Aloha, dearies. Back again for chapter 2. I should have been doing one of my numerous essays for school, but instead, I wrote this. But hey, if it`s a competition between development in infancy, and the crazy shenanigans of Sherlock and John, there`s really no contest, is there? Anyways, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not much has changed since the last chapter, as in I still do not own Sherlock. *cries*
Sherlock's reappearence at 221B Baker Street may very well have ended Mrs Hudson's life had not Mycroft been considerate enough to phone ahead and let her know he was coming. As it was, she merely screamed and sat down heavily on the steps when he walked through the door.
It took her a minute to recover, but after a bit, she retired to the kitchen and returned with a cup of tea and some biscuts ("Just 'cause your back, dear, and just this once. Remember, I'm not your housekeeper!").
As Sherlock sipped his tea and stuck on about six nicotene patches, he decided it was time to start brainstorming the Ron Adair case. He looked around the room, kept exactly the way it had been since before he'd left by Mycroft, at his request. All his things were there... except...
"Mrs Hudson!" Sherlock called, and she, of course came running immediately.
"What is it, dear?"
"Where's my skull?"
"What?"
"My skull! The one that sat right there on the ledge since we moved in!" Sherlock snapped, then stopped abruptly, wondering why he had said "we" instead of "I," which would have been a much more appropriate word choice. It certainly had been a strange day...
"Oh, that old thing. Well, it hasn't been there for years, Sherlock. John must have taken it with him the day he came back from Switzerland."
"He took... my skull? Why?"
"Well, I wondered that myself. I'd thought because he missed you, but now I'm not so sure. I do wish he'd told me about you... still being alive. Where is he anyways? I'd expected you two to be chatting away about murder in here by now!"
Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Well... I've been to see him, but he doesn't seem to be quite himself today."
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, I showed up at his flat, and he hit me, then passed out, then slammed the door in my face when he woke up." Sherlock said, trying to sound bored instead of confused about his friend's actions.
"John? Why would he do a thing like tha-" Mrs. Hudson's voice trailed off as she realized the answer to her own question. A disappointed, almost scolding look came into her eyes as she looked at the consulting detective. "Oh, Sherlock. You didn't tell him, did you?"
The answer was written clearly on his face. Mrs. Huson sighed and tutted, shaking her head at him.
"What?" Sherlock snapped, genuinely at a loss as to why people were behaving like this.
"Well, dear, he thought you were dead for three years."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. She was, once again, pointing out the blatantly obvious rather than answering his question.
"Yes, I know that."
"Well... how would you feel if John did the same to you?"
"Irrelevant. I'd have been able to figure out from the footprints and the paper trail that he'd survived; it's not a valid point."
Mrs. Hudson sighed again. "Alright then. What if he actually died? What then? Goodness knows he's come close enough since I met him, a few times. How would you feel if John died on a case with you, and you didn't get to say goodbye?"
Sherlock looked at the floor. If he was honest with himself, in a way he'd never be with anyone else in the world, it was a thought that had often kept him up at night, especially during the past three years. How he would feel if he lost John. It was something he preferred to shut away in the back of his mind with the rest of the dusty emotions and other trivialities.
But still, he'd been there at Reichenbach. He'd heard John calling for him, desperate, as if his life had depended on it. He'd lay on the ledge above the roaring falls, clutching the wet grass, shivering with the cold, and listened as John found his discarded phone with that damned text still unfinished on the screen. And he'd heard him crying, his sobs louder to Sherlock's ears than the falls.
The peculiar, horrible, gut-wrenching feeling he'd had then was similar to the one he was feeling now, at the thought of permanently losing John.
Of course, his departure had been necessary. It was the best way to keep them all safe; Mycroft, and Mrs Hudson, and Sarah, and Harry, and John. Especially John. If he'd known Sherlock was alive, one slip of the tongue could have cost him dearly.
Sherlock tried to explain this to Mrs. Hudson, in lieu of responding to her question. His reasoning in the matter was sound. Still, when he was finished talking, she was eyeing him disapprovingly.
"What?" He snapped again.
"Sherlock... Even if all you've been saying is true, it doesn't change the fact that he went around for three years thinking you were dead. You should have seen the state he was in when he came back, poor thing. Walked straight in here without a word, picked up that skull, and closed the door. I didn't go in but I heard him crying through the door. He must have took the skull with him when he left a few hours later, to go stay with family, I think. He moved out not a week after that. I've been lonely these past few years, dear. Me and Mrs Turner next door would get together for tea sometimes, maybe a girl's night out every once in a while with some of the ladies from bridge. But, I'm sure it'll get more exciting when you're both nice and comfy back here."
