Fic Rec:

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Title: The Pillar upon Which England Rests
Author: DiscordantWords
Pairing: Sherlock/John, Gen
Length: 27038
Rating: Mature
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: They have all saved him, at one time or another, in different ways, these people Sherlock Holmes has come to call friends. But she was the first.

Reccer's comments: How to begin? She can still see him, so painfully young, pale in the Florida sun, with a beet red stripe of sunburn across the bridge of his nose. Frank had favored Hawaiian print shirts, had just about insisted on them for anyone who worked for him in any capacity, and hadn't Sherlock just looked thunderous in those garish prints? She wishes, not for the first time, that she had a photograph. But that's the thing about living. You don't always know which moments are the significant ones until they're long gone.

snarryfool's recent rec of a Mrs. Hudson-centric reminded me of this heart-wrenching story. The Fall has just happened, and in a bid to comfort a distraught John Watson (and herself), Mrs. Hudson tells the story of how she met Sherlock Holmes. The story moves flawlessly between the past and the present as Mrs. Hudson spins the tale of a young and terribly lonely Sherlock and how they ended up saving each other. Hello, new headcanon! This is an intense, emotional read, bittersweet and melancholy, with one of the best characterizations of Mrs. Hudson I've read.

This is tagged Sherlock/John, but there is no overt romance here, just Mrs. Hudson's observations of the two and their mutual pining. I left it tagged as such, to follow the author.