A/N: This isn't a reunion fic, or anything else like the ones you see- just to make that clear. Review if convenient. If inconvenient, review anyway. Could be dangerous.
Sleep is not, death is not;
Who seem to die live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young-maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon,
They are all vanishing
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are the days when you don't want to live.
Tracking down the rest of Moriarty's Empire, watching as it crumbles in your hands. The glistening strands of the spiderweb that you wish were only that, falling away like dust as they dissipate into the cold night air, a flurry of powdered snow and icing sugar. Feeling something in your gut tighten as you stride one step closer to The End, to The Reunion, to the not-yet-fully-determined Forgiving.
You wonder if he'll even remember. Not remember You, as such, but you. The you he lived with. The you he laughed with. The you he slowly fell in love with, and you who slowly fell in love back.
Not "Sherlock Holmes; Consulting Detective proved fraud." Just Sherlock.
There is ginger hair disguising the black, thick framed glasses hiding irises he would surely recognise. Stubble grown on a chin he would no doubt remember as the one he had gripped while you would kiss, with a passion so strong and so unencumbered you could feel it pulsing through the air like a tsunami tide.
To be struck by that wave would to be the greatest feeling on earth, you think.
To know as you are pulled beneath the waters that he is yours and that you are wonderfully his and wonderfully helpless in this struggle you so long to lose. Salt water filling your lungs and laughing through the pain because pain is but a feeling and feeling anything other than love for John is impossible.
Sometimes you watch him and wish that he is you. So he would be so bloody adept in the science of deduction that he'd march right up and punch you square in the jaw, relishing in the feel of power and anger and poorly concealed relief. But then he'd patch you up with a grin trying so hard not to envelop his face you want to freeze this moment forever. And he'll pretend to be cross and demand you shave and dye back your hair, break the goddamned glasses and just be Sherlock.
But he isn't you, and you can only stare as he limps past, wanting to reach out as he relapses back into the 'before-Sherlock' John, who needs a cane just to step out the front door. Military stance drooping, the once thriving strings of a puppet have been cut at the neck. Clothes that grow stained and soiled as he forgets there is such thing as being society's definition of acceptable, because what is a society and why is it acceptable where men are wrongly accused of fraud and Sherlock is without his John?
Questions you don't have the heart to answer.
Eyes film over with a sort of hopeless longing; oceans drained of their life, their reason for waking. The tide washes in then out again. What's the point, but to fulfill the mindless cycle of each new day?
Going by life blindly accepting that it's what happens.
He tells himself you are dead. Don't hope. No point.
He's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead.
(And I'm slowly dying along with him.)
Maybe it's good.
No, it's not.
This can never be good.
Why try to keep someone out of danger when they aren't even safe from their own mind?
You watch as he slips further and further into the gloom of depression. You wait as his eyes lose all their colour and his face grows pale from lack of sunlight. You stop tears from falling into your pillow as the man you love's life slowly spirals out of view.
The man you love watches as the drink in the bevelled glass bottle disappears almost as quickly as you did. Waits in his chair each night for you to walk through the door only to realise that you're not coming back. Stops tears from falling into his pillow as the man he loves wanders through a haze of ghosts and cigarette smoke and unfinished goodbyes.
He slips and he spirals as cold Sherlock resurfaces.
You wonder when your emotions came back, and why they're leaving again now.
You frequent Speedy's cafe incognito just to stare at the building standing beside it, though you know John isn't there. He barely goes home any more, spare those few early hours of the morning when he's too intoxicated to even get further than the 5th step.
You tell yourself you love him, and this is why you're doing it.
But you don't love this John.
Yes, you do.
He's still John. This is still your John, but he's a John drowning in the amber liquid of a beer bottle, trying desperately through the haze to grip the smooth edges. No use. He's washed away by yet another wave of the bitter alchohol and you slowly drown along with him.
You slip and you spiral with him by your side. Cold Sherlock swims in and out if view.
