Broken Home

There wasn't a lot that Sherlock really thought that he was afraid of. Certain things unsettled him: the dark, when he was three and Mycroft told him stories of the east wind, a life without cases and the consequences to the lack thereof, being deprived of his senses or his smarts. But there wasn't a whole lot of that he was truly afraid of...

Well. There hadn't been, not until he met John Watson.

Because loathe as Sherlock was to admit it, he had dreaded this day even before he knew that it was going to be a certainty.

He tried not to listen to the preacher as he prattled on about life and death and God and things. He wasn't religious; he never had been and this probably wasn't the time to pick it up. Not only was it bad timing, he just didn't feel like putting the ambition into it. Honestly, he hadn't even wanted to come today, but he thought he ought to be there for Mary.

She'd been the one to tell him. Been the one to call. Been the one to hear a crash through the line as Sherlock had dropped his mobile and then been the one to show up at Baker Street when she couldn't get back through.

John had gotten in the middle of a random mugging. The gun had gone off.

Somewhere, Sherlock knew that he blamed himself, at least partially. John wouldn't have had such a fine sense of justice if he hadn't spent years with Sherlock. But then, the other, logical part reminded Sherlock that John had had a sense of justice even before he had met him, and he probably would have jumped into the middle of the mugging anyway.

It didn't deaden the blow, not even a little bit.

It hadn't been for a case. Sherlock hadn't been there. It was just John, John being John, and he'd stepped in to try and help and now Sherlock was at his funeral. Numb, with permanently red eyes and dark lines smudged under them from lack of sleep without nightmares, the ones where he'd wake up in a cold sweat with John's name on his lips. Pale and perpetually shaky, ready to wither away into nothingness. If the sentence weren't such a paradox in itself, he would have considered himself the physical manifestation of a ghost.

Mary gripped Sherlock's hand tightly, startling him out of his reverie. His vision blurred and the tears were back, but he dismissed them with a quick shake of the head, like trying to dislodge an irksome fly. They fell harmlessly onto his lap; he kept his eyes closed a second longer than strictly necessary to push the others back, and curled his fingers tightly around Mary's.

He didn't know how long they'd been there - it felt like hours - but his control was slipping away. Emotional turmoil and a lack of sleep and the press of humanity behind him at the funeral would have put him into blackest of moods had it not been someone he cared about in the casket.

They'd finish their little speech, their prayer, soon. Then, people would talk about John. Sherlock wasn't one of those people. Mary have never asked him if he wanted to, and Sherlock was just fine with that. He wasn't very good with public speaking, John knew that. And asking him to do it now was a train wreck waiting to happen. So he wasn't.

Then, they'd say their final goodbyes. They'd get in the hearse, drive to the cemetery, and lower the casket into the ground. Typical burial business.

Sherlock squeezed Mary's hand and then pulled away. People who knew him and even people who didn't immediately looked at him as he stood, but Sherlock ignored their gazes. He swept his coat tighter around his body and ghosted from the room, silent, but for once, not unseen.

The warm air blasting into his face, a stark contrast to the icy air conditioning indoors, seemed to Sherlock like it was taunting him. What a perfect day it might have been, under other circumstances. If John were here, spiritually, what they might have been doing. There might have even been a case today.

Mary didn't follow him outdoors. Sherlock hadn't expected her to. He didn't want her to. It was her husband's funeral. There wasn't a person on the face of the earth that she should miss that for.

He sank comfortably into a sitting position, the humidity of the day sinking past his thick wool coat that he hadn't wanted to go without, today of all days, and directly into his skin. He had been a combination of both hot and cold since Mary had told him days ago, a mixture of light and dark swirling beneath the surface.

Sherlock pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His forehead fell forward to rest on his knees and he closed his eyes.

He could instantly be taken back to the day he met John. He thought about it a lot, not that he'd admit that to anyone. Mostly over the two years he had been away, and in the past few days. His life had changed so much since then.

Death was part of his profession. He was used to it. But it was different when the tables were turned. Solving crime was always a fix, always feeding the addiction lurking beneath his veins, but there was little satisfaction in finding the murderer of your best friend. Or... maybe he just hadn't felt it yet. He hadn't felt anything when he'd found the guy two days ago and beat him half to death before Lestrade and Scotland Yard could pull him away from the bastard. Maybe the satisfaction would catch up. The sense of justice. Sherlock wasn't sure.

Never had he doubted his own mind more.

There were things that he could have done, things that he should have said when he got the chance. Saying it to a casket or a tombstone wouldn't bring closure. Not to him; he wasn't that type of person. So, he was doing what he did best: internalising. Internalising, and composing, in between throwing up and not sleeping and dying.

