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α.
Harriet Jane Watson was born 11:48 PM, on the 13th of July, 1990.
John Hamish Watson followed suit three minutes later.
It was, quite possibly, the last time John followed Harriet in anything.
It became apparent that something was not-quite-right when, at three months, John was almost half a stone heavier than Harriet. They had tried putting John on a diet and limiting his milk, but then he would cry piteously and just grow thinner while remaining noticeably bigger. Finally Douglas Watson insisted they take both children to a doctor, even as Eva scoffed (“He's just healthy, who ever complains because their baby is too big?”).
It was a week before the results came in, and in that time the disparity between the two infants grew more pronounced. As they waited in the doctor's office, John gurgled happily, sitting up on Doug's bouncing leg, even as Harriet sucked on her fist, head on Eva's shoulder.
The visit found them returning back to their home in silence. Eva disappeared into the bedroom while Doug took John in his arms and thought.
2.
They moved to Doug's mum's old family house in the South Downs after Eva overheard the neighbour's boys calling John stupid for not being able to talk. He had been ten months old but walked and looked like a toddler.
The house itself was stone and oak and beautiful; as a child Douglas had loved going there on holiday, to the house and the rolling hills of the chalk downland that was made up of ancient bones of creatures long gone. Eva mourned the loss of London and her city's own bones underfoot, but consoled herself with the sight of her children against an endless backdrop of grass and yellow flowers.
It was a peaceful life, of sorts, even when Eva would cringe whenever the old Farley man who kept bees down the hill commented on what a sweet older brother John was, or bristle when the women would murmur about her boy, who had not yet mastered fine motor control or speaking. John and Harriet celebrated their second birthday alone with their parents and their Gram Lydia, without mentioning it to anyone from town. After all, it might have been hard to explain how John and Harriet had the same birthday, the same cake, the same age, yet have John heads and shoulders taller (older) than his twin sister.
3.
A pale doctor with white hair and coat watched John and Harry bouncing on the couch through the kitchen door as he sipped his tea, John jumping enthusiastically, Harry more swaying drunkenly than bouncing, but the giggles from the two children sounded the same.
“John looks well,” he murmured approvingly. “No complications so far, then?”
“Not so far, thank God, apart from his ridiculous appetite, but I suppose that's to be expected. If we didn't know better, it would be like he was just a regular kid, just … sped up.” Doug made a twirly motion with his hands that the doctor was sure made sense to the man but only served to put him in mind of a deranged octopus on too much caffeine.
“Douglas, are you sure you don't want to take him to a specialist? You know how rare his condition is, the effects aren't fully documented. There's been only one other case in the UK that I even know of.”
“What happened, then? To this other case?”
The doctor hesitated, running his hand through thick white hair. “Jacob Francis Sebastian, born 1971. His condition was only reported in 1975, so documentation about his early life was incomplete. The syndrome didn't even have a name until—“
“Was, so what, he's died?”
A pause, a clearing of the throat. “Around two years ago, I believe, from cardiovascular complications.”
There was a brief silence, punctured only by John's loud exclamations and Harriet's laughter. Douglas had known this, of course, he had always known, could still remember the initial diagnosis and constant progression throughout the lifetime of the patient with rapid acceleration from late-teens to mid-twenties culminating in death due to systemic failure, but it seemed it was something he mostly (wilfully) ignored.
The doctor cleared his throat again, a nervous habit, and averted his gaze before changing the topic.
“You were looking for full-time tutors for John, you said?”
“Um, yeah. Eva's been teaching him and Harry to read, and Johnny's been taking to it more, so I supposed that it would be best not to waste time.” A cough. “Such as it is.”
“I think I can help you with that. It's a good idea, actually. Studies have shown that intelligence and brain development are usually more advanced as compared to children of their age group.”
“Dad!” John bounded in, followed by a still giggling Harriet. “We want to watch The Spy Who Loved Me again.”
A white eyebrow was raised sceptically. “Is that … appropriate, Douglas?”
Doug shrugged in apparent nonchalance but the jiggling of his leg gave him away. “Um, well, Eva likes Carly Simon, Johnny likes the Lotus Esprit, and Harry likes Anya. It's practically a family film. Maybe later, you two.” He shooed the children away with octopus hands.
The eyebrow only rose further, but there was no further comment on the subject. “Right. I'll contact you tomorrow about tutors. Thank you for the tea.”
The two men were at the door when the pale doctor turned to the young solicitor. “Douglas, why are you so opposed to seeing a specialist? There are trials John could be part of, studies that could help others with his condition. If it's a matter of financial assistance, you'd be more than recompensed.”
