Don't You (Forget About Me)
Summary: Nothing really original. Just a somewhat angsty His Last Vow blurb.
(remove spaces in between the letters and symbols for all links)
Notes: Required background listening (put it on a loop if you're a slow reader like me): www. youtube watch ? v = UdHopftQD3A
Title inspired by the Simple Minds song: www. youtube watch ? v = CdqoNKCCt7A
Once upon a time we fell apart
You're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart
"You will look after him for me, won't you?"
Mary put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheeks "Don't worry. I'll keep him in trouble." she said lightly, and Sherlock did not fail to notice the heaviness underneath. He simply smiled at her and pulled back.
"That's my girl."
Sherlock turns to John and John nods at him in greeting, "Since this is likely to be the last conversation I'll have with John Watson..." he says, turning to his brother, "...would you mind if we took a moment?"
Mycroft looks a little startled but then glances over to the security man, signalling them away and leaves them alone. Sherlock turns to John, who smiles at him rather weakly, not quite meeting his eyes and nods.
"So, here we are." John exhales painfully, scrunching his eyes at the onslaught of the wind. He glimpses uncertainly around the airfield and clears his throat.
"William Sherlock Scott Holmes," Sherlock says when John steps closer.
"Sorry?"
"That's the whole of it – if you're looking for baby names."
"No, we've had a scan. We're pretty sure it's a girl" John chuckles without any real mirth.
"Oh." Sherlock replies softly, "Okay."
Unsure of what to do except to calm his tremendous heartbeats, John avoids looking at Sherlock, looking around awkwardly everywhere except at him for several moments. It is only when a vague fear of having said nothing seizes his insides, does he turn away from the airfield and looks at Sherlock, who, John notices, is as lost as him.
"Yeah. Actually, I can't think of a single thing to say."
Wrong. "Neither can I." He lifts his head as John steps closer still and speaks quietly, his words are measured and what Sherlock imagines to be heavy.
"The game is over" John murmurs.
Sherlock looked up, firmly meeting John's eyes for the first time since they'd been alone. "The game is never over, John... but there may be some new players now. It's okay. The East Wind takes us all in the end."
"What's that?" John asked, relieved to be able to temporarily focus on something other than the sharp pain that was spreading from his chest, parching his throat.
"It's a story my brother told me when we were kids. The East Wind – this terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path." He sniffs, feeling his eyes sting from the wind and looks into the distance." It seeks out the unworthy..." Sherlock faces John again, who is now looking at him intently, desperately trying to not think about the time they would have to say the final word. "... and plucks them from the Earth. That was generally me."
John huffs "Nice"
"He was a rubbish big brother."
At that they both smile, then John looks down, clearing his throat. Not ready to say the words yet, grasping for the real words to come to him. He wonders if Sherlock was feeling how he was feeling. Stuck underneath the water, trying to breathe through a straw. He wanted to say it, - he almost started to. Almost.
"So what about you, then? Where are you actually going now?"
"Some undercover work in Eastern Europe," Sherlock answered quickly, dismissively.
"For how long?"
Sherlock suddenly found the air above John's head to be extremely intriguing. "Six months, my brother estimates. He's never wrong." He attempted sounding casual.
"And then what?"
Oh, John.
Sherlock searches his face for a moment, meeting his obviously restrained gaze. He looks down thoughtfully, unable to answer for a while. Then he raises his head and gazes off into the distance again, offering a non-committal shrug in reply. "Who knows?"
John looks at his feet and at the tarmac and then at the colour of the jet, and then at Sherlock's feet, all the while breathing in deeply. Sherlock looks directly at John until he turns back and then Sherlock looks down swiftly, pressing his lips in an effort to keep them from trembling, he looks back up when he's ready.
"John, there's something ... I should say; I-I've meant to say always and then never have. Since it's unlikely we'll ever meet again, I might as well say it now."
John panics as a most grotesquely familiar sense of déjà vu creeps around his heart, spreading like ice-cold blood spilt on a slanting floor.
Sherlock hesitates for a long time, then draws in a deep breath and raises his eyes to John's. John is perfectly aware of where they were at that moment and what it looked like, he had never had more clarity of thought, he glanced at Sherlock, drawn by the sincerity in his eyes-which were so green right now, all he wanted to do - all he had to do was take that one step towards -
"Sherlock is actually a girl's name."
And John turns away, giggling almost silently, feeling a little hysterical, his body trembling with not just the waves of laughter. Sherlock simply smiles at him. John turns back, still smiling, he doesn't bother to keep his eyes from watering in the wind. This was it. He was going. Again. And there was nothing John could do to stop it.
"It's not," John said, shaking his head and frozen with incredulity.
"It was worth a try."
"We're not naming our daughter after you."
"I think it could work"
John chuckles instead of responding to Sherlock's blatant possessive. Sherlock does the same. Then meets his eyes, holding his gaze for what seems like a long, long time to John, stop, stop, stop, stop...is all John can pray to time for. But Sherlock lowers his eyes and after a beat, he takes off his right glove and holds out his hand.
The moment is gone.
"To the very best of times, John."
His voice is loud and John recognizes the roughness as mirroring the condition of his own dry mouth.
My dear, dear John.
John hesitates for a long while, he feels rather out of sync with all the time rushing past him while he sat unmoving like a stone - disintegrating...slowly.
When he finally takes Sherlock's hand and shakes it and John feels his chest tighten. They stand there for a couple of seconds, holding on to each other's hands. John tries frantically not to grip it any tighter and Sherlock keeps his larger hand wrapped unrelentingly, deliberately delaying the inevitable, then Sherlock gives John's hand one more small shake before releasing it and turning away, putting his glove back on as he starts to walk on.
John watches Sherlock till he reaches the steps to the jet door, he watches his shoulders tense in a moment of indecision and holds his breath, anticipating; but Sherlock doesn't turn around and John watches him as he climbs up the steps to get on board. John doesn't release his breath till the engines roar to life and Mary is by his side, whispering something he couldn't care less about.
"Sherlock-" Mycroft begins abruptly,
"No."
"Very well," Mycroft says at length, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. "Take care, Sherlock."
"I'm not made of porcelain, Mycroft," Sherlock says rolling his eyes but there are no edges in his words, "Won't just break." Mycroft smiles wanly in reply to that.
Mycroft sighed, lingering a little. "Perhaps next time."
"Don't count on it," Sherlock said, looking away from him.
Moments after Sherlock is seated, the jet plane door shuts quietly behind Mycroft—no ceremony there—and the plane begins to lift off the ground, is when he falls apart.
His face pressed into his hands, breathing ragged, and muscles stiffening under the strain of exercising superhuman effort for control. Between frantic breaths, he scoffs at his outburst—but there is none of his usual sharpness of self-criticism.
He sits like that for long moments, letting his heart slow down, then he slowly removes his hands from his face, curling one into a loose fist-the one that John had shaken-and unconsciously touching it to his lips before bringing it to rest under his chin. Sherlock then looks outside the utilitarian widow thinking—
John
"Can't you see what's going on?"
An easily missed crack in his voice as he whispers to the loneliness around him.
A/N: HLV transcript: arianedevere. livejournal (remove spaces in between the letters and symbols for all links)
Check out this URL to see the artwork that inspired this fic: ayana96. deviantart art / His-Last-Vow-Personal-Headcanon-713690508