A/N: This will likely be my one and only Sherlock fiction (no promises, though) as I honestly don't feel like I can add much to an already great show – my muse just doesn't want to seem to write in that direction. Except for this. Because we didn't get to see this…
Summary: John Watson, after The Fall.
Fingerprints and Footfalls
221B. It was a vast wasteland of memory. There was something in every nook, every cranny, ever speck of dust. It was a mausoleum of nearly two years' worth of time that sometimes felt like a lifetime.
A figure sat in the waning London light, a heavy hand ran over sleep deprived eyes. A breath seeped in quietly and was exhaled just as quietly, as if to not disturb the heaviness that had overtaken the room.
Dr. John H. Watson was a pragmatic man. And compared to most, he was a smart man.
It was about six months after… Well, after… that he'd realized he was back where he'd started those few short years ago, alone in a lonely, anonymous bedsit. The only difference was he was now alone in a lonely, not-so-anonymous flat. And so, he'd taken stock carefully and pragmatically.
The days he went into work, he thrived as only a person in his "situation" could. The occupation of his mind and person kept everything fogged to the point where he could operate happily in the simplest terms. Smile, greet, handshake, small talk, a bit of doctoring, platitudes, gratitudes, handshake, farewell. Rinse and repeat. A fugue state of flurry. A mind palace of his own in which his ordinary life trumped the extraordinary life cut short. That extraordinary part of him had been surgically cut out and left at Baker Street.
The days he did not go into the surgery he usually sat in his chair. Sometimes with a newspaper, pretending to comprehend the headlines, hoping at some point to actually care, and studiously avoiding the adverts for numerous reasons. Sometimes he would just sit, staring at the mind-numbing pattern on the wallpaper, his mind blissfully anaesthetized and with want of nothing but silence.
John would not touch the chair sitting across from him, barely acknowledging it most days. It was better to pretend it wasn't there than to see it empty – knowing it would remain empty. Truth be told, John would not touch a lot of things in the flat. And he adamantly refused to let Mrs. Hudson clean anything. He was doing an admirable job himself, the keeping clean bit. It helped that there was only one person making a mess… a reasonable, sane, everyday sort of mess.
His forehead met his palm as he leaned into it. It was a minute to minute struggle to hold in the bubble of emotion. But he would not let it burst. He refused to let it. Even alone.
Alone is what I have. Alone protects me…
John shook his head, and sat up straight, clearing his thoughts. His therapist would say that it was a different sort of denial he'd slipped into. Ever since that fateful day in which he'd uttered those words, the words that he refused to say aloud again, he'd accepted the truth of what had happened. John knew that his best friend would not be coming back. The miracle he had asked for in a moment of complete and defenseless despair simply did not happen. And he had closed the thought away, locked away with other unspeakable things.
But that did not stop him from counting the fingerprints around the room. They were there, he knew it. On the violin that had to be shut away in its case, because every time he looked at it he could hear the phantom strains pouring out of it. They were on the pipettes and beakers still tucked away in the kitchen, on the experiments dying away from negligence in the fridge. They were still in the lower level bedroom, on the dressing gowns and the designer label pressed suits. They were on the skull on the mantle, the rare edition of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, the Cluedo board, and the stray packet of cigarettes John had randomly found tucked in the cushions of the sofa. They were everywhere, even where John couldn't see.
Especially where John couldn't see.
He did not let himself think that this was the reason he had done his best to quarantine the flat from Mrs. Hudson's fastidious nature.
John's fingers clenched on his knees as his eyes roamed the room once more. Perhaps there was some credit to his therapist's theory after all.
Some days, he could picture the whirling dervish that had been his best friend at his most deductive ghosting along the well tracked paths through the flat. Or in the throes of his most boorish boredom, walking over furniture and fiddling with dangerous things other than his beloved Stradivarius.
Czardas, John. Not Stradivarius. Obvious. Nor am I as posh as you seem to think…
And some days he could hear the detective's voice in his head, correcting, scolding, bragging, ordering about…
John closed his eyes and willed that voice, that audio apparition of his mind, away. It hadn't been successful these past six months, but one day the will should be stronger than the want. At least, it was what his therapist always assured him.
221C had been rented out on a temporary basis to a desperate university student from abroad. Every once in a while, that extra presence threw John for a loop. He was used to Mrs. Hudson's presence, her movements and ambient sounds. When that front door opened and heavy footfalls sounded in the hallway, John's heart would nearly stop beating. He couldn't even admit it to himself that he was waiting for those very footfalls to land on that first stair towards B so he could tell himself maybe…
With that thought, John Watson stood. He rubbed his hands against his trousers legs and let out a breath before going to the door. His decision was the right one. Academically, he knew that. But there still was that part of him that rebelled. That whispered to him quietly. And sometimes that whisper was even louder than his own voice had been when he'd declared what everyone else in the world knew to be truth.
My best friend, Sherlock Holmes… is dead.
John closed his eyes, swallowed hard. The hand on the doorknob involuntarily clutched. With one more deep breath and a subtle nod to himself and the ghosts that still live there, John pulled the door to 221B closed behind him.
He'd begged for a miracle. He'd screamed for one in all of his nightmares. But those miracles never came. As he descended those familiar steps to the ground floor, Dr. John H. Watson said his goodbye to Baker Street.
You were the best man, the most 'human' human being that I have ever known, and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie…