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She makes the transition early, of course.
She’s markedly advanced by every quantitative measure he’s familiar with—and has intentionally become familiar within his scope and capacity for knowledge retention— after all.
Sherlock’s rather pleased with this particular outcome, however: it’s indicative of her neural development, her sense of independence—suggestive, subjectively, of a sense of curiosity, a willingness to leap. That’s what he’ll say aloud: all true.
Better than any of those things, however, if the fact that here, like this, he can tuck her in and lay by her side, above the covers so as not to disturb her when she drifts off mid-story, but there’s something inexplicable, something unbearable and beautiful and right and they’re the same in this, in her, in every inch of her: the warmth of her little body. The curl of her tiny hands; the scrunch of her face as she fends off sleep and he curtails the story—the rise and fall of each precious breath and Sherlock knows, now, about the value of a life, better than he’s ever known before and watching Rosie Watson in her bed, now, her hair darker than her father’s, closer to her mother’s natural shade—feeling the tiny puffs of every exhale as she cuddles into him, as he wraps an arm around her that’s no longer hesitant or uncertain but practiced and well-worn and true: that’s the thing.
That’s what he loves best about Rosie’s declaration that she was too grown up for a crib.
“And as it turned out, the princess was simply lonely,” Sherlock murmurs, having told the story of a girl on the banks of a river who collected hearts to find solace, and a dog on the rocks and slices of cake and airplanes—John would chide him for such themes in a bedtime tale for so young a mind but Rosie’s eyes are wide, hanging on the words; she’s keen. And he cares far too much to risk for her, with her—any possible thing that could so much as hint to do her harm.
“And once she found a home, and friends, she didn’t want to take away anyone’s heart anymore. In fact,” and Rosie’s breathing deeply against Sherlock’s chest, now; close enough to sleep that she might already be dreaming as Sherlock whispers, stroking her angel-wisp hair: “in fact she may have found her own.”
He watches her back rise and fall, and marvels at it: he’s studied life at the opposite of death for so long, as long as he can remember, and yet life against the stretch of sheer possibility in this perfect, small human being, simple and achingly complex, small and so infinitely large inside his ribs—the stretch of absolute boundlessness, and the weight of the world for its potential is...terrifying.
“Heart.”
Sherlock stills, and feels one of those little fists unfurl against his chest; the story. His own—so much closer to the surface, so much easier to find.
He doesn’t mind it. He thinks it’s better than anything he’s ever known.
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, soft and slow at the knife’s-edge of her rest, teetering; lulling her back to sleep.
“Love?” she asks, half steeped in dreams. He covers her hand with his own, leans to press a kiss to her brow, cradling her against him a little tighter, a little selfish, suddenly very aware of time and how nothing stays close, stays small: stays.
Love, though. Maybe.
He’s still collecting data on that score, and yet there’s no question here, in this:
“Very much.”
Rosie lifts her head, eyes so wide: her father’s eyes, entirely.
“Me?” she asks, and Sherlock’s heart—that loves; it squeezes just a little too hard for comfort, too quick to control; a little too hard to shirk the burn in his eyes.
“You?” Sherlock asks, innocently, lips quirking a bit as she eyes him warily, sensing the ruse already: clever, so very clever. “I’m sorry, I was talking to Mr. Snuffles,” he grabs for the stuffed elephant on her pillow and ruffles it against her arm just enough to get a sleepy giggle from her as he tips his chin down again to kiss her head: breathe her in, and there are a million empirical answers to the way that she smells, for the way that it fills Sherlock’s chest, sings in his blood in ways he can’t describe: he knows them.
“Of course you, darling.”
He knows them, yet none of them are accurate. The whole of human endeavours, of words and science and meaning, fail at the feet of Rosamund Watson.
“Hmm,” Rosie nestles in against him again, patting her hand on his chest as she drifts, and it feels like a statement, a proclamation he cannot fathom as she sighs: “love.”
And he just watches her, stares at her unblinking until his cheeks turn wet, because to miss a moment is to miss a lifetime, to cut beats off the life of his heart that he can no longer afford to toy with, to gamble on because he has to see all of it, all of her, as much as he can for as long as he can and he’s beginning to wonder if any of it’s real because John is waiting for him, in a bed that they share, and this unfathomable creature lives next to John now beneath Sherlock’s ribs and it’s not a Mind Palace that needs remodeling, it’s not a hard drive that needs organising, deletions for space, no: for all that he knows what a heart is and isn’t, what is fairy story and fantasy and romantic drivel; for all that he knows what a heart can and cannot, does and does not hold in truth, in fact, he needs to find a way for it hold more, because more is coming for him. To him.
He doesn’t care if it’s real, so long as it never stops.
“Sh’lock?” It’s so small, and so faint, and so plaintive—she’s almost to sleep again, and Sherlock is tempted just to hold her, just to assure her of his presence and let her drift but there’s something innate about a Watson, it seems: there’s something innate in that he can deny her nothing.
