A/N: Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock, I'm just visiting around with them.
When he got there that day, John was surprised and slightly disappointed to find that someone else was already on the roof and standing at the edge.
The tall figure of the man in the long black Belstaff coat was just standing there quietly, the wind blowing his black curls and tugging at his coat. It didn't seem like he was aware of John's presence on the roof behind him.
John walked forward a few steps and then stopped, he leant against his cane and waited but the man never moved.
John looked down and shook his head, feeling annoyed at this person who was wasting his jumping time and who had stolen his spot in the first place.
He cleared his throat slightly and the man before him twitched and slowly turned and looked at John.
The tall, thin man with extraordinary cheek bones just looked at him in an almost sad and tired way.
"I'm sorry." The man's almost music like baritone filled the air. "Do you need something?"
"No, no I don't need anything," John replied, shaking his head and gripping his cane tighter. Oh how wished this man would just go away.
"Ah..." The man looked at him, his piercing grey eyes taking in every inch of John like he was taking inventory of him and then he turned his back to him again in a silent motion.
John raised his eyebrows and sighed quietly. Well this isn't going to work too well is it now, John? he thought to himself.
The man turned around again. "Is there something I can do for you?"
John shook his head and with the slight wave of his hand, he replied, "No, no, I'm just waiting."
"Waiting…" The tall man repeated the word and he looked John over again.
"I see... I did not realize this roof was so popular."
John laughed sadly. "Well I guess it depends on the day."
And in that moment both men on the roof realized that they had come to do the same thing.
The tall curly-haired man turned his back on John. Then he turned swiftly back around to face John again, his coat swishing silently around him and he glared darkly at John and, like his grey eyes, the man's voice also lacked emotion.
"Well then I guess one of us needs to find another roof."
John swallowed and looked away from the man's intense gaze as his heart ticked madly in his chest.
"I would, but I think if I got down, I'd change my mind."
"And you don't want to change your mind?"
A frown creased the man's features and the deep voice had a puzzled sound to it, like he didn't understand.
"Do you?" John asked softly.
"No," Came the man's short reply, tinged with sadness and apathy, the dark frown still on the man's face but he seemed to be too tired to hold onto it very well.
"Well," John replied softly, looking up into the soft grey clouds above them. "I think it's going to rain today, at least something will cry for me; even it just turns out to be the clouds."
The tall man laughed softly and bitterness flowed through the deepness of it.
"We are in a sad mess when all we have is the rain to cry for us."
"Yeah," John whispered, looking down at his injured leg. "I suppose we are."
The tall man stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the street below and his voice slightly shook as a small, sad question floated from him and over to John.
"Do you think anyone will even notice?"
John paused for a moment as flashbacks of the blood and screams of war filled his mind. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and replied softly, "I don't know... I had always hoped so, but I have realized in days like this that if I truly had someone who would stop and care, I would not be up here."
John's voice was empty, like a man who always tried too hard but could never win. John limped closer to the man and stood beside him and they both stood on the edge of the roof and looked down at the empty street below.
John stretched out his hand to the man. "John… John Watson."
The man looked at him for a few seconds and slowly reached out his hand to John's, the long slender hand grasped the outstretched one.
"Sherlock Holmes," was the gruff reply and he stuck his hand in his pocket slowly, almost like he secretly regretted giving up the offered hand of kindness but made himself do so anyway.
"I have heard that name before," John replied with a flash of remembrance concerning what he had heard about the man.
"They say you are really smart at figuring and solving things out for people and the police."
Sherlock laughed, a soft and low laugh, as he stiffly looked over at the London rooftops. And it seemed as if John had just told him the stupidest joke he could think of.
He looked at the smaller man with the air of scorn and dignity that he had still refused to let fade away.
"Is that what they say?"
John looked down and he could see the long slender hand was now curled up into a clenched fist.
"Well, aren't you?" John asked softly, as he looked up at the man's face again, taking in the features now lined in stony edges.
The sound that Sherlock made could have been described as a snort of quiet rage and discouragement, but Sherlock tried as best he could to make it be more of rage for he despised the object of discouragement and he became all the more angry when he felt it overcome him at that moment.
