#recluse!john

Ooh, thank you! I love this ‘verse. I began with John leaving both Sherlock and Mary, so the “before” is John drawing a line. Most of the events of s3 remain the same as far as Mary and Sherlock (though I haven’t decided yet if Mary is pregnant in this ‘verse or not) and John draws a line, I guess. He can forgive them, but right now, he doesn’t want to see them, so he goes off into the forest to be alone and lick his wounds, essentially. 

Thanks for asking, anon!

He can hardly blame the mule for getting lost, as she’s never been to the cottage and doesn’t know the way. He can blame the rain a bit, at least for the current state of the path they’re on, although not knowing where it leads is the bigger issue.

The small cart gets stuck again, and the mule grunts at having her progress stopped short.

John swears mightily and goes to the back to push. He has his feet planted, shoulder against the edge, ready to shove, when the mule nickers and snorts, tries to back up, can’t.

“What the devil . . .” He stands to look.

The wolf pair stares at him, one brown, one grey, and John freezes. The mule skitters, tries to pull, and John can’t blame her--the predatory stillness of the two wolves in the road sends pricklings of fear along his nape, his shoulders. Though they only stand at attention, ears and tails neutral, John’s fingers stretch, slowly, slowly, towards the pistol at his hip.

A low whistle sounds, and the pair’s ears flick toward it in unison. They run immediately off to the side, bounding into the dripping trees. The mule calms. John pulls out his gun and steps forward.

“Hello, John Watson,” says a familiar voice. A bay mare comes out from the trees, a cloaked figure seated on her back. All John can see is the smile beneath the hood, but it’s enough. “Always at the ready.”

He holsters the pistol and reaches up a hand.

“Always,” he says, and he holds Sarah’s free hand as she dismounts.

John does not exactly enjoy his time with Ella, but he doesn’t hate it either. There’s something about her that makes him want to try.

There isn’t much time for introspection, though, and he spends the rest of the morning in town bartering and buying, gathering all the supplies he needs, all the things he didn’t think of when he made his dramatic retreat to the woods.

And if he looks over his shoulder, if he secretly prays not to run into Sherlock or Mary, well. It is what it is.

By midday, he admits it; he’ll have too much to carry on his own. He goes around to Molly’s and eyes a white mule.

“Thought for sure you’d be a horse man,” Molly says.

John gives a half-smile, the most he can muster. “Perhaps my practical nature is showing itself these days.”

The mule comes over, long ears alert. She butts her grey muzzle against him, rubbing against the pockets of his coat.

“Shy one, eh?”

Molly smiles. “She likes you.”

More likely she smells the apple he’s got stashed at his hip, but he takes her all the same.

“Meant to be,” Molly says as he leads her away, but John can’t afford to think that way.

A fortnight passes, and then there’s nothing for it. He must go back to town. He has provisions to restock, supplies to purchase, and a promise to keep.

He treks back, straight to Thompson Road, goes around to the back porch as all the regulars know to do, and finds her pruning her roses.

“Morning, Chitchat,” Ella says, handing him a bucket half-full of clippings. He takes it dutifully and follows her as she works. “How’s the hermit life?” she asks without looking over at him.

“Quiet.” John holds the bucket up beneath her outstretched hand as she drops wilted petals, yellowed leaves.

“Anybody come see you?”

He clears his throat. “Not a soul.”

Ella looks over to him at that, her brown eyes taking the measure of him in a sweeping glance from boot to brow.

“And what will you say when they do?”

He purses his lips and looks away, squinting in the sunlight. Says nothing.

Ella turns back to her roses and clucks amid blooms and thorns. “Time to find your tongue, Chitchat.”

purpose

map

goodbye

supper

promise

transport

He knows he’s reached the cottage not only from Mike’s excellent map but from the accuracy of his description. It is, indeed, one room and an outhouse.

Undisturbed by human influence for over a year, nature has crept back in, nested in the crooks and corners. The small paddock and makeshift shed attached to the back of the house are in danger of collapsing. There is no firewood. The barrel doesn’t hold water. 

Everywhere John looks, there is work to be done.

“Well,” he says to the family of mice that has infiltrated the corn cob pile in the outhouse.  “I’ll never be bored.”

The two-hour hike in has taxed his leg, but he works until nightfall. He sweeps the flat spot in front of the porch, builds a fire pit circled in stones, erects the discarded spit. Clears out the cobwebs and dead leaves from the house, beats and airs the mattress from the creaking cot, carts wood, stokes fire.

It is dark outside when he finally stops and pulls the bundle that Mrs. Hudson had pressed into his hands out from his pack. He unwraps the tea towel to find a loaf of bread and a generous hunk of cheddar.

It’s too much. With the early autumn weather and no ice for the icebox, there’s no way to keep it fresh for long.

John winces at the thought that she couldn’t bear to give him less.

He digs through the basket of kindling and whittles one end of a branch to a point. 

He watches the cheese soften at the end of the stick as he turns it slowly near the flames, the firebox door open and throwing heat and shadows across the room. He spreads warm cheddar over torn bits of bread for his supper, and very carefully thinks of nothing and no one as he chews.

There are no goodbyes, not real ones, anyway, not proper ones.

Mary refuses to use the word. “This isn’t over,” she says instead.

He spends his last drop of patience. “It is for me.”

He walks to Baker Street. Stands across the road and looks up at the windows, down at the door, back up to the windows.

Sherlock looks down, face flat, bandage still tied around his middle beneath his dressing gown.

Their eyes meet a half-second before John turns away, eats up cobbles with his feet, doesn’t look back.

He turns north and his stomach churns and he can’t tell if it’s relief, excitement, despair.

It is Mike who, once again, finds John a home.

“You’re a lifesaver,” John says, unable to smile, but grateful nonetheless.

Mike tilts his head. “It’s one room and an outhouse.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Grabbing a scrap of parchment, Mike draws a map in clear, confident lines, and John remembers suddenly that Mike has always drawn, is an artist as well as a tinker.

“Nearest neighbor is about a mile away, but she keeps to herself.” Mike talks as he draws, filling up the spaces. “Plenty of game, and the river runs about five hundred yards to the east.”

He hands the map over, but holds tight when John tries to take it.

“You’ll be stuck out there once the snows come--no way in or out back to town.”

John sees the concern in Mike’s gaze, but it only shows how little Mike knows him now. He smiles thinly, and Mike lets go.