Chapter Text
John pressed the buzzer while Rosie stretched up on her toes, extending her arm over her head, trying to reach the knocker.
“Did you think you were taller than last time?” he asked, aware of the tightness of his teeth even as he joked.
“Maybe,” she replied, the shrug audible.
“Keep trying, I suppose.”
She sank into her usual posture, school rucksack on her back and the purple overnight bag sagging beside her feet. There were clothes and pyjamas and toys and books enough for her upstairs, but it seemed she had new favourites every week. Things she wanted close by, to remind her of John while she visited. Things to show off to Sherlock. This time there was a book about rocks she’d borrowed from the school library, two fashion dolls and their own little bag full of clothes and tiny shoes and miniscule hair brush, and the little flannel blanket she’d dragged around behind her for the best part of her first four years. John had seen it rumpled up in the bag when he’d put in her glittering pink trainers (lately she only wanted to wear rain boots), but hadn’t mentioned it or asked her about it. Let her find comfort where she needed to.
The black door swung wide and there stood Mrs Hudson, with the roots of her hair newly touched up to cover the white, in a green dress spattered with coin-sized triangles of pink and yellow. John twisted his mouth into a smile.
“Mrs H,” he said with a nod.
“How are you, my dears? Come in. Come in!”
John frowned and gave a tight shake of his head. Rosie was hefting up her overnight bag into the crook of her elbow. John turned toward her and opened his arms. “Do I get a hug?”
Rosie steadied the bag and leaned against his middle, arms around him as much as she could manage while weighed down on one side.
“Love you, Dadda,” she said. Another echo of their past; the name she called him before she began to worry what her playfriends might think, when all of them had already graduated to calling their fathers Dad.
“Love you, Rose, down to your toes.” He dipped down to plant a kiss in the part of her hair. “Behave. I’ll pick you up after school on Monday.”
She managed the bag, swaying slightly, and Mrs Hudson stepped aside for her to pass. As Rosie thumped up the stairs in her rubber galoshes, John heard her holler, “I’m home!” He cleared his throat to keep himself hearing whatever reply might come from the upstairs flat.
To Mrs Hudson he said, “There’s a note in her rucksack for him. Just. heh-hem. About the calendar. Next few weeks. Could you maybe make sure—?”
“I’ll mention it,” Mrs Hudson said, and her face was doing that thing where she was about to say something disapproving and piteous, so John flashed another tight-lipped grin at her and waved his hand a bit.
“Thanks for that. I’ve got to get to the clinic. Enjoy your day.” He cleared his throat again, and allowed himself to turn his back. He heard the door shut with a sound thump as he marched up the pavement toward the tube station.
“Ah, Watson! Excellent. First: Are you hungry?”
Rosie dropped her overnight bag beside the hall tree on the landing, shook her way out of the straps of her rucksack and her cardigan all in one go and let them fall. She ran to where Sherlock sat on the back of his leather armchair with bare feet on the seat cushion, and tugged at his arm for him to lean sideways. When he was within catching distance, she kissed his cheek.
“Nope, Dad even said I ate a good breakfast,” she answered, and flopped onto the red armchair opposite him. Sherlock could see her eyeing the threadbare spot on its left arm, the twitch of her hand as she denied herself fulfillment of the urge to pick and scratch at it, to make a proper hole in the fabric.
“Are you tired? Need sleep?”
“No. I only got up before breakfast and then got dressed and came here. I haven’t been awake all day yet!” She gave him an intense look that implied he was asking a very silly question indeed.
“Have you any need for the bathroom facilities?”
She looked up to her left, checking in with herself. “Maybe a little? But not yet.”
Having ascertained that all her bodily needs were addressed and met—he’d remind her about the bathroom again in thirty minutes—Sherlock was ready to move on to the more diverting matters at hand.
“We have a heady decision before us, Watson. Consider the options carefully. Ready?”
She nodded her blonde head vigorously, which only served to emphasise the fact of her hair growing straighter and darker with each passing season. Sherlock felt something like disappointment about this change in her, though he could not properly explain why he should feel anything about it other than interested. He’d spent the past seven years observing continual changes in everything about her except the smell of her neck, requiring him to form a new set of deductions daily—sometimes every few hours. Lately he wondered what interim transformations he had missed at the in-between times, and the wondering was edged in lavender-grey.
“Option one,” he said, and got to his feet, pacing like a school lecturer laying out a complex problem. “The zoo. The weather favours fewer of the animals lingering inside their enclosures—neither too warm nor too cold. Additionally, there is a temporary exhibit of spiders I understand is informative as well as mildly terrifying.”
Rosie shuddered dramatically and let out one of her excited half-squeals. Sherlock reminded her not to rush to judgment by holding up one finger.
