Certain people feel at home only in the dark.
I have watched them, over the winding path of my career. Usually in the course of pursuing them. It transpires that darkness has a reputation which is not entirely unearned. I have learned their ways, followed, unearthed, and shed light on what drives them to creep beneath the awning of 'ordinary' society.
(That that light casts certain reflections is hardly my concern.)
Often, I have admired them.
But never until now have I completely understood them.
John is something different, you see.
John I understand, more or less, and I admit that it took many years' study, watching him pushed to his limits time and again. Watching him break. There are less extreme ways to learn what someone is made of, but that is the only method I have ever found absolute. Despite his many contradictions, John is, perhaps, the only human being whom I can claim with any degree of certainty to understand. (Nature? No. Human? No.)
I was different too. We were alike in that way, he and I, living for the adrenaline, the chase—
And there our paths diverged. John Watson, soldier and healer. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective.
(I insist upon this designation, whatever Mycroft may say. Any dragonslaying is incidental, merely a part-time occupation, and I am no knight.)
Mycroft is himself an expert in the art of deception, however pure he believes his own intentions to be. I know better and don't care, just as he resents my work and finds uses for it. My brother scrapes earth across the picked-over bones of misbegotten scheming, planting as adornments such gratuitous titles as classified and need to know basis. By contrast I am the grave-digger, the burglar; unearthing fact and watching fallacy writhe and twist away like maggots beneath the sun's rays.
Magnussen did the same. That is one truth I have learned, staring into the darkness.
In the dark I watch him fall, again and again, objectively, from different angles. They never let me see the autopsy shots. I am left with only memory, and that serves me as it has always done: perfectly. I know the angle he fell. I know where the bullet entered his brain. I am no John Watson, but enough of a crack shot at point-blank range to know where it would pierce before it left the gun. Enough of a biologist to envision the bullet penetrating several degrees below the right eye, lodging in the hippocampus, where a few inadequate layers of fleshy tissue guard the neuron pathways responsible for transferring memories from the short- to the long-term. I aimed for and hit his mind-palace, watched it crumble and collapse, like his gaunt body, into the abyss of those endless vaults. In the darkness I can almost laugh at the sight.
But even in the dark, there is little point in wondering whether he will be a short- or a long-term memory.
Mary has a thousand of them buried in the layers of her consciousness. I wonder if any of them deserved it.
The voice sounds again, stirring a miscellany of feelings—first a familiar aversion, the briefest steel-edge of cold fear, and then something softer and less recognizable. The voice has been there all this time, alternating with others, droning in a by-now familiar rhythm. I take as little notice as I do of the wall. That too has changed—at first plain, textured and hueless, then a pale cream, and now a resolute blue-grey—Baker Street, I realize. The bedroom—my bedroom, though it never felt like mine, in the way of my flat, my best friend, not my housekeeper. Merely a chamber designated for sleep. Pointless.
But I am here now, and I wonder how many nights I have spent in darkness, staring at the wall.
The mattress, uncomfortably soft and yielding, sinks beneath my weight as I shift; this has always been irrelevant before.
"Sherlock."
That voice, that pattern of sounds breaking through the clouds again, however tightly I condense them. And this time another voice answers, reluctant and creaky with disuse. It takes me a moment to recognize it as my own.
"Mycroft."
"Sherlock?"
"Back with us. For now."
John felt his eyes slip shut and his breath rush outwards, knees buckling in relief that his friend was back, that all would be—
Not well. All would be far from well.
But better.
Mycroft didn't look at all well either, John realized all at once, with a sudden pang of…was it pity? At any rate an emotion he had never thought to associate with the tall, infuriatingly self-assured man; the British Government with its impersonal secrets and casually wielded power, with his tailored suits and even more carefully crafted expressions of nothing. If not nothing, then detached displeasure or amusement, since Sherlock and his brother always veiled their sniping in taut humor to conceal either the bitterness running through their relationship or its lack. Every word and gesture was a move in a carefully orchestrated game, and it went on until one of them, generally Sherlock, stopped wanting to play.
