Summary: There is a new feeling, one Sherlock does not know. It takes him three days to identify it. He is crestfallen.
Notes: This time, there were 113 words starting with a C that needed to be in the story. Many of them had to do with crying. Poor Sherlock!
Crestfallen
Sherlock's memories of the fifteen month of his hiatus are painfully clear. Every detail, every second for ever engraved on his brain. He thinks about deleting most of it, about cleaning his hard-drive of this mess, but refrains from it, because he needs to tell John about it afterwards. He needs to tell him everything, so John can understand. If he will ever listen to Sherlock again, that is.
The fact that Sherlock cares for his friends is not a revelation he has while standing on the rooftop of St. Bart's. He knows it weeks, months ahead, when the plan to challenge Moriarty and his network is nothing more than a vague sketch. He knows that the pool incident has been nothing but a test. A test Sherlock failed by showing Moriarty how deeply he cared for John. Throwing the FBI man out of the window has furthermore proved that, for those he cares about, Sherlock is capable of doing everything.
He cries real tears up on that roof, knowing his next step will separate him from John for a long time. Sentiment is merely a chemical defect, he knows. Yet, he also knows that he can not stop loving John. He hesitates, already knowing that he will not be able to cope with being cut off from John. He listens to his voice on the phone, sees him standing down there, and hesitates.
Then he imagines John dropping to the ground, hit in the head by a sniper, and a strange calm rises inside of him. He jumps. His plan is cunning and brilliant, of course, and it all works out perfectly.
Still, afterwards he wishes he could delete John's reactions. He tries, very hard, but it does not work. He would like to delete the broken sound of John's voice, the broken look in his eyes. He would like to delete the fact that John needs medication afterwards. He would like to delete the video footage from the clinic, showing John, slack in Harriet's arms. But he cannot.
Then he decides to clutch those painful memories, for they give him the drive he needs to challenge Moriarty's network.
One thing Sherlock never wants to delete is how John punches Mycroft at the morgue. Who would have thought that John could swear THAT strong? Not that Mycroft deserves it, his cooperation with Sherlock on faking his death is exemplary. Still, Sherlock cannot stop himself from feeling strangely proud of John when he sees his brother's swollen face afterwards.
During the first few days Sherlock cringes a bit every time he thinks of John. John, who does not know that Sherlock is still alive. Who does not know that Sherlock is actively saving John's life by being dead.
Then he sees him again at the funeral and his confidence returns. Sherlock watches, disguised as a member of the homeless network, how John stands next to his coffin, upright and calm, shaken but obviously unbroken. Sherlock knows that he watches a man who will get over it, sooner or later. Why does that not make him feel like celebrating?
But anyway, John will be fine, apparently. He continues his life at 221b, gets up every morning, eats enough and basically keeps calm and carries on, or so Sherlock's informants tell him. Sherlock can start crushing Moriarty's network before the first week after his death is over, and he can do so without worrying about John too much.
At first it is glorious. There is a clash of options on where to strike first. Sherlock catches one member of the network after another at breathtaking speed, right in front of the CID officers or whatever they are called in all those God forsaken countries. He, shows courage and superior intelligence. He feels brilliant, like a champion, like nothing can stop him. He never stays long enough to watch them being brought to the holding cell, never follows their trials at court.
In his mind, he tells John about it, and John is all admiration and marvel. Sherlock feels a clarity of mind he has last felt when taking cocaine.
He travels from China to Canada so often it feels like merely commuting.
And they fall so easily, never knowing who hit them. Sherlock is all confident and clever, cocking a snook at Moriarty's people.
He cannot wear the coat, cannot conceal his cheekbones behind its collar, but in his mind there is the swirling sensation when he runs around a corner anyway, and he is dazzling and magnificent and splendid, all charisma and elegance. And all the time, before he turns in for the night, or while he is sitting on a plane, or when he is waiting motionless for hours to make his move, he thinks of John, and of his admiration and his support.
Then he slows down. Is slowed down. With most of the network crushed, only the most persistent members left, the gaps between action gets longer. Unfortunately, that means more time for boredom. More time to be concerned about John.
He is surprised when he feels himself craving for John's company after merely six weeks. Without John, Sherlock feels cold inside, even when he tracks down scum in Cairo.
Without John by his side, he no longer feels cheerful. Which is funny, for Sherlock has not been aware of the fact that he has been cheerful. But without John, he suddenly realises that he has been, and no longer is.
Without John, Sherlock tries to enjoy the liberty of calling everybody around him names without being silenced by The John Glance. He smokes cigarettes, is cruel to waitresses, insults idiotic people. Does all the little things he stopped doing because John would have disapproved. It is not half as satisfying as it used to be.
