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Fated Ghosts.
Silent Angel.
Sherlock Holmes.
I'm falling.
Twisting through the air with the wind tugging at my hair and at my coat. There's nothing for my hands to grab to save myself. The ground is getting closer, cold, hard and unforgiving. And I'm afriad. Because John is screaming incomprehensible words at me, agony like I've never heard thick in his voice. I can't see his face, the world is moving by to fast and I'm almost glad I can't. He doesn't know it's a cruel trick, that's he shouldn't be worried about me. I'm hurting him and that hits me harder than I imagined it would.
I'm sorry, John.
Graveyards have an eerie and forboding sort of beauty to them. Endless perfect rows of graves and chipped headstones. I was surprised to find John amoungst them, standing with a solider's ease in front of the rock that bared my name. This was the John who had protected me, behind a stoic mask and his military rules. It hurt inside a little, watching him from the distance and seeing that blank stare. For the first time, I wanted to run to him and shake awareness back into him. Prove to him that I was still alive and he didn't have to be this machine. That was my job. I was supposed to be cold, heartless and robotic. John never knew the human heart he brought out in me.
"You told me once that you weren't a hero, um...there were times when i didn't even think you were human. But let me tell you this; you were the best man, the most human, human being that I've ever known and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie. I was...so alone and I owe you so much. One more thing, one more miracle Sherlock, for me, don't be dead. Just for me, just stop it, just stop this."
His voice crackled in places and words got lost in the wind but I heard him. His pleads and the fracture of his heart. I would have given anything to give John his miracle. To put a smile back on his face and forget the last few days. But then John would never be safe. He meant to much to me to risk his life like that. I found my best friend in the small army doctor but couldn't stop him walking away.
...
John bustled around in the kitchen, his mouth stretched around a yawn and one hand rubbed the dust of sleep from his eyes. I was stupidly relieved to see his hideous knitted jumpers again and hear the racket he made as he moved. It was home, safety and my sanity. John kept the monsters away without realising it. I should thank him but I don't know how. I pressed my fingertips together underneath my chin and stared up at the ceiling.
"Tea, Sherlock?" John called.
"Please." I responded absentmindly.
There was the click of the kettle and a rattle of milk, briefly I wondered who had gone to get it. I shrugged it away and listened to John humming softly under his breath. He set the china mug down in front of me and craddled his as he sank down into the chair beside me. He pulled his laptop toward him and fiddled with the keys.
"Thank you." John whispered suddenly. I lazily rolled my head over to look at him. John blushed and refused to look at my face. " You...um...you gave me my miracle...a little late...but still. So, thank you."
I grinned softly and bumped my knee against his. "You're welcome. I know...you don't fully understand why the last three years had to happen, John. But I...I knew Moriarty wasn't lying to me. There was a sniper in one of the buildings on the day I ju-fell."
John stiffened, his hands freezing over the keyboard. There was a fine tremor in his arms and a twitch above his right eye.
"I never knew." He muttered. "I thought..."
He hissed in annoyance and abruptly turned his head away from me. I saw him start to rise from the chair and in a panic, my hand shot out to grab his wrist.
"Sit down, John. You're so angry with me and I need to understand why."
"I'm not one of your experiments, Sherlock." He spat.
"No, you're my best friend. I'm trying, John. Please."
My quiet plead unlocked his stiff muscles and he sank back down beside me but his eyes remained determindly on his nails. He was closing himself off to me again, trying to hide from the one causing him emotional pain.
"I thought you'd given up." He confessed. "I didn't see Moriarty on the roof until Lestrade went up there. For a few weeks, I actually thought you'd comitted suicide and I didn't know why. I went through everything I'd ever said to you. But I couldn't find anything that would explain why you'd done it. I just...didn't understand. I thought maybe it was me."
He dropped his head forward onto his hands and his face from me. I reached out and touched his shoulder softly.
"I didn't mean to make you think that. I really didn't. You were supposed to be alright."
"So I was just supposed to ignore that my best friend committed suicide in front of me? Just keep smiling and going to work like a good little soilder? Damn it, Sherlock! I'm not a machine."
I flinched a little at his raised voice and the fire in his eyes when he brought them to glare at me.
"I'm sorry." I murmured.
"No, you're not. You never are." He dismissed.
Anger rolled a little in my chest like a distant storm but I cooled it down and tried to remind myself that John was hurt. I shuffled myself closer to him and pressed my shoulder against his. He didn't pull away from me and something leaked out of him, a nasty emotion that didn't belong in him.
