A/N: The following chapters were written much later than Chapter 1. The continuity works, but the format is different, which bothers me. Maybe someday I'll go back and rewrite chapter 1 so it matches. For now, that's my disclaimer/apology.
He's on the roof with Moriarty again, but it's dark. Either it's a moonless night with no city lights, or this building is somehow inside an enormous, pitch-black room. It feels that way; the air is closed and still. He knows what's about to happen but he makes no attempt to stop it. "Bless you," Moriarty says, and grabs Sherlock's hand, and opens his mouth wide. And then the gun is in John's mouth, there's no sound at all, just brains and blood and bits of skull exploding behind him and Sherlock is reaching around him, trying to close the hole, wrapping his arms around John's head and pulling him to his chest, to the ground, but he knows as he falls that he's failed, the hole is much much much too big.
Sherlock wakes with a start. He's sweaty and John is leaning over him with a look that suggests he might have been making noises. Humiliating. He rolls over on his side, away from John, and closes his eyes although that is the last thing he wants to do. The insides of his eyelids are black and painted with the blood and brains and skull fragments of John Watson.
"Sherlock?" John's voice is calm and only a little hesitant. "Nightmare?"
Sherlock snorts. He doesn't have nightmares. Or didn't, until he jumped off a building. Since then, it's been a veritable festival of horror. Recurring nightmares are a phenomenon he doesn't fully understand and, thankfully, has never experienced. He suspects that the combination of uncontrollable terror rising from the depths of his psyche plus monotony would be enough to drive him over the edge. No, his subconscious is just as creative as his conscious, offering him something new every time he allows himself to sink into REM sleep. They're not all masterpieces. This one, for instance. He knows he's tired because this one is rather pedestrian. In contrast, consider the one he had Tuesday, where John's head did not explode at all, but oozed violin strings and spaghetti from the perfectly round hole in the back of his skull, and after Sherlock sat cross-legged on the rooftop and watched the corpse ooze for an interminable amount of time, John sat up and started eating the pasta with relish, and finally looked up and grinned at Sherlock with pointed teeth. That was more original. Still, there's something to be said for a literal approach. The contents of John's head, flying out of his reach, probably exactly the way they really would only slower, is an image that Sherlock can't yet shake or handle. Without realizing it, he has clutched his arms to his chest, where John's dead body was last seen.
"Sherlock, it's ok," John is murmuring. "I mean, it's not. It's not bloody ok at all when it happens. But you're safe." He sounds just a little embarrassed to be saying those words, but he continues. "It makes you feel you're mad, doesn't it? It can be so real. It's like you can be more frightened in a dream than you ever would when you're awake. And that's alright. If you are. I'm here."
Sherlock is staring at the wall. The insides of his eyelids are still not a safe place to be. "What good does that do?" he asks in a hoarse voice. He doesn't care about the answer, it's really just that he wants John to keep talking.
"I don't know for you, but for me, when I wake from a nightmare it's good… to see I'm not alone. For a long time, I was. Sometimes the waking was worse than the dream, then. But after I moved into Baker Street, I'd wake up and sometimes hear you playing violin or crashing about the flat, doing whatever daft thing you do in the middle of the night, and it was better. After a while, I felt better even if I didn't hear anything. I suppose because I'd got used to you. I knew you'd be there." John makes a tiny, uncomfortable but conclusive hmph sound, like he feels he's said more than enough.
Sherlock wants him to keep talking. There's a part of him that wants him to talk about anything other than his feelings, but also a part of him that desperately wants to be the center of John's attention at all times, and another part that doesn't care what he talks about as long as that calm voice keeps going. So that's two parts against one. "And then? After I left?"
"Oh. I thought we were done with that subject. Well, you know. I was alone. Again. Very. And the nightmares... well. They weren't any better, that's certain. And when I woke up, the silence was worse than it had been before. Before, silence was just silence, that was bad enough. After, silence meant you were dead."
Sherlock swallows. "I'm not dead."
