How To Be Dead: Post Reichenbach
Everyone's had a go at a post-Reichenbach fic, haven't they? Here's mine, with added help from 'How to be Dead' by Snow Patrol, which I think fits perfectly. (Apologies for guessing BBC Sherlock's birth year!)
Please don't go crazy, if I tell you the truth,
No you don't know what happened, and you never, will,
If you don't listen to me while I talk to the wall,
This blanket is freezing, it's been out in the hall,
Where you've had me for hours, 'til I'm sure what I want
But darling I want the same thing, that I wanted before,
So sweetheart tell me what's up, I won't stop, no way.
It hadn't been at like Sherlock had imagined; in fact, he hadn't considered the moment where he would reveal himself in all his living, breathing glory to John until he'd actually done it. He supposes, now, that he would have expected John and his short fuse to react like this but that was the problem with John Watson. Constantly unpredictable. Little things, like maintaining contact with Lestrade, coffees with Molly, visiting his grave – an empty box beneath lies set in marble.
Here lies Sherlock Holmes, 1977 – 2012. Not true. But they're set in stone, and when someone mourns over a grave how do you tell them it was all a story? Sherlock didn't know.
A much-loved brother, son and friend. More lies, and these are the ones that permeate Sherlock's emotional walls – because if he was any of those things, it was friend, and now he isn't sure John will ever speak to him again. If Sherlock could have wished for a best case scenario, John would have boiled the kettle, he'd have made an apology that would be sincere but brief, and life would have slotted back into chaotic place at 221B. Thinking back, now, Sherlock berates himself for the folly of believing even for a second that John would have reacted with anything other than righteous fury.
"You're dead." John had said, loudly, no hint of happiness in his tone. Sherlock had rather hoped he wouldn't have to state the obvious, but instead dipped his head – his only concession to apology, as it had turned out – and said, "No, John."
He was studying the floor (furniture had been moved, scrapes of wood barely visible in late February light through unwashed windows) and missed the hands flying towards him, propelling him out of the living room and into the hall until they were on his shoulders, forcing him out of the way but also – he could feel it – fingertips pressing slightly as though to prove his existence.
"You were dead!" A bellow, forced from John's lungs, and a door slammed in his face. Sherlock had stood for a second, unthinkingly righting his suit jacket and evaluating the reunion thus far. It was, as John would have said, not good. He had glanced at the top of the stairs – no point going down, Mrs Hudson would be all tears and shock and other things he didn't think he could process. So he folded his long legs into a crease and sat at the top of the stairs, listening to the unmistakeable sound of someone throwing a teacup at a wall as he slowly lost his mind.
"Why are you here?" John's disembodied voice had roared. In the back of Sherlock's mind the word rhetorical appeared, but it was hazy and disconnected, and so he said in a tone that sounded too loud for the hallway, "I'm back, John. I had to do what I did, and now I'm back."
He sprung to his feet at the sound of John's footsteps, heavy and furious, heading towards the door, but even as it was flung open John's hand was held out against him like a priest warding off evil spirits.
"Don't you dare come in he - don't you dare! I don't want to be anywhere near a man who thinks he can die and just... come back." His voice is lower and cracks on the last words, providing Sherlock with some of his least used emotion; pure guilt.
"John, I –"
The door had slammed shut again. Sherlock sits back down and for once in his life, he waits.
Please keep your hands down, and stop raising your voice,
Its hardly what I'd be doing, if you gave me a choice,
It's a simple suggestion, can you give me some time,
So just say yes or no, why can't you shoulder the blame?
'cause both my shoulders are heavy, from the weight of us both,
You're a big boy now, so let's not talk about growth,
You've not heard a single word I have said, Oh My God.
The first few days are awful. A collection of awkward moments, seeing John start slightly as he enters a room and remembers again, the reunion with a sobbing Mrs Hudson that is marred only by the burning accusation in John's eyes, a visit from Mycroft where John flatly refuses to speak out of fury at his involvement. He barely speaks to Sherlock most of the time anyway; Sherlock had let himself into the flat once he'd heard John fall asleep on the sofa. It had taken hours and Sherlock was sure he heard the sobs of a grown man, exhausted and muffled, into a cushion. It made his skin prickle with discomfort to hear the consequences of his actions and he avoids looking at John's face as he crosses the room to his chair, looking untouched, where he spends the night wondering how to explain himself. It's not something that comes easily to him, nor apologies, and so when John wakes and says nothing as he moves around the flat, he keeps his thoughts to himself. Give me time, Sherlock thinks, and he imagines John's reply: give back my three years.
They finally crack four days later. Sherlock attempts an apology of sorts.
