The Perditions of John

2nd Perditon

Author: Howlynn
Realm: Sherlock
Story Title: The 2nd Perdition of John
Summary: John fights for reasons to stay, but when he accomplishes them what is left?
Character/Relationships: John/Sherlock

Faking.

In the first weeks, John faked it. He opened his eyes and parroted the things that he was expected to say. He closed his eyes and sobbed into Sherlock's pillow, begging. John offered any entity his very soul just for a year, a month, a week, a chance, a single fucking day to spend with him. So much needed saying and he'd never get the chance.

No entity wanted his tarnished putrid soul. John was soon inviting his acquaintance for dinner. He often drank too much to cook for him by the time he was supposed to arrive. Death was angry with John. He was standing him up on the dinner invitations. John was being watched unofficially by his colleagues. It was standard friendship procedure. John did have friends. Everyone loved John. He was just so bloody oblivious since he'd gone around the bend about that crazy Yard devil.

John was not gay. John was not a criminal justice major. They did know that John was a bit of a thrill seeker and they all assumed that beings this Holmes fellow seemed predisposed to disaster, perhaps John found it intoxicating. It, being danger, violence, trouble and general chaos, was their only explanation for his unexplainable attachment to the strange and, though brilliant, illusively manipulative Scotland yard snob.

Everyone loved John, but they could barely stand his flat-mate. He was from some kind of family. That man is uncouth, discourteous, and without a farthing worth of charm. The Holmes' have been behind the crown for generations, but sometimes they throw an off sprout. They couldn't keep him in a school but he has the other side of that savant coin. It was all very mysterious. They whisper hope that this infatuation with his intellectual assets and ridiculous stunts doesn't suck John down the drain with him. He's awkward and he may be completely insane. John turns them down, more and more. But there is only so much a friend can do.

Poor John, what could he be thinking? Perhaps there is more to this, he may be assisting the family to keep up with their little rebel freak. That made the most sense really. John was a good person. John is an adult and certainly smart enough to determine when he's fed up with the embarrassment of it all.

Then the bloody idiot leaps from the roof.

It's in all the papers. His friends avoid the subject near John, but the darting eyes, the elbow bumps and the unveiled weather fascination don't really fool John. It's all anyone is discussing these days. There is no escape. He hears remarks he would have killed someone for not so long ago. He ignores them as best as he can now, he can't kill them all. Well, he chooses not to take that path, though it makes the inner fury boil because he still hears every word like a hot poker at his neck.

John seems philosophically aloof at work. They don't blame him for any of it. Must be terrible to have been employed to keep a man like that stable and have failed so spectacularly. They try to be supportive. They try to put him back in his slot among them. John had always been the easy going dependable bloke who they set up with cousins and friends of friends. He was a bit on the dullish side, a sweet clueless buffoon of sorts, but his prospects were his redemption.

They had all agreed that John would be a grand addition to family if the right girl could just be found for him. John would make a stable, kind husband and a sweet dedicated father. He may not inspire the dreams of romance on windswept exotic beaches, but if a girl could see past his lack luster, she would find a diamond. In this day of all things fast and furious, John could offer the right woman such ease and proper manners. He was the species of nice man that mothers coveted for unruly daughters.

Dr. John Watson was considered to be on the market again, now that he had found release from his terrible obligatory friendship with the time consuming freak, was no longer a factor. They were his friends again, though something they couldn't quite admit or express seemed to have taken something out of Dr. John. When mentioned, they all blamed it on the fact that he had to feel a little off, considering he'd watched the man die before his eyes.

They did understand that John had been fond of the man, though they themselves could express few redeeming qualities for Sherlock Holmes. John barely spoke of him now. They understood. It was like losing an aged parent to dementia or a small child to a preventable tragedy. There was nothing that could have been done, but the one responsible for the departed would, of course, have to examine every moment at length to finally assuage the simple survivor guilt.

They whispered their evaluations and diagnoses, completely missing the truth. They put up with John's quiet dignified grief and they waited for time to relieve his obvious disinterest in the laughter he used to be part of. They invited him along to endless social events and took his polite deferments with grace. Some managed to get him cornered and speak frankly to him about how he must carry on, stiff upper lip, and other remarkably banal platitudes. John always maintained his good nature and his appreciation for their interest, but then he would walk away unperturbed, but unmoved.

