You sit in the downstairs with Mrs. Hudson. The mug cupped between your hands is warm and smells faintly of chamomile. She raises her eyebrows – painted on, you note – and you cough to fill the silence. That's the trouble really; you both know there ought to be noise coming from the upstairs flat. But there isn't. No conversation, or clattering of pots; no whistle of the kettle or clanking of God knows what; no ambience from the television, and certainly no violin. Not even any footsteps.
"He says he's quite fine, you know," she tells you with pursed lips, and you nod, though neither of you believe it.
"It's Sherlock, you know, so I suppose…" She doesn't finish, thinking better of it. She tuts. "Well, never could tell what went on in that funny old head of his."
You thank her for the tea.
You do not follow her advice and instead mount the stairs to the upstairs flat. The silence pants behind you, following you like a dog. The place looks utterly untouched. It smells of rot: rotting food, rotting chemicals, an entire life left to rot in the dust of another's belongings.
You call out but no one answers. Disdainfully you pick your way through the mess. A cold cup of tea has congealed on a small table beside a chair. Old laundry sits unfolded in a basket on the breakfast table, along with a plate of moldy bread. You can't even see the tabletop under all the unsorted rubbish.
"Leave." He appears as a tall, dark silhouette in the door and you turn, unsurprised to find him lurking about. You are only surprised that he has acknowledged you at all. You raise an eyebrow at him and the reprimand comes to your lips before you can stop yourself.
"Really, Sherlock, I don't see how one event can cause you to completely forget how to wash and dress yourself." The clothes and hair resemble the apartment – festering and forgotten: a random act of preservation that has backfired and crumbled into ruin in the aftermath. His lips tighten into a thin line as he draws himself up.
"Get out of my flat."
He tells you to stop following, but you have always considered it your brotherly duty to disregard his wishes. Besides, from the looks of things, you hardly trust him on his own. Your sleek black car stalks his taxi through the streets. It is almost enough to make you feel like a predator, hunting after a creature that has lost its way. Sherlock, alone, separated from the herd, fleeing from you to the safety of a crime scene and work.
You loiter barely a block away, parked comfortably behind an entirely conspicuous delivery truck. The wait only reinforces the feeling of a hunter crouched in the grass, watching its lost creature. You are not kept crouching for long. Mere minutes after Sherlock has entered the scene, your mobile begins to panic. You let it ring for as long as you can stand to before bidding Anthia to answer. She is cordial in her greeting, though you can hear the commotion on the other end of the line even from your seat beside the driver. She deals with Lestrade for a full forty-five seconds before handing the mobile over to you.
"You have got to get him out of here." Normally you wouldn't tolerate such brusqueness from anyone besides your childish brother, but Lestrade has become an exception to many of your carefully concocted rules.
"Really, you used to enjoy his input on cases," you muse. The comment is nostalgic even to your own ears.
"That was before." He trails off immediately. That seems to be the answer for everything these days: "that was before."
The conversation doesn't continue long. You hang up quickly to call someone to collect Sherlock and ensure that he is escorted back to his flat. It is the dissappointing pounce that rewards all of your watching and waiting. Quietly, as though the consulting detective might overhear you from the safety of your vehicle, you request that the staff keep watch over the apartment. You hate to think of the trouble he could get up to now that you've angered him with this show of authority.
Still, you'd rather face your brother's fury than to deal with the legal repercussions of his actions, lest he decide to take it out on the neighborhood. Whatever sense of propriety the man had once possessed is long gone by now.
"And this man was his…?" The bespectacled woman in front of you looks dubious. You begin to doubt her competence, and even more, you begin to doubt your own intelligence in deciding to seek her out.
"Companion," you supply, and fix her with a look that dares her to contradict this title. She gives a mutter of consent and scribbles something on her clipboard. The silence begins to wag its tail back and forth behind you. You can't quite seem to loose it; it has grown too fond of you. You shouldn't have ever encouraged it. Now it follows you everywhere.
"Was there ever anyone else?" she asks. You close your eyes and are surprisingly sure of your answer.
"No, never."
Sherlock is furious when you next appear at his flat.
"You have no right!"
"Sherlock, everything I do, I do out of concern for your well-being." You know that, to anyone listening, you sound like the mature one. At this point, you are not entirely certain.