“Yes, Rosie?” he breathes against the crown of her head, willing to offer the sun and burn for holding it to give.
“Mmm,” is all she says, just a hum with her eyes closed and her small frame wriggling into him all the closer and she sighs and slips the hand on his chest around him as far as her reach can go and she exhales into the silk of his shirt, the fibre of his being and the intricacies of all that he is that he so long presumed her quantifiable and yet they aren’t they simply cannot be in the face of this, of the breath that whispers:
“My Sh’lock.”
And he only knows there were tears again in his eyes when they fall, when his breath catches and he reigns it only in halfs, only for the sake of not disturbing the small anomaly, the strange exquisite miracle held to his chest as she dreams, but he cannot help but answer, either, just in case the sound sifts through.
“Oh yes,” he murmurs low, deep enough that it resonates, shivers into the cadence of his heart and though as he makes yet another vow, unending:
“Your Sh’lock.”
______________________
John walks in later than expected; out for drinks with some old mates, Stamford’s doing. Rosie’s been asleep for a good hour, now, and Sherlock can tell by the way John hesitates in the kitchen that he’s a bit put out that he didn’t get to say goodnight.
He’s therefore approximately 2.57 seconds slower in discovering Sherlock sitting on the floor, crossed-legged at the base of his chair, fabric draped across his knees and thread between his lips as he eyes a needle critically.
“Should I ask?” John leans against the doorway, and Sherlock hums as he threads the needle idly and pulls the fabric taut between his fingers; John can ask—Sherlock would rather he deduce.
It’s not particularly complicated.
Sherlock had been boiling the kettle for Rosie’s arrival from school; Mrs. Hudson insisted on making cakes every afternoon to go with tea because it made Rosie ‘feel like a princess’, and while Sherlock’s wary of her nutritional intake, it’s easily countered—he’s kept a rigorously documented chart in the collection of notebooks documenting her growth and progress since birth (you’d be surprised how woefully misleading the health facts on the mush they pass off as baby food actually are; Sherlock thinks he could have danced a damned jig when she copped on to solids); but so long as there’s whole, fresh fruits in each baked good, and only a conservative percentage of sugars, Sherlock allows it.
Hell, as if Sherlock can deny his Rosie anything, really, but still. Her well being is always paramount above all else.
And that includes the smile on her face as she kicks her legs where they don’t quite meet the floor just yet, crumbs around her mouth as she breaks Sherlock’s heart in the best way, a way he never thought possible, a way that’s not quantifiable or by any means logical: a way that contradicts every definition or understanding of breaking at all, and yet.
Right.
He’d just flipped on the kettle, was fetching plates from the cupboard that’s strictly clean for food consumption when Rosie’d flown into the flat in a proper state, cheeks red and wet with tears and that’s the heartbreak Sherlock had known the definition of as long as he’d known to define anything, though it was poetic metaphor of course; and yet he understands it now, in a way he’d begun to learn with John but had learned, in kind, to subdue as he subdued anything, everything: as he’s learned better than to even try, anymore.
But she’d near-sprinted to Sherlock, dropped her bag and held him round his middle as she cried into his shirt and it’s not even a breath, not a heartbeat before he’d wrapped arms around her, rubbing circle on her back as he tried to make sense of her hiccoughing words, disjointed and breathless and all he could do was to hold her, softly quieten her heaving sobs as he began to piece together the context: the class play, and he’s interested to see if they allow the suicide scene for children so young, but she’s won the role of the Nurse, which Sherlock’s grateful for, because suddenly the idea of literary integrity and the honest truths of the mortal world come into stark contrast with the bile in his throat at the thought of Rosie even so much playacting the role of Juliet Capulet, still on a slab on a stage.
At any rate, eventually he’d made sense of her sobs:
~
They’re ugly, they’re horrible and so old and the bottoms—hems, the hems—are all raggedy and if they’d kept them out I bet I could have guessed—not guessed, deduced, darling; but Sherlock doesn’t say it—what the stains were, I could have, but they’re awful and all the mum’s are making new ones, she cries, not loud and not dramatic but all the more heartbroken for it as she buries his face in Sherlock’s chest before he can crouch to her level and look her in the eye; and they’ll be brilliant, but I don’t have a mum, and—
Stop right there. Sherlock holds her cheeks in his palms and wipes her tears with his thumbs and they’ve talked long and full about Mary—Mary is as much a part of their odd little family as she possibly can be, and Sherlock’s learned that the best way to get over the lingering sting of guilt is to do all he can to be for Rosie not a replacement for her mother, never that, but whatever and all that he can be. And so he reminds her, fierce and faithful as he ever is, as he ever will be:
You do have a mum, love, and she was brilliant. And Sherlock smiles a little, remembering Mary in the shape of Rosie’s nose as she sniffles, blinks away a few lingering tears that Sherlock is already there to wipe clean. And she loved you more than anything in the whole world. Nothing will ever change that, even though she’s not here with us now.
