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It was October when my father said that we were to be expecting a package, soon, and that we weren't to make a fuss about it, or tell anyone. Even my sister, Harry, wasn't to know about it, but that would be a simple feat, as she lived away from the house, now. We never saw much of her those days, anyway, as she was busy sewing uniforms for soldiers in the city. She didn't want to live in the country anymore, she said. She was meant for more than this. Than us.
After a while, we never saw her at all.
It was a Thursday night, after dinner, when father came in from the cold rain, stomping water out of his boots (much to my mother's dismay), and took off his streaming coat. Her glare stopped when she saw his ashen face, and she quietly sat back down at the little table we used for our meals. I sat, as well, not knowing what was wrong, but knowing that I was old enough to help bear the burden of what was about to happen to our family.
"Our package is to come to us, tonight", My father said, putting a telegram down onto the table. It seemed to be in some odd code... some amalgamation of words that meant nothing to me, but everything to him. Sliding a hand through my blond hair that needed a trim, I looked to my equally grave (and equally blond) mother. She nodded, fingers over her thin lips, and turned to the kitchen to... do something. It was a distractionary tactic, I knew, but my father and I both let her go.
I still wasn't sure what, exactly, was happening, and father seemed to read the question in my eyes. He held up a finger to ensure that I stayed seated, while he went to every window and peered out into the darkness, drawing the blinds and looking for God-knows-what. His paranoia was unnerving, but I sat there, waiting, while he checked out the house, and mum brought me a cup of tea, before disappearing back into the kitchen like a mouse caught by a cat.
After what seemed like an eternity, my father sat down opposite me, with a bone weary sigh.
"John. I have kept you in the dark about this, and I am sorry for that. I want to explain to you what is going to happen, now, and give you the chance to... express your opinion on the matter. You're 17, now. You're a man, and while I will make my own decisions in my house, as I see fit, I also value your opinions." He sighed, again, the same huff of air that made it seem as if his entire body was heaving with the effort of it.
"A year ago, I incurred a debt. The farm wasn't doing well, and with the changes in the government, I didn't know what we would do, should we lose the farm. I took out a loan, but the war hit, and..." He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It was a debt I haven't been able to pay back. It is a debt that tonight, I am to start my payments on."
I felt nauseated, and I'm sure my face looked it. My tea sat cooling and untouched in front of me, and I stared at my father. Who did he owe money to? Was he going into the war? On whose side? My father was not a man who seemed to agree with our particular government, though our poverty and fear kept us rooted where we were. He hadn't taught me everything about the farm that he wanted me to. Hell, he had started to talk as if he'd actually let me try to get into medical training, when the war was up. He seemed so serious, as if he were to be going to his death, that night.
"Drink your tea, child" he said gruffly, checking his pocket watch, seeming twitchy. "I'm not dying, so put that thought from your head. The man that I owe money to... is Jewish. He and his family had planned to escape from here, and they all had separate means of doing so. Each member of his family got across the border... except for his youngest son." He paused, drinking from his own cup, which I suspected had something a bit stronger than tea in it. "I have agreed to, in place of monetary reimbursement..." He checked over his shoulders again, making me jumpy, "...to hide his son, until which time a secure passage can be found for him, and he can be taken out of the country."
I'm sure my eyes widened in a way that, in any other situation, would be comical. It wasn't any other situation, though, and it wasn't comical. Swallowing air, I looked down and spied my teacup, picking it up, and drinking it as if it contained all the answers swirling in my head, at the moment. When I set it down again, I set my shoulders, and set my mind, as well.
"How do I help?"
----
Unbeknownst to me, there was a small cellar that was separate from our main cellar, and it ran the length of the back side of the house. Also unbeknownst to me, my parents had been slowly setting it up to be as fit for human living as they could. A few old wooden boards to make a platform on top of which an old, uncomfortable mattress of my sisters was placed, a broken table beside it that had a tendency to list toward the makeshift bed, a couple of nubs that used to be candles, blankets, my pillow (I hadn't thought to question a brand new one for myself), a coat hanger, and enough half-filled boxes of my family's accumulated junk that at first glance the long, narrow room looked like mere storage.
