I've been told that when you lose a loved one, it takes about five years for the pain to subside.
They tell me that you always miss them; the void that only they can fill will never really go fully away. But after five years, the pain manages to subside for you to carry on with your life with a sense of normalcy. The void is permanent. The complete and utter grief is temporary.
I don't know what studies they did to come to that conclusion or if there even were studies at all. I don't know how you can go about, asking a person each day, "Well, it's been approximately sixteen months since your husband passed on. Tell me, has it stopped feeling as though your heart is being ripped out each time you breathe and he does not?"
It just doesn't seem to be a logical way to form a scientific conclusion.
I may not have the knowledge of these studies. But I do know one thing.
I watched my best friend fall from the rooftop of a building to take his own life three years ago.
And I don't see how a person can ever come back from this.
It is rainy day, not unusual for London in September. There's a chill in the air as I make my way back to 221 B from the shop. It's become a routine. If I don't maintain the routine, I lose my grip. And I dare not lose that. Not when I spent a solid two years building myself up to this...thing. This manner of coping. Two years of therapy and distancing myself and the struggle to distinguish which was my life and which was a continuation of the nightmares that plagued my sleep.
I open the door, climbing the stairs to the flat. The steps do a number on my leg, where the stiffness and pain have once again begun to settle and I pause a moment to regain my balance and adjust my cane. Amazing really, how the side effects of my post-war life came back so speedily when there was no Sherlock with his ridiculous antics and adventures to distract and give things meaning once again. The blog has laid dormant since the months following Reichenbach. Or rather, I assume it no longer sees activity. After the fall, messages started flowing in, a mixture of cruel, biting words mocking the fraud of a detective and insisting that the man had got nothing more than exactly what he deserved, and the painful, almost pitiful optimism of those proclaiming that they believed in Sherlock Holmes.
They believed in Sherlock Holmes.
As though he was a thing to be believed in. A myth whose existence must be perpetuated through faith and belief and the passing down of oral tradition.
As though he was not a man to be known. That was known. Who I knew and cared about.
All of this past tense.
Because none of this belief will bring him back.
I approached the door and open it, noticing that I have am no longer preparing myself for the overpowering, painful emptiness that has filled the flat for three years. I hang my coat and head to the kitchen to deposit my purchases when out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow at the window near the bookcase. I refuse to give it the gratification of being observed, something I had to coach within myself when the nightmares began to birth hallucinations. So I carry on with my business, paying no heed the the illusions that the blank emptiness brings.
"John."
My blood runs cold, but I cannot falter. Cannot acknowledge, because to acknowledge is to succumb to it, and to succumb to it, as my therapist will tell you, is to sell your life to it.
And I simply cannot afford to repurchase my life.
So I avoid it. I continue to put the groceries away, careful not to look towards the sitting room unless absolutely necessary because, after all, there is nothing there.
"John."
This is unusual. The voices are typically present, but not persistent.
"My friend. My John."
The sensation of a hand on my shoulder sends chills down my spine and my solider training takes precedent over everything that I think I know right now.
I clench my fist, turn around, and punch the intruder square in the jaw.
As the figure stumbles back, I back out of the room, unable to process what I think I see right now. This cannot be real. I am obviously having a relapse. I shakily search the sitting room for any sign of my mobile so that I can ring Ella and tell her that my hallucinations are back, but that I'm clearly regressing as they have taken on substantiation this time. Surely I didn't really punch a face. And certainly not that face, with that unmistakable jawline.
As I rifle through the room, my eyes look up again and meet with a pair of cerulean eyes that are unmistakably those of the world's only consulting detective, somehow continuing to haunt me beyond the grave. I saw him lying on the concrete in front of 's three years ago, I wept at his grave, and yet he stands here in front of me, looking at me in a very real way that threatens to break my soul anew. I know he cannot be here, but I cannot break his gaze.
"Well then..I suppose I deserved that."
"Sherlock...how are you...? You were..."
Sherlock laughs his own deep laugh.
"So I was. And now...one might deduce that I am not."
In an instant I am flooded with emotion. I am all at once filled with disbelief that he is standing here in front of me and overjoyed that this is truth rather than hallucination. I am broken at the sight of this man and angry that he laughs and speaks as though his appearance here and now in 221B is something that is completely natural which it both is and is not. It is an unspeakable blend of fiction and fantasy and feeling and I can do nothing more than...
Shout at him.
"Deduction, Sherlock? Three years and you want me to simply base my reaction on you being here right in front of me on a bloody deduction?!"
He remains calm. He looks at me, calm and pensive and sits himself in the chair as per normal...or rather as once was normal. He balances his chin on his prayer-like hands and studies my reaction.
"John, allow me to expl..."
"Explain? Jesus, Sherlock! What is there to explain? I watched you fall, Sherlock. I stood there and watched you. I saw your body on the pavement. I could do nothing as they took my best friend away and I attended your funeral!"
I collapse to the floor and can no longer hold in my emotion as I continue, gasping between shouting and sobbing as he looks on.
"You. Were. Dead, Sherlock. I...Christ...I had to bury you."
He winces at this. "I know, John...I..."
"I buried enough friends during the war and then you go and force me to do it again!"
I expect nothing from this. I sit here on the floor, as shattered as the day they lowered him into the ground, hating him for forcing me to relive it all again. I hate him; God, I hate him. I hate him for being arrogant enough that not even a confrontation with death can prevent him from having the last word. I hate him for not being there through every bit of anguish that he caused over the past few years. And I hate that he forces me to allow him in, even after years of separation and deceit. I hate that his shallow, sociopathic, emotionally stunted mind and heart will never understand that I both love him and hate him concurrently so much that it physically aches.
And yet, because I have been shown that on occasion, hope for the unexpected and out of character is ultimately rewarded, I study his face, waiting for something, anything, to show me that I am completely and utterly wrong. And as though he can read my thoughts, he repositions himself from the chair to the floor next to me.
I have no idea what to expect from him. My usual, unpredictable Sherlock. He takes his hands and places one on either side of my face, forcing me to look into his eyes once more and see that he has been undergoing secret suffering for the length of his absence. I know that look. It is the look of a man who has been to war and seen and survived the most unspeakable things. It is a look of the aged beyond years, the hunger of the deepest loneliness, and a desperation that leaves one screaming on the inside and lights your veins on fire, as you die a silent death that no one can see or hear but you.
"John..my John...my friend...you are making this sound as if I wanted this, as though I chose this. I did not, would never have chosen this for me or for you or for anyone because the complete and honest truth is that for the past three years I have been in utter hell. And what you do not understand is that this was not what I wanted but it was a duty that I had to undertake. I had to do this because if you did not bury me, I would have had to bury you. And John...you are and always have been my soldier, my strong one. And you have lost me and you have lived and I can and will spend the entirety of my lifetime trying to ease and make reparations for any pain that I most certainly caused you. But you see, I could not have buried you. I could not have gone on. Because for all of my power and strength of mind and will, losing you would have driven me madder than at all possible and for these reasons I am even more so convinced that if I can one day possess even half of your strength, then, John, I can take on giants without blinking."
At this moment, he too has tears streaming down his face and there is nothing more for me to do than to collapse into him. I bury my face into his chest, breathing in the familiar scent from his scarf blended with the petrichor of the London rain. He draws me in, lifting my head once more to steal a kiss long deferred, long awaited, and pregnant with meaning and feeling and my heart is both rebroken and mended in this one act of sheer passion and love and resolved anticipation and once more, everything seems just right and good and perfect once more.
And there we sit in a tangled heap on the floor of 221B. The consulting detective and his blogger. Brought together once more, never again to be torn asunder.