Fic: Crossroads - John (3/7) (Sherlock BBC)

[keep_counting]

Look what I found time to post anyway! :)

Title: Crossroads 3/7 - John
Characters/Pairings: John, Molly, Harry Watson, Clara
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, selling of souls, a bit blood, dead people, temporary character-death, resurrection
Genre: Crossover/Drama/AU
Word-count: 1,118
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N: Crossover with Supernatural, though it is not necessary to have watched the show: I am merely using the mythology to fill a plot-bunny made by fueschgast and me: the wonderful banner is also made by her!
Summary: If you make a deal with a crossroads-demon, you can get whatever you want. You can even bring someone back to life.

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four // Part Five // ....

John

Harry’s short for Harriet.

~

”You must be Molly,”

He really hadn’t intended to scare her, but the young woman must not have heard him come in or walk up behind her at all, because she whirled around in fright, almost dropping the papers she was holding.

“Sorry!” he said, automatically reaching out to steady her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“That’s alright, I was lost in my thoughts for a minute there,” she muttered, hand coming up to tug her hair behind her ear. “I’m a little tense. Um, a-anything you wanted?”

“Yeah, you’re Molly Hooper right?”

“Yes,”

“I’m here to… that is…” his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I’m here to identify a body.”

Molly’s eyes went wide. “Oh. You must be… the brother, John Watson?”

The morgue felt colder by the second, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“Yes,” he got out between the thick know in his throat. “I, uh, I am.”

She shot him a sympathetic look. “Right. Come this way.”

His feet click-clack loudly against the tiled floor, echoing off the bare walls, and he can’t help but see in his mind’s eye, the dead bodies inside the compartments there, lying in wait to be sliced up and inspected.

John is a soldier, and he is used to death. He is used to causing it and saving people from it: he’s used to shooting someone and stitching someone back together. He’s used to seeing enemies and friends die, right in front of his eyes.

He’s used to all of that happening in a dry, desert-land where the sun shines sharply in your eyes. It’s not supposed to happen in this haven, back in England where he remembers a childhood and happiness and living.

This place was supposed to be safe. The people he cared about weren't supposed to just die while he was out there, risking his life. He was the one supposed to…

“Here,” Molly’s voice breaks through his thoughts and there it is, right in front of him, slowly uncovered as she pulls back the white sheet.

The body.

“A bus?” John quietly asks, staring down at the broken thing that used to be his sister. Molly is staring at him, he can tell. Like she’s waiting for something: an outburst, tears, vomit. Anything. She is probably all too accustomed to this.

“Yes,” Molly mutters quietly. “It was… she would have died very quickly.”

His eyes snap up to hers, surprised by this sudden comfort she’s offering, and realizes that there is a pain in her eyes that has probably been there for a while.

“My dad got hit by a car,” she explains. “So not as quick a death as your sister… oh, no, I didn’t mean… sorry,” she mutters, closing her eyes in embarrassment.

Everything is turning upside down and John can smell flowers amidst the stench of dead, and he’s standing over his sister’s dead body and he wants to laugh. Of course he doesn’t do that, only smiles softly and it doesn’t stop the clenching in his chest, but it’s enough for him to imagine that it lessens slightly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,”

“It’s a long time ago now,” she quickly says. “Eight years. He’d just… I mean, he’d survived cancer,” she says and suddenly her tone is hard and something unfamiliar is glittering in her eyes and she isn’t the awkward, bumbling little coroner anymore.

And then it’s gone all of the sudden, and it’s as if the temperature rises and John has the odd notion of someone laughing, a male someone, but there is no-one but them there and it’s certainly not him: because really, you don’t laugh in a morgue.

Especially not when your sister’s dead.

“Oh god,” he gets out as it finally hits him and he is only vaguely aware of Molly reaching out and holding him as he collapses on the ground, gasping for breath.

~

Harriet Watson is dead. She was born in summer, and is buried in the cold winter, the ground so hard that it takes twice as long for the diggers to prepare the grave.

Harriet Watson – when she had still been alive – had been a drunkard and, quite frankly, quite a bit of a bastard. That does not make her any less of John’s sister, or Clara’s wife or other various people’s friend and colleague. John is only slightly surprised by the large number of people at her funeral, because despite her issues – and Harry had those in spades – she was a people person.

He has to make a speech, and he stands up there for what feels like hours and rants on about half-forgotten childhood-memories and a time before booze and heartbreak had been introduced into his sister’s life.

Booze and heartbreak and a bus that crushed her face.

It is, he thinks, quite morbid. And it is, of course, a closed coffin. Not much to be salvaged there.

He has been staring at photographs of her, for hours on end, trying to rid himself of the broken image that was in the morgue, recall what she looked like when she was still alive.

It only works in the light of day, when the shadows aren’t long and he can hear someone laughing, god, who the hell is it he can hear laughing all the time?

“I keep dreaming of crossroads,” Clara tells him one day, because he’s moved in with her for the time being, helping her sort out all the stuff (and all the booze) and figure everything out (and drink all the booze) and just generally be a comfort to each other (and get wasted on all the booze Harry had, and Harry had a lot of booze).

It’s a slow process, and it’s like losing his parents all over again, it’s losing someone he thought he quite frankly detested and that’s ridiculous because Harry is – was – his sister, and he will miss her no matter how many times she’s gotten a bit too violent or hurtful towards him.

“Crossroads?” he asks and Clara only nods, looking tired and worn and it doesn’t come up again.

John forgets about it, of course, because amidst paying bills and arranging a funeral and the hundred, thousands (it feels like thousands and he really needs more booze) of people coming around to give their condolences, well, there really isn’t time to dwell on things like odd dreams.

Not much time or want to dwell on much. His sister is dead, after all. Dead and buried in the ground.

Harriet Watson is dead.

Which is why John really wants to know how the hell she’s currently standing on his door-step.