Chapter: 9/14
Chapter Warnings: Sex. Discussion of miscarriage. General asshole!Sherlock, but then again, when is that not a warning?
Additional Notes: Yesterday was this fic's One Month Anniversary! Thanks to all who have been keeping up with this so faithfully. As I've probably waxed poetic on many, many times before, the response to this has been truly amazing and inspiring, and I can't thank each and every one of you enough who have reviewed/favorited/alerted/etc. Have a cream tea on me :)
Thanks To: ACD, for his brilliant creation (sorry for what the boys get up to, sir) and Moftiss, for their brilliant rendition, and for giving us a great second series. I don't want to think about this being the last chapter posted of this before all of S2 is over /sob. And, as always, KT, for her equal brilliance.
(Wednesday, January 25th; Week 19 continued)
The first time Sherlock had met Harry, she'd dumped one of his own experiments over his head.
In an effort to make John as uncomfortable as possible, she had simply stopped by one evening; no warning at all. An evening during which they had been otherwise… engaged.
"Sherlock - Sher… I think there's someone at the door," he'd moaned, tugging half-heartedly at the strands of sweaty, inky hair slipping between his fingers. His back arched off the bed, part trembling indecision and part desperate desire to come right then, right now.
Sherlock's fingers, preoccupied with gripping his hips to keep him steady, dug in sharply at the words. They clawed their way down John's thighs, the trailing red grooves evidence of his displeasure as he worked more fiercely to keep him distracted. John practically howled as Sherlock's tongue probed his slit, the rest of his mouth hollowing around the head of his dripping cock.
"Boys! There's someone here to see you!" came Mrs. Hudson's voice from below.
A second followed it. "Johnny? You up there?"
"Shit," John panted, and Sherlock growled in warning as his lover's breath hitched in something that was not arousal. You stop breathing only for me, he thought, crawling up his slicked body and savaging his lips, invading his mouth with his hot, searching tongue as John gasped and squeezed down around it, dragging his teeth across the velvet surface before his hands came up in sudden remembrance and pushed on Sherlock's chest. At first, he resisted, digging his hips firmly into John's with a twist to elicit a delicious groan, but it wasn't long before their grappling turned into Sherlock tumbling down onto the floor. He righted himself and sent a livid glare in John's direction, cock jutting angry and red from his body as his face, also annoyed and flushed, stared up at the man on the bed.
"Why have you stopped?" he asked, in the most agonizing display of patience he'd ever been asked to put on. John, however, had the audacity to ignore it, frantically tucking his rejected penis back into his trousers and doing his best to clear the sweat from his face.
"Because that's my sister out there, and I am not going to let her listen to you fuck me," he hissed, digging around on the floor for his discarded shirt. Sherlock, spying it an arm's length away, grabbed it from the ground and didn't let go, even as John approached with a menacing narrowing of his eyes. "Sherlock," he warned.
He gritted his teeth, but threw it at John's face anyway. Hard. "Why don't you just let her join in?" he said sarcastically, standing up and gathering his own strewn items of clothing and cleaning himself up as best he could under the circumstances.
"She's a lesbian, if you've forgotten. And sort of my sister."
"Yes, well she's interrupting as it is, so might as well," he answered, and stepped to the door.
The door which was abruptly thrown open by a panting Harriet Watson, who took two steps inside before pouring a mixture of questionable substances all over his head.
"Oh, no you don't, you pervert!" she cried, kicking him in the shins so hard that he didn't remember falling to the ground, only that it felt very nice and soft against his cheek.
"Harriet," John said, aghast, kiss-red lips standing out starkly against a face that had gone very, very pale. "What are you doing?"
"Well, I heard some, ah, noises, and…well, isn't he…debauching you?" she whispered, huffing from exertion, the bowl dangling from her trembling hands.
"Yes, that's exactly what I was doing before I was ever so rudely interrupted," Sherlock bit back, not daring to open his eyes. He still couldn't recall what, exactly, had been in the bowl, the contents of which were now dripping down his face in alarming quantities.
