"It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparison anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play a game of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and no longer." – David Levithan
PART ONE: JOHN
My heart fell along with the kinky-haired man in the trench coat.
The sickening crunch of a skull hitting the concrete vibrated within my ears and rang incessantly, never letting me forget that moment when my life was strewn all over the ground.
I think I ran towards him. It was hard to be sure of anything at that point. A voice in my head repeated the phrase "Sherlock is dead, Sherlock is dead" over and over.
The biker who hit me did not faze my progression towards the broken, wounded body of the world's only consulting detective, whose blood seeped out from his head in a halo formation. His hair was splattered with it, hands slack.
"He's my friend. He's my friend, let me through, please! I'm a doctor!" I demanded, shrugging aside the growing crowd that is here to admire the spectacle.
There was no pulse.
The paramedics finally succeeded in putting the body onto a gurney and rolled him into St. Barts.
That was the last time I ever saw him again, face-to-face. With the crimson liquid tainting his cheeks, even at his most vulnerable moment, his last moment, Sherlock still managed to have a look of accomplishment and secretivity, with a dash of snarkiness.
I walked back to Baker Street, head disoriented. Taking a cab would let loose too many memories and too much anguish. There is already so much that I'm drowning in my own mind, adding to the collection would be ill advised.
I walked back to Baker Street and sat down in my armchair. Alone. Without a tall, slender detective opposite me. I think I stayed there for a few minutes, or had it been hours? Time seems utterly irrelevant and incalculable without someone there as an anchor. Maybe, just maybe, if I look up, he'll be sitting there again.
No one there.
I closed my eyes and tried to forget.
The PTSD relapsed. The dreams came back, but instead of them being centered around my fighting days in Afghanistan, a black-clad man with high cheekbones managed to weasel his way in.
It was the same every night.
We were in Baker Street, just like always, and Sherlock suddenly blurts out in a sing-songy voice, "A fall, a fall, Sherlock's gonna fall. Right off St. Barts, and you can't help at all." The scene then shifts, and we appear right on top of the hospital and suddenly, his face morphs into that of Jim Moriarty. There was a slight moment of hesitation as I realize what had happened, and in that time span, Jim stalks forward and pushes me off the ledge.
I was falling, falling, falling, and the momentum always shocks me awake.
My appetite decreased, until I was drinking no more than just a few cups of coffee and tea a day, nothing else. Mrs. Hudson had tried to convince me to eat more by bringing cakes and other foods up to my flat, but they always stay in the fridge, untouched. It was pretty spacious now, without his heads, thumbs, and other experiments taking up room.
I need help, so I went back to my old therapist.
"Say it, John. You have to come to terms with it," my therapist prompted.
Heaving a painful breath, I forced out, "My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is –" I choked on the last word. "–dead."
She nodded like she understood my pain. There was no comparison for it, even four months later. Had it been an earthquake, then it would measure off the Richter Scale. If it were a hurricane, there would be no category to fit its aggression.
"Tell me about his funeral. How did you feel then, John?" She leaned forward and clasped her hands together.
It had been raining. He always did have a flair for the dramatics and liked to end things with a bang. Gathered around the tombstone had been me, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, and a few others. Small. Wait, who is that? The women that caught my eye was... the Woman. She's alive, against all odds. Against what I previously believed.
"Irene," I walked up and greeted.
"John," she replied with a nod.
There wasn't much more to say. What else could be said without Sherlock here? He had been the glue, the guiding light, the reason we had even interacted at all in the past. Without him here, the conversation was a lost cause.
A flash of red locks suddenly came into view. Kitty Riley. Moriarty's helpful little accomplice that brought on Sherlock's downfall.
I strided forward with a bottle of pent-up anger and let loose a tsunami of hate and swears at the sly woman. She looked surprised, taken aback.
Everyone seemed shocked by my outrage. There was a slight look of satisfaction on Molly's face at my verbal attack, but she still pulled me back and tried to calm me.
Kitty left.
