Under the Bridge
The rain. It was pummeling. A row between the gods. John held his breath, shivering under the tarp. He had nailed it to the edge of the bridge three times already and every time it was peeled away unceremoniously.
Sherlock continued working, unphased. This amazed John. They'd been living on the streets for over a week now. Sherlock was as well-adjusted as if they were living in a somewhere Hilton. He moved through the steaming rain that was washing all his casework drawn in chalk down from the bridge's concrete walls. He had covered the chalk by stuffing it in plastic bottles.
All at once the rain stopped. Sherlock peered up through ink-splatter wet hair. The sun was hiding like a bride behind that pale cloud. Yet hope came with that white rush of light. They may well dry out before the night.
"How's that for a tramp's wash, John?" Sherlock turned to smile at John. He startled, feeling like the wind was knocked out of him.
"My name...You used...My name?" John smiled. Did this mean?
"I am detoxing again. It's unfortunate...I am completely out of the serum. Now I am cut off from what I had. It went up in the flames…"Sherlock smiled sheepishly at John. John got up, casting off the newspapers he'd clothed himself in to retain some sense of dryness. He smiled, and then he laughed softly.
"You...So, you remember me now? As in, you remember everything?" John tilted his head. Sherlock's face was drained of the scarce color it had before. He nodded.
"I...ah...I remember that you are my first and truly greatest friend. Honestly, you are my...um...you were my only friend." Sherlock shuddered and looked back at the wall that was dripping with the chalky smear that had been his case notes. He sagged visibly, bone-weary from this intensive puzzle and a life spent on the street.
"I don't see how you can continue as my friend...I have wronged you greatly. Using the drug from the Baskerville case, I made you believe I had died before your eyes. Tricking you like that, leaving you behind...Leading you like a lamb to slaughter now, when I swore on pain of death to keep you safe from me." Sherlock turned to face John, face pinched with horror. John had shoved his fist to his heart, dumbstruck by this analogy of a sacrificial death.
"Safe...from you? Do you...You may not remember everything clearly? No, that's...That's mad, what you just said. That's not how it works." John stumbled closer and seized Sherlock by the forearms to keep him from turning away again.
"This case...You've been using that godawful stuff the entire time. This isn't the first you've been on the streets since you've been back, you know." John swallowed a ball in his throat at the guilt-ridden expression on Sherlock's face. Now John had come down wonderfully just like him. They were out here in the muddy rabble together.
"You've been tortured...Recently. I was there. You don't know that? I was there and I'm still here…I've seen your tapes. Handed over some of them to Mycroft even." John cleared his throat. Sherlock grinned, drawn again into the game that was his life's raw passion.
"Those tapes were all decoys, a rabbit trail for Myc to lead the police force down. I wanted them to have a mock case to go after, a plethora of dead hull drug dens of Moriarty's former network to expose. The real case...It's all in here. I will live and die with it. I mean to be the only casualty." Sherlock swallowed as he laid a shaking finger on his temple. John felt the breath rushing out of him.
"Why does anybody have to die?" John was getting emotional. Sherlock took him by either side of his face. John was stunned now. The intense focus in Sherlock's eyes. The familiar way he spun him in a circle as he demanded that he think. He spouted off an incessant and unintelligible string of rapid deduction. John didn't hear a word of what he was saying now. This was a carbon copy from memory. All of this. This action. This was the first time that he was reunited with Sherlock as his living friend. Not his ghost. Not the stranger…
"I'm sorry. I'm not following. All of this. Your death and life and sacrifice, it's a bit too bloody much for me!" John shoved Sherlock off of him and stared at him, teeth barred in terrible pain. Sherlock's sadness increased by powers of 100. He opened his mouth as if to keep speaking, but then he closed it again. Thought better of his deductions. Thought to appeal to John directly.
"I never had anyone to lose prior to...To meeting you." Sherlock weighed his speech carefully. How he struggled with openness. John nodded, chewing his lips.
"I didn't either. Yet I did lose you. Alright? I can't...I understand what you've been doing. All of it to keep me from ever having to know what their labs are like… I can't say-" John, an Army Doctor, a man who had lived through a war and kept a straight face the entire while was reduced to tears. Tears at the thought of what had been done to Sherlock to keep him off Moriarty's rack. Sherlock looked as if he'd been electrocuted. John nodded, holding up a hand.
"Damn it! You've turned my bloody head into a fountain, you have. Sherlock, I know why you did...What you did. But I can't...You can't ask me to let you. Now that I know. You can't expect...It doesn't work that way!" John's voice was breaking. Sherlock shook his head, mouth opening and closing in bewilderment.
"How do you not see it, John? You are far cleverer than you give yourself credit. I am not a man that anyone will miss. My family barely knew me when I was with them. Only the idea of me as younger, troublesome kin. I have no one else. Truly, no one that could be bothered with my second passing...You on the other hand. You are a man of great stature. Someone with so much luminosity that you could attract an entire village of friend and colleagues if circumstances would permit. Someone I've looked up to until my eyes were rolling for it." Sherlock let out an exhausted huff. John was sputtering.
"What are you talking about? You looking up to me?! You've had me looking up all the way to St. Bart's roof to you!" John dabbed furiously at his tears. Sherlock was getting visibly upset now too, struggling to breathe. That made this infinitely worse.
"John...Honestly. I know me. I had forgotten but I remember it now. O, wretched man that I am, how on earth? Someone like you. It's unbelievable. Certainly not something I'd have solved toward. But here you are. And, by God, it was my job at that point. Heaven granting me an Eternity of mercies by the chance to make your acquaintance. I couldn't just piss it all away, could I? My God! Perish the bloody thought of that!" Sherlock was shaking now, hands folded in front of him, prayerfully.
"I had a duty to you. The price of admission to a life as miraculous as yours...If it was blood, paying it was the only way to guarantee it was valued well enough. That I respected it for what it was." Sherlock traced his fingers over his throat. It was getting hot now that the sun burned above them, as the cloud opened for a brief instant.
"Dear God, Sherlock…"John bowed his head. Sherlock caught him as they both dizzily stumbled again to the wall of the bridge.
An hour or so went by before either one could speak again.
"You know, I never really slept rough before...It's not all bad." John kicked at a piece of chalk Sherlock had dropped. Sherlock cleared his throat.
"Someday you will have a life again." Sherlock smiled. He straightened himself to sitting upright and turned to face his friend. John eased himself up more, squared his jaw.
"Yes. With you. You will be there too, damn it. Don't try to get out of it. I won't let you die for me again, Sherlock. Two years' worth of that is quite enough." John gripped Sherlock's shoulder and gave him a shake. Sherlock smiled, putting aside the argument.
"Well, I suppose I'll have to fill you in a bit if you're going to be staying around." Sherlock shuttered. He hopped to his feet and held a hand out for John.
"I know somewhere that we can dry out and I can diagram this for you. Also, if it doesn't bother you, they have fresh food in their bins. It's almost as nice as ordering it." Sherlock's lopsided grin would have been comical on another day. John allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.
"Better fresh food from a rubbish bin with a dear friend, than a gourmet restaurant alone." John chuckled. Sherlock tilted his head.
"Oh, sentiment? Right. Okay. If you say so. Still, rubbish is rubbish, John. Some smells and tastes a bit nicer, though. See for yourself...Come on." Sherlock nodded over his shoulder, darting around the corner in his sudden eagerness.
"And we're off. You're back, finally. The game is afoot again." John grinned as he whispered this acknowledgment to himself. His stomach growled, hunger for the chase at the heels of his best and brightest man exceeding the hunger and pain of this failing life.