A/N: This is a birthday fic for AGirloftheSouth, written at her request! Happy birthday! I hope you enjoy this.
It had been so quiet.
Who knew silence could be so deafening? That it could swallow sounds and leave him with nothing but the looping track in his mind that ran in endless circles until he'd become so used to it that it was nearly impossible to remember ever thinking of anything else. It pressed in on him, this silence, leaving him lethargic on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
His fingers had begun itching. Not an itch that scratching could ease, but a prickling right below the surface, as if the muscles were twitching, aching from a ghost of a memory. He knew what he wanted, the habit formed over a lifetime of practice, so ingrained that he caught himself now making the movements and had to ball his hands into fists. But it didn't stop; when he wasn't paying attention it started again. He'd caught John noticing and it sparked other cravings. Cigarettes, cocaine. One would give his hands something to do. The other wouldn't vanquish the silence but make it bearable, even welcome.
He didn't want it to be welcome. He wanted it to be gone.
His traitor mind had allied itself with his hands – he didn't know when. He'd lost track of time. He'd never kept a good hold on it to begin with. But now his fingers moved, subtle motions, and he heard the music in his mind drowning out all the other thoughts. Smooth strains, so quiet, almost like hints on a breeze, but it stilled everything else and oh– he remembered that sensation. The stillness. The calm. The focus.
Without thinking – without letting himself think – Sherlock pushed himself from the couch and withdrew his new violin from its case. A lifetime of practice made the tuning and tightening of keys easy, unnoticed. He closed his eyes, raised his right hand. The bow seemed to hang in the air, suspended with the seconds that slipped by, as though the world was holding its breath.
He let out that breath, put bow to strings, and began to play.
It had been so quiet.
It was early enough that the sound of traffic outside was little more than a purr, no chattering of voices, no slamming of doors, no honking of horns. There were always these few precious minutes of silence when John woke up, stolen moments when there was nothing but the stillness of their flat.
But the tone and tenor had changed. This was real silence now, not the suspended silence that was the space between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. Living with Sherlock had taught him to always be listening, to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or rather, the explosion or sound of something breaking or the shouted insistence that John get up because there was a case.
"Sometimes I don't talk for days." Now Sherlock did talk, conversations that he even initiated sometimes. He would respond to questions, make observations, throw in derisive comments. All of these were him, but there was some piece missing. John could see it in the flicker of his eyes, the twitch of his lips. Part of him wasn't listening. Even when he was still and thinking, that part was focused on something else.
"I play the violin when I'm thinking." But thinking had become quiet, consumed by pacing – when there was any movement at all – defined more by silent immobility, staring at nothing, not even having a conversation with the John who lived in Sherlock's head.
He missed the noise. For all the times he'd longed for silence, now that he had it, it was suffocating. Heartbreaking.
Footsteps and the creak of floorboards broke him from his thoughts and he listened to the familiar sounds. The bed beside him was cold – Sherlock hadn't slept with him that night. The silence descended again and John withheld a sigh; nothing new, nothing changed.
He was about to sit up when the silence shifted. The first faint strains seemed like a dream, like a hallucination, freezing him in place as his mind tried to deny it and accept it at the same time. He listened, unmoving, as the music began to take shape around him, softly, melancholic.
John let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding, feeling some tension release and settle as he let go. He closed his eyes to better hear the melody, and to keep the room from blurring behind unshed tears.
It had been so quiet.
The noise had been difficult to get used to when Sherlock had first moved in – shouting, gunshots, explosions, police tramping in and out whenever it suited them. Sherlock's voice carried more than John's, his deep baritone not quite matched by the doctor's quiet murmurs. Violin music at all hours.
Later that year, the tone had changed and there was never music when John slept, although the explosions didn't stop and the police kept coming.
Then it had all fallen silent.
Grief had its own atmosphere. It wasn't the first time she'd felt it at Baker Street, but even then, there had been music. It had become the background to her life as much as the noises from the sandwich shop and the street outside, as much as the police and the visitors who wanted Sherlock's help. The clients were fewer now and the police hadn't come since the day John had brought Sherlock's childhood violin down to her for safe keeping.
She'd seen the other one in the bins outside. A work of art, priceless, reduced to nothing more than a lifeless pile of kindling.
And now it was the silence that woke her. Martha Hudson had learned to sleep through the comings and goings, the disregard for time, the shouting, the music, the bullets. She awoke earlier now, always startled awake by the quiet.
She didn't hear it at first, bustling around her kitchen, making a morning cup of tea. The first strains barely registered, so soft and distant, her ears playing tricks on her as they were wont to do these days. Then the notes drifted around her, so normal a sound that it was shocking. She stayed unmoving for a moment before tiptoeing into the corridor, half afraid that even the sound of her door opening would distract Sherlock and he'd stop playing. But the music wound round her, tugging her to the base of the stairs that led to the upstairs flat.
She rested her hands on the banister, closed her eyes, and listened to the mournful sound, warm tears slipping down to trace the edges of her smile.