"No one asked you to. I don't need you and your parade of psychiatrists waltzing through here anytime you feel guilty for not acting sooner." He is dangerously close to raising his voice at you. That is preposterous, of course. He hasn't shouted at you since he was a child. You had accused him of being ruled by his emotions and he'd never tried to win a shouting match with you since. He seems to have forgotten the lesson now.
"Do you really blame me for what happened?" He falls dead silent as he tries to stare you down. He'd never been able to do it, even with his height. This time, though, you can't quite meet his eyes. It isn't just you, you know. He blames everyone: you, Lestrade, that man, himself. Even John. Sherlock shakes the silence off himself as he leans towards you. His whisper hollow, as though spoken from a long distance away.
"When I was up there – when he was threatening those people – do you know whose name did not appear?"
You knew. You've always known, of course, that your brotherly "affection" was far from reciprocated, but you can hear the implication behind his words. If their places had been switched, if it had been your close ones on the line, you both know Sherlock's name would be the first called out. You never thought it would bother you that Sherlock could not say the same.
You smile hard at him and show yourself out. After all, you've got another psychiatrist to fire.
"I never thought he'd be so… important," you confide. You rarely make mistakes, and it is even rarer for you to admit to them. Greg listens dutifully. You have no idea if he has grown tired of seeing you. The air between you is different, the silences larger and more threatening. There is none of the eerily easy companionship that marked your earlier meetings. It is one of the few times you'd ever consider using physical violence yourself; just to be rid of the awful blanket of tension.
You blink hard. The man in front of you is not important. Perhaps he might have been one day, but after what you have watched Sherlock experience, you know full well that making him important would be a grave mistake. You give the silence an internal nod: permission to linger on.
You hate how haggard he looks, even as he nods in agreement.
"Perhaps a replacement… That girl from Bart's, maybe." You aren't even speaking to Greg anymore, just to yourself. Your mind is wandering, exploring the possibilities, and the idea of just how difficult it might be to surreptitiously arrange an "accidental" meeting between Sherlock and his new Skull. You aren't even aware that you are still speaking out loud until Greg stands up suddenly.
"Break over already?" you ask innocently. A glance up at his face reveals drawn lips and deeply furrowed brows. You can't believe how much he's aged in the last few months. He nods at you curtly and leaves without another word.
You hope he isn't insulted enough to tell Sherlock of your latest ploy.
Your hope is for naught. You knew it was a mistake, confiding something like that in a man as loyal as Greg Lestrade. Sherlock refuses to acknowledge your presence the next time you visit and you leave feeling as though you might as well have been talking to one of the cadavers in St. Bart's for all the good it's done.
A week later, however, he is working stubbornly over a book when you visit. He's using his own laptop to take notes at the same time.
"New case?" he grunts. You glance around the flat. Everything is still in the same state of decay. Not even his makeshift lab equipment has been dusted. He won't use the table, where the foul tea is still congealing next to John's laptop. It's still open, though the screen is black.
You wonder if you ought to apologize. Instead you say, "It might go a lot faster if you went back to your usual methods… your 'experiments'…" You make a face of disdain, the underlying inquiry about the untouched state of the flat lurking beneath it.
It does not go unnoticed. Sherlock's head doesn't turn from his papers but you can see the curling sneer on his face. "I don't need your 'help,' Mycroft."
"Did I offer it? Sherlock, I'm a very busy man, I don't have time to help with your cases," He still won't look at you. His knuckles are turning white around his pencil.
"Henry Langston: honorable discharge from Afghanistan and a penchant for outer space. Percy Williams: medical school graduate looking for work and a flat share-"
"Sherlock-" But his voice is rising now.
"Felicia Dawson: amateur writer and a homosexual brother with alcohol addiction – Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
And for once in your life, he gets under your skin. You can see each name written at the top of their file, each face of each potential as you prepped them for meeting Sherlock, and the shameful confrontation after every failure: every reporter, every doctor, every well-wisher, every therapist, every replacement. You can feel the weight of your plans crumbling around you.
"I was only trying to help!"
"Stop trying to help! You can't help. I don't need your help. I don't need you to "fix" me. I'm not broken. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine, Mycroft. My "problem" is you!"
"Then get rid of it." Your throat is dry. He hasn't shouted this much in so long, and you are just the tiniest bit grateful. At least he is still in there somewhere. He looks at you now, all pride and anger and outrage.
"What?"
"Get rid of his things, Sherlock. You haven't touched them. You haven't touched anything since-"
"Don't, Mycroft,"
"His clothing. His chair. His laptop.
