Reading of His Will- Chapter 2 Author's Notes

This chapter was hard to write. Early August 2016, I was in the writing zone and felt optimistic that I would finish and post the whole story at the end of the month. But then we received the news that my paternal grandmother passed away. It wasn’t that much of a shock as we deep down knew her time was coming but it still was hard. We flew to Nebraska and had the funeral the day before my birthday. I wasn’t that upset because sometimes life just messes with you and my poor dad just lost the last of his childhood family, so my priorities were better focused. After the funeral and everything that happens afterwards, we drove to Norfolk where my maternal grandparents, an uncle and aunt and loads of cousins live. So I got to spend my birthday with most of my relatives and it’s been ages since that happened. That was nice fun. We fly home and barely 24 hours after our arrival, we got the news that one of my maternal uncles passed away from lung cancer! I knew he had it, but I was really out of the loop as to how bad it was. So, I lost family before and after my birthday.

You can’t imagine how much that sucked.

I was kinda in a numb place with my grief. By the time I got back to my writing, I was at the beginning section where I had to express John’s grief and it was like my emotional walls crashed down. I couldn’t do it. I focused my writing on other stories, other real-life stuff happened, we got a super sweet puppy, and then March 2017, I came back to this story, wrapping it up by November.

I’m not 100% happy with how I wrote John’s grief, but all in all I strongly feel that that’s the best I can produce. It still feels too close to home and John is just the hardest “Sherlock” character for me to write thus far. Sorry, if it’s not enough, but sometimes a writer can’t give what they ain’t got.

So, I make it clear right away that I don’t and won’t “officially” ship Sherlock and Molly. Even though I have faved a ton of well-written fanfics that do ship them on Fanfiction.net. And fics that ship her and Lestrade as well. But that’s neither here nor there.

I use the term “officially” because while I have at least two Sherlock stories planned where he ends up with Molly, but they are not part of my main official headcanon series. One is a really drastic AU that will be awesome if I do say so myself and the other is sort of a background to the main plot and it’s a story I might not even finish.

And because I have so many Sherlock ideas in separate continuities from my main headcanon series, I can’t get away with using my Sherlock’s OC-love interest in all of them. I’d really love to, but there’s apparently a limit. Darn. :^[

I really like Molly and think she’s a sweetheart, but that’s part of the reason I don’t ship them. She’s too nice. I think that whoever Sherlock Holmes would have a romantic relationship with, regardless of gender, it should be someone who has the iron will needed to tell him when to back off when he’s about to cross a line or just to say “Don’t!”. It should be someone that can be on equal footing with Sherlock in terms of inner strength and not end up as a doormat. I like Molly, but I don’t believe she has the spine needed to make the relationship an equal one. The few fanfics I’ve read that tried to make her tough enough, it came off as too OOC.

Whoever Molly ends up with, it should be someone who appreciates her quiet sweetness and won’t force her to change that.

All of that yammering aside, if Moffat and Gatniss do have them end up a couple in some future episode, I won’t mind. I like the ship, but don’t love it enough to “endorse” it, if that makes sense.

It’s kind of a peeve of mine that Mike Stamford and Angelo haven’t really come back since “A Study in Pink”. I intend to remedy that in this and future stories.

Mike Stamford holds a very important place in Sherlock Holmes history as the man who brought together one of the most iconic, coolest partnerships in literature and beyond. The epitome of Bromance, if you will. And from the few minutes screentime we get, we meet a guy that’s really nice and seems to get along with Sherlock pretty well in his Pre-John days. That says a lot and yet we don’t get any more. :^(

And Angelo is this big teddy bear of a man who also proves that Sherlock does have friends before John showed him how to appreciate such things.

So it’s probably obvious, (or will be in future “episodes”), that Lestrade’s one of my favorite characters in the show. There’s so much to this guy that the show never reveals. How did he and Sherlock meet? What does he think about John and the doctor’s friendship to the “high-functioning sociopath”? The Baskerville episode showed him without his wedding ring so what happened there?! What happened to him after Sherlock “died”? I can’t believe he went thru completely unscathed, something must have happened! And etc, etc. The show barely scratches the surface with Greg, and it bugs the heck out of me! Come on Moffat and Gatiss, you got Rupert Graves playing one of the coolest Lestrade’s we’ve had in decades, and he’s been reduced to a walk on!