"No," John cut in quickly, "no, no; Harry, this was entirely consensual."
"Oh." Her brow furrowed. "But you're not gay."
John put his face in his hand. Sherlock, terrified to do the same, curtly requested a towel. Harry, giggling in a way that was not as nearly as nervous as it should be and really sounded more like the hyena's amused cackle, answered his plea. The visit that followed was cut short, as Sherlock's skin began to turn a questionable purple color about ten minutes into a conversation about boundaries and the limitations of labels on sexuality and no, Harry - wait, what the fuck do you mean, 'you knew all along?'
Well. There were some small blessings, at least.
All things considered, it's no wonder that they're now sitting in terse silence on opposite ends of the table. Sherlock does not offer her tea. He is not sure whether not she will pour it over his head as well. As he is finding it difficult to discern the reason for her sudden appearance, he decides it is better to not give her any ammunition whatsoever.
"No experiments, I see," she quips at length, pointed gaze resting on the empty stretch of kitchen table between them.
He scowls back to her end. "Potential fumes would be bad for the offspring."
"'The offspring', listen to you," she practically crows, leaning back in her seat as her fingers clench and unclench on the kitchen table in search of something that isn't there. "Bet John was the one that got in the way of your precious chemistry. He does like to worry."
"Sometimes, he's the only one that does," Sherlock replies, voice low. But the deep, threatening rumble only earns him another teasing grin. She leans forward over the table, her eyes impossibly large as the overhead light hits her face. "How are you finding it?"
"Finding what?" he snaps. He has no time for her mind games; for her at all, really. He has held John countless times as he came apart under the heavy weight of thoughts concerning his ungrateful, unnecessary sister and the troubles she drowned herself in every night and every day, so he finds it a little more than difficult than usual to sit placidly on his end of the table and care at all about her petty wants and selfish desires.
"Fatherhood," she says with a careless gesture of her shoulders. "Pregnancy. Gotta be hard for you. All those… limitations. All those feelings."
He bares his teeth in a sickeningly sweet grin that looks more like a wolfish grimace. "You'd know." He is determined not to think about the face John would give him in response to that comment. Harry's face, however, remains startlingly impassive, and something in him boils all the more for it. "Do you care at all?" His eyes dart over her, his inspection probing deep into the corners of her mind; all the places people think they can hide from him. But no one, no one ever can, and no one ever will.
Well, except John. But John was always the exception.
"Does it hurt you to know that you've given up everything for the bottle?" he whispers, standing slowly from his chair and looming over the table. His hands curl around its edges as he presses into her space. "How does it make you feel to know you lost it all because of that deep, addictive desire? The need to have it spilling down your throat and rotting inside you like acid? How does it feel, Harriet," he whispers, and he knows it's cruel, also knows he doesn't care, because John's face and his red-rimmed eyes and his quaking shoulders are all flashing in front of his mind, again and again and again, images that he won't ever forget, "to know everything you could have been, and everything you'll never be, all for your twisted obsession?"
She is staring at him coldly. The lazy, bleak look of before has been replaced by a calculating stare that belies her own inebriation, and he wonders briefly if sometimes she only is as drunk as she feels; if maybe she's so far gone by now that one more never matters and she can just fake it well enough. But her voice, sharp as the edge of a knife, cuts into his thoughts. "Yeah, it does. Like hell. And you know what?" She stands, too, and mirrors his posture. He's gazing right back into her blue eyes, which should be foggier but now seem to pierce him straight to the core in a way only one person's eyes had ever done before. "I did lose everything, and now I'm here prepared to lose it all again." She's trembling now, and at first he thinks fear, but he doesn't smell it - now he can taste it on the air, metallic and sharp. Anger. "I came here to ask for help, because maybe, maybe - maybe I do need it," she admits, biting her lip. "Maybe I'm ready to do something about it, because I'm tired of trying to live with who I'm not when I know all I want to be." Her glare turns dark again. "But oh, great, I come here and get John's wonder boy," she says, snide voice loud in the stillness of the quiet kitchen. "Perfect Sherlock, brilliant Sherlock, who's ever so good at mucking things up in the relationship department. You're not so flawless either, sunshine." She laughs, low and cruel. "Don't think I've forgotten the night he showed up on my doorstep because you'd -"
"Don't -" he interrupts, eyes slamming shut on the memory, and he can feel her smirk.
