Hello everyone! Just a short piece and depending on reviews a longer one next time. Please tell me if you want another one.
Much love!
...
Fated Ghosts.
Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.
It was supposed to be simple. Our reunion. My return back to Baker Street. John was supposed to be there, a little older and perhaps a little angrier. He was supposed to answer the door when I knocked because my key was misplaced. I wanted him to stare at me with surprise and awe and MISS me. I had calculated the exact moment when recognition would hit him and his eyes would light up. An affectionate man like John would hug me and I would let him because I needed to feel him breathe.
But Mrs Hudson opened the door to me instead and she frowned at me, like she didn't know me. I looked passed her into the hall and toward the staircase, it was empty. Confused, I turned back to my little landlady who looked a little duller and slightly weaker. Three years is a long time when there isn't a lot of years left. Her eyes were watering badly with the beginning of tears gripping to her lashes. A gnarled hand touched her lips in surprise and tapped against the thin flesh.
"S-Sherlock?" She whispered and shook her head. "Silly old lady, Sherlock's dead."
"Mrs Hudson, use your brain. I am alive and standing before you in the cold. Let me in, I need to see John." I dismissed her and brushed passed her.
My footsteps were familiar on the stairs, nine steps up and a silly hop to avoid the stair that screamed under pressure. John wasn't in the living room tapping away happily on his blog or blundering around the kitchen bemoaning our lack of milk.
"John!"
Mrs Hudson had caught up with me and kept trying to distract me with words that got lost in her gasping breaths and I didn't have time. I raced toward John's bedroom and flung open the door, fully intending on frightening my small friend. But he wasn't there. I paused in the doorway bewildered by the bed that hadn't been slept in and the slightly stale air to the room. There was a fine layering of dust on the desk and the curtains were drawn tight. John hadn't been in here for days, more likely weeks. I tried to ignore the nagging feeling in my mind when I realised it was fear. Fear was irrational and not needed in this situation; there was a perfectly logical reason even if I hadn't found it yet.
"JOHN!"
Mrs Hudson was still standing next to my old armchair when I burst back into the living room and sprinted toward my bedroom. My hand gripped around the handle and I prayed to a God that couldn't possibly exist that my friend was safe behind the wood. The door swung open and I knew he wasn't. My room was deathly silent and dark like a tomb. Here the air was thick with mould and disuse but under it all, I smelt John. But he wasn't here. I stood in the middle of the room and felt hopelessly lost and insecure. I didn't understand why John wasn't here; he had no reason not to be. This was his home. Our home.
"Sherlock?" Mrs Hudson questioned.
I span around to her and wanted her to solve the mystery because I couldn't. "Where's John?"
"Come sit down dear and we'll talk."
She was keeping secrets from me. One that kept her up late at night weeping into her pillow case. Something that should never had happened. It chased her when she slept and whispered to her when she was awake. Then I looked closer into her eyes and something dropped inside my chest.
Blame.
My sweet, old landlady blamed me for something I had done. To her? A friend? ...John?
Wildly I shook my head and gripped my shoulder tightly. "I want John."
Mrs Hudson sighed softly and rubbed her forehead in thought. When she looked up at me there were still tears in her eyes and hopelessness. Secrets were bad. People got hurt. Someone had.
"I know, love. Uhm...please sit down and I'll promise I'll tell you everything that's happened. Okay?"
Numbly I nodded and sat down where I was, there was no time for chairs. Mrs Hudson lowered herself onto my musty bed sheets and pressed her fingertips together.
"Sherlock, you've been gone a long time."
"Three years, two weeks and twenty minutes." I informed her.
"A long time." She reiterated softly. "There are a few things you need to know. John's sister Harry died about two months after you did...didn't."
What on earth was that feeling that tightened in my chest? Oh...concern, John taught me that one.
"John?" I tucked my knees under my chin and stared at her.
"He didn't take it too well as you can imagine. He was already pretty bad from losing you. He shut himself away from everyone and we thought we were going to lose him too. But one day he just bounced back and was John again. I honestly thought he was okay, maybe I should have sent him to get some help."
"John was getting help for PTSD. He didn't need more help." Not my John.
Mrs Hudson shook her head and clenched her fists. "He stopped going and refused to go back. But he was better and I didn't think he would go off the rails."
"Off the rails?"
"He kept a stash of cigarettes under that old skull and I came up one day and he was smoking. Imagine it, our Doctor Watson puffing away like a chimney, I was so surprised."