So like any good fanfic writer, I’m taking over. I plan to write a big backstory “episode” to cover a lot of these questions and such. I wish I can release it as “episode 2” of my AU season 3, but I seriously can’t cause of important reasons. Reasons I can’t reveal yet cause they’re of the spoiling sort. Darn it!

I don’t know a thing about the British divorce laws, this is one time where I chose to totally make it up instead of doing the research. Sorry, but I’d rather be wrong than actually go and read up on British “legalese”. My brain can’t handle the amount of smart needed to comprehend. And since this is something that’s not going to be a huge factor in the plot, I figured it’d be okay to fudge it. When it’s really important, then I’ll do the research.

I was going to write Lestrade ruminating about Sherlock’s “confession”, but then I thought “John probably wouldn’t have told anyone what Sherlock’s last words were. It would’ve hurt too much to even admit he said them.”

This was not intentional, I swear to high Heaven it wasn’t, but somehow I ended having Mycroft of all people paraphrase my top favorite Tom Servo line from “Mystery Science Theater 3000”! It just happened before I realized it! The subconscious geek part of my brain is kinda nuts, I think. And now, I would give a thousand dollars just to hear Mark Gatiss say that line in complete seriousness. It’s on my bucket list.

For the record, there won’t ever be any Lestrade/Mycroft ship in any of my stories, regardless if they’re in this continuity or a separate one. In my headcanon, Sherlock, John, and Lestrade are straight and Mycroft is asexual. Whether he’ll experience a romantic attraction towards someone of any gender/sexual identity in any future “episodes” is up in the air for now.

Because yes, I looked it up and asexual people can fall in love, they just don’t feel the sexual attraction side of love and, that’s fine, no one has the right to judge that.

Also, and no offense to those who do ship these guys, I just don’t see it. Have these two ever been in the same scene? How can you ship two characters that haven’t interacted at all?

I know it’s done in MLP: FiM all the time and I admit some of my pony ships are random, but the shipping rules, if they exist, differ from franchise to franchise.

All of that being said, and again this is not meant to offend, I will lightly poke fun at this ship in upcoming “episodes”. It’s just something I do in lots of my fanfics and not just Sherlock ones. I good-naturedly tease ships I don’t support. Just laughing with you guys and not at. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

However, I could very easily see Lestrade as being one of the closet things Mycroft will ever have to a friend. Even though Mycroft will never admit to such a thing as friendship.

Saltram Crescent is a real street. There is this AMAZING website called London.streetmapof.__ (I can’t put down the real URL but this should be enough to find on google). It has been the biggest Godsend for my research cause NOW I can look up what streets are in relation to what iconic locales in London and figure out locations for all my Sherlock stories although I’ll still have to use creative license at times. Especially since there isn’t a Northumberland street nor a Rathbone Street both of which feature in “Study in Pink”. This website is real easy to navigate, there’s a list of all street/road/avenue names in alphabetical order, and the map has zoom features.

I used it and certain real estate websites to figure out what neighborhood Lestrade lives in for my headcanon. Saltram Crescent is a ritzier place than I assume most Detective Inspectors can afford to live at, I have no idea what their pay grade is, but I have headcanon reasons.

Real life trivia: There is a Tesco’s on Baker Street, about a block or so from the Sherlock Holmes museum. So that’s where in the show, John would go to get milk and other groceries. And I don’t know why I find this hilarious, but there’s a Baskin-Robbins and a Dunkin’ Doughnuts not that far from the museum. Maybe the mental image of Sherlock and John needing to get some ice cream and/or doughnuts after a long day solving mysteries or something.

John Hector McFarlane was the client in distress in one of my top favorite Sherlock Holmes stories “The Norwood Builder”.

Nicholas Rowe played the titular “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1985)

I know I just said that I don’t like swearing in God’s name, but I’m writing that John is mostly calling out to God in prayer/desperation.

I hope the “ ‘quotes’ ” thing makes sense. It’s something I’m field-testing for when characters have to read something outloud or quoting someone else and I want to make it more clear it’s a quote. One of my Sherlock Holmes volume editions uses this technique too and I figured if it worked in print, then it can’t be too hard for online reads. Let me know if it works for you, the Reader, or doesn’t.

It may seem out of character for Sherlock to show that much emotion in his will, but bear in mind this is his way of giving a proper goodbye to everyone right before he sets off on his Moriarty empire crumbling.