He’s quiet, and waits for her to make sense of it, to run it through the grief and loss and sense of being other, being less that Sherlock wishes something in his mind could pin as a solution so that this ineffable specimen of what it means to find beauty in the world never felt that, could never be touched by it, a surfactant between the mess of the universe, of people and their complex cruelties and the small, aching heart in the eyes watching him now: he wishes desperately, and yet falls short.
And where anger, frustration, holes in the wall and stabs in the mantle would have met his failure in another lifetime, now?
Now, Sherlock waits for Rosie to nod, to show him that she’s sorted it in her head—not a palace, there, no: softer, instead; better lived-in and loved—and the emotions Sherlock gives way under now is softer, too, as his hands cover her shoulders as they heave, not uncontrollably, but still too tense, too filled with the kind of poisonous feeling Sherlock wants to extract from her body, her mind, her being as quickly as he can.
But what have I taught you, love, about everything you see?
She blinks, and her shoulder drop a bit, and it’s a cliff’s edge; it’s a breathless taste of what living means for its absence between one heartbeat and the next.
Seeing’s not enough, she tells him slowly; I’ve gotta observe.
Exactly, and oh, Sherlock learned what pride was, true pride and joy in watching it come to be when he met John Watson but this, this is something else entirely, the swell of golden joy at watching her become herself before his eyes. Inexpressible.
And you see that you’ve got a mum, yes? And you see that the children at school, their mums are making them costumes, she nods, and he nods, and she’s eyeing him warily, trying to test what she’s missing—but she knows that she is missing something, and Sherlock is thrilled at that; her progress, what she’s learned to do and think.
Well then, he prompts gently, observe what you’ve also got, maybe something all those cretinous children don’t have?
She laughs wetly at his description of her classmates; she always does, and he so loves when she laughs.
He squeezes her shoulders and tilts his head to meet her eyes directly as he tells her, soft and sure and absolutely unwavering:
You’ve also got a me.
And if his heart’s learned anything over these years, it’s how to hold against the threat of bursting, but it still shivers and sets him alight when it happens, when it comes from the spark of her wide eyes, her open mouth like she can’t believe—impossible; like she should have known—learning, always learning, and he’ll never stop being flabbergasted, under steamrolled by the wonder that is watching what it is for her mind to grow, to expand and assimilate and reject and know; oh.
He’s learned to hold his heart against the threat of bursting, yes, but only because there are two people who live and breathe within it, who live and breath live into it, to keep it from falling to bits.
And I love you just the same, Sherlock tells her, every honest truth from his mouth paling soft in the light of what it means, he knows now, to love.
And if there’s anything in the world that a mum can do, that I can do in kind? Do not for an instant think that I won’t, yes?
And she’s quiet, staring at him with her eyes so big and her jaw still open before it snaps shut, before she squares her shoulders—so much like her father—and says, still a little shaky but with full sense of her faculties, full control of what comes next when she eyes him, tests him, though Sherlock can see in her that it’s a test he’s long since passed; and thank god for that.
But she eyes him, a little bit critically nonetheless, when she asks, almost solemn:
Can you sew?
He raises a brow and asks her to revisit her inquiry without a single word: honestly.
Can he sew.
~
“How much did this cost?” John asks—not an obscene amount, obviously: it’s the costume for the nurse, not nobility.
“Irrelevant.” Which is the more important answer, because it doesn’t matter how much it cost, just that it’s done and done right.
John scoffs. “Irrelevant?”
“Accuracy is vital, John,” Sherlock answers him with the practiced note of affection when describing something tedious, that long ago didn’t have to be practiced anymore. “Have you learned nothing from our years of partnership? The facts must be respected if evidence is to be at all useful. The truth will out,” he huffs as he finishes the line of stitches; no machines, obviously. Accuracy.
John breathes out a laugh in that way that dances around Sherlock’s heartstrings—literally, not in the hearts-and-flowers greeting card sort of way but in the way that Sherlock can feel it in his chest as much a real, tangible, measurable thing as the string beneath his fingertips when he plays; John breathes out a laugh that shivers through Sherlock’s curls as he presses lips to the crown of Sherlock’s head.
“You’re absurd.”
“Again,” Sherlock murmurs, relishing the fact that John hasn’t pulled away yet, just stays propped against Sherlock’s hair, chin resting and his breath even and soft; “have you learned nothing, over our years?”
And it’s not yet lost its novelty; and honestly, Sherlock doesn’t have to hope that it won’t, because he knows that it won’t: the idea that he can call them our years, and truly so.
He feels John’s smile as he bows his head down, mouth at the base of Sherlock’s skull:
“God, I love you.”
And that, too, he will never get tired of: that, too, will never stop filling him with an unfathomable, unreasonable, indefensible and nevertheless undeniable sense of wonder.
“You got all this done since school let out?” John lets his lips drag against the roots of Sherlock’s hair above his neck, his breath causing a shiver that Sherlock doesn’t bother trying to fight.
“Hmm.”
“How’d you get her to sit still enough for measurements?”