The entrance to it was easily (and well) hidden through a sort of trap door in our kitchen, with a few steps down into the space. Once the door was closed, the board that served as a handle was sanded down properly (something that apparently my father had done the week before), and our usual threadbare rug tossed over the whole business, there was no reason at all to suspect that there was anything there. I felt the surprise wash over my face as I watched this small, but necessary, drama unfold, and was more than mildly impressed at all of the precautions that my parents had taken for this. All of the precautions my parents had to take for this. If we were caught out, not only would the boy be taken to a labor camp, or worse... But my parents? They would likely be killed.
We were all fraught with nerves as we waited, though we tried to keep our habits and movements the same. A ticking little cuckoo clock, we were, going through the motions with jerky motions and unseeing eyes, waiting for the...
Two knocks. A pause. One knock. A pause. Two knocks.
All three of us froze in what we were doing. Mother, washing up in the kitchen (again), father, reading the paper (third time around, there), me, on the floor in our little sitting room, reading a medical book that my father had picked up for me on his last trip into town. For the span of a breath, none of us moved, and there was no sound except for the rain that still poured down on our small house, on our small farm, in our small pocket of the big wide world.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and as if it knew, thunder boomed so loud that we, all three, jumped into action. Father stood up to, feigning calm and confusion, go to our back door where the knock had come from. Mother went to put the kettle on, muttering about how they shouldn't be shuffling children about in this dreadful weather. And me? I calmly put the ribbon to mark my place in my book, closed it, and stood up. I heard the door open swiftly, and close just as quick, and my father softly, calmly, telling me to go get towels.
I blinked at what I saw coming in through the doorway, and heading straight for the kitchen. It wasn't a child. It was a shivering, slumped, wet mass of black coat, black curls, sodden, awkward limbs, and shockingly white skin. I must have made a choked sound of some sort, because my father hissed at me to hurry, so I did what was asked of me, and returned to the kitchen after a few moments. He was taller than me, or would be, were he standing. As it was, he was sitting on the same rickety kitchen chair that I had been in when I had learned he was coming to stay with us (hide with us?) earlier that evening. I was intrigued, how could I not be? This stranger, who seemed to be about the same age as me, who had dealt with so much more than I could have ever dreamed at my age. He was here because he was being hunted. Persecuted. The most I'd had to deal with was wondering how to pay for school, and my sister leaving the house.
I had only thought that I was alone.
Handing over the towels to my mother, I let her fuss around him, not wanting to crowd. The kitchen was small. She pushed tea into his hands, talking soothingly, while my father took the meagre things that he had lugged with him in the night down to his secret cellar room. I stood in the doorway, empty handed and empty brained as I watched the scene as if I were watching a scripted drama on a stage. I had no more thought or input, and I couldn't seem to make myself reach in to pop the bubble that seemed to surround the room. I couldn't become part of this, and was frozen on the precipice, not unwilling, but unable to participate.
I turned around, then, and went back to my book in the sitting room.
----
Life continued to function as, seemingly, normal. I was proud to note that it really rather looked, to the outside eye, that nothing at all was amiss about my family. My home. Nothing different over at the boring old Watsons. Nothing at all. Us boring old Watsons surely weren't hiding a gorgeous, tall, brilliant, alluring...illegal... Jewish youth in our storage cellar.
Nope.
It took a few days of paranoid posturing and stiff movement, but soon enough, we found a rhythm in our home that let us all breathe easier, and let Sherlock leave the cellar for a little bit each night. It wasn't for long, and we all had to be on guard for any noise or movement that was unusual outside, but I was adamant that it wasn't right to keep a person squirreled away under our floorboards constantly. It wasn't human, and it wasn't right.
It wasn't as if my parents didn't understand and didn't empathise with Sherlock's plight... they were the ones who agreed to take him in in the first place, of course... but I suppose they were concerned about surprise visits, or spies. As though if they didn't see him regularly, then they could pretend that they weren't aware he was there. Maybe it made lying easier, made pretending come cleaner to their conscience. I wasn't sure what their reasoning was, but they left most of Sherlock's care to me, and gladly. Indeed, they always made sure they they were safely tucked away in bed when it was past dinner, and the sky was dark, and the house was quiet. They made sure they remained perfectly innocent to the fact that in that dark and quiet, I moved the rug and pulled open the cellar door.
