Chapter Text
“I am that lost, oh, who will find me
deep down below the old beech tree?”
John Hamish Watson slowly walks through Russel Square Gardens.
With every step he leans heavily on the walking stick in his right hand, and tries to forget the pain that shoots through his left leg each time he puts weight on it.
His thoughts circle around the war. The battlefields he's been to in the last years.
The sand, the heat, the noise of gunfire, explosions, blood, tears, shouting soldiers.
He can still remember the feeling of the adrenaline shooting through every pore of his body. The fear of getting shot every second.
The feeling of the warm blood of wounded man.
The broken promises he made to the brave young soldiers, who were dying under his hands, never to see their loved ones back home again.
The agony as the bullet rips a hole through his body.
The white, hot heat that spreads from his shoulder into every part of him.
The pain, that would never seem to end.
The prayer he spoke in his mind over and over, “Please God, let me live.”
At the same time wishing for it to end. One way or the other.
Lost in his memories he almost didn't hear the voice of his old mate from uni, Mike Stamford. He's teaching students at a hospital now.
St Bartholomew's Hospital - where they used to study, too. It seems like a lifetime ago.
How young he has been. How naïve.
After all he's been through, becoming a doctor was the best decision he's ever made.
He loved learning all about the human anatomy, how a body works, the diseases one can catch, how to cure sick people. And he loves that this profession gives him a purpose. A new direction in his life.
He could help people now.
He couldn't help some people back then.
When he was just a kid, when he didn't know how to cope with mental illness, with loneliness, with loss, with heartbreak and guilt.
He tries to stop this train of thoughts as soon as they come.
The thoughts about the little boy with the chocolate brown, unruly curls. His pirate hat and bright red wellies. How he jumped through the sand on the shore. Mud splashing around him, as he waves his wooden sabre around. His Irish Setter dog always beside him. The laughter.
He shuts his eyes and shakes his head as if the motion could stop the memories from flooding in. It's over. It's been over for a long time, almost 30 years now. It almost feels like a dream now.
He follows his old mate Mike to his working place.
He tells him about his bad financial situation at the moment. You can't afford London on an army pension. And after his mother had died a few years ago there isn't anyone else who could help him out now. He's not even able to help himself out. He can't be a doctor any more. Not with the tremor in his dominant hand. The hurting leg. The memories.
And now he's supposed to meet a friend of Mike. A potential flatmate. He hasn't much hope that this man would want to share a flat with him.
Who in his right mind would? With a depressed, disabled army doctor, who couldn't even sleep because of night terrors.
They arrive at St Bart's and go straight down to the labs, where research and teaching is done.
And there he stands.
Bowed over a petri dish with a pipette in his right hand.
Dressed in a black suit and white shirt.
Almost black, curly hair on his head, framing the high cheekbones and the bright blue-grey eyes that gaze at the intruders as soon as they step into the lab.
His gaze roams over them and John feels a shot of adrenaline course through his body.
Those eyes. This intensive look. So strangely familiar.
“Mike, can I borrow your phone?” the deep baritone voice sounds through the room and John can't help but stare at the man the voice belongs to. Mike has left his mobile in his coat when they arrived, so John offers his instead.
The potential flatmate stands up and walks over with a quiet “Oh, thank you.” and takes the offered phone out of John's hand. He starts texting, while Mike introduces John to him.
Instantly the man looks up from the mobile and for a few seconds looks almost shocked at John but with a slow shake of his head he continues to write on the borrowed phone in his hands.
“Afghanistan or Iraq?”, he then mutters and John can't believe the things the man deduces about his former profession as an army doctor and his psychosomatic limp, that he developed after getting shot in the shoulder and being invalided out of the army.
Startled he continues to listen to this fascinating man as he goes on about his own bad habits, because flatmates should know the worst about each other. Not talking for days on end and playing the violin when he's thinking.
The violin.
Instantly a memory from a long time ago comes to John's head. A young girl with dark brown pigtails. A melody. The little fingers holding the bow of her beautiful violin as it floats over the instrument.
Another memory of a boy. Yellow jumper and unruly curls. Holding a violin and being furious about his slow progress in learning, while producing a screeching noise out of the poor strings.
John's heart begins to pound in his chest and he feels the blood rush through his ears as he sees the man before him and the little boy in his memory from thirty years ago.
Those curls. Those eyes. The violin.
Could it be?
Nervously he licks over his upper lip, and continues to stare at the middle aged man, who apparently waits for him to say something. Mike seems to be quite confused by this whole situation, stating from the look on his face.
“What's-” John eventually starts to talk, but has to stop because of the faltering of his nervous voice, “What's your name?”
'Please say it,' he pleads in his head.
Curious blue eyes roam over him. “Sherlock Holmes,” The man answers a little confused about the nervousness of the other man and extends his hand for his acquaintance to shake.
John slowly nods his head, as he looks down at the pale hand with the long elegant fingers, before he wraps his own slightly shaking ones around them.
He looks up and can't help the tears from starting to fill his eyes and the little smile to form on his lips.
'I found you.'
“Nice to meet you, William Sherlock Scott Holmes.”