For days John drifts in and out of consciousness, but he can't tell the difference between the chemically induced dreams and reality. Sometimes there are images from the pool, sometimes Afghanistan, other times there is Sherlock. Sherlock sitting by his hospital bed or pacing across the room, or even once having a heated argument with Mycroft barely above a whisper.
When he is finally coherent, though still groggy and a little unable to focus on things in the room, the person waiting for him is Mycroft.
"Wrong Holmes." He chokes out, obvious that he hasn't been using his vocal cords for some days.
Suddenly, there is a straw at his mouth. He sips the cool water, knowing that if he gulps it down he'll make himself sick.
"Sherlock?" He asks looking up at Mycroft.
"You need to focus on getting better, John." Mycroft responds with an attempt at a kind smile.
That is John's first clue that something is wrong. The second is that Mycroft rarely calls him 'John'.
"Don't bullshit me. Where's Sherlock?" The heart monitor speeds up sounding almost as anxious as he feels.
"I'm afraid my bother didn't make it from the pool..." He continues to talk but John isn't listening. The white noise in his head is louder than it has ever been. Even louder than when he got shot or following any of his nightmares.
He closes his eyes and lets the morphine take him again.
'Maybe this is another dream,' he thinks to himself hopefully.
When John wakes again the room is blessedly empty. There are flowers on the table next to him but he doesn't care enough to read the card. His mind recalling the conversion with Mycroft, going over it in his head, looking for tells that he was lying. But John can't find any.
'Sherlock's gone.' It sounds wrong in his head but his heart breaks all the same. That glorious man who gave him his life back, the one who seemed to know him almost better than he knew himself. The man that he loved... Gone. And there is nothing that John can do. A doctor and a soldier and he couldn't even save his one true friend.
John curled onto his side, the best he could still attached to the machines, and cried until he fell asleep.
This time the doctor wakes him. John is still in a daze. He remembers to answer the questions and tries to look relieved when they tell him he gets to go home but part of him doesn't really want to go back to Baker Street.
He signs the appropriate forms, takes the bottle of pills from the hospital's chemist and gets a cab.
A cab.
He can't even take a cab without thinking of Sherlock. Thinking of that first night on their way to Lauriston Gardens. Knowing he should be angry at how Sherlock had just aired his dirty laundry but all he could think was how brilliant that mind worked. And how he was falling for the man since they met at Bart's, but this moment was when he acutely felt affection.
John tries to chase away both the thoughts of Sherlock as well as the knot that is forming in his chest. It is almost a relief when the cab comes to a stop.
Almost.
Then he remembers where he is. Standing outside of 221B, John sighs and stares up at the flat. He secretly hopes to hear the sound of the violin from the window, but knows he will not. He considers going for a walk just to put off the inevitable or find another place to stay. But he doesn't want to do that. Doesn't want to leave the only place he has considered home since he was a child.
He unlocks the door silently and practically sneaks up the stairs. He can't deal with anyone today, especially Ms. Hudson who will mother him. John can't face that right now, the sympathy and the pity.
Climbing the stairs, he bypasses the sitting room and heads straight to his bedroom. He removes his jumper and trousers, and wonders if he can avoid the rest of the flat forever. But he knows that the need for tea will win out in the end.
'Tea.' He thinks, 'that is what I need.'
Now in boxers and an old army tee shirt he pads down to the kitchen. The sight of the chemistry set and the sundry evidences of the Moriarty case stop him in his tracks.
'Fuck tea.' He walks to the cabinet, pulling down a glass and the bottle of whiskey, then takes them both to where his laptop is still on the desk where he left it on that fateful evening.
John can't decide whether he should put something in his blog or just delete the thing all together. He opens the lid and finds that the browser is on the home screen for his email. Logging in he finds more messages than he wants to deal with bit one catches his eye. Unable to stop himself, he clicks on it.
ifrom: .uk
to: john_
date: May 4, 2011
subject: My dear John
I'm writing this just in case I don't make it back from the pool tonight. I feel I owe you some explanation.
First, I'm pleased that after tonight the world will be rid of Moriarty. I do enjoy the game, John, I always have. I appreciate his abilities much like someone would appreciate a fine expensive wine. This is one of those delicacies that you indulge in once or twice in a lifetime. I fear the cost though, my dear John, the pain that you will feel if this does not end well. Which I admit, is highly possible.
Second, I knew I was meeting him when I let you leave this evening. I need you to be safely away from this final meeting. No man could have hoped for a better friend or better partner than you, John Hamish Watson.
As for my possessions, they are yours now. By the time you read this Mycroft will have all the pertinent information.
I hope you will forgive me and believe me to be, my dearest friend, very sincerely yours,
SH /i
John reads the email a second and then a third time, hits print and refills his glass.