“Unnecessary,” Sherlock tilts his head to the side, to the black-bound book on the table: and John’s rarely seen what’s in them, though he knows what they’re for; he never looks without permission, and Sherlock still sometimes marvels at the trust in that, in so much of what they have and what they are—but Sherlock invites him, now, and knows John sees the numbers in the corners of every page, often the same, but the smallest of changes are documented to the millimeter: Rosie’s height, across days instead of months or years.
Data. Observation. It’s who he is.
John’s putting the book down, and reaching around to the fabric in Sherlock’s lap.
“She won’t need this tomorrow,” John murmurs against his ear, kissing his temple soft; slow.
“She’ll want to see it,” Sherlock protests, if only half-hearted.
“And she’ll see this,” John nods, setting the project onto the sofa with all due-delicacy. “Which is amazing already, even if not yet to your standards,” John eyes him knowingly, seeing the objection before it’s voiced.
“At the moment,,” John returns to him, takes his hands and pulls him to his feet: “there’s something I want to see,” and John’s kissing him in earnest, now, full on the lips and licking between, drawing them close and stroking a bit wildly over Sherlock’s chest, teasing at the edges of his shirt wherever he can.
“And something I want to show you, yeah?” and, if the matter had been in any sort of doubt, John has the good grace to grind his hips against Sherlock’s to make it crystalline.
Yes. Right.
“I suppose,” Sherlock concedes slowly, letting himself be devoured joyfully; letting himself be led willingly to the bedroom:
“I suppose I can resume in the morning.”
______________________
John had thought that, as a result of his many torturous years at the clarinet, that it would be—pun unintended—child’s play to help Rosie when she came home with that long, thin black plastic case swinging in her hands, ready to dazzle them with all the absolutely horrific squeaking of a young musician newly in possession of a shiny noisemaker of death.
John—not entirely surprisingly, but certain less frequent than it once stood—is very, very wrong.
He’s tempted to go for something stronger than the Anadin in the cabinet—Greg got them a nice whisky for the anniversary of Sherlock remembering my goddamn name all on his own, for Christ’s sake, which is tempting—and he does feel a little bad for it, but he’s managed to control the urge to wince every time Rosie blows across the mouthpiece of her flute to the point of screeching—and it’s only been a week, and he knows it’ll only get worse before it gets better, and he’s shocked that they’ve not got a noise complaint yet, then again people know that Sherlock lives here and while he’s more than mellowed in recent years there’s no forgetting how many times their flat literally blew up so this probably isn’t worse, but fuck, what about now that Sherlock’s home? He’d been away on a case for the past few days, and god, him and Rosie’s flute, John’s going to have to pay fines for this, he’s sure of it, and it’s only been a week and—
John puts the tablets away and goes for the liquor.
He only realises after her takes a good drink from the tumbler that it’s… quiet.
He glances at the bottle to make sure it’s what it’s supposed to and something that induces sudden deafness that Sherlock put into the locked cupboard to keep from young hands—but no.
No, just whisky. And it’s quiet, sure, but upon listening closer, it’s not silent.
John leans against the wall and watches as Rosie holds her flute with stiff limbs, still uncertain of its weight but proud—watches as Sherlock considers her from his chair, straight across from where she stands, hands steepled below his chin: eyes narrowed.
There’s silence, now—tangible. Waiting on a precipice.
Rosie sighs, deflates, looking a bit desperate, and John recognises this: the game.
A new sort, for he and John—but one Sherlock seems, against all odds, to enjoy almost as much.
“Position—” Sherlock offers a leading hint, and Rosie brightens immediately, resumes her stance.
“Fingers,” Rosie figures swiftly, repositioning her hands on the correct keys, counting to make sure of it. “Right.”
She glances up for approval, but Sherlock’s still staring her down. Her face scrunches as she tries to figure out what she’s missed.
“Tighten?” she tries, and he grins at her, cheshire-like with a nod.
“Very good,” he praises, and mimics lifting the instrument to the mouth before he chides with all solemnity: “Don’t forget the tongue.”
John stifles a choked laugh into his scotch, at that: the memory of an era ago, of Sherlock sweeping from the morgue and calling the very same thing to John. Which is not to say similar situations don’t still arise, but, well—
Jesus, but they’ve come a long way.
“Like I’m tutting Mrs. Turner’s cat,” Rosie asks, quite seriously, and with good reason: that cat’s a fucking menace and has proven why it’s a wonderful they they’d largely relocated Sherlock’s labwork to the 221C-unit downstairs when Rosie was still small, because the damned thing somehow managed to knock over something noxious regularly.
And live to tell the bloody fucking tale, too, the bastard.
“Precisely,” Sherlock confirms, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as Rosie brings the mouthpiece close, and John braces for the squwaking he’s been hearing, and unable to help improve, for days now on end—but nothing.
Rosie’s waiting, watching Sherlock for instruction:
“Now,” he says calmly: “try like a birthday candle.”
And ah, there it is. There’s the squawk.