He was always dead silent, wide pale eyes searching my face near desperately for a moment before he'd follow me like a wraith into the sitting room. It was always nearly pitch black when I could let him out, no lights allowed and blackout curtains drawn. I always felt rather like I was leading a secret pet out to be walked, and the comparison made me cringe, especially when I'd catch him looking at me with such intensity and, sometimes, what could almost be a smile. His skin was so pale in that darkness that he was like a ghost, sometimes, silent and unmoving, and I was glad for the dark, as it hopefully kept him from noticing how I would stare at him until my eyes hurt from the strain.
As it happens in unusual situations, we became close much quicker than people probably should, and though there weren't many words apart from soft whispers when necessary, my regard for Sherlock grew daily. No matter that all that I ever got from him was to share the sofa as we each sat in our own minds for a while, sometimes with a cup of tea and a biscuit or two that I'd save from dinner for the pair of us. No matter that we couldn't see, couldn't really speak, couldn't really... do anything. No matter that it should have been the most boring time of day, this dark and quiet existence... it was all that I looked forward to, and all that I yearned for.
About two weeks after Sherlock had come to our house, we discovered that my bed happened to be situated directly over his own. This suited us just fine, as I discovered that Sherlock's mind was not the sort to be contained by a small storage cellar, and he discovered that I was quite impressed by his intellect, and his ability to tell me everything that was going on above him, without being able to see any of it. There was a space between the slats in my floor, his ceiling, that was just wide enough to slide a piece of paper through.
By the month's end, I had a wooden box in my wardrobe that was full of entire pieces of paper ("Your mother cooked eggs the way you hate, but you say you like as to not offend her. You worked on the farm today, but not with your father, as you usually do. He went to town, and left you alone, and you got more done than he thought you would. He is pleased."), some half pieces of paper ("You got new soap, yesterday, and used it this morning. You bathed third, and did so quickly, as you had no heated water, and you hadn't woken early enough to get more"), and some scraps of spidery scrawled notations ("You murmur in your sleep about the bones in the hand. It's fascinating" or "Your mother keeps trying to feed me turnips. Do fix that, won't you?" or "Are there anymore chocolate biscuits?")
Most notably, one evening in December, I heard the soft tap that indicated I had been delivered a message, and looked down beside my bed with a quick grin. Throwing my medical text without care of losing my place, I scrambled to grab it, not wanting to have been the first to write, but not hiding the fact that I was over the moon to continue our correspondence. I refused to think about the fact that besides the books that I had secreted to him, our slight smiles and interactions when I got to open the little secret door to hand down a plate of food, the half hour each night that it was safe enough for him to leave his tiny prison room, papers to write (compose, he said), and the soft plucking of the strings of a violin that we couldn't let him play (and I wouldn't admit, I rather longed to hear), writing notes back and forth to me through the floorboards was, really, his own form of entertainment. I rather liked to think he kept on because he quite liked my wit and humor... or at least that I wasn't as insufferably idiotic as he found the rest of the human race.
"You kissed a girl, today."
There was no reason at all for the way my heart jumped into my throat, and my entire body stilled quite suddenly. No reason for me to feel ill, or hot and cold all at once. There was definitely no reason at all for me to feel guilty, like I'd been caught out by something. I was used to, by then, Sherlock's ability to notice and divine every little thing about a situation from the smallest bits of evidence, and the queerest of reasonings. He likely had a stack of papers (not that he had any reasons to keep them, of course) from me with only praises on them. A whole stack of "Brilliant! How on EARTH did you know that?" and "Clever. Of course you'd hear." and "Wonderful. You're wonderful. Did you know that? you just... are."