"It grew to be too much for me. Will it grow to be too much for you?"
"We're not the same person."
"Oh yeah, but we're not very different, either. Both of us, addicts in our own right. Both of us, and the first thing we do is turn that against each other." Her whole posture is like the rind of a lemon - bitter, curling, a sickly yellow, and with a sudden venom she marches away from the table, headed towards the open door. "Sometimes John is blinded by his own addictions. Because he has them too, you know. And I think you're one of them. You might just be the addiction that kills him, just like ours will kill us in the end."
"Wrong," he answers, head snapping up. His eyes lock with hers as she turns back to face him. "Because in all my years of addiction, it never felt this right. And I know what it's like to be clean." Clean, cleansed, whole.
"Maybe I just want to know that, too," she says, and though her chin juts from her body and her eyes are hard, she can't disguise the quaver at the end of her words.
Sherlock doesn't shift, but his quick inhales bespeaks his disbelief. "You had… you had a child inside of you and you didn't even care. How could you possibly care now?"
He hopes Harry realizes that this is one question not intended to cut. As he stares at this woman - beautiful (she shares John's genes, how could she not be?), cunning, and so fallen by the wayside - he cannot understand how anyone could feel this and want to give it up. Or worse, how they could just not care one way or another. Because, as Sherlock is learning, there is nothing more important than this.
She does seem to sense it; the desperation with which he pitches his question and the lurking uncertainty in those stone grey eyes. Senses it, and sags against the doorway in response, all the fight draining from her. In seconds, the tension in the room had fizzled, a palpable exhaustion taking its place and settling over their ragged forms. "But I did care. I did. God, how could you even say -" her voice cracks, and she swallows, and meets his gaze. It is broken; that is the only word, and not for the first time that night he holds back a shiver.
"But at the same time, I didn't even… I just didn't realize, then." She laughs, but it is not a sound one usually associates with laughter - cold, dead, it crawls up from her throat like the cry of a wounded animal. "It was all foggy-like; the days just sort of passing and happening with me stuck in the middle. There I was, one day, with Clara and a baby in my tummy and a house and a real smile. A real smile, christ, I can't even remember what that feels like. Because then there I was again, with no house, no wife and no…no baby." Her voice slips on the end of the word, as if the razor's edge she's held herself on for so long is beginning to tilt. But, relentlessly, she moves on, almost talking to herself. "And none of that really sank in, not really. Not until Johnny came home and started gushing about all the things that I don't have. Not anymore. And he started talking about it, and for the first time - it hurt. Really, really fucking hurt, the kind of hurt I can't even - can't even hide away in a flask."
No, he thinks. He doesn't imagine the loss of anything so great as a life would weigh easily on anyone's conscience, whether or not they were actually guilty of anything at all. Can't imagine it now, and the involuntary movement of his hands towards his stomach - to soothe, to protect, to hide away - says it all. His expression remains unreadable as he waits for her to continue, but it appears she has nothing left to say, and in response, he can only drop his head.
"You're right, Harry. We've both done some terrible things. Said some horrid ones. But we also both have John." He steps closer, maneuvering around the kitchen table to stand tall and proud in front of her, daring that equally proud and strong woman to meet his gaze. "If you're willing to do this, for all you've lost, then do it, fine. But you have to be willing to go all the way for John, because I'm not going to stand idly by and watch you hurt him with your failures anymore. This is it, Harriet." Though he's beginning to suspect she's far from the only one with failures.
He extends one long, pale hand.
