He and Lestrade go and to the pub and get very drunk several times. Sometimes they reminisced about Sherlock on cases, London in the rain and snow. Cases with diamonds and giants and small dogs who accidentally stole blackmail photos. Sometimes they said nothing at all.
"I keep waiting for him to wake up, to be there, for everything to be normal again," John said into his pint. "I just want him to come back."
"I know what you mean mate. It was the same way for me." Lestrade said, just drunk enough to lean forward hazily, sober enough not to slur.
'No it's not,' John wants to say. 'It's nothing at all the same.'
Stroking Sherlock's hair then down, his fingertips brushing across his face like feelers, John felt at a loss. Although Sherlock was a little warm, humming with a sort of energy, his heart wasn't beating, he wasn't breathing. He wasn't awake and deducing people's childhood dream from the length of their fingernails. There had been so many dreams, shuffling and sliding through so many psyches. Dreams where he had to hunt, dreams where they collapse in fear, dreams where they trust him, floating in the midst of a happy little dream world. Plucking out the hearts of Moriarty's organization in handfuls, and still Sherlock won't wake up.
"I have a plan Sherlock," he said conversationally, as if he was talking to a coma patient. "We'll tell them you were traveling around taking down Moriarty's organization. Traveling the world, fighting evil. There's holes of course, in my plan. You'll find them, when you wake up, you'll make it airtight."
There's no response, not even a twitch, John fought the budding panic. Why won't Sherlock wake up? Does he need special hearts? The hearts of evil men? Pure hearts? The hearts of virgins, like something out of a fairy tale? The hearts of children? How many? He's doing everything right, John whined to himself. He's doing everything he's supposed to do. He knew he was getting stroppy and shook himself out of it.
More, he needed more. He checked his watch fitfully. He's working part time now, a few hours at a time at the surgery, building up to life again. Everyone was treating him like the grieving widow, which wasn't accurate by half, but gave him time to sleep. John knew he can't abandon his life he had before; he'll need it when Sherlock comes back. Normalcy will help Sherlock along once he woke up.
"It's good to see you back again," Sarah said gently. "I know he was a good friend."
Sarah was sweet; she had always been so kind. "Thank you Sarah," he said softly.
"It's hard, I know," her hand hands are strong and soft on his, callouses of someone that works with their hands. He let their fingers overlap a little so they were almost intertwined. "If you need anything…"
John smiled at her, "I appreciate it Sarah. I'm not ready to…"
"Oh no," she flustered and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a little tell. "I didn't mean…"
"But later," he smiled at her, tired from too much sleep and no rest while he's sleeping. The anxiety and worry. "Later maybe?"
She smiled at him like he might be able to get a pity date out of this, but he didn't feel like it would be right to press for it. He just wasn't comfortable with taking advantage like that.
"John," her head tilted to the side, "your eyes look strange."
"Do they?"
"No, no," she shook her head, laughing, "it's just a shadow."
In dreams, John crouched over Arturo Deleon, a small time drug pusher, who at times enjoyed a little smuggling on the side. He was weak from addiction and didn't pose much of a threat; his mind was as easy to burst into as a wet paper bag. His psyche trembled pitifully under John's hand. Pressing his Browning against Arturo's heart, John said firmly, "I sacrifice this heart to Sherlock Holmes."
That made twenty even. The dream form of the Arturo disappeared with the muffled BANG,as he died. John tucked his gun into the back of his waist band. It was important to use a totem with power, and he had used the Browning to save Sherlock so many times.
In the morning the heart attack isn't even questioned, the man was filled with drugs and exorbitant living. His body is strained and broken. They just pack him up and shake their heads. A dealer should know better than to get too deep into his own wares.
When Ella asks him how he's been coping, he answers honestly.
He's been sleeping a lot.
Mycroft doesn't look good at all. He's very pale, deep circles until his eyes. His force of will was tight and terrifying, he was trembling with it. John couldn't calculate weight like the Homes brothers, but he was sure Mycroft had lost quite a bit. He looks like a man. Just a regular man that had lost his brother and was trying to look like he wasn't suffering with it. It made John feel a little guilty, at this secret he was keeping, he wanted to tell Mycroft it would be okay, Sherlock was coming back.
