Believe Me to Be…
By: InitialA
Disclaimer: I don't own or make profit off of BBC's Sherlock.
Author's Note: Preemptive strike against all of the feelings I will be feeling for Sunday's Reichenbach. I have not watched it, it has not aired, so if there are inaccuracies and you read this post-Reichenbach… apologies. Enjoy.
The world was spinning, his senses on a delay from reality. He felt as if he walked through molasses. His breathing was too loud in his ears. His heartbeat was deafening. He distantly heard Lestrade calling for him—("John… John…!")—and grabbing his arm to keep him from getting too close. But he needed to be close. He needed it. Lights flashed hypnotically as the ambulance arrived, but his entire world focused on the dark, bloodied mass of tangled bodies on the pavement.
Paramedics leaped out of the van. John blinked, looking left. Lestrade's men were roping off the area, trying to get him out of the way. He blinked again, looking right. A paramedic was swimming in and out of his vision, trying to ask him what had happened. "Mr. Watson, I need your statement…"
The clatter of wheels and metal brought his attention left again. His body: dark, listless and bloodied, with shouting, lively medics in white around him in perfect juxtaposition. They moved to the ambulance. His arm slipped, hanging helplessly in a bizarre angle off the gurney. John convulsed, feeling ill. He heard Lestrade behind him again, shouting his name again and again. John seized again as they loaded the body onto the ambulance and his head slipped, revealing his bloody forehead. His mind flashed back to Afghanistan and another friend, another body struck by tragedy. Another life he was helpless to save. Lestrade had him by the shoulders as the shaking continued, and a mangled cry escaped him: "SHERLOCK!"
"John! JOHN!"
The scene blurred. He couldn't breathe properly. He was shaking. Or was Lestrade shaking him? "JOHN! Oh, God, someone help him!"
No, that wasn't Lestrade's voice. "Anticonvulsants, now!"
Everything went white. He was choking. Was this it? Sherlock dead, and he, John, dying as well? Grief? Can one die purely from grief? "Someone do something!"
"Ma'am, if you don't restrain yourself we will have you evicted from this hospital!"
"Hold off on the medicine, he's not seizing! He's fighting the tubes!"
"He's waking up?"
"Hang on, Captain, just hold on…"
His eyelids felt so heavy. He gagged as something was removed from his nose and mouth. Someone rolled him onto his side just in time; he vomited. "Easy there, Cap. You're all good now. Welcome back, sir."
Someone put a straw in his mouth. "Just water then, rinse and spit."
He obeyed, with much difficulty, and was then rolled onto his back again. "Sher…"
"John, oh John…"
His entire body felt heavy, and then knew no more.
When he came to, it was dark. His eyes hurt anyway. He tried to lift his arms to rub them, but it was as if they were made of lead. His head felt the same, but it wasn't nearly as difficult to move it from side to side. He took in the surroundings. The dark revealed little, but the monitors and IV drips screamed 'hospital room'. 'What happened…? Sherlock and Moriarty… and then the ambulances…'
Absolutely none of it made sense. Did he faint at the scene? Had he been injured somehow? Where was Sherlock?
The door opened, and he grimaced at the flood of light, squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as possible. "Sorry, love," a woman said, and he heard the door close. "You've been out of sorts for ages, it's no wonder your eyes are hurting."
"Where-?" The voice that spoke sounded like an alien had mated with a blender.
The nurse poured water into a cup and put the straw to his lips. "No talking for now, though that's a good sign. You're in less pieces than we thought. Just rest now."
She took the cup away when he'd finished, and pressed a button on one of the monitors. "Here's something to help you sleep. Welcome back, Dr. Watson."
It was daylight when he woke again. The light hurt less this time, and he adjusted more quickly. A woman shrieked when he turned his head. "JOHN!"
He was enveloped immediately in a hug, and he struggled. "Oh John, I'd all but given up hope! Oh but look at me, smothering you and you barely awake. Here, let me get you some water."
As she did, he recognized his sister. But this was a different Harry. She was thinner, more well-kept. Her hair was stylishly cut, not thrown in a ragged ponytail. Her hands were steady. She was wearing clothes that weren't threadbare at the elbows, and jewelry that wasn't lacking for care. "Harry…"
She let him take a long drink, and then sat in the chair positioned near the foot of the bed. "I know… I know you're probably not pleased to see me. We've never… well… But John, after that horrible accident, and mum and da not around anymore, how could I just leave you here like this?"
John closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to wrap his brain around everything. After several long minutes he asked the only thing he could think of. "Harry, what… happened?"
She gasped slightly. "Oh, dear. The doctors said you might not remember…"
"I… remember… Sherlock. Hurt." Words would not come as easily as he'd like. His brain was moving rapidly, but his mouth was not cooperating.
"Sherlock? Oh, he must be one of your army friends. I don't know how he is, you were the worst hurt. An IED right under your Humvee, it's amazing any of you are alive at all."
This was unexpected. "Humvee?"
"Yes, John, the Humvee. Remember? You were in Afghanistan."
"Ages… ago."
Harry shook her head. "They put you in a medical coma and transported you as soon as it was safe. But they couldn't bring you out of it. No one could give me a straight answer on why."
None of this was adding up. "But… Lestrade. Sherlock?"
"I'll have to put a call in to your regiment to see how they are, John. I don't know."
He tried to shake his head. "No. Not… army."
"Not army? John, we haven't kept up in years, I don't know all of your friends. Do you have their mobiles in your diary? I can give them a ring," Harry was starting to look distressed.
Hadn't kept up? Harry was one of the most avid commenters on his blog! What was she playing at? She knew who Sherlock and Lestrade were! His temper was getting the better of him, but he couldn't get the words out. It only frustrated him more. The monitors beeped faster in response. "How long?" He asked finally.
Harry looked around as if someone else would magically appear to answer for her. Finally, she said, "You've been in a coma for six months, John."
The doctors explained it better later. Six months ago, during his tour in Afghanistan, the Humvee he and his squad were in was hit by an improvised explosive device. All of them had barely escaped with their lives, but four of them, including John, had had to be airlifted to a more secure medical facility. His injuries had been extensive—massive head wounds, a few fractured ribs, one leg broken in three places, internal bleeding around the abdomen, and third-degree burns—and it was decided that he be put into a medical coma to help his recovery. Once he had been stabilized, he had been transported to St. Bartholomew's in London. There, he had lain unconscious until two days ago. It was a miracle that he had woken up. The miracle grew when he showed to have normal brain patterns and slowly regained power over speech.
When he asked about Sherlock Holmes, no one could answer him. Eventually they brought someone down from psychiatry and he explained, at great length, about Sherlock Holmes and their adventures together. When he finished, the man was smiling at him sadly. "Unfortunately, Dr. Watson, you're suffering from the misconception that your brain activity while in the coma was actually real. The simplest terms would be a 'coma dream', though that's still debated on facts."
He went on to explain that some recovered coma patients reported knowing their doctors and nurses by name, though they had never been formally introduced. Others reported having vivid dreams. John was shown his brain activity scans, and he saw the varied colors indicating which parts of his brain had been active while he was unconscious. He also saw a list of the doctors and nurses who had attended to him over the months: Sally. Anderson. Greg. Molly. Hudson. Holmes.
"Really, they're not uncommon names. You heard them while you were under, and your brain incorporated them into your subconscious. I also believe your sister left the television on quite a bit, which may account for some of your wilder adventures. If you'd like, I can get someone down from neurology to explain it better."
John felt like someone had cut out a large part of his chest. "No…" he finally said. "No, it's fine…"
When he wasn't working with the physical therapist to regain control of his body, John sat and stared at nothing. Harry tried engaging him in conversation, but he wasn't interested. He learned that she had been stone-cold sober for five months, as soon as he'd come home. She shared why her relationship had ended. In another world, in the world he wanted to be in, he would have felt sympathy. He would have been happier that his sister's life was turning around, in a positive way this time. He would have been glad that she had managed to hang on to a good job for more than three months.
But this was not that world. This was a world without Sherlock Holmes. This was a world with a few less good people in it.
In the other world, people often mistook them for a couple. And now, John felt like he had suffered a break-up. There was a gaping hole in his life that Sherlock had filled. He felt like half of him was missing.
Sherlock and John.
And now he was just John.
And he didn't know how to be just John anymore.