The weeks since his brother's imprisonment had not been kind to Mycroft. The days since Sherlock's failed exile still worse. Dark circles and defeat, lines that should never have touched that unassailable countenance.
John did the unthinkable, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"It's all right now, Mycroft. Or…it will be. Why don't you go and have a kip. I'll sit with him—"
But Mycroft shook off the hand and the offer just as he shook of the exhaustion that had, for the briefest moment, overwhelmed him enough to rest visibly in the slump of his shoulders. Weariness he could neither afford nor indulge right now, that would keep until this whole affair was over. Until James Moriarty was buried deep a second time, if need be.
"Go to him, John. I will be monitoring, and I will be right back, I…"
I need a moment.
"John. How long?"
My voice is sharper in the dim light; the words are voluntary this time, and emerge only with effort. Mycroft is not here now, if a brother with a CCTV network and a thousand hidden tricks can ever be said to be 'not here', and I need to know now, before he comes back; need to prepare a dishonest reaction before he returns to pull away the curtains. I no longer relish the sunlight.
And yet John is the sun, in an odd way, everything from his candid face to his skin tone to his soldier's fluency in profanity proclaims it; he always has been. In a lifetime spent shedding light beneath the paving stones of London, I have been delusional if I believed it to be my own. John and others like him are the sun's rays, the reason the grass stretches upwards a painful sharp green, and I am the muted wash of greys edging into black.
On edge is what I have always done best.
"Sherlock," and there is no mistaking the relief and strain and—yes, I recognize it now—love, as he says it. I shut my eyes against the flash of undeserved radiance, and focus on calculating, from his tone, the answer to my question. Cracking, not broken. I have seen John Watson break. Days then, not weeks. Good.
There's a problem with the edge. Sometimes you fall.
I wait for darkness to reassert itself before repeating the question in a voice that I can only hope is stronger than before.
"How long, John?"
This time his voice is nearer and I know he must have settled at my side, though the creak of the chair escaped my ears. There is a rustle as he reaches out his hand, and draws it back.
"Almost six days." He clears his throat. "Six days since your…return."
Six days. No wonder. I gave myself only two; long enough to leave the British government and its agents far behind. I was not supposed to be here when the memories swarmed back.
Four days unaccounted for, then. Four days is a long time. Half a week. Long enough to solve a murder, or move into a flat. To collapse from lack of 'proper nutrition' (idiot), to destroy and remake a friendship, to track down a hound from hell, to learn a detective inspector's name.
Long enough to keep from giving in.
Long enough to gain a fan, lose a killer, and find a living smile where you once met only an empty grin. Long enough to give in (idiot), and then let the poison seep out with so much more pain than it entered.
Long enough for a brother to learn Serbian and for four stone walls and a rusted pipe to creep into your nightmares.
(Remember sleep?)
Long enough, in short, for scars to form and seal away the pain, and for it all to come rushing back.
The rush of future meeting past was too much. No, not too much, too much all at once, necessitating re-cataloguing. John must not know. I shut my eyes again and slip into the reassuring blackness. John will not know.
I am deluding myself if I think he doesn't know already.
Mycroft is a stone wall, and like the shadows I have come to appreciate, steadying in his coldness.
(If he were not, if he were to turn, become
Merry Christmas
and
Your loss would break me)
But Mycroft knows better.
"Little brother. How are you feeling?"
I don't restrain a muffled groan into the pillows.
"Haven't you disowned me yet, Mycroft? Do get a move on, it would save us both these conversations."
Above my head his mouth curves into a frown, or worse, a smile.
"Tempting, I grant you. But you are avoiding the question."
"I am, aren't I?"
He apparently has nothing to say to that, and after long minutes of silence, leaves.
Two days and countless cups of tea later
(I can't quite recall when my life became a fathomless sea of hot water and tannin—
I think it had to do with jumpers, and Chinese, and just filling in for your skull—)
Mycroft returns.