Rosie’s eyes go wide, her cheeks a bit red, and John hadn’t noticed that while he’d gently encouraged her playing the past few days; isn’t sure if it was there or not, if he’d been remiss or if, under the close watch of those impossible seachange eyes it’s different.
Not to pardon himself too easily, but in John’s experience? It may very well be the latter.
“Ah,” Sherlock says, draws the sound out: not patronising, as he may have done once upon a time, but guiding almost—leading someone to come with him and meet his stride, rather than glancing back to see how far behind you’d fallen. “Do you see?”
Rosie takes a second, before finally she nods.
“Too hard.”
Sherlock lets the tease of a grin sprawl into a full smile.
“Exactly,” he leans in, as if it’s a secret bestowed to the world between just them two. “Now,” he waits until she brings the flute up again before instructing: “like a cup of tea.”
She closes her eyes, as if envisioning the cup, before she blows across the mouthpiece—the sound muddled: a sad sort of squeal. She lowers the instrument and frowns at it before she looks again to Sherlock.
“Too soft?”
Sherlock lifts a brow.
“Is that a question?”
Her frown deepens, and she considers, and she doesn’t have any of his blood, any of his genes, but hell if that moment isn’t proof that Rosamund Mary Watson isn’t as much Sherlock Holmes’ daughter as John’s, because the look on her face, the darting of her eyes: it’s alcoholic brothers and psychosomatic limps and Afghanistan or Iraq in the making, and John’s a little punch-drunk with it, if he’s honest, in that moment.
“Too soft,” Rosie says, definitively; “but not like,” she squints, and then looks up: “too soft.”
“Mmm,” Sherlock neither confirms, nor denies, but prompts her to go further: “what do you suggest, then? Given the evidence at hand?”
She’s got the instrument held vertical, studying it idly before she presents her deduction:
“Like a curry?” she asks hopefully; “Or the ravioli from Angelo’s?”
Sherlock’s eyes dance in the way John can’t quite resist, can’t quite keep from dancing the same between his ribs, even after all this time.
“Try it,” he says softly, gesturing for her to play, one more time.
And it’s a sound alright, it’s a pitch, a note, and it wavers but it sings, and maybe it’s not perfect, maybe it’s not precisely right but they all know that’s not what’s important, it’s not always the same thing as:
“Beautiful,” Sherlock grins at her, and the grin she gives back is blinding, and John, well.
John knocks back the very last of the scotch he’d poured and lets it burn swift and true the rather unwavering truth he is, in fact, a right lucky fucking sod.
______________________
She’s on the steps up to the flat when he finds her. She’s done a good job stifling what sniffles are left—he hadn’t heard her upon entering until he went to hang his scarf. He leaves his coat as he climbs the steps; he doesn’t ask for details, just settles beside her and keeps his hands in his pockets and waits for her to speak, if she wants to.
He has a feeling she doesn’t want him to leave though, and Sherlock’s still not the best at this, but fourteen years haven’t been entirely waste on his ability to read emotions.
Particularly with those he loves.
"Boys are stupid," Rosie finally mumbles, using the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe at her face.
"Yes."
That gets Rosie’s attention off the laces of her boots.
"Are they all stupid?"
Sherlock shrugs. “Generally."
He doesn’t like to lie to her, after all. Makes a point not to. Ever, if he’s able to help it.
Thankfully, he’s usually able to help it.
"Do you think Da's stupid?"
Sherlock fights a smile, keeps himself from getting lost in a past where conductors of light were still unseen for what they were: the sun itself.
Around which Sherlock revolved then, and revolves now, and blast the rest of the planets, they don’t matter on balance.
"Only occasionally."
Rosie ducks her head back down, but Sherlock knows her too well, sees all things too clearly: the hint of a grin.
"Are girls stupid, too?" she asks him, and he wishes he could give her hope there, but:
"Mostly."
And that’s when she stomps her feet once, hard against the stair beneath them and groans, hands tangled, frustratedly pulling at her hair less like her father and more like, more like—
Well.
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
Excellent question. On the whole, he’s quite pleased with her ability to ask good questions, to interrogate a problem, but this particular one is something he’s not sure even the finest, keenest of mind can quite solve.
For her, though, he’ll acknowledge his deficits and damn well try:
"Well, for the most part,” he sighs, and ventures to place an arm around her shoulders; she leans in immediately, so he drapes the Belstaff around her like a blanket, like a curtain to drown out the world. “For the most part, people are dull, dear."
She’s unnaturally quiet for a moment, just her breathing and his own, and he’s reminded of when she was very small, suddenly: he’s overwhelmed, for a moment, before she asks in a small but sure voice:
"Do you think I'm dull?"
He tightens his arm around her, pulls her against him just a little more:
"Not a bit."
"What about Da,” she turns, stays pressed close to Sherlock’s side but looks up at him as she asks; “You love him. Do you think Da's dull?"