Harry pushed him into therapy. It didn't really work, sitting there and talking about a man who did not exist and how he had affected him so deeply. His therapist wrote a lot, more than he could read while she wrote it. She tried explaining to him that Sherlock was never real. It was a long dream. He was substituting reality with this dream because the horror of the war was too difficult to deal with. If he could just open up about the war, everything would be fine again. And wouldn't it be nicer now, he was getting along with his sister again?
He tried explaining again and again, it wasn't a dream, it was real. She corrected him again and again, it had only felt real. He had been in a coma for a long time. It was a very long time to dream, of course it felt real. During one session he stood and shouted for a good long while until he collapsed from exhaustion. A few days later, he mumbled a sort of apology for his behavior, and his therapist smiled. "You've had a frustrating few weeks, John. I can take a little shouting."
Instead of asking him questions this time, she just handed him a moleskin notebook. "I want you to write down everything you remember. I want you to write it out exactly as you remember it. Maybe if you get it on paper, it will help you more than just talking about it. And your physical therapist thinks it will help you regain control of your motor skills."
At first he put it off. He stayed in his mind, recounting adventure after adventure. He recounted the mundane everydayness of life with Sherlock Holmes. He remembered unemployment, watching the television with Mrs. Hudson and her soothing comfort and tea when his relationships ended. He remembered panic when Sherlock would start shooting the walls. He remembered the odd ways that Mycroft would keep track of his troublesome younger brother, and hiding Sherlock's cigarettes.
There were painful times as well. When he woke the whole flat with his screaming from night terrors from the war. Sherlock perching like an owl near the foot of his bed, watching as John drank his chamomile tea. Small gestures the next day to make him feel better: having a clear space in the kitchen to eat, no body parts lying about in clear sight. His favorite piece played on the violin. His laptop undisturbed by anyone but John himself.
At some point, John found himself reaching for the journal and a pen. He started at the beginning, and wrote. He recanted the Geek Interpreter, The Woman, Sherlock's penchant for Mrs. Hudson's cakes. He complained how Sherlock would never get the grocery shopping done, or would leave it in the cab when he did. He wrote of Lestrade's divorce and how they had awkwardly moved him back into the dating scene. He wrote of Saturday afternoon football matches in the park. How Sherlock had loved walking the city for the sheer joy of its ancient mystery. He wrote and wrote until his hand seized with stress. His PT the next day focused on relaxing the hand muscles and working his arms to handle extensive work. Later, he wrote more, but stopped at the first sign of muscle stress.
After a full week of writing, he came to the fall. The struggle between Sherlock and Moriarty. As he wrote, he realized he wasn't just writing what happened. He was writing dialogue that hadn't happened. Or rather, it had, but it wasn't what had played out in the streets of London that horrible day. Or was it a horrible day?
Was it a horrible dream?
Could it really all have been just a dream?
John gave the moleskin to his therapist after he had finished. She leafed through it, and finally came to rest on the final page. "'As I write this now, I find difficulty holding on to the dream. The words that were said do not fit the scene of Sherlock's horrible death. When I watched them taking him away from me, I felt myself returning to reality, and the words I recorded were not part of my living dream. I thought I was dying of grief because he was dead, but in fact I was returning to the living. In a way, I suppose his death was symbolic. He had to die in the dream so I could live in reality.' That's quite poetic, John."
John said nothing in return. His eyes were glassy with unshed tears.
Six weeks after the dream had ended, he was released. He was instructed to outpatient care three times a week for ongoing physical training. Harry insisted she stay with him for the time being. She had an extra room in her new flat, and few stairs for him to worry about. If for nothing else but to get her off his back, he agreed.
Once a week he went to therapy. He talked about the mundane life he led. He talked about Harry and how he felt she was putting on a show to make up for how horrible their relationship had been for decades. He talked about how he felt like an invalid, walking about with a cane while his pathetic body tried to keep up.
He did not talk about the times he had cried. John Watson felt lost. He was lost and had no way to direct himself somewhere else.
He did not talk about how, in an insane moment of hope, he had typed 'the science of deduction' into his web browser and cried when 'The page you are looking for cannot be found' appeared.
He did not talk about the dreams he had still, of an impossible man and their impossible adventures.
