The incessant tapping of rain on rooves accompanies the bubbling of a coffee pot and sizzle of frying bacon. A clock rests, ticking on a blue painted wall, half nine it reads, daring anyone to contest it. A man sits at the front of the small café, he wears a trench coat with the collar turned up despite the relative warmth of his position. A cup of tea sits ignored on the green-checked table in front of him. Tilting his newspaper slightly the man stares into the rain washed London street, the rain pulls streaks through the mirage of people, bricks and shops, blurring a lot of the detail. Sherlock's gaze is fixed just across the road on a small block of flats; his attention is trained on a black door engraved with 221b. A man pushes open the darkly painted door, causing Sherlock to abandon his newspaper entirely. This man walks with a determined military stride however he cowers slightly due to the rain. His face is drawn and down cast, he pushes through the crowd towards the intersection. Sherlock jumps to his feet and a clang of wood on tile bursts through the air as his table lurches forward. Sherlock waits until Dr. John Watson passes almost out of view before sweeping out of the tiny café to follow him. Sherlock pushes through the oncoming torrent of rain, the fleeting figure of Dr. Watson dances just ahead through the turbulent metropolis. As John reaches the curb Sherlock feels a surge of unease, his observations of the typical morning traffic indicate a foreboding future. John freezes as he hears it, a screech rents the air. A green corolla flies along the road. It screeches and slides on the wet tar. John's eyes meet the terrified eyes of the driver. A horrible crunch accompanies the collision. Sherlock breaks into a run. John's body folds in on its self as it falls. Sherlock falls to his knees beside the fragile, now broken body of his friend. His knees grind on the cold tar. The slam of a car door and the driver was mumbling his apology over and over again, denying any real fault of his own, and subsiding eventually into silence. Several seconds pass, the only sound is sirens and someone calling an ambulance.
"John?" Sherlock whispers. John's head turns slowly, his skin is pale and pasty and blood dribbles slowly down his forehead. John's eyes lock with Sherlock's, widening with shock. John's already glazed eyes clouded with confusion. Several charged seconds pass by slowly before the klaxon of approaching alarms abruptly halts and the muffled thud of ambulance doors breaks the two's locked gaze. Sherlock looks up into the stern green eyes of a Paramedic.
"Excuse me sir," the ambulance man begins shielding his eyes from the rain that Sherlock had all but forgotten. "Were you the driver?"
Sherlock meets the man's eyes slowly, unable to prevent the torrent of information suddenly apparent to him.
"Ah… no. No I'm a friend." His voice is void of all its usual self-assured arrogance when Sherlock reply's, pushing the observations that this man had two cats, one dog and at least one child (probably a daughter) from his mind. As Sherlock speaks John is manoeuvred carefully onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. John's bright blue eyes never leave Sherlock's face and they darken with increasing pain and confusion. Sherlock stepped into the white glowing interior of the ambulance as its engines kicked into life.
The buzzing of neon lights penetrates Sherlock's head. He hates hospitals, always has, always will. 'Shut up! Sherlock, shut up.' Sherlock winces at the recollection, John's voice had been fused with anger and, surprisingly, fear. "They'll all die if you don't.' Moriaty's voice, full of manic glee, chases John's around the inside of Sherlock's skull. 'All of them.' Moriaty's voice merges with John's getting louder and louder, driving all thoughts of where Sherlock really is from his mind. 'Sherlock!' The shout slices through all the other memories, Sherlock's face contorts. John's last word to him, screamed as Sherlock fell through the air. Sherlock shudders and is jerked suddenly from his torment. The present comes flooding back all at once, the buzzing, the patients, the knowledge; the previous patient had been a mother of at least two children, victim of a car crash. Sherlock slaps his hands over his ears trying to stop the buzzing and closes his eyes to halt the onslaught of observations. The blitz relents but the reprieve is short lived. Sherlock gives up and opens his eyes. John floats into view. John… John is moving!
John groans, lifting his bandaged hand to his head. Sherlock runs to his bed side.
"John…" he calls heralding his friend's arrival into consciousness.
John's dark blue eyes meander their way around the room resting finally on Sherlock.
"Sher…' John pauses and starts again. "Sherlock?"
Sherlock smiles, it had been so long since he had heard his own name in John's voice.
"Hello." He whispers.
