Shared Nightmares
She awoke with a start.
Involuntarily her whole body jerked as if electrocuted and her eyes snapped open, breath being sucked in with a sharp gasp. For a moment she stared wildly, disorientated, before realization began to trickle its way back in. Darkened bedroom, warm blankets, a large warm body in the bed with her. Lestrade pulled her even more back to reality and she slowly let out a sigh, her sight focusing on the curtains.
Lestrade, classically spooned around his wife, stirred as well, his arms shifting to pull her in closer. "Hmmm?" he murmured, a low pleasant buzz in her ear.
"Sorry," she whispered, running a hand along his arm, "Go back to sleep."
"Bad dream?" He mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes.
"No," she replied and gently urged, "Go back to sleep." She knew, for the most part, that once Greg was awake, he wouldn't go back to sleep.
"Why's your heart trippin' like a jackhammer then?" he mumbled sleepily in her ear.
Anne sighed, a soft smile flirting on her lips. Ever the detective, always asking questions. "Yes, it was a bad dream."
"You all right?" he quietly asked.
Anne smiled, clutching his arms closer to her. The vestiges of the dream were escaping her, she was snug in the secure circle of her husband's arms. She reveled in the warmth of it. "I'm fine, love."
"Same dream?" he asked.
Anne nodded. "It's passing. It's all right," she reassured him. His small murmur of acknowledgment told her he was still in that quasi state of wakefulness and sleep. She, however, was now wide awake. She glanced at their clock, inwardly groaning at the fact it was only a few minutes past two in the morning and came to a decision.
She carefully slipped out of bed, causing him to groan a little. "Don't nick the warm spot, I'll be right back," she whispered, planting a gentle kiss on his forehead.
"I don't nick warm spots," he muttered, rolling onto his stomach in her place in the bed, curling his arms in, his characteristic smirk stealing across his lips. He still hadn't once opened his eyes.
Anne leaned over, kissing his cheek gently. "Yes, you do you heat seeking pig," she whispered in his ear. He reminded her of a large content cat.
His acknowledgment came back as a cross between a mumble and an oink, causing her to smile with affection as she turned to snatch up a robe draped haphazardly across a nearby chair. As she made her way towards the bedroom door, his voice followed her.
"John's asleep on the couch."
Anne paused, hand on the knob, remembrance flooding in. She tugged the robe into place and tied the sash, silently letting herself out of the room.
John had shown up unexpectedly. Which wasn't a problem -he had a long standing invitation to visit whenever he could. What surprised them was his actually taking them up on it. Outwardly, he was a normal as ever. They made a night of it, calling out for a meal, a few drinks, easy going conversations. Anne gave up on them around 10:00 trundling off to bed while the men continued on.
Anne and Lestrade were both keenly aware of the gulf of loneliness John currently found himself in and as unobtrusively as they could they included him in to their small circle of influence. They took great care not to push him into anything, knowing that John Watson was a strong individual with an intensely quiet pride. He dealt with his grief and loneliness in a way which suited him best. Still, they kept a friendly eye on him and were silently glad he had accepted an invitation to their home.
Pausing at the doorway, Anne glanced at the back of their couch, sensing rather than seeing John laid out on it, before padding softly towards the kitchen.
She hadn't had nightmares since she was a little child, but since the kidnapping the previous year and the nuclear meltdown of her family, she wasn't surprised to find she was having them. She didn't remember much from them, mostly fragments of horrific scenes that had occurred directly to her. They passed quickly enough, but she was inevitably left awake, shaking from the effects the nightmares left behind. Shivering, she decided it was more from the chill in their flat, than the effects of bad dreams.
She found, to her fond amusement, that she'd fallen back on an old remedy Consuela, the Richardson family cook, had used on her as a child. A warm glass of milk.
Only in her case, it had to be chocolate milk.
Glancing at John, apparently sound asleep under a pair of blankets on their couch, Anne silently padded into the kitchen, and as mutely as possible got out a glass, a spoon, and a tin of Nestle's Quik. Gingerly she opened up the fridge, flinching as her eyes snapped shut at the sudden light as she reached in and tugged out the milk jug.
Silently she added the powder to the glass, poured in the milk and stirred, then looked up at her microwave and frowned. No way was she going to be able to use it without the bell ringing and in the silent flat it would sound like a fire bell going off and she was loathe to wake her guest up.
She sighed, idly stirring the milk, contemplating warming it up the old fashioned way, but that involved finding the small pan in amongst the others and that too would produce noise. Hearing the sounds of John shifting on the couch she glanced his way.
"Warm milk?" he asked.
Anne started, looking at him in surprise as he reached up one hand to cradle behind his head, the other unconsciously smoothing the blanket across his stomach. "Did I wake you?" she whispered mortified.
"No, no no..." he reassured softly. "I was awake."
