Chapter Text
John Watson measures his life in first times.
He proudly owns a little green journal, carefully placed in his bedside table drawer, and in it he records all of his first times. The cover is made of consumed leather and his name is written in a shaking five-year old handwriting on the first yellowy page. Every night little John would sit at his desk, writing with the accuracy that only children have, all of the things he deemed worthy of a place in his precious green diary.
He had started to keep track of the passing time in this particular way after his beloved older sister Harriet had revealed him her own First Time Diary. John would never forget the evening he received the green journal.
It was a normal Wednesday night in the Watson household, and outside a light rain had just started to fall from grey clouds. John was playing hide-and-seek with his sister in her room. Suddenly, the intensity of the rain increased, and what was just a drizzle became a thunderstorm. The booming sound of the thunders resounded painfully in the little room, as well as the furious shouting downstairs. John didn’t like thunders, the way they made the walls shake and his ears ring. Usually, John managed to keep himself from crying, because there was one thing he hated more than thunder, and that was to appear weak and vulnerable in front of other people. That night was different, though. That night, the thunders sounded deafening, creepily mixed with his parents’ loud voices and the sound of smashed dishes made him burst into tears.
His sister had held him in her arms and she had sung for him until he had calmed down. She then asked him if he wanted to know her secret. The five-year old nodded weakly, and Harriet smiled, handing him a turquoise notebook.
“This is my secret diary, or, as I call it, my First Time Diary,” she said. “I named it this way because I don't write down in it everything that happens to me, you know. If during the day I do or see something for the first time, I pick up my diary and I record the date and the event.”
John was looking at her with wide eyes and a frown on his little face. She sighed and asked, “Would you like me to read you an example?”
John was going to say yes, but as soon as he opened his mouth, the noise of a chair violently hitting the floor made him wince, and the word died in his throat. But Harry knew what John was about to say anyway, so she wordlessly opened her notebook and started to read aloud.
“August 16th, 2000. I ate macaroons for the first time at Katie’s house. October 22nd, 2000. I spoke to Clara Cummins for the first time. Want me to read you more examples, or do you get the gist?”
John nodded enthusiastically, but then frowned.: “But why d’ya only write the first time that something happen, and not your day, like girls in movies do?”
Harry closed the diary and put it back on the shelf, then she turned to her brother and whispered: “There's always a first time. After you repeat something for some time, it just becomes normal, and you forget what it means to live it for the first time. Like, when you first tasted Coke, I remember you were… You should have seen your face, John. You had your eyes wide open and you exclaimed ‘Ooh!’, as if tasting Coke was the strangest and most exciting thing that had ever happened to you. I don’t want to lose that feeling, the shiver you feel when you see something you have never seen before. The first thoughts you have about someone. Because every first time brings with itself emotions and experiences, and when you read them again, you remember a little what you felt”.
While talking, Harry had gesticulated a lot, her hands trailing invisible patterns in the air. The silence in the room (never in the house, in which now a loud “BITCH!” could be heard) was broken by John’s enthusiastic voice: “That’s so cool! I want one too!”
“I knew you’d like it,” Harry said with a wink and a smile that did not reach her eyes, “Lemme see... I have a nice journal for you, but you must treat it well: it was granny’s”. She then handed him the green leather journal, and John immediately fell in love with it. He asked Harriet to write his name on a piece of paper so that he could copy it in his diary without any mistakes, and then spent the whole evening turning the yellow pages and smelling their old scent. He eventually fell asleep on Harry’s bedroom floor, holding his diary to his chest, and ignoring the sound of a woman crying downstairs.
oO°Oo
January 15th, 2002: I plaid played for the first time with a Game Boy (it was Tim Ford’s though). IT WAS AWESOME! I want to ask Mum one for my sixth birthday, because Tim is stoo stupid and I want a Game Boy too. With the same Pokémon game.
January 24th, 2002: I met Harry’s best friend Clara. She is really nice, because she gave me a sweet.
February 5th, 2002: I LOST MY FIRST TOOTH!!! Before I liked playing with it with my tongue, but now I feel a hole and it seems huuuge. It’s kinda cool, actually.
February 6th, 2002: THE TOOTH FAIRY BROUGHT ME £2 AND A TOOTHBRUSH!!!
March 12th, 2003: Harry and I fought for the first time. Like, for real. I even pulled her hair and punched her leg. Now I can’t even remember why we were fighting. Now she is here in my room with me, she has made me hot cocoa with pieces of marshmallows in it. So I forgived forgave her. I feel awful though, I don’t like fighting with her. She’s the only one who really loves me in this house.
May 26th, 2004: Dad came home drunk from the pub yesterday. It was the first time I saw him in that state. He scared me. I hope he never drinks anymore.