I did, though. I felt all of those things, and all at once. I was knelt down on my bedroom floor, clutching a slip of paper in my hand, and staring at the wooden slats as if it was their fault that Sherlock had known, just from me bringing him dinner, that I had been cornered by the butcher shop by Mary, a girl I had gone to school with. Cornered with no reason not to be pressed to the wall in the small alley and kissed quite sweetly on the mouth. She was warm, and soft, and inviting, and everything that boys my age were meant to want. I tried, for my sake, to enjoy it. After the Jews and the Gypsies, everyone knew that systematically... anyone different was being arrested for the slightest thing. Anyone.
Another soft tap was heard and, as I was still kneeling on the floor, I watched it slide up through the floorboards slowly, then a shadow retreat from underneath it as Sherlock's hand left the space.
"She was blond. Your back was to a wall. It wasn't very clean, so an alley, most likely"
I swallowed, and nodded, though I knew that there was no way that he could see me. I was frozen on the spot. I was cornered, again, though this time, panic was rising in my head for a much different reason than it had that afternoon. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears and I knew that my breathing was uneven. I knew that he would be able to tell everything that he wanted just from what I was doing at that particular moment, but I couldn't make myself move. It was as if I was rooted to the spot, caught between trying to figure out how to explain myself, wondering why I felt as if I needed to explain myself, and waiting to see what else Sherlock knew. My inactivity, apparently, was time enough for Sherlock to write another small deduction, slipping it right into my fingers that were resting on the floorboards.
"You weren't pleased."
My mouth had opened to say something, when I snapped it shut, there was another message waiting for me.
"It was not your intention to kiss her. And you disengaged as quickly as possible. You came home early, because of the encounter. One might say that you weren't interested."
I heard knocking at our front door, and I frowned for a much different reason. It was late. We were far away from many of our neighbours, and most wouldn't come this way, this late in the evening. Especially not with the war on. Not in this sort of snow.
"Why?"
My father had reached the door, by then, and still, I knelt on the floor of my room, clutching tiny scraps of paper in my hands, though now my ears were straining for a clue as to who was at the door. If Sherlock were here, with me, he'd know immediately. He'd know who they were, why they were here, what they are for dinner, what sort of pets they kept, and how they drank their whiskey. He'd know everything. I'm not as clever as him, though, so I stayed where I was, listening, and praying that His Cleverness was smart enough to stop moving, shut up, and pretend he wasn't hiding under my floor.
When I heard the sharp tones of what I assumed to be a member of the military, I stood suddenly, shoving the notes in my hand into my pillow case. The harsh sounds of boots on the hardwood floor of our front room brought a new sort of reality to the moment, and I knew that I needed to help distract them from... everything. I've always been good at talking to people, and mum had always said that my charming smile and easy nature made people comfortable, or something like that. I don't take much stock in it, but I was willing to try, now, for the sake of keeping their attention on me and off of anything that may seem amiss that we didn't have time to think of.
I redressed properly, having been in my night clothes already, and headed into the front room, just as I heard one of the unfamiliar men ask after the son that my father had. Perfect timing, then.My heart was beating a wild tattoo in my chest, but my face was full of curiosity and mirth... I hoped... as I walked into the room.
"And, there he is! My boy, John. John, here are some soldiers who were passing through, and decided to pay us a visit while they warmed up and rested a moment. Isn't that nice?"
I would have done anything to wipe the near desperate cry for help that shone brightly in my father's tired eyes. I smiled, and began to play the part of an interested party, and delighted host. I mentally thanked my mother for her insistence that I learn every sort of manners that she deigned to teach me as I talked jovially with the soldiers for quite some time, though I had to deflect inquiries on why I wasn't a part of the Hitler Youth. Their visit ended with them full of tea, biscuits, and a bit of whiskey, and me promising to think about coming to a meeting, though they seemed to also respect that as the only son of a poor farmer, my place was on the farm.
The minutes seemed to stretch into hours, during that visit, but finally, finally, they left. For a while, my father and I sat across from each other, silent and unmoving, an awkward tableau. Surprisingly, he stood up and offered me the rest of his glass of whiskey, saying that he was going to bed, and that I should, too. It was silently understood that it was far too risky for Sherlock to be able to move around, that night, and I nodded and downed what remained in the glass. It was foul, and burned, but I didn't cough. I sat in the front room for a few minutes more, contemplating what the visit meant, when my thoughts slid straight into thinking about the notes that I had received.