Eventually the rumors of his possible orientation of a private nature began to circle just out of John Watson's earshot. That had slowly bled away some of his friends from constant intervention. For others, it simply shifted focus from the family damsel in matrimonial pursuit, to the closet cases of the kin in question. It was speculated that perhaps they had missed the important signals of John's true nature. Perhaps he was less manipulated by that Holmes man and much more heartsick over him. This new frame of sympathy, closer to truth but still so far below the realm of reality, brought new waves of sympathetic sentiments that served only to feed John's need for aloof distance.

New eyes examined the seemingly obvious answers. There had been a certain allure to that taciturn flat-mate of his. Holmes had been most attractive ascetically in his tailored cloths and stylishly off beat grace. He had that understated panache of truly great wealth. Poor John, silently mourning a lover and they had taken so long to catch on.

John was determined to wallow in his lonely tragic world. The friends began to forget to bother to ask him to their little gatherings. He'd been absent for some time and this finally became accepted as who he was. A friend can only do so much and eventually they gave up trying to make it better for him.

John existed in fog and half-lit fantasy of his own demise. He drank. He even took up smoking. He ate only when forced. His first few months of sleeping obsessively gave way to sleeping little, unless he was sleeping it off. Strangely, he looked healthier now. He had lost some of his budge around the middle. His features grew angular and his physique took on the tone of the soldier's workouts he forced himself to do just to exhaust himself enough for sleep. He often wore Sherlock's clothing. It was not tailored for him so it always looked a bit like wealth unkempt, or as if he was shopping at one of the second hand places pretending he still had money as could be seen around London often by those who observed such things about other people, but it made him feel close to peaceful to be held in something Sherlock had worn.

People seemed fooled by his self-hatred, misinterpreted by the wishers of wellness and the stiff upper lip proponents. They concluded, that his new and very pleasing frame, must indeed speak of his sexuality. He had always been well groomed, but in London, in the medical field, that could not ever be counted on as a sole indicator of lifestyle. Doctors had to be perfectly groomed. Who wanted a shaggy slob explaining grandmother's cancer treatment to them?

Fine.

That's how he was doing these days.

That's how he responded to all inquiry to his life.

That is how the line could be described between his survival day to day and his will to follow his northern star to freedom from the pain.

There were days that he managed better. There were days, he still hoped that Sherlock had somehow outwitted his acquaintance of decay. But time was not healing John's wounds. Time was not on his side in this case. Time was the master of his daily schedule, but it cost him dearly. The price time demanded for its services was a small leaking current of hope within John's spirit.

Sherlock could out think anything. Never mind he'd taken his pulse, held his dead hand, seen the height from which he'd sustained the injuries, gone to his funeral, visited his grave, and seen his dead eyes with mismatched pupils. John still had hope. He didn't get rid of Sherlock's belongings. He didn't spend his money. He waited. He watched strangers carefully for the signs of disguise. He waited for a balding old man or an awkwardly tall house frau to fall into step with him and reveal that it had all been just a magic trick like he'd said that day. He trusted. He believed. He could not exist without this self-deceptive little mirage.

He rifled through Sherlock's belongings, carefully, sacredly and yet he studied this man's every scribble searching for one of his subtle clues to deduce what his mind wanted to believe. Sometimes he would leap upon a scrap of nothing, calling Greg with unfettered excitement, begging the man to agree that it was important. Greg was patient, but he was also firm. He did not feed John's hope with false dribbles of maybe. He visited with a bottle of expensive highland scotch and the official and complete autopsy report. They had weighed and photographed the organs, standard procedure of course, and he must face the truth.

The brilliant mind of Sherlock Holmes glared upon glossy Kodak paper in full color, naked, pink and exposed. That mass of jelly had stopped functioning nine months ago. It was time for John to find his way or find himself some help. John was used to seeing body parts lounging on Molly's scale. He didn't bat an eye about it. But this was the empty container of his Sherlock. This had once pulsed with overwhelming brilliance. This was the most horrific moment in his life as the true consequences of this bit of tissue, just meat like all the rest of them, sat without fanfare in a stainless steel pan, before an uncaring camera.