"John, I'm ... I know the past few years must have been difficult, but you can't ignore me forever." It's as close as he dare go to I was lost too. A sharp glance in his direction, cut through with a look of pain that belies exactly how difficult John has found this time, makes Sherlock's ribs ache with sorrow.
"Difficult?" chokes John, struggling to sit upright on the sofa. "No Sherlock, there was nothing difficult about seeing you fall off a building without any explanation. And speaking at your funeral wasn't difficult at all, no. Fucking walk in the park, mate."
At the mention of his sham funeral, Sherlock's chest tightens. "Sherlock Holmes was a man who I am immensely proud to have known. He was fiercely intelligent, brave and loyal and ...I'm sorry. I just... no, I can't. Sorry." John had walked out of the church, Mycroft had said, looking torn between grief and anger, past Mycroft, past Lestrade, past an inconsolable Molly, past a paltry number of black-clad mourners and journalists clutching handkerchiefs or planning their next headline. He had stood, over Sherlock's grave and spoken to Sherlock in a way he'd never done to his face, and it was with the echo of John's words – "nobody could ever convince me you told me a lie" – that Sherlock had set about eliminating every part of Moriarty's web so that he could come back and prove John wrong. It turns out, Sherlock thinks, that that part might be much more complex, more human, than he is capable of.
"I had to do it, John." he hopes this will be enough. He is not yet so changed by the experience that he can admit that sentiment, of all his least favourite things, played a part in the final act of Moriarty's dark master plan, that he leapt willingly from a building and broke John's heart just to keep it beating.
It's not enough. John explodes, filling the space with indignation and open, redundant grief and – Sherlock's throat clenches – betrayal. He rants that Sherlock had no right to do what he did, and he curses every single part of the Holmes brothers' existence, and he roars furious sadness at Sherlock, at the walls and windows of their previous existence, until Sherlock tries, in snatches between bouts of shouting, to explain.
"He was going to kill -" Deafening noise. John isn't listening.
"John, for God's sake¸listen to me -" Sherlock isn't sure John's even heard him, such is the force of his own tirade, his voice breaking between lines. Sherlock resorts to grabbing John's shoulder in a gesture that forces air out of his lungs and makes the next words a ragged breath – "He would have killed you if I didn't and I couldn't let that happen. Not to you."
It takes seconds to sink in to John's weary, besieged brain and Sherlock is catching his breath when he hears John's quiet "He may as well have."
Please take it easy, It can't all be my fault,
I haven't made half the mistakes, that you've listed so far,
Baby let me explain something, it's all down to drugs,
At least I remember taking them, and not a lot else,
It seems I've stepped over lines, you've drawn again and again,
but if the ecstasy's in, the wit is definitely out,
Dr Jekyll is wrestling Hyde, for my pride.
In the quiet rebuilding that follows, it is Sherlock's pride that keeps knocking bricks back down. He let his one, desperate admission of Moriarty's plan say everything he wants it to John, and yet he cannot bring himself to say anything else and so he pretends there is nothing to say. John watches him like a hawk at all times as though fearful he may vanish, and the first time they visit Bart's together John physically shakes until they are safely inside the morgue – and John's relief now smoothes the edges of his anger so that he is cautiously, but definitely, grateful Sherlock is back. Sherlock's guilt and indecision, however, eat him alive.
How to explain to this patient, extraordinary man that Sherlock would die a hundred times more if it meant nothing happened to him? That Sherlock only knew he had a heart when he felt it shatter on the edges of John's words, at his own graveside? It wouldn't do to say these things to John, who wouldn't believe him. He barely believes himself; he still proudly, foolishly clings to the notion that he is meant for more than achingly human hearts and nights sleepless for all the wrong reasons. But in those moments where John's eyes roam his skin for something Sherlock isn't sure he's got to give, he knows he's got to say something even if it sticks in his throat.
In the end, it's easy.
It's 4AM, and it's raining in that inconsolable manner that makes it impossible for Sherlock to sleep, sluicing the windows down and distorting everything on the London streets so that Sherlock is too busy observing a lone passerby to realise John is awake too. He's curled under Sherlock's Belstaff coat – a gift from Mycroft he couldn't even pretend to dislike, given to John with the rest of Sherlock's effects – his knees under his chin and his arms in the sleeves, and he is staring straight ahead from his motionless guard in Sherlock's chair. Sherlock's mind spins blank reels as he struggles for words, ways to explain or console or atone, and in the end it's John's blink that does it for him.
"I would die again for you." he says, quietly. John's eyes blink once more, and then he collapses in on himself, head hanging onto his knees and his back heaving with the weight of them both.
"Don't lie to me," Sherlock hears, and it's like an open wound. He kneels in front of John, the penitent one for once in his life, his forehead meeting John's knees.
"Not again."