Lovers of the Lost
It's never easy, leaving someone. Wherever you go. Whether it's somewhere just down the road, or somewhere the people don't understand the way you speak, or somewhere the sun doesn't reach. You beg permission to leave, or give an excuse, or sometimes, that's too hard, and you don't say anything at all. You just go, leaving an empty space in a bed that wasn't there before. You think it's better that way, but that someone you leave, that someone you love, never does. They feel forgotten. It hurts them. It hurts you too. Sometimes they forget that. Sometimes they forget that you love them. Sometimes they forget that you ever did.
One cold January morning, a man sits on a bench in Regent's Park. His head is in his hands. His face is grey and worn, that numb look of grief that belongs only to the lovers of the lost.
"Oh God, Sherlock," he says.
He shuts his eyes, breathes in.
"Do you even know? Do you even understand? I can't do this without you. You make me more than I am."
His voice breaks, splinters with emotion.
"Come back. Come home to me."
His name is John Watson.
John knew this would happen. He knew Sherlock would break him. He knew Sherlock would burn him. And he let him. Sherlock always had John's heart, and John gave him the chance to break it.
One day, it happens. He loses Sherlock Holmes. And the world doesn't end. It's not a desperate gunfight in a dirty alleyway. It's not a fast fistfight in some hot foreign country. It's not brave and it's not dramatic and it's not together. It's weak and it's silent and it's alone. They don't go down fighting, back to back, as soldiers, as friends, as lovers. No. Sherlock Holmes just jumps off a building. Suicide. Countless people have done it countless times before. It's just blood on the pavement and a chair that no-one sits in anymore and a black gravestone with nothing more than a name. Fragments of what Sherlock was. Pieces of a man. And it just feels like this is wrong. Like this isn't how it was supposed to be.
Afterwards, no-one knows what to do with him. Mrs Hudson cries. It doesn't help. Lestrade tries to calm him down. It doesn't help. Mycroft comes round to put Sherlock's affairs in order. Punching him in the face and slamming the door helps.
The next day, a thick envelope comes through the letterbox. John tears it open, reads the first sentence of the document inside.
THIS IS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT of me SHERLOCK HOLMES of 221B Baker Street, London, Greater London, NW1 6XE.
He can't read anything after that for a few minutes, because his tears are falling onto the thick cream paper. Sherlock's will is quite simple. There's some money to Mrs Hudson, and a few items for Mycroft, Lestrade and Molly. Apart from that, Sherlock's left him everything. John reads and re-reads one sentence twenty times, tries and fails to understand what it means.
I devise and bequeath the residue of my real and personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever to my friend and partner John Watson, who will be loved always, no matter how far away I am.
"Why do you do this, Sherlock?" he whispers, "Why do you do this to me?"
He doesn't get an answer.
There are some things that none of us can understand. Things that never fail to confuse us, no matter how many nights you stare up at the ceiling in your empty bed, wrapped in rough sheets that smell of the man who used to sleep there, and try to understand. Things like why you're so alone. Things like life now that the man you love is gone. Things like Sherlock Holmes. And all he meant, and all he was, and all he will never be. John doesn't understand this. He doesn't know that he will ever understand.
Sherlock scared him. He scared him so much. He was scared that one day it'd all be gone, Sherlock would be gone, SherlockandJohn would be gone. Well, it's gone now. And John doesn't have anything to be scared of anymore. He is without fear. He is without love. He is without so many things.
He's still all so entangled in Sherlock's life. He aches. Sherlock's like a bullet to the stomach, gnawing into him, biting into him slowly. Sherlock's strangling him. He's trapped, tied to a dead man. The strings are tightening and there are welts across his wrists, his ankles, his neck. And John's tied up in this mess, this madness, and it's not alright, because it's not how it was supposed to be. John had given himself, all of himself. He split open his chest and reached into it and pulled out his heart, raw and bleeding. "Here, use mine," he said, and he gave Sherlock half his heart, because he didn't have one. They were SherlockandJohn, their shapes bled together, he couldn't see where Sherlock ended and where he began. He is not just John Watson. He is Sherlock Holmes too. Sherlock made him more than he was. Now he's empty.
And some days he's alright, and some days it isn't. Some days he steps outside with a soldier's smile and the sun doesn't seem so far away, and some days he makes two cups of tea and he stands crying at the sink as it runs into the plughole, and some days he presses his hand against the cool glass of the window, watching the world outside. There's a world full of people who are brave and beautiful and brilliant but not Sherlock. There's a world full of people but not one of them is his best friend and flatmate and colleague and lover. There's a world full of people but not one of them is his. He stumbles along like he always has done. Alone. Again.
Lestrade tries. He phones, he comes round, he keeps close. John's more grateful than he shows. They go out for a drink one warm June night, the alcohol and the hum of conversation wrapping around John, numbing and warm and distracting, like radio interference. It's almost easy, handing out words to each other over the table, simple small talk about work and sport and family. Then Lestrade takes a breath and looks at him, really looks at him, and it's the first time in months that anyone's had the courage to do that.
"How are you, John?" he asks.
And John feels like crying. He wants to grab fistfuls of Lestrade's shirt and cry into his shoulder like a drunk teenager, and tell him how bloody awful it's been.
But he doesn't. He nods, throat tight.
"I'm alright," he says, "I'm coping."
He sighs, takes a swig of beer.
"I mean, I'm not good. But I'm better than I was. At least I can eat now. And I even sleep a bit. Some nights."
He shrugs.
"I'm as good as I can be. I'm going to take a while. I'll get there. It's just – hard."
He looks down, tries to keep his voice even.
"I just – I always thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. And I'm not."
He takes a breath, bites his lip.
"Oh well. Life goes on."
The words are dry and hollow. He doesn't like lying.
Lestrade nods, sees something broken behind his eyes.
"I'd be lying if I said I could understand what you're going through," he says, "So I'm not going to. But for what it's worth, you have me, you have your friends, and we're not going anywhere."
John's mouth is dry.
"I know," he breathes, "Thank you."
Lestrade holds up his glass.
"To Sherlock Holmes," he says.
John raises his glass.
"To Sherlock."
It's the closest thing to closure he's got these past few months.
One hot July evening, a man sits on a rickshaw in Cairo. His head is in his hands. His face is grey and worn, that numb look of grief that belongs only to the lovers of the lost.
"Oh God, John," he says.
He shuts his eyes, breathes in.
"You can't know. You won't understand. I have to do this without you."
He bites his lower lip.
"You make me more than I am."
He has only made one promise to the man he loves, and that is to love him until he dies. Now he promises him something else.
"I will come back. I will come home to you."
His name is Sherlock Holmes.