She looks up into his face, and he recognizes the expression more as one he'd see on his own face than as one he's ever seen on John. Searching, desperate, grasping at threads and unraveling them in time - because sometimes there are just too many, and it's hard to know which to choose. Which one, like in the old children's story, you can pick up and follow out of the dark forest to home. For Sherlock, it was a limping, invalidated army doctor with a cane and an unbearably ordinary accent and an unbearably ordinary past and a self that was so unexpectedly, wonderfully extraordinary.
For Harriet Watson, it comes in the unlikely form of a man who grasps her hand and shakes it firmly, then leads her into the living room, trembling in relief and anticipation alike, to wait for John to come home. John, because he's saved someone once - more than once - and Sherlock knows he can do it again.
But the minutes tick by, with the quiet spaces between their breaths lengthening into an uneasy stillness. He calculates the average time it would take someone to make a trip to the shop and come home; finds that John has been gone abnormally long. Waits some more, just in case something came up. Perhaps he went to the pub. But he would have told Sherlock. Texted him, at least. But the phone he pulls from his jacket remains stubbornly silent, its dark screen and empty inbox giving him nothing, even when he sends a text demanding that he come home immediately.
He calls. There is no answer.
Leaves a message. Mentions Harry, who would have in any normal circumstance merited a dash home.
The door remains closed, and Harry's eyebrows continue to fall in anxiety. Sherlock's own face betrays nothing, but he is becoming more and more aware that something is amiss. He quells any sort of emotional response, knowing it would do no good, and turns to her with a deep breath, standing from his chair.
"He does occasionally forget to charge his phone," he reasons. "Come. Set up in the extra room. We'll all…confer in the morning."
Strangely, the morgue has all but fled his mind, but now it dawns on him that perhaps John went in search of him there. He did mention takeout before…
"There are sheets in the cupboard," he says, and with an abrupt turn heads for the door.
"Hey! Where are you going?" she shouts, scrambling up from the couch and jogging down the stairs after him.
"Mortuary."
"Why?"
He shoots her a look, gloved hands already reaching for the doorknob. Why is no one else ever able to just keep up? "Might find John there." He says it with finality, but it seems she does not find this to be the end of the conversation, for she whisks under his arm and plants herself firmly against the door. He peers down at her as if she is a mildly interesting spot found on the bottom of his shoe - or, at least, that's what he hopes he conveys. She, however, seems entirely unphased, and stares back with a haughty set to her jaw.
"I'm coming with you," she declares.
He blinks. "What purpose, exactly, would that serve?"
"Me, helping you find John. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, yeah?"
"If he's there, I can assure you I will have no trouble spotting him myself."
She glowers up at him, in a look identical to one Sherlock could swear he has seen on John's face multiple times. Usually in the context of unidentified objects in the tub or mildly insulting comments. "Fine, then. Me, not bored and cooped up in your flat." With that, she does not give him a chance to answer, merely turns to the door at her back and marches down into the street, hand already out and hollering at a cab.
His eyes narrow, assessing, and he takes measured steps down into the street. "You're… remarkably persistent," he comments, and the words are uncertain. She's pretty sure he only means it as a statement, if he knows what he meant by it at all, but she throws him a smile nonetheless, stepping towards the taxi that slows on the asphalt before them.
"From what I've heard, you need a Watson in your life. Allow me to fill in, in my brother's temporary absence."
He'd like to point out that there is really only room for the one Watson in his life, but given the parameters of their previous deal he holds his tongue. John may be the only Watson he needs, but this is what he has. It will do. For now. And if he's looking after her for John, then really, might as well, he thinks grudgingly. Could be interesting, too, he supposes - in light of the fact that this is his only experience with a female version of John, he could spend the time gleaning information on traits that could be passed to his child if it happens to be a female.
And even if it's only a game to distract himself from the fact that John is not answering his phone and John had promised to come straight home and John was not there and not anywhere, well then - might as well.
He hops into the cab, and they make for Bart's through the busy London streets.