Doug stopped and crossed his arms, with that stillness he sometimes got that unnerved the doctor unduly. He was used to the man's tics, the tapping fingers and expressive hands, and it always surprised him, the calm core that the man reached for in the most unexpected of times.
“It's daft, or so Eva keeps telling me. It's just, there's so little time, and I'd rather he not spend it in endless tests. ” It was a rare cloudless day, and Doug's hair looked bleached in the sun.
The pale doctor nodded and took his leave, soft grass under his feet, and underneath, the bones of ancient sea-creatures.
8.
“John, Ms. Hawthorne called, she's down with the flu so you don't have a session today.”
John watched his mum put up and pin her hair with graceful hands and shrugged. “Huh. Can I go down to the lake?”
“I'm going to work, and your grandmother won't be able to go with you there. Best just to stay in.”
“I don't need anyone to go with me, mum, I've known how to go about since I was four.”
“Stay in, John. You're not actually a teenager, in case you've forgotten, and your father lets you run around without supervision often enough. Besides, it looks as if it might rain.”
John scowled and collapsed back onto the couch, feet dangling over the edge, as his mum smoothed his hair back and gave him a last peck on the cheek before hurriedly wearing her coat and stepping out into the cloudy day. John tried reading about algebra before giving up and rummaging through the video piles.
Honestly, Blockbuster and VHS rentals were a freaking godsend, although he was convincing Dad to go buy one of those new DVD players. John had watched his father's collection twice over, and since Harry had started proper school a few years ago there was nothing to do when he wasn't studying or being tutored. Dad would pick out tapes for him every week and bring him all sorts of (“age-inappropriate,” mum would grouse, as if he followed some standard developmental chart) films.
He picked out a tape with a poor illustration of Harrison Ford with a weird gun, a smaller image of a smoking woman, and glowing buildings on the cover, and popped it in to watch.
Gram fixed him brunch and watched telly with him before napping. A light rain fell across the grasslands, and his dad came in shaking an umbrella. “Good day, Johnny?”
John groaned from his position on the couch, feet still dangling over the side. Last year he could still mostly fit even when he stretched. “I don't want to stay here any more, Dad.”
“Where d'you want to go, then? Fancy another trip down to the Seven Sisters?”
“No dad, I mean I can't stay here. I can't … if I burn out before even lighting anything then what’s the point?”
“Johnny, are you sure you're all right? Did Emily have you reading literature again?” Doug dropped onto the end of the couch unceremoniously, forcing John to drop his legs to the floor.
“Ow, watch it. No, it's—forget it, dad.”
Doug sighed and patted his son's knee. “Johnny, listen.” His face was soft and serious. “I'll take you where you need to. Just tell me where. I promise I'll find a way for you.”
John looked back and nodded, All right then, his face a mirror of his father's.
10.
“London.”
Dinner had been finished for some time, but everyone was still at the table. Dad was reading the newspaper leisurely, which was something he tended to do at night rather than in the morning, Mum was sending a text on her new phone, Gram was snoozing lightly, and Harry was doing her maths homework, something she was sure to ask John for help in once she got frustrated, so best to nip it in the bud. Nobody really heard John when he spoke, but his Dad turned absently from his newspaper to face him.
“What?”
“London. It's where I need to go. Ms. Hawthorne says I'm ready for my A-levels, and then I can apply to Barts for medicine.”
Suddenly all the attention was on him, and everyone was speaking at once.
“Just what are you saying, John?”
“Dear, why would you want to go all the way to London again?”
“Medicine? Johnny, is that what you really want to do?”
“Are you serious? Or did you go and watch Doogie Howser reruns again?”
“Shut it, Harry, that's nothing to do with it. Yes, it's what I want to do. Anyway, it's not like I'll look out of place, and Ms. Hawthorne thinks I can get in.”
John certainly wouldn't look out of place, although it was less certain if that would be true after four years. He'd stopped growing taller two years ago, but was still growing unmistakeably older, lines starting to appear on the corners of his mouth and eyes.
Eva pursed her lips as if sucking a lemon. “Don't universities have minimum age limits? Speaking of Barts, Ricky tried to get in early there but wasn't allowed because the age limit was 18, did you know? And it can't be the most appropriate environment for you, John. Why would Ms. Hawthorne even suggest that?”
“What sort of environment would you consider appropriate, Mum? Or do you mean for me to stay in Sussex forever?”
“What's wrong with staying in one place, dear?”