Gathering my thoughts, and my fortitude, I stood up and headed back to my room, leaving the glass where it was. If I put it in the sink, my mother would know that it was me drinking from the glass, and she would have enough on her plate as it was without worrying about me turning into a drunkard. Getting undressed and re-dressed for bed was an easy task, and I wasted no time, not allowing myself to tarry. Once everything was in it's proper place, I got a scrap of paper out, and began to write.
"Your question, earlier. It's because of you."
Trying to control my breathing and, inexplicably, my shaking hands, I slipped it through the slats of the floor, tapping three times to let him know that he should be expecting a message. It seemed an obscene amount of time passed before I heard a returning tap. It was more than enough time for me to start to doubt myself, think about sending another note, saying that I was joking, and any manner of other embarrassment soothing things. A reply did come, however, and I had to read it twice, such was my confusion over what I had received.
"Ah. I see. I do understand that having to carry a burden such as my presence would be heavy for most people. I had thought, John, that you, at least, would have been able to shoulder it moderately well. I hadn't assumed that the guilt and embarrassment of having to hide something like me would force you to abandon your natural instincts to reproduce, as is seemingly natural for all of the ilk of this world, and I am so terribly sorry that my being here is robbing you of your chance for social trivialities and a grand romance. You needn't worry about being soiled by me, or my presence. I shall, of course, leave as soon as I am able, though you might understand how that would be difficult for one in a position such as mine."
I gaped at the words on the sheet, my emotions cycling from confusion, to amusement, to fear, to a vague grip of sorrow that what Sherlock wrote really was true. The main goal of all of this was to save his life and to get him out of Germany as quickly as possible. That aside, I couldn't let Sherlock think that I was ashamed of him, or that I thought ill of him. Too many times in his life has he been told that he was lesser, for one reason or another. Too many times (even if it were only the once, once is too many...) was he left abandoned and alone. Too many things had happened too many times for me to let him think that I didn't value his presence in my life, limited though it was. Perhaps I was overly romanticising the situation, but I knew that I had never regret anything in my life as much as I would regret not correcting the insane notion in that curly headed bastard's wonderful brain.
The note I sent back was his own, except that I had scribbled out all of the wrong and irrelevant information, and added my own opinion at the end in terms that, I hoped, would not go misinterpreted.
"Ah. I see. I do understand that having to carry a burden such as my presence would be heavy for most people. I had thought, John, that you, at least, would have been able to shoulder it moderately well. I hadn't assumed that the guilt and embarrassment of having to hide something like me would force you to abandon your natural instincts to reproduce, as is seemingly natural for all of the ilk of this world, and I am so terribly sorry that my being here is robbing you of your chance for social trivialities and a grand romance. You needn't worry about being soiled by me, or my presence. I shall, of course, leave as soon as I am able, though you might understand how that would be difficult for one in a position such as mine.
Yes, because of you. Because she is not you, and that was unacceptable."
For the second time since I had returned to my room from our unexpected visitors, I nervously steeled myself and slipped the paper down through the floor and tapped three times, holding my breath as I waited. At first there was nothing. No movement, no sound. Nothing. I thought that maybe I had waited too long to figure out how to best phrase my intentions, and Sherlock had fallen asleep. Shaking my head, I dismissed that as an option, as Sherlock seemingly never went to sleep. At least not at night. He must have been ignoring me, or making me wait, for finally I heard the slight creak of the springs of his bed as he reached for where the note fell. I could nearly hear his eyes raking across the paper, so thoroughly was I listening for his reaction. As I should have predicted, though, there was nothing exciting forthcoming. He must have been made to school his reactions heavily before coming here, as there never seemed to be much of a change in his demeanour, regardless of the situation.
Soft tapping heralded his much awaited reply, and I grabbed it before he'd even let go of the paper, causing a low, dizzying chuckle to come from below me. I was grinning even then, before I'd read his reply, because I figured that someone wouldn't be amused by the excitement of someone if they were mortally offended or disgusted by what they had just been told by that person. Thankfully, I was right.
