Disclaimer: I neither own, nor profit from! Set following The View From Up Here (and won't make sense without having read that first).
It was like living in a fog. I didn't know this Sherlock, the one who took me home, the one who didn't press the issue of me visiting the hospital, the one who lapsed into silence and stillness.
I'm not sure what I expected, perhaps a day or two of this at the most, and then a resurgence of the energy that made him who he was, the lightning-quick thought processes, the hunger for a challenge, the constant need to be moving, to be doing something. And anger, I expected anger at James Moriarty for this, what was a senseless waste of life and for no real reason. I expected anger for being shunted down the wrong path, too, and a new determination to find him, to stop him, to meet this adversary head on because he was the only person who could.
I didn't expect nothing.
That's what I got.
I had to take myself to a specialist, schlepping by train up to the veterans hospital for treatment that I knew full well Mycroft would pay for, if I'd asked for it. But I wanted to be cared for by the same people who'd treated me previously, who knew what to do, and who did not ask more questions than necessary. When my brother-in-law found out about it, through whatever his usual channels were, I at least got first class train tickets to and from the outpatient physiotherapy centre.
Sherlock asked me about my shoulder when he thought about it, and not, I sensed, out of any real desire to ignore the problem. He just wasn't thinking about it. This wasn't entirely unusual – it's not as though I didn't know I was marrying someone who was less than aware of other people and their problems or desires. But I had grown to expect more from him now, because he'd always made the effort to give more, when it came to me.
It wasn't as though he was ignoring me. I was used to Sherlock ignoring me in a sulky mood – when did so, he made it abundantly clear that I was being ignored. He was terrible at actually ignoring me, because of a desperate need to know that I knew I was being ignored. It was always mildly funny, behind the frustration and annoyance, but this was different.
He wasn't ignoring me. It was as if he didn't even notice me. For all the world, I may not have even been in the flat some days. I was a ghost in my own home, my own marriage.
He went back to work, such as it was. Scotland Yard had taken a big black eye over the Merkley case and everyone was walking on eggshells, but the fact was, they needed him. If Mike Merkley hadn't been going to work for the EU, and as a prosecutor, too, not some low level paper-pusher, this may not have been so bad, at least not for the police. But everyone wanted someone to blame, and the obvious choice – Moriarty – wasn't good enough. It had to be the fault of the police. After all, this was their job, wasn't it? It wasn't in the least bit relevant to the powers that be that the actual kidnapper was dead and the two missing victims were returned alive and more or less unharmed. The man behind the kidnapper was still at large, and he'd murdered someone who was not at all an obvious target.
That's not the way others saw it, of course.
Sherlock took only homicide cases now, in which the victims were already dead. He went to work when Greg asked him to and did his job exceedingly well. Efficiently, quickly, and with results. But never with any passion.
It wasn't as if he refused to speak to Greg, either. He did, but about the case at hand. Any attempt to talk about the Merkley case ended with a stony silence or a switched topic or Sherlock just leaving. After the first few times, Greg gave up, but tried to talk to me. What could I do? I thought he just needed time.
He started returning his brother's calls and messages with alarming frequency, always answering Mycroft's questions with the minimum of detail that could not be considered evasion. It concerned me a great deal that he'd given up his life-long stubborn feud with his brother, and it concerned Mycroft, too. It was paradoxical that now that Mycroft was getting what he wanted from his younger brother, he didn't like it.
I went back to work after about a week because I had to – I had patients who needed me and the other doctors couldn't pull my weight indefinitely. Karl wasn't sure how to treat me, nor I him, frankly. I tried to imagine what my life must look like from the outside if one had an inkling of the insanity that came with knowing the Holmes family. I didn't blame him for not really wanting to get involved.
My shoulder got better by degrees – soft tissue injuries are always slower healing than broken bones, but I was glad that Moriarty hadn't done any damage to my collarbone. That was a painful break and one that took awhile to heal. The bruises began to fade and I was diligent about icing it and doing my physio stretches and exercises, because I'd lived through the pain of it healing once before and didn't want to prolong it.
Meanwhile, nothing changed with Sherlock. Or, I should say, things did, but not for the better. I would come home and find him sitting on the couch, staring at nothing, the way he had been the morning after Mike Merkley's death in the barracks. It was unnerving, because I couldn't get used to him being so still. Mrs. Hudson asked me about it often; she wasn't accustomed to silence coming from our flat. Neither was I. But sometimes these things took longer than we'd like, I told her. I wasn't sure if I trying to convince her, or myself.
There was no talk of Sherlock going to seek therapy; therapy was for other people. This is a prevailing problematic perception in the mental health field, and one that I myself am guilty of believing from time to time, even though I'm a doctor. Even though I've been in therapy. Sherlock's view on this, I knew, what that it was for people who had suffered some sort of terrible trauma or had a mental illness. It concerned me that he didn't think either applied to him. But I couldn't say it, because I knew what the reaction would be, and I wasn't ready to face it, either. Nor was he ready to hear it. Maybe that shouldn't have mattered.