There's a knock on the door below, but he ignores it. John can think of only one person he wants to come through it but knows that isn't going to happen. Eventually the knocking stops and John walks to the window, glass in hand, in just enough time to see Lestrade get back into his squad car and drive away.
He sits on the couch, refills his glass and reads the email again.
Days or weeks could have passed, John doesn't know. He has stopped returning anyone's calls and barely gets dressed except to go to Tesco or to the clinic. He wouldn't have even gone back there if Sarah had not caught him as he was walking back to the flat.
But he goes diligently seven days a week now, always on time, always freshly showered, always sober. Pretending to be, not alright, but better. Handling his patients as he always did, though now will a little less patience than he had before. Anyone who saw him at work would think he was just depressed. They wouldn't think about how his life had changed outside of these white stucco walls.
At first, John tries to hide all the empty bottles. He knows that Ms. Hudson sometimes comes up to check on things during the day while he is away. Leaving the occasional casserole on the counter. Tsk-ing at the fact that he still has not moved or put away any of Sherlock's things.
Every evening on the way back to Baker Street he stops and picks up a bottle or three of something nice. Tonight, it is Sherlock's preferred wine.
His mood during the first bottle of the evening is what he considered 'normal' at this point. It relaxes him enough to shake off the day at the clinic.
The second gets him thinking as he pulls out the now worn and creased email.
i I feel I owe you some explanation./i
'And I owe you some too.' He thinks to himself. 'But I will never get to make them. You will never know how I feel... felt about you, Sherlock. Though I guess you knew it the night at Angelo's. I am sure you could tell it then. Married to your work and all.'
i I knew I was meeting him when I let you leave this evening./i
'And like some idiot, you went alone.'
i I need you to be safely away from this final meeting./i
'And I walked straight into his trap. I couldn't even keep you safe and you didn't run. Why didn't you run, Sherlock?"
The tears begin to flow again but they are quickly soothed by anger. Because John is angry.
Angry with himself that he was a distraction to Sherlock at the pool. Angry that he could not take out Moriarty before the detective got there. He knew he should have tried harder. Angry that Sherlock had been so stupid to set up the meeting in the first place. But most of all, he is angry for being abandoned.
Rationally, John knows that people don't choose to die. However, that is what it feels like sometimes. And now John is stuck in this flat, in this city, surrounded by memories, sometimes still hearing Sherlock's violin or steps on the stairs, even though he knows they aren't there. He has left him to deal with all of this, and deal with it alone. To watch as the world becomes a darker place because Sherlock was not in it. Forcing him to fill his hours with placating hypochondriacs rather than chasing Sherlock chasing criminals. To try and predict fortune cookies by himself. For making him pick up this fucking bottle in the first place.
Before he realizes what he is doing, John is up and across the room sweeping the chemistry set onto the floor. The few flasks that don't shatter on contact he picks up and throws at the fridge, the cabinet, the door.
The third bottle of wine goes through one of the recently replaced windows. And John crumples onto the tile.
He knows he should care that he is sitting in glass. He also knows, he should answer the door that Ms Hudson is pounding on. But all he can do is sit there and cry.
"What have I done?" asking the empty room between sobs.
Ms. Hudson's stopped banging, 'probably to get the spare key,' John thinks to himself before he hears a different tread up the stairs.
Suddenly, John is being put in the shower, clothes still on.
"Damn it, John. What are you doing?" Lestrade asks him, turning on the cold water full blast.
He could attempt to fight him. And even being as drunk as he is, with the military training behind him, John knows he would win easily. But he doesn't have it in him.
Instead he lets Greg man-handle him into dry clothes and onto the couch. Ms. Hudson is sweeping up the glass.
John thinks he should tell her that he will clean it up but doesn't know if he voices that thought or not. He sits there feeling as he did when Mycroft initially gave him the news, or when he pried the news out of Mycroft.
He looks down at his hand and sees he is holding a glass of water.
"Who gave me water?" he asks, not expecting an answer.
Lestrade sits down on the coffee table in front of him and starts to check him for shards of glass. John knocks his hands away.
"I'm fine."
"Obviously, you're not fine. You just destroyed the kitchen and the window. Not adding to it that you would have been brought up on charges if that bottle had hit anyone. Luckily, I was still at the station when the call came in and the desk operator recognized the address."
"It won't happen again." John promises badly and they both know the lie when they hear it.
"Come on, let's get you to bed." He says, helping John to stand and leading him up to the bedroom. John catches Ms. Hudson's eye as he leaves, she smiles at him timidly.
John waits until the DI is gone and then creeps down the stairs, slipping into Sherlock's room without her noticing.
He just needs to be near Sherlock tonight. To apologize for what he has done. But there is no Sherlock. There's his room, the way that John always saw it when he would occasionally get a peek. A chest of drawers on one wall with bookshelves on the others. Case boxes here and there. The double bed unmade, exactly how Sherlock had left it.
