Chapter One: The Return
John honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd seen 221B Baker Street so full of people. Despite Sherlock's numerous claims that John was the only friend he had, and in fact, the only one he particularly wanted, this was complete and utter proof he was wrong.
Rose Tyler sat at the end of the sofa, the Doctor seated next to her. His arm was around her shoulders, and they both seemed to be doing nothing but staring into their mugs of tea.
Martha Jones, representing both U.N.I.T. and Torchwood, still clad in U.N.I.T. uniform, had perched herself on the arm of the sofa, the opposite end from the Doctor and Rose. They had looked like they needed as bit of time to themselves.
Molly Hooper had taken a seat next to Martha, Lestrade sitting rather awkwardly in the middle.
Away from the crowd, in an empty corner of the room, Sally Donovan and Anderson stood, both holding cold mugs of tea simply for the sake of having something to do, and both of them trying not to look as guilty as, in only three short minutes, John had succeeded in making them feel. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that they were only there because Lestrade had made them come, and everyone else knew it.
John himself was in the centre of the room, looking round without really taking anything in. Mrs Hudson would occasionally touch a hand to his arm as she walked past, but apart from that, hardly anyone else actually acknowledged him.
Finally, looking thoroughly out of place in his immaculate suit, and, as always, carrying his umbrella, was Mycroft. He, much like Donovan and Anderson, was trying and failing not to look as guilty as he felt. John hadn't said anything to him; in fact, no-one had, and he preferred it that way. He didn't want to remember what he'd done to Sherlock; what he'd done to his little brother.
It had been exactly a year since Sherlock's death. Without being asked, every single one of his friends had shown up in the space of half-an-hour, not to talk, not to do anything, but simply to be there. To remember him.
Of course, if Sherlock himself had known this, he would never have shown up. He knew it had been a bad idea, choosing the anniversary of his supposed death, but at most he expected to run into Mrs Hudson and John having a teary cuppa, or maybe Mycroft paying a rare visit.
He didn't take into account everyone else.
And that, of course, was his mistake.
When he opened the door of 221B, Baker Street, Sherlock was on the phone, which was perhaps why he didn't, at first, notice the crowd gathered inside.
"What would I like you do with him? Well, for starters, you can arrest him, I'd recommend using a sedative, by the way, then you can put him in a cell with the others to await trial-"
Sherlock suddenly seemed to realise exactly what was going on around him, because he told whoever was on the other end of the phone,
"I'll call you back later."
The few people in the room that had been attempting conversation, stopped. There wasn't a single face that wasn't staring at him. Molly opened her mouth, presumably to ask him what the hell was going on, and managed a sort of strangled choking nose. Mrs Hudson gasped and dropped the tray she was holding, hot tea and sharp pieces of china going all over the floor.
It was this that jerked everybody into action.
"Oh, dear, what a mess!" Mrs Hudson exclaimed. "I am sorry. I'll go and get a tea-towel."
"I'll help you." Martha said, getting up. Rose stood also.
Sherlock, knowing full well what it felt like to be on the receiving end of one of Rose's slaps, braced himself for at best a bloodied nose, but was surprised to find her arms wrapped tightly around him, whilst she muttered,
"My God, I've missed you," into his coat. When she finally pulled away, her large eyes were filled with tears.
"We were all so worried," she whispered. "I thought you'd died, Sherlock. We all thought you'd died."
"That was the point." Sherlock replied, his eyes scanning the room as he realised how many people were actually there.
"Why would you do that? Can't you think of other people, just once? Would it really hurt you so much, to think of your friends before deciding to fake your own death? You bloody idiot!"
Seeing no-one would listen if he tried to explain himself, Sherlock took a deep breath in and placed his hands on Rose's shoulders, getting her to look straight at him.
"Rose, listen to me." he said, keeping his voice calm. "Remember what I explained to you about seeing and observing?"
Rose nodded. "Yes."
"Now, from what you've heard, seen, or read during the last year, tell me what happened on the roof of St. Bart's."
"Moriarty creates a fake actor persona, convincing the world you hired him; that you're a fake."
"Very good. Now continue."
"For an unknown reason, although the press and most members of the public believe it was because your plan with Moriarty backfired, you went to the roof of the hospital and jumped, but not before you made a final phone call to John, in which you admitted you were a fake and Moriarty wasn't real."