"Yeah, I think that's pretty well-established now."
"I dream about you being dead. Sometimes."
John says nothing.
"Say something."
"Don't know what to say, Sherlock. I'm sorry."
"Anything. Just... talk. Really, about anything."
"That's really your area, isn't it? Prattling on incessantly. Not my forte."
"Honestly, John, you're making me repeat myself a third time, that can't be necessary. Anything. Really."
John seizes on the first pleasant thing that comes to mind, an abandoned lot where he and Harry used to play. The abandoned flat where he and Sherlock are currently squatting has had him thinking about that place. He tells Sherlock about the stupid games they used to get up to, climbing contests and king of the mountain, building forts out of rubbish and lumber and pieces of fence and playing at war. Sherlock doesn't care in the slightest about the summer they found a lost puppy and tried to keep it there or the time John's friend stepped on a nail and got tetanus. He deletes the words the moment he hears them and retains only the solid, warm, earthiness of John's voice. He breathes deeply, slowly, and his eyes are open.
John is on the sidewalk in front of Bart's. The one directly in front of Bart's, the rectangle where he knows Sherlock will fall. He is absolutely certain he will be able to catch him. He is strong enough. "Go ahead," he says into his radio. "I've got you, over." Then he returns the radio to its holster, adjusts his helmet and stretches out his arms. The figure above him doesn't move. He's backlit by the sun so John can't see his face. The figure just stands there on the ledge, his coat fluttering dramatically around him. "You look pretentious, not mysterious!" John yells. "Just jump already, I'm cold!" The figure doesn't even look down. And then, so slowly, he lifts up his arms like an angel, and takes one graceful step forward. John reaches up and is so focused, he almost doesn't notice the bullet. Until he does. The searing pain through his left shoulder is pulling him down and he thinks "I can still do this, I can, stand up for god's sake" but it's useless, he's down on one knee, he's clutching his shoulder against his will, he feels the blood pulsing over his hand, and he looks up and Sherlock is falling, still falling, now he can see Sherlock's face and read terror all across it and the chasm in John's chest is the knowledge that there is absolutely nothing he can do.
There's a hand on his shoulder. He jerks away and sits up, full of adrenaline, ready to fight. It's just Sherlock, looking worried, which will never not be disconcerting. His shoulder is throbbing.
"You were talking," Sherlock says, almost accusatorily.
"Was I?" John tries to appear unconcerned, but he's surprised. "What did I say?"
"Sherlock."
"Oh." Awkward. "You were falling. I couldn't catch you."
Sherlock looks away. "I assumed you dreamed about the war."
"I do. You introduced a new dimension, that's all."
"I see." Sherlock looks intensely uncomfortable.
"So… thanks for that. Wouldn't want to get bored, now would we?" John smiles. Weakly at first, then genuinely, because that's Sherlock in a nutshell, isn't it? Horror and agony over boredom. We should claim that as our motto and get shirts printed up.
"No, definitely not." Sherlock smiles back. "Glad I could help." He clears his throat. "Do they recur?"
"Do what now? Oh. Sometimes I have the same ones again, yes. This one. This one I've had before."
"How dull. I never have the same one twice. But there's a technique called imagery rehearsal -"
"Yes, I know. My therapist had me try it. Doesn't work. However, I wished you back alive and that worked, so maybe I should concentrate on that technique."
Sherlock chuckles.
"Don't think I'll get back to sleep tonight," John says after a silence. The worst thing about that particular dream is not the bullet. It's knowing that he failed, that he could not be strong enough, not even close. Like a rock in his stomach, pulling him down through the ground, it stays with him for hours after he wakes. Days, sometimes. "You're not sleeping anyway, are you?"
"No." Sherlock settles back to the position he must have been in before he woke John up, sitting against the wall with his knees tucked up in front of him, his hands clasped over his knees. "Thinking."
"Would you mind thinking out loud?"
