Wanted You More
Chapter/Verse Two
Sherlock-centric
A/N: Obviously, I don't own any part of the Sherlock Holmes franchise. Sigh. The plot is mine, and the idea comes from SpookyZaragoza, to whom this fic. is dedicated. Thanks!
Sherlock clutched his knees to his chest, shaking slightly as the weight of all that he had been forced to leave behind came crashing down about his shoulders. The delicate vapours, curling in electric tendrils around his buzzing neurones, were beginning to dissipate, and he felt as though his life really had ended, all those months ago. How long was it now? He knew no dates, no time of day. All he knew was that it had been long enough that the particular cadences of his friend's voice were beginning to fade from memory, just like the drug. All his comforts, abandoning him at once. Tucked into an enrolled ball of grief, tiny droplets glinted as they rolled down his obsidian eyelashes and dropped into pools on the cold, unfeeling stone beneath him which he so envied, unheeded and as alone as their creator.
All the words unspoken, promises broken...
He had sworn to himself – to John – that he would not do anything... stupid. That was one of John's favourite words to describe his misadventures. Of course he saw the utter genius behind that eccentric exterior, the minute gears and wheels, computing, calculating... But he saw more. More than anyone ever had; even Mycroft. Even his only brother had never peered in close enough to see the aching, wretched heart, beating a slow and painful tune behind the ivory bars of its cage. Behind the lock to which only Sherlock had the key.
I cried for so long...
Only John had reached into the fleshy cavern and broken his self-made chains. Only his John... Sherlock had wept that day, for the first time in a great many years. A Sherlock boy did not cry. It was a motto carried with him since childhood, a stigma from which only one man had been able to free him. But at what cost! His friendship; gone. His heart; in pieces. His brilliant, agile mind; rusting and abused. Loathing, agony, a purgatory beyond any hell, tormented him day and night. How can you live with yourself, it probed, after what you did? The hissing of his conscience, reminding him – as if he could ever forget – what he had done to John.
Wasted too much time, should've seen the signs...
But he had seen the signs. He had seen the friendship his roommate felt for him, had watched it grow. Had encouraged it, although he would not admit it to himself. He had revelled in it. Sherlock's keen wit and refined humour, tenderly coaxing his gentle friend into the light, stroking his very soul with emotions that wavered with neglect. It had been so long since he had felt, really felt, that his heart ached under the strain of it. But he persisted. He must, for John's sake.
In all that time, though, he had never succeeded. He had hoped, he could now confess - if only in the confines of his own yearning mind – to draw the opalesque, radiant love forth. To open John's heart, as he had done in kind. To repay a debt beyond measure. It was just the kind of impossible task which Sherlock so relished, and so absorbed had he become that he had not realised what was happening to them. To them. Until, as cliché dictates, it was taken away. Sherlock always professed to be at once amongst mortal men and above them, but even he could not rise above the crushing agonies of a broken heart.
Now I know just what went wrong...
As the water rushed in his ears, he knew. As he narrowly avoided death, he knew. As he crawled from the frothing shallows, he knew. Wiser men than he had taught of knowledge as power, and it was a doctrine into which the learned man had eagerly bought. A lifetime of observing, absorbing, resolving such human problems had taught him that power, in its turn, carried the inevitability of responsibility. As the icy water lapped at his feet, as he huddled in a violently trembling mass of burgeoning hypothermia, every ounce of the responsibility for what he had done came crashing down on top of Sherlock. And he wept.
Additional A/N: As anyone who has read any of my other work will know, I will always appreciate reviews, and I do try to reply to as many as possible. So please, drop me a line! A word, even! Let me know what you think. Thanks!