I finally settled down enough to give my eulogy, "Sherlock Holmes is– was– indescribable. No single word can fit a personality like his. He was both arrogant, annoying, a genius, and –" I felt a heavy weight on my ribcage. It felt like the sky was pressing down on it, not relenting. "– the best man I've ever known." There were tears on the faces of the audience. Even Mycroft seemed affected.
I had promised myself beforehand that I would not cry during the service, but there are promises that just can't be kept.
There was an article that came out the very next day on the funeral and an apparent "emotionally unstable ex-army doctor who needs to realize that Sherlock Holmes was a fraud and no love lost to society", written by the infamous Miss Riley.
My therapist's voice lulled me back into reality, "John, have you tried reconnecting with your friends? Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, the lot. They loved him, too, you know, they would understand your pain. Loss needs to be shared."
"You don't get it," I glanced out the window to avoid further eye contact. It was raining and thundering, just like at the funeral. How funny, how coincidental. "Before I left St. Barts, when I thought Mrs. Hudson had been hurt, I was so angry with him. I thought Sherlock was being an emotionless jerk. He had said, 'Alone is what I have, alone protects me', and I just replied with 'No, friends protect people' and walked out on him without knowing that... Moriarty..."
My therapist brought out a page cut out from The Sun written a few months ago. It had been headline news, because they found the phone Sherlock had left on the roof of St. Barts, and it had recorded, so cleverly hidden by the man himself, the confessions of a certain consulting criminal. The whole nation was shocked, I was shocked. Sherlock was innocent, after all.
"He did it to protect me and the others!" I shouted. "He was our friend and he protected us from those snipers! And he died knowing that almost everyone in the world thought that he was a fraud. A fake. Yet he did it all the same, jumped."
The picture on the article had been a picture taken of him bloodied and dead on the sidewalk that horrible day, and the signature one of him from a while back, the one of him in that hat, looking slightly uncomfortable. The deerstalker.
I inhaled sharply and my eyes turned bleak, "I doubted him and he knew I doubted him, and still, he sacrificed his life. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?!"
She opened her mouth to make a comment, but I stood up before she could speak. The room seemed suffocating, "I need to leave."
I left England. I left Baker Street and all its glory and headed to America.
At first, my reasoning had been that I needed a short break from the past, the the charming state of Pennsylvania drew me in until I ultimately made the decision that London can function without me and not go back.
Harry, Greg, and the others tried to convince me to return, even for a brief visit, but I always managed to conjure up some form of excuse as to why I can't.
But don't think America was a total escape, either, because I still jump whenever I see a Belstaff trench coat or a dark, curly lock of hair. Most of the time, though, I managed to stay free from it all.
Two years had gone by, and Molly, via text, had informed me that most people in London had forgotten, or just don't care anymore, about the whole fiasco, about Sherlock. Most had gone on with their lives, not bothered to know about a great man by the name of Sherlock. He doesn't deserve this.
On the two-year anniversary of his fall, I gritted my teeth and opened my laptop to the page of my blog that hasn't been updated since that incident. The hit counter had virtually stopped moving the few months after Sherlock's vindication, as people just completely lost interest in the man. Sure, it might go up on an odd day, but it's always just once in a blue moon. The moon did look blue that night. Everyone and everything on that day looked blue.
Do I dare? Do I dare open up his website? The Science of Deduction. I haven't heard that phrase in so long a time, and I long to see it in print. I typed in the url for the page: .uk and waited as the page loaded.
It was a barren land, that website. The entries from before still remained, as did his analysis of tobacco ash. The comment about Bluebell the rabbit was still up, too. A peek into the past. It didn't help.
I miss him terribly.
Mary Morstan, whom I met on the job at the hospital, somehow managed to crawl past my barriers and found herself a home in my very much alone heart. She made it better, made it heal, and made all the sadness disapparate.
After the initial few dates, I realized that I was in love again, but in a different way than it had been with Sherlock. With him, it had always been dysfunctional, but it was because of the dysfunctionality that we grew to be very close. Something I said before about, "We solve crimes, I blog about it, and he forgets his pants." We weren't exactly friends, and we weren't exactly lovers. He had managed to create a whole new category just for himself to reside in.
