Chapter Three

John found an odd comfort in sitting within the small confessional booth. The walls were near, and the air was still. There was never a loss for quiet, even when he listened silently to the admissions of the flock. By mid-day, even those hushed voices became little more than a whisper as each person let the weight of their guilt and shame fall from their shoulders to the worn carpeting at their feet. He rarely had to speak in turn, only vague confirmations that he was, indeed, there and willing to take their moral burdens from them. There was no list of penances to be consulted to admonish their sins, and there was, perhaps, a bit of guilt on his part when he realized that after the seventeenth patron, he was simply repeating himself.

It wasn't usual for him to fall into a palindromic rhythm of duplication, but to be very honest, he did have other things on his mind. His thoughts had become wholly obsessed with the trembling man named Sherlock, the mysterious suit who stole him away, and the Detective Inspector that had somehow found himself falling victim in a dangerous game of persistence that lead to his death. In between the short visits from lost sheep, John was left with only his thoughts and he couldn't really be blamed if that's where they chose to linger. Idly, he grabbed up his cane from where he left it resting against the thin divider of the confessional, pursing his lips together as a ineffable expression twisted his features.

If he had to guess, John thought that perhaps he looked a bit enraged at the inanimate stick. Annoyed, perhaps, or even a bit insulted, that he had spent the last few agonizing months depending on it for stability and relief of a pain that never really existed in the first place. A few of the flock had noticed his lack of a limp and praised his quick healing. A good number of them said that it must have been God's kind hand that relieved him of his malady, but John knew better. It wasn't some omnipresent deity, it certainly wasn't the many prayers his congregation had been throwing his way, it was a shaky drug addict that stumbled out of the rain. High out of his mind, hands shaking and eyes wide in the shadows of the church; frantic. Sick on the floor, passed out in his bed, and trembling; feeble. Standing there with his head held down by a firm grip on the back of his neck, shuffling his feet out to an unmarked car and then simply; gone. Somehow, Sherlock had made him better and John was struggling to figure out how.

He cursed quietly, earning a small gasp from the other side of the thin screen to his right. A frown curled his lips and he shook his head in silent admonition against himself. So lost in his thoughts, he had been ignoring the young woman beside him for a solid seven minutes. "I am so..so very sorry, miss. I have, well, there has just been quite a bit on my mind."

"Where does a preacher go to confess, Father?" She asked softly, her voice giving away how relieved she was that perhaps he hadn't heard a thing she just admitted. "Who do you talk to when there is no one else to listen?"

"We..we pray, I suppose." John couldn't remember the last time he had a heart to heart with the supreme being he supposedly served. In fact, the last time he uttered anything aloud, spoken in earnest, to the higher power was during his military service.

Please God, let me live.

He also found himself staring at his hand throughout the mundane and repetitive tasks of his day as if it were a stranger's appendage. It remained still when otherwise it would tremble until he was forced to clench it tightly at his side. Another odd side-effect of his 18 hour intrigue with Sherlock, one that perplexed him even further than his mysteriously vanished limp. Medically, it made no logical sense unless his maladies were nothing more than a fabrication of his own damaged mind. But he was a strong minded military man with extensive schooling and a well-bred background, not exactly the type to fall so easily to mental illness, despite his therapists constant assurances to the contrary.

Speaking of which...

John glanced at his watch, calculating how much longer he could linger within the walls of his church before absolutely having to take the weekly taxi across the city to her office. If he timed it right, he would be late enough to cut the session brief but just on time so as not to incur her wrath. The time ticked by as he idly dusted off a shelf.

Intentionally, John had walked into the office with his cane in hand and his limp fully forced. It was a conversation he dreaded having, though he could hear it ringing through his thoughts clear as crystal with every awkward step that he took.

You're doing much better, John.
Did you have a revelation at church, John?
Working around people is good for you, John.
Self reflection has been good for you, John.
Holding onto your faith will be good for you, John.

The repetition of things that were good for him was endless and droning even as he shifted uncomfortably in the under stuffed chair, waiting for her to speak. His therapist, a woman of thirty or so, continually stared at him and every now and then the scratching of a pencil against paper would shatter the silence between them.

"So, it's been awhile since we've last talked." She flipped through her little book slightly, paging through her notes from their previous sessions and he took his time in reading the scratchy handwriting from where he sat. "Did you have anything you wanted to discuss today?"

He paused and shook his head, "No."

"Nothing of interest lately?" There was a kind smile on her lips, goading him into sharing the swirling storm of thoughts in his head. John remained stubbornly silent. "No new friends?"