Without John, he fells like catarrh and chickenpox coming on at the same time. Sherlock is so much more in danger of getting lost than he imagined he would be. And the thought, the knowledge that John is fine, is coping, is carrying on, is both frightening and life-saving at the same time. He fights over this contradiction for a while, and the concern for John's well-being wins.
Because Sherlock is lonely, yes, but John needs to be, has to be all right. If he were not, it would destroy Sherlock, more profoundly than Moriarty could have done it. It is a caring notion, one Sherlock is not used to. It challenges the opinion he has of himself.
One month of way-too-slow-progress merges into the next. Sherlock's sense of time is completely malfunctioning. He changes his identities, changes his clothes, his hair colour so often he loses track.
He is cautious not to be seen anywhere. Sometimes he wears a decent coat with collar turned up, sometimes he changes into cycling shorts combined with cowboy boots to hide in plain sight.
Sherlock avoids company. Not only to remain unseen, but also because he cannot stop himself from comparing every single person he meets to John. Everyone looks cheap compared to him.
One day in autumn, Mycroft sends him a letter John has written to him. It was obviously written down in anger, torn apart with desperation, retrieved from the rubbish bin after two hours, glued back together by one of Mycroft's minions.
In it, John tells Mycroft to clear off and stop using CCTV cameras to follow him. He also tells him how guilty he feels about Sherlock's death, and Sherlock is struck when he reads it. There is pain in it, and desperation and grief.
For a second, Sherlock allows himself to believe that John is hurt so much more that he thought, and this idea nearly drives Sherlock crazy instantly. With an enormous amount of will-power, he pushes this feeling back, deduces the letter more carefully. John has torn it apart. Because he has not wanted anyone to read it. Because he did not feel the things he mentioned in it. They were only written in a moment of desperation, after a sleepless night, judging from the strokes of the t.
John. Is. Fine.
The dreams hit him by surprise. They are domestic and harmless and nearly sweet.
In one, John and he are having a candlelight dinner at Angelo's that Sherlock forgot to cancel. They just hang around there and talk and eat. First, they talk about Sherlock's teenage years, how he had considered a career as a chemist, or a cemetery keeper, or even a cabbie. Sherlock continues to complain about the criminal classes, and John listens. Whenever their eyes meet, John smiles. That is it.
In another one, Sherlock forgets to cancel his subscription of body parts from Bart's. He is charged for three arms and a torso he does not need, and John complains about it for half-an-hour. Then he starts to giggle, and everything is all right again. That is it.
In another one, Sherlock sits at Mycroft's diner table with John, both of them watching his brother wearing a crown for some reason, consuming lots of cake, custard, chicken, cheese, candy and celery and becoming corpulent. John mentions the fact that Mycroft might blow up, and they laugh so hard it annoys the hell out of fat Mycroft. That is it.
Every time Sherlock wakes up from those dreams, a certain organ aches. He is fairly sure that it is his heart.
Sherlock spends Christmas somewhere in South America. A mistake, he soon realises. Should have spent it in a non-christian country, without choirs singing hymns on how lovely it is to love each other.
There is barely another time of the year when so many people get depressed. He wishes he were still as cold-hearted as he used to be pre-John. Molly sends him a text, saying "Merry X-mass".
"Christmas is cancelled until further notice" he writes back, hating how often he remembers last Christmas, with that absurd jumper and the terribly annoying good mood. Hating how he is already thinking about the fact that he will spend New Year's Eve alone, too. As if that would matter.
When spring comes Sherlock feels so lonely that he chats with Molly voluntarily. But whenever they talk, over some secret channels, there is always something odd about her. Not because she bores him with stories about Lestrade. Something that has to do with John. But Sherlock does not feel courageous enough to explore that topic. John meets her and Lestrade regularly. Good. John is fine. Full-stop. No need to explore further.
And that Mary Morstan she mentions is surely not more important than Sarah and Jeanette and all the other colourless women in John's life have been. She may charm John an cheer him up a little, but Sherlock will easily scare her away, will cleanse John's life of her by being his cocky, cheeky self when he comes back.
Spring turns into early summer.
Sherlock feels carsick from travelling across Canada once too often. He feels claustrophobic, like buried inside a coffin, when he sits in a cheap motel room, in a city whose name he will have forgotten again this time tomorrow. Wishing he had at least found a way to smuggle the Union Jack cushion out of 221b. Pretending it is the only comfortable cushion in the world. In reality longing for something that smells of John.
Sometimes he feels like he is condemned to live like this forever, feeling cold and homeless. "A case, I need a case," he thinks. A good, solid, ordinary case. In London. With John by his side. He does not need a case. He needs his old life.
He feels the wish to caress John, which is funny, for there has never been any caressing between them, so why does he feel like he is missing it now?