July 21st , 2004: Dad keeps drinking. He’s drunk every night now. Yesterday he hit me. It was the first time he did something like that. I hate him. I don’t want to talk to him anymore. I hate Mum too, because she watched him do it. I decided I wanted to live on a pirate ship, because pirates fear no one. So I was preparing a bag with my clothes and a swimsuit earlier but Harry stopped me. She said we are lucky to have each other. She suggested I write down what I feel, and I must say she was right: writing makes me feel better.
October 1st, 2005: I HAVE MY FIRST GIRLFRIEND! Her name’s Jessica, and we held hands during the break and she kissed me on the cheek before she went home. She makes me blush and feel a knot in my stomach whenever I look at her and she has beautiful eyes (and hair). I think I love her.
November 9th, 2005: Jessica and I broke up. She was too clingy, and didn’t let me play with Suzanne, who’s more beautiful and funnier than her, anyway.
April 8th, 2006: Happy tenth birthday to me. It’s the first time we didn’t celebrate it, mainly because Harry is on a trip with her school (why does she have to be seven years older than me?) and Mum is in the hospital, because Dad pushed her down the stairs. Dad is at work, and I am staying at Mike’s house for the afternoon, Mum and Dad are picking me up later. Mike's mum baked a cake just for me, and they both sang me ‘Happy Birthday’. It should have made me feel happy, but somehow it didn't. The cake was good.
September 19th, 2006: Dad let me try to drive his car in an empty parking lot. It was the first time I tried to drive a car. It was fun, but I know he did it just because yesterday he hit Mum again and he felt bad. It was a lot of fun though.
November 13th, 2006: Harry, Clara and I skipped school today. We went to eat ice-cream and then we went to play with a ball in the park. Well, I played, while they were sitting on the grass kissing. Ew. I had a lot of fun though. I admit that I was nervous, it was the first time I skipped school! What if a teacher had seen us? Harry said I was a “geek” and hit me in the face with the ball. She is so annoying sometimes.
December 30th, 2007: Dad was so drunk that Mum, Harry and I had to go to our neighbour, Mrs. Turner, so that we could have some sleep, because Dad was really scary, and threatened to hit all of us. It was the first time I slept somewhere that wasn’t home.
May 11th, 2008: Today I found Harry drinking something with alcohol in her bedroom, and for the first time I had to behave like the older sibling. So I took the bottle from her hands and smashed it on the asphalt outside the house. She cried the whole afternoon apologizing, but I don’t care. I don't want Harry to drink like dad.
June 3rd, 2008: TODAY I HAD MY FIRST KISS. So, I was talking with James Sholto under the big tree in the school yard. He is my best friend (even though he is not friends with many other kids), and he always makes my stomach feel strange, like I have butterflies in it, and I always feel like this when he laughs and when he looks at me with his blue eyes. What am I saying, whenever I am with him my stomachs tries to escape from my body. I like the way he looks. We were talking about the football match that we won yesterday, when I made a joke and he laughed. Suddenly, seeing him laughing made me feel weak and I had this pain in my chest and I just leaned forward and I kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t complain or run away, he just held my hand and kissed my cheek. After this, I asked him if he wanted to be my boyfriend and he said yes. HE SAID YES! I’M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW! As soon as I came back home I told Harry everything, and she congratulated me and asked if I wanted to celebrate by hanging out with her and Clara, because tonight it’s their third anniversary. So two first times today: first kiss and first visit to the pub (should I say first boyfriend too? Jessica was a girlfriend, after all).
oO°Oo
John wears his favourite t-shirt (the one with David Tennant’s face on the front, with the 3D glasses on, so classy), and a pair of old trousers for the evening. Then he combs his hair more meticulously than usual, wearing even a splash of his father’s cologne. When his sister sees him, she theatrically pinches her nose, as though he smells bad. John playfully hits her with his shoulder and off they go, picking up Clara first and then heading to the pub. He gets some apple juice, while Harry and Clara get beers. They sit at a table and chat, and when Harry gets him to try a sip of her beer, both she and Clara giggle like crazy at his horrified expression, even though he was miserably trying to act cool, like the taste isn't making him sick. After glaring angrily at the two of them for a couple of seconds, the boy bursts out laughing, and the two girls follow him. They talk about nothing and everything, play darts and eat some chips.
It’s the happiest day in John's 12 years of life.
Eventually they leave the pub, and all three stand on the pavement in front of the door for a couple of minutes, just chatting while Harry smokes her “last cigarette of the day”.
“Congratulations again, John. It was very brave of you. To initiate the kiss, I mean,” Clara says with a bright smile on her round face, her green eyes watching John tenderly.
“Must be a Watson thing then, since I had to make the first move with you, too.”
“Oh shut it Harry, back then I didn’t even know I liked girls! You Watsons are too precocious with this stuff.”