“I love staying here Gram, but there are things I can do elsewhere, it's—Dad, you promised.”
The table devolved into mayhem then, and in the midst of it Doug sat still and thought.
12.
London.
London was—
amazingfantasticfrighteningoutstandingextraordinary—
“—John? Are you listening, John? Listen, you have to be careful. You're not used to this kind of environment. Even if you're still living with us, we can't be with you when you start uni, so remember—”
John listened, of course, since it was all quite sensible advice, but at that moment Eva might as well have been dictating the morning's grocery list for all the attention John was able to give her. The beautifully imposing façade of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry stood before him, within reach if he'd but take a few steps forward.
He honestly had no idea how his Dad had pulled this off, but it wasn't as if he had time to contemplate his good fortune, and he'd always tended towards action versus introspection, so he nodded perfunctorily, kissed his Mum on the cheek goodbye, and ran for the building giddily. If the other students found it strange that a student in an overlarge jumper was running around the grounds like a kid, well, there were certainly stranger things, and any attention they paid him was soon diverted.
Hanging from a lanyard on his neck was an ID with a picture that had been taken the previous year; his hair had been slightly longer and more unkempt, his skin somewhat smoother and his general expression more boyish, but the anticipation in the eyes was the same. Below his name, his date of birth had been written as 13 July 1980.
A check in the computerised records would show the same information, and no traces of any suspicious tampering would have been found even if anyone had bothered to look.
15.
“John! John Watson!”
John turned around and grinned at the bespectacled postgrad student calling him from a bench. Michael Stamford was taking his Masters degree and they had none of the same classes, but Mike always had a smile for him and didn't laugh at John (too much) whenever he did something ridiculous, and had covered for John when the bulldog pup he'd sneaked in ate a cadaver's thumb.
“Hullo, Mike. Anything on?”
“Not much, I'm waiting for Dave. We might drop by the pub later, want to come along?”
“You just want to see me sloshed again.”
“Well, we've got to build up your tolerance somehow. Honestly John, the way you carried on last time it was like you'd never had a pint before.”
John smiled weakly but agreed to go anyway. Mike was good company regardless.
“Have you thought about where you want to do your Foundation year?” Mike was finishing up his second pint and eyeing a dark-haired girl who looked to be a first year student at the other end of the bar. John was still nursing his first pint, barely halfway through.
“Um. Not entirely sure, but Reg said the army had a program. Mike, isn't she a bit young for you?”
“If she's young for me, then she's young for you too. Army John, really? I didn't think you were the type”
“Well, Reg said the program would mean I'd actually see some action sooner. I don't really fancy going up the ranks and dealing with hospital politics.”
“So you'd rather deal with bullets, then? Forget I asked, of course you do. Actually John, I think it's you she likes, she's been looking over here all night.”
John groaned and put his head in his hands. “Stop trying to play wingman Mike, you're absolutely horrid at it.”
“Oh come on John, lighten up. Anyway, you should go on and live a little. See, buy her a drink. She's been making eyes all night.”
John frowned uncertainly, surreptitiously sneaking a peek at the brunette. “You think?”
“Definitely. Go on John, you only live once.”
His first time with another person was an altogether awkward experience, especially when the girl he wanted to get off with expected that someone who looked so much older would, well, actually know what they were doing. He left her rooms with flaming cheeks five minutes after they'd started.
John made sure to do a copious amount of research before the next pub outing; he was, after all, a very good student, and things went quite a bit better after that.
18.
Douglas and Evangeline Watson died in a car crash on the 5th of August, 2008. John received the obituary in the post. He stepped out of the dark cab with a single bag slung across his shoulders, still kitted out in camo and numb inside.
Harry was nursing a flask of whiskey by the window of what had been their parents' bedroom, boxes and bags littered across the floor. She had always looked impossibly young to John, which was unavoidable, he supposed. Her hand trembled minutely around the flask.
“The funeral was this morning.” You useless wanker was left unspoken.
John dropped the bag by the bed beside an inexplicable tower of cans, and dropped himself beside his sister. “I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it back in time.”
“Not like it would've made a difference if you did. They were dead before they even got to hospital.”
“I always thought they'd attend my funeral,” John admitted, and spoken aloud the thought sounded frail and lost. “I was supposed to go first.”
She turned to him, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Don't leave me too, Johnny.”
John didn't have the heart to tell her the first response that flit through his mind, I was always going to leave you, and instead grabbed the flask from her hands and took a swig of his own. They stayed that way through the night, until morning's first blush lightened the sky and John left again.
19.
