Condolences
Summary: John thinks of what he'll say to the Holmes parents when he meets them for the first time, at their son's funeral, of all places. Post-Reichenbach.
Even thinking hurts now, and he's thinking about how that could be, but that hurts too. The funeral is tomorrow and he can't sleep, but the nightmare of a falling body plays behind his eyes nonetheless. John wonders, vaguely, why everything in his life has suddenly become contradictory. Maybe, a little voice answers in his head, it's to replace the contradictory man that'll soon be buried six feet under.
It infuriates John that the stupid little voice sounds so much like him.
He won't cry tomorrow. He knows he won't, because there will be people around. He never could let go that way, not in front of anyone. Not even in front of –
Doesn't matter now.
Very little seems to, these days.
He can't help imagining what it will be like, tomorrow, sitting among mourners in a church for a God Sherlock didn't believe in. Most people there will barely have known Sherlock, and far fewer could claim to have understood him. There are only two people that John believes will grieve as much as he, because he has always heard that losing a child is the worst and truest pain one could know. He shudders to think that there could be anything worse than this clawing emptiness inside him, but assumes it must be true.
He's thought about Sherlock's parents a lot since it happened, for some reason. There was a time when he had such curiosity about the people who brought Sherlock Bloody Holmes into the world. Now he hardly cares about what they're like, and only cares about what they're going through and Christ, what he's going to say to them when he meets them for the first time, tomorrow of all days.
There's so much he'd like to say, so little he knows how to say, about their son. He can't bring himself to offer the usual platitudes, even if they'd be the easiest to give without breaking into a million pieces.
I'm so sorry for your loss is just so trite and lacking and means nothing, and he resolves never to utter that phrase again if he can help it. He's told too many patients' families in the past, and only now does he realize the extent of that cruelty. Empty words fitting of the suddenly gaping hole in their lives.
If there's anything I can do...there is nothing to be done, and certainly nothing he can do. He can barely keep himself together, can barely get out of bed these days, and bloody hell, isn't he pathetic?
In the end, the phrase that keeps coming back to him is simply, I loved him too. It makes a wry, bitter laugh come up from the depths of John's chest, and he's glad there's no one around in this new flat to hear it lest they think him crazy. But it is funny. Because is it any wonder people thought they were gay? It never mattered how platonic that love was, it was the love that they saw and gossiped about. If he could do it again, maybe he'd care less what other people thought. He'd let Sherlock know how much he cared – how much he loved him. How much he meant in the totality of John's life. He would tell Sherlock directly instead of giving lame condolences to his parents.
I was so alone before I knew you. (And now.)
You were a hero, Sherlock, even if you never wanted to be. (At least, you were mine.)
He imagines the scoff and the eye roll and the condescending mutters of sentiment, and it's utterly stupid that that should be comforting, but it is. Comforting enough to allow John to fall into a fitful asleep for almost a full hour before the nightmare (is it still considered a nightmare if it's in real life too?) wakes him up with the rising sun.
The funeral is every bit as awful as John expected it to be. Mycroft doesn't say a word to him but merely nods, and it takes every ounce of John's energy not to punch him in the face: for not being the Holmes brother he wants to see, for not taking better care of Sherlock, for giving Moriarty the weapons that would ultimately be Sherlock's downfall. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hudson is clutching his arm and the handkerchief she's using to blow her nose is an absolute lost cause. Molly won't look him in the eye, and in contrast, Greg is looking at him too hard – like he's just waiting for a sign to haul John away from any sharp objects in the vicinity.
Even if he's not crying, John knows he must look a real mess, to be given a look like that.
It's almost to distract himself from that thought that he begins to scan the crowd, bracing himself for the shock of familiar features on a different face. But there are no defined cheekbones, no carelessly curly locks to be found. There is no sign of Sherlock's parents at all; no one hovering near Mycroft or at the front of the church, and where else would they be? More than that, though, there is no one to be seen with the proper amount of grief. John is sure he could recognize them instantly, certain that their eyes would mirror his own with their emptiness, or that the heaviness of their limbs would give them away.
They didn't come, he's forced to conclude.
That's strange, he thinks, strange in an unsettling way that sticks into his skin. In another lifetime, he would have wondered about it in full, sought to know how it could be possible that two living, able-bodied parents didn't make it to their youngest son's funeral. He would have been absolutely hung up on the fact that it didn't make any sense.
But that was the past him, the old him, the John Watson that still looked for reasonable explanations. This John Watson is sitting at his best friend's funeral, and nothing has made sense since the day Sherlock fell. So instead of demanding an explanation from Mycroft or investigating in some other way, John writes off an unusual, telling absence as a mere relief.
He doesn't know what he would have said to them, anyway.