"Right. That's what you've seen. If you can observe closely enough, it is possible to work out what actually happened that day. Think about what you've just told me. See what you can deduce."
Rose thought for a few minutes. "Right. Well...I know you're not a fake. So you were lying, so you must have had a motive. You told John to tell anyone who would listen that you were a fake, so clearly you wanted word to get around. Jim Moriarty hasn't been seen since the day you 'died'; his men must be covering up for him. Even with everything in the papers, you wouldn't jump of your own accord, you'd have to be cornered into it. And who wanted your life wrecked? Jim Moriarty. He was with you on the roof that day, but he must have had some secret weapon, something to use against, you. Before you jumped, you phoned John, told him you were a fake...you told him to look at you, so he didn't see the bicycle coming, he was knocked over, never saw you hit the ground! You escaped, but he had to think you were dead, so maybe Moriarty was using him against you? But like I said, it would take extreme circumstances to force you into jumping, and Moriarty never goes far without backup...he was going to kill John and the others if you didn't jump, wasn't he? But no-one saw Moriarty on the rooftop, they only saw you, so you must have backed Moriarty into a corner, you were about to win. The only way out was if he killed himself. That's it, isn't it? I'm right, aren't I?"
The look on the consulting detective's face told her she was. Before she had time to celebrate, however, she heard a soft voice coming from the door.
"Is it true, Sherlock? Would Moriarty's men really have tried to kill us?" Mrs Hudson asked. Her hands were shaking so much the tea was threatening to spill again, so Martha kindly took the tray off her and passed it round herself.
"Yes." Sherlock replied, his voice emotionless, as always. "They would have tried to kill you."
"Oh." was all poor Mrs Hudson could manage as she sat down next to Lestrade, who patted her arm sympathetically.
John, who had been silent ever since Sherlock walked in, suddenly found his voice, because he turned to Sherlock with the angriest expression Sherlock had ever seen him wear.
"Excuse me," he started, "but who exactly gave you the right to just waltz in here? You fool us all into thinking you're dead, now you walk in, talking into your mobile like everything's normal. Why, Sherlock? Why hurt us like this?"
Sherlock didn't reply. Instead, he walked over to where his violin still sat, untouched, picked it up, and started tuning it.
"Oh, bloody hell!" John cried, flinging his arms up in exasperation.
Sherlock still paid no attention, choosing instead to start playing violin at them all. John sighed and left the room, muttering something about, "...bloody stupid violin-playing sociopath...", but the others, shocked as they were at Sherlock's sudden materialisation, were content to sit and listen. Martha, for her part, had never heard Sherlock play violin before, and the others, only once or twice, so they found it a rare treat to sit back and listen.
Rose had always particularly enjoyed Sherlock's rare moments of actual violin-playing, as opposed to angry screeching, and happily closed her eyes and listened. After a while, however, she realised something. The music wasn't just music, it was a story. Sherlock probably wasn't aware of this; from the sound of it, he was simply pouring his thoughts and feelings into the music, which wasn't unusual in itself. Most musicians were prone to doing it. With Sherlock, though, it was something else, perhaps because he was not at all in the habit of sharing any of his thoughts or feelings with anyone.
Something else she noticed was that the more she listened, the more she was able to put certain words -or, more accurately, names- to different parts of the music.
'Moriarty' she picked up on quite quickly. Low, fast-paced yet quiet playing, which would suddenly amount to a crescendo, then into a slow diminuendo, and finally so soft it was barely audible. This would tend to repeat several times, then he would move on to a different part of whatever he was playing, but Rose couldn't help noticing Moriarty came up several times during his playing.
'John' was easy to discern; a mostly happy, quiet tune, and Rose found she felt inexplicably calmer whenever she heard it. This one, too, came up several times.
'Mycroft' came up only once, mostly a long, drawn-out, classical sounding piece, which ended on a high crescendo, and Rose got the distinct feeling that Sherlock hadn't really bothered to finish it; he'd simply dropped it and moved on.
If Sherlock assigned particular pieces of music to certain places, Rose couldn't name them, but she felt sure that was exactly what he had done. She could just sort of hear it in the music.
When the music finally stopped, Sherlock put the violin carefully in its case, then sat down in the only unoccupied armchair, leaned back, and closed his eyes, his fingers laced together, his classic 'thinking' position. After a while, when he still hadn't moved, Martha reached forward and gently tapped his arm. When he continued to just sit there, she leaned even closer to him.