She smiled a little. Sherlock looked over at her, just a little grumpily.
"He's still not talking to me."
"And he's got every right not to, young man."
"Well, what do I do?"
"You apologize." Mrs. Hudson said matter-of-factly.
"I what?"
"Apologize."
"But I didn't do anyhthing wrong."
The only response that got from the landlady was a raised eyebrow.
"My reasoning was sound; staying here would only have put more people in danger!"
"You know I wasn't talking about you leaving, Sherlock. But you could have dropped him a line any time while you were away, and you didn't."
"Well, he... I couldn't risk..." Sherlock stammered (a rare occurrence for the consulting detective).
"Look," Mrs. Hudson said, standing up. "I don't care what your reasoning was, young man. The only thing to do in this case is to swallow your pride and go apologize to John."
"But-"
"No buts!" She said with an uncommon finality. Then she patted his head in a motherly way and left the room, leaving Sherlock to sit and think.
He sighed, and went to the laptop sitting on the dusty table.
"You have 9 new e-mails!" Said the fake voice from John's tinny laptop speakers.
He rolled his eyes, already knowing who they'd all be from. One from the hospital, two annoying forwards from Harry, and no less than six from Sherlock. He angrily deleted every single one of them without reading a word on them.
A few years too late, Sherlock.
Then he found a white envelope with his name on it on his kitchen counter. There was no way it could have gotten there other than being placed there by Sherlock. John rolled his eyes, and added "breaking and entering" to his mental list of Reasons to be Mad at Sherlock.
He crumpled up the envelope without opening it, and threw it out of the window, where it fluttered to the street just in time for a certain tall, dark-haired individual to pick it up. He looked at it, saw that it hadn't been read, and glanced up in irritation at the window it had just come out of.
He had worked all night on the damned thing, and John didn't even bother looking at it? What the hell was wrong with him?
He stayed where he was, holding the unopened letter until John came out on his way to the hospital. Sherlock hurried over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Yes?" He said politely, before he realized who he was talking to. Then the anger was back. He brushed Sherlock's hand away and started walking quickly in the opposite direction.
"John, you're being childish." Sherlock said, following him.
"Go away." John said without looking back.
"It was necessary-"
He only laughed humorlessly at that. "Was it now?"
Sherlock sighed and quickened his step to catch up with the doctor. He decided it was time to try for an emotional appeal; those usually worked with John.
"Come on, you can't stay mad at me forever. I thought we were friends-"
John stopped walking so suddenly that Sherlock almost ran into him.
"Friends?" John said, in a tone that implied he's never heard of such a thing before. "Friends, eh? Well, I'm not entirely sure about your definition of the term, but my dictionary happens to say something about friends being there for each other. Nothing about disappearing off the face of the Earth for a few years and then waltzing back like nothing's happened."
"This is an apology, and you should-"
"Apology? No, Sherlock. This is stalking. I'd threaten to go to the police, but they'd probably not believe that I was having my flat broken into by a dead man."
"They know I'm back." Sherlock said simply in reply. "They've known for nearly a week."
John blinked. "Lestrade... knows." He said softly. "Lestrade's known for a week. I've known for two days. Mycroft's known for three bloody years, and you didn't think once, not once, to just pick up a damn phone and call me, text me, anything at all to just let me know you were okay? Would it have been that much trouble to let one more person in on your little secret? Or did you just not care? Did you just fail to consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, you had let some people down, hurt them by leaving? Did you even give it a thought at all?" He gave another short, humorless laugh. "Of course you didn't. Sherlock Holmes, knows everything about everything except what matters. I just - I can't deal with this, Sherlock. I can't deal with you. I'm done."
When he stopped speaking, there was a beat of silence between the two. When John spoke again, he was quiet. He sounded resigned, tired.
"We were friends. Once. I thought." He looked Sherlock straight in the eye for the first time. "But I guess I was wrong again, wasn't I?"
And without another word, he walked away.
"John!" Sherlock called. "You're being childish!"
But John kept on walking. He hailed a cab and drove off without so much as a backwards glance in Sherlock's direction, just as the detective himself had done to John all those long years ago.
I hope Mrs. Hudson wasn`t too matronly. Anyways, I`m almost finished writing the last chapter, so updates should be pretty quick. In the meantime, why not click that pretty green button down there and review?