Hey again! I've been off Fanfiction lately, but I've come back with this fic that came to me earlier in the week and I was dying to write. I hope I portrayed it alright, please let me know if I should continue with anything!
Sherlock Holmes was dead. To anyone walking past on the street, he was lying on the ground with his head bashed in.
To Sherlock Holmes, he was very much alive. Just a tad bit uncomfortable.
Everything had gone splendidly, and here he was. John believed him to be, in fact, dead. Very dead. He had fallen from a building in front of his very eyes.
Sherlock should be grateful that this had played off well. He should be proud of himself. And he was. How clever was he to have faked his own suicide in such a fantastic way?
But the words. Those words, ringing in his head. His name. Screamed from the mouth of his best friend.
He tried not to focus on that. Instead, he focused on the people gathered around him. The hands that rolled him over. He could see the sky now. He dared not blink. He squeezed the ball under his arm harder than necessary, probably, just to keep him from thinking. Keep him from picturing that face. How he betrayed him.
"Let me through, please."
John.
Everything in Sherlock's body was numb. He had to stay still. He had to stay dead. He stared at an invisible point in the sky and pressured himself not to listen.
"Let my through, I'm his friend."
The strain in his voice nearly did it. Nearly sent that man standing and embracing his best friend. John's voice was pained and he could feel it. Sherlock could feel it. His heart breaking.
And as if his voice wasn't enough, there he was. John. There was his face, his panicked face and his worried eyes. And still Sherlock stared. Stared at that invisible point.
John's hand was on his wrist. His warm, calloused hand, feeling for a pulse that wasn't there. He could feel his heart breaking into pieces. "I'm not dead! Please hear me! Please see me!"
But he couldn't. This was how he had planned it. This was how it was supposed to be.
John's hand fell from his wrist and his face faded from Sherlock's peripheral and they lifted him onto a cart and took him away. And when Sherlock Holmes next saw John Watson, John Watson didn't see him.
"Would you do that for me? Please, just – don't be dead. Would you do that for me?"
Yes. Yes, I'm not dead. Hear me. See me.
But John neither saw nor heard Sherlock, and he wouldn't for a long time. And in the steps Sherlock would take, away from that graveyard, away from London, away from John, he would leave his heart. He would leave each broken piece in each of his footsteps in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, John would find him. Until then, Sherlock Holmes was as cold and lifeless as the corpse that was buried under his headstone.
