Written for a prompt on the kink meme, this ended up a lot more fucked up than I had originally intended. The prompt was "John is killed. Brutally. Sherlock's reaction." So that's what this is.
So, WARNINGS for gore and character death and the fact that this is not a happy fic not at all not one bit. I hesitate to file it under the genre of "Horror," because it isn't really, but... I suppose it'll do.
Also, one last warning for gratuitous song lyrics at the beginning there, haha.
little angel, go away, come again some other day | the devil has my ear today, i'll never hear a word you say | promised i would find a little solace and some peace of mind | whatever, just as long as i don't feel so-
Sherlock still has the blood on his hands.
It has been nine hours, thirty six minutes, and twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen... seconds, and Sherlock still has the blood on his hands.
Whose blood?
Well, he isn't quite sure anymore.
When Sherlock left 221B at 11:17 in the morning, John was not there.
He still isn't there when Sherlock returns at 9:24 at night, but this time it's in an entirely different way.
That is, John's body is there, but that's it. Not his smile nor his chuckle when Sherlock does something particularly brilliant and especially not that furtive little grin John sneaks him sometimes when they're alone.
None of that is there because John is dead, dead, dead.
And Sherlock is absolutely sure of this because that is John's body, alright, but it's not where it's supposed to be. For one, it's not even all in one piece . It's in seven.
And all seven of those pieces are draped artfully over Sherlock's chair.
The torso has been speared through the middle with Sherlock's harpoon, fixing it to the chair. The arms have received a similar treatment, in that they have been pinned to the chair with kitchen knives, then arranged to sit nicely on the armrests. The legs are bent awkwardly, but manage to stay up without any further support.
John's severed head has been balanced rather precariously on what remains of his neck so that it, too, sits without further support. It's nothing compared to what sits balanced on the harpoon and leaning against John's chest.
It's his heart.
It's John's heart?
It's his heart, which had always been too exposed for John's own good. Sherlock had always said so, and now he had proof that he was right, and it tasted disgusting.
God, John looks like he's sitting.
But he's dead, dead, dead.
John has been dismembered and put back together by a persons unknown, with all the skill and finesse that would make a five year old proud but makes Sherlock feel sick in the stomach.
He can't remember ever tearing his gaze away from what's left of John, but apparently he does at one point, because he registers that slathered on the wall - no doubt in John's blood - is a greeting.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHERLOCK.
It is not Sherlock's birthday.
He doesn't admit it to anyone, but Sherlock cries. They're bitter, angry tears, because there's a lot that Sherlock should have done and didn't do and probably wouldn't have done even if he'd known that John would die today.
For instance, Sherlock should have taken John aside and kissed him so hard they both saw stars.
For instance, Sherlock should have taken John aside and shared secrets and bared his bones and shown John that maybe he was a man worth loving after all.
For instance, Sherlock should have taken John aside and clung on and refused to let go for anything in the world.
For instance, Sherlock should have taken John aside and allowed him to live.
But, of course, none of that had happened, and now John is dead, and now Sherlock does nothing for three minutes and eighteen seconds but cry bitter, angry tears that are all that's left of days that could have been.
After he cries, he feels hollow.
Apparently, this is normal.
Apparently, this is "to be expected."
It doesn't make him feel any better, so he flops on his side and apparently he does it hard enough that the ground shakes and John's head wobbles precariously. It wobbles and wobbles and eventually, slowly, it falls away from his shoulders and rolls to the floor.
It rolls over to where Sherlock is lying and looks at him curiously.
"Hello, John," Sherlock says.
John's head is suspiciously quiet.
Sherlock stares at it and while he does so he has to remember to breathe in and out and in and out and every now and then he forgets which order he's supposed to be going in, and he starts breathing in in in out in out in in out out out out out out out ou-
He passes out on the floor.
He wakes, and his breathing has stabilised. Sherlock, however, feels just as shit as he had before.
(John, of course, is still dead. He checked).
There's nothing left but to crawl into John's skin. So he does. He burrows himself inside because he never had the chance to do it before. Granted, it had never been so literal before now, because now his skin is all that's left.
(Once you've put aside the bones and the organs that remain the ugliest excuse of art that Sherlock has ever seen).
He surrounds himself in John and breathes in John and closes his eyes and believes in John. He stays like this for thirty four minutes exactly and only moves because his phone vibrates against his thigh and won't stop until he checks it.
Stop.
JW
Sherlock puts the phone down. He stands and he lets John fall away from him and he remembers that there is nothing of John left here.
It has been four hours and twenty two minutes and twelve seconds since he came home and found John sitting in his chair and Sherlock can't separate the image of John's blood from his skin. So he gets up and ignores the fact that he's tracking blood all through 221B and he gets into the shower, clothes and all.