I had begun to search for any sign that he was self-medicating somehow. Years of dealing with Harry's alcoholism had taught me all of the typical and not-so-typical hiding spots, and I checked them religiously, for alcohol or other drugs, but always came up empty handed. Sherlock bought more nicotine patches now, but he always wore the same amount, so we were developing a stockpile in the bathroom. Like he was saving up for something. Building a barricade. I actually wished I'd find a package of cigarettes, so I'd have something to be well and truly angry about. How could I be angry about extra nicotine patches? What was I to say? That he was working too hard to kick the habit?
He took up going for walks every day, for at least an hour. Knowing that following him was pointless – because he'd spot me – I went with him one day without asking. He didn't comment, but didn't ask me to stay behind either. Instead, he hooked his arm through mine and we walked for an hour in the pleasant spring breeze. I got the sense that he didn't walk the same way every day. It was the closest I'd felt to him since what I had mentally come to term The Shooting.
We were no longer sleeping together. That is to say, we still shared the same bed, for however long Sherlock put up with being in bed each night, but we hadn't had sex since the morning he'd met Mike Merkley. This concerned me the most – and frustrated me, too, I'll admit. In the year and a half that we'd been romantically involved, I'd had more sex than I had the rest of my life combined up to that point. Sherlock was skilled and creative and we frankly couldn't get enough of each other. I knew I wasn't his first lover, but I was his first love. He was the first, and only, man I'd ever wanted to be with.
Being rejected, even tacitly, stung.
After the crash, when the doctors had finally released him from the hospital, he told me the first thing he wanted to do when we got home was to have sex with me. He didn't care about the food, or any other complaint that most patients have. I had laughed, and told him we could have as much as he wanted, because by then I'd needed it too.
I still needed it, but it felt like he didn't.
He would kiss me, but only if I kissed him first. That hurt, too. I never got the sense I was invading his space when I kissed him, but I felt as though it no longer occurred to him that I may want something from him. He was reacting to what I did, but that was all.
He was sleeping less, too, and I knew he had nightmares almost nightly now. After the crash, he'd had some very bad stretches, but he'd always let me in, to help him deal with it. Now, I often didn't know unless he disturbed my sleep, or if I caught him with dark circles the following day, or limping slightly. His leg acted up when he didn't get enough sleep, which was almost always now. It was hard for me to tell, because he came to bed without complaint, but I wondered how many hours he spent lying in the darkness, awake.
I had no idea what was going on in his mind, behind those grey eyes.
Some days, I was frightened of finding out.
One day, just over three weeks later, I came home from work and couldn't take any more. It had been raining outside, and I shook off my umbrella and hung up my coat. Sherlock was sitting on the couch, a book on his lap, but it was closed and he had one hand resting on the old leather cover. He was staring blankly at the wall, grey eyes focused on something else.
I toed off my shoes and sat down on the couch, lifting his legs and resting his feet on my knees. He slid his eyes to me, but didn't say anything. I drew a breath.
"Sherlock, I need you to come home," I said quietly.
He gave me a look and for a moment – just a moment – I saw the old Sherlock and there was a hint of do-try-to-keep-up-John behind his eyes. It made my heart skip a beat.
"I am at home," he said matter-of-factly.
I shook my head, absently squeezing one of his ankles.
"Sherlock, I'm perfectly aware of where your body is," I said. This was true; if he was around me, I always was. "I need you to come home. I can't do this. I miss you, and you're right here."
He gazed at me inscrutably, but then there was a hint of some expression behind his eyes. He raised one hand – he had beautiful hands – in a gesture that I couldn't interpret. Dismissive, uncertain, indifferent.
I shifted so I was sitting closer to him and put one hand on his cheek. His eyelids fluttered, only once, but it made my breath catch in my chest. It was the first time that I'd touched him since The Shooting that he'd really reacted to my presence, even in a small way. A small positive way, I mean.
I laced my hand into his hair on the back of his head and he titled his head back ever so slightly, an involuntary movement, I thought, but I took it.
"I don't care about Mycroft or Lestrade or the Yard. I need you. I don't bloody care about Moriarty or Merkley. I asked you if you were going to leave me and you said no, but you are, Sherlock. You're leaving without going anywhere." I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. "I need you back. I can't imagine life without you anymore. Please don't make me live it."
He stared at me as if I were some new and foreign thing and I could feel my hands trembling slightly, one against the back of his head, the other still resting on his leg.
He was silent for a long moment, then closed his eyes and I fought against shuddering. When he opened his eyes again, something had changed, there was a brightness in them I hadn't seen in weeks and it made me faint with hope and a silent plea to whoever might be listening that I wasn't wrong.
He shifted, leaning forward, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his head on my shoulder, pulling me to him. I let out a shaky breath despite myself and closed my eyes, encircling my arms around him as well and tilting my head back so I could rest my chin on his dark curls.
It was the first time he'd reached for me since Merkley's death.
There was no rush of emotion, no tears or the like, nor I had expected any, but there was a difference. Wherever he'd been, he'd walked away from it. There would be no over-night change, I knew, but it didn't matter.
He'd come home.