The days pass and the web continues to crumble. It's closer now; The End. The Reunion.
You can't bring yourself to ponder upon topics of Forgiving, because you aren't even sure anymore.
It's been 18 months, and just one strand of web is left. Right in the heart.
Sebastian Moran was the hardest to locate. Constantly slipping out of your reach, fleeting and dangerous. Getting so close to discovering the truth sometimes that you feared, not for the first time, that John was stepping right into the firing line of the so trigger-happy sniper.
But now you've got him. Well, Mycroft has got him. Okay... Mycroft's men have got him.
You allow yourself to chuckle and the sound is foreign through the silence.
Baker Street seems so close. John seems so close.
I'm coming home.
You draw closer. Your phone rings but you ignore it. Only Mycroft, after all.
Does it feel how you thought it would feel? Is it as if the stars have fallen from the sky? Are you so giddy with the supressed passion of a year and a half you can't walk straight?
You want to feel his voice on your skin.
Hear his crooked smile.
Smell his hair.
Drink in the presence of his being.
You want for him to be yours and for you to be his.
You want it to be the same, but different.
He sits on a bench overlooking the park, clutching an empty coffee cup within trembling hands. You don't think he knows it's even there. The dregs at the bottom are dripping onto his jumper and with a jolt you realise that this is the same jumper he wore on your first ever case together. A Study in Pink.
The day he shot a man for you, and the day you fell a little bit in love.
He has a look of sorrow in his eyes that you're sure you've seen before somewhere, and you realise that this is a look he now wears every day.
Your throat aches.
You sit beside him and he doesn't look up from his hands.
"Good morning, sir."
He continues to stare downwards and you realise your voice has grown tired and weary in time away, no longer the velvety bass he once knew. You cough as though to clear it out.
You want it to be the same.
Your phone rings again and you turn it off, pretending not to notice the seven missed calls from Mycroft. It's over now, you don't need him anymore. Moran is dead. It can all go back to how it was before this downward spiral. Before the Fall.
You want it to be the same.
The End has come. Now for the Reunion.
"I said; Good morning, sir."
The new John laughs, but it's not his Laugh. This laugh is bitter and pained and filled with something Sherlock can't bring himself to name.
"Hardly a 'good' morning."
His voice has changed too. He stares the other way, not looking you in the eye.
"And why is that?"
"Oh come on, mate. It's been a year and a frigging half! I don't want more bleeding reporters hounding me day and night- it's over, okay? It's just over. Maybe if you didn't have your head shoved so far up your own bleedin' arse you'd unde-"
"Look at me, John."
"No." His voice cracks.
"...Could be dangerous."
Silence.
The seconds that follow move in slow motion to you.
The turning of his head and the realisation as it dawns in his eyes. The shock, the relief, then the anger. The fist drawn back, ready to pu-
The bullet slicing through your stomach.
What?
And then there's blood.
So much blood.
Seeps onto your hands as you rise them in shock, the pain not quite hitting you yet. Numbness. Blinks, again and again. Coffee cup hits floor. Sound is magnified. Slow motion. Hits you now. Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain so much pain. John above you, shouting. Can't hear.
What's that, John? I can't hear you.
Smile. It hurts. Smile for John, Sherlock, he can see you now. Hello John. I'm back. It hurts. Hurts.
Mycroft with umbrella. Hurts. Shouting. More shouting, into phones now. What's that? Sepashan? Shepation? Sebastian? Someone's crying. Want to see John. Hurts. Blinks blink blinkety blink. Stay awake. Dizzy. Got to stay awake.
I can't hear you, John.
Sirens. Nee naw nee naw nee nawwwww.
Laugh. It hurts.
Why are you shouting, John?
Lips on your lips, soft and warm and whole. It's nice.
Hurts.
FIN
A/N: Ta-da. My feels were put in jeopardy while writing this. I hope it floated your boat.
Review? Extra points for anyone who noticed the teensy Fault in Our Stars reference I slipped in. I will love you forever and ever. Laterz!