AN: good morning everyone aaaand...I'm back with a new story! I wrote it down as a sort of a challenge, because I wanted to write something very dark and angsty and I don't really know if I'm any good at it... so here it's my try! I know it's not the most original subject for a fanfiction, but I felt like it was worth giving a try anyway :) Let's hope it's not that messy!
I hope you all are going to enjoy it and, even if you don't, drop a line telling me what do you think!
Gently reminder: I'm not British and it's not betaed (actually I'm my own beta reader) so...read at your own risk!
As always: reviews highly loved, really! You know I love every single word you write to me, the warm my heart!
All the rights to BBC, all the fun to me!
It wasn't going well at all for John Watson.
Sherlock had died eleven months before and he was now alone in his grief. Everyone around him seemed to have finally accepted Sherlock's death and moved on with their lives. They told John to do the same, that there was no point in lingering in sorrow. But how could he just let it go? He couldn't.
He had just spent another sleepless night, eyes fixed on the ceiling, his pain torturing him slowly, but steadily. He knew it would have been another awful day.
At seven o'clock a.m. he took his mobile and called the clinic.
"Hello?", answered the familiar voice of his secretary.
"I'm not coming today.", John said.
"John,", she said caringly "you can't…"
"I'm not coming today.", he repeated.
And closed the call.
It wasn't the first time he didn't go to the clinic. His secretary and all the staff knew that some days he couldn't just manage it. The problem was that, lately, he was finding it unbelievably hard to work. That had led to some quarrelling with the administrator of the structure who, one week before, had told him that he couldn't go on that way and expect to not being fired soon or later. But John didn't care. He didn't care for everything at all. Fuck the whole world.
He sat on the bed, hugging his knees with his arms, head resting on them. The light of the day was slowly seeping through the curtains of the window and he wished desperately for the sun to not rise that day. He desired an eternal night, embracing him, caressing him, making him oblivious of what was going on inside him. But one couldn't stop the sun from rising. He lay down on his belly on the bed and hid his head under the pillow, silently crying his tears of sorrow.
He stayed motionless in that position for an undefined time. They could've been minutes or hours, even days. His whole body was aching with pain, so much he would have wanted to scream. Yet the voice failed to come out from his throat, tears suffocating it.
He heard Mrs. Hudson climbing upstairs. She had been very nice with him, she had tried to help him when he was in that state. But no one could've helped him
"John?", she said softly "You haven't gone to work. Is all ok?"
He squeezed the pillow more around his ears. He didn't want to listen to Mrs. Hudson voice. He didn't want her to ask if it was all ok, knowing she knew there wasn't anything ok at all. She waited at the door for an answer that didn't come.
"John, I know it's hard.", she said.
No, she didn't, answered John in his head.
"But you have to go on with your life, you just can't…"
Why, why, why and then why again? Why didn't she just shut up and go away?
"…stay there the whole day, Sherlock…"
DON'T SAY THAT NAME, John's head yelled, shouted, cried. Yet no sound escaped his mouth.
"…wouldn't have wanted this for you…"
Yes, obviously he wouldn't have wanted it. And yet he had thrown himself down Bart's roof. So there was no point in saying that to him. If the detective hadn't wanted it to happen, then he should've just not thrown himself down.
"Sherlock…"
DON'T SAY THAT NAME.
"…would've wanted you to be happy…"
Then he shouldn't have done that. Stop.
"I don't want to hear this anymore!", he finally shouted "Just leave me, alone!"
Mrs. Hudson began to articulate something, but stopped and descended downstairs.
John returned in the comfortable, deep silence of his room.
Sherlock wasn't a name that could've been easily pronounced in front of John. All his friends had to face that. Because every time that name was pronounced, it had reduced John into a mass of shivering flesh, barely able to walk, talk or even think. No, that wasn't quite true. Thinking was always with him. When everything else around him had ceased to exist only two things had remained with him: thought and pain. The more the thoughts, the more the pain. For all of them concentrated only on one single subject: Sherlock's death.
He had tried to drive them away. He had tried to keep on as nothing has happened. He had tried to readjust to his normal life. Nothing had worked. Life without Sherlock wasn't life at all. He buried his head deeper in the mattress below, almost trying to choke himself.
Some other time passed. He could feel his heartbeat echoing loud on the bed, the noises of the street outside muffled by the pillow. The dark, the silence were protecting him, but not enough. His head was giving him the same old images, the ones so carved in his mind he could almost trace their trails with his fingers.