John wanted it to be a lie. But Greg cried as he laid other bits before John on the table. "Believe me, I can barely look myself. It doesn't matter how we think when it is strangers, when it is a friend, it messes with our heads."

Sherlock, skull exposed and topped for examination, his curls folded forward and his face pulled into the gruesome distortion of the autopsies procedure. Molly, face hard with grief, and streaked with tears as she had sewn up the examinations damage with more care than he himself could have managed. A picture of his flat-mates Y-incision, sewn back together with thousands of tiny delicate stitches and not the ugly black quick-stitches most people received.

"She spent hours at that. For him. She said he was full of secret vanity and he deserved to be … cared for. This was done in a respectful manner, far above what you or I will ever rate. You have seen the toxicology report. He was as clean and sober as he'd surprisingly ever been. He was not drugged or hallucinating. He made his choice and made certain none of us would have any chance to save him. You must accept he left us. He made the call."

"I will never believe it." John kicks his head back, trying to not cry.

"John, we can't do anything else for him. I know. I know you and he were … more than mere … friends. I don't know how far and I don't want to know, because it isn't my business and I don't care. I am here, because, there have been some who have mentioned you are not managing this. I do understand the desire to hope above all facts. But he wouldn't want to see you like this. I can't stand to see you do this any longer. You have to accept this. Grieve. Stop cursing your life with this obsessive false footing. I have seen this sort of thing. You have too."

John swallows and nods. " They always seemed so delusional. Am I?"

Lestrade sighs and shakes his head, "You are getting there old friend. I don't know if you are lost but you are going to slip soon. I don't see any cat boxes yet, have you any feline adoption whims or are you just stalking the shelters for now?"

John genuinely laughs for the first time in an eternity. Maybe it is the smooth liquor making him feel less despondent, or maybe it is the cold truth of the photo's again packed safely in the file and locked back in the inspector's briefcase. Maybe it is the finality of it all that has unburdened him slightly, but John laughs heartily at the image of himself sequestered in this empty apartment with three dozen cats and, and a box of new kittens scampering through the piles of Sherlock's life.

"No. I am not Cat-daddy crazy. Yet."

"Good to know. " There is quiet for a moment as Greg debates his next question. "You can tell me, you know. You don't have to hold it all so dammed tightly. Known a bit of buggery myself in the days before I said the words of eternal torment. I wasn't always such an arrow before I let my life slip away with the old 'I do' bullet."

John looks at him in anger but it melts to resolved guilt. "I can't say you would be wrong. I have never. I deal with it all the time of course with patients, and there were jokes made of course, but we were never. Not even a kiss, Greg. Yet, to deny that something had affected me seems pointless now. I am not opposed to homosexuality, it just never crossed my mind. I always was certain I was a skirt chasing believer in true love. I am certain I found the true love part in a most unexpected place. "

"Nothing wrong with that. He was terribly attracted to you. You do know that, right?"

John shakes his head. "I never told him. I never said to him a glimmer of how I felt…feel. I would give anything, you know? I would march into hell just to say it to him once. It is so much worse now…now that I understand. I hurt him. I wanted a reaction. I had no idea that I could possibly break his heart. He did it because of me. How do I go on, knowing he died… because it was the only way he knew to make me see?"

"You don't believe that. Tell me that hasn't been bouncing around in your head all this time—"

"I never told a soul. Only realized it myself as I watched the dirt fill in. I knew, but I lied to myself. I love him. Oh God, I love him. I never bothered to tell him and he died not knowing. He died because I was too much of a coward to give him a strand of kindness. I was so angry. I was afraid they were going to kill him and he was taking chances and hiding things from me. How could he do that to me the blasted second he was safe? How could he hate me so? I will never forgive myself. The bastard killed himself and my heart, my soul, everything I was, just stepped off the ledge and ended. I am beyond grief. I sometimes don't even … " John zoned out, his face bland as his eyes focused far away, spilling over with the tears he'd never allowed anyone to view. He'd done so well at keeping his disguise glued in place, but finding someone who could see him so easily, had exposed his secret.

Lestrade only hesitated for a moment before pulling John to his shoulder and offering him the comfort the rest of the world lacked. He held him tight, like a father comforting a son. He wasn't after an inconspicuous seduction or vying to take Sherlock's place, despite his admission of his younger wilder days. But the poor man needed someone who really could accept how badly he needed someone to just know and acknowledge that Sherlock had crossed the borders of all self-styled life expectations.