"Not in the slightest." Not even when he used to say the opposite. He doesn’t pretend that John Watson does not do or say dull things, sometimes. Perhaps even many times. But John Hamish Watson, dull?
Never.
She frowns.
"I don't think,” Rosie frowns down again at her shoes. “I don’t think I understand."
Sherlock sighs, and leans back against the harsh cut of the step against his spine.e
“Honestly, I'm not a very good source on this sort of thing, bit of an idiot with it really."
"You're not an idiot about anything."
"Oh love, wait and see,” Sherlock chuckles, and exhales slow as he leans his head back, stares at the ceiling as one might stare at the stars: “you’d be surprised.”
He feels her eyes on him, waiting for him to continue; he breathes in long, light, and tries, as ever, to find words for the things that exist in a heart he’d his while he learned to speak, to know, and maybe that’s why the words never fit; maybe.
Maybe it’s just that these things exist beyond words—cliche though it is.
“But,” he starts, pauses; but there’s no better place to begin so he soldiers on as he’s learned from the man he loves how to do, how to stand:
“Here's what I do know, or else, I think I know,” he folds his hands beneath his chin and closes his eyes and walks to the chambers of his mind palace where he built other stairs, steeper and more numerous than those upon which they sit, deeper and deeper and lower down until the raw-red of velvet and silk is a susurrus, a heady cadence and it’s the one way he’s learned to keep it all, to contain it and grow ever wider: this thing called feeling, where it lives in your mind for the sake of science, for the fact of biology but is know in the centre of a chest.
He sinks into the give of the lush burgundy that envelopes him in the gentle drumbeat of all that he is, anymore: still mind but so much heart that it scares him, still, but he welcomes it now, and it’s brilliant, blinding: some ten patch problem he never wants to solve.
He feels eyes on him, still, and so he breathes in, and listens to what the chambers he fingers himself inside want to whisper from his lips:
“You can tell when someone's right, for you, when they're not the least bit dull. Or, well,” the lilt of humour curls Sherlock’s lips; “of course they’re a bit dull, they’re people, people are dull but you don’t notice, or you don’t much care really, because it’s not dull to you. When even the worst bits of them shine and beg you to look deeper. That's love, as best I can find words for it,” Sherlock exhales the whole of it in a single palmful of heartbeats, like he might lose it otherwise: “Never dull. Always shining."
He ascends his stairs and exits his palace and opens his eyes, and Rosie’s tucked herself under his arm, breathing gently.
And for the way his back aches, he should move them.
For the way his heart sings, he wouldn’t dare so much as dream it.
______________________
His phone doesn’t vibrate for the call—bad service—but the moment he sees the voicemail waiting, who it’s from and the time, his heart sinks.
He doesn’t wait to listen to it.
“The brother-in-law’s research assistant,” he spouts off; Greg looks flustered and starts to ask follow up but there’s no time, no time and Sherlock’s gone, pressing his number three speed dial because there is something comforting about the number three, as it happens, and he needs that comfort in this moment as the line rings, and rings, and rings—he needs that comfort to calm his pulse and remind him that, logically, had the worst happened, had something dreadful occurred it would have been John they’d call first, he’s the first contact—had she been aware enough during the worst, she must have been at least functional, and that’s, that’s—
His heart’s still racing as the line continues to ring.
“Sherlock?”
“Oh, thank god,” Sherlock can’t help but to breathe out, his thrumming pulse laid bare in the words before he’s able to read anything from Rosie’s tone: low, secreted aware—not in danger, but fearful, and…
“Rose, what’s happened—”
“Lonnie’s house, you know Lonnie, right?”
Of course Sherlock knows Lonnie, Sherlock’s knows Lonnie and about seven branches of Lonnie’s family tree on command—and he’s been told that it’s overstepping, yes, multiple times, but Mycroft runs background checks on all of Rosie’s friends, without complaint too, because he’s an impressively doting Uncle My—who knew?
But her voice is fearful, yes, and fretful—but slow. Slurred.
Ah.
“Can you, can you, please, I mean,” she babbles, frantic; “I know you were out on cases tonight but—”
He flags a cab and covers the phone to relay the intersection.
“Five minutes.”
She’s quiet, her breathing heavy over the line, and in honesty, Sherlock will be there in three.
“Thank you,” she exhales shakily, and oh. Oh, his Rosie.
Two minutes, he’ll make it happen—he’d bend the world in two for her.
“Just stay where you are,” he instructs softly, but clearly. “Where are you, precisely, right now?”
“Outside.”
“Are you alone?”
SIlence.
“Rose—”
“I’m right outside the door, promise,” she defends; “there are people from the party having a smoke, it’s fine.”
He leaps from the cab and turns the corner: she’s in sight.
He breathes easier.
And when she sees him, when she casts her gaze around, a bit like a frightened animal and lands on him, she runs.
Right into his arms.
“Sherlock,” she says, a bit hesitant but mostly, she sounds relieved. “Sherlock, I’m sorry, I mean, I don’t, I mean,” she stumbles over her words, her feet, and Sherlock ushers her gently into the back of the waiting car; the drivers in this city know him well enough—they know where to go.