The morgue is deserted.
The thumbs are in their box in the freezer, labeled clearly in Molly's neat handwriting. They are untouched, the surgical tape at the edges of the container still freshly sealed and uncurled at its edges. He slides it back in and shuts the doors, eyes drinking in the empty room, filtering it all through the great hard drive of his mind.
The white area does not possess any scent of the food John promised to get or the distinctly muddied, sweaty odor that he would have had, had he made the trip here at all.
The light switch that stiffens in place and become more difficult to toggle if it's been a while since someone has used it remains stuck the first time Sherlock puts his hand to it. No one had used the lights for a few hours, then.
Not even traces of dusty footprints, and the custodial staff weren't due on this end for another half hour at least.
The overwhelming evidence rules unanimously - John has not been here today. His mark does not rest on this room in the way it touches every place he goes. The marks of life, even, are absent, and the morgue remains a resting place for only those who have departed the world and no longer lay their own claim to the label of humanity.
"He's not here."
Harry, fiddling with a microscope at the counter behind him, snorts. "Well, I could've told you that." She makes a vague gesture at the entirety of the room. "So, is this where you work?"
He sweeps out of the room, a sigh at her answer. "I don't have time for inane questions."
"Oi!" she yelps, as the door nearly catches her in the face. She darts out after him, struggling to keep up with his long-legged strides. "Well I don't know then, do I? Johnny never tells me about what you do; in our short visits he doesn't shut up about you enough to tell me what it is, exactly, that you do."
"Consulting -"
"-Detective, only one in the world, yeah, yeah, I know that part. But the rest of it, the bodies and ick and all that. D'you ever cut people up? Ooh, d'you ever fire a gun?"
"Harry," he cuts in, and the word is terse as he turns around, curling over her. "John is missing." Oh, people are so tiresome when they're unable to keep up. And talkative. God, are the chatty ones tiresome. Useful, yes, but not right now. Not at all right now.
Her face drops. "What?"
"I'm not going to repeat myself." Doesn't think he can, even. Something cold twists in his chest.
"You - you sure he didn't just, I don't know, pop off for a drink?"
He brandishes his phone, marching off towards the glass-plated doors of the entrance, coat swirling in agitation around his knees. "No text. No call. No answer." For the first time, though his steps remain even, he has to swallow back an unsteady breath. "No reason why a trip to Tesco's should take so abnormally long."
For a blessedly long time, she is silent. And then, "Maybe we should go to the store before we jump to any conclusions?"
He throws her a tight smile, one that would be genuine if not for everything else warring on his face. "There's that empirical Watson streak."
John, like the doctor he was, waited for everything, all the evidence, before a diagnosis. Sherlock, confident in his assumptions - because he never guesses - often forged ahead more fearlessly. But as they head into the shop together, Sherlock is almost uncommonly glad to put off the final decision.
And yet, when they meet back up in the center, and Harry's hopeful eyes turn up to his, Sherlock is forced to acknowledge at last the inevitable. It strikes like a disease, unnoticed at first but then suddenly looming and terrifying, and as he reaches for his phone with hands that shake in a betrayal to his calm, blank face, he names it; diagnoses and defines it so it cannot hide no longer.
He presses the phone to his ear, only waits for the click before he begins speaking. "Mycroft. It's John. He's - he's gone."
Mycroft is already waiting for them in the living room when they ascend the stairs. Sherlock knows by now not to ask, and merely moves to stand in front of the chair he's sitting in. Sherlock's. He suspects he knows that John's things are now sacred territory. Deserving of respect. It is for this reason, he suspects, that he turns his back to it as he addresses his brother - not that the sight of its emptiness produces a similar feeling of loss at the base of his throat.
"Well?"
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"
"Please, you probably already have a whole file on her," he snaps, and why doesn't he understand that these trivialities were never important but are now even less than that, because John is not here and he is missing and -
"I don't have a whole file on him, though, whatever the hell that means," Harry jumps in, physically asserting herself in the conversation as she stretches around Sherlock for Mycroft's hand. "Harriet Watson, which apparently you know, which is sort of creepy. And you -?"