"I'm sorry!" she said in a hushed whisper.
"Don't be." He looked at her curiously. "Is that warm milk?" he asked.
Anne didn't reply right away, just pointing at her microwave. A nod from John and she proceeded to warm up her glass. "Chocolate. Want some?" she asked.
"Nahh," he drawled sleepily. "Can't sleep?" He asked.
Anne let out a soft snort. "Bad dream," she said waiting for the microwave to go off. "Sure I can't make you a glass? What woke you?"
"Bad dream, " he replied, shaking his head at her offer. The bell dinged, loud in the still flat, as Anne quickly put the milk away in the fridge. Grabbing her glass, she padded silently into the living room.
"You? A bad dream?" She asked quietly as she curled up like a cat in the loveseat across from him. She tucked the robe in demurely around her legs and settled back, holding the glass in both hands.
"Nightmares, yes," John replied, looking over at her. "Happen to the best of us."
Anne nodded. "Greg has had some doozies. You sure I didn't wake you?"
John smiled, unable to resist a picture of Lestrade shooting straight out of bed from a nightmare. He nodded his head. "You didn't wake me," he reassured then he studied her a moment. "You still having bad dreams about last year?"
"Yeah..." Anne admitted, then looked at him, she shrugged. "And Montana. You?"
He paused and she could see it all play across his face in the dimly lit confines of the flat.
"Don't answer that," she said quickly. "You don't have to. Of course, you would."
Sherlock's apparent suicide reared its ugly head yet again. Those closest to John Watson knew he had witnessed the entire event. They also knew of his deep reluctance to talk about it. Plus he was an army veteran, his wartime experiences no doubt often reared their ugly little heads in the deep and dark hours of the night.
"Is that how you cope?" he asked. "Warm chocolate milk?" It seemed absurd, a grown woman drinking warm milk to get back to sleep, but coming from Anne Lestrade, John somehow wasn't all that surprised.
"Consuela used to make it for me when I was a kid. Mexican cocoa, big dash of cinnamon mixed in. Started doing it again last year after all that business up in Whitby. Only it's Nestle's Quik. Can't get Abuela's over here." Her Americanism crept through.
"Does it work?"
Anne shrugged, sipping carefully, studying her guest. He was relaxed well enough, even to the point of having kicked off his shoes and socks. His bare feet poked out from under the edges of the blanket. He was idly toeing the armrest of the couch.
"Helps me get past the jitters I guess," she said softly.
He nodded, looking up at the ceiling. "Do they make any sense?" he asked.
Anne frowned, her gaze on the carpet but her thoughts inward. "Not really." She looked at him. "Do yours?"
John shook his head. "No. No sense at all."
The question was out before Anne realized it but what surprised her more was the reaction. "What doesn't make sense?" she asked him. She was about to retract the question when John sighed, frowning slightly, running his hand up his chest.
"That day. Things aren't adding up. It's been months now and they still don't make sense."
Anne froze in place, carefully watching him, taking refuge in her glass of warm milk. John glanced at her and smiled ruefully.
"It's okay," he said gently. "I don't mind."
"Only if you're sure?" She gave him the option of bowing out.
John smiled ruefully and nodded. "I've talked to Mike, you know?"
Anne nodded, Mike Stamford, a long-time friend of John's. He had been instrumental in introducing John to Sherlock as a potential flatmate.
"Sherlock lied when he said he'd researched me. I knew he was. Mike had never mentioned me to him. He hadn't seen me in years before we met that day. He didn't even know I'd been invalided out. He was shocked to see me for that matter. Sherlock couldn't have known I existed until Mike introduced us. He couldn't have researched me."
"No," Anne agreed, "Plus you've told us how he came to the wrong conclusion about your sister."
"If he had checked up on me he would have known I didn't have brother," John affirmed. "Sherlock was a good actor but he wasn't that good. He was irritated when he realized he'd drawn the wrong conclusion."
Anne smiled gently. "He was when he realized I wasn't having that so called affair with the PE teacher."
John snorted softly in remembrance. "Gets the details right..." he murmured.
"But not always the right conclusion," she finished for him, with a tiny smirk curling her lip. She paused a moment then said softly. "You don't have to answer this John, if it's too much."
He glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow in query.
"Could he... you know, could he still be alive somehow? I've heard stories about his brother and MI6?"
She saw the far away horror still lurking far back in his eyes, even in the darkened living room. The utter sense of loss and certainty. She was about to say something when he spoke.
"I took his pulse, Anne. There was nothing." Spoken so softly and so full of sadness. He remembered the huge pool of blood wetting Sherlock's head and the pavement. The total lack of sight in those inscrutable pale eyes. It had to have been instantaneous, the impact...
Almost involuntarily the smart of tears sprang into Anne's eyes.