"Mycroft-"
"You haven't even touched his tea since-"
"Enough!"
You expect him to be furious with you. You know you've been pushing him too fast, but the world needs him. He is of no use to them, or to you, cloistered away in his shrine of an apartment. You expect him to look livid for everything you've thrust on him, unwanted and unasked for.
Instead you find him pale and drawn and utterly terrified and staring at you wildly. You are stunned at the power you suddenly hold. You know that with just a few words you might be able to break your brother. Part of you wants to. This state of denial is not healthy. He really ought to have known better from the start anyway, yet something holds you back.
You haven't seem him this frightened since he was a young man, shaking and convulsing from withdrawal and you wonder now if you are not witnessing the same process in slow motion before your very eyes.
You are not supposed to be privy to the interaction. You know this, especially considering the way Sherlock threw you out of his flat the last time you spoke with him. Yet here you are, lingering on outside the morgue with only the silence nipping at your heels for company, feeling immature for eavesdropping. Then again, you were never above a bit of espionage.
"Are you really on a case again?" You'd forgotten the girl's name until just now, though she was the first one you approached with the topic of becoming a replacement for Sherlock. She had angrily refused you, as insulted as Greg had been at the idea of it.
"Why shouldn't I be?" You can hear Sherlock, at once managing to sound bored, apathetic, and defensive all at once.
"Well, it is the one first since." Ms. Hooper seems to pause, considering her next words carefully, even as she is interrupted by Sherlock's sharp intake of breath, "since he died."
"Murdered." You can hardly believe your ears, and apparently, Sherlock's quiet, curt response caught Molly off-guard as well.
"Sorry?" To your knowledge, it's the first time Sherlock has willingly spoken about the incident to anyone, let alone so casually.
"Since he was murdered. Are you hard of hearing or an idiot who doesn't even grasp the concept of murder?" Sherlock says, the venom in his voice utterly unnecessary. "Don't say it as though it was an accident. As a scientist, you ought to know the importance of being as precise as possible, and at any rate, I don't see how the passing of one person could be at all relevant to the quality, or indeed the very pursuit of my work. All that matters is the work."
He says the last part so quietly you almost don't hear him. As though he's trying to convince himself of his old mantra. You can hear Molly shuffling timidly around. It is easy to imagine the mousy woman trying to look as though she has some actual business, besides Sherlock's presence, keeping her there. You wonder if she looks hurt by his words.
"I can't believe you." She certainly sounds insulted, and far angrier than you would have expected.
"You're-" She takes a deep breath, as if gathering her courage. "How can you say it doesn't matter? He's dead. I don't understand. I thought you two- and you haven't even said is name out loud since. You didn't even cry after it happened. Not at his funeral, not once. And you keep going on with your cases like you don't care. Like it doesn't even matter that he's-"
You can hear a chair being knocked over and her gasp at the sudden noise. "What do you know? Were you there? Were you on that rooftop? Because the last time I checked, it was me – not you – who saw it. Who saw-"
And he stops suddenly, as if the words themselves were trying to strangle him.
The silence at your heels whines, hoping to join in their conversation, but you reel it in. "What did you see, Sherlock?"
"I-" It's as if everything in Sherlock's mind is telling him not to think on it, but his body is rebelling against it, forcing the words out of him. "I hesitated. He was coming to find me and- I hesitated. I was at the edge. I waited too long and he-"
His fist slams on the table. "Why did he have to come back? He would have been safe if he'd just taken the bait and- that idiot! Why did Mycroft have to tell him everything? Help me? He- he- he told him everything! Why didn't he intervene sooner? He could have stopped him- he could have- have-
"I waited too long…" You can hear his voice crack. "He was just coming to look for me." You can hear Molly shuffling across the floor toward him, whispering his name over and over.
And then you hear it. A choke. A cough. A shudder. Then, finally, a thin wail. It's the cry of a child, lost and afraid and unwilling to believe even in the sadness. It goes on and on until you feel shame prickling the tips of your ears and eyes and turn away. You will pretend you never heard the horrid, wracking sobs but you will try to make Molly Hooper's life much easier in the future. It is at this moment that you finally realize what it meant to be important to Sherlock Holmes.
Being important to Sherlock meant that you would never be able to replace him. No matter where you search, you will never be able to find another John Watson. And you don't think Sherlock will ever forgive you for it.