“Option two, the cinema. Personally, I’m quite desperate to see the sequel to one of our mutual favourites—Zootopia—which is well-reviewed as both hilarious and heart-warming. Bonus datum in favour: sweets and popcorn for lunch.” He squared himself to Rosie, her boot-clad feet hanging well above the rug and her head resting well below the back edge of the chair, and clasped his hands at his chin. He narrowed his eyes. “Which will it be?”
Rosie slithered and rolled from the chair in the bendy manner of soft-boned children and dashed to her rucksack. “First I want to show you.”
Sherlock resumed a seat in his chair, this time properly, and crossed one thigh over the other. Rosie was unzipping her pack even as she approached, reached in and drew out a sheet of yellow paper with a crayon-drawing on it.
“What’s this, then?” he asked, taking it from her and examining it carefully. The drawing appeared to be of a tall person wearing ear muffs and holding a cigarette lighter, and another, smaller person with long, pink hair with a speech bubble barely containing the phrase, You are under arrest!
Rosie stood close by his side and pointed. “This is you on a case about stolen cats and guinea pigs, and this is me helping you find the clues.”
“What’s this?” He pointed to the ear muffs.
“Your hat you let me wear.” Sherlock had handed off the deerstalker he’d accidentally made into his signature—despite Savile Row suits, an endless string of blue mufflers wound around his neck, and his good coat—for Rosie to keep in her dress-up trunk when she’d begun to toddle. Rosie pointed to the drawing’s hands. “This is your magnifier.”
“Not a cigarette lighter, then.”
“If you smoke cigarettes, I’ll divorce you,” Rosie said automatically. Sherlock regretted that he and John had ever so freely shared that particular running joke in her presence.
“I promise I will not smoke cigarettes. Are you a police officer? Putting the petnapper under arrest?”
“I’m your assist-it. You need one.”
“I do indeed,” Sherlock agreed, and forced a grin. “It’s a fine picture. I’ll tack it up?” Without waiting for a reply, Sherlock crossed to the fire and pinned the drawing up on the wall by the mantel, amidst an array of letters and photos he’d been lately rearranging, for a case that was no more than a three, but which paid a lot. “So, which will it be: zoo or Zootopia?”
Turning the key in the lock still felt like breaking into a stranger’s house—the pale blue door and the stack of buzzer-buttons with strange names beside them, the numbered post boxes and flickering overhead light—a sense of wrongness that was only amplified by the fact of going in alone. Being parted from Rosie for days and nights at a time left John with phantom-limb syndrome—frequent, frantic moments of panic before he remembered where she was. Safe and sound at the place he knew she still thought of as home. This strange-smelling place with its filmy window curtains was her home now, too, but despite John’s attempts to convince at least himself of its long-term if not permanent status, he could see that for Rosie it was merely a placeholder: a life-size diorama of a home, not the real thing.
It felt less like a real home than ever, on those nights when John returned from his clinic work to the hum-filled silence of a flat with nobody in it.
John imagined some men in his position might exhale relief at a few nights of quiet and time to themselves. Without Rosie there to cook a meal for, he fried an egg and ate it on toast, then left his plate in the sink, unwashed. He kept the telly on just for the noise. He made a pass around the room chucking toys into their crates and baskets, standing books spine-out on the little bookshelf. The only glimmer of goodness he felt in her absence was when he dropped himself into the bed—a proper bed tucked into an alcove that may once have been a cupboard, the only bed in the flat—instead of onto his usual bunk-post on the sofa just barely long enough for him to stretch across. Falling asleep was difficult; but the sleep when it came was thicker and more enduring.
He’d have lain on a bed of nails if it meant Rosie slept every night in the same room.
“Would you like to call Dad and say good night, Watson?”
“No, we can say good morning, tomorrow.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure. Will you do the alphabet?”
Rosie’s feet had emerged from her rain boots pale and clammy and wrinkled, her socks damp with perspiration that smelled of absolutely nothing. She dressed for bed, self-reliant but still unself-conscious, delivering continuous patter while Sherlock fluffed her pillow and pulled back the bedding to make an envelope for her. A tilt of his head and a comically expectant look from Sherlock reminded her to drop her clothes into the round pink laundry hamper. Sherlock didn’t rush her; it was the weekend and so the schedule could be left a bit of breathing room. Once she’d arranged cuddly toys and blankets to her liking, put on socks then taken them off a few minutes later, and yawned twice, Sherlock assumed his station on the edge of the mattress and opened their book. Of course it had been several days since they’d last read, so he had to reverse a bit and remind them both of recent story-events. While he read out the chapter, Rosie wordlessly guided her fashion doll through some basic balletic choreography.