John's eyes harden as he stares at his friend. Finally he speaks. "A year… Sherlock you made me believe you were dead." It would have been better if John had cried or shouted. Instead his voice was dead pan and drained of emotion.
Sherlock couldn't meet John's eyes, how could John understand? But of cause he would, it's just the sort of thing John would understand. Sherlock reaches absently for something for his hands to do, he ends up tugging the wrinkles out of the sheet on John's bed. "I had to John, Moriaty would have killed…"
John shakes his head, cutting Sherlock off. "No."
Sherlock blinks several times. "Excuse me?"
"No. Get out. I'm… I'm not dealing with this now. Get OUT!" his voice starts out low and clipped, growing until the last word is a shout that brings a nurse to the door.
"Is everything alright?" the nurse asks poking his head around the curtain.
Sherlock takes a step back shaking his head. Turning to the nurse he says "Everything is fine nurse… I'm," Sherlock glances back at John whose eyes burn with anger. "I'm just… leaving." As if in a daze Sherlock walks out of the room heading down cyan corridor after cyan corridor. Finally he burst out the swinging front doors into the frozen night air. Coldness, anger and repressed tears flushes Sherlock's pale face with red as he storms across a concrete bridge to stare out across London. His hands shacking Sherlock reaches into the pocket of his billowing trench coat. There is still a dark patch of blood on his sleeve but he ignores it. Fumbling for several seconds Sherlock pulls a small packet out of the furry depths of his pocket. From this he pulls a cigarette and unsteadily lights it. Several puffs later he feels no calmer so he throws the smouldering butt into the crowd bellow his feet.
A thud rings through the air as Sherlock closes 221b Baker Street's front door. He stares up at the familiar, much missed staircase to his room. He is still breathing heavily from the walk and repressed emotion. There is a scuffling from the room down the corridor, a short woman shuffles around the corner reading a newspaper, speaking as she walks.
"John? Is that you? The hospital called, said you were…" Mrs Hudson looks up and meets Sherlock's eyes. The newspaper flops slowly to the ground. "Sherlock… but…?" she stares at him for several seconds. Sherlock stands uncertain of how to react, let alone how to tell her. Without warning she runs at him slapping and punching every bit of him she can reach.
"A year Sherlock! John was devastated! How could you do this to him? …to me?" every word is punctuated with a punch until she stops abruptly a stalks into the kitchen, leaving Sherlock standing there completely taken aback. Eventually she sticks her head back around the door her eyes shining with tears.
"Tea?"
Sherlock smiles, he has missed Mrs Hudson's tea. "Thank you." He says and walks into the kitchen after her.
John stares around his hospital room. He dazedly holds a balloon from the trinket shop. Mrs Hudson had been by to see him. He scratches at an IV drip in his arm then runs that hand distractedly through his hair.
Aggravated voices float down the corridor and the blurred lights from other rooms flicker dark with movement. A nurse backs into the room, he's long black hair is slowly escaping from a hair net as he shouts at a figure eclipsed in the doorway.
"I really must insist you leave. This patient needs to rest and the last time you were here you caused considerable emotional unrest, his doctor has asked for you to stay away!"
The figure steps around the man whispering "I only want five minutes, I need to know he is being taken care of." He then strides into the white light of the room. Sherlock stands tall, easily dismissing the nurse with his manner and focus. He locks his bright, aqua marine eyes on John.
"So are you being looked after?" Sherlock intones mildly
John nearly answers before disjointed memories of the past year slide sharply back into his mind's eye. The memories bring with them a pulsating bundle of conflicts dominated by an icy surge of anger that steals his voice. Sherlock sighs.
"You're still angry at me so you won't talk to me," another sigh "quite right too." Sherlock surveys the room critically before his voice becoming matter of fact he continues "Well you quite clearly are being looked after so… I've got to buy more milk. Good bye John." His sweeping coat is nearly out of sight before John bursts with a question.
"Does Mrs Hudson know? …about, about you being alive I mean?"
Sherlock almost smiles, it was frosty and a little awkward but it was contact. "Yes," he says softly walking back into the bright room.
"How did you do it?" is John's next clipped question. It is like a broken dam, now he has started asking he had to know it all.
"Survive you mean?"
John only nodded.
"I told Molly she counted."