Title: Synapses
Author: BluePhyre
Characters: Johnlock, basically the entire crew
Rating: T, for the moment
Genre: Angst, Adventure
Summary: The suicide of Sherlock leaves his associate and only friend, Dr. Watson, crippled and depressed. To save him, Holmes assumes the role he's carefully avoided for years. Criminal. Puppeteer. He is Moriarty. He will be, for John. Jocklock, Post-Reichenbach.
Disclaimer: I do not own any version of Sherlock Holmes, and the lyrics below belong to Motion City Soundtrack, not me.
Author's Notes: Hey :D First Sherlock fic, hopefully to be a successful epic. I know post-Reichenbach is the most explored part of the fandom so far, but for good reason. It's really fun to play with and plot, so any good Sherlock writer must have their go at it, right? This is my attempt. Bear with me, please. And review! That'd be brilliant. Inspiring, actually.
If you want a nice, proper playlist for reading this fic, I suggest you look up ViolinistBAKA on youtube or tumblr. All of the Dr. Who/Sherlock/Star Trek violin covers have inspired me so much :D Add Rainymood and that's precisely what I listened to for hours on end while writing. That, plus endless Teavana, is basically my method dissected for writing this particular fanfic. Must channel Sherlock.
Mmph. Sorry if my author's note is a bit long. Especially in comparison to the prologue, which is quite short. I'll make up for it with the following chapters, though, so no worries! Thanks for being interested in my fanfic, and have a good read. Kai? Kai.
"I barely have the motivation
They say I suffer from
A lack of serotonin
Synapses, they happen
Too infrequently for me
To be functioning properly."
Prologue: The Sound of Silence
His violin. That's what he has ventured back to 221B Baker Street for. Faking death, defying the logic of all of England – that had been the easy bit of all of this. But what had proven to be difficult was the "note" he left and the aftermath of it all. And how on earth could Sherlock be expected – though, the expectations come only from the depths of his own mind these days – to riddle it all out without his precious violin? It was the only irreplaceable part of his entire lifestyle. Well, he had thought so. Before John.
Molly had refused to fetch the instrument for him. Probably has something to do with guilt. She suffers from the dreadful, pitted, queasy emotion these days because of her role in Sherlock's great deception. She had succeeded in sobbing her way through the wake, if only to make sure the open-casket show went swimmingly, fooled everyone. She had refused to attend the funeral. Sherlock couldn't say that he had expected a large showing, but the assembly of seven was humbling. A standard coffin requires six pallbearers, and Anderson had been the last to be dragged into the service after Watson, Mycroft, Lestrade, Angelo, and Henry Knight. Mrs. Hudson had followed them, handkerchief in hand as she sniffled over her lost tenant. Sherlock had watched as they all departed quickly, leaving John to his tears. Best friend...
He stored John's speech away for later reference. No clue as to where in his mind palace those words belong, they lurk now in a room created solely for stupid things Watson's done. The emotions, while lukewarm at best for an average human, brought Sherlock to hysteria. He was above feeling. Why, then, as he listened to John, did his deep lumbic system argue otherwise? He should have let the puppy-faced soldier be gunned down. It would have been so much easier. Then, Sherlock would be able to handle the emotions. Or perhaps, then, he really would have killed himself.
That has to be the absence of his violin speaking. Sherlock knows saving John – oh, yes, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson as well – was the only thing to do. After all, he still has his life. They still have theirs. And really, how hard could it be to regain his semi-positive role in the media? First, though, he must destroy the three assassins. Yes – that's the plan. But retrieving his violin is necessary.
It can't be any violin but his own. It is this one that punctuates every moment of his routine. His all-important routine. Don't eat, play, don't sleep, play, solve cases, play, humor John. How on earth will he replace John? He won't. He can't. He shouldn't have let John become more than a nuisance in the first place, shouldn't have involved such a weak variable – human contact – in his methods. But removing one instrumental piece of his precise schedule is better than removing two, and the rest is so easy to replicate. John had become his challenge, in all of his unpredictability. John still is his challenge, but now simply because he cannot have him in his life. Now, he's alone. Alone, alone, alone. The word never seemed to bother him before. But never had he discovered such a stimulating second mind. Not quite extraordinary like his own, but certainly not ordinary. Stimulating.
