Chapter 9: The fifth identity
Mycroft Holmes is not a nice man. Polished, refined, influential, powerful –yes, but nice – no.
Mycroft knows that on most days, he doesn't really rank high as a good man. Sometimes he doesn't even rank as a proper human being. Most days it doesn't really bother him, either, this ridiculous social construct of "good men". The parameters defining the category are too vague, too pliable to bending and stretching. Too human. On most days, Mycroft Holmes has no interest in moulding himself into what average folk consider a good man, because on most days (all days) Mycroft has much more important tasks than winning congeniality contests, to which he must tend. He must choose wisely to which efforts he will devote time and energy.
However, as he turns his back to John Watson, walking away from the fruit of his labour that stands on the pavement in form of a very conflicted ex-army doctor, Mycroft feels, more than he is accustomed to feeling, the weight of his choice. For the first time in a long time, Mycroft is acutely aware of being not nice, because John Watson is possibly the only other person in the world who cares for Sherlock as much as Mycroft does. And Mycroft's just bullied him into an impossible position, making him face a horrible choice. Horrible, but necessary, because feeling love and actually loving someone are not the same thing, Mycroft knows. Well, perhaps semantically they are synonymous, but experience taught Mycroft that sometimes dictionaries aren't the most precise and truthful in telling of reality, because loving someone is an active process. It isn't the simple letting go. It isn't the passiveness of being washed over the feeling of love. It is an action and it's hard work, at times.
And it is always, above all else, a choice.
It isn't romantic, this idea. It isn't a rosy-tinted-glasses-compatible point of view. But if you ask Mycroft he'll tell you that it is a far worthier (he'll tell you even if you don't ask) one. As opposed to the involuntary emotion that comes as side-effect of chemical processes in the brain, a choice is a conscious decision that entails consequences and responsibility. It is the process of assessing risks and disadvantages, of considering all the worst aspects of a person and still deciding to willingly risk everything, deeming them worthy of any possible devastation that may come as result.
A meddler, a controlling busy-body. A pain in the neck and an intruder in lives of others. A protector. A brother.
He said once that Sherlock and he have more in common than meets the eye, but the truth is that there is one aspect in which they differ greatly. While both of them excel in their ability to institute mental faculties and logical thinking above emotion and impulses, there is an innate, intrinsic quality to Sherlock that makes him unlike Mycroft in a way that can be viewed either as a great advantage or a grievous, deadly impediment. Mycroft's always been a polished man, a calculated man, a controlling man – but also controlled. His greatest asset (in his opinion) has always been self-control and ability to take a step back from the situation, running all viable responses to a stimulus in a fraction time that it takes for synapses to light up and choosing the most opportune one. Sherlock on the other hand...Sherlock's always strived to imitate this, but never really reaching the same level. It wasn't lack of mental acuity that rendered him unable to reach Mycroftian levels of detachment, but lack of moderation. Mycroft's always been better at detecting those almost imperceptible differences between neighbouring shades of gray that populate the spectrum between black and white. Sherlock, while being able to note those differences in behaviours of others, was tragically unable to do the same in his own. Volatile, Sherlock always swung between completely ignoring of his feelings (thus the fake sociopath tag he created as a cover) and utter surrender to his inner currents that thrashed him against sharp rocks. Volatile and so very, irreparably, dangerously, amazingly human. All red blood and pumping heart and thin skin too flimsy to keep it all in. Despite Mycroft's repeated warnings, Sherlock's never learnt how to find the golden middle. Like Icarus, he is always either too close to the Sun or too low down, sea foam on tips of waves nipping at his wings.
If Mycroft is a planet long-formed, stable and set it its ways, high-functioning with intricate workings of atmospheres, stratospheres and layers upon layers of crusts, cool and seemingly static, then Sherlock is a young planet in formation, with a molten, bleeding core still inadequately protected by layers of rock and a gravity much beyond that of Mycroft, which sends people hurtling towards Sherlock like space debris, and Sherlock absorbs the few he finds worthy – absorbs them so that they become an integral part of him. Only, instead of contributing to the formation of his hard crust, these people seem to make Sherlock softer and softer - vulnerable. Curiously enough, they are both his potential doom and (Mycroft sees this now) his greatest protection.
Which is why, in this particular case, it was Mycroft who made the mistake of misjudging John. Because John is, at his core, much like Sherlock and very unlike Mycroft, a creature of impulse rather than prolonged contemplation, when it comes to things dearest to him.