In celebration of the occasion, John wavers between the living room and his still-furnished bedroom upstairs. Curiosity wins out in the end, and his old wariness around my brother, though half-vanished these days, rides in the tension of his shoulders in full force. For my benefit, I understand, when he drops into his old plaid armchair and leaves Mycroft to perch uncomfortably on the sofa. My fingers twitch beneath the blanket (a knitted monstrosity of Mrs. Hudson's), wishing to pluck at the strings of my Stradivarius, but the instrument is slumped in a corner of the no-longer-neglected bedroom with blue-grey walls, and Mycroft sent before him too little warning even for me.
Mycroft shifts his umbrella to his left hand and his gaze to my face, and all of a sudden I hate him for appearing at a time when a fraction of John's endless rain of hot tea has made it into a mug in my hand, and the bathroom mirror still reveals dark circles in skin that is definitely tipping off the poetic end of 'alabaster' into the realm of 'translucent'. He, of all people, should know the importance of façade.
(No, inaccuracy of wording: I am perfectly steady, although I may not look it.)
My brother slips two fingers into the breast pocket of his tailored suitcoat and removes a slip of folded paper. Without effort, I recognize it as the single remaining copy of the official orders for my aborted mission (read, memorize, destroy without delay). Whatever Mycroft says, I am doubtful that I will ever really match his penchant for melodrama. He is watching me closely now, cataloguing my reaction—which, I am not displeased to report, is nonexistent.
"Sherlock," he says after a pause, and I fight down an invisible upsurge of irritation, because when did my name become the target and wellspring of every absurdly pointless emotion I despise, "you know our time is not unlimited. We need to talk about what happened."
The room is too bright, and I wish John would turn the lamps down, but I know better to ask this in front of the overperceptive eye of my lying, caring is not an advantage brother. So I settle for turning my head and snarling with enough restraint that it might, possibly, under entirely different circumstances, actually be true, "Nothing happened."
It's typical of our relationship—if you can call it that; the words humans come up with to euphemize hostility—that Mycroft will to send me to near-certain death without bothering with this conversation, but the moment I set foot within fifty kilometers of his usual revolution (home to office to Diogenes club) I'm once again his little brother. Not this, Sherlock. Not that. Mummy will be upset, Sherlock. It's apparent that neither adulthood nor anything else is sufficient to relieve his self-imposed burden of responsibility. Heaven knows how many times I've offered. And in what variety of ways.
But no. Never happy unless stalking one's newly acquired flatmate via public phone, and offering thinly veiled bribes (threats) for information on yours truly. Or forcing equally absurd, if more straightforward, conversations on a convalescent little brother.
For just a moment I wish Jim Moriarty had stayed dead.
Fortunately, I have had ample time to plan for this moment. Unfortunately, so has the pompous prat I call brother. Even less providential, Mycroft only appreciates subtlety up to a certain point. Both he and John can be irritatingly candid at the most inopportune times.
Speaking of.
"I would beg to differ, little brother, you were practically catatonic for four days."
"I was rather crushed at being forced back into lecture range. Tried to block you out. Unfortunately, it could only last so long."
"Don't joke about this," John says sharply, and again I catch a glimpse of the strain he's been suppressing, badly, (slant of shoulders, left-hand tremor, conversations with Mary few and hurried) throughout the past week. I suppose that a less robotic friend would feel pity, but I'm far too irked at the fact that he and Mycroft have obviously planned this. Should have seen it coming. Did see it coming, just not the precise timing. I was thinking about something. What was it? Oh, yes, the resurrection of my mortal foe.
Possibly less mortal than previously thought.
John is saying something. I pull a fraction of my focus back to the conversation at hand. If it was just Mycroft, I wouldn't bother. [There's an idea in that: Text Mary, keeping hand immobile beneath blanket—she'd be on my side, owes me that much, just a lie to tell John her contractions have started, and then all that's left is to ignore Mycroft in blissful silence—Mycroft. Can't text Mary, Mycroft would notice the screen's glow—]
Previous experience suggests that variations on this plan, however tempting, will only delay the inevitable.
"…know you hate this, Sherlock, but we were really worried about you…"
Yes, your concern as of late has been flattering. I don't need to say this out loud for Mycroft to hear it. If there is any comfort to this, it is that Mycroft despises these conversations nearly as badly as I do. And we were so close, brother, to never having them again.