It's precisely his requirement for stimulus that has lead Sherlock back to 221B, despite the enormous risk the entire operation holds. He's always liked risks, but this isn't one to enjoy. He dreads this one challenge, because he doesn't know if he'll mess it up or not. And if he's found out, if it all falls to shit... Sherlock can hear the sniper fire in the back of his mind, and it makes him jump. No – his brain will not fool him. Not now.
It's dark but not far from dawn as he pulls out his key and enters the apartment for the first time in what feels like a millennium. Really, it's only been two weeks of homelessness and nicotine patches used sparingly, but Sherlock is starved for music and knowledge and John and it's devouring his mind. He can no longer think properly – deduction has left him. He feels weak and out of practice, and he can't even imagine his mind palace it troubles him so. The disrepair it's in stings like a ragged, deep laceration right over his heart.
He sneaks up the first staircase rather soundlessly – that, he can say, he's still brilliant at – and stands in the sitting room for a moment. John is the type to like things clean. His own bedroom had always been kept spotless, if not a bit impersonal and hard to draw deductions from, and upon seeing the flat for the first time he had said it'd be perfect if it was tidied up. However, nothing in the room has changed since Sherlock's jump. Just as messy as ever. All of Sherlock's belongings were willed to his flatmate, so the good doctor had every right to do what suited him. Was it nothing, then? Since when had simply doing nothing suited John in the least? Not since before the war, he can rightfully say.
Where is the violin, then? If nothing else was moved, Sherlock decides it has to be in his room. He resists brewing a cup of tea – it would be the first he's had since the cup John made him two weeks prior – or checking on the eyeballs in the microwave as he passes the kitchen and focuses on the door to what was his most private area. He had hardly ever exploited the haven that his bedroom had offered. Before John, there had been no one to avoid. With John, there was no reason to avoid. The army surgeon's mind had been like a sturdy brick wall, whether or not he spoke his thoughts, and Sherlock had been quite content to sit on his arse and bounce ideas off of his mere presence all day and night. Now, he knows not what his room has become. The entire flat is a shrine to the great Sherlock Holmes. How, then must his room be kept?
He opens the door and shuts it behind him, just as it was before. In the darkness, he sees nothing. Where his bed is, he hears light snoring. John's snoring. Sherlock's colorless eyes adjust to the absolute darkness, and there he is. He wears Sherlock's clothes as he sleeps in Sherlock's bed. Beside the only consulting detective in the world is the violin case, and he grabs it eagerly. The sudden urge to play tugs at his heartstrings, but he knows he cannot. He must process this scene without its help. Deduction, his mind weak, emotional, disused, has never been so painful.
As John sleeps, Sherlock inches closer to observe. He is doused in a thin sheen of sweat and he pants and shakes. Eyes dance feverishly under closed lids and lips part in soundless whimpers. A nightmare hidden in snores. Harry's old phone sits on the beside table. There are more scratches where it's plugged in to charge. A shaking hand. Not from alcohol, because John has a personal vendetta against binge drinking. An intermittent tremor that's returned. That blasted cane rests beside Sherlock's bed. A psychosomatic limp. John knows about its cause, but he can't remedy it anymore. He's seeing his doctor again, but it doesn't help. Nothing helps.
Sherlock knows it's his absence. He knows his death is the cause. There's no adrenaline to guide John through life, to pave his path and numb his pain. The battlefield has been pulled out from under his feed for a second time since his addiction to it began, and it's cruel. Even crueler than his addiction to it.
John lets out a yawp and Sherlock, closer than he had planned on letting himself get, nearly jumps out of his skin. He scuffles back to a corner he knows to be eternally doused in shadows and has settled into the shelter just as John's eyes fly open in terror. His pants are shallow and dry, and he sits up in a cocoon of blankets. Knowledge sits heavy in his drooping eyes.