"Sherlock?" she whispered. "You awake?"
Still, the world's one and only consulting detective lay still, so either he was sleeping, or pretending to be sleeping. Either way, he wouldn't be moving for a while. Mrs Hudson smiled fondly at his sleeping form.
"Ah, bless him." she said, covering him with a spare blanket. "He'll have had a long day."
The Doctor, who had only that morning proudly informed Rose of the fact that he could go for months without sleep, bit back a yawn. Rose giggled at him.
"I think maybe we should all get some sleep." she suggested. "And we can discuss...this...in the morning."
Mycroft stood up. "Actually, I should get going, there's quite a lot happening at work right now..."
He trailed off at the look Mrs Hudson was giving him. "I've told you before, Mycroft Holmes, family is all we have in the end, and you're the only family Sherlock's got. Like it or not, you're staying."
Mycroft, now resigned to his fate, sat back down. Mrs Hudson went off to get some more blankets for everyone. The others made themselves comfortable.
The only one missing was John, who was still in his room, calling Sherlock every name he could think of, and decorating them with pretty much every swear word under the sun.
He didn't care if Sherlock walked out of the flat and never came back again. Why should he? It wasn't like Sherlock meant anything to him. He certainly couldn't mean anything to Sherlock, judging by the fact that he'd pretended to die and couldn't even bloody call.
Just once.
That was all he was asking for.
One phone call.
One apology.
John sighed. Two things he was never going to get.
It was about three o'clock in the morning when Molly Hooper woke up. Light spilled into the living-room from the kitchen, and she could hear someone moving around in there. Quietly, she got up and, pulling her blanket around her, padded through to the kitchen.
Sherlock was in there, holding a steaming mug of tea. Molly offered him a tired smile when he looked up, and walked over to him.
"What are you doing up?"
"Sleeping's boring. What are you doing up?"
Molly shrugged. "Couldn't sleep, I guess."
Sherlock lifted his gaze from his drink, and scanned the young woman standing before him.
"Your hair is slightly messed up," he noticed, "but not very much, which means you've only been asleep for an hour or so, but you've perhaps been tossing and turning for a while before. You have shadows under your eyes, which, although they're not prominent, suggest you haven't been sleeping well these past few weeks. You're thinner than I remember you, you've lost weight, therefore, you haven't been eating properly, most likely due to emotional distress of some sort."
"You never called." Molly said, as way of reply. "I helped you fake your own death. Then you left, and for a while, you called me, then you just stopped. I really believed you were dead, Sherlock! But no, don't worry about me, I'm only your friend, after all!"
"I don't have friends."
The words were out of Sherlock's mouth before he had even fully comprehended exactly what it was he was saying, and, in an unusual display of humanity, he regretted it almost instantly. Molly was looking at him with a strange mixture of hurt and hatred, her eyes filled with tears of anger.
"Right." she said. "Of course you don't. How silly of me. Well, don't let me keep you up. Don't bother with me at all. Don't even bother to bloody well phone me, even though I was obviously going to worry myself sick about you, but no, that's fine, because I bloody hate you, Sherlock Holmes!"
With each word she said, Sherlock was regretting his own words even more, but the sociopath persona he had spent so long perfecting wouldn't shut up long enough for him to say so.
"Why would you worry about me?"
The words came out harsher than he meant them to; he didn't even mean to say them at all, really. But it distracted Molly, at least for a moment.
"Because, Sherlock. You're my friend, and I care about you. Even if it is only one-sided." Her last comment was barely audible, but Sherlock heard it. Molly turned to leave, but he found himself reaching out a hand to stop her. She turned around. Her stare was icy.
"I didn't call you because I couldn't. I was being tracked, and by the time I realised it was too late to warn you. Moriarty's men were apparently willing to go further for revenge than I had anticipated. They would have been listening in to phone calls. Tracing any letters. Spying on all my texts, no doubt. I wanted to let you know I was alive, Molly, but I couldn't, see?"
Molly was quiet for a moment. "I understand." she replied. "But you can be so confusing, Sherlock! I mean, you barely notice me, then you embarrass me at the Christmas Party, then you apologise and kiss me, so I think, 'Okay, maybe we are friends', then get me to help you fake your own death, vanish off the face of the Earth, and suddenly, all communications just stop. For all I knew, Sherlock, I could just have been another one of your stupid experiments!"
