sherlock has done so earlier, or something that jogs John's memory. It wasn't surprising for the detective's associate to find Sherlock quite at ease consulting an online repository of old newspapers as he is in a laboratory or a morgue.

A bit funny that, given that John is usually left to do this mind numbing work himself alone, at the detective's request. Watching Sherlock breeze through earlier with an uncanny ability to absorb information while scanning each page skimming through diagonally before moving on to the next, John wonders if what he does, painstakingly taking on each paragraph for it might hold the important clue, is at all necessary for the genius requesting his assistance.

It'd figure Sherlock would be better than John even at a mundane activity like reading...

'I appreciate your help', Sherlock comments out loud, without stopping his attentive test tube mixing. 'It allows me focus on more pressing matters, and I trust you to recognise matters of importance to me. The time it takes you is of little consequence to me.' He raises honest eyes, looking blue under the winter's sun, flooding through the window behind him. 'Besides, you are a fast reader, you developed that ability during your medicine studies. When I'm doing it, it's not necessarily reading. I'm scanning the pages for specific key words, John, like your grandfather's name, the Watson's name, and that address. I wanted to see if the controversy around your grandfather had reached the local papers. It takes you to recognise a neighbour's name, a local scandal of that time, or a past event that may have bearings on our case... Argh!' he protests, quite pirate-like, as he aggressively replaces the last test tube on the rack. 'Nothing! Nothing at all, but unwanted contamination on the samples!'

John sighs and burrows deeper into his seat. He can't help it. He's got a terrible headache and the bright light behind his friend is only aggravating the situation. Yet he won't excuse himself, this is where he needs to be. Sherlock's regular clients never get to be a part of the action like this, and John feels very privileged to be here, watching the painstaking yet realistic process taking place. He can only imagine what it'd be like for himself to try to make sense of all this without Sherlock's help.

'So what do we do now?' he asks the genius.

Still a bit grumpy with his lack of success, the genius sighs and makes up on the spot: 'Now we go for some food, John. It will ease your headache and provide me with valuable information.'

'Wait, how do you know I've got a headache?'

'Oh, please, John! It practically shouts out at me from that crease between your brows... Now, be helpful and open the door. This dreadful place's landlord is coming up the stairs.'

John nods, surprised. He appreciates how Sherlock does not give up and refuses to let down John.

Sherlock appreciates how John is so agreeable, as he sees his friend opening the door to a man carrying a vast sample of helium balloons.

'Anywhere will do, landlord', he dictates, haughty, as he loops the blue scarf around his neck. 'Coming, John?'

'Yeah, sure...' Always. 'What are the balloons for?'

'Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something...'

'Ugh?'

.

TBC