"What I do is beyond brilliant, but normal people can't comprehend that far, so they make up excuses for the things they cannot understand."
Like freak, spook and fake. The words echoed through Sherlock's mind and he pushed them away. Irritated at himself for letting them surface in his mind.
John nodded and thought silently for a moment. "I believe you," he replied softly. Sherlock looked at him, surprised.
"Do you? How could you possibly believe me... and how could you ever know what I am? People… people like you cannot possibly understand someone like me and I do not need or want you to," Sherlock replied, angrily wishing that this man would shut up and go away already.
John's mouth tightened and he could feel tired tears prick his eyes, ignoring the other man's angry words as he spoke with a sad voice of experience.
"I know what- who you are, you're a man who… just wants to be believed and accepted, with no labels or excuses and false exceptions hung on him. And, well, you have just got to the point where… you're just too tired to care anymore because without anyone to believe in you, the world is a very…very dark and cold place and all you can feel and see is just different shades of black."
John paused and looked up the tall man. "You're just a man who has run out of good days, and despite all your brilliance of mind, you just don't know what to do anymore. You... you can't think of any other way to save yourself..."
John's voice trailed off to a whisper as he furrowed his brow into a hard line and pretended to concentrate on his feet.
Sherlock froze, and stared at John, trying to make his mind work with all the hated emotions rolling through him and as he tried to figure out and understand what had just happened and what kind of man was on the roof with him.
Trying to understand this person before him, who seemed to understand him without even trying, and not even realizing it, Sherlock finally got control of his voice and his thoughts as he gathered himself, and tried to pretend what John had said did not shake him like it actually did.
He turned up the collar of his coat as the coldness of the wind and the heaviness of the soldier's words started to chill him.
"I should suppose if anyone would know, then it would be a soldier recently returned from a war that has left him behind."
"Yeah," John sighed, looking away. "I guess he would be the one to know."
"Afghanistan or Iraq?
"Afghanistan," John replied, as the pain in his shoulder flowed in rhythm with the hollowness of his beating heart.
Sherlock nodded, slowly looking John over again as his anger that came with unwanted memories that the man's words had stirred within him slowly began to fade, and he softly replied, "I understand, and I'm sorry for it, John Watson, for if anyone had a reason to have something to come back to and to have someone to care, it should be a soldier like you."
Sherlock stated this very bleakly, like it was a sad bit of matter of fact information that he had casually pulled from his pocket. Like he knew what the outcome always came to be, but he could do nothing about it. It was like he already knew how it would end. It was like he knew how everything ended.
John sighed and looked up at the looming grey clouds.
"You get used to fighting for something, trying to save everyone and coming home to nothing." John whispered the quiet confession sadly down at the floor of the roof, noticing even his shadow had left him.
He wondered what happened to the shadows of people when they die. Did they die and disappear? Or did they just go fall into a corner and accept the darkness they had become, and embrace more shadows until the world become completely dark?
He thought of the men who died under his hands as he tried to save their lives. Wondering how many soldiers' shadows he had added to the collection of lost shadows.
"Army doctor?"
The deep voice shook him free of his thoughts. He looked up and tried to focus on the man who had asked the dreaded question that John was so proud and also saddened to answer.
"Yes."
"You have that look about you."
"Oh? What look is that?"
Sherlock pulled his Belstaff coat closer around him as the chilling wind whipped through the two men on the ledge, trying to sweep them away as if they had styrofoam bones.
"The look of a man who has looked down too many times in the face of a dying soldier that he tried his best to save, and of one that always says that he is sorry for not being able to save and help him see the new day's sun again.
"And the look of a man would remember every single dying face he ever saw, who carries them with him every day and every place he goes. And who is unwilling to leave them behind and they have turned into memories of madness and survivor's guilt and he's counting the days when he can put them to rest and himself with them."
John fought back the threatening tears that Sherlock's words had awoken within him.
John had never met anyone like this that could read him so accurately just by simply looking at him, and this man, Sherlock Holmes, had painted a picture of John with colors he had never seen before.
John nodded slightly as he watched people slowly walking past on the sidewalk below, oblivious to the two men above them who had taken the last hour of their lives and had unknowingly split it between themselves.