"I usually don't make it a habit to theorise without considering all of the facts and, after this incident, I surely will not do so again. The long blond hair and the tell of your lips when you brought my dinner was hateful. Staying down here while you're up there is hateful. This war is hateful. This whole country is hateful."
The grin was still on my face as I penned my reply.
"The whole country? all of it, and everything in it? Because, might I say, I agree to a point. You, however, belong to this country, and I take offence to anyone saying you are hateful for being such"
A soft knock later, I was lying along my floor, no longer pretending to want to get back onto my bed, not when I was finally letting myself realise how I felt, and I wasn't being spurned for it.
"I suppose you're right. The whole country, present company excluded. Look, John. Your father is under strict orders to report via telegram everything of note that happens as concerns me or your family to my brother. He will tell my brother about the soldiers. My brother will expedite the process of my extraction. I know that it isn't likely, however, after the war is over, may I hope to see you again?"
"Of course, Sherlock. Of course. I promise."
----
Our nighttime visits were shorter, now. They came rarely, because of my father's insistence that our visit was not a casual one, and that we were being watched. Only when father deigned it alright could I let my ghost out into the house, into the dark, and the quiet. Our time passed together much as it always had, except now when we would sit together on the sofa, he'd have one long fingered, pale hand wrapped up in my own. Now we didn't try to hide our wide eyed stares, trying to memorise each other in the dark with naught but soft touches and fingertips and flashes of pale skin in the dark to go by. Now we didn't hide how much it ached when I had to put him back down in the ground, like something to be ashamed of. Like something that must be hidden. We both knew that we both hated it immensely... but we both also knew that it was wholly necessary, and that this existence was preferable to death, and to never having met at all. This would be enough, because it simply had to be enough.
----
The day Sherlock left my house came with no warning. There was no telegram. There was no extraction team. There was no big plan and intricate song and dance for getting him. There was only, thankfully, a half formed emergency plan that Sherlock had come up with and that I had gently spread, carefully putting things in place 'just in case'. A word here, a hidden bag there, a promise to find him in the pocket of a jacket. It seemed like an unnecessary precaution at the time, so the note that I penned was hopelessly sappy, me thinking that in the best case, I could find and tear it up so that Sherlock wouldn't know how deep my affections ran, and in the worst case, well, maybe he'd get to read it while he was running for his life.
As dangerous as I knew the world to be, and Sherlock's situation in particular, I never actually thought that any of this would happen. I thought that Sherlock's brother would come through, and that he'd be safely secreted away to England or America or something. Anything other than the fear of not knowing where he would be, what he would do, or how secure he would be while doing it.
I was in the sitting room, cleaning up for my mother, so that she wouldn't have to before dinner, when I happened to see movement on our long drive from the corner of my eye. My heart jumped to my throat as I recognised uniforms... and guns. I stopped what I was doing immediately and grabbed a piece of paper, scribbling as I stamped three times on the floor, loud enough to rouse Sherlock if he were dozing. I slipped the note through the crack, and moved to intercept what I could, not knowing what would come out of this exchange.
"They're here. Cellar door. RUN."
I heard scrambling and shifting of things as my note was read, and I fought the urge to be ill as I heard the soft creak of the door to the cellar opening, and Sherlock quickly, but quietly, slipping out. I wanted to go to him. Say something. Do something, but I couldn't. I stared for as long as I dared, before the back door was closed and I was praying to a God that I wasn't sure I even believed in to keep him safe. Keep him safe and taken care of and happy.I didn't have long before I had to steel myself for the front, distracting the soldiers that were coming to make sure that their eyes stayed on me and didn't stray to where Sherlock was trying to make his way to the barn, then the pasture, then the woods, and to our sympathetic neighbor's house, who was prepared to do his part in our emergency plan.
I don't remember what happened in the conversation that followed, once the Nazi soldiers busted into the house, guns drawn, but I remember the way my mother screamed when I was shot. I remember how after that, everything sounded as if I were underwater. I remember my mother begging them, and not being able to use my left arm to be able to help her. I remember the last thing that I thought before I passed out was that I couldn't possibly die, yet. I had promised Sherlock I'd meet him after the war.