"For one so smart you can be an idiot sometimes, Sherlock. You died and I didn't. I have to admit that now I can see how clever your idea was. Who's was the body?"
"Someone from the morgue. Molly helped me." I hesitantly informed him.
He nodded. "I thought so. You put the van there?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. Who was the man who ran into me on his bike?"
I gulped nosily. "I think it was the sniper."
A shudder ran down John's back and he pressed his knuckles firmly against his mouth.
"Oh. Well, at least he didn't shot me." He tried to tease. "Shit. What about you? Tell me what you did. I'm listening this time."
"I went to Eurpoe to track down the others. I hadn't expected Moriarty's web to stretch so far across the world. It was tedious and at times revolting."
I shuddered at the thought of darkned alleyways infested with rats as my bed. The bars with their fog of drugs that made even my mind turn to mush. The blood of vitims, both theirs and mine. The sleeplessness nights with only John's screams filling my ears. And the satisfactions of ticking of another death and being one step closer to home. I had become something worse than I thought I was.
"Well...that's in the past now. You're home. We're safe."
But life has a funny way of destroying everything.
...
"JOHN! JOHN, PLEASE, ANSWER ME!" I screamed.
My heart was a beating painful drum inside me, my pulse pounded in my head... John... I skidded down the gravel path and slipped often in my haste. A nameless thug had John and I couldn't find him. Lestrade had said he had an easy job for me, something to relieve the tension in my muscles and the thick sludge in my head. Naivily I thought I would be able to solve it and be home within a few hours, so I didn't take John with me. I left him at home, unprotected, vulnerable. I had forgotten that the world knew I was back and that everyone knew John. That included the suspect. He stole John away from the streets and I didn't even know.
The text message on the phone clasped in my hand taunted me.
Missing a blogger?
He's at the park.
I thought that he would be safe because Moriarty and his men were dead. I had made a dreadful mistake and I wouldn't allow John to suffer for it.
Lestrade waded through the foliage and called for John, his voice rising in fear with every second that passed.
"Sherlock. Stop." John's voice suddenly cut through the silence.
I jerked to a stop and peered into a spotlight of moon glow and found the figures in the centre. There was John, standing tall and proud as I knew he would be, even with the blade of a butcher knife pressed against his neck. The man behind him was tall, thin and wild. His eyes darted around the park, to me and down to John. I went to step forward but John's eyes widened in alarm and his hands jerked up.
"Don't move!" He ordered. "There's another one somewhere."
"Shut up!" The man growled and shook John harshly.
I obeyed my doctor and stopped, John's eyes glowed in relief. Lestrade blundered forward and only stopped when I locked my hand around his jacket. The blade pressed harder against John's neck and I watched a thin river of blood snake down his throat. My insides burned in anger and fear as John hissed and risked a swipe at the man.
"What do you want?" Lestrade questioned.
"Its not everyday someone gets the jump on Sherlock Holmes. The papers were right after all, he is a big fake. He had no idea how close I was getting to Doctor Watson."
His words pulled something deep inside me, despite everything I had said to John and let the papers print, I had never lost my confidence in my abilities. But this one tiny man had found a chip in the pride inside me that I didn't even know existed. John. I dropped my eyes to the floor for a second too long and heard the laughter that followed.
"He's a total fake and he knows it. It was very clever though, I give him that, faking his death like that. Don't you agree, Watson?"
"Bite me." John hissed. "He's my friend, he's not a fake."
"Shit, you are a guliable bastard. Pathetic."
"What about you?" I finally found my voice and my brain. "You're nothing. No job and very little qualifications. A drug addic and an alocholic. Your girlfriend just left you for another man WITH a future. And you feel you have the right to call others pathetic?"
A flame of untamed rage ignited behind his eyes and John whimpered softly. His hand flew up to tug on the man's forearm and he gasped.
"Let him go!" Lestrade ordered, his gun aimed at the man's head.
"Shoot him." I hissed.
But the gunshot came from behind me and whizzed the bullet passed my ear. Lestrade hit the floor for cover and dragged me down beside him. A second body hit the floor with a grunt and I peered up. John and his attacker had gone down in a tangle of limbs and my heart was chocked. Neither men were rising from the ground, they weren't even moving. John wasn't moving. I pushed away from Lestrade and darted to John with a burst of fear induced adrenaline. I barely registered than my knees were pressed into something wet and that it shimmered crimson in the moonlight. Only that John's chest was covered in blood and my trembling fingers couldn't find a pulse.
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