John ran a hand through his short blond hair and shook his head to clear the web of memories that began to fill his mind's eye.
"My last days have always laid heavy on my mind," he said softly.
Sherlock turned to him, his full attention focused on John, his mind collecting and storing the image and words of the ex-soldier.
Being careful not to delete anything.
He didn't know why, he just knew that whatever happened that day he didn't think this soldier would ever be deleted from his mind palace.
It's strange how certain people can creep inside your mind without you ever being aware and when you finally do realize it, it seems like they had always fit there and have been there all your life, and they always seemed to belong even though you just met them.
"In Afghanistan I was always wondering if this would be the day, if would live long enough to fight death away from another soldier or if it would be the day that death would come for me and I'd lay in my blood beside someone I had failed yet again to save."
"And yet you did survive," Sherlock murmured, like he was talking to himself and turning over John's words in his mind.
Sherlock looked at John's leg and cane and his eyes caught the trembling of John's left hand.
"But not without a heavy price, and here you are now and you want death to come back for you because you are stuck living in the presence of the past."
John stuck his trembling hand in his pocket, not just to hide the trembling but also not to hide his face in it.
"Yes," he whispered. "And like you, I have come up to this roof and feel like screaming like a fool just to see if anyone would... simply come."
John looked away and wiped the back of his hand against his mouth before turning back again to Sherlock.
"But now, I'm just too tired to try and to care anymore, I have forgotten how and I have no one to remind me how it goes..."
His voice trailed off and he was shocked to see Sherlock gazing at him with a strange and sad look of acknowledgment that showed he regretfully understood.
Sherlock stared at this strong, sad and beaten man before him, with head bowed and who was so unwilling to leave his guilt and past to yesterday just because he had such a strong streak of nobility that had gifted and cursed him with the same hand.
A man who had, for the very first time in Sherlock's life, taken one look at Sherlock and knew and understood him just by simply being beside him there silently, listening, taking the time to look into his eyes without looking away with disgust and fear in what he saw.
"I'd rather have no one care than someone who only pretends to care," Sherlock softly said as the wind blew through his curls and threatened to open tightly shut rooms of emotionless memories in his mind palace.
Sherlock stood still beside John, his coat fluttering in the wind and he turned his head away from John as he pretended to look over at a building in the distance.
His deep voice broke the silence, surprising John out of his dark thoughts.
"I come up here all the time you know, and I can't understand why I don't just end it all and stop coming back.
"But I do and it's always the same. I find myself standing here alone, thinking that maybe this will be the day that if I just stand still long enough someone would come around for me."
John nodded, truly understanding this tall, sad, skinny man who stood beside him.
Sherlock continued on, not knowing why he couldn't stop himself from talking to this man like he had known him all his life.
"I don't know what I keep doing it for I'm not one for sentiment, and I absolutely would not know what to do if someone actually did come out of the act of something else rather than in duty. But I always thought I'd give it a try, even though I know it would just be a hopeless waste of time and in the end, I'll find myself laying on the pavement below and the world will keep spinning madly on whether I'm here to watch it or not."
Sherlock felt the wind blow around him and it felt like it was blowing right through him.
"I know what you mean," John whispered, looking off in the other direction, pretending to study a far off street sign.
John stuck his hands in his pockets and thought about the sad words that had been shared with him.
"Do you ever think someone will come for you... do you think that they'll make it in time?"
John turned and looked up and was surprised to see those sad grey eyes looking down into his.
Sherlock flashed a very tiny, sad smile before it vanished again into the chilly breeze.
"I don't know… Maybe one day I'll find myself up here again and someone will beg me not to jump, or I might just get tired of waiting, I'm not sure."
"What about you?"
"Me?" John whispered looking down at his worn out shoes.
"No, nobody ever comes for me."
Sherlock nodded and wished that any minute that someone might come for this man and soldier called John Watson and give him a second chance, not that Sherlock believed in second chances.
He certainly knew he would never get one and there would be no going back for him but something inside him wished that the soldier and doctor beside him would end up better than himself.
He turned and looked at the small blonde man and smiled sadly.