“I don’t, I mean, the drinking, yes, that was me, and it was stupid, I was an idiot—”
“Stop,” Sherlock tries to curtail her unfiltered confession of apparent sins before she can work herself up any further, to no avail.
“But the drugs, Sherlock, I swear,” and yes, he can smell the cannabis on her without even trying; “they offered it to me, yes, but I said no, you always told me, you taught me—”
“Stop,” he gathers her flailing hands in his own and waits until she fixes bleary, unfocused eyes upon him as best she can.
“It’s alright.”
She blinks; and Sherlock knows it’s more than the alcohol—not obscene amounts; she doesn’t have much tolerance, he can tell, but still more than enough, and in condense quantities—fancy shots amateurly prepared, he suspects, that probably tasted suitably abhorrent: typical indulgence upon coming of legal age, or so he suspects.
“You made a choice, arguably poor,” she finches, looks down, but he places a finger beneath her chin and lifts it back up, keeping her gaze level with his own.
“But you’re not the first, or the last, or the only. And in the end your judgment was sound,” he tells her calmly, softly, with all due care. “You did what we always told you, you didn’t misplace trust, you didn’t endanger yourself or others, and you called home. It is fine.”
She chokes on something like a laugh, something like a sob.
“Fine?” She wants to believe him, he can see it; but she can’t make the leap.
That’s okay. It’s enough, he thinks, that she wants to. That he’s merited that, no matter how many years he’s worked to earn it, is a miracle of sorts in itself.
“You are fine,” Sherlock tells him, solemn with it as he holds her face in his hands. “You are what matters, darling, and the fact that you’re okay is all I’m particularly concerned about,” he drops her cheeks and takes her hand again. “Have you learned from this?”
She tilts her head. “Learned?”
“What maybe not to do, next time.”
“Yes,” she answers immediately, emphatically, and Sherlock presses a cold hand to her forehead and urges her eyes closed against the nausea he knows it likely building in her. “Oh, god, yes.”
“Then you’re home,” he says as he eases her up without forcing her to open her eyes, and leads her to the door after he throws more bills than strictly necessary at the driver. “You’re home, and you’re safe, and that’s all that really matters.”
He guides her slowly up the stairs—John’d worked late at the surgery, paperwork and whatnot, so he’s dead to the world as they enter the flat with just a hint of a bang at the awkward, two-step they manage up the steps.
Rosie goes to try to manage the stairs to her room, and Sherlock grabs her arm and guides her away in the pause she takes to size up the challenge before her wobbly equilibrium.
“You’ll stay up with me for the next hour or so, though,” Sherlock murmurs at her side, settling her into a chair by the table. “Toast, water, paracetamol,” he instructs, like he knows the sequence well, which rusty as it might be, he still does. “Tomorrow will likely be some degree of agony, nonetheless, if my deductions regarding the content of those shots are correct—”
“Of course they’re correct, they’re yours,” Rosie grumbles, though any bite it may or may not have held is ruined in the way she groans, and shies away from the light.
“But best to make it as manageable as possible, yes?” Sherlock says, pushing a glass of water her way before he goes to pop some bread in the toaster.
“Thank you,” he hears floating soft from the table.
“For what?”
“For not,” she starts, voice thickening and catching her mid-phrase; “for being…”
She turns, and braces herself to stand and make her way slowly, carefully to where Sherlock is waiting for the toast and gives him a full-bodied, rather desperate hug.
“For being you,” she murmurs into his shoulder—she’s reached that height, though for her genetics it’s unlikely she’ll reach much higher; “For being my, for being, like,” she trips, as she often has, often does when she’s over-stimulated, particularly emotion, over what he is, what label fits him: she’s not the only person to struggle with that, though, so it’s not particularly problematic. He is whatever she needs him to be, and that’s more than enough.
“For being here, for me, always,” she settles on, eyes a bit misty, though that may be the drink; “No matter what I,” she hiccoughs, and shakes her head; “just, no matter what.”
“Exactly, love,” Sherlock whispers, kissing her temple as he settles her back in the chair; “always.”
The toast finishes, and he grabs two painkillers from the pack to place next to her half-drowned water—baby sips—as he keeps the lights dim and takes a seat beside her:
“No matter what.”
______________________
She’s taken qualifications in English, and in Chemistry. She wants to be a science writer. Maybe work with crime and such.
Frankly: he could have said she wanted to be a sanitation engineer, for all it would impact Sherlock’s pride in her, but as it stands: he is so very, very proud.
“Sherlock, they’re about to get to the W’s,” John tells him, grabbing his arm and Sherlock’s equally giddy, overjoyed: John’s baby. His Rosie.
All grown up and leaving uni. Sherlock had never understood the way that people lamented the perception of time, but this.
He still remembers her in nappies. Still remembers the tufting curls of her hair in the first years, the soft weight of her against his chest as he bounced her to sleep.