He thinks about coitus with John more often than he should. He tries to relieve himself, but whenever he gets close to climax, shortly before he comes, the loneliness he tries to keep at bay overwhelms him, his cock reacting instantly, the time he spent on building it up a waste of time once more.
He hides in cellars, cavities, empty houses, train wagons, one time even in a crevice somewhere in Alaska, chilled to the bones by the cold northern summer rain. He spends the time with making plans for the future. No, that word is too small, for the future he has in mind for John and himself. He develops, he creates plans for the future. They are glorious and exciting and strangely domestic.
In June conceals himself in a coat check room of the Caring Cross station, waiting to take down one more part of Moriarty's net, one of the last left. He has to wait for a long time, and in the meantime allows himself to fantasise about how John figures it all out by himself. How he comes up with the brilliant solution of how Sherlock survived the fall.
Afterwards, when he sits in yet another lonely hotel room, he realises that John is not thinking about that, because he is sure that Sherlock is dead.
Mycroft meets John every once in a while now. He never gives Sherlock details about their talks. Instead, he sends photographs, one for each meeting. John looks calm.
Sherlock would never admit it, but he cries a lot these days.
One day, he gets a surprising email from John. He quickly identifies it as a goodbye letter, as suggested in every better mourning guidebook. It is written without deep feelings, just to please the reader. That being Mary, apparently, not Sherlock. Normally, thinking of Mary leaves Sherlock cantankerous.
But with the email, John tells them how he cherished the time he had with Sherlock, writes lots of nice things about him, and Sherlock is flattered. He misses John's praise terrible. John describes how glorious it was to chase after criminals for some clients, how Sherlock saved him from a mediocre life.
All this hits home, and after reading it four times, Sherlock feels chivalrous enough not to mind the final paragraph that thanks Mary for her tireless efforts to care for John.
John writes nothing about being broken or desperate or hopeless. Hence, Sherlock is cocksure he was right, John is fine. Everything will be fine between the two of them. Soon.
Sherlock hates himself for his clumsy attempts to find comfort. Most of the time he manages to chasten himself and refrains from making his homeless network to spy on John. Ever so often he fails and asks them for videos or photographs.
When did he get this needy anyway? It must be some bizarre chemical reaction. And yet, here he is, more than a year after his fall, contemplatively sitting in an Australian cyber-cafe, with a strange cramp in his chest. Checking the link he has got would be imprudent, but in the end the curiosity about what John does gets the better of him.
He clicks the link and instantly feels his callous façade crumble to dust. Kensington garden, John and that Mary Morstan woman again. Her arm is placed around his waist. They walk down the alley, she pulls him closer again each time he starts to drift away. Cunt.
Then the camera angle changes, the person holding the mobile apparently cycling, outpacing the couple, then facing them from the far. It slowly focuses on John's face. While the image is still blurry, Sherlock dreads what he will see. Imagines John smiling at her, lovingly. John admiring her the way he used to admire him. John looking happy. He gets an unpleasant cramp in his crotch at the thought of John happy together with Mary.
Then the film comes back into focus, and Sherlock's heart clenches so hard that for a second he is honestly wondering if he is suffering from cardiac arrest. John is not looking at her happily, or admiring. Instead, he is broken. So broken he does not even look hurt or lost. Dead.
And Mary cannot see it, obviously. She chats and laughs, and John chats and laughs with her, but the creases around his eyes barely move, and his eyes are dead. He is broken. Thoroughly and completely broken. Sherlock feels a catastrophic crash building up, and only a minimal instinct of self preservation makes him stumble back into his hotel room before giving in to it.
Disgrace adds to pain when he realises he is crying. No, howling in pain, like a wounded animal. He cries even more when he hears how lost he sounds, how sordid. In his confusion, he clings to the only hold he still has. He grabs his mobile and calls his brother, still unable to stop sobbing.
"I've broken him," he blurts out the second his call is answered. On the other end of the line, silence. Then he hears Mycroft's voice, unnaturally soft and warm: "I know. I'm sorry, Sherlock."
Sherlock has always known that coming back would be the hardest part of his hiatus, but he has always imagined that after a while they would resume their friendship, their life. Maybe even turning John's feelings into love.
Now he realises that will not happen. He has broken John by saving him. He will never get a chance to explain himself to John. They will never resume their life at 221b. Sherlock will come back, but John will be gone, even if he is still there.
There is a new feeling, one Sherlock does not know. It takes him three days to identify it. He is crestfallen. When he realises it, he stumbles into the bathroom and throws up with revulsion. Then he sags down next to the toilet, too exhausted to crawl back to bed. He stay inside the bathroom the whole night and cries and cries and cries.
