John climbs out of the bed and walks toward the door. He stretches out his hand stopping a moment to stare at it. His left hand is shaking. He turns back to look at the bed. Sherlock is splayed out across it, face-down and naked, a white bandage wrapped around his right arm. John feels a pang in his chest. Yesterday he was Sherlock's friend. What is he now? A murderer. That much is true. What will the world think? John's not ready to face the world yet. He opens the door and walks out, carefully closing it behind him.
The bathroom, some clean clothes, and then tea. That's what he wants, but when he reaches up to take the mug with his left hand, he drops it, the shattered fragments skittering in all directions across the linoleum floor. They lay there, dangerous and irreparable, like the shattered pieces that make up his life. He stares at them without bothering to pick them up. Instead, he reaches up and takes another mug.
The steam of his tea rises in ribbons as he crosses the room to the desk. He opens his laptop and sits. The cursor blinks at him again and again. He begins to write.
Dearest Sherlock,
It's only a matter of time before the police come to get me. It's much too obvious. I wouldn't even rate the crime scene a four. It's always the husband, isn't it? So I have to write this now, for you. Because we didn't have a chance to talk beforehand, and I'm afraid that you might think that what happened last night was simply an accident. A response to high emotion, a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. Not at all.
I'm sorry for not telling you this face to face. I should have waited for you to wake up, but this sort of thing is hard for me to talk about. It's easier for me to write. I'm afraid that you might misinterpret things, and I can't let this go unsaid, not again.
John takes a deep breath and sits back in his chair. Under the tip of his fingernails there is a bit of dried blood. He reaches into the drawer for a nail file and pries out the flakes letting them fall onto the desk's surface before sweeping them up in one hand and dropping them into the waste basket. Even if they search the trash, they won't find anything wrong with it. It is Sherlock's blood after all.
His arm had been coated with blood when John had pulled off his coat after they had returned to the flat.
"John, it's nothing," Sherlock said as John gaped at the sight of his blood-stained shirt, the purple silk soaked red. He'd undone the cuffs and the buttons while Sherlock fidgeted with his eyes glued on John's worried face. "I told you, John. She only grazed me."
John flinched at the word 'she' reaching out to grab at the wound with his hand. He dragged Sherlock into the bathroom and washed his arm to find that it was indeed superficial. Even so, John would not let Sherlock go until it was neatly tied in a bright white bandage. He washed his hands and dried them. Then he had to reach out again and touch the arm. His fingers slipping down the bare skin until they rested on top of Sherlock's hand.
They stood facing each other. Their hands on the counter touching. Sherlock's eyes darted across his face. "Are you alright?" he asked.
John breathed in a shuddering breath before saying, "No."
Sherlock nodded. "I thought not."
"What matters, all that matters now is that you're safe" John said. Idly lifting his hand to touch the bullet wound on Sherlock's chest. He traced the spot where the bullet had gone in before, the bullet that had almost taken Sherlock away from him the last time. Then he leaned forward pulling Sherlock into an embrace.
Sherlock's fingers slowly rose to touch John's back as John rubbed his cheek against Sherlock's chin. Sherlock turned his head to look down at John. His eyelids lowering as he bent slowly down tilting his face until their breath mingled. Then he leaned down further touching his lips to John's.
John touches his fingers to his lips remembering the feel of that first kiss. Then he continues to type.
These last few months, I have felt as if my world has been swirling around me. In all of this, you have been my one stable point. I never told you, but it meant so much to know that you were only a phone call away. So when you kissed me, it all snapped into place. I knew that my home, my future was with you.
Shall I describe what it felt like to watch the flush of pink rise across your chest like a wave, or the joy I felt at the first press of your lips against mine. Can words convey my excitement at the sounds you make, or the first taste of you on my tongue. The fear I felt when I woke that you would reject me, only to hear you beg me to take you again.
Shall I tell you how long I've wanted this? How long I've wanted you? In truth, I can't say, because those thoughts were so often pushed to the back of my brain. Suppressed so that they wouldn't get in the way of what we had. Oh, how I wish we had done this earlier, but I wouldn't let myself think of such a thing. It wasn't the life that I had planned, so I didn't consider it. Yes, I know. I am an idiot.
John pushes back in his chair and frowns.
Mary in the empty house shooting a coin out of the air before pointing the gun at him because she thinks that he is Sherlock. The anger of his wrong assumptions making him shake. Anger at himself as well as her.
He was such an easy mark. Sherlock would never have been taken in, but by then she'd had his child in her womb. There was no getting past this mistake. No turning back time. She was his wife, and the mother of his child. It was his mistake and he would claim it like a soldier. He had got his wish, and he would follow through. Sherlock never understood. It wasn't a judgment on him. It wasn't John choosing Mary. It was John cleaning up his own mess. It was John taking responsibility for the choice that had almost resulted in the death of his dearest friend. He'd made his bed, and he'd lie in it. He had to make Sherlock understand.
When my little Elizabeth was born, I thought that my world was complete. I had always wanted a family of my own, and when I saw the way that Mary held her in her arms and rocked her, I knew that she would never let anything harm our child. In this, we were in perfect accord. I thought that maybe, despite her past, we might be able to find a way to make a world for this little life to thrive in. Who would have guessed that she would die of pneumonia before the month was out.
You can't understand what it feels like to lose a child. It was like a black cloud filling up my brain. I questioned everything. It seemed that all that had gone before was pointless, my life, her death, my marriage, living though Afghanistan at all.I would rather have died back then, than to live to see her beautiful life come and go so quickly. All our hopes and dreamswere dashed with the last fall of her tiny chest.
