He backed out of the room and slammed the door shut.
It was silent. In the hallway and in John's hospital room. It was a cold and maddening silence, the kind that expected something from you. The kind that waited calmly and patiently for the turmoil in your head to subside just enough for you to realize exactly how bad things are and how worse they can get if you are stupid or selfish enough to let it.
And Sherlock was not stupid, but he knew he was selfish.
He pretended, just for a moment, that slamming the door shut on his closest, best and only friend of several years, a friend who had just attempted suicide and is now in the hospital with severe injuries as a direct result of Sherlock's actions, was not, in fact, an utterly stupid thing to do.
This facade lasted a solid two seconds before crumbling.
He then realized that he was both stupid and selfish. Because the man who cannot read is not as stupid as the man who cannot love. And the man who sympathizes with himself is not as selfish as the man who has no sympathy at all.
Sherlock never liked philosophy.
Who are you?
How could a simple three word question be enough to make, Sherlock Holmes, the most inhuman of humans, slide to the floor with his head in his hands?
You were the best man, the most human...human being I have ever known, and no one will ever convince me that you told me a...
Lie? Oh, I lied. In the end, in that last phone call, I lied to you. And I lied well, John. I regret that. I regret that now.
Anybody else would be confused at that question. They would be in blissful denial. Who are you? Well, what do you mean, who am I? You know who I am!
But Sherlock was not most people. Sherlock knew. He knew immediately. And for a second he thought this was worse than death, that if John had died instead he would at least have been remembered as Sherlock's friend, as Sherlock's flatmate, the man he had shared so much with...
Not this blank piece of paper who knew nothing. Or at least, nothing that mattered.
But he thought this only for a second. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would be worse than John dying. It was inconceivable.
Who are you?
I am Sherlock Holmes. I am thirty six years old. I live in London, England at 221b Baker Street. I am a consulting detective, the only one in the world.
Is that really who I am?
I am Sherlock Holmes. I am your flatmate. I get bored if I don't have a case, at which I point I either shoot the wall or shoot cocaine. You would prefer I do neither. I occasionally leave specimens in the fridge, which is the bane of your existence. Most people would find me a cantankerous flatmate, but you are patient. I am a consulting detective, which means I often get myself into dangerous situations. You have saved me from said dangerous situations more than once.
You are my only friend.
Sherlock swallowed and stood up. He stepped back into the room.
John was sitting up in bed. The extent of his injuries was now clear. He had one broken leg elevated in a sling above the bed, one arm in a cast, and a bandage wrapped around his ribs on his bare chest. But none of that compared to the injury that may not have been as visually extreme, but certainly was the worst: the bloody bandage on his head, where he had received the severe concussion that put him into a coma for days and turned him into an amnesiac.
Retrograde amnesia. Memory loss received from a severe blow to the head, particularly one that damages the frontal lobe (cerebral cortex). May or may not be temporary. It is possible to regain memory from certain stimuli, although not scientifically proven.
"Back so soon?" John said, with a wry smile.
Sherlock felt a slight amount of relief. He still had his pawky sense of humor.
"I'm sorry if...if I can't remember who you are," John continued quietly, the smiled fading. "The doctor said I have amnesia..." He looked at Sherlock uncertainly. "I hope I didn't, um, startle you or anything."
"No, it's fine. Besides, my reaction may have been...unnecessarily dramatic."
John laughed. "Yeah."
There was a silence. It was one of those silences again, the ones that wait. The ones that expect.
John looked at Sherlock, really looked at him. What a strange looking man. Tall and thin and angular, all in a dark coat. He seemed imposing, almost intimidating. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, John felt completely comfortable with him. Even safe.
But there was this edge of darkness, an ever so subtle one, about his presence. As if something bad had happened that involved this man.
So tall...so tall and excessively lean that he appeared much taller...
Interesting thought. Familiar thought.
He could not shake the feeling that he had thought the exact same thing before, long ago. A vague an inexplicable feeling of déjà vu. Somewhere, sometime, this was his.
He knew this man and he knew him well.
If only he could remember.
"My..." Sherlock hesitated, his facade of emotionlessness cracking as he took a deep breath. "My name is Sherlock Holmes."
Remember? Sherlock Holmes? Thirteen letters, three syllables, plastered all over the papers and all over your mind? The name used to be everything to you, and therefore nothing. A name that was so commonplace in your life that hearing it daily meant nothing. Now you don't know what it means. Now you don't remember.
