Words have been spoken; things that were bottled
have burst open and to walk in now
would be to walk in
on the ocean.
-At Sea by Simon Armitage
1.
John never thought a walk home could be so hard. Even after all this time people still gave him pitiful looks and there was muted scorn on everybody else lips. The London rain that fell about him had begun to fill him with a sense of defeat. Placing his foot on the step he'd once loved to return to took a kind of courage he hadn't mustered in a while. Somehow he found the strength to carry on, if not for himself but for his friend.
"He'd want me to be here."
The man's fingers outlined the brass numbers, not truly believing he was back after so long. He placed his hand flat against the door's damp, black surface and felt the memories of a life lived here radiating through the paint and wood from inside.
John had returned because today was a good day, a day of hope where he allowed himself to believe the impossible: that his friend wasn't dead. He thought his flatmate might have returned, he didn't know why, instinct he supposed, and walking up those well worn stairs he started to believe it.
"He's alive."
He heard this simple line, over and over, his head full of his swirling but painful belief. He felt that sickening sensation of anticipation, not dissimilar to the feelings of dread that had plagued his mind every sleepless night since that day. It seemed no matter what John Watson did he could not win against the scars he held. His flat's door stood before him and, like everything else in this building it was screaming at him one word. One name. Looking down to the hallway he remembered the laughter the two of them had shared and how John had forgotten everything that haunted him. That moment when he'd realised this strange, wonderful man had saved him. He dragged in a deep, coarse breath in an attempt to prepare himself for whatever might lie beyond the door but his chest was tight with a strange, but not unfamiliar mixture of fear and thrill so he found he could only inhale quick gasps of stagnant air. John's hand clung to the handle as he tried to suppress the wondrous thoughts clouding his reason and tugging at his already worn out temples. As much as he tried to rationalise one powerful idea seeped into the front of his mind and took root there and grew.
"He might be in there now, lying on the sofa, his hands pressed together, placed under his chin, thinking and deducing like he never left. He'll greet me with a grin or with a look of remorse, because he did leave me and he's sorry but he's not dead, he is so completely alive and..."
John thrust the door open with a thud and saw an empty room. The life appeared to drain from his body. Every shimmer his hope had left on his face vanished. Cell by cell, from the hollow chambers of his heart outwards he began to crumple. Grief bled from his body. His best friend was not here.
Understanding, once again, that his friend was gone John found he could not stand upright any more. He slumped down to the floor, his shoulder and head dragging against the wall to his right.
"He isn't here."
Somewhere in the darkest corner of his mind he dragged a notion that he had admitted to people, but had never quite believed. A thought that haunted the bad days, the hopeless days.
"He's really gone."
He pulled his knees to his chin and scrunched his eyes shut. This solider had been so strong but now he was done.
Curled up on the floor, still and unmoving, John stayed where he had fallen until the sun that was out before had disappeared and the street lights had come on. Not entirely sure what the hell he was going to do now, John surveyed his surroundings, trying desperately to find a clue he may have missed to where his companion might be. He looked up at the wall he leaned on and saw the spray painted face with the bullet holes for eyes and was reminded once again of what was lost. The souvenirs of their lives together were still here but the biggest of them all, the one he wanted to keep forever was not. Sat alone in a room full of memories he felt a desperate need to give up, to remain where he was until it was all over.
Eventually, from somewhere within him, he found the will to stand and once he was on his tired feet he managed to tread slowly about the room. Each object held some anecdote that caused fire to jolt through his chest. Every inch of the room besieged him.
John had tried to return to normality, to life before Sherlock Holmes, and found he couldn't stand it. They'd been so happy here with his days filled with mystery and Sherlock's filled with someone new to impress. A friend. Soon he felt that expected and all too familiar sensation of tears moving down his cheeks. He could not believe he had tears left for that man. He had shed so many, alone, at night, in the hours where he couldn't shake the image of blood, trickling down past crystal blue eyes, from his own fractured mind.
John was a tough man; he had not cried in front of people and after a week played the part of a man trying to regain a sense of order. A stranger might have been fooled into thinking they were not talking to a broken man but all smiles he gave were fake and his eyes, if you really looked, showed nothing but bared grief. It reminded those who knew him back then of how he acted when he'd returned from conflict. What they could never understand, however, was that the war in this man's head was far greater than that experienced as an army doctor. A war John fought alone and one which he felt he was slowly starting to lose.
In his mind's absence John's body had gravitated towards the other man's chair. He imagined, very clearly, the figure that once sat there, long and slender in a tight shirt, or with upturned collars, or simply in a sheet from his bed. John saw, quite abruptly, his friend's animated body agitated, with feet tapping, waiting for a case. He witnessed him mocking John's own inferior, "simple" mind, perceived him drinking sugary coffee from dainty cups, caught a glimpse of him hollering, shooting, deducing and best, yet at the same time worst of all, smiling. Sherlock grinning at John with his eyes still shiny and so very alive. All these mirages highlighted to him the moments he had missed so much this past year and the things he'd taken for granted at the time but would now never see again. He held back the growing sobs he'd locked away and turned instead, eyes closed, towards his memories trying to remember every inch of that upturned mouth. He found he hardly could.
"How fragile memories are. No matter how much you care for somebody they will always and inevitably be forgotten."
A few hours had passed now, since John had first arrived. Time felt so slow to him, even though he did very little with it. He had no idea how long he had been stood staring at nothing. His body was stiff, his soles were sore and he was about to sit down and rest when he caught sight of a thing that was quite insignificant but that stirred something within him. His hand ran along the top of dull leather, turned it upward to face him and regarded it with a smile. Dust. He recalled his friend once saying that dust was eloquent. He was right of course. The dust on John's finger tips did tell stories and it told the saddest tale he knew of a great man who left too soon.
He took his seat opposite where he had imagined his friend and just seeing it empty hurt him. Sighing deeply he closed his eyes shut, secretly hoping that when he opened them his flatmate would be sat in his own chair. John always wished he'd reappear when he looked upon the real world again after the darkness behind his eyes. This was why, as he'd told his psychiatrist, mornings were the worst.
"It's just in my dreams," he would tell her, "he is so alive, vivid and real that every morning it's... it's him... dying. All over again."
John was only revived from his sleep when Mrs. Hudson found him, his hands clenching the chair arms in unbearable agony. She fretted for him to leave at once, said she'd been told to keep watch and not let him return, but he asked if he could leave a note, just in case he'd been right and his friend was alive and returning here, on the anniversary of the eve of his death. Mrs. Hudson looked at John through welling eyes as he scribbled a letter and slipped the folded note under the skull on the mantelpiece.