Mycroft understands this now, because he can see plainly that caring, while dangerous when felt towards a person as mortal as any human being, can be a shield when received – if it is shown in a proper way. Being cared for is risky business – it can kill you or it can save your life. Letting yourself be cared for is really just a shot in the dark – William Tell's apple shot. Perhaps it is too harsh to say that there are wrong ways to care. But there certainly are wrong ways to show it, and Mycroft can't afford that. Not when it comes to Sherlock.
Mycroft Holmes is not a nice man. Most days, he isn't even a particularly decent one. Most days, he doesn't really care that he isn't. Popularity is a socially-dependent, varying construct and as such trivial. He's a hard-crusted planet, all dry mud and layers of impenetrableness. Unlike Sherlock, he's Daedalus, flying at perfect equidistance between two perils. And yet, every now and then, his wings threaten to give out and leave him plummeting, because there's a kink in Mycroft's perfect trajectory. A crooked feather. A crack in the layers around the molten core. Because if being cared for by someone is William Tell's archery practice, then caring for someone is Russian roulette.
So, no – Mycroft Holmes is not a nice man. But niceness is the price of a gun with a single bullet, of choosing to pick it up round after round, day after day. Something's got to give...something's always got to give, and Mycroft knows one thing if he knows anything – if the choice is between his humanity and his brother, humanity will draw the shorter straw, every time.
Funny enough, it's the biggest paradox of his life, that sacrificing his humanity should be the thing which makes him so irreparably, dangerously, amazingly human.
That's Mycroft's choice. One that he's been making for over thirty-seven years.
John walks into the flat, walks hand-in-hand with his hard-won decision, and sees Sherlock where he stands by the window, framed by the last fingers of Sun clutching to the windows and the note stand that stands like a blackened skeleton in the dying glow.
Sherlock eyes skitter across the room and stop on John, searching for an answer to an unvoiced question. John notes Sherlock's worried eyes and the defeated line of his shoulders. There's the desperation, poorly hidden, and the resignation, carved deeply into lines of flesh, and John can't. Resolution wavering, he can't go through with his choice. But he can't back out of it either. Most of all, he can't let Sherlock deduce it off him. Not like this. He needs...a distraction, a deception, muddying of waters, needs Sherlock otherwise occupied. Most of all, he needs time. He needs more time – more time to choose and more time with Sherlock, because it might be all he's got if he lets Sherlock waltz off into danger all by himself and he wants it to last. (He needs eternity, but he's keeping his expectations realistic.) The thought that whatever stretch of time he may manage to steal now may be the last he'll ever have.
John knows he's probably overreacting, knows that Mycroft would never let Sherlock just stumble into mortal peril without ensuring maximum security measures were in place (although even Mycroft is fallible that way and the threat to Sherlock's life is a rather real one). The true danger lies in the fact that John knows his choice will irreversibly alter this thing they have, throw them off balance and out of their mutual orbits that circle each other. It will be perceived as revenge or betrayal, however deserved, and it will be just another whiplash on a bloody back of the past that is also the present, adding and adding to the wounds and scars and petty grudges and they will never be the same.
They will turn into apologies and guilt, fall into silence slowly and irrevocably, until they become strangers to each other, more so even than they were the day they first met. So, John isn't just risking Sherlock's life. He is risking more – even more than both of their lives separately. He is risking the life they have together – a life that is more than just two of their lives added together, a whole that is more than a sum of its parts.
It's like bright light to eyes long kept in darkness, this sudden clarity that John experiences. Distilled, his thoughts are like 98% alcohol, burning John's brain into sterility as if it were an open wound. The surge envelopes him like a cocoon, all emotion that accumulated in the past few hours (days, weeks, months...years) rising in an eddying chaos like the sediment off the bottom of the ocean being disturbed by a current. Anger, loyalty, resentment, worry, fear, love – an amalgam of mud and seashells, skeletons of creatures from twilight depths and strands of seaweed whirls inside John Watson and he has to move in order to ease the pain of so much commotion taking place in his still-standing body.
The whole process of contemplation doesn't take more than a few seconds, although to John it feels like an eternity squeezed into the relativity of time of a freeze-frame. The flat smells like dirty dishes and clean linen and warm dust. The floorboards squeak as the wood expands in the slow-creeping warmth of oncoming spring. The light is fast fading, shadows infiltrating the space like Chinese circus acrobats. And John must move, although whether to prevent Sherlock from making deductions or to prevent himself from going mad, he can't tell. Probably both. Probably both and several other reasons, too.