In the year-and-a-half since their parents died he'd become a full-fledged doctor, had been deployed to Afghanistan, and was shot in the shoulder. In the same frame of time, Harry had dropped out of uni, married Clara, and then had gotten scared and left her. They were quite the pair, the two of them. He walked with a cane and had deep lines on his face, but there were the beginnings of lines around Harry's mouth as well, and they had matching intermittent tremors in their left hand, albeit for different reasons. John wondered if she was trying to catch him up, wanted desperately to tell her to stop, but he knew better than most how it was, the dissonant chord playing in his head telling him to keep on moving, and so he didn't have the heart.
It was a minor miracle that Mike Stamford had even recognised him that day considering how he looked now; the man was genial and tactful, and John was absurdly grateful that he didn't have to contend with inane (You look like you've aged ten years!) remarks from the man.
He had much, much more to be grateful to Mike for now, John reflected as he sat eating Chinese at two in the morning after shooting a man through two windows and giggling with his new flatmate. He hadn't felt this utterly young in ages.
Sherlock Holmes was a supernova. He had seen brilliance before, but Sherlock operated on a totally different level, and the sheer wonder at the fact that such a person existed made John dizzy.
It was hardly a wonder he fell in love. Oh, he'd been with others before, had a healthy enough libido after all, but even he could recognise the difference.
It was a cruel thing, though, to have someone love you and have that taken away, so John acknowledged it but never acted upon it, and chased a string of anonymous faces instead. It was a kindness for both of them, all things told.
“I remember you, John Watson.” Jim Moriarty's smile was almost fond as he watched two men strap enough Semtex on him to level a building. “Your father was one of my first real clients. Practically gave me the idea for this business. Before he was my client, though, I was his. He was my solicitor, did you know? Got me off a particularly nasty murder rap, so when he came to me asking to change his son's records, I could hardly refuse.”
A twitch was all that betrayed John's surprise, but Jim noticed, and his smile widened. “Oh, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,” he crooned, “did you honestly never wonder how he not only changed your age and history, but got you fake school transcripts, medical records, all that jazz? I did a very thorough job of it, too. I had to break into three schools, two hospitals, and four government offices just to lay down the paper trail.”
Oh God, oh God, John's head was spinning, and he could hardly breathe in that blasted parka, and Moriarty had walked free because of his Dad, and he had gone to medical school and the army unencumbered because of Moriarty, and twelve people had died in a bomb blast because of him, oh God—
“Showtime, Johnny.” Jim pushed him lightly towards the doors to the pool. “Make it a good one.”
Moriarty never spoke directly to him again, after that incident in the pool, but his presence could be felt like a miasma, thick and paralysing. John tried to chase it away with normalcy and cases and Sherlock's brilliance, but there was something missing there, and something was shrieking in his head to move, but he didn't know which direction he was supposed to go.
21.
It was after Henry and Dartmoor, and Sherlock must have still been affected by the gas, because he pulled John back when he turned to go to his bedroom upstairs and hugged him without saying a word.
Suddenly something snapped in place in John's head.
Oh.
He thought he'd been sparing Sherlock, but apparently they were both too far gone. Well, he'd always been a man of action, anyway.
He pulled back, ignoring the little sound of protest Sherlock made at the loss of contact, took that lovely face with the sharp cheekbones in his hands, and kissed him.
And oh, oh.
Brilliant. Like a forest fire, like the sun, like a galaxy spinning on its axis when all he had previously was candlelight.
And John had never believed in forever, couldn't, but there are moments that make their imprint in the fabric of things, leaving echoes long after the end of all, and John thought, Perhaps.
22.
John wondered if the universe was paying him back for his hubris. Since childhood he had dealt with the prospect of his own mortality by facing it head-on and pushing back, and yet it seemed as if it was always the people around him who paid. His parents, his Gram, the young soldiers who died in Afghanistan under his care, some of them even younger than his actual age, and—
Sherlock had been the brightest light he'd known, incandescent in his glory, and he had jumped of a fucking building, and John Watson was still here, existing.
He had become a doctor and a soldier to try and make a dent in the world, somehow, his own small mark with his own small life in the vastness that was the universe, and he couldn't even save one person, not even the one that mattered most.
He left Baker Street and went back to their old house in the South Downs. It was in disrepair since no-one had actively lived there for years, and John threw himself into fixing up his old home. There was something comforting about being back in the chalk grasslands, with the remnants of creatures long dead underfoot, evidence of their existence.