At two months, John was taking regular walks around Angel. His trainer insisted upon at least thirty minutes of this a day. At three, he went about the city on short excursions. He cheated a bit, taking the Tube and the bus more often than he walked, but it gave him an excuse to rest his aching legs. He watched the CCTV cameras carefully, and almost expected the phone boxes to ring as he passed them.
They never did.
On the south bank, he sat one day and watched the skateboarders roll past hundreds of layers of graffiti. John wondered how many messages had been left and destroyed over the years. A homeless woman sat huddled by a pillar, ignored by the masses save one or two.
John thought about her, and how else she might have lived her life. He thought of a man who, though probably as an afterthought, might have made her day better in exchange for information.
He dropped a few quid into her hat and went home.
Four months after the dream, he made his way west. It was somewhere he had avoided. He wasn't sure he was ready. But, one morning the thought would not leave his head. He finally screwed up his courage, grabbed his walking stick, and went.
He stood in front of Speedy's, looking up at the windows he had gazed out of so often. But he never had. Not really. An elaborate dream, of a man who had never existed. It was something he almost accepted by now. He turned to go. He looked for a taxi in the vain hope that he would not have to walk all the way down to Marylebone. He cursed Harry for living in the middle of Angel, as far from any Tube station as one could get in the middle of London.
The door to 221 Baker Street opened. His heart raced as an impossible voice, husky from years of cigarette abuse, made itself heard. "And do make sure your least annoying officers are present, Lestrade—"
"Sherlock, I can't clone myself, and we need a full set on the scene."
"Then try to keep them from talking, or worse, thinking. Dear God, what does it take to get a cab at this hour?"
John spoke before he could stop himself. "Sherlock Holmes?"
The man turned. He was magnificent and whole, and every detail exactly as he remembered it. That was impossible, wasn't it? The unruly mane of dark curls, the piercing blue eyes—he even popped his collar the same. "You were out a while," he said, still beginning conversation in the same, annoying way.
Of course he could tell about the coma. Every fiber of his being sang. "Several months, I'm told," John replied.
Sherlock's eyebrows twitched upwards briefly. John was pleased. Surprising Sherlock Holmes was turning out to be just as entertaining as he'd once dreamed. "I've heard of you. Someone who is familiar with your methods shouldn't be surprised," he said.
Lestrade covered a laugh with a cough. "Sherlock, the crime scene…"
"In a moment, Lestrade. As long as your team isn't as incompetent as I fear, it shouldn't matter much. Several months and already walking about. Army training must serve you well," Sherlock said.
"Ignoring that it's what put me in a coma in the first place, yes."
"Afghanistan or Iraq?"
"Afghanistan."
"Sherlock Holmes, making pleasant conversation. Never thought I'd live to see the day," Lestrade commented, shoving his hands deep inside his pockets.
Sherlock glanced over John again. "How do you feel about the violin?"
John blinked, caught off guard. "Come again?"
"I play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes I don't talk for hours on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."
'You also shout at the telly when it's wrong. You compose hauntingly sad music when you're distressed. You don't eat for days at a time unless I make you. You pickpocket policemen when they're annoying, you've stolen from the Queen herself. You half-kill those who harm people you love, and you claim to know nothing of affection for anyone. I know more than just the worst of you…' John wanted to say so much more. Instead, he asked, "Who said anything about flatmates?"
"I did. I put a notice out for a flatmate. You're here, you know my name. A simple deduction."
His heart was in his throat. He cleared it, and shifted on his aching legs, looking around anxiously. "Well. I've been informed that I'm a serial monogamous. I have rows with chip-and-pin machines. My therapist wants me to write a blog about everything that happens to me. Would that bother you?"
A corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched into a brief smile before fading. "It's horribly impolite for two men to make living arrangements without knowing each other's names."
"John Watson. Doctor John Watson."
"Sherlock, please, we need to go," Lestrade said.
Sherlock glanced at the detective inspector, then back at John. "An army doctor… Interesting. Seen a bit of action? Injuries, violent deaths?"
"Clearly," John replied. His hopes were higher than they had been since he had woken up.
"Want to see a bit more?"
"Sherlock!" Lestrade protested.
John couldn't stop the grin. "Oh, God yes."