"But please, there's just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me, don't be ... dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this..."
Walking away from Sherlock Holmes was something that I never thought I would do. However, he had given me no choice this time. Whilst I sat in an armchair within 221B Baker Street, Sherlock lay buried inside a coffin six feet underground ‒ the one place on the Earth that we could not go together ‒ although at the height of my grief I admit that I may have been tempted to try. Saying goodbye to him was the hardest thing I had done since being invalided home from the army. Somehow, Sherlock ‒ of all people ‒ had managed to help me heal from that experience and move on. He probably wouldn't understand that though. He would label it as 'sentiment' and give it no further thought. Or would he? If ‒ after meeting him for the first time ‒ somebody had asked me whether or not Sherlock Holmes was capable of experiencing the feelings that he so despised, I would have said that he wasn't. People like Sergeant Sally Donovan and Anderson would still say that now, but then they didn't know him as well as I did. I had once remarked ‒and Sherlock had reiterated it to him, Moriarty ‒ that Sherlock did not have a heart, but this was too much of a simplistic view, I realised that now. Moriarty himself had said that the statement was not quite true, but I didn't fully understand what he meant, until now. Sherlock cared about people, he was just afraid to show it. Afraid that what he perceived to be his weakness would be used against him. He must have cared, there was no other ‒ to use Sherlock's own word ‒ logical explanation.
"Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
A memory of Sherlock's voice offering one of his favourite cryptic sayings appeared in my mind without being summoned. I scoffed. As if the real Sherlock would support such a comment as the one I had just made in my mind. He had described emotions as "the grit in the lens, the fly in the ointment." Why would the despised sentiment cause Sherlock to throw himself from the roof of Bart's hospital? That certainly wasn't logical, and it definitely didn't show any consideration for anybody's feelings, particularly mine. Mrs. Hudson and Molly were inconsolable, and Lestrade was burdened with enormous guilt tied together with torn loyalties between his admiration for Sherlock and his duty to the police force. I knew that trying to convince Mycroft to divulge his true feelings ‒ or any feelings at all, for that matter ‒ would be futile. As for me, my heartache and pain had changed into numbness. I felt nothing and everything, all at once.
To me, functioning normally had become boring and therefore lost its appeal now; eating, drinking, sleeping. Even dating. It was all a waste of time if there was nothing to do it for. For once, I understood completely what Sherlock had regularly experienced; his need for a distraction, for the nicotine patches, for a case. Mrs Hudson had given up trying to tempt me to eat properly or socialise. She had even consulted Mycroft for help, though why she thought that seeing one of the people who I blamed for what happened would help me was beyond my comprehension. I'm sure that Sherlock would have had a theory though. If not a theory, then an answer.
Sherlock had spent his final minutes alive trying to break my confidence in him, before eventually jumping from the roof. The emotion in his voice as he 'confessed' had sounded real enough, but then I had seen him switch convincing-but-fake emotions on and off like a tap during several of our investigations. Had emotion and sentiment finally betrayed him? Had he been upset and fearful at the prospect of jumping, or was the emotional response actually a release from unburdening his 'lies' about his intellectual capabilities? I could not ‒ for one second ‒ believe that he had lied to me for all this time, but I couldn't bring myself to accept that he had always told me the complete truth either.
Ever since the incident at Bart's hospital, my cyclical thoughts had remained constant throughout.
"He can't be dead. He just can't."
"But you saw him fall."
"He's buried in the cemetery."
"But how do you know that? They wouldn't let you see his body."
"Well, in fairness, the injuries sustained from that fall would have been pretty severe."
"Yes, but you're an army doctor, it's likely that you've seen worse."
Perfect(!) I was having arguments with myself now, and was beginning to understand why Sherlock had missed having the skull that he had been so fond of talking too. Maybe my therapist was right after all ‒ though her previous efforts at diagnosing my problems had definitely not been one hundred percent accurate ‒ and it was all just wishful thinking on my behalf that Sherlock was alive. That, in reality, there was no doubt that it was Sherlock's body inside the coffin, that there had been no secret cover up and there was no chance at all that Sherlock had survived the fall but just didn't know how to let us know. Or, maybe my therapist had been in on the whole thing, right from the start. Maybe she had become part of Sherlock's network of contacts, and he had instructed her that under no circumstances was she to allow me to believe that he was alive. If so, was it for my benefit? Or for his? Or both? My therapist had been right about one thing; that I had "trust issues." I'd trusted everyone ‒ Mycroft, Sherlock, Lestrade ‒ and looked where I had ended up. I couldn't even trust my own thoughts any more.
I've often heard people say that if somebody close to them died, they'd be able to feel it. I'd felt pain before, unbearable pain, but I didn't feel alone. The space that Sherlock filled ‒ whatever it was ‒ was still full. I had detected no change, and my feelings hadn't altered. What did this mean? Was it wishful thinking or was it real? I needed somebody to help me fathom this out. I hadn't seen Molly since the day of Sherlock's death, and so it would be difficult to go to her. Mrs. Hudson was too upset to even mention his name, never mind help me discover the truth. Lestrade faced an inquiry at work after his boss had discovered that he had allowed Sherlock 'the fake genius' to assist in numerous police cases. It would be unfair to approach any of these people with what could only be described as my wishful-thinking, shot-in-the-dark theories. As much as I despised the only course of action available to me, I knew that I did not have a choice. Mycroft Holmes was now the only accessible person with the deduction methods capable of helping me. As a result of this, I would try to follow another of Sherlock's sayings, one that I even I could understand and relate to.
"Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side."
I would have to put aside whatever negative feelings I possessed for Mycroft and ask him to help me make some sense of this situation. He owed me that much at least. He owed Sherlock.