"Mes excuses les plus sincères." It irritates Mycroft when I speak French, because my accent is superior. For a brief moment I entertain fantasies of Mycroft believing I engineered this entire scenario to annoy him. The opposite is unfortunately true.
John, bless his monolinguistic heart, is less than enthusiastic about being left out.
"What?"
"I said, I'm sorry and I'll never do it again."
I wait for that stricken look to cross his face, but he flings a pillow at my head instead. Sometimes John Watson still surprises me. Then again, John's skill at detecting sincerity, or the lack thereof, has greatly improved since we became flatmates. Mycroft says the universe isn't lazy enough for coincidences, but then, Mycroft is a fat git.
"Would you two kindly…"
"Have you another preference, Mycroft? Ste došli ovde da pričamo , zar ne?"
My brother's face becomes, if possible, stonier still. John occasionally voices the opinion (or his face voices it for him, which, now I think about it, is all kinds of ironic) that social encounters are my Achille's heel as a detective. He may well be right. But have you ever considered, John Watson, my sole childhood companion? I can walk the fine line between disappointment and indifference very well. Why learn to read anything else, when Mycroft has only variations on these?
Presently he is leaning heavily toward the former. Feigned indifference is translucent as a watercolor wash, to me. John's face, on the other hand, is the palette of an overenthusiastic painter. Tobacco ash has always held my interest much more than acrylics, but Mummy has a great-great-uncle. Art in the blood, they say.
"Sherlock," John tries again, strained, through that unlikely mixture of patience and murderous exasperation. (The lines in his face are a curious marriage of military predictability and the doctor's untidy scrawl). "There are things I need to know. You two can sit and play your silent games, and snipe at each other in Hungarian and pretend not to care, but I do, do you understand!" His voice rises. A tidal wave at sea.
Serbian, actually. I avoid his eyes, although I know there is no danger of saltwater spillover so long as the surf pounds immutably against the knife-pocked mantle and peeling wallpaper.
"What do you want to know?"
"All of it!" he hisses—actually hisses. I know. "What you were…what's going on in that brain of yours, Sherlock—why you speak and move and function like your usual self, a bloody well-oiled—" he flinches back from the word machine. Go ahead and say it, John. It might shock my circuits into something like a pulse. Reset the operating system.
"—and then…you just stopped. You stopped, Sherlock, and there was nothing I could do." He rubs a hand over his eyes. John is exhausted. Try lying in the dark for four days, John. It helps. "He was scared too, you know. He just won't admit it."
Mycroft? Mycroft, frightened? No. No, the ghost of his fright lives only in my head. Never fully glimpsed. Always blurry, distant through a haze of narcotics or helicopter glass.
My brother's disbelieving face mirrors my own. John looks from one to the other and lets out an uncouth sound halfway between a sob and a snort.
Time for a thrust from the side, I think. John has accomplished at least a piece of his plot—captured my attention in full—and so in return I wrap my question in half a lie.
"Mind palace, John." It's a solid defense, logical and well supported by precedent. "As a matter of necessity in determining if Moriarty really is back…"
"Sod Moriarty!"
A blink. "Excuse me?"
And Mycroft, Mycroft who should be on my side for once, listening, believing, examining the situation logically, Mycroft who plucked me from the sky and my temporary liberty, and brought me back, at Jim's implicit request, to be shut up like a bird in the old cage of suspicion and concern and one day we'll be standing around a body, and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there…
Shut up, I hiss, and Sally's voice fades into empty air.
Mycroft is looking at me in that way, and something hardens inside me because beneath the indifference and disappointment I can see that he knows. Moriarty is not the one I spent four days struggling with in the darkness. Except for one moment of blind panic and near-eclipse, Moriarty was never the one I hated.
"It's all right to be human, Sherlock," John's voice continues, disconnected from John, because John does not say these things, John makes tea and buries his head in a newspaper. Or stalks the streets of London, foraging for the balm that will calm him down. (Normalcy or insanity, whichever comes first.)