Harry stayed with him for a while, but she'd just started a job in Manchester, and in the end John asked her to leave for his own sanity. She still came by when she could, and they spent afternoons walking old country trails and evenings with films they'd last watched more than a decade ago. It was pleasant, but strange. It seemed both of them had slowed down, the past year.
John started using his cane again, this time not for any psychosomatic pain, and his hair started falling out. One cool March day, Harry stopped by for a visit and gaped when he opened the door, all cane and wrinkled skin and thinning hair. She bit her lip and looked as if she wanted to cry.
“Oh, come off it, I'm not that ugly.” It was weak and forced, but Harry smiled for him anyway, and then started laughing.
“God, John,” she managed to say through her giggles, “Yeah, yeah you are. What's showing tonight?”
Harry stopped eventually, but kept giggling giddily at the slightest provocation all throughout dinner and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
24.
There was a knock on the door, and then Sherlock Holmes was standing in front of him, an equally stunned look on his face, and no, no, Sherlock did not get to do that after—
“You fucking tosser.” He smacked Sherlock with his cane while holding the doorknob for support. “Come in before I slam the door in your face.”
He retreated inside the house as Sherlock walked in after him, his tread almost tentative, the door closed softly. He could hear Sherlock walking around the living room, picking up things off of the mantel and setting them down again.
When John returned with a tray of tea, Sherlock was looking at a picture of his and Harry's second birthday. He couldn't see it, of course, but John knew that the date was indicated in the bottom right, not that Sherlock wouldn't have known anyway from the clothes or the cake or the photo quality and paper used.
“In hindsight, I suppose it should have been obvious. There was so much contradictory data … you never let Harry visit, were generally friendly and sociable but didn't meet up with old friends, didn't like celebrating birthdays, stupid, so unforgivably stupid—“ Sherlock pulled at his hair as if it would somehow make his brain stop.
“Yeah, you're an idiot. Welcome to the human race. Obviously I'm an idiot as well, because I could've sworn I saw you jump off a building.” John sat down and took a sip of his tea. “So I'll tell you, and you'll tell me, and we'll go from there.”
They went from there, to the couch, and after raised voices and choice words and anger and adrenaline, to the bed.
Afterwards John lay on his side and stared at the clock as it blinked slowly and changed numbers. He could feel Sherlock breathing slowly behind him.
“We were supposed to have time, after,” Sherlock whispered into his neck. “Years upon years.”
John closed his eyes and kissed a pale hand with chapped lips. “We have time now, Sherlock. Are—will you stay, then?”
Sherlock snorted behind him and didn't reply, but the tightening of his arms around John was answer enough.
25.
Sherlock bought out Harry's share of the Sussex house and moved there with John. He also bought the nearby Farley estate since there was no-one left to tend to it, and took care of the bees that were left.
John's hands were paper-thin, his hair snow-white, and his smile sun-bright, the entirety of the universe contained in one man. He still made tea and nagged Sherlock to eat, and wrote up his cases; if Sherlock closed his eyes it was almost as if they were in Baker Street.
Too little time passed, and then John 's eyesight started failing and he could barely get up to make tea, and Sherlock couldn't maintain the illusion even in his mind. He briefly contemplated asking for a miracle, as John had done at his grave, but then there were stars in John's eyes, and he supposed that he was lucky that he even got this one miracle he had.
It was little consolation in the dark, but Sherlock worked with truths, and this was the truest thing he knew.
ω.
John was cremated, his remains scattered across the downlands. John had told him once that he liked the Chalk, because it had history in it, evidence and remains. Sherlock thought he might understand; there was something, not comforting, that was absurd, but—it quieted his mind, somewhat, the knowledge that what had once been John was underfoot and around, in the air and earth.
He went back-and-forth what had been their two homes, 221B and the Sussex house, but he thought, when he was older, he'd probably live in Sussex permanently, with the bees.
And Sherlock thought, Perhaps.
∞.
It was one day amongst many. The clouds were unusually beautiful, but the day was otherwise mostly unremarkable, and one might be forgiven if one thought that this was simply a day like any other.
On that particular day, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson solved a case, a particularly tricky theft with an associated triple murder, and were briskly walking home in the fading sunlight.
“That was an entirely satisfactory outcome; the scheme with the honey was quite elegant, don't you think?” Sherlock was tapping out a melody on his thigh; John wasn't sure if he was doing it on purpose. “If only it could be like this always.”
Sherlock was referring to beautiful puzzles and post-case highs, of course, but John was also aware that Sherlock rarely ever meant just one thing.
John smiled, and told the universe:
“Yes. Always.”
He took Sherlock's hand, and together they walked off into the sunset.