"Mycroft, Mycroft Holmes. Pleasure." He flashes a toothy grin.
She nods, realization setting in her features. "Ah. Holmes. Explains the creepy."
"Can we please turn to the matter at hand?" Sherlock growls, an impatient tick settling about him in the way his hands dash through his hair and come to stroke restlessly across his abdomen. "John is missing."
The crack in his speech at the end of the word - unable to be hidden, the broken slide of it shattering in the silence like glass - brings both of their eyes to him, twin gazes resting heavily on his shoulders in some inescapable way. He does not want their sympathy. He does not want their understanding. He wants to find John; John so that he can give all those things and make tea and sing in the shower and disrupt his thoughts and just be there, like he needs to be.
Only now is it sinking in that John is not here, and that he is not anywhere.
Sherlock swears to chain them together; knows it would be easy to swipe a pair of cuffs from Lestrade and how equally easy it would be to throw the key into the Thames, and let all chances of their ever being separated wash away with it. He has seen John in the hands of others too many times to let anything happen now, now of all times, especially when -
His fingers stop in their mad roving, and come to rest stiffly by his sides. Panicking, caring at all, would not help. He knows that; practices it in earnest every day with his work. But it's difficult not to do so when part of him is inexplicably linked to part of John. The part of John that cares, the part of John that is good - it's all in him, and maybe some of it sparks through his blood and boils up through his throat. Just that taste of it, harsh and heady on his tongue.
He swallows, clears his throat of the bitterness and lets it wash away from his mind as well. He meet Mycroft's cool gaze with his own, even and unabashed.
"I don't care what you have to do. Find him. Bring him back to me."
In his mind, he is already running over all the places John has been or could be. He is running through lists and files containing all those who know enough to seek out John in order to strike at him. He pages through those containing the names of people who would simply want John. He sees their hideouts in his mind; maps out all their strategies. Locked away in the caverns of thought, he constructs the story behind every version of the kidnapping of John that has ever happened. And he knows he could do it - would do it if it killed him, because if there is no John then there really is no point in anything, not anymore.
But that was before - before the planning and the preparation and the union; before the bump and the books and the appointments; before what was once the only sun in the center of his universe joined with the dawning of another.
And so he knows, before Mycroft says it, knows and agonizes over it, what he will be asked to do.
"You can't go looking yourself, of course."
His eyes close on a deep inhale. "I wasn't planning on it."
The answering silence is enough a description that Sherlock doesn't need to look to know Mycroft is sporting an incredulous face. His spluttering, a rare event that should be treasured, is not even enough to banish all that clouds his mind. He pushes on. "John, were he here, would not approve of my chasing kidnappers while carrying his child. Considering it is half his, I must take at least half of his opinions into his account. Thus, I acknowledge my… limitations." He grinds his teeth down on the words, hates every single syllable of them as they glide across his lips. Hates that he must choose; that now these warring forces - at once both so wonderful, so pure and miraculous - can together be enough to bring him, tied and bound, onto his knees. "I will give you everything I know," he continues quietly, eyes still firmly shut, "and you will do the legwork this time. And you will bring him home for me."
He waits from Mycroft to regain control of his albeit limited senses, and is rewarded with that creamy, sickly-smooth voice and its assurances.
"I will do my best."
That isn't enough. Sherlock's eyes snap open; bore into his brother's. "No. You will bring him back."
Mycroft is again rendered speechless, though he quickly disguises it, adjusting his vest and straightening in the chair, a slightly disgruntled look on his face. This does not appear to be the evening he imagined, and though Sherlock would normally take pleasure in disrupting that carefully planned façade, now he is only able to wait for a reply, refusing to drop his gaze.
"I - I will."
"Good." Sherlock finally releases him from the intense stare, lighting to the window and staring out into the dark night. "Why haven't you left yet?" he growls, but the sound lacks its usual vigor. It trails off in the end, lost.
