The Eyes Have It

Reichenbach Fall moment in time character study. Sherlock Rate T for action reaction and suicide (ish)

My eyes are my curse. Sometimes I look at them in the bathroom mirror and they look right back at me as if they are someone else's eyes looking at a stranger. Or my eyes are seeing what I see and then seeing further, deeper, and right back into my soul.

And that is when I think I would prefer to be blind. Had been born blind. Because I see…..too much.

I always have done. I don't know how …not…..to see. Even as a child I remember people telling me: 'You see too much.' Yet it was never said as a compliment, nor seen as a talent, even then. Just another criticism, another problem, another part of my disability.

My parents, my elder brother, relations, family friends, teachers, fellow scholars (No, I won't say schoolmates. Schoolmates? Me? Such a 'chummy' little phrase would be a lie. Surely you know that?) Always the same complaint. 'You see too much' Whinge, protest, insult, whatever. But always there was the essence of my problem, my failure.

And yet, of course, no-one ever told me how, or taught me how, to stop my seeing. So I never knew how to stop on my own. Because that started to define me. Seeing was - is - me. It is how I have always been. And then somehow as I got older it became too late to learn how to stop.

Seeing too much became not just how I saw, but it became my character, my thought process, my engine. Became who I am and what I am and what I do.

For as long as I can remember I have always been able to see. Not just looking, because looking - observing - is the simple bit. I mean being able to see - everything. Problems and their solutions. To read character at first sight. To see what people lack within themselves - and what they want. To see the rare, the special, the different, the dangerous. The lie, the lure, the illegal and the illicit.

I see the grit on the lens, the skull under the skin, the fly in the ointment. I see the fatal flaw, the finite mistake, the final problem. I can refine my sight, but I cannot deny it. Sometimes I wish I could stop doing this, especially as I get older and understand all the implications and the dangers of the clarity of my vision, the results and repercussions of what I have to do just because I can see. Especially when it is things other people do not, or cannot, or do not want to, see for themselves.

You cannot stop your eyes looking, that's the trouble. How can you not see? How can you stop seeing? Unless you want to stumble blindly in the dark with every step you take, depending upon other people to do your seeing for you. That's how other people are, isn't it? How most people live, blundering from one day to another?

I can't do that. Nor do I have - people - to help me, I don't really have family, or friends. I am myself alone.

So I look at myself in the mirror, and my eyes look back at me. They are nothing special, my eyes. Well, I don't think so. They look fairly ordinary eyes to me. Not big or beautiful or alluring, whatever that means. No luscious long lashes fanning my cheek, nothing as sentimental as that.

They are a bit aslant, but that is not unusual. Greyish, blueish greenish eyes with a technical something called heterochromia iridisis; sounds posh and a bit special, but just means the colour mix is a bit unusual.

Oh, and I have a brown fleck on the right iris you would see if you look closely; but no-one gets to look closely, not even you. Take my word on that. If you got close enough to see into my eyes then you might think my eyes are uniquely recognisable. But that is no-one's business but mine. A bit not good, as they say. So stay back.

From the outside looking in, I suppose other people would only see that one difference. From the inside, I see all the others.

They do look just like ordinary eyes. My eyes don't flash or sparkle, nor attract and charm. They are not X ray eyes with super powers. I am not a character in a comic book, I am just a man who schools his eyes and his face to stillness because through them I see too much into the hearts and souls of other people. Whether I want to or not.

I see and read people. I do not allow them to see or read me.

So I keep my face and eyes guarded, always have done. Unless my eyes are working for me, that is - laughing, frowning, charming, contracting, chilling. Even crying. Whatever is needed at the time to solve the problem, get the right result. The ends justify the means. That is what my eyes are best for. Seeing all, deceiving when necessary, and doing their job. My job.

Eyes are the windows of the soul, they say, and certainly those windows are transparent in everyone I see. Although that is not true when other people see me. My windows are safely shuttered. No-one sees in. Well, only….no. Not anyone now.

My eyes gave me my career. My skill. My life My reputation. My eyes led me to my death. Even though it wasn't meant to be like that.

My eyes were finally a force for good - everyone said so. Because I looked, and saw, and observed, and deduced from what I saw. I solved puzzles other people couldn't. I delivered honesty and truth and closure. It wasn't a trick. It was - is - just a talent, honed and developed and pushed to limits other people could not, or dare not, take their own eyes and talents to.

The puzzles became darker, deeper, more dangerous. And so did I. And before I knew it I was in too deep to stop, while my eyes saw more and more.

Justice, morality, honesty. Someone has to stand up for that. Not quite sure how it turned out to be me. Except that when you are slaying dragons, chasing pirates, winning your spurs and riding the range it is best to do it on your own. And I have always been alone.

Except when John came into my life. That was an accident, pure and simple. I needed a flatmate. An acquaintance had a friend who also needed a flatmate. A done deal.