With the cooling air brushing against his skin like hands trying to pry him away from his destination, John moves towards Sherlock, crossing the room in five steps, until he is crowding the detective against the wall, just like that time when they came back to Baker Street ('God, was that really just yesterday?'). Only this time there isn't that damn absence of spirit in Sherlock's eyes – eyes that somehow manage to be both alight and darkening at the same time. Roles reverse and this time John gets to read Sherlock. In Sherlock's impossible eyes, John reads a flurry of things – guilt, resignation, but also careful hope, relief, desire...love – and it's too much. Sight simply seems like a redundant sense at that moment, more an ache than a channel of gaining input, so John shuts his eyes as he pushes on to kiss Sherlock. And because it isn't enough that Sherlock's eyes are a canvas of some artist's twisted catharsis that makes John seek voluntary blindness, when John's mouth covers Sherlock's, a sound so raw rips from Sherlock's mouth that John wishes he was deaf as well. It is a moan and a sob and a shout and a whisper and a word in a language John forgot but understands all the same. It's despair and a plea and a wish and a benediction. The rumble of it shakes through Sherlock like strong wind through empty rooms, howling its eerie aria.
And then there are hands sneaking under John's clothes and foreign breath stealing into John's mouth and the push of a body against John's, all edges, hard planes and inexplicable strength, but also softness in places which are unreachable to human hands but felt nonetheless. They start fumbling towards Sherlock's bedroom, legs twining together as neither shows any inclination to move away far enough to actually resemble two separate beings. Hands wander and touch, eliciting gasps and breathed-out curses. John keeps his eyes closed as much as the trip across the lounge and the hall allow him, avoiding looking into Sherlock's eyes and focusing instead on the sound and smell and sensations of skin-to-skin touches. The little he sees when he opens his eyes in the gloom that has descended are colours – the pink of flushes skin and the angry, rebellious red of a mark he's sucked onto Sherlock's neck, the blue of Sherlock's gown peaking through the door where it's been abandoned in favour of naked skin.
When they finally collapse onto the bed, pressing together so hard that John is sure they'll both be green and blue with bruises afterwards, John wonders if Sherlock didn't see right through him. He hopes he didn't, and his hopes are somewhat sustained by the unfocused quality of Sherlock's clouded gaze that speaks of his current indisposition towards deductions. Twining their fingers together above Sherlock's head, John tries to ignore how perfectly they move in time with each other, their rhythm somehow complementary to their rapid heartbeats.
It's heartbreaking and delectable and delirious and oh, god, yes. Such exquisite pain that matches them so very well. John kisses Sherlock's chapped lips in a way almost gluttonous, crashes over him like a wave while Sherlock burns beneath John like a pyre. As Sherlock writhes beneath him, sending shivers up and down John's spine with each slide of his body against John's, John can't understand how something can feel so right and so wrong at the same time.
It's all wrong because it's avoidance and an excuse and cowardice. It's buying of time. It's cheating future out of arriving on time. It's weakness of the human mind and the selfishness of the human heart, and John hates that he's using it so, when it should be more, should be everything.
But it's not everything it should be – it's...something.
It's all wrong but oh, it's right, too. Right like gravity that holds together planets. It's just chemistry and biology and physical processes, so it's simple. Right? It's a right wrong choice. It's wrong and it's right, too, because it's love.
It's not everything it should be – it's...something (avoidance of conversation? Deception? Muddying the waters? Buying time?)
Looking at Sherlock face, his tightly shut eyes and lips parted to allow escape of air in moans and breaths like dying winds, John comes to terms with the fact that, deep down, this was never about reconsidering choices. It was about something else, about claiming time to do something else. The same something that makes this all wrong.
Between the slide of lips against the juncture of jaw and neck and the caress of hand on the juncture of leg and hip – tracing of invisible seams that bind parts into a linked whole - just as Sherlock's wide eyes grow impossibly wider with pleasure, a realisation washes over John like a wave - it's all wrong, because it's not everything it should be (avoidance of conversation? Deception? Muddying the waters? Buying time?)...
...It's wrong because it's a goodbye. John is saying goodbye the only way he thinks he can manage – by not saying it at all.
It's not everything – not yet. There's one more thing it must become.
In the moments before his vision blurs with the overpowering burst of his nervous system going into overload, John gives in to the knowledge of what must happen next.
As the molten core somewhere in the inexistent place within him explodes to the very edges of him, all bright orange and red sparks behind his eye lids, John goes from feeling love to loving Sherlock.
It's still wrong because it's still a goodbye. Only now, it's also right.
(Avoidance of conversation? Deception? Muddying the waters? Buying time? Goodbye)
It is right, because it's a choice.