Harry jolts him back from the new dark paths he's following out into the somber streets. "What should I do?" she pipes up from where she's sitting on the couch, hands held tightly around her middle. "He is… he's my brother after all." She sends a weak smile in his direction, but he does not turn to see it.
He slides a finger across the cold, clear glass, and meeting the eyes of the reflection on the other side of the window. They are just as cold, but not nearly as clear.
"Harriet, you should rest. Calm yourself. There's more than enough worrying in this household as it is," Mycroft answers in the absence of Sherlock's voice, but she throws him a deadly look.
"Hey, I'll worry if I want to! Don't tell me to calm down when my brother's out there, with God knows what happening to him. You can just shut up and go get him back, like he says, whoever you - Mycroft," she reminds herself, and then, more vigorously adds, "and besides, I was asking him."
For the first time that evening, Sherlock feels the thin, weak pull at the edge of his lips. He turns to face her.
"However you usually cope."
She stares back, expression stony. "I usually cope with the bottle."
"Aren't you going to turn to it now? Now that you're losing everything again?"
"Are you going to turn to the drugs?"
"I'm fighting for something now."
There's an imperious tilt to her chin, a wicked glint in her eye, when she fires back, "And so am I."
The universe, in all its strange complexities, might have taken away his John, but they've given him a Watson with that same spark.
Not the same, no. But enough.
Harry does, despite all her bravado, end up passing out in the spare room as the result of a fit of nervous agitation (once Sherlock's, now long used as storage and an area for the occasional guest) while Mycroft pulls out every scrap of information from Sherlock that is available for extraction.
When he at last makes to leave, his people no doubt already all over the case, he pauses at the door.
"You've grown up, brother."
It's as close as they'll ever come to declarations.
He knows he will not sleep tonight. It is the best he can do to deprive his mind of the chase for the sake of John and the being inside him, but he will deprive himself of sleep because he can do nothing else. Not when everything in his brain is spinning, spinning so horribly, and there is nothing to quell it. No warm arms to bury his face inside until he could squeeze out all the burning in that comfortable dark; no soft words to surge over the constant, voiceless murmurings of his thoughts.
He wanders like a wraith around the darkness of the flat, dressing robe trailing behind him in a ghostly blue train. Hates the imagery of the tragic Victorian heroine awaiting her lover's return; can picture nothing else except it. He always hated those stories, because what was the purpose of an ending intended only to be sad? What was the purpose of deliberate pain? As he returns anxiously to the window, time and time again, and peers out at the weary world below, he still sees no point in it.
How do people stomach this constantly? Inaction. Roaming. He can hardly stand it; can hardly breathe when he thinks of all he could be doing and all that he cannot, and how much - how horribly, awfully, terribly - they coincide.
There were days when he got like this, before. And on those days, the pressure of a needle in his arm was enough to take it all away. And there was even nicotine, when it wasn't too bad to handle. And cases for all the other times. And then John, suddenly his new drug of choice.
Take that away, and the tremors return, more violent than ever before.
He hugs his knees to his stomach on the floor, gasps desperately for air because he has to remind himself to breathe; that breathing is important even when it feels like all the important things are gone. Because there is still this, he reminds himself fiercely, dropping his head so that his nose just brushes against the globe of flesh. He inhales, squeezes his eyes tight tight tight, and it's almost the same, but not quite.
And it has to be enough, even this, right now, has to, has to.
"Hello," he breathes, and it is wrenched from his throat as the plug from the dam, and suddenly everything is spilling from him. Spilling from his mouth in a flood and he can't stop it, can't push it all back in in time. Very, very rarely, John unbinds him like this and leaves him strewn and trembling across his chest, and the sound of Sherlock's voice in words of nonsense and other languages and other worlds carries them down into sleep, when the river of words at last runs dry; leaves his throat as cracked and hoarse as it feels in his chest.