John finds himself giggling, watching the two girls playfully bickering on the pavement, elbowing each other and smiling fondly whenever they catch the other’s eye.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough,” John says, “tonight’s not only about me, it’s about the two of you, too. Happy third anniversary! You can now kiss the... uhm... celebrated.”
Harry and Clara laugh, and then kiss with a loud pop.
“Hoy! Yeah, you too. It’s a shame, kissing like that in front of a child! Do you want to make him become a fucking faggot?”
John turns around to see who spoke: a thirty-something year old man, clearly drunk, with a leather jacket and a bald head, threateningly waving a can of beer toward the three of them.
“You got a problem, sir?” Harry asks, spitting out the last word, and gaining a warning look from Clara.
“Yes, yes I have,” says the man approaching the little group, “because you’re fucking filthy lesbians and you are kissing in front of an innocent kid. He will start liking a cock up his arse if you continue with your fucking crap. It’s just disgusting for all to see the two of you fucking each other’s mouths.”
Harry's a bit drunk. John saw how Clara only had one pint, while Harry had three. He saw how giggly and talkative she had increasingly become. And he sees, now, how reckless she is acting, taking a step forward to place herself between the man and Clara and John, as if to shield them. Her eyes are full of anger.
“First of all, you are a far worse example to 'this innocent kid' than us, Second of all, shove your ignorant crap up your arse and piss off, wanker.” Despite his anxiety, John cannot help but feel a small wave of pride bloom in his chest, but it is quickly dampened by a jab of fear running all the way down his spine. Harry looks at the man from head to toe with a distasteful glare, while he stares at her with blurry, red eyes.
“You know, you're just a narrow-minded twat, a troglodyte.”
“You fucking bitch!” the man suddenly screamed, pulling a pocket knife out of his leather jacket and thrusting it into Harriet’s stomach. Once. Twice. And again. And a fourth time.
“NO!” John screams, throwing himself against the man, who is too drunk to avoid the twelve-year old, accidentally stabbing him in his left shoulder before losing the grip on the knife. Some people are now gathering around the little group, and a couple of men take care of the drunk man, so that John can run toward his sister. Clara is holding her in her arms, whispering that everything will be all right, she has already called an ambulance, she just needs to stay calm and don’t fall asleep. John holds one of his sister’s hands in his, and watches Harriet’s eyes closing slowly and inexorably, while the ambulance siren painfully wails into John's ringing ears.
oO°Oo
It’s her spleen. A tiny organ, in the otherwise perfect machine that is the human body. Her spleen is completely mangled, and although a human could live without it, she has lost too much blood already. Harriet Eugene Watson is declared officially deceased at 12:02 am, June 4th, 2008.
The drunk man (Bob Maurice, thirty-three years old, just out of prison for harassment and aggression) is arrested.
Too high on adrenaline and paralyzed with cold dread for his sister's wounds, John wasn’t even aware he’d been stabbed, too. A young and gentle doctor sews him up and tells him that he has been lucky, it was barely a scratch. He hadn’t been lucky. If he had, he would have died along his sister.
John doesn’t remember much of the night in hospital, just tiny fragments: the face of the doctor who sewed his shoulder and her kind, brown eyes; the green scrub of the two surgeons who told them Harry hadn’t made it; Clara’s pale face, her blank expression, Harry's blood on her clothes; his mother crying her heart out in the corridor; his father blaming the doctors’ negligence, screaming and waving his angry fists in the air; the silent and hollow car ride to get back home; him throwing away his t-shirt, Tennant's face covered in blood; hours spent staring at his darkened bedroom ceiling, a feeling of desperate emptiness that just doesn’t go away.
A few days later, John attends the funeral, and he yet has to cry. He watches family and friends grieving his sister theatrically and he hates every single one of them. They don’t deserve to be there.
Where were they when John and Harry had to fight against their drunken, irate father? Where were they when their father broke Harry’s arm, or when he gave her a black eye? Where were they when their mother decided that she had had enough, but couldn’t manage to run away, because she had nowhere to go? Did they help? They stand there, telling each other memories of little Harry’s adventure, but they do not know the first thing about her. Oh yes, they are all here now, supporting the family, but isn’t it useless now? Easy for them, just a pat on a shoulder, a word of pity and then everyone go home, back to their ordinary, perfect lives. They are all such hypocrites and John despises them.
And then there’s Clara. All alone, in the farthest corner of the room, she’s staring blankly at the people gathered there, without really seeing them. John approaches her and takes her hand. They look at each other knowingly, then they spend the whole afternoon in silence, the two of them against the rest of the shallow grieving crowd.
The next morning, after another sleepless night, John takes his green First Time Diary, shuts it in a little tin box, and buries it in the backyard.
For the first time since his sister died, he allows himself to cry.