"What you…what happened, it's enough to make anyone hurt. That's not weakness, it just means you're more…more than you want to be."
John's voice drones on, but he is only saying two things. Both I know already. One of them is true.
To murder is terribly human, John's voice is saying.
To feel for it is okay, John's voice is saying.
No, John's voice, you're wrong. For all your humanity and your social ease and your everything-Sherlock-Holmes-is-not, you're wrong. What good does it to feel? Who deserves to feel for murder? Like a child begging forgiveness after stealing gingerbread, crumbs still edging the corners of its mouth. Humanity developed guilt as a last-ditch effort at redemption. But guess what? Life will only flutter back into one of them. And not the one I removed it from. I am, in many ways, more thorough than my nemesis.
No, John, I would do it again in a moment. I don't deserve the sweetness of hurt. What I deserve is the curse of six months, and that was taken from me. I have more utility here. What they need is a machine, not a stained knight. The world has had enough humanity out of Sherlock Holmes. So, back to work.
Soon. As soon as the cataloguing is complete.
"John," I finally snap, if only to stop his droning voice and its lies. "You know my methods. I am perfectly all right. As if that should be of the slightest concern to anyone besides myself. The problem now is Moriarty. Does that penetrate the fog of your small brain?"
No, of course not. Sometimes the sunlight hits John's face at just the right angle, and it is so easy to read. I admire the pattern of hurt I splashed upon it. No, of course not Moriarty. He's
"…concerned with another murderer right now?"
The words escape unbidden.
"Concerned with a friend," John replies, and the bruise staining his face reaches upward and into his eyes. This should have the effect of dimming the light but does not. The small, trailing ache in my head intensifies.
"You're both correct, to an extent," Mycroft speaks up. "Moriarty, and not Magnussen, is the current concern. Which is precisely the reason you need to get past this, Sherlock, and if that means talking to someone…"
And somehow I am on my feet, the mug of John's tea splashed like blood across the carpet fibers, Mrs. Hudson's scratchy blanket collapsed around my feet like a dying animal.
"I think it should be abundantly clear," I hiss, "that this isn't helping!"
John's face crumples in shock, Mycroft's in triumph, and I hate him more than ever.
"So talk to us, and I won't insist upon it," he says. A small brotherly reminder, as though one was needed, of the power he now has over me. I handed it to him myself by removing a piece from his chessboard. Not black or white. Grey. One manipulation deserves another.
"Talk about what? The past? You're right, of course, much less dreary than the future. We know the future. Moriarty is the future. After him, what then? The past is much more interesting. Let's talk about Magnussen. Let's talk about Sherlock Holmes, and how everyone knew he would finally snap one day. Let's talk about how they were all right. Then, because privacy is a thing of the past too, let's talk about his freakish brain and how it needs four days to realign things!"
John's face is a picture now. Of what I don't know. "Sherlock, you aren't…"
"No, let me finish," I hiss at him. "This is what you want, isn't it? Then let's continue, let's talk about Magnussen. Do you have a picture in your head, John, of how he fell? The way he crumpled—where the bullet entered, and where it left, how that meticulously compiled archive fell to ashes? My hands aren't stained with blood, John, they're stained grey—grey ashes, grey suit, dead grey eyes. It wasn't murder, it was arson. The whole thing, collapsed, do you have an image in your head of that? I have a thousand. Did you hear the bullet leave the gun? I felt it enter. It's too much information, John. It's Serbia and it's Baskerville and it's every charred corpse we ever found in an alley and the poisoned breath of everyone Moriarty ever got his hands on, and I'd make the same decision in a heartbeat. Does that sound okay to you, John? Does that sound human?"
The strange thing about words is that they are better, sometimes, than silence. While they last. Afterward the silence echoes a thousand times louder. And if I disappear, retreat to the disused, despised bedroom, the only place left to go, and slam the door, that echoes too.
Somewhere between the echoes I slip into unconsciousness. When I wake, in the deep grey hours of early morning, it is to stare at four words etched on a glowing screen. An unsigned text message.
More than you know.