"Sherlock?" he croaks, clearly parched. The brunet in the corner feels himself wither inside. He needs to flee. Too many emotions. To much sentiment. No wonder the world thinks he's dead; he lost the game. He grew... fond of someone. He grew weak.
John swings his legs to the side of the bed as he curses himself. With one hand, he reaches for his cane. The other is already occupied by his pistol, and the safety is off. Had he been holding it in his sleep...? Sherlock had failed to notice. For a moment, the good doctor raises the handgun to his head, and Sherlock can see Moriarty die. Hopelessness floods him again and he reaches out. He wants to scream, but John doesn't pull the trigger. Instead, he gently places the firearm down on the beside table and, with the aid of his cane, limps out of the room. His disability is much more pronounced than Sherlock remembers it to have been.
Had that all been for the rush? For a momentary feeling of uncertainty? Perhaps he had made John suicidal. Sherlock had always thought that he ran that risk more when he was alive, rather than dead. He presses his back to the wall and sinks down it slowly, fingertips pressed first to each other then to his lips. He is uncertain. So very uncertain.
The faucet is turned on in the kitchen and John comes back with a glass of water. Sherlock will have to wait to leave until he is sleeping – and then until he can compose himself. The sun isn't far off. If it rises, it will be too late for secrets. John needs to sleep now.
Sherlock watches as John drinks the water he's retrieved from his Royal Army Medical Corps mug. He's perched on the side of the bed, hand still shaking against his case. The tremor is like an earthquake to the spying detective. John's gray eyes probe the room after his water is finished, but he misses Sherlock, chilled to the bone by his own irrational shivering. He almost sees recognition in his eyes as John's gaze passes his corner, but he's vacant again and laying down with some difficulty before Sherlock can give up and advance from the shadows. Why, at that moment, did his breath hitch? It must have been momentary excitement. Or fear. Had he been holding his breath? Sherlock feels starved for oxygen and slides his fingers over his mouth to silence his ragged gasps for air.
"Could've sworn..." John murmurs to himself, his proper accent frail and undone by his weariness. When had he picked up the habit of external monologue? Sherlock reckons that he ought to use a skull. At least then his desperate words could be prose instead of candid heartbreak, ad-libbed just for Sherlock's unreasonable, unwarranted pain.
But he drifts off – into REM, too, judging by the erection that tents his blankets as he shifts onto his back – and Sherlock his freed from his bar-less prison. As he leaves, the morning wood John sports makes him lightheaded and giddy. He can't place why, when a moment ago he was sodden with grief and regret. Perhaps, he theorizes, it's the knowledge that his friend's body is sound, even if his mind does not seem to be. Nocturnal tumescence during REM is sign of health. Sometimes, Sherlock knows offhandedly, the process is halted by extreme depression. Then, maybe, he isn't as put out as he seems, despite the gun that he had put to his head not an hour ago.
Yes, perfect explanation.
Sherlock doesn't send a second look to the rest of the flat as he leaves. There's nothing to see – it's all the same as he left it. John's seen to that. But, as he closes the door marked 221B Baker Street, the violin case in hand, he knows that his thoughts will continue to linger here with John, as they have since his fall.
The good doctor is hopeless without Sherlock, he's concluded. Utterly hopeless. He needs the next adventure; he needs excitement and adrenaline. That shared need – John's for specific danger, Sherlock's for anything truly witty – had been the glue between them. The link that created their symbiotic relationship. They still need each other, and they both know it, but it's not possible for Sherlock to help John anymore. Not directly. And John... He will not be back in Sherlock's routine for some time. He doesn't know how – he needs his violin for this riddle – but Sherlock will nestle it back into their lives. The adrenaline, the excitement. He owes it to John, and he's too greedy and dangerous to do without it himself. It'll happen, and soon. Somehow.
He just... he needs to think. Ah, what a wonderful problem.
Thanks for reading! Hope it wasn't too short. Reviews are always much appreciated. They usually help the updating process, too ;) Until next time, then.
- Phyre