----
Almost ten years after I had lost everything in one single morning, I was walking in a park in London. I was alone, withdrawn, friendless, plagued by nightmares, and currently living on my sister's couch. Using the cane that I had come to rely on, I walked, trying to waste time before I had to head back to Harry's house, searching the papers again for medical positions that I would be qualified to apply for.
So focused was I on enjoying my walk that it wasn't until my name was called a second time that I took note, and slowed my walking to a stop. Hurrying behind to catch up to me was Mike Stamford, a man who had been of some assistance to me when I first arrived in the country, and was trying to get records of my schooling so that I could attend medical school. I hadn't seen him in years and, though I was tired and didn't much feel like socialising, I agreed to have a cup of coffee with him. After some polite conversation, and catching up, I revealed my desire to move out and into a place of my own, but being unable to because the money that had been left to me by my parents, and that we earned from selling the farm and the house wouldn't support me living alone in a city like London for very long. Mike looked at me curiously, and before I knew it, I was accompanying him to a hospital.
I knew as soon as I walked into the room that the curly head of hair that was bent over a microscope belonged to a face, and brain, and body, and words that I had longed to see since the day that the Nazi soldiers became something more to me than ordered lines, faceless masses, and red arm bands. I felt as if everything shut down in that moment, and I froze in the doorway, unaware of Mike's confused look.
As if sensing that the air had all been sucked from the room, the man over the microscope slowly raised his head, and looked directly at me. I'm sure no one in the world could have blamed me for the way my eyes prickled with emotion... I had queried and searched for a very long time, and had nearly, very nearly, come to the conclusion that I would never see Sherlock Holmes again, and here he was. Alive.
Neither of us moved for quite some time, and I'm afraid that I had certainly forgotten how to breathe, and put a hand to the nearest table, as I had gotten dizzy. This seemed to reanimate Sherlock and he took a gasp of air as if he'd stopped breathing as well, and I was distantly aware that Sherlock told Mike to leave in rather sharp tones, and Mike did, indeed, leave us there, alone. Not once did I look to anything other than his face, and neither did he, even when he set down the slide that he was holding, or when he stood up, or when he crossed to me.
"John."
Had I known that my name could ever sound so perfect in anyone's mouth, I would have banned everyone else from ever saying it, because it all paled in comparison to how it sounded coming from his. Sherlock's hands fluttered vaguely around my hips, my chest, my face like two birds, trapped and confused, before I grinned and took them in my own, halting their action. I had often dreamed about what it would be like to kiss him, but that would have to wait. The war was over, but some things hadn't changed. It was alright, though... I almost felt as if my heart would burst if anything else good happened in that moment.
"Dinner." I managed to get out, staring at Sherlock's face in wonder and amazement. "Dinner, and we can talk, and.."
He started to pull something out of his pocket, and I was given a sheet of paper that was nearly torn in pieces from the number of times it had been folded and unfolded. It was obviously very important to him, and had been on his person for quite some time. I looked up at Sherlock in confusion before I carefully opened the letter, and his hand quickly came to my elbow to steady me as I looked over the words that I had penned so long ago, put in his coat pocket just in case he had to leave in a hurry. Not only had Sherlock kept it throughout his journey to escape Germany, but he had carried it on him ever since then.
I had to look away from the letter, my free hand dropping my cane to be able to come up to cover my mouth, for it was the only way to keep my emotions inside and to keep me from pulling Sherlock into myself and to never, ever let him go. His eyes, though, were shining as much as mine must have been, and he risked reaching up to brush my cheek momentarily before he bent to pick up my cane. Handing it to me, he straightened up and brushed at his own cheeks.
"I've spent the past nine years and seven months in New York, in Rome, in London, I've spent what seems like a lifetime trying to find out what exactly home meant for me anymore. If it meant anything to me, anymore, after everything that I had seen, everything that I had heard." He said, folding the letter he'd taken from me once again and putting it in the breast pocket of his jacket. "I had come to the conclusion that it was a word for a feeling that I hadn't ever properly felt, and wouldn't properly feel, because those things are beneath me. But they aren't, and it's about time that you come home, John Watson."
And that is exactly what I did.