The water is either ice-cold or scalding, he can't quite tell anymore, but it makes his skin tingle unpleasantly and his clothes cling to his body. More importantly, it washes John away and down the drain and leaves enough of Sherlock behind to better register what has happened.
He doesn't want to register it, so he sits at the floor of the shower, leans his head against the wall tiles, and distracts himself by watching the water turn from red to a strange mauve to a light, almost indiscernible pink.
He lets the water run over his face and into his mouth and pretends that he's drowning.
Delusions were never his area, but when he gets out of the shower two hours (and thirteen minutes and fifty six seconds) later and checks his phone, there is no text from John.
He throws his phone against the wall so hard that it cracks and no longer registers the touch of his fingers.
Sherlock thinks he might like it better this way anyway.
I never said goodbye, Sherlock realises.
A second later he realises that it doesn't matter anyway because he's always been absolute shit at the only goodbyes that ever mattered.
John wouldn't have wanted one, anyway. At least, that's how he rationalises it to himself.
Sherlock sits across from John, still dressed in his soaking wet suit, and they watch the sunrise together.
It has been nine hours, thirty six minutes, and twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...
He steeples his fingers and brings them to his lips in a familiar gesture and finds that he still his blood on them. Or maybe that's new blood. Is that his own blood? Or is it more of-
Sherlock sits across from John and formulates a plan.
His name is James Winter. He has a lot of aliases, but that doesn't help him one bit, since Sherlock isn't interested in names. It isn't the only way to find someone, after all.
Which Sherlock does, of course. He finds him twenty six hours (and two minutes and forty three seconds) after he'd found John Watson dismantled and crudely put together again.
(All the King's horses and all the King's men...)
Sherlock also finds that he can do a lot with a set of kitchen knives and his own fingernails. For example, he manages to carve a sloppy Y-incision in James Winter's chest with a sharp bread knife and peel the folds of skin away with his fingers to expose his rib cage.
The heart had stopped beating three minutes ago after the twenty-fourth time Sherlock had stabbed him in the chest. It had stopped beating with a strange, gurgling sound that, when he shut his eyes, reminded Sherlock of a small stream he used to enjoy playing around as a child.
Most of all it was something of a disappointment, since Sherlock had been quietly looking forward to wrapping his fist around the organ and squeezing it to a halt himself.
Never mind. Instead he comes to a compromise and decides to take as many of James Winter's organs as he can. He's hardly going to need them now, after all.
Mycroft finds him just as he sets what remains of James Winter's body on the floor and begins his impromptu surgery. He appears in the doorway without a sound, and watches. They both pretend that Mycroft hasn't been watching the place for hours.
Sherlock ignores him and gets to work. His fingers are his partners in crime, and the bread knife is his prime witness. Together, they pry the bones of James Winter's rib cage apart and stare in wonder at his anatomy.
His insides betray nothing, and Sherlock can't help but feel disappointed about that. In the end, they're all the same, people are. He's seen enough cadavers that none of this is new.
Tap, tap tap.
Mycroft has begun to tap his umbrella in a staccato beat against the ground.
Tap tap tap, taptap- tap tap tap.
"Satisfied?" he asks in response to Sherlock's head jerking in a somewhat distracted fashion towards him.
Tap, tap.
Irritated, Sherlock abandons any pretense of precision he'd been clinging on to and simply rips out his heart and begins stabbing at the organ with a vicious intensity. Despite how much he looked like all the others, he'd never had the opportunity to do this before.
(All that's left afterwards is a barely distinguishable mess of veins.)
Tap tap tap, tap tap- tap. Is that Vivaldi?
That, and an incredibly mangled corpse stretched out in pieces over the kitchen floor.
"No," Sherlock replies. He scowls and throws the knife away and for once he takes the hand offered him. The way Mycroft's face twists ever so slightly in disgust is gorgeous.
"You'll want to clean yourself," is all he says, though he lets go of Sherlock's hand as soon as he possibly can.
Sherlock wipes his hands down on his pants. It's absolutely ineffective and does nothing but smear blood the blood into a different pattern over his skin. "Will I?" he asks.
Mycroft shoots him a sharp glance. "You will," he says.
So he does.
He cleans himself of James Winter because he smells disgusting.
He cleans himself of John Watson because of a different reason entirely.
Then he throws up over his feet and starts cleaning himself of Sherlock Holmes.
He shaves and he cuts his hair and he has all his clothes dry cleaned and only once he puts a suit back on does he feel like Sherlock Holmes of old again.
He feels like a man that wouldn't tear anyone apart with his bare hands.