He was the opposite of me in every way. Short, blond, tough, dependable. Honest and moral and kind But regardless of that ….I also needed an assistant. I wasn't expecting it to be him. But he was a doctor and a soldier and good at other stuff too. Stuff that was beyond me. Laughing, shopping, cooking pasta, paperwork. I never had any ability or inclination for all that ordinary stuff.

Because John was ordinary. That was his special talent. Except for his even rarer talent for putting up with me. Oh. And saving my life. Did I tell you he saved my life? So many times, in so many ways.

And he even seemed to understand me. I never had to explain myself or apologise for myself with John. With John I laughed and relaxed and let my eyes take a rest sometimes. Which was when it started to go wrong. I should never have let him into my soul and behind my eyes, I should never have relaxed.

Relaxing is making the space in your life for awful things to happen, when danger slips past you. Even when you plan, and strive and sacrifice to ensure that it doesn't.

Well, I had to sacrifice. I should never have let John, or Lestrade or Mrs Hudson get under my skin, let any of them try to find the place where my heart was supposed to be. But they were - are - more important than me. Better people. So they sort of crept their way in without me noticing them do it. Because I suppose I am just human, like everyone else. In the final analysis, dammit.

So I had to thrown myself off that roof to save the lives of all three of them. That was the deal Moriarty demanded of me. Three good lives saved as opposed to one miserable life sacrificed. That was the pragmatic, sensible decision to make, wasn't it? The right odds. Me or them. I was OK with that, it made sense then. It still makes sense.

But I couldn't just die. I had too much to do. Put the world to rights for John and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson, for a start. Make sure they were safe, not suffering because of me; because of knowing me and even caring for me. Why should they have to suffer for that? I am only me, not worthy of their sacrifice. But I was responsible for them because of that human weakness in them.

And I also had to solve the crimes, settle the problems, put right the rest of the world Moriarty had knocked sideways in his pursuit of me. No pressure, then.

So we came up with a plan, my brother and I, to save John and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson - Oh - and save me at the same time. The only way there was to get things done, wrongs righted.

Of course I had to die. Well, appear to die. It was the hardest thing. No, no, not pulling off the deception of that. Doing that was just a trick, a magic trick. Abracadabra and Sherlock disappears! Drum roll! Lights, action….oh yes, the action.

So finally the hardest thing was to just fool Lestrade and Mrs Hudson and the rest of the world - and John especially -convince all of them that I had died.

I played the trick, made the jump, took the fall, and I lived. But to make that work I also laid myself down on a cold wet pavement and played dead. With blood on my face, a squash ball under my armpit to stop the pulse for that vital moment, and with my heart in my mouth. So I might as well have really been dead. As good as dead.

But it was only acting and totally winning and the prize was life or death. Not death or glory. But death or disaster. No stakes could have been higher. I've done that sort of thing before. More than once. It should have been easy.

Which was when my awful and all seeing eyes, the eyes I have loathed and loved and lived with all my life, came into their own.

Because when they needed to do their job, to look dead, to fool the most important person of all to see me die, my eyes did not let me down.

As I lay on that pavement playing dead, surrounded by so many passers-by, and the few who were in on the trick, the one person who was moved the most, could have seen the most, needed to be fooled the most, and would hurt the most, was there at my side.

He should not have been there. I had decoyed him away, into thinking Mrs Hudson was dying and that he needed to be by her side. I made him go to her, that humane doctor, driven away by my coldness and indifference.

'I am alone. Alone protects me' I told him coldly. We had words. He called me a machine. Quite true, John. An insult to me, from you. But also a compliment from you, to me. For I was a machine in my cold determination to get you clear of me, of Moriarty, of our pact that would end in the death or betrayal of one of us. Me being alone was to protect you, not me. And thank God you never realised. Just strode off in high temper without a backward glance.

But he is a hero, John Watson, and not stupid. As soon as he got to Baker Street and saw our landlady up and about and perfectly healthy…he realised I had tricked him, and rushed back to Bart's….and was unexpectedly here to watch me die.

I couldn't bear it. It could have upset all our plans, led to three deaths that were not my own. So I had to talk to him on the telephone, prepare him for the fall. And then he had to watch me jump. There is always a spanner ready to be thrown in the works, something corrupting the machine, however carefully things are planned. Everyone needs a contingency plan. But I had not got one to deal with John..

I have not cried like that since I was a child. I stood on the rooftop, blinded with tears, feeling them dripping off my chin. Uncontrolled, inelegant. Crying so hard my all seeing eyes could not see for once. But at least they could not see the ground and my landing place like that. Could not see John in all his horror.

Frustrating, all that, very true, but we could not have our meticulous planning thwarted.

And that was the only reason I was crying. I was just a bit stressed at having to change plans on the wing, that's all.

"He's my friend ….let me….he's my friend…Sherlock. Oh God, oh no…." I can still hear the grief in his voice, the tears and the shock in his words.

