Seventeen Steps
By BornofStarlight
Words: 500
Posted this on my tumblr (blame-my-muses) a while back, but now you can read it here, too. :) I don't own Sherlock, and am in no way affiliated with its actors or writers, unless you count that one trip back in time to hang out with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...
JWSHJWSH
There are seventeen steps to the second floor flat of 221B Baker Street. Your foot is stuck on the first.
It's a short flight—always has been, even when you were depending on your cane—but now, looking up it gives you a feeling of vertigo. Too many feelings at once, all swirling, like your stomach has just dropped out through your feet, and like something has a vice around your heart, squeezing, and you can't breathe.
You want to ascend those steps. You want to go upstairs, throw yourself into your usual chair, only to find he's gone and saturated the fabric with chemicals again—some sort of "experiment" he'll say—and have to get up again to blog about the inconvenience. You want to open up the refrigerator for dinner, only to find there's nothing edible in there, only bits of dead people, being carefully observed in their glass jars. You want him to receive a phone call and drag you out the door as he swirls himself into his coat.
Instead, you lean against the wall, and can't bring yourself to go up that flight.
The empty flat will make it all real. You'll be forced to acknowledge that he's really, truly gone. Admitting that, you think, would kill you.
There are seventeen steps to the second floor flat, and for the first time in your life, you are afraid of something that makes no sense. You're in no physical danger, no one has a gun to your head, or a bomb strapped to your chest, yet your hand is shaking, and you have to clutch it into a fist convulsively.
You lean against the wall, and remember when he was leaning next to you, both of you laughing and out of breath. You close your eyes and wish for that moment back, so that you could have said to him just how much his friendship really meant. It doesn't happen. He doesn't come through the door, doesn't look at you like you're daft for thinking he'd ever do anything so stupid as jump off a building.
You take a shuddering, gasping breath. You will get past this, you tell yourself. You've lost people before, after all, in Afghanistan, as a doctor. You can move past the burning empty place in your chest, you just need a cup of strong tea, or to get back to working in the real world, not the adventure-story-whirlwind world that Sherlock belonged to—had belonged to.
Your hand shakes again, and you clutch at the handrail until it stops. You put your left foot up on the first stair, and try to tell yourself that everything will be all right. You'll learn how to cope—grieving is a step-by-step process, unique for everyone—and you know you'll be safer without him, without his experiments, cases...
You can't put your foot on the next.
There are seventeen steps to the second floor flat of Number 221B Baker Street, and you can't bring yourself to move past the first.