"Well… I don't see anyone around trying to save us do you?"
John shook his head with a sad sigh, "No, I don't. I guess some things will just never change."
"No, some things never change," Sherlock softly replied.
Of all the facts he knew and stored in his mind palace that was one thing he truly regretted knowing and no matter how hard he tried, he could never delete and forget it.
John laughed softly to himself, startling Sherlock out of his thinking.
John had forgotten that he could even laugh.
He had forgotten a lot of things.
It's sad, that when it's the time to die that you remember all the important things of life that you had forgotten and lost through the darkness.
"I guess we could beg the other not to jump since we have no one else?"
Sherlock looked over at him. "And why would you beg me not to jump?"
John shrugged a little and delivered the honest statement.
"I don't know, maybe it's because I think you have something that's worth trying to live for again."
Sherlock looked at him, for a long moment trying to understand this interesting and confusing man.
"Alright then, I suppose it would make a good experiment, you may go first if you wish."
"Well here goes nothing," John replied and he closed his eyes and thought for a moment then nodded and looked back up at Sherlock.
"No, Sherlock," John quipped, trying not to laugh at himself as he did so at the foolishness of the hopeless idea.
But a man who has nothing has nothing to lose.
"Don't jump, what would we do without all your massive intellect and how would the world turn without..." He paused and looked up at Sherlock again. "What exactly do you call yourself?
Sherlock, looked at him with a tiny glimmer of pride as he nodded at John and replied, "Consulting detective."
"Ah yes," John replied, nodding. "Consulting detective. Who in the world would do our job better than us and in half the time?"
Sherlock's deep laugh filled the air. "I don't think they would ever say that, not even if they were actually here."
John's laughter mixed with Sherlock's and it rang the still air.
"Alright, my turn," Sherlock stated as he stopped laughing, and wondered how in the world this stranger got him to laugh like that.
He caught his laughter and hid it inside himself and his eyes grew dark as he looked at John with intense observation.
"No, John, don't jump, we need you, just because you are a ex-soldier with a psychosomatic limp doesn't mean you are not still a doctor who can..." Sherlock paused and looked over at John.
"Could get a fairly good position as a locum and you may be not so useless and washed up as you think, and you know the old saying… one man's trash is another man's treasure…"
John shook his head as he tried to sort of the words he had longed to hear during all of his days after coming back home.
"What in the world does that mean?"
Sherlock smiled suddenly and looked over at him as if he had just told a great joke.
"I have no idea, but it sound like something some ordinary person would say if they were trying to stop a man from jumping off a high building."
John nodded and tried not to smile at Sherlock's heartfelt but black and white statement.
"I suppose you are right."
They stood there silently, side by side, not sure what to do next, and holding onto to each other's pleas of not jumping because they knew they would be the only ones they would ever have.
A group of school children walked by on their way to school and it seemed as if people decided that it would be a good time to go do their errands, for the street and pavement was bustling with activity now.
"Well, there goes any chance of jumping today," Sherlock stated pointedly, with a dejected air, as he turned with a swirl of black coat and blue scarf and walked toward the roof exit leaving John on the edge alone.
He stopped suddenly and turned around and faced John.
"Hungry, John Watson?" Sherlock asked. "I know a nice Italian place around the corner."
John hesitated and looked down at the street again, part of him wanting to complete the task he had come to do but another part wanting to go with this interesting and brilliant man who knew so many fantastic things and who had taken time to know John in his plain jane glory and who had just called his name.
Making up his mind about what he would do, John slowly turned to the roof edge again and, with a salute to the horizon, he about turned and walked toward Sherlock. As he grew closer to Sherlock and further away from the ledge, John desperately ignored the urge to stay behind, telling himself he could always come back another day.
"I'm starving," John admitted, as he reached Sherlock's side and he realised for the first time since his return from Afghanistan, that he was actually hungry.
"Alright then." With a flourish, Sherlock fixed his blue scarf around his neck and waited as John limped beside him and they walked toward the exit of the roof.
They walked together side by side down the street, just chatting with each other not really talking about anything in particular. Both men feeling secretly glad that they had run into each other on the roof.