He murmured kind things to John, soothing his deeply held sorrow as best he could. "Sherlock was special. He was beyond anyone's ability to truly see. He would never have done this out of cruelty. He just didn't know how to fix things like normal people would. I am sure he did love you, but if you had any part in his decision, you have to believe it was because he must have convinced himself that he would only do you harm by giving in to his own feelings. He didn't do well with emotional attachments and yet holding them in check didn't stop them from existing."

"That is not making me feel better."

" John. You have to find some way. You have to let it be. He gave you no option and made his choice. It could be that he was too afraid to tell you. Imagine what he must have believed. He was unable to process that he had changed what you believed about yourself. He believed you were never going to realize what he couldn't even tell you that he wanted most. He wanted you and yet, you were not a possibility. He was so without any bounds of reason in this area. You are probably the only thing he'd ever had this reaction to. Think about that. He'd never been in love. He was possibly still a virgin, I mean he never has been with anyone to my knowledge. Imagine being his age as the real thing crashes into you as your first experience. It must have been terrible for him. You were something he's losing control over. The accusations. His life falling apart. He didn't have the ability to deal with it all and realize it could blow over in time. He didn't have the patience. He probably reasoned that this was better than letting you be stained with his own disgrace. "

"Do you really think?"

"Did he love you? I don't just think it, look at the evidence. Do you know how many flat mates he'd been through? Do you have any idea how many of them lasted less than a week? I don't know if you realize this, But Mycroft came to me only two months after you moved in. He was livid. Sherlock had changed his will and Mycroft wanted that gold digger, meaning you, away from his little brother. He was pretty sure the two of you were a couple. He wouldn't have believed that if Sherlock had not indicated some affirmation of that?"

"That's impossible."

"No. Sherlock knew. All that time ago. He loved you. He didn't tell you. It isn't your fault. It isn't really his either. He depended on you. That was the best you could have imagined if only you could have seen what he was like with some of his other co-occupants. It was a selfish thing for him to do. But I think in his mine, maybe he was just saving you from the embarrassment he was sure you'd feel at that time, if he told you the whole truth. He didn't see it with a clear mind, because he'd rather hurt himself than take a chance that he would harm you with his misplaced adoration. Brilliance without faith, without that ridiculous bit of hope we count on, he simply couldn't understand. It isn't his fault that he lacked any way to process that what can't be observed can still be possible. Do you see what I am saying? "

"We had so little time and yet we wasted it."

"You can dwell on that, if you would like. Tear yourself inside out if that is what you want. Here's the trouble with that. You are wasting all he must have seen in you. He often forgave us for not being as smart as he was. He knew we had no tool to fix that we were not as nimble of mind as he was. I think you have to look at it just like that here. You have to forgive him for not having a nimble heart that he had no tools to change. Can you do that? Don't you want to?"

"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters to me. Not a bloody thing. I have nothing. Nothing to give to anyone. I don't … want anyone. Not even, just to be a meaningless shag. I don't even…"

"I get it. I do. Depression and you know it. Not as easy when it isn't just a definition and list of symptoms. I lost a partner once. It wasn't like this, but there was that hero worship sort of love. Like a combat brother. He taught me everything, put up with my crap and then he was gone. I thought I would die of the crushing hatred for the soulless bastards who killed him."

John sat up interested in this, "How? What helped you get past it?"

"I solved the case. I caught his killers. It was all I lived for. I had a rough time once they were all punished, once the job was over, but it helped. I could breathe again. I felt this pleasure, like maybe he was pleased. It was almost like he was proud of me. And I met the Missus and settled down to a house and kids and normal. If you can find one thing that matters. It might keep you from your constant dwelling on fault long enough to get you past the worst of it. I can't lie to you. It won't ever go away all the way. But, it gets more manageable. "

John let the words sink into him, but he couldn't come up with one thing he cared about in the whole world.

Lestrade watched him contemplate, through two more glasses of scotch each. Finally he guided him a little. "What about him? You still care for him?"

