Title: Circo de Pastel
Author: Mesita
Words: 1538/50,000+
Pairings: Sherlock/John (Eventual) Lestrade/Mycroft (Implied)
Warnings: Slight torture, kidnapping, violence, death
Summary: John Watson runs away to join a circus where he is forced to live with the resident consulting psychic. After one of the circus members is murdered, it's up to John and Sherlock to solve the case.
CHAPTER ONE
JOHN WATSON
Dedicated to:
My wonderful husband for understanding how much
I emotionally invested myself in this and helping with
Taking care of the baby, cooking, cleaning,
fight-scene choreography and most of all:
Not minding when I sat in the bed with my laptop at all
Hours of the morning, typing away.
My local NaNoWriMo Write-In group!
You girls were a wonderful inspiration and got me out
Of a few tight spots when it came to some basics.
Thank you for keeping me on track all those Saturdays!
And lastly, to my mother-in-law for unknowingly
Acting as a baby-sitter for my daughter
So I could have 48 hours of literary abandon
…on more than one occasion.
A fifteen year old John Watson rolled over in his bed and pulled his pillow over the back of his head to drown out the sound of his parent's voices. The situation had been a common occurrence since John was nine, and he figured he would be used to the shouting by this point, but he was wrong. He did not even care about what had gotten his parents so angry, anymore. He only wanted the two of them to stop, even if it meant their separation. His mother claimed she wanted to stay for the kids’ sake. His father probably stayed out of laziness.
Things were easier when his father was out. His mother would often cook a small meal and John, his mother, and his sister, Harriet, would all eat together in front of the television. Nights like that were wonderful. On nights like that, John’s father was probably out with some woman he had met at a bar. Sometimes he came home, and sometimes he was out for the entire weekend.
Harriet was four years John’s senior and remembered with more clarity the times when their parents did not fight. She became a safe haven for John for many years. When the shouts became particularly loud when they were younger, John would often crawl into his sister’s bed and cry into her sleeve. She would stroke her younger brother’s hair and tell him stories about what life was like before. John could not remember a time when his father did anything without malice. After some time he begged Harriet to tell him stories about different people. He no longer wanted to hear about his parents’ failed marriage.
Mr. Watson never raised a hand to his family. Despite the yelling, the verbal abuse and the broken objects around the house, he never struck his wife or his children. He must have known how to avoid legal disputes because neither John, nor Harriet, nor their mother could take Mr. Watson to court. They had no cuts or bruises; only bruised egos and damaged self-esteem.
Harriet turned to drinking at a young age, and it surprised no one. She stopped coming home most nights simply to avoid the wrath of her father. This left John alone to defend his mother or to comfort her when his father eventually went to sleep or passed out in a drunken stupor.
His once safe haven of a sister slowly turned into a disappointment. John resented her for leaving his mother and himself when they needed her the most. To John, it seemed like the minute she became of age, she left her family behind.
For nearly a decade of his life John endured his father’s insults. The fights had turned his mother into a weakened shell of a human. All traces of emotion had left her years before. She moved with almost robotic-like movements. The once graceful Mrs. Watson had been reduced to nothing more than an automaton. John took it upon himself to care for his mother. His care kicked into high gear when she became sick. His father found that yelling to a sickly woman on a bed was no where nearly as satisfying, so he switched his attention to his son, instead.
John felt he took his father’s insults rather well. He hardened himself to others. He kept quiet during school and made sure to finish all of his homework between classes in case he was unable to get to it while at home. School projects were nightmares, but he worked diligently and made sure to always meet anyone anywhere other than his own home.
John learned a lot about taking care of the sick in the later part of his High School years. His mother’s health had declined so rapidly, he was almost forced to stay up late studying medical manuals in hopes that he could find something to help his unfortunate mother. Occasionally, a nurse would come around, but only when Mr. Watson was not at home. John took as many opportunities as possible to learn from the nurse. He was a fast learner.
When the situation turned into a hospice, John tried to get a hold of Harriet to let her know her mother’s life was coming to an end, but he had no such luck.
John Watson was nineteen when Mrs. Watson finally passed on. His mother held John’s hand and smiled for the first time in ten years. As she took her final breath, her last smile remained on her lips and John left it that way. He wanted to pretend his mother led a beautiful life.
After a few hours, the coroner came to take the body away. John’s father happened to be coming home just as his wife was leaving in a shroud. John did not care who you were, if you saw your wife of over twenty years leaving your house for the last time-in the worst way imaginable, you were bound to be affected by it. His father, however, was not affected in a way that John found acceptable.
Mr. Watson lashed out at his son, blaming him for his mother’s deteriorating health. He refused to pay for the funeral, let alone attend it, and John found himself swamped with the preparations. In the end, the only solution he could find was to donate his mother’s body. He did not want to but he could see no other option. He could not afford a coffin or a plot and therefore could not give his mother a proper burial. And, seeing as he hadn’t turned twenty, yet, he could not even apply for a loan to help out. He had successfully graduated from High School, but the thought of going to University was a laugh. He could perhaps have gotten in somewhere with a few good scholarships, but his mother’s well-being had prevented him from acting on that. He was paid a very little bit of money to take care of his mother full-time. He had learned quite a bit from the doctors and nurses-but the money was so little, he could only feed himself and there was little, if not anything at all, to stash away for safe-keeping. His mother had a bit of money set aside, but it was not enough to cover even the lower rates he had been quoted for funeral arrangements.
The day John returned from the morgue was the worst day of his life-far worse than holding his mother’s hand as her life slipped from his grasp.
No sooner had he stepped over the threshold of his home, he had to duck a flying tea mug as it sailed over his head, out the door, and smashed in the yard. Carefully, John poked his head around the wall as the house opened into the kitchen. He was not surprised to see his father in the worst rage he had ever encountered.
“It’s all your fault! You let her go!” He opened a cabinet and started to pull plates down, causing them to smash into bits and pieces on the floor. John let his father vent, already trying to plan escape routes in his mind. His father continued on. “What am I supposed to do, now, huh? You killed her!”
John did not answer. He knew better than to refute anything his father said. He had learned long ago to outwardly agree that his father was correct in anything and everything he had ever said or did. This caused much less confusion in the long run, and saved John very many headaches. In fact, this time around, his father was shouting himself hoarse and John had long since tuned it out. His mother’s face had been taking up so much of his mind, that there were no senses left to register anything his father threw at him, literally and figuratively.
Mr. Watson must have noticed how his words completely missed their intended mark. In anger, he grabbed another mug and hurled it directly at his son. John did not have the time or reflexes to duck this time and the mug hit him hard on the side of the head and landed on the floor with a crash. The handle broke off and slid across the floor to rest under the couch. A thin trickle of blood slowly made its way down John’s temple.
He stared at his father. This was the first time Mr. Watson had turned violent enough to inflict physical harm to John, and he did not appear to regret it one bit.
“Filthy boy,” Mr. Watson spat. “Rotten you are, the lot of you. A weak mother, a drunk sister and then there’s you: whining and crying and the gnashing of the teeth. You sicken me.” His face was getting redder and redder with each growing second. “Get out of my sight.”
Gladly, John thought, inwardly. He wasted no time in rushing to his room. He had barely enough time to shove as many articles of clothing as he could into a bag along with a few essentials. Just before leaving, he made one last clean sweep of his room. He would probably never be seeing it again.
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