My teeth started to grind together and the lump in my throat tightened oddly."He smokes?"
"He gave that up as well. I was so proud of him."
I grabbed her hands tightly and wanted to rush her passed details of John's decay so I could fix him.
"Where is he?"
"Oh, Sherlock! That's the problem. No one knows."
I forgot how to breathe and how to think. I sat uncomprehending in a dark room and couldn't tear my eyes away from the bowed head of Mrs Hudson. She made silly sniffling noises and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
"What?"
"He left. About nine months ago. We can't find him. I'm sorry Sherlock."
She reached out to comfort me but I pulled away from her and hid away in our living room. A shrine, this room had become a shrine to me and later to John himself. My skull sat proudly on the windowsill and I could see the box of cigarettes through its teeth. The smiley face and bullet holes were still defacing one wall. John's laptop was resting on the table silently and I knew it hadn't been opened in months. Why hadn't John taken it with him? Why did he leave me?
I rummaged through my pockets and snatched up my new mobile phone. LeStrade's number was easy to remember even after all these years and I punched them hastily into the small machine.
"John?" LeStrade answered on the second ring, his voice frantic and hopeful.
"No, it's Sherlock." I corrected him.
"Sherlock? Funny, who is this? Tell me!" He was angry now, furious and I didn't fully know why.
"I am Sherlock Holmes. I demand to know where John is!"
"I don't know." Apparently he had decided to believe me and his words rushed out of him in a gasp. "I saw an unrecognised number and thought it was him. Oh god...no one knows. We haven't got a bloody clue. We simply got up one morning and he was gone."
"Didn't you look for him? For clues? Someone could have him hostage. They could be hurting him right now!"
"I know Sherlock! I've spent months looking for him."
"Look harder." I growled.
"I will. S-Sherlock, why are you back?"
"For John."
I hung up before he could reply and dropped the phone to the floor. Mrs Hudson tutted and picked it up and replaced it onto the table. How could John be gone? Without a word or a sign? John was loud and he was human and he didn't know how to disappear. Not like me. But what if he had learnt more from me than I thought he had?
If he had learnt to fade away into the crowds, how would I find him?
And what if he was lying hurt somewhere and we didn't know? Nine months is a long time to be kidnapped, there was no promise that John was even still breathing. It didn't make sense. I had come back for the stubborn blogger and he needed to be here. I fought to keep him safe from nightmares he shouldn't ever know about and he wasn't here to thank me.
Mrs Hudson patted my shoulder softly. "I'm glad you're alive, Sherlock. Somehow."
I didn't reply to her and she slipped away from me. The apartment was quiet in a way it shouldn't be. I wandered back into John's bedroom and flung open the curtains, welcoming the winter sunlight into the room. I needed John, wanted John near me and my feet made me move toward his wardrobe. All of John's stupidly large sweaters were still here, even the Christmas one that I had hated but hadn't told him. I dragged the familiar beige jumper toward me and buried my face in the scratchy wool. It still smelt faintly of him behind the mothballs and staleness. I tied the arms around my neck and methodically sorted through the boxes on the floor. One I opened was full of pictures, some of John as a child with a bright smile, Harry standing close by. Others of family members, birthdays and Christmases but one at the bottom caught my eye. It was me and John a few weeks before I had to leave and we were happy. John's eyes were gleaming and his lips were parted in unrestrained laughter. I was smiling and looking at John with a fondness I had never forgotten. This is how we were supposed to be, not separated from each other. John's Army tags were resting in a corner of the box and with terrifying certainty I understood.
John hadn't been kidnapped or stolen away from me. He had left me. He had moved away to start a new life where he could be someone else. That's why LeStrade couldn't find him; he was looking for a ghost. John Watson didn't exist. He had done exactly what I had and no one had noticed. His departure hadn't been as loud or as big as mine; he hadn't given the newspapers gossip or ripped hearts apart. His was as small as his size and he had left while the wound to my friends was still weeping and everyone was too numb to see. My John, always overlooked.
Gone. John.
Come back.
Who are you now? Are you still a Doctor? Are you in a war? Maybe a Captain again? Perhaps you're a husband and a father.
I missed you.
I'm sorry. Please, come home.
"Sherlock?" LeStrade was standing at the door with a panicked face and wild eyes.
Something dripped down my face and I touched my fingertips to it. Tears. John had made me that little bit human.
"John's not coming home anymore."
The photograph fell from my hands when I gripped my hair in despair and wailed.
Come home. I need you, my friend.