With Mary, it love, pure and simple. She made me smile and laugh again, and our personalities fit snuggly together.
Our wedding had been in the fall. Rather ironic, isn't it? That I lost a love to a fall and gained one during that season.
Life can be so funny sometimes.
Our life together as partners in marriage had lasted fifteen years already, and not a day go by am I not thankful for her presence.
I had told her about Sherlock. About his deductions, his snarkiness, and that last phone call we had. About everything, essentially. She didn't say much, she didn't have to. Pulling me into a hug, she then attempted to cheer me up with some freshly baked cookies.
There were some detrimental factors in our lives, of course, as there is in every marriage. We couldn't have any kids. The doctors said Mary was infertile. But that's alright, we have each other, and I am perfectly okay with that.
On the thirtieth Fall anniversary, a decision came to me in the form of desire to see Sherlock's grave. I'm going back.
Mary had asked to come along, but did not push when I politely declined and told her that I needed to make the trip alone.
Stepping onto the familiar streets of London for the first time after thirty years was strange. Very strange. Almost nothing had changed, and yet, almost everything had.
Baker Street was no longer the same after I learned about Mrs. Hudson's passing. After making my way there to see the flat, it was like that first time I had laid my eyes on the place, except Sherlock wasn't there to lead me inside.
I sighed and walked off in the opposite direction.
Over the course of all these years, I had quit communicating with Molly, Greg, and Mycroft. It wasn't that there were any quarrels between us, just that time had gotten in the way of things. We all had our own lives to lead, our own ways to cope, and the Atlantic Ocean hadn't helped in terms of distance and accessibility.
Scotland Yard wasn't very much different, just who is employed there. I had discovered that Lestrade had quit a long while back, possibly right after Sherlock's name was cleared, and Donovan was promoted to fill his spot. Anderson's retired now, but had continued to work on forensics after I left the country.
There was a part of me that had still been angry at them for planting the doubt in the police force's head, in my head, and for attempting to arrest Sherlock, but I suppose that's because Moriarty had fooled them all, that clever bastard. But all that's gone and passed, I suppose, and no amount of feeling can bring him back.
If only I had a magical blue police box to travel back in time. I can then finally have the chance to tell him sorry, that I believe in him, that I owe him so much.
A horrid shade of pink edged into my vision, worn by a young woman, and I can do nothing more but think back in nostalgia and try to relive our first case the best I can.
A Study in Pink. The phone. The cabbie. Two pills.
Oh, it had started everything, that case, but perhaps, it had ended everything, too, because that was when we had our first whiff of Moriarty. The door to discovery was also an entrance for destruction.
How can something be so brilliant yet so damning? How can someone?
The walk to St. Barts was brief, and before I knew it, I was standing, on the sidewalk, in the same spot, looking up, like I had done thirty years previous.
Does Molly still work here? Was she forced to examine his body after death? How she must have felt. She had always overlooked his flaws and kept him in his heart, no matter how rude he was.
I requested for her presence at the receptionist's desk, but she was out for her lunch break.
Curious, I walked up the stairs, up all the way until I reached the roof. It was a nice day, a clear day.
I sighed again.
Every say that memories fade and people move on, but I remember that earth-shattering moment like it was yesterday, and it kills me every time.
Grasping control of my emotions, I managed to take a step back from it all and drop back into reality. Coming out of the hospital, there was a moment of finality as I decided this would be the last time I would go back to that forlorn place.
The next location wasn't as difficult. Buckingham Palace. It was nice, to see the grand old building after so long and be reminded of the good laughs me and Sherlock had in there with the sheet. I still have that ash tray, you know.
There is still one last place I haven't visited– the cemetery.
Arriving at the final destination with a heavy heart, I realized there were three figures cluttered around Sherlock's headstone. They seem familiar.
"Molly! Greg! Mycroft!" I called out gleefully and started running.
Thank you for reading this, and comments and critiques are welcome and helpful. Next chapter is going to be Molly's narration of her events and life.