Lost In Translation

Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and BBC, I do not make any profit from this.

Warning: Mentions of death and drugs.

"Baby in our wildest moments,

We could be the greatest, we cold be the greatest,

Baby in our wildest moments,

We could be the worst of all..."

- Jessie Ware

Chapter I

Wildest Moments

It was like watching a house burn without the ability to make it stop. Pleading desperately on the sidelines for the chance to do something, yet in the midst of flames splitting higher into the sky, the raw terror keeps you frozen. That's exactly the helplessness John felt as his best friend stood at the ledge of the balcony, one step from falling over. He was immobilized in his spot, struck dumb by the thought of what was about to happen, and like the house, he watched him burn.

At first, John couldn't believe it was Sherlock, whose form lay lifelessly against the pavement, his black curls drenched with blood and body's warmth quickly draining with death. How could it be? He felt torn between the urge to look away and the inability not to. Despite to horror he felt, John had to find out if it was true, if it was possible that he had just witness the heartbreaking suicide of the only man capable of being more than human. This couldn't be the end for the world's only consulting detective, right?

He scrambled though the throng of people gathering at the scene, his head pounding with dizziness from colliding with the driveway after being pushed by a cyclist. His hand reached, despite the individuals trying to pull him away, and grabbed to check Sherlock's pulse, but there was none. Gone, ripped from the world.

John watched, feeling deader than the corpse before him, as the medical team took Sherlock into Bart's emergency. John had felt raging emotions as he watched Sherlock standing on the precipice of death, as he fell, yet now as he sat on the sidewalk, distantly hearing questions being thrown his way, he felt nothing. Not a single tear, curse, or sigh of despair escaped him. He was completely numb.

That exact feeling of emotionlessness didn't leave for weeks until the media, those heartless bastards who still dared to smear Sherlock's name, had begun to look passed the whole ordeal as if it were nothing more than another unfortunate case. John thought going to his therapist might help, but it only proved to him how much it wasn't working in the first place. Why would he tell his therapist what he wished Sherlock to hear? It was absurd, honestly.

Yet he took her advice at his funeral. After Mrs. Hudson had gone away, leaving bittersweet memories in her wake, he exploded. Emotions, thoughts, and raw hurt, he'd been holding back tumbled out. His hands clenched at his sides, serving as the distraction that withheld the tears he didn't feel deserved to be shed. Truthfully, John didn't think he earned the solace of crying at all. Deep down, unsaid yet laced within his tone, was the guilt that had begun to haunt him. The guilt of not moving, of letting Sherlock jump without attempting to make him stop, for watching like another passerby.

Oh, how he wished for a miracle, at least one last miracle to rid the pain clutching his heart. John no longer felt alive, he couldn't be. What was he other than an empty shell going through the motions? Would it ever end?

It never did. So for three years, John was numb to everything, even to himself. He'd tried getting a girlfriend, Mary, to direct his attention and life into a positive path, but it oddly felt wrong. As though he was betraying Sherlock's friendship, only adding to the guilt that had added up.

Now, it wasn't that John didn't love Mary. He really did, he appreciated all that she'd done for him during his 'recovery' stage, but there was always something missing. Even the sex wasn't as enjoyable as it had been before just that, sex, devoid of passion. But he still tried to make things work, and gradually he had begun to get better, planning to eventually propose to Mary Morstan. He wanted it to work, he desperately did.

Not that he fully got to enjoy Mary's company. As fate would have it, and fate could be very cruel, even she was ripped away from him. Gone, just like only other important person in his life. He had lost two people he cared for in the expanse of just a couple of years. It's like he had re-winded.

He went through the whole process again, the mourning, his therapist, ending with an extra load of guilt. It always ended with guilt, but this time there was something else. John felt true loneliness, in every sense of the word, for the first time since Sherlock's absence. It was different from the nagging feeling he'd felt during his youth when his older sister preferred to go out drinking with her friends rather than watch a movie with him. No, this was even worse than when he returned home from war. He had returned to where it all began, before he met Sherlock, just an injured army doctor, a lonely man. This time, it came with the inclusion of a broken heart.

Perhaps this was what they called depression…

John sighed as he opened the door to 221B Baker Street. He hated passing by the flat but it was something he had to do, no choice, someone had to rummage through the forgotten things that had been left within the apartment. Throughout the three years of Sherlock's absence, John had managed to avoid it, coming by occasionally in order to please Mrs. Hudson. But now Mary's home, no, his home, was a place he rather avoid as well. He was stuck, lost in translation.

It was unbearable, as John climbed the steps and peered into the familiar, and seemingly untouched (besides the litter of beers around the place for the times John did come over), living room. The air felt dry, cold and weary as if the flat itself was in mourning of abandonment. Dropping his keys at the coffee table, he shrugged off his jacket and placed it on the empty coat hanger. John padded his way over the fireplace, placing the wood strategically to start a fire to give the room the warmth it needed. When the hearth began to heat up, he stood to glance around the room. With his room emptied, and the kitchen rid of experiments, it was time for the living room. Unfortunately…It was either this or…He couldn't think of doing his room. Never.

Walking to the kitchen, he pulled a beer from the fridge before trotting over towards Sherlock's desk. Actually, a pack of beers is a more accurate account as he placed the pack of drinks on the table, popping one open and letting the burning liquid slide down his throat with a rude awaking of what he was about to do.

He hated cleaning out the flat, it's why he couldn't ever do it sober. Too many memories would coil around his heart, tightening with every recollection and thought. The times he came over to Baker Street, John couldn't find it within himself to blame Harry for her excessive drinking. Lord forbid, he began to understand it. He began to go down that same desolate path.

