After watching the train car sequence in The Empty Hearse, and after reading Pennypaperbrain's Sherlock!POV fic about it, I wanted to write about that scene as well. Mostly as a way to wrap my mind around Sherlock's and understand his thoughts and emotions (though, not to condone his actions, which were so Not Good!).
Warnings for references to suicide, mild gore, emotional manipulation, self-loathing, violence.
You've seen the battlefield.
You know the rules:
lie, cheat, kill. Or die.
I was just playing the game.
There is so much grey on the battlefield.
Even with the laws of war.
You lived there: Afghanistan,
London. I was the grey for two years.
I am you, I told M on the roof.
He was my shadow twin. You are my negative space.
You fit in my hollows, in the spaces
I thought were so undefined until you fit into them perfectly.
:
We are not good men.
We may want to be. We may pretend.
But I know you giggle after you kill,
you know the sound of my fists on flesh,
I know the feel of your hands on my throat,
you know the way my tongue draws blood.
You were my prism. My mirror.
How could I see myself without you?
Even if I had to shatter you to do it?
:
I am not a (good) man.
I am instinct and lightning.
I am blood and death and run.
I am wildness and ruthless and a knife at a throat.
I am the instant decision,
I am the kill or be killed, I am finish it any way necessary.
I am take the risk take the shot take flight
take the opportunity no matter what the cost
and I sacrificed your soul because
I had nothing left to give, sacrificed you
to the gods of forgiveness so I could hear you say
perhaps, perhaps I may be redeemed.
I became Want. I was Need / Now / Dark / Desire.
Stripped of blood and flesh and brain down to my core,
no longer a proper noun.
Being Sherlock Holmes.
I don't know what that means anymore
besides a wool coat and a bad hat
and the feel of you at my side
(I could carry your best and wisest
words like stones in my pockets).
:
I didn't lie entirely. I killed myself on that roof.
The Sherlock Holmes you knew is dead.
I wear his sallow skin,
pretend it is smooth and new.
I am his ghost, trying to remember mortality.
:
Did I enjoy it? A holiday?
From boundaries, from limits? From you?
I didn't have to grow. Or face you
your disappointment / your questioning
your faith in me, as if I were Something Greater.
I am not a god. Or not a smiling one.
:
I laughed at you. With you. Near you.
I almost forgot what that sounded like.
My laughter. Your shouting. Your anger—violin strings.
stretched and plucked to breaking.
:
What I did, was not right. What I did, I needed. What I did, I wanted.
(because / because / because)
Anyone would tell you—everyone has told you—to run. Long, long ago.
(stay away from Sherlock Holmes)
I told you to go. I told you to go. And still you stayed,
your splintered voice and fractured heart
and your faith somehow intact.
You once were a broken bone, poorly healed. I broke you
again when we met, cracked your shattered places over and over
to reset you into what you (i) needed.
I forgot that fractures never fully heal.
:
This was always in me.
I told you long ago, I was never one of them.
(heroic / ordinary / good)
Even when you wanted me to be.
Even when I almost believed I could be.
I can't do it, John.
I don't know how.
AN: The title is from Florence + The Machine's "Heavy In Your Arms" (which is also the song I had on repeat while writing). Thank you to Mirith Griffin and Pennypaperbrain for reviewing and critiquing this for me.