John collapses onto the bed and breathes in the smell of chemicals, shampoo and Sherlock. All of these things are recognizable as 'Home' to John. For the first time since he has returned from hospital, he dreams, not of Sherlock dying. But of him shooting the walls, smiling at the thrill of a new case and giggling with John as if they were school children. Something that is infinitely more cruel in John's mind, dreaming of him living.
He hates himself when he is working. Mostly because it is the only time he is sober. It gives him time to look at what he has become and what he is doing. He has become his sister. No, scratch that, he has become his father. Harry Jonathan Watson.
Harriet was at least a fun drunk before she got moody and then tired. John, as he was learning, went straight from relaxed to violent. In medical school and even in the army that had not been his response. But it is now and he knows it should scare him.
His therapist would probably say that his self destructive pattern was self inflicted punishment for feeling he failed Sherlock. And she would be right. John both knows and accepts this.
But he also knows something else too. That he rips his mind to shreds when he is clear-headed enough to think. Those are the nights that he finds himself going for a walk instead of the bottle. Sometimes he just needs to beat himself up some, mentally.
'Probably a good thing I don't have kids.' he thinks to himself as he walks out the clinic doors. He takes a detour, one he takes at least once a week, sometimes more when he needs it, and passes into the cemetery. His feet find the way without him having to think about it.
Soon he is standing in front of a simple grey stone. There were no fancy embellishments, only a single quote, that John had requested the one time he talked to Mycroft at the hospital.
iSHERLOCK HOLMES
19 July 1976 - 4 May 2011
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be truth."/i
There was one wilted branch of Forget-me-nots at the base of the stone. John had been searching for something else when he had come across them at the florists. He knows Sherlock would probably not have cared for flowers, but it made him feel better and isn't that what cemeteries are all about? Making the living feel better.
For when the time came, John had bought the spot next to Sherlock. After all, it was a better use for the money Sherlock had left him than all the alcohol he was killing himself with. He had even picked out the matching stone.
He stretches out on the ground as if laying by Sherlock's side and speaks to him as he always did.
"My beautiful idiot, I miss you. I know you aren't here and if you were you would get tired of me repeating it, you always did hate that. But it is true. It's always true. There is not a minute that goes by that I don't think about you. About the pool and what I could have done differently to keep you safe.
"It's been a year now. I know you knew the risks in going there that night. But the world needs you more than it needs me and I would have done anything to keep you in it. I would change places with you in a heartbeat, even now Sherlock.
"You wouldn't have retreated into a bottle. You would have kept on being brilliant. Making the world a better place, because you did. Just for being in it and being you.
"What I wouldn't do for just two minutes. Two minutes to tell you all the things I couldn't How I have loved you from that first week. That I had been trying to ignore it because your friendship was better than nothing. How I didn't know what I would do if you found out and told me to leave. Bugger, it's the reason I went on the pull so much. To try to keep my feelings for you at bay."
He stands and brushes himself off. The sun has gone down now, hours later then when he first walked through the gates. He leans over and kisses the top of the stone, a poor substitute for the real thing but it is all he's got.
"I love you, Sherlock." He whispers, turns and walks towards Baker Street. If he doesn't surface soon, Ms Hudson will have Lestrade out looking for him and he doesn't want to deal with either of them tonight.
John stumbles out of Sherlock's room. He sleeps there nearly every night but it is still inherently Sherlock's.
He throws the empty gin bottle in the bin. He hates gin and hasn't had it since his army days, but last night it seemed like a good idea. It wasn't, he realizes as he searches the drawer for the Paracetamol. It takes him a moment to notice he isn't alone in the flat.
In the sitting room, in Sherlock's chair, is Mycroft.
"No one sits there." John says sternly, trying to cover his mental chastisement about being snuck up on and allowing their flat to be invaded.
Mycroft ignores the comment.
"Doctor Watson, this has to stop."
"It really doesn't." John replies finally finding the bottle. Cursing to himself because it is empty.
"What would Sherlock say?"
"That doesn't really matter, does it Mycroft? He's not here to say it." John throws the empty bottle in the sink and turns to the stairs. "I have to go to work, get out."
"No, you don't. I took the liberty of finding you a replacement for a few days. Doctor Sawyer understood. Apparently, she has been trying to get you to take some time off for a while now. Sit down, John. We need to talk."
"Talk? Now, after all this time? It's been two and a half years, Mycroft. I haven't seen you since the day before I left hospital. If you wanted something you should have come before now." He says barely keeping his anger in check.
"That was my mistake. I did not realize how bad this had gotten. But that doesn't change the fact that you're honoring my brother's memory by slowly killing yourself and I will not have it."
With that, Mycroft rose and walked out the door, while John went and found a nice bottle of scotch that he was saving for a special occasion. Well, this would do.
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