"Where were you? Where were you when Sherlock went over?" he was a rather tall man, tight in John's personal space, eyes narrow.
It started as a somewhat polite but pointed interview question, but ended as the segway for a series of increasingly pointed and loud accusations. John understood, the two of them suffer together for a lost brother, it was worse for Mycroft because Mycroft worried constantly and John had hope. But every day he still suffered, turning to share a joke with a Sherlock that was absent, their apartment full of solemn hateful cups of tea just a reminder no one will drink them.
"I went to the bottom of the Falls, I went to go see if he was alive," John said finally in the lull during which Mycroft was breathing heavily, face turned away from him. "How to help him. I couldn't just stand there." His voice sounds odd, coming out of his mouth, the sleeping pills he stole from work are making him heavy.
"Something's wrong," his eyes narrowed at John.
"No really," John barked back at him. How could something not be wrong, Sherlock was lying unresponsive on his bed at 221B.
"No, you're not grieving. You're worried… anxious. That something will happen, not that something has. You're desperate, but not with grief. Why?" he looked like a wild animal with his teeth bared.
"Mycroft," John said, his whole body was shaking, everything was shaking, was he crying, how long had he been crying? "Please."
When Mycroft released him his legs stuttered and he almost fell to the ground, John stuttered out, "I was supposed to protect him. I'm supposed to be-"
"Your eyes look odd," Mycroft said. Interrupted him with the ultimate in non suquitir, staring at him with detached curiosity.
"What?" he blinked at him.
"I had thought they were blue."
Moriarty was grinning at him, a pleased little smile like a razor blade; they were having tea in a garden that was going very aggressively out of its bounds. The topiary was going feral, the roses were twisting with thorns that looked they could punch through his palm. But this was a dream, so if they looked like they could, they would if he wasn't careful. "Tea?" John asked politely.
Moriarty knew something was wrong subconsciously. He knew that John wasn't quite right, didn't belong, but he hadn't quite put it all together yet. Why would he, dreams were one of the few safe places from the outside world, even for psychopaths. So far, Moriarty had thought it was some sort of game he was playing with himself. And he did love games.
"What a lovely little party you've put on. The garden is so nice in the spring."
"I'm thinking of a vacation actually, could you suggest someplace?"
This was the signal to the madman across the table that the game was about to start. John was under the table, as flat as a stone, when it came to word play. His mind was like Sherlock's, not in its beauty or shape or latticed intricacy (something organic and vaguely blue), but big and fast. So John played tricks, he made gardens and white painted tables in the garden. He made teacups that were never quite full and teapots that never run out. He attacked in subtle ways, shifting reality, leeching and gnawing away at the subconscious. It was three months and John has been riding Moriarty viciously for names.
"Greece does sound lovely this time of year," he said; if he gave a centimeter he may lose it all. "Tea?"
There was very little of the real, deep down Moriarty, the Moriarty that has nothing to do with memories and intellect and loneliness (well some loneliness, people who are different always feel a little lonely) that John hasn't looked at, some of it he's touched, some of it he's only looked at, some of it he just knows where it is. If given enough time John could blast out his heart like a mortar shell.
"Are those all of the men that work there?" John said. He has worked these months to develop his memory, it is getting better. He wondered if perhaps his growing memory for names is part of his loss of regret.
He sat like a pillar of stone giving nothing away, solemn and inescapable. For a moment he wishes he could step out of himself and look through Moriarty's eyes and see what he looks like. Does he even have a face or is it just his Johnness that allows the man to recognize him? There is an awareness superseded by his incredible grief at being alone, that he may be losing himself. But what would it profit him to keep himself and lose the one person that understood him. That thing inside him that John can never escape again is calling to run shoulder to shoulder and chase and danger and defend, its loose and loud now, pounding in his body.
"You always were such a good little pet," he grinned around his biscuit. "What a good little boy you are. You'd do anything to help Sherlock, wouldn't you? " He was a perfect little caricature of a cat vivisecting a mouse as it played with it. All he needed were wee little whiskers and fluffy little ears.
"Yes."
John filled up Moriarty's cup again.
"Anything."
Something flashed across Moriarty's face that could have been fear. It was gone as quickly as it came. An immune response that even his own subconscious had dismissed immediately.
"More tea?" John said.
