Just Johnlock- The Big Book of One Shots

You'll Never Forget: Part 2

          

"Still keeping an eye on Mr. Watson I see?" Sherlock's nurse asked jokingly as she arrived to pick him up from TV time to go take a walk or something. Sherlock didn't remember the schedule, however he was sure no one really did except the nurses and the powerful overlord over the loud speakers, and maybe time, the controller of the clocks, who willed it to be TV time, or bedtime, or lunch time, or anytime in between. Sherlock blinked, looking around at his nurse and shaking his head innocently, trying to make it look as though he were just looking out the window instead of at the man reclined and asleep in a big blue armchair near the door.
"No, not Mr. Watson. I didn't even know he was there...oh ya. He is." Sherlock murmured very quickly, forcing a smile and forcing a lie before smiling at his nurse the best he could. She just laughed, as if she didn't actually believe him, and helped him find his walking cane so that they could stroll around the garden or whatever he wanted to do.
"He knew me, he approached me today. He used my name before I had the chance to introduce myself." Sherlock admitted once they were finally up and running (or shuffling, that is).
"Well of course he knows you Sherlock, he's been here just about as long as you have." The nurse assured. Sherlock frowned, that certainly didn't add up.
"But I didn't know his name until just yesterday, I didn't know anyone. I still don't." Sherlock admitted.
"Yes well there's a difference between you and him." The nurse assured with a smile.
"And that is?" Sherlock wondered accusingly, glaring at her the best he could all while trying to find a safe spot to land his walking cane in the lumpy grass.
"He cares about the other people." The nurse pointed out with a grin.
"I do care about other people; here I am right now, talking about someone else!" Sherlock defended.
"Mr. Holmes, do you even know my name?" the nurse asked with a raised eyebrow, to which Sherlock just gaped, surprised she would even go to that length to make him feel bad about himself.
"Well that's just a rude question." Sherlock insisted, trying his best to divert the conversation before she started to cry or something like that. Women were always so defensive about that, Sherlock was quite sure he had always hated that about whatever woman he had ever come across.
"What's your fascination with Mr. Watson, Sherlock? Do you want to be friends?" the nurse asked. Sherlock sighed heavily, pausing for a moment under a very ugly old tree, stripped of leaves for the winter yet still hanging tall and proud. Sherlock leaned very heavily on his cane, setting it on a cobblestone that had fallen from an old bench, tumbled years ago and overgrown beyond the point of recognition.
"Do you think it would be weird if..." Sherlock sighed heavily, shaking his head suddenly. "No, never mind."
"Oh come on Mr. Holmes, don't be defensive. You know me, I won't judge you." The nurse assured carefully, walking closer with a kind smile on her face. Sherlock groaned, shaking his head and attempting to take another step away. He didn't like this spotlight, and now the nurse knew that he was contemplating...how embarrassing.
"You'll make me feel stupid." Sherlock insisted as he shuffled away over the short cut grass.
"I will not, Mr. Holmes I'm here for your aid, and that's mental too. I can help you with whatever this is, that's what I was hired to do!" the nurse exclaimed, matching ten of Sherlock's little strides with two of her own and reappearing at his shoulder. Sherlock frowned once more, however he didn't seem to have any control over this situation.
"It's pointless anyway. I'm too old to fall in love." Sherlock murmured, dropping his head and continuing on in silence. The nurse cooed from behind him, however Sherlock was already off towards the home, trying to walk into the doors by himself so that his shadow clad in white didn't get the opportunity to interrogate him much more. This would be a lot easier if Sherlock could reverse the clock maybe, fifty years? Sixty? He wanted Mr. Watson to see him as more than withered old shell of a man, hallowed out and deprived of his beauty, because he used to be beautiful, he knew that much. Oh there was a time when he could have any man he wanted, all he had to do was bat his long eyelashes and recline a little bit too far over a chair, let his arms dangle, let his eyes stare. Oh those men melted like butter, didn't they, even the straightest of them all, they crawled to him on all fours, desperate. And now look at him, smiled down to like he had not a power in the world, like he's never had a life. These nurses saw them all as helpless; they had surpassed the age of individuality and were now placed in sweaters that corresponded with their risk of death. If only they had seen him shine, if only they could've witnessed his power among the weak, and the less superior beauty in the world. And now he was just dumped in this home and treated as though he didn't have a future or an opportunity, stuck in here to die alone among faces he still wouldn't recognize. And John Watson, that John Watson that had no claim to fame, no grasp of beauty, and yet a smile that could make even Sherlock's wrinkled heart begin to beat like it used to do. What the nurse didn't understand was that love between elderly people is still love, no matter how short lived it was. And maybe Sherlock wanted someone just to realize he was gone, since he couldn't for the life of him remember what his family looked like, if he even had one. Somehow he must've ended up here, and yet there seemed to be a colossal wall between the past and the present, there seemed to be a rift in time, blurring the lines between his freedom and his self induced elderly prison sentence. And he was here until he died of course, and yet maybe it was his responsibility to make sure that someone mourned him.