He doesn’t fight the sting in his eyes; John’s already blubbering, so it won’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
Whatever he’d learned about keeping his heart from bursting was a thing he’d long since deleted: his heart, whatever it’s made of and whatever it’s built for, seems quite resilient in the face of its own obliteration, coming apart from the inside with too much to contain. A muscle, in the end, and Sherlock should have known: for the tears and damage, it learns to repair itself stronger: broader.
It expands to contain what it needs.
She’s standing, waiting to be called up to kneel and accept her hood. They wait with baited breath like it’s uncertain, like it’s a precipice.
Rosamund Mary Watson-Holmes.
Sherlock’s breath catches; he can’t have heard right.
He plays it back in his head, questions his senses, tests them against every litmus available to him: the touch of John’s skin, tighter around him, bracing; familiar. The scent of too many bodies above the waft of fresh flowers; oppressive, but not overwhelming. The colour of the regalia, many-hued among the staff like a scattered rain of shades: vibrant. The lingering flavour of John on his lips for the way they’d kissed not so many moments ago: the sweetest of all things. The couple in front of them muttering obscenities under their breaths—clear as day.
Rosamund Mary Watson-Holmes.
And yet—
“Did you—”
“No,” John responds to Sherlock shaky half-request, a smile clear in his watery voice; “no, but I suspected.”
“I never,” he starts, at a loss in a way he’s not been in eons: entirely at sea because he and John have never married—never needed to, when hearts were shared and given, when souls were prove between them beyond the realm of logic and science and sense. They’re partners, life-mates, lovers, halfs of wholes but wholes themselves and more for it, strong in ways they’d never dreamed and close in ways that matter shouldn’t allow but they’ve melded, a single essence, a single purpose, a single fact of life.
They’ve never married; and likewise—for all the technicalities that the British Government himself had made certain would default solely to Sherlock in the case where it ever was needed, and for as much as Sherlock’s never thought of Rose as anything but as close as, no; closer than his own flesh and blood: for all that he’s thought it, he’s never made the words formal, barely says them at all, if ever. For all that he knows it in his bones and deeper still—Sherlock never adopted Rosie as his own.
“You never needed to.” John reads him, and Sherlock nods, and John never lets go of him and Sherlock is grateful. The rest of the pomp and circumstance passes in a blur, and suddenly everyone is mulling, John is grabbing for the bouquet of her namesake and Sherlock is still adrift, his world still buzzing uncontrollably.
“Da,” she grins as she takes the flowers, as she crushes them wholly without a second thought in wrapping John in a hug so tight she nearly lifts him off the ground: a feat if ever there was one, as John’s got older, yes, but never all that less strong.
She lets him go, though, and he kisses her and they cry and Sherlock watches—the halves of his heart, the reason it beats—and the buzzing subsides a bit, because of all the things uncertain in the world, these two, these two are immutable truths.
And then she’s turning to him, her eyes soft. Her arms open. Her voice choked with tears as she breaths:
“Sherlock.”
She embraces him, and it’s instinct to hold her in kind.
It is necessity for him to crush her against his chest and brace against her, for fear of losing touch with what is real.
Rosamund Mary Watson-Holmes.
“Was it okay?” she asks, her breath soft at his ear; “I wanted to ask, but—”
“Okay?” Sherlock chokes out, incredulous; “Okay…”
He shakes his head and pulls back only far enough to frame Rose’s face with his hands.
“It is everything,” he says, almost harsh but only for just how much feeling is in it: so heavy and so necessary and more desired, he realises, more wanted for the words than he ever could have dreamed. “The clearest truth in all the world.”
“I love you,” she says, kissing his cheek and staying there, eyes closed, like he’s a sanctuary, and that’s all he’s ever wanted for her; all he’s ever wanted to be.
“And I you, darling,” he breathes into the tight-drawn hair before the bun swept up behind. “And I you.”
She pulls back a little, her arms around his torso now and she laughs wetly, and gestures for John to come closer, to join as she wraps one arm now around him, pressure Sherlock and John shoulder to shoulder before her.
“Plenty of my friends had lovely parents, two dads even,” she says softly, with such deep soul: “But me? Me, I got the best,” he leans in for a kiss for John: “the best dad,” and then her eyes move to his side.
“And I got someone irreplicable, impossible and brilliant and patient,” she says slow, deliberate: so he hears and absorbs every word. “And so full of love.”
His throat seizes; he can’t see straight.
“And I don’t know what I’d do without him, this singular man that only I get to have as my own,” she whispers, and the tears on her face no are only a taste of the mess of Sherlock’s own cheeks:
“I got a Sherlock.” She reaches out and wipes some of his free-flowing tears with a damp giggle of joy:
“My Sherlock.”
“Oh, Rose,” he breathes, crackled and faint around so much emotion, such inescapable feeling; “forever, and for always.”
He draws her in and kisses her head:
“My Rosie.”
And she smiles against his neck as she says the words, the only words Sherlock never realised he was waiting to hear:
“I always was.”