He tightened his grip around his knees.

There were some connections, friendships, relationships... The type of thing where one person just sort of belonged with the other. As if they made them whole, shattering the picture would spoil the beauty of both of the objects. Like one person dying and their lover dying barely months after them. Sherlock had never put much stock in them, but it was true. He knew it was true, now. Being on the receiving end of a crippling loss, he felt the aftershocks throughout his entire body. And it wasn't just... sadness. It was... it was more than that.

There was a proper time and place to die, Sherlock knew that. His place was Baker Street, and as for the proper time... He was on a spiral. He knew that. He accepted that. He had known that when John died, if he died before Sherlock, that he would be a mess. That accepting John's death might be harder than living - or not - with the consequences.

Besides, everyone knew that Sherlock Holmes wasn't Sherlock Holmes without John Watson at his side.

No one would be surprised if he ended up dead, twenty-four hours from now, lethal amounts of drugs in his blood.

But there was Mary. And what would Mary do, when she was suddenly alone, without John and without Sherlock, the two men she'd been calling her real friends in her made-up world. It would ruin her more than just John's death, and wasn't that a depressing thought?

A hand on his shoulder made him startle; he hadn't heard anyone coming up behind him. When he looked back, there was Mary, smiling weakly.

Sherlock swallowed back the lump in his throat. "Mary. What are you doing?"

"Checking on you," she said, sitting down next to him. "Someone has to, now that John can't."

Sherlock bit his lip to stop it from trembling. He always thought the wobbly lower lip was a stupid exaggeration - puppy dog eyes and trembling lips - but he was a trembling mess in general. He was pretty sure the tears were a good enough example of that, but every breath pointed to it.

"Live, Sherlock," Mary whispered. "For him."

Sherlock clenched his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. Everything was a push over the abyss in his mind and heart. Everything hurt. He swallowed again. The words got lodged in his throat. He took a deep breath. "I'm not sure how," he admitted.

Mary was the one to put her arm around his shoulders this time.

Sherlock did something he hadn't done since he was a kid: leaned into the embrace. He kept his eyes closed. "John made me human," he said shortly. "John was..."

"One half of your whole?" Mary said quietly, and Sherlock made himself assent with a nod. "I know, Sherlock. He had a special place in his heart for you. And you... You helped to make him, too, Sherlock. You helped shape him into the person I fell in love with."

Sherlock swallowed again, swallowing back the lump with a noise that he wasn't even aware that he could humanly make. "Fuck, Mary, I loved him, too."

"I know, love." She pulled him closer; Sherlock twisted around to wrap his arms around her shoulders and bury his face against her neck.

"He was more important than family. His life was worth more than I value my own," Sherlock muttered.

"I know, I know. He knew," Mary said quietly. "He felt the same, Sherlock. But he wouldn't want this. Wouldn't want you to waste away."

He was crying again. He didn't know when it had started or even if it had stopped, but at least the gut-wrenched sobs had already been exhausted from the past few days. "But... if he felt the same... and you, too..." He rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. "You'd both know... I can't do this without him."

"And he'd say... 'You're Sherlock Holmes. Of course you can'."

Sherlock huffed a weak, watery laugh. "He'd probably tell me to get off my arse and get back to my cases."

"Probably," Mary said. It sounded like she was having the same little humoured-in-the-stages-of-grief moment. There was a smile in her voice, but it wasn't a happy one.

"Ah..." Sherlock sniffed, raising his trembling fingers to rub his eyes. "I'll try... although I'm not making promises."

"I'll be there with you."

Sherlock laughed again. "Mary... aren't I supposed to be saying this to you?"

"No," Mary said, drawing her fingers through his hair. "That's not how our family has ever worked."

Our family.

Sherlock swallowed and pulled back. He put his hands on either side of Mary's face and kissed her forehead. "I'll be there as long as I can. For you. And for him. I swore I'd be there for both of you... as long as I can," he murmured, closing his eyes again.

Mary sighed, resting her forehead against his. "Don't shoulder everything yourself, and don't shoulder it alone."

Sherlock smiled. "No... with you two, I've never had to."

After spending the day crying to myself with no apparent reason than to make myself feel worse, I decided to work on this story since I was in that sort of headspace. Started writing this ages ago... I like playing with the idea of their deaths, separately or together, because it makes for heavy, emotional writing. Of course, heavy, emotional writing is hard to write, which is why it's been sitting unfinished for a long time. (And partially because I think Sherlock wouldn't last without John, but I didn't want it to sound like he'd just give up, either, what with Mary still being around.)

I do not own Sherlock. Thanks for reading!