"Even that didn't make sense," he said, seeing her reaction. Anne blinked, sipping milk and looking at him. He glanced at her. "I saw him. When he, you know, when he..." John paused, taking a breath. He still couldn't say it out loud. "He was perpendicular to the building. By all accounts he should have landed that way in the street."
Silence crept into the room again as John relieved the memory. "Then that idiot on the bike hit me."
Anne frowned, trying to get a sense of what John had seen that day. "Perpendicular?" she whispered, perplexed.
"Looking back he was parallel to the building on the pavement. At least that's what I can recall. That idiot hit me hard enough that I landed on my bad shoulder. Bounced my head off the road. Knocked me for a loop."
"Do you think the biker was involved somehow?" Anne started.
John just shook his head. "That doesn't make any sense either. Anyway by the time I started realizing what all had happened, that biker was long gone." A frown had appeared on John's face. Silence settled around them again.
"Sometimes, I have found," Anne said quietly, "we simply aren't meant to understand things. Look at my mother." She said in self-mockery. "Who knew she was capable of manipulating someone into killing for her? In a way I am not surprised that Randy pulled the trigger, but my own mom?"
John snorted softly. "I keep telling myself that, too. It certainly doesn't make any sense at all. Everything he said. He was keen on having me believe that he was lying all along and that everything had been invented. And he was even more keen on having me tell everyone that."
"See, I don't get that either," Anne said. "Sherlock loved pulling all the bits and pieces together and figuring out how they all fit. He was proud of that. Especially at how fast he could do it."
John nodded. In this tiny little haven of a flat, he knew the people around him didn't believe a word Sherlock had said in his supposed 'note'.
"Why do what he did and completely destroy his own reputation?" Anne murmured.
"I can't help but think he was trying to protect something, maybe even me, I don't know," John admitted with a shrug a hint of frustration in his voice. "I've no idea. We may never know now."
John had told Lestrade about the several assassins living around 221B in those final days leading up to Sherlock's death. Neither man hadn't mentioned that fact to Anne. John thought about them yet again and for the thousandth time wondered if Sherlock had been trying to protect those he considered close from further harm. Moriarty had certainly been devious enough to try and get everyone convinced that Sherlock had invented him. John wouldn't put it past him to try just about anything, having experienced his own personal brand of Moriarty's madness. That alone was the stuff of nightmares in and of itself. John knew, however, that Moriarty was real and that Mycroft Holmes knew that as well, even if the tight-lipped bastard wasn't saying a damn thing these days. John sighed. He had his own grievances with the elder Holmes.
"It all seems kinda out of whack, doesn't it?" Anne asked softly.
"Hmm?" John murmured, pulling himself out of his thoughts. He shook himself and glanced at Anne.
"This whole business with Sherlock. Something isn't sitting right about it besides everything that doesn't make sense."
"Yeah..." John agreed, then caught himself trying to stifle a yawn. "No matter how we try and fit all the pieces in."
Anne drained the last of her milk and sat up. "I think it worked."
"What?" John asked frowning and glancing at her.
"The chocolate milk. You were falling asleep on me there." Anne stood up.
"No I, " he started then looked at her in chagrin. "I'm not the one drinking it." John pointed out.
"But you were the one drifting off." She smiled and headed for the kitchen. "Go back to sleep John, I'll see you in the morning."
"It is the morning."
"Oh, funny man." She teased, setting her glass in the sink and heading for the bedroom.
"You're the one getting chocolate milk in the middle of the night."
"But you were falling asleep first."
John started to open his mouth in protest but Anne just grinned at him from the doorway.
"Good night, John!" she whispered at him as she turned the knob. She barely heard his soft snort of amusement.
He was still awake when he heard the click of the door shutting and he lay there a moment, listening to the sounds of the flat as a drowsy peace settled over him. He was struck by how easy it seemed to him to tell the little details of his life to Anne and how much of a struggle it had been to talk to his therapist. Then again he also knew his private sessions with his therapist had been efficiently, and ruthlessly, plundered by Mycroft Holmes at least once before. He simply didn't trust her anymore.
Lestrade and Anne were different. That and Anne was good at wheedling information out of him. He was ever grateful that she was an extraordinarily discreet creature, not to mention a fast friend. These two he trusted.
He sighed, feeling his shoulders relax, a faraway ache seeming to subside and drain away. For a moment he reflected on Anne's own turbulent past year or so, not blaming her one bit for having nightmares about her experiences. One positive result of those experiences were the repairs being made to the Lestrade's marriage. John carefully avoided the black hole of loneliness threatening to rise up inside of him. God knows he had dealt with that particular demon far too often in the past. He kept it firmly in check. Plus time had been passing and he was moving on, despite circumstances.
He let out another, longer more relaxing sigh, his eyes shutting and he could feel that pleasant lull of twilight sleep creeping up over him. He let himself succumb to the feeling and before too long he let himself fall back to sleep.