"I'm sorry." His voice was quiet, but Molly heard what he said and smiled.
"Yeah, me too. About what I said. I don't really hate you or anything."
Sherlock smirked at her. "I deduced that much."
"Right, well, I'm going back to bed. Or rather, back to sofa. You coming?"
"No, I'll stay here for a bit. I hate sleeping in the same room as other people. And besides, I'm not tired and sleeping is boring."
Molly gave him a small nod and smile before heading back through to the living-room. Sherlock took a seat at the kitchen table, and mulled the night over in his head.
That was where Sergeant Donovan found him when it was properly morning. Head resting on his arms, fast asleep. For once, she ignored him, and began making toast.
"You seem happier than I expected."
Sally jumped at the voice behind her, and turned round to see Sherlock awake. The only thing she could think to say was;
"Why's that?"
Sherlock didn't say anything, just gave her that irritating smirk of his and looked towards the living-room, where she could just make out the sleeping form of...Anderson. She felt the heat flood her cheeks.
"God! No, I mean, that's..." Sergeant Donovan took several deep breaths in an attempt to regain whatever dignity she had left. "We stopped that months ago."
The consulting detective raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything else. Sally went back to getting some food.
"Oh God, that's horrible!"
Sherlock looked round. "What?"
"That is disgusting, you freak!" She pointed to a small bottle containing a red liquid that Sherlock took to be blood. He briefly wondered what it was doing in his fridge.
Well, he certainly hadn't put it there. He couldn't imagine what use John or the others could have with it. That only left...
"Mycroft!"
Mycroft appeared in the kitchen almost immediately, carrying, of course, his trusty umbrella.
"You called, brother dear?"
"Is that yours?" Sherlock asked, indicating the bottle. Mycroft nodded.
"I received it a few days ago. I need to give it to a DNA specialist. I was going to do it today, actually. But I needed to store it somewhere."
Sally gave an irritated sigh. "And people wonder how the two of you are related."
And that was when John chose to enter the kitchen.
"Right." he said, surveying the scene around him. "Bottle of blood in the fridge. Nothing out of the ordinary, then."
He set about making himself some tea, pointedly ignoring Sherlock, emphasised greatly by the fact that he was making perfectly cheery conversation with Mycroft and Sally. After a few minutes, each excused themselves to freshen up or make a phone call, and John and Sherlock were left alone in the kitchen.
"John, about last night-" Sherlock started, but was cut off by John.
"No." he said flatly. "No, Sherlock. I don't want to hear it. I waited and I hoped, but no. Nothing. I really thought you'd gone and died, Sherlock. I didn't believe it, not at first, but in the end, what choice did I have? I had to move on, and this...I'm sorry, Sherlock, it's just too much."
"John, I was being tracked by Moriarty's men, any kind of message would have reached them before you. I would have been marking you down for death by even hinting that I was alive. I had to wait until I had brought down Moriarty's entire criminal network before I could contact any of you. I- I'm sorry, John."
Up until that point, John had been doing his absolute best to ignore the consulting detective, but when he heard the last two words, he looked up. "Sherlock?"
"Every day. Every day, John, knowing you were alive and not being able to talk to you, not as me. Spanish student asking for directions? You looked right at me and didn't know. A week after my 'death', I was standing not a metre away from you, and you couldn't see. My funeral, John! I was behind the tree." Here, his voice dropped to a whisper. "All you had to do was look up."
"I...wow." John shook his head. "I mean...Jesus Christ, Sherlock. You really..."
He struggled with what to say for several minutes, before finally deciding on,
"So, you were the Spanish bloke, then?"
Thank you for reading! Chapter Two will be up soon, hopefully featuring more twists, turns, dramas, and heads in the fridge!
But, just in case you can't wait, here's a little sneak peek of what lies ahead...
John looked between Sherlock and Molly, who was looking increasingly upset.
"John, really, I'm sorry. I didn't know Sherlock hadn't told you, not at first." John looked right through her, glaring at Sherlock.
"You asked Molly for help and didn't ask me?"
The others exchanged Looks of their own, shrinking back slightly in their seats. Sherlock took a tentative step forward, for once unsure of how to proceed. "John-"
"No, don't bother. You stick with Molly if you like. And your heads in the fridge and eyeballs in the microwave, and playing the violin at bloody two in the morning! 'Cause you know what? I'm leaving."