Sherlock's text was surprisingly short, considering its life-altering content. She had read it multiple times, and the message was unmistakable. John had made his decision.
Mary, please come to Christmas dinner at my parents' home. Will send driving directions a few days ahead. John will be there. SH
Sherlock would not have chosen a family occasion if John intended to tell her it was over. He would not have asked her to drive her own car unless John would be coming home with her. Sherlock was personally extending the invitation instead of John because this was his way of taking well-deserved credit for his efforts, and letting her know he was okay with the results.
But she knew it wasn't what he really wanted. She was about to be the recipient of the greatest gift Sherlock could give, and she was the only one who appreciated what it was costing him. She had always known how much he meant to John, but John had always told her that Sherlock was not capable of any real emotional attachment. John thought Sherlock had initially been attracted by John's admiration because he'd never had that reaction from anyone before. After that, he'd just become used to having John around. He downplayed his importance to Sherlock because he couldn't see it, just as he couldn't understand why so many people thought they were a couple. It drove him to distraction. She wondered how he could still be so blind.
Mycroft had told her that Sherlock would be her greatest ally in reconciling with John, and everything she and Sherlock had discussed in their covert phone conversations since he left the hospital confirmed it. Whether John was giving in now out of obligation, or because he was ready to forgive her, remained to be seen. But Sherlock had kept after him, and she owed him for whatever chance she now had. The first step was about to be taken, and she was more than ready to do whatever it took to win back John's trust. She was prepared for a fight.
Magnussen's room in his Mind Palace was cold and sterile. Glass walls and white carpet. A glass and chrome desk, bare of any clutter, with a large leather chair behind it, and a pair of smaller leather seats in front for his prey. The air smelled of Magnussen's expensive cologne, old parchment and money.
When he'd still been in hospital, he had taken a mental side trip to a restaurant he used to visit on the rare occasions when his appetite was active. They served a penne pasta dish that was one of the few meals he would actually seek out. Magnussen had wandered out of his Mind Palace room and found him there. That was when the plan had taken shape.
Sherlock had removed the spectacles from Magnussen's face, something he could hardly do in reality. For reasons he had yet to identify, the spectacles did not provide the answers he had expected. The data he had been so certain Magnussen was always reading when he met with anyone was invisible to Sherlock. He couldn't decide what this meant, or what clue he had picked up unconsciously that his Mind Palace was trying to make him see. It could be that the data was encrypted, which would be a logical precaution, or perhaps it was accessed by some other means entirely. Possibly Magnussen had a microchip implanted in his head that was required to activate the display.
But that wasn't important. Gaining access to the original documents was his goal, and he knew how to do it. Magnussen's ultimate goal was Mycroft, and Sherlock knew exactly how to take advantage of that to make a trade that would keep Mary and John safe.
The meeting to arrange his visit to Appledore had to be held in a location that would avoid Mycroft's tedious surveillance. His office was obviously not an option, nor was Baker Street. Ultimately, Magnussen hired a private car and picked him up around the corner from 221B. All Mycroft's men would be able to report was that Sherlock had gotten into a limousine with blacked out windows, and then emerged from it nine minutes later without the vehicle having moved from the spot. If Mycroft had them trace the ownership of the vehicle, the false name of the man who had hired it would lead nowhere. It might raise his brother's suspicion, but it would not connect to Magnussen.
If Magnussen seemed a bit too confident, it was a factor in Sherlock's favor. He had left nothing to chance.
As the Christmas deadline rapidly approached, John began to feel the tension in even the smallest interactions. With only a week to go, there was a forced normalcy about everything that had them both on edge. Lestrade called with a case that Sherlock solved without rising from the sofa. John repeated the solution into the phone as Sherlock rattled it off in a tone that seemed exaggeratedly bored. Lestrade didn't ask about Mary, and John didn't offer any explanation for having answered Sherlock's mobile.
John put the phone back on the coffee table after the call ended, then stood watching Sherlock until the silence made him look up.
"What?" Irritated, but almost on autopilot.
"Sherlock, you haven't said a dozen words since yesterday. If you're pissed about something, I wish you'd just tell me."
Sherlock gave him a sideways glance, then resumed his previous pose, stretched out on the sofa with his fingers steepled beneath his chin. His eyes were closed. "I'm thinking."
John started to walk away in frustration, then turned back and sat down on the end of the coffee table. "What are you thinking about?"