Once the reading was done and Rosie had been offered one last chance to call John—Sherlock’s reaction a rich blend of guilty relief and rueful compassion at her second refusal—she turned onto her stomach and Sherlock brushed her hair aside so he could trace shapes and figures over the slight expanse of her back with his fingertips. They’d always called it doing the alphabet, as it had begun as him tracing letters for her to guess, though over time it was much less structured. He practiced his Arabic, which was shockingly rusty, right to left across her shoulder blades, then slowly followed a serpentine route down her spine. After a few minutes he could sense the sinking of her slender arms toward the mattress, and dipped his head to see her mouth had fallen slightly open and her eyes were closed and still. She had John’s same long, gold-blonde eyelashes.
He let his hand come to rest cradled across the broadest part of her back, feeling the rise and fall of her ribcage. John had once confessed he couldn’t bear to feel her heartbeat against his hand, didn’t like to watch her breathe for too long, because it made him feel helpless in the face of her fragility. Sherlock, though, had always admired her resilience and sturdiness, the way she lengthened and toughened with each passing week. She was the most remarkable machine he had ever encountered. He counted thirty of her breaths, then pulled up the quilt and switched off the lamp. Even though it had been nearly three years since she’d routinely woken in the night, Sherlock left the door open just enough to hear her.
By the day of John and Rosie’s move, he and Sherlock had already been avoiding each other’s company for over a week, sending tersely worded texts and emails only when unavoidably necessary. When one knew the other was in, he made a point of staying out. The last time they’d been in the same room for more than a minute or two was when they’d set Rosie on the sofa between them and John explained that he and Sherlock just weren’t able to get on anymore, even though they’d tried, and so it would be nicer for all three of them if they had another flat—one for Dad, and one for Sherlock, and both for you, darling—instead of going on living together and always arguing, too often feeling grouchy and sad. After the expected questions (Will I stay at my school? Yes. Who will take me there and pick me up at home time? One of us always will, just depends on the day. Can’t you just say you’re sorry and accept the apologies and then nobody needs to move house? I’m sorry, darling; sometimes for grown-ups there are things that can’t be apologised for.), Rosie had drifted and shifted away to find less troublesome scenarios, toys and the telly, and then later a trip to the park. She asked Sherlock to take her.
They’d arranged a schedule, three nights with each parent, with flexibility. The school summer holiday was coming up, but after that there wasn’t much to negotiate until Christmas, think it over and let me know; we’ll sort it out. Sherlock had packed half her clothes, a box of books, a box of toys—she’ll just be wanting something different every week anyway so let her put the ones she wants for the next couple days in her rucksack for now—packed her brush but kept her comb, left her toddler-era comfort-blanket folded on the foot of her bed, which she left, and then three weeks later, took. Mrs Hudson gave her a little tea party while the men with the van jogged up and down the stairs six times. Sherlock leaned against the kitchen worktop, tugging his lip. John rubbed his fingers and thumb against his headache spot.
“I hear your Dad’s flat has a little shop underneath, just like we have here.”
“Not just like it.”
“No, but differences create interest. I wonder how long before the counter-girl there knows your order off by heart.”
“Probably not for a month.”
“I imagine perhaps less time than that, if you wear something memorable. Your red jumper with the pigeon on it.”
“It’s an owl!” She giggled, and Sherlock smiled. He reached for her and she squeezed him around the neck hard enough to break his heart.
“I can’t wait to see you again, Watson.”
“Don’t miss me, Sherlock. I’ll be right. back.”
“I’ll do my best.” He smoothed her hair, then her shoulder. Her fingernails were glittery pink. “Go on. Dad’s waiting for you downstairs.”
John’s smile was mostly genuine when she appeared on the stairs, one hand sliding along the rail, her rucksack slung over just one shoulder.
“Ready to go?” He guided her with a hand on her shoulder, always slightly in front of him where he could see her. “Wait until you see the new stuff I got for your bed. Sheets and four pillows, two blankets, and a yellow patchwork quilt for the top.” He rambled, talking up the one-and-a-half room flat the entire Tube ride until he’d surely built up her expectations to the point where she could not but be disappointed when she saw it.
“You forgot to say goodbye to Sherlock!” she gasped suddenly, as they walked up the pavement toward the building.
“It’s all right. We said goodbye earlier.” John tried not to sound as grim as he felt, talking about Sherlock, and inhaled, exhaled, let his shoulders fall for the first time in what seemed like years. In a lifetime of starting over, it was the first time John had made the decision for himself that it was time to begin anew. It was good. He could breathe. The rest would shake out. His girl had grit and good wits. She’d be just fine.
*