Watched The Reichenbach Fall, of course. Look, it's not my fault; I didn't want to write anything on the subject.
Fired this off in about twenty minutes. Sorry if it's crap, constructive criticism is always welcome. I own nothing. Don't sue me.
2 + 2 = ?
The dead man's fingers had been stubby.
John lies awake at night, remembering how desperately he had tried to feel a pulse and how he hadn't found one, and he remembers thinking how stubby the fingers had been. He thinks of bloat, of the coagulation of blood, of gravity, of bodily fluids and bacterial gases—all of which take a certain amount of time. There hadn't been any time.
Sherlock's fingers weren't stubby. Sherlock's hands had been thief's hands: long and narrow and clever. Not stubby. Never stubby, never squarish and blunt.
John tells himself he is wrong, he is mistaken, he had not been thinking clearly and could he just shut up now, please, and go to sleep? But of course the answer's no, because the bloody fingers had been bloody stubby and John knows what he saw.
Shock, he tells himself firmly. It was the shock.
He cannot bear for it to be anything else.
When he finally gets it, when he finally fucking believes what his brain is telling him (you see but you don't observe, yes, all right, thanks, I'm observing now, you happy?) he is angrier than he thinks he has ever been in his entire life. And then the anger bleeds away to a sort of vague, nagging irritation, like an itch he can't scratch. Nice try, the itch says, you can pull the wool over their eyes but just you try that with me, you proper arse, just you try.
He's, honestly, a little bit concerned for his own sanity. It's not easy to know that your best friend is alive while everyone around you keeps on insisting that he isn't. Especially when there's a body in the morgue with his face, and documentation to prove that it's his. Not very easy to believe a thing like that, is it, and not doubt your own sanity after a while? But he does. John has gotten very good at believing whatever the hell he wants to believe, and he's seen enough to know when he's being lied to. Sherlock is dead is only one explanation of some of the facts—oh, ho ho, very good, not going to make that mistake again.
Still, he's worried enough that he asks Mycroft, a few months after It happens. "Do you think I'm losing my mind?" he asks. "Seriously, now. Am I insane?"
Mycroft looks at him, pale eyes in a pale face. Then a twist of the mouth, a tilt of the head. He's laughing. "I very much doubt it."
Mycroft's word is as good as gospel, as far as John is concerned, and he puts the matter of his possibly-flagging sanity out of his mind after that. It's odd, but he actually trusts Mycroft. Mycroft, at least, is not a liar.
Lestrade drags him out for drinks one year after. A quiet dinner. He misses having Sherlock around, John knows. Sherlock may have been the high king of all bastards, but he'd been useful and entertaining. Especially after they'd cleared his name—of course they had found the cameras, all the little wires and microphones and machines around the flat. Sherlock's flat and that reporter woman's. Lestrade had actually laughed, after he had finished swearing. "Sherlock's last great reveal," he had said, and maybe that's why John cannot resist asking him if he ever thinks Sherlock will be back.
The look Lestrade sends him is priceless. "He's—John, look. He's not coming back," he says. John scoffs and rolls his eyes. Lestrade leans forward. "He can't. He's dead. You feeling all right?"
"Fine," John tells him. "Fine, yeah. I'm. I'm just...fine."
Lestrade leans back again, watching him out the corner of his eye. "You're sure."
"I'm sure."
Lestrade makes a noise. Pauses. Takes a drink.
"It's just that the hands were wrong, is all," John says, and Lestrade chokes and sets his glass back down, leans heavily on his elbows and scrubs his hands over his face.
"Jesus, John..."
"Sorry."
"The hands were wrong?" Lestrade repeats, the picture of incredulity. There are new lines around his eyes. "How the hell do you know?"
"Took his pulse. Or tried to."
Lestrade stares. "Shock, man, you were in shock."
"Yeah, I know, just—"
"What, you think he'll come back from the dead?"
The words are out before John can stop them. "Wouldn't be the first time." And it would, technically, but there's the Adler woman to consider. This must be how Sherlock feels, John thinks, when people refuse to believe something that's staring them in the face. It's so obvious, he thinks, and turns a laugh into a hasty cough.
Well, Sherlock had never doubted his own mind, and John won't either. He'll sit and wait, for however long Sherlock takes to return. And if Sherlock never returns, well...that doesn't mean he's dead.
But to be perfectly frank, John is rather hoping he'll turn up again, if only so that he can finally get a good night's sleep again. Because, sometimes, at night, he still finds himself lying awake. Wondering if Mycroft is wrong. Wondering if he really has lost his mind. Wondering if Sherlock really is dead, if his hands really were thick and blunt, if he really had leaped off a building and died there on the pavement. He can't believe it. He can't. He can't.
He won't. Because he cannot bear for it to be true, and because the hands were wrong. He won't believe it's true, because he knows it isn't.
Just as he had known Sherlock wasn't a fraud. He had never doubted, never once. And he does not doubt now that Sherlock is alive.
And he'll be back.