John shook his head. "Like you said, I can't do anything for him. Which pretty much puts me right back into the planning my own leap, so to speak. Not a damned thing I can do for him, but join him."

Lestrades's heart stopped for a second. He's admitted it like it was of no more importance than a grocery list, just like Sherlock used to do before John showed up and seemed to cure him of such utterances. "John. That isn't funny, and I know you don't mean it to be, but you must be aware that this self-destruct gene was in him all along. It runs in families you know. Before he met you, it was a common threat. Mycroft covered for him. Anyone else would have found themselves institutionalized. It was not your fault. It was NOT your fault John Watson. If anything it was all of us. The whole damned world in doubt of him."

John nodded in terminal despair at how his indescribably beautiful Sherlock would be remembered. His eyes locked to Lestrade. "That's it. I have something I can do for him. I can.. Oh my god. I can prove that I love him, and keep it a secret too. I can clear his name. I can make him be seen for who he was. I can give him a place besides the star of the circus. I can put his star back in the sky, where it belongs. Oh my God, what have I been thinking? I have been letting them say all those things. Greg, you're a genius."

"Well I will leave the genius bit to you and him. I'm just old. I'm just a stupid old bobby who has been through it all ten times over. I've seen. Experience isn't genius. But if you find anything, anything real. Not doodles and not that chicken scratch of his, and you need me to help, or get you something you need, even quietly, if you follow. I'm in. I'm all in. I hope you can find a starting place, because I have been working on it this whole time and haven't got a trail of piss to follow. Here, brought you something, just in case."

Lestrade stood and set the briefcase on the table again. The folders all bulging with mismatched papers trying to escape, landed on the table with a resolved heavy thunk.

John looked up then back down at the folders. "A case. Of course. A case. I need a case and this one, I need most of all. Thank you."

Lestrade felt chipper as he left the flat whistling. He had been watching the Doc since he'd invaded Sherlock's life. There were only subtle hints really, but he saw them. Greg smiled. Sherlock may have not been in love with him, but he'd still rubbed off on Greg over the years. Being near Sherlock for very long was a hell of an education.

"There you go old friend, " he said three blocks from the flat, "I can't fix what you did to him you bloody arse, but I will try to keep him from being planted next to you anytime soon."

The night was beautiful.

John's mind could not be compared to Sherlock's intellect. That didn't mean he was stupid either. John was a doctor and he could only achieve that because he was brilliant when compared to the general population. Only near Sherlock did he lose the races, and certainly not all the races. Sherlock had spaces of vast material storage in his mind, yet in some ways he was nearly stunted by any average man standards. Sherlock had a mind for puzzles far above any conceivable intelligence range, yet he could not remember to eat or pay rent or contemplate the solar system. Simple things were beyond him. John functioned well in vastly more subjects then Sherlock. He had the ability to slowly plod along and do most anything well with practice.

He had studied his friend, learning his details and his methods, and like calculus or advanced anatomy or firing a tiny lead projectile from a tube of steel, John had his own formulas and ways of creating success.

It took him several trips to St Bart's to get comfortable on the roof. He finally faced one demon. He stood in that spot and looked down. The wind filled him with fear and the sun blazed anger, but the place itself made his heart beat with a lust to invite his acquaintance into his own possibility. He didn't hesitate to step up. He had a tingly desire to imagine exactly that moment again, from Sherlock's perspective.

He could see a ghostly cab, stop and his time faded self, emerge. The exact moments went through his head. John, he should speak to him. He could imagine reaching into the satin pockets of the familiar coat, deep and soothingly slipping over his knuckles as he pulled his phone from his pocket. The words were branded into his mind and John stood on the ledge, dissecting them sentence by sentence.

These were the moments he knew. He played them in his mind, and yet, somehow standing here contemplating the finality of the concrete below, he realized what he'd missed all along. It wasn't possible. Sherlock would have never picked this. The possibility of survival was small, but Sherlock would never play a game he could lose so badly. Suicidal at times, yes. Hell putting himself in danger, on the edge was his greatest addiction, but putting himself into a situation of irrevocable damage and long term care, would never have done.

Sherlock's ego, would never allow himself to have made such an error. Now if he'd fed a lethal cocktail into his veins and wobbled unconscious off the roof, as a second measure of surety, John could believe. But, this was not high enough alone, when there were so many better options. He was perfectly calculating and lucid when he said the last words. Why then. Why that moment.