"Friends?" Her pencil scritched across the paper and he read it easily. Still has trust issues.It was a struggle not to scoff aloud, even as his jaw clenched and his gaze flicked back towards the birds outside of the window. "No, no friends."

John wasn't sure he could count Sherlock as a new friend, having only been around him for 18 hours, the majority of which the tall, lanky stranger had spent unconscious in his bed. He was definitely a new something, but he had yet to find a proper definition for it. If anything, he was simply and wholly, just … new. Something new, something intriguing, something exciting, and something entirely dangerous. Sherlock was also something that he couldn't stop thinking about, even while he tried to force his mind onto other topics. The patterning on the drapes in the office, flight patterns of sparrows, even the growth rate of tropical house plants. No matter how obscure the topic, they always seemed to loop the perimeter of random and settle back at the beginning.

What was it about that night that cured his limp?

The answer, though clear as ever, was insufficient. Sherlock. Always, Sherlock.

"John.. I would like you to give something a try. I know that you may find it a bit odd, and you may be resistant to it at first." Her pencil rested for a moment, long fingers lacing together as she pulled him from his thoughts. "I would like you to start a blog. You can write about anything you wish, even the every day, ordinary, and mundane things that happen to you. Keeping a blog, having a place for the things in your mind, will be good for you and will honestly help."

He didn't miss the glance she gave to the cane in his hand, though he had a feeling that she wasn't exactly attempting to hide it from him. John didn't need a blog for the things in his head and he certainly didn't need a blog to chase away the psychosomatic limp that plagued him. He needed someone tall, with unruly hair, and trembling hands. He needed someone that burst into his life like a flash of lightning through the darkness. He needed Sherlock, and the nagging twinge at the back of his subconscious was screaming at him that perhaps Sherlock needed him as well.

Rationality kicked in well after he left his therapists office, well after he had fake limped his way around the corner, and well after he flagged down a cabbie to take him home. Perhaps it was the cold of the window on his forehead or the humming of the vehicles engine that lulled him, but on the cusp of drowsiness, John had a startling and entirely upsetting revelation.

It was clear that Sherlock did not want his help, or he would not have left the church when sanctuary was freely given. If he wanted his help, he would still be there. A conscious choice was made the moment the phone call was placed, and despite his instincts to throw himself head long into the thick of it all just to help his fellow man, how could he save someone that didn't want saving? It seemed ridiculous and foolish to persist.

Who is the more foolish of the man, the one who wastes his thoughts on those that don't wish for them, or the man that wastes his thoughts on no one at all?

He was rubbing the pads of his fingertips into his eyes as the taxi approached the church, slowed and then stopped at the curb. A nagging headache from a disjointed night of sleeping, and the constant flow of speaking to one person after another, pounding at his skull.

John wanted to go inside, fix himself a cup of tea, lie down on his marginally uncomfortable bed, and let the heavy arms of Morpheus drag him into oblivion. He wanted to do exactly what the man with the umbrella had so kindly suggested and just forget everything that had happened. He wanted to go back to normal and dull; boring and routine. He wanted to return to when things were expected because nothing ever changed. He wanted to fall into the calm and let it lull him into his geriatric years where he could justify buying a rickety rocking chair, have a real reason for needing a cane, and if he found himself very very lucky, he would have a geriatric wife to share every innocuously ordinary moment. He also wanted, at one point in his life, to be an astronaut, a pilot, a world renowned rugby captain, prime minister, a ninja, and to be taller than his sister. As the years flew by, John learned that he rarely ever got what he wanted, and most of the time, that was just fine with him.

John pushed open the heavy doors to the church as the hinges groaned and the framing sang along in an age worn chorus of slow decomposition. A soft sigh of exhaustion on his lips and the weight of his day sagging his shoulders. There was a sermon to write tomorrow, more meetings with members of his congregation, hours of confessional, and he had to pop over to the grocers at some point to pick up a bit of shopping. He let his mental to-do list slowly file itself away to the back of his thoughts for morning, his foot steps shuffling along the wooden floor as he passed pew after pew on his way to the staircase set back in the darkened corner. Colorful beams of moonlight and street lamps broke through painted windows, flickering across his creased features, lighting up the dark edges beneath his tired eyes and casting a glittering rainbow over the speckling of greys in his blond hair.

Sleep would be swift, heavy, and welcome, and though John wouldn't remember it in the morning, his dreams would be filled with images of Sherlock.