He feels like a man that wouldn't let anyone burrow under his skin and build a home and against all odds, make him feel something more-
He feels like a man that has nothing more to lose.
Mycroft visits after John's funeral. The date had come and gone but Sherlock was too busy to attend. He had several cases running at once now - but not a one from Lestrade, since the man had started barring him from crime scenes, and he still hadn't figured out why.
It could have something to do with the manic glint in his eyes. Or it could have something to do with the fact that he had murdered a man and taken great pleasure in it.
Lestrade was wrong. There had been nothing pleasurable about it. Maybe Sherlock had thought that- at the time-
But he was wrong.
(God, was it disgusting).
"John would be disappointed," Mycroft says. He says it as though Sherlock wasn't aware of that one simple fact, but it hardly mattered.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't- god, why?!
"John is dead," Sherlock says, because it doesn't matter anymore! "A cadaver can't be disappointed with anything, least of all the shape of the box he's served up in."
Mycroft says something more, but Sherlock has already tuned him out, already focussed himself on something different.
Because John would be disappointed, but not for something so trite as missing his funeral.
"It wasn't worth going, anyway," the John of his delusions says to him. "God, I almost fell asleep twice, it was that damn boring. Anyway, have you eaten yet? I'm starved."
The cruellest thing is that it sounds just enough like his John Watson that it fools him, just for a second. Then he remembers.
There's no walking away from dismemberment, after all.
Every morning, when Sherlock wakes up, he stares up at his ceiling and remembers, John Watson is dead.
Then he gets up and maybe he'll have a shower, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll have a cup of tea, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll greet Mrs. Hudson with a kiss on the cheek, maybe he won't.
Later, he changes into a suit - maybe with the purple shirt, the one that John always admired out of the corner of his eye - and remembers, I am alive.
And that's okay.
Is it okay?
It's not okay. Sherlock's known that for quite some time and god, John Watson must really have been something new, because he's never denied himself anything before.
It's not okay, because Sherlock could feel himself all but tearing apart at the seams, and he still tried so hard to convince himself that he was fine.
The funny thing is, that John had once confessed that he felt like the aftermath of Sherlock's explosion. John was the quiet that was left behind - the reverberation that rings in your ears and remains unnoticed until it's gone.
Who's reverberating now, John?
Whose bones shake so hard with every step that they threaten to crumble mid-symphony, John?
So Sherlock makes a decision, and copes in the only way he knows how. The world cracks and fractures and tiny bits of it shift, ever so slightly, then fall back into place. The picture that's left behind is Sherlock Holmes, fixed.
Sherlock wakes the next morning and finds that he still doesn't have a phone so he goes out and gets himself a new one.
He pays with Mycroft's money, because that's always guaranteed to piss him off, and calls Lestrade.
For some reason, Lestrade sounds almost terrified of him. But that can't be right, because Sherlock hasn't done anything to warrant such a reaction.
Eventually, Lestrade goes back to sounding tired and worn, like he always has, instead of terrified, which was new and unnerved Sherlock. Eventually, Sherlock manages to convince Lestrade to let him in on one of his cases.
Serial killer. His favourite.
"Look, mate, I know you don't like talking about it, but..."
A cough. Lestrade shuffles his feet somewhat awkwardly. It's irritating.
"And I mean, personally, I don't blame you, but..."
If he keeps trailing off like this, Sherlock's going to do something drastic.
"You're not coping, and..."
Sherlock scowls and stands up properly, turning his attention away from the corpse in front of them. "Your mindless drivel is giving me a headache, Lestrade. Just spit it out."
Lestrade frowns and stops shuffling, but he does shove his hands in his pockets. "We need to talk about John," he says quickly, with his head bent slightly forward and away from him just enough that Sherlock almost has a hard time hearing what he says.
Sherlock sighs in frustration and leans back over the body. "You need to be more specific than that. You should hardly need me to tell you that 'John' is one of the most common names in the English speaking world."
He feels Lestrade freeze behind him. "John. John Watson," he says.
"You're repeating yourself," Sherlock informs him. "Please stop it."
"No, but," Lestrade begins to say, sounding incredibly flustered. "We need to talk about John!"
Sherlock's scowl deepens. "Who are you talking about?" he snaps out.
Lestrade's eyebrows furrow in confusion and he deflates. "Oh," he says. "Uh."
"I told you Anderson was contagious," Sherlock says bitterly. "I've got what I need here. I'll be in contact later."
He leaves the crime scene with a bitter taste in his mouth. It takes him a while to realise that it's blood - his blood. He'd been chewing on the inside of his lip.
Sherlock feels sick and he isn't entirely sure why, but he also feels like he's forgotten something important.
John Watson is dead.
Who's John Watson?
John Watson is no one.
FIN