"As you know, I prefer to." And Sherlock begins his rhythmic muttering, a cascade of words that rise and fall and speed and slow like the world's longest and most erratic roller coaster. Only bits and pieces make sense, and even those aren't connected to anything that matters. John just sinks into the rich timbre of Sherlock's voice, dark like mahogany, like wine, like really good coffee, like a night that is soft and quiet and not full of danger, the sort of night that will probably never happen again. He lies on his side and watches Sherlock, who never minds being watched, and lets the words rumble across him until sunrise.
He's walking through Central London. He's been walking forever. London cannot possibly be this big. His boots have worn blisters into his feet and the straps of his field pack are digging painfully into his shoulders, but he never thinks of stopping. He's looking for something important. What, or who, exactly, is hard to remember. It's hovering just outside his mind, but he knows that if he keeps walking, he'll either find it or remember it. Sometimes the buildings quiver and melt away. As always, he's acutely aware of the slightest movement around him, so the moment the buildings start to fade, he notices. But it never seems to affect him, so he doesn't react, he just keeps walking. Sometimes the buildings lean in. That's worse. He's aware that they could fall on him and he doesn't have any viable escape routes. When they start to lean, his heart pounds in his chest and his senses sharpen, his finger strokes the trigger of his gun, but he keeps walking. There's nothing else he can do. Then suddenly, there's a loud POP and the buildings are just gone. Instead, all around him, above and below, is yawning blackness. Terror wells up from the pit of his stomach but before he can react, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns, and it's Jim, wearing an innocent smile and an impeccably tailored suit. "Baby," Jim coos, "don't be scared" and then suddenly his brown eyes flash yellow and he lunges forward with unsheathed claws.
Sebastian wakes up gripping his throat. His t-shirt is damp with sweat.
He groans and rolls out of bed. He stands for a while, staring at his reflection in the mirror and the city lights beyond it. Sirens and car horns and drunken yells occasionally sound off in the distance, but for the most part, London is calm.
He drops to the floor and starts doing push ups. Not counting, just pushing, letting the blood in his veins and the roar in his ears and the soft grunt in his throat take over everything else. This has always been the best way to clear his brain. But there's Jim, sitting in the chair by the desk, watching him with laughter on his lips. Like that time Jim flounced over and sat on his back, just dropped all his weight on it mid push up, and Sebastian crashed to the floor yelling "What the FUCK!" and Jim just sat there, primly smiling and examining his cuticles until he was bored. And Sebastian let him, of course.
So he's thinking about Jim after all. Pull ups then, on the bar mounted in the bathroom doorway. It's strange, he thinks. You can't really miss someone who was never really there. In many ways, nothing has changed. Jim would disappear for days, weeks, months at a time, and then suddenly there would be a text with cryptic instructions, or he would simply show up at Sebastian's flat with a Cheshire grin, and Sebastian would let him in, every time. You don't say no to someone like that. And he was happy, actually, to take orders from a madman. The army had been no different, except that there everyone was pretending that the madman was sane. That dishonesty - that's what Sebastian couldn't stand. He hated that about Jim, too. You never knew with anything he said. He would say things just to try them on, just to see how they felt sliding out of his mouth, and there was no distinction at all for him between the truth and the lie. Sebastian never said anything about it because he knew Jim would take it as evidence of his ordinariness.
Sebastian knows he's not ordinary. He might not be a genius like Jim, but he is exceptional and always has been. Jim saw that.
When Jim was around, Sebastian basked in his glow. When Jim was gone, Sebastian gave off his own light. Now Jim is gone and not coming back and that's just as well. He was never really here even when he was here, Sebastian thinks, because this world can't fully contain a man like that.
Sebastian flops back onto his bed. A man like himself can do fine in this world, however. Ordinary enough to breathe the air. Extraordinary enough to shine, if he wants to.
He's lived in Hong Kong, Mexico City, Seoul, Rome, New York. London is just a town by comparison, small and very quiet. He listens to the soft thump of his own heart and stares at the ceiling until he hears the sounds of the city waking up.