He must have been working for hours, shuffling old newspapers to one side and files in another, before he reached his last beer. The desk was nearly completely empty and he felt regret at doing so. Taking a break he lounged on the sofa, trying to grasp the last remnants of sobriety as he downed his last beer, and with it his pride.

He stared at the leathered box he'd found in one of the many desk drawers earlier, there was no need to open it, John knew what he'd find, which was why he'd quickly placed it on the tabletop without a second thought. However, now it seemed enticing, wrongly so. John leaned forward to pull the box towards him, opening it without reluctance to be met with the exact sight he expected.

Inside, delicately placed, were the syringes of cocaine Sherlock would on occasion indulge in when he got into one of his moods. There were bags of white powders, an array of drugs ready for Sherlock's choosing, tourniquets, a metal spoon, matches, everything. Sherlock's secret stash. Where he got it, John didn't know. As far as he could remember, Sherlock had paid off all the dealers in an attempt to stay clean. Obviously Sherlock had been hiding many more things from John than he was aware of.

The thought grieved him.

John started at the needles within the leather case…He could…He could do it, just like the detective did on days he needed to stimulate the mind. Except John would use it to forget…He could…No he wouldn't. He wasn't an alcoholic and he surly wouldn't be a druggie.

But it was tempting...The promise of forgetting, even if it lasted only hours. Like the forbidden fruit offered so shamelessly to him.

There was no second thought before John rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, fastening the tourniquet tightly so that his veins could be seen straining against his fair skin. He stole one of the needles with trembling fingers and for a moment he wondered if he'd even be able to do it with the dizziness that swam his vision. But alas, he could. The prick of the needle was faint in his mind, he didn't even notice when his fingers had pushed the drug into his vein but…oh, God…It felt good, like molten mercury sliding effortlessly into his system. His world spun, head tilted back with a twisted sense of ecstasy, syringe forgotten on the floor.

He let out a shuddering, pleasured, sigh as his body was taken on a roller coaster ride of turns and sways, lights and shadows. A slight sheen of sweat encased him in heat; John sluggishly tugged at his shirt wishing he could just rip it off to feel to cool air.

John groaned as the lights overhead turned off, he'd probably forgotten to pay the electricity company and would have to pay late fees, again. His fingers twitched to grab another needle, one more dose, just to keep the feeling of ecstasy within him. It wasn't until he reached out that he noticed the shadowed figure at the foot of the kitchen, body stiff and loaming within the near dark room, the only light being from the fire whose kindling flames were nearly gone.

The figure stood there for many minutes, unmoving that John disregarded it as the drugs playing tricks in his current disadvantage. When the doctor's attention diverted to the syringes the shadow began cautiously nearing his splayed form on the couch, as if afraid any sudden movement would set John off on a run.

"Who are you?" John muttered as he looked up again, his words coming out tense and slurred as his eyes strained to focus on any details. The shadow drew closer still, steps almost inaudible, until he was across the table from John, lowering to close the box.

"Who are you?" John repeated harshly, much firmer than he imagined he'd be able to in his trance like state.

"That is irrelevant," the shadow's voice sounded feral, like a wild animal on the prowl. The figure, obviously man from stature, sauntered around the table with an outstretched, and very much gloved, hand. John stared at the hand, not fully understanding the situation but not really caring to do so with his mind jumbled up by the cocaine.

John tried to swat the hand midair away from him but it gripped John's forearm tightly, almost painfully enough to sober up the drunken and drugged doctor. Startled, said doctor fought against the hold, his body unable to put up a good fight against the other and much stronger man.

"Come" the man whispered. John was ready to refuse but there was something about the tone, a sorrow so distressing that John stilled in his struggling.

"You my faaaairy godmother?" John laughed drunkenly as he was lead across the room and down the hall. He wasn't given a reply.

"Wheeeere are you taking me? You aren't my master," The grip that pulled him tightened painfully, dragging him faster to their destination. John's free hand reached out to the walls for support as he stumbled about, he kept whining that they were moving away from him and loudly so, his voice just below a holler.

"Bed, now be quiet you'll wake up the neighbors with your complaining." Again, there was that fuming baritone voice, so destructive that it shut John up, his sluggish steps lightening to make as little noise as possible. When the man opened the door, John stopped, pulling away from the figure. It was Sherlock's room, the one room in the whole flat that he had successfully avoided as much was considered acceptable for three years.

Sensing John's hesitancy, the figure looked back, "Come," he repeated. John wasn't given a chance to respond as he was tugged under the threshold and tossed onto the bed. The man helped rearrange his body so his head was rested against the pillows and not the foot of the bed.

"Are you my guardian angel then?" John asked, more to himself than his company. The man gave a deep chuckle, his face burying further into the shadow of his coat. He tucked the sheet up to John's chin, hand faltering as it pulled away. The gloved fingers wavered for a moment before stroking John's cheek sympathetically, his index finger and thumb tilting John's chin up to face the darkness.

The following words were whispered so softly, voice light yet holding the darkest depths of the night that John knew his mind was incapable of creating such sounds.

"Just because I am on the side of the angels, don't think for one second I am one…" The shadow paused at the door, looking down at the doctor whose eyes were drooping to sleep deprived narrow slits.

"Goodnight, John."

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed it! I will hopefully have the next chapter posted soon. Please comment with some feedback, it'll motivate me to work faster! ^.~