We cried together at the funeral, Mary and I. She clung to me as they lowered the body into the ground. She wailed. It was the last time that we were truly a couple. With Elizabeth gone, there was nothing left between us.
Mary had never loved me. She liked me, but there was no love. That bit of honesty came out before it all went to hell. She had liked me, and so she didn't mind that I was her child's father. She knew that if she should die, I would care for Elizabeth and fight to protect her like I had always fought to protect you. Those are her words. "Like I'd fought to protect you." She knew my true feelings long before I did. She knew them, and she wasn't afraid to admit it like I was. Like I still am.
John touches the palms of his hands to his eyes. Images cloud his brain coming so close that they overlap each other.
Mary with a stuffed lamb on her lap, sitting for hours in the baby's room in the dark.
Sherlock's heels bouncing on his thighs as he presses him against the wall pounding into him over and over.
The look in Mary's eyes as he pulled the trigger.
It had been only that morning that Sherlock had come to John's flat at his request. He had texted him the night before because he couldn't stand the sight of that crib for one day longer. They had looked around the baby's room, at its tasteful green walls decorated with yellow and pink bear decals. He'd stared at the empty, white crib before unfastening the mobile, a fanciful version of the solar system, and dropping it inside. Then he'd followed Sherlock as he went to move his borrowed van closer to the door.
Sherlock froze suddenly, and John turned to see Mary standing in the living room, her gun pointed at Sherlock. He stared back at her with fear in his eyes. He had felt the touch of her bullet before, and he knew that she wasn't bluffing.
John didn't remember removing the gun from the drawer. He only remembered the feel of it in his hand as he cocked it, and pointed it at her head. Sherlock turned to watch him then, mouth falling open. Mary smiled.
"Sherlock doesn't think that you'll shoot, John, but we both know better don't we?"
"Drop the gun Mary,"
"He's shocked. He didn't think that you'd pull a gun on your own wife to protect him. He really is slow, isn't he?"
"Mary, what are you doing?"
"You won't ever commit to a life with me as long as he's around. 'A man can not serve two masters.' Isn't that how the saying goes?"
"Put down the gun, Mary. I'm serious."
"So am I, John."
John straightened his stance sighting down his arm. "I'll shoot if I have to. I won't let you hurt him again."
"Then you will have to shoot, because I will kill him. I'm aiming for his head this time. I should have known that shooting his chest wouldn't finish him. His heart was elsewhere."
"Mary, you're out of your mind with grief. Put down that gun!"
"You're going to have to choose, John. You're going to have to make the choice right here, right now. Either the two of us will make a new life, try to have children again in a world without Sherlock, or..."
"Or what Mary?"
"Choose John. Him or me."
"Mary, no!"
"I'm counting to three, John. One, Two..."
I don't remember pulling the trigger. I only remember the sound of the bullet, and the thud of her body falling to the ground. It was only then that I noticed the silencer. That's when I knew it was suicide. I never used a silencer. I didn't even own one, but if there had not been one on the gun, the neighbors would have come running. She must have ordered one weeks ago and hidden it away. I had checked the gun only that morning. She must have put it on just as you arrived, when we were in the room preparing to move the crib.
I should have been the one to check her pulse, not you. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't dragged me away from there. I had to do it. I couldn't lose you another time, and as she knew, in my heart, I had already made my choice.
Now I sit here apart from you as you lie sleeping on what should always have been our bed, and I don't know if I will ever be able to bridge the distance. I expect any moment to hear Lestrade's knock at the door as he comes to take me into custody, and I don't know how to face you again, because I know that once I see you, I won't be able to say goodbye.
I can't turn back time, and I would never unwish Elizabeth's life, no matter how brief, but I wish...I wish that our first time together could have been slower and more deliberate. That we could have talked. I wish that we could have had forever. It was no accident nor mistake. I chose you and will always choose you, because I love you. I love you, Sherlock. And maybe that was Mary's gift to me, to force me to admit that at last.
Don't doubt my feelings for you. Don't doubt them, no matter how long we're apart. I'm going to turn myself in now, but I'll love you forever. Goodbye Sherlock.
Your loving blogger,
John Watson.
John looks up at the sound of the bedroom door closing. Sherlock, sleepy-eyed, shuffles out into the room. He focuses on John and then rushes toward him wrapping his arms around his shoulders. John covers his long fingers with his own. Sherlock looks up at the screen then, but John self-consciously turns it away.
"Writing a goodbye letter are you?"
"No, I..."
"Mycroft just called. He's handling the scene at your house."
"You can't just handle a murder. I murdered my wife."
"Your letter said 'suicide'."
"Can you really read that fast?"
"I have a program that echoes what you type on your laptop onto my phone."
John frowns. Then he blushes. "Why Sherlock, that's...horrible."
"I am still officially listed as MI6. Mary was a rogue agent. Mycroft is handling it."
"But I can't just forget..."
"No one said anything about forgetting. We won't forget Mary or Elizabeth. But there will be no reporting this to the police. We'll wait here until Mycroft decides what story we're going to tell them."
"Since when do you listen to what Mycroft has to say?"
"Since he promised to keep you safe. Don't doubt my feelings either John." Sherlock walks around to take John's arms in his hands. "Don't doubt me. I will always do what I have to do to protect you because… I love you too."
They stare into each other's eyes, love, loss, and acceptance plainly shown on their faces. Then John bows his head and Sherlock kisses his hair before lifting him to his feet and leading him back to their bed.