It's John Watson choosing to love Sherlock Holmes.
They burn and drown and as John's mind finally gives up for those few seconds of blissful oblivion, they finally turn to ash. Petite mort seems more appropriate a term than ever, just then.
Afterwards, Sherlock fights hard to stay awake, but exhaustion gets the better of him and he drifts off. Conveniently for John, Sherlock sleeps like the dead, so when John extricates himself from the warm tangle of limbs (oh, and how that feels wrong, less like untangling and more like unravelling – disintegration of so much, of all they've achieved). Dragging himself up the stairs to his room, he dresses in a fresh outfit, pulls his overnight bag that's always packed and ready for emergencies from under the bed and looks around, trying to decide what to take with him. With no time to pack properly and knowing that the longer he stays in the flat the more likely it is that his willpower will completely dissipate, John decides on three items that will be clue enough for Sherlock to be able to deduce what's happened (because there will be no note, John knows – pen and paper and words might just break him if he even tried using them).
He can't stay. He can't Sherlock, can't tell him the words he doesn't mean anyway. Partly because Sherlock would probably read it right off his face or the slant of his hair over his left ear or something. He will read it and try to convince John that Mycroft is wrong, that the best possible thing John can do is come along. And John knows he will yield. Mostly, John is fleeing from this (John, Captain Watson – a man that didn't flee from the line of fire) because he doesn't trust himself enough to look into Sherlock's face and stay strong enough to choose him in a way as selfless as the occasion demands.
He only plans to stay away long enough for Sherlock to leave, believing John has chosen not to go with him because he is still resentful over the whole Mary conundrum. After that, the flat will be empty anyway, empty and waiting for someone to come back, so there's no need for John to pack heavy. Just enough to make the message clear (no matter how false it may be). Deciding to go to Mary's old flat (he gave back his key, but still knows where she keeps the spare), knowing that it's empty. He considers the probability that it wasn't even her real flat, and is now unavailable, but decides to just take things in stride and cross bridges when he reaches them. Planning too far ahead seems absurd, since any plan John makes, the Universe seems rather intent on ignoring or making a complete spectacle out of. He scan feel time smoothing down his skin like sand, as it runs, runs, runs, and he knows he must move – move before it buries him alive. In the end, the choice of objects is simple. He takes with him aspects of his life – things he's been for a while as well as things he's become through association with Sherlock.
His gun (soldier), his medical bag (doctor), his laptop (blogger) and his tea mug (flatmate). There is one aspect of himself that he can't take with him, one facet he finds to be the truest of all. There is no object to represent it – there is just the knowledge of it, knowledge stored in two men. So, John takes four things and leaves one.
Making his way out of the kitchen he risks a last trip to Sherlock's bedroom. Sherlock is but a shape tangled in sheets. Soldier, doctor, blogger, flatmate – important, but not essential. Gun, bag, laptop, mug – all palpable, transportable. All utterly useless, verging on banal and meaningless. Reaching for Sherlock and dropping what is more a whisper than a kiss to his forehead, John takes his four things and leaves the kiss to Sherlock.
Along with it, he leaves the fifth identity – the only one that seems to matter. The one he can't take.
Gun – soldier, medical bag – doctor, laptop – blogger, tea mug – flatmate.
Kiss – Just John.
Three hours later, Sherlock Holmes awakes to an empty flat. He searches for John, but finds only empty spaces. Four at first, and then, additionally, five.
One - on the desk, where John's laptop should be. Two – in the left-most cupboard ('John is left-handed, practicality dictated the left-most cupboard'), where John's tea mug should be. Three – beneath the sink in the kitchen, where John's medical bag should be. Four – in top drawer of John's nightstand, where John's gun should be.
Five – in Sherlock's bed, now just a cold nest of crusted sheets, where John should be.
(He doesn't find the kiss – it falls off his forehead and gets absorbed by the criss-cross of fabric fibres in his bed clothes.)
Sherlock Holmes is a genius, by all accounts. The price of genius is the diminished ability of fooling oneself into comfortable (comforting) denial. So if chain of logic is followed, conclusion follows that Sherlock gets but mere moments of blessed doubt before certainty comes crashing down on him like a collapsed glass ceiling. He is stranded beneath shards of a collapsed sky, his own mistakes and the factuality of John's absence. Of John's choice.
Five hours later, Sherlock Holmes is on a plane headed for Switzerland, the British soil rapidly vanishing underneath him.
Six hours later, in an empty house, sitting on a dusty sofa, John Watson realises his mistake.