"It's a magic trick."

"I researched you, to impress you."

"Sherlock?" John said out loud. You were trying to impress me. This is not very impressive. You couldn't have researched me, because Mike didn't tell you I was coming. But a suicide, you would have researched. You would not do it this sloppily by your own will. Magic trick.

John stared at the pavement. His head shook. Sherlock loved high places. The image of him standing on the stones his coat flapping in the wind and of the moon behind him as he leaped high on a roof as graceful as a manor cat. He must have been so afraid. Yet he lied to me. Why was that the most important part?

John stood on the ledge in a contemplative parade rest, far from afraid, more like in communion with Sherlock. You lied. The last thing you needed to say and it was a lie. Why. The way you ended it. A stupid choice for a brilliant man. An easily disproven lie for your … me. To leave me what. Angry? Lost? Or did you know I would nip at your heals, not just your pet faithful dog, but you own hound of the Baskervilles?

He had turned to look at something. No someone. There had been blood, but no actual body on the roof. If someone were making me do this in some way, what would I say to him. He didn't take his eyes off me. I couldn't look away or move because he asked me to Do this for him. He gave me no time to say anything or get my thoughts in order. Yet he knew each tiny gesture would be too bright to see for a while.

He threw the phone. He didn't take me with him. He. Didn't. Take me. With him, but he kept his eyes on me. Johns eyes snapped open. "Sherlock." Johns head tilted and he got Goosebumps. Watched. He was being watched and Sherlock was being watched that day.

"Dr, Watson, I need you to please step away from the ledge" Came a shaking voice, behind him.

John spun and grinned, hopping down with a shrug.

It took hours of careful calm explanation and a phone call to Lestrade to keep him out of the psyche ward that day. Lestrade had come round to collect him, acting annoyed with him and the procedure. As soon as they were out of earshot of hospital administration he went through round two of the 'is this a suicide threat' routine.

John laughed and said it did cross his mind in a sick wish to be like him, connected to him, but until the name Sherlock Holmes was again spoken of with awe and respect, his flying days would be limited to helicopter.

He eased Lestrades's mind and not only that, the first fire he'd seen in John since that terrible day was dancing in the sparkling mirth filling his eyes.

Lestrade stopped short and turned to John. "You found something. You did?"

John shook his head. "Not precisely, but I did deduce some very enlightening truths. Something forced him. Not physically, something got in his head and it wasn't me. The fake call from you that wasn't you about Mrs. Hudson. The choice of method. Greg, he would not have been opposed to ending his life. His life was a toy to Sherlock. But that was not lethal enough. His ego would never have picked something he could have survived. He would have asked me questions and the second he realized he could survive with a damaged mind, he would have made other arrangements."

"Maybe he just snapped? He met him up there, watched him…"

"No. He was not being vindictive to me. He was not confessing his sorrow at his enemy's demise. Don't you see? He was trying to make it easy for us. He was sacrificing all he was, to stand there and make it so we would not love him. He was crushing our vision of who he believed himself to be. Sherlock would only do that for something more important than himself. He didn't want to die, but he felt it would accomplish something. He stepped off for something he feared more than the landing. I don't know what. I don't know what he could have felt deserved to wipe every trace of him out of the world. "

"He would have proved himself right before." Lestrade looks back toward the direction they came from and whistles. "This must be some kind of big missing link, John. I assume you are going to be following. You will have to be reasonably careful you know. If it is something too big for him, he wouldn't want you to…"

" He wasn't up there to hurt me. He reached out to me. He wanted me to be the last thing he saw. Not to hurt me, though it did, not to punish me for being an arse for a second, but as if begging me to see. See him. Know him well enough to observe. I was only observing up there today. I was playing the tape again, not letting my emotions cloud what actually occurred." John admits looking at the sky, as if telling Sherlock too.

John kept seeking. It was a form of perdition to be on Sherlock's death trail, trying to imagine his every thought and relay it to action, But John strolled the road with a new bounce to his walk and the ability to blog again. Following Sherlock, seeking the hidden truth, made him feel he had purpose again.