He continued, walking over to John's bedside. "I'm..." A friend? Was that really all they were? Friend, a term that could stretch from drinking buddies to soul mates...how could he possibly explain the nature of them, of us, of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson?
"I'm your flatmate."
That would do.
"Oh." John raised his chin. "Well, that's a start. It's nice to, er, know you, Mr. Holmes." He smiled.
Oh...
"Sherlock." He swallowed. "Just...just call me Sherlock."
Mr. Holmes? Mr. Holmes, as if he was a complete stranger, as if they had never met, as if everything they had ever been through together, every word they've ever exchanged, every moment they had ever shared, has been reduced to absolutely nothing?
Shut up. Stop being overly sentimental. Of course he would call you Mr. Holmes; he did the first time you met. Hardly unpredictable.
"Alright. Sherlock..." He said the name slowly, letting it roll on his tongue. Strange name. It wasn't very common; in fact it sounded almost archaic.
Sherlock. Familiar.
And for a second, he almost remembered everything. Almost. Just a little more effort and the connections would have been made. But it was alright, for they remained blissfully unaware of the lost chance. There are many lost chances that remain unknown, and a good thing that is, too.
He shifted in the bed a little and cringed as he felt a sting in his ribs. Sherlock shifted as well, seeing the look of pain on John's face. No one could have noticed the shift. It was well hidden. Years of practice, building up his armor, hiding his humanity where no one could find it. Almost no one.
He was quite good at pretending.
"What, er..." John hesitated. It was difficult. The situation was unique and awkward and exceedingly difficult and he was beginning to get tired of knowing nothing, of being refused answers, of pain and more pain and endless pain in his scarred and broken body; he was just so tired of being tired. And he didn't know what it was about this strange man that felt like the answers to all of his questions, but it was there. Whatever it was, it was there, and it was something, at least, which was such a big contrast to the big nothing that he felt, the big nothing that he could remember. He looked at Sherlock with exhausted eyes. "What...happened?" he said quietly. "Why am I in the hospital with a head injury and amnesia and multiple broken bones?" He sighed, closing his eyes, continuing. "It's just...nobody will answer me. Nobody will tell me what happened. Was it an accident? A crime or something?" He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and grabbed Sherlock's arm. "Look, I don't know who you are. I'm sorry about that. Really, I am, because I know it's probably tough for you, talking to me when I'm not the person that you knew. But I also don't know who I am, either, and it feels like I've been asleep for what seems like a very long time, and all I remember about my life are the strange things I dreamed about, things that don't make any sense, so I need you to tell me, please." He swallowed. Sherlock stared at him breathlessly, stared at his scared, pleading eyes that had seen so much and hid so much.
"What happened to me?" John whispered.
I don't know.
What did happen to you? What made you feel so empty and so hurt inside that you thought there was no other choice, that you thought you could not go on fighting any longer, that your only path to happiness was the cessation of your own life?
How could it have been me? Me, of all people, me, who cannot love and cannot be loved, how could it have been me? How could you have cared so much that you would die to be with me? How could you have cared for someone like me at all? No one cares for me, no one has ever cared for me. Only you. Only you, John.
The cessation of life. Sherlock understood life and death. Life is when the heart beat and the brain functioned, when oxygen continued to pass through the lungs and carbon dioxide continued to be dispelled, when the thousands of minute life processes that exist in the human body are still continuing in their seemingly infinite cycles. Death is simply the cessation of all those processes.
He did not really understand life and death.
No one does. But some people think they do, and they give their lives meaning when it was otherwise absent of one, and they are happy, and they die happy. But Sherlock did not care.
Interesting, but irrelevant.
And he looked at John, and he saw a man who had been so broken, who had been so utterly shattered inside that he could never have been saved, a man who had had absolutely no hope...but who had been given a second chance. A clean slate.
He saw a man who would be completely unaffected if the stranger known as Sherlock Holmes walked out of the room and was never seen again. He saw a man free of the world's most addictive drug: love.
A man who never had to know anything, who could live a normal, happy life.
And that was fine.
"You were in a car accident."
It was fine. Everything would be fine.
"A drunk driver, apparently. You're lucky you survived."
And what a fine lie it was. So easy, so incredibly easy to lie smoothly, convincingly, in the same monotonous, rapid tone he always used when speaking to people he didn't care about enough to make sure they understand.
And in order to save John, he must not care about him. Because caring will not help him.
"We don't know who it was. The person drove off before anyone could identify the vehicle. But at least you're alright." And he smiled.
John, blissfully ignorant, smiled back.