Heavy sigh, but he opened his eyes and looked at John. "If you are under the impression that my mood has something to do with you, please do get over it. I am not 'pissed'. I'm busy." He closed his eyes.
"If this is getting to be too awkward, I could leave now instead of waiting for Christmas. I imagine Mary would be fine with that."
Sherlock looked at him briefly, then resumed his position. "It's all fine, John."
"Okay. That's good." He went to his chair, utterly unconvinced, and picked up the book he'd been pretending to read all morning.
A few minutes later, Sherlock got up and went back to his bedroom. He came out a short time later, dressed in a white shirt and black suit. "I'll be out for a while." He pulled on his coat and scarf.
John got up and walked over to him. "Out where?"
Sherlock gave him an arch look. "Don't wait dinner." He turned, breezed through the door and down the stairs.
John went to the window in time to see him hail a cab and get into it. He watched it head up Baker Street and turn right, out of sight.
If he was not planning to be back before dinner time, that meant he'd be gone for at least five hours, which took this out of the realm of temper tantrum and put a knot in John's gut. If he was haring off on a case without backup... But then, that's how it was going to be soon. This would be his new normal, a thought that did nothing to ease the knot.
It was nearly impossible to be sure what Sherlock was feeling under the best of circumstances, and this was anything but. John had seen him demonstrate his acting abilities too many times to ever take any display of emotion at face value. He knew Sherlock cared about him as much as he was capable of caring about anyone. He knew he'd expected to come back after two years and just pick up where they had left off. That would be an incomprehensible attitude in anyone else, but it was just the way Sherlock was wired. Sherlock wanted him to stay, but he wanted him to go back with Mary even more. Mary had been convinced that Sherlock had thrown himself into the wedding preparations because the thought of John getting married had upset him so much. The look Sherlock had given him at the reception seemed to back her up, but he couldn't be sure that had been real any more than he could believe what he was seeing now. It wasn't that he thought he was being deliberately deceived. Sherlock was feeling abandoned, and that had always seemed to be an issue for him. He was losing someone he'd become comfortable having around, but it was no more complicated than that.
John's own feelings about his departure were more complex. He had long ago given up trying to put a name to whatever it was he had with Sherlock, although he couldn't resist defending his gender preference on occasion. Mrs. Hudson seemed particularly adept at hitting his hot button on that topic, and she had started in on it from their very first meeting. He knew that there had been a betting pool at Scotland Yard for years now, and the smart money had been on John and Sherlock being lovers. He imagined that the odds had changed since his marriage, but there were still those who would insist that Mary was nothing but a beard to quell the rumors.
Irene Adler had believed they were a couple. That whole experience had come with a few uncomfortable moments, he had to admit. He had disliked her on sight, but given that his first glimpse of her had been straddling Sherlock stark naked, that reaction was understandable. What had not been so clear to him was his reaction to her after that. She had obviously been interested in Sherlock for more than his mind, but it had been Sherlock's attraction to her that had bothered him most. Her death had put Sherlock into a tailspin like nothing John had ever seen, and it had scared the hell out of him. When she had died for real, John had lied to him for the first time, but it had been because he couldn't bear to see him go through that again. His own reaction to her being permanently gone had been even more disturbing. Feeling relief at the death of another human being, other than Moriarty, was just wrong. He'd told himself that it was protectiveness that had made him try to keep her away from Sherlock. The man wasn't equipped to deal with a woman like Irene Adler. Not many men were, but especially not Sherlock.
It wasn't until Janine Murtagh came on the scene, and the feeling had resurfaced, that he began to question his definition. But it hadn't been just his own feelings that had bothered him. Sherlock's behavior had seemed deliberately aimed at making him react. He'd kept up the ruse of Janine being his actual girlfriend when she was no longer even in the flat There was no earthly point to that other than to inspire the very response John had provided. Even now, he wasn't able to give that response a name, but there was really only one thing it could have been. Both the fact that he'd felt it, and that Sherlock had wanted to see it, were unsettling to his view of who they were to each other.
When he had thought Sherlock was dying, an event that had repeated itself far too often recently, he had been forced to consider his feelings in more detail than he'd done since his five week stint in the private hospital that Mycroft had slapped him into on the first anniversary of what he'd thought was Sherlock's death. Knowing that Mycroft would get his hands on everything he said, patient privacy be damned, had made it hard to open up, but he was so desperate to stop feeling dead himself that he'd given