Hello! Another shortish chapter is up! I've also got some business to attend to though.
1. "Someone somewhere wake me up" is a phrase borrowed from one of ABakerStreetIrregular's fic of the same name. It's a good story (all of theirs are really good actually) so check it out if you have the time.
2. Oh snap. Colors Beyond the Spectrum was lovely and reviewed and told me that "mon ami" is the masculine form of the phrase "my friend." Since Alice is a girl she should have the feminine "mon amie." I'm going to go back and change it, but this is what happens when Missing Triforce tries to use French when she knows next to no French and is just ripping it from the Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot novels she's reading (Christie FTW!).
3. I lied. This is NOT the last chapter. There's an epilogue.
5. The promise referred to in this chapter (as in "Fuck your stupid promise") is the promise Sherlock made to John in my other fic, After, NOT his promise to raise Alice with John. For those who haven't read After, in that story Sherlock promised he'd die first, meaning that he's never going to (or ever want to) outlive John.
4. Phew, that was a lot. I love you all. Thanks for all the support! Leave a review if you like!
Chapter 8
I was a heavy heart to carry
But he never let me down
When he had me in his arms
My feet never touched the ground
-Florence and the Machine
Someone somewhere wake me up.
After six hours, Sherlock passed the mark of mere concussion to coma.
It has now been seven days.
He could breathe on his own, and his heart pumped on its own. He simply didn't wake up.
Alice and I were waiting for him to wake up.
Every time I woke up in the morning I thought I was falling asleep into one of my nightmares. But my actual dreams were no better: all involved death. Alice would sleep in Sherlock and I's bed with me and tried to help. Whenever she woke to me twitching, she'd kiss my forehead and snuggle closer. She's stretch her legs, trying to make them as long as Sherlock's. At least that's what I would remember her doing in that lucid place between sleeping and waking.
Other times, I'd wake up and she'd hold my head to hers and hum a tune I didn't know-maybe something Clémence had taught her-until I fell back asleep dreamlessly.
At the hospital, we'd sit in the uncomfortable plastic chairs of his room. Alice would sit on my lap silently, just watching her other father patiently. She noted every movement, every rise and fall of his chest. I bet my best jumper she was going to grow up just like him.
Sherlock being unconscious had happened before, of course. But every time was unadulterated agony. It felt like a hand was squeezing my ribs, gently tightening around the fleshy valve of my heart. It hurt to breathe almost. My stomach was all prickly pain and knots of uncertainty wound together. When it became too much, I would hold Alice to me harder. She would then give me a peck on the neck and snuggle closer. "It shall be well, Papa."
Her voice, whenever it came, was always startling. It was so clear but held an air of mystery or unknown, like a foggy morning on a mountain: everything was hypersensitive and still, but also an ancient calm pervaded. So unlike Sherlock's deep thunder or my sunny wood.
Every day Alice and I would come to Sherlock's room at the beginning of visiting hours. And then we would talk. I told Alice of our adventures (the not-so-graphic ones at least).
"I thought he was a madman after I left the lab. A real nutter. But somehow I found myself at 221b the next day."
"Suddenly Sherlock grabbed me and spun me around trying to 'maximize my visual memory' but really, I think, he just wanted an excuse to touch me. There was lots of under-the-radar flirting in the early days."
I tried to avoid the cases about Moriarty, but in those first years everything had to do with Moriarty. "Moriarty had promised to burn Sherlock's heart out, though why that had to involve Irene Adler, I don't know. Sherlock's never told me if they met before."
And of course I avoided the Riechenbach Fall.
That would be too much. Even if he had come back from it eventually, it was still too close. Too near what was happening now as each pang of the second hand ticked by. Sherlock was falling away from me, getting lost deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of his mind. Surely he'd never been asleep this long before? We were getting older, too old. Our bodies were starting to betray us.
I blinked and a second had passed. I blinked again and an hour was gone. I blinked a third time and Alice was asleep in the chair besides me and it must have been almost the end of visiting hours. Something wet was on my face.
What if Sherlock just died? What if he became a vegetable, his soul sucked down, down far from his body? What if his expressive face of which I had mesmerized every minutest detail never moved again? Never showed any emotion of sorrow or anger or smugness or authority or happiness or love? What if his hands never grasped for mine to drag me away from his brother or let us run together on a case or to let me hand him his phone which was just in this stupid pocket? What if he never again proved to me, to the world, how fucking human he actually was?
What was I going to do?
I had Alice. I needed to keep it together for Alice.
But my face was just getting even wetter.
"Sherlock," I choked out. "Sherlock, please. Love, wake up. You have to wake up." I stumbled over to him, not caring anymore. I grabbed his limp hand and brought it to my lips. "My love, please. Don't do this to me. Don't do this to me, Sherlock." I kissed his knuckles, the coolness of his skin against my own hotness was reassuring. "I love you," I breathed. "Alice loves you. Please come back. Fuck your stupid promise." I put his hand all over my face, touching it to my burning forehead and cheeks. Please, dear God. Not like this. Don't take him like this. Not because of some stupid kid and his damn dog statue. Not now when we were about to begin something.
But death waits for no one. I should know that by now.
Sherlock was silent.
Fully crying now, I slipped into the sheets beside him, letting my legs lie over his and using my arms to press my side to him. I whispered. "Come back to me, Sherlock. I belong with you."
I fell asleep there, curled against the colder man.
Somebody must have pitied us because when I woke up the lights were dimmed for sleep. The first thing I could make out was Alice had also climbed into the bed to be on the other side of Sherlock.
"John..."
Let this be real. I started up in an instant and looked down to see Sherlock's smoky blue eyes gazing lazily at me under heavy lids and a weak smile on his lips.
Oh thank God.
"Hello John."
My heart was hammering like it wanted to bound out of my chest. "Oh my God, Sherlock." I sank down and buried my head in the space between his neck and shoulder and never wanted to move.
He chuckled and pressed a hand to the back of my head, carding his fingers through the hair. "How long was I out?"
"If it's still the third of April then seven days."
"The clock says 12:03am"
"Eightish days then." I felt my eyes tearing up in relief that he was alive, truly alive. He'd surfaced and come back to me. God...
"I'm sorry. Thanks for not giving up on me."
Suddenly I was all motion. I peppered his neck and the space behind his ear and his jaw and his cheek and his forehead and finally his mouth with my own. "I would never ever give up on you. But let's not do that again, okay Sherlock? Okay?" I could feel myself trembling.
His only response was to swish the hair out of my eyes. "Alice?"
"Right here," I chuckled, feeling giddy with relief. "She loves you too."
"Alice," Sherlock said gently, putting his hand on her head and nudging it. "Wake up."
She opened her eyes, used her arms to lift her upper half, and blinked about sleepily. Her eyes eventually found Sherlock's face and she grinned like a mad person.
"Daddy!"