He was seeing Sherlock, obviously. Sherlock on Bart's rooftop. He was hearing his note to him, every single torturing word. He was hearing himself screaming the other man's name. Except this time he let it out loud, filling the room, resounding in his brain, leaving him breathless.
Rushing steps on the stairs.
"John!", Mrs. Hudson shouted, about to enter the room.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!", he shouted, but pleadingly.
"John…", she said again, letting out a sigh.
Steps going downstairs. John took a deep breath, emerged from his pillow refuge and turned on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. It hurt. It painfully, desperately hurt. He took another deep breath. Tears had dried on his face and now his skin was itching for the salt. He enjoyed the little pain it was causing to him. He buried himself into it, knowing it would help him rest his head for a while, before the second wave of pain would hit him harder than the first. He waited for it to attack, sobbing slowly. And it did.
Few minutes later his whole body was agonising in pain, the heart in his chest was about to explode, or so it seemed, his head hurting so much he could barely keep his eyes open. He started to cry inconsolably, at first he was sobbing, then crying, but in the end he was screaming in torment. The never-ending torment of living.
He bit his left shoulders fiercely, almost wanting to tear off his flesh from the bones, wanting to feel the taste of blood, wanting to feel the physical pain of it, desiring the gesture to drive his inner torture away. He stopped only when he could clearly see his teeth's purple marks on his skin. He abandoned himself in the sensation, while his last tears left his eyes.
He felt dried, but somehow lucid. His head was heavy and aching, but his thoughts seemed sharper. He stood up, trying to not fall on the floor for his legs didn't seem to be able to respond at his will to move. He took some deeper breaths until he managed to move three steps in the room. He thus reached the drawer to the other side of the bedroom and opened it. The so familiar orange cylinder of his sleeping pills in front of his eyes. He took it and put it in his pocket. He glanced at his alarm clock. Midday. It was all ok.
He went downstairs, still fighting a bit to keep himself upright and therefore to not fall on the floor, the stairs squeaking under his steps. He was opening the front door to go out, when the familiar voice of Mrs. Hudson called him.
"John! Where are you going now?"
He didn't answer and slammed the door behind him.
He roamed for a while, almost unaware of his legs moving and of the world existing around him, but knowing exactly where his head was leading him. After thirty minutes of walking he reached the old pub he had always gone to when he had needed some comfort.
He had chosen that one because he had memories of it with Sherlock. They had gone out drinking there once. It had been for a case, actually, not really a drinking evening with a friend. But it's atmosphere was quite cosy and even Sherlock had let himself go a bit that evening. He had laughed and joked with John, he had proved his infallible deducting skills to him, he had made John's head go in heaven. So he went there for the happy memories it preserved.
"A beer", he muttered to the bartender.
The man served it in no time. He went to the table where he and his friend had sat months ago. He sunk into the comfortable sofa and drank his pint in the blink of an eye. He ordered some others before the happy memories of Sherlock in that pub were replaced by the sad ones. Barely able to walk, he paid and stepped out. Two o'clock.
His head was spinning fast while he was walking, his heart engulfed in grief one more time. He walked for what seemed hours to him, until his legs couldn't sustain him anymore. He thus reached a park nearby and lay on a bench. He looked up to the drifting clouds in the sky, blown by the wind. The image of that peace over him making his heart ache a little more. He got up once again and crawled to another pub, drank some other beers and left. The pain wasn't giving him rest at all that day. The other times he had drunk until his head had felt so light he had forgotten all his sorrows, this time the more he drank, the more it struck him deeper and deeper.
He needed to make it stop. He desperately needed to make it stop. He entered a small store and bought the largest bottle of whiskey, then went back to the park's bench. He sat on it and extracted the pills from his pocket. The whole cylinder was gone in no time in his mouth, down to his stomach. The same happened with the whiskey. He wanted the pain to stop. He wished for it to stop. He pleaded and screamed, while tears were running again on his cheeks. Life without Sherlock was despair.
He didn't want a life without Sherlock.
He realised that it was the only way.
He didn't want to live anymore.
He let himself drown in the oblivion.
Happily.
He was going to meet Sherlock after all.
It was all ok.
AN pt.2: I loved playing with this fanfic in another way. After I wrote every chapter, I had to give them a title and I decided to find the title from songs that, in my opinion, fitted with the main topic of the chapter. It was a hard and challenging work, but I found it really rewarding. So I'd like you playing with every chapter too by telling me what's, in your opinion, the song that fits the chapter.
In this case mine is: Endless Sacrifice by Dream Theater.
What's yours? :)