The air bag was spirited away, as well as the corpse that had flown and landed on the cold grey pavement in my stead. My face now was cold on the wet ground, and the unit of blood that had been lifted from Bart's blood bank and squirted over my face, my eyes, into my nose and mouth and ears, and tasted sweet and acrid and metallic and nearly made me gag.

That was bad enough, believe me. But that wasn't when I needed all the strength of purpose and detachment I could muster. Although at that time I thought it was.

The worst moment of all was seconds later when John Watson pushed through the crowd of people around me, dropped to his knees in the rain beside me, took my hand in his, put his fingers on my dead pulse, and looked into my eyes. My dead eyes. My dead eyes that were still alive, genuinely really alive and seeing everything, and still saw everything. But had to stay dead.

I saw his pain, and his tears, and his overwhelming grief. His grief for me. Me! No-one had ever cried for me before. And I found I couldn't bear that. I was crumbling, breaking apart, dying inside. I had never felt like that before, responding to someone's genuine, heartfelt grief. Because I had never imagined anyone feeling grief for me.

People say I am without emotion. I say I am without emotion. I am proud of that deficiency in me. But experiencing this was still…..something I do not want to describe.

I so much wanted to blink, show him I wasn't dead. But would he have the sense and detachment to realise what I had done was a ruse - that he needed to keep acting out his grief to save his life? Or would he leap up shouting 'eureka!' and rejoice that I had survived and destroy everything and condemn himself and others to death? I could not risk it.

I wanted to reach out and comfort him, roll my wrist, the wrist that was in his hand, over towards him and grasp his fingers reassuringly in mine. Tell him I was alive, breathing, not dead. That it was just a trick, John, a magic trick. Laugh and tell him it was a plan, John, just another of my plans.

But I could not do that. The game was on, and I could not stop it. We were all being watched by dangerous men. Guns were being pointed at heads as I lay there playing dead with such purpose. There was more at stake here than John's pain. There was his very survival. Lestrade's. Mrs Hudson's…perhaps Molly's and Mycroft's and Mike's, too….who knows who could or would be taken down when dealing with the plans of a maniac like Moriarty? People would die just because they knew me. I could not let that happen. Could I?

So. When I needed them most, my eyes did not let me down. They remained unblinking and expressionless. My dead cold eyes, the windows of my dead cold soul that had to become mirrors and reflect light back, not be windows and allow John - anyone - to look in.

I might just as well be dead anyway if John Watson thought I was dead, I suddenly realised. But I was already dead. People had seen me jump and fall and land and die. So I would have to be dead and stay dead. Dead to John from now on. Dead to them all.

But that was fine. Because John would stay alive now, and so would Greg and Martha. That was enough. Enough achieved by my life ending to justify what I was doing by dying.

Someone finally prised John's hand from my wrist, another woman turned him away from looking at me. Ah, common humanity. Because if those two passerbys had not taken pity on John at that moment - my living, breathing, hurting John - I don't know if I could have gone on with the charade.

Remained motionless, kept my face still and dead, not blinked as I yearned to under his fierce, desperate scrutiny, and just….give the game away. Pushed past the limit of even my unyielding endurance and determination. I might even have cried - proper honest tears of pain for my friend and the damage I had inflicted upon him. And pity for his pity.

But that moment of weak humanity passed and my iron self control held. Well, I have had years of practise at that. So I stayed dead.

I was scooped up and dumped unceremoniously onto a trolley and wheeled into Bart's and away, leaving John behind me and in tears on the pavement. A final glimpse of his grey face, the blood on the pavement he thought was mine.

His eyes were betraying him, I saw. Tears flowed unheeded from those honest blue eyes and down his face. My eyes had stayed dry and cold and unblinking. Dead to the world and it's emotions. As always.

Like I said before, my eyes are a curse. I wish I had been born blind and then I would never have seen into John Watson's eyes and soul and realised that he loved me and grieved for me. When no-one else had ever loved me.

And in that moment I was suddenly as dead to myself as I was to the rest of the world. But mainly dead to John.

Because whatever I do now I cannot forget the look on his face. No point in wishing I was blind. It's too late now. I have seen.

And because I have seen, and have finally understood, I know I am not, and have never been, worthy of that good man's grief. And I wish my eyes would only look outwards, not inwards as they do now. Because every time I close my eyes that image of John returns as if it has been branded on the insides of my eyelids.

John is a wise and pragmatic man. He will recover from this and move on. Instead of mad adventures with a high functioning sociopath he will be a good doctor once more, do what other people, normal people, do - buy a house, get married and have children.

Be happy with the future I hope I have given you, John.

Goodbye and good luck John. Forget me and have a good life. See where life leads you from here and relish every minute of it. Eyes forward, John. Look well to this day, John, for it is life. Look. See and observe. I hope I taught you well. And be glad your eyes were never mine.

END