And even now John does the same, in the mere fact that he is not here, and in the second fact that this little piece of him - these bare, few inches - is all Sherlock has left. He clings to it; lets his words fall over and into it, in the hope that they, at least, will be enough to keep it there.
Harry awakens from nightmares in a strange room in her brother's house, gasping and stretching out shaking hands for a bottle she knows isn't there. She fists her hands in the bed sheets, breathes. Struggles not to cry, wonders why - oh. And remembers.
She lies back, heartbeat slowing, as she stares up at a foreign ceiling and rests against pillows that aren't hers and lies in a house where she doesn't belong. Even if John were there, she could never belong. Slotting into their perfect family life - but then again, if this is how that life goes, maybe she doesn't want a part of it.
And yet, she'd come at all, and she knows that says something but she can't put her finger on it, not when the room is so dark and cold and everything else feels so far away. Instead, it begins to feel like it means nothing; like all the lengths to which she'd gone were pointless and none of it matters at all. John was never there to save her, and now, again, he isn't. Never would be. He'd given up a long time ago, stopped caring the moment his own stupid principles got in the way - but she'd believed that maybe, maybe he'd continue to fight for her if she came out punching. Maybe, if she raised her fists, he'd stand on the sidelines and cheer for her all the way.
But it all feels foolish now, and in the dark every failure rings back sharp and clear.
Against her own volition, she is creeping out the door, turning the corner and stepping into the kitchen. The tiles are as cool as ice against her skin, sliding, sliding towards the refrigerator. Every neuron fires weakly, but it knows the routine. Knows its feeble warnings are nothing compared to the instinctual, animalistic urge of addiction. She'd cry for her lost convictions if she weren't already so used to the bitter sting of regret. But she is, so she does not, and her fingers continue to stretch upwards for what she knows is hidden inside.
And suddenly, music. Soft and sweet.
She freezes, turns her head to find the source. And there, silhouetted against the window, all angles and darkness, is Sherlock. He moves like oil slicks on water, shifting, molding imperceptibly to the swells as his fingers ghost over the instrument under his chin, the bow that saws in his other hand coaxing tender, aching sounds from the strings. They vibrate, and she can hear it weeping under his gentle ministrations; feel it in the air as it warbles and cries in an agony of unrestrained emotion. Though his face, pale under the moonlight, remains impassive, she can see his pain like a shimmering curtain about him, the lonely space he occupies in the world full of the tremulous, beautiful music that she suspects he himself cannot even hear - only feel; feel in the way his hands curve around the neck and in the way his arm moves back and forth in the rower's push out to sea or the bird's gentle flaps for the sky.
She feels it flowering within her, too; the painful bloom of something sharp and deep and real. Real enough that her hands drop silently from the handle; real enough that she shuffles back to her room and closes the door.
Real enough that even as she is surrounded by the sobbing notes that bear her down into restless dreams, for the first time in as long as she can remember, Harry does not drink or cry herself to sleep.
(Thursday, January 26th; Week 19 continued)
/
Text From Mycroft Holmes (10:24AM)
He has been found.
Text From Sherlock Holmes (10:24AM)
Is he alright? Where? Show me. Now. - SH
Text From Mycroft Holmes (10:27AM)
The hospital. A car has been sent for you.
Text From Sherlock Holmes (10:27AM)
Is he alright? I'll take my own cab. What ward? - SH
Text From Mycroft Holmes (10:32AM)
Floor 6, Second Hall on your right. Please do relax.
Text From Sherlock Holmes (10:32AM)
Mycroft, is he alright? - SH
Text From Mycroft Holmes (10:33AM)
He's fine.
Text From Sherlock Holmes (10:40AM)
…Thank you. - SH
This is also, if memory serves, the longest chapter posted to date! Yay, milestones! Hope you enjoyed (and if you did, leaving your thoughts behind would be swell :D). We'll be back next Thursday, and in the meantime, enjoy Reichenbach (if possible...) and have a fantastic week.