I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and the BBC.
If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Special thanks to Feej and LeDragonQuiMangeDuPoisson for having read this over for me.
It's the loudest silence John has ever felt.
They were walking there, just this morning. If he squints, he thinks he can almost make out the telltale scuffs in the dust. He can't, of course. There isn't any trace, not really. But John has to believe that there is.
When they walked this path earlier, the sun was warm, even though it hadn't had the chance to fully rise above the trees. He can remember how it felt on his skin, his shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows, the feel of his friend's hand on his arm. He can remember the slow, gradual heat of the morning and the sudden, startling heat of the touch.
The sun is up now, past its zenith and just beginning to fade into the gold of evening. It should be much warmer with the leftover heat of the day. It isn't, though. John is walking along the path, trying to see the footprints that aren't there, and he is shivering. The sun is shining, but the light is made of ice.
There are no traces on the rocks, either. John never expected there to be. Even strong fingers are no match for stone. He lays a palm against the rough surface and tries to feel a heartbeat from hundreds of feet below. There is nothing, nothing but the steady thrum of the water against the mountainside, and John can feel the spray on his face.
No scuffs on the path. No marks on the rocks. No heartbeat from the water. No sign at all that anything has happened.
It doesn't quite make sense.
John always expected Sherlock to make a dramatic exit.
He doesn't understand why there are no echoes when he screams.
"Sherlock!"
"Sherlock!"
"Sherlock, if this is some sort of experiment, it's not very fucking funny!"
"Sherlock, what the bloody hell are you playing at?"
"Sherlock…"
The missing echoes are not the only thing John doesn't understand.
It's been hours, or maybe minutes. John remembers his army days as he belly-crawls to the very edge of the path and stares into the abyss, breathing in the mist.
The water should be churning, he thinks, but it isn't. Not up here. The quicksilver glide of water over the mountainside belies the thundering in his head; the swirl of darkness reminds him of the coat it was too warm to wear this morning.
The coat. Sherlock would never let any harm come to the coat. He should have been wearing it. Why wasn't he wearing it?
When is he coming back for the coat?
He wouldn't leave the coat behind.
John feels the cliff's edge digging into his collarbone. He leans into the pain, just to remind himself.
He is wrapped in twilight, and Sherlock isn't there.
He must be back at the hotel by now, John thinks, probably irritated because John is late. That's where he has the papers he's been attached to ever since they arrived. That's where he has the skull. John told him not to bring the skull.
John fills in for the skull, sometimes, when Sherlock feels like it.
Maybe the skull would have done a better job
of what?
keeping him safe.
Realization hits John, then, no, too gentle a word, not hits, but smashes him, tossing him aside in its freight-train path, and he can't breathe or move or see and it's a lie, he knows it's a lie, because if it were ever true, it would happen with coats and clues and scorn and drama and John would be there, god damn it, because Sherlock would not do this without him.
And then it sinks in and sinks in and sinks in; John feels like he might drown in the realization, and wants to.
Is this what Sherlock felt, he wonders?
Rationally, Sherlock never had time to drown.
Still, this is Sherlock.
It's possible that there are stars. John isn't looking.
A lie, he insists for the thousandth time, an act, a farce, a travesty. Tragedy. Tragicomedy. Because it's funny how many mistakes they've made, funny how easy it is to see through it, funny how they didn't understand how wrong they've gotten it all.
This isn't how a hero dies.
Not a hero, says the voice in his head.
"Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them."
Fuck you, he says to the voice in his head, the voice that sounds like Sherlock.
Fuck you.
He thinks he hears footsteps in the middle of the night and jerks upright, heart pounding in his chest and throat and temples.
"Sherlock?" he calls into the pitch blackness.
I wasn't asleep, Sherlock, only waiting. Are you coming back now?
Silence.
He should go back, back to the warm light of the hotel, the friendly openness of the little town. Maybe that little restaurant on the Bahnhofstraße is still open. Maybe they serve tea.
Maybe he'll get back to the room, drag Sherlock out of bed and curse roundly until he runs out of breath, and when he does, his anger will run out of steam as well and they will sink to the floor, giggling like children, because that's how things end, the ridiculous, terrifying things they do. Every time Sherlock has flown headfirst into danger, John caught in his wake like a cork on Sherlock's dark ocean, they have ended with running and collapsing and laughter. Every time. And after that, he will haul Sherlock along to the little restaurant with him, even though Sherlock won't eat.
Unless Sherlock isn't there.
He can't go back. He can't leave here.
What if Sherlock comes back?
Morning, only John barely notices because he has returned to lying on his stomach, staring down into the water. That it was black at first, with only the barest hint of foam in the gloom, and then grey, and now suddenly a silken sheet of green and sun-flecked silver, doesn't seem to matter.
The roar of the falls has been in John's head for a long time. It's not much more than a drone now, his whole mind muted against it. His head is buzzing.
No, not his head.
His phone.
He arches upright, eyes wide, hands scrambling at every pocket and in places where there are none, hunting, tearing it out of the back pocket where he eventually finds it and fumbling with half the buttons to close his thumb over the right one.
"Sherlock, where the hell – "
"John."
Mycroft.
John stares at the phone in his hand, only distantly aware that he has taken it away from his ear and that Mycroft is still trying to be heard on the other end of the line.
Finally, he realizes.
"Mycroft, where – "
"John, where are you?"
He hardly knows. "Mountains. The waterfall, I'm at the waterfall. Sherlock – "
"Christ," he hears Mycroft say to someone else, "he was with Sherlock."
Of course he was with Sherlock. Where else would he go? This brilliant man, who saved John's life and then became it.
Where else would he ever go?
Mycroft is talking again.
"John. John."
He says something, maybe, or perhaps it's just a strangled noise he can't quite hear over the white roar, not the falls, but in his head.
"Stay where you are. I'm sending someone to get you."
John looks at the phone, the one Mycroft has just used to call him. This is the phone Sherlock uses to summon him at any hour of the day or night, whether John is at the clinic or the coffee shop or the kitchen. It's the phone Sherlock sometimes borrows without permission so that he can text a serial killer or, more often, instead of borrowing it, he just makes John text the serial killer. Because in their lives, his and Sherlock's, texting a serial killer is something that seems to happen every few days.
He turns the phone over in his hand. It still has all of his most recent texts in it.
Buy milk. SH
And trichloroacetic acid. SH
I don't suppose the clinic has any spare fingers? SH
And beans. SH
Or the last ones.
Where is your passport? I need to pack it. SH
Because we're going to Switzerland. Never mind the milk. SH
John sits back, unable to look away from the phone, and he is suddenly hit by the enormity of having known all along.
When it buzzes in his hand again, he is startled into shock.
He doesn't check it. Instead, he throws it as far as he can, watches the arc of the phone against the sun, glittering for a moment above the water and then falling.
Silence again. No more buzz from the phone. No more of Mycroft's concerned voice (if you care so much, where were you twenty-four hours ago?). No more of the constant undertone of John's life, "no, of course not, not with the cyanide, that's far too obvious, and then there are the missing buttons…"
It's all wrong.
Sherlock was supposed to go out in a blaze of glory, or never.
Not fade away into silence.
It's the loudest silence John has ever felt.