It only took him a few weeks actually. Once John set his mind to really see all that was there, he found Sherlock. He found his clues and followed them to the truth. He found the small bits that put him in pursuit of the why, right in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen as she complained of the nice plumber who had suddenly been called away before finishing his job. Mrs. Hudson's sink was still in clogged disarray all these months later. John made inquiry as to why the company had not returned to finish the job. They had no employee that fit the incompetents' description, nor any record of a service call to 221 Baker.

The work should have only taken a few moments, but the man had tinkered under the sink for two hours. He was no plumber. John searched her kitchen and it was a simple matter to discover that Mrs. Hudson had had something besides a plumber in her kitchen that day. There were blood stains under the sink. He had banged his knuckles attempting the simplest of routine chores. Only an amateur would have injured himself trying to remove the entire s-curve trap. He had left behind smudges of his telltale real profession. There had been gun oil on his fingers, causing him to slip repeatedly.

Mycroft was invaluable.

John told him what he'd figured out. There were cameras in the vicinity. They watched Sherlock and the man meet, struggle. They couldn't get the audio, but there was a partial transcript provided by experts on lip reading.

Snipers set about the city.

Sherlock Holmes jumped off a fucking building to save him and it took him this long to question that he may have not been quite as selfish of a bastard as the person he saved had thought.

Mycroft had the supposed plumber within his clutches by the next afternoon and the poor man was pleased to recount his story. It seems that he was left unpaid and on top of that, he had gone home to discover his live in girlfriend murdered. He had only managed to save himself by using the very gun he'd been expected to kill Mrs. Hudson with on the intruder who was still in his kitchen standing over the body. The man's months on the lamb had taken a toll on his health severely. Cash worked far quicker than intimidation.

John learned why Sherlock had to jump. Mycroft and he worked together and before the week was up, they had begun a friendly sort of alliance. They quietly rid the world of Sherlock's reasons. The Plumber was an exception, because he had proved himself both a small potato and the key to really solving the whole thing.

Mycroft was pleased but warned John that the London web was but the tip of the iceberg. John extended his willing hand and his service to Mycroft without reservations. It wasn't at an end, but John had done something. He'd had made a difference.

When the London network was in effect of no more importance, John turned his attention to his blog and wrote of his adventures. Strangely, people were interested, though the press was painfully slow to recant their horrible words about Sherlock Holmes. There were cases of graffiti all over the city and a small riot broke out aimed mostly at the press. The public was demanding that people pay attention.

There was a new rally in London. Word of mouth had people tentatively speaking well of his old flat-mate.

It was a Sunday special edition, that brought John both pure triumph and abject pain. His Sherlock was in the news again.

"The life and tragic death of a hero scourged and redeemed."

The world had lost a great man. People who never had a kind word for the man in person, recounted details of him with fondness. John was pleased. Sherlock had told him once to never make a hero of him, for he would disappoint him. He did it anyway, and Sherlock disappointed him. He didn't magically leap out of his grave and make it all better for John.

John stood in the cemetery, not sure how to feel anymore. Maybe he was moving on."I have done the unthinkable, Sherlock. I have survived this horror by doing the one thing you would probably hate me for. You're a damned legend now. You are a dead hero, worshiped for his emotional sacrifice. Held up as the measure of a good soul. Yet, I am still without you. I ask myself, what now? I am supposed to be happy now, moving on. I have a bit, you know. But, you are not here. I'm alone and all I want is to follow you. Could you forgive me if I did?"

John felt his skin prickle. He searched the surroundings, while pretending to pray. He turned back to the stone, pushing off the sensation to his own foolish hope. "If only I could have told you this thing on my heart. Seen you laugh at me for it, maybe then. I will never know for certain now. I have to deduce what you meant and it just isn't good enough. Some nights, I think you must have known, but others I just know you didn't. What do they say about protesting too much? What if I hadn't? What if I hadn't lied to you? Or myself? If I say I am fine. Do you know the truth? Would you know? Did you?"

He lays the flowers up against the stone. "I bought something with the money, Sherlock. It was the only thing I wanted. It is a rather expensive piece of land, considering how tiny it is. But you know what they say about location. I May be moving in soon. I'm bored, you bastard. I'm bored."

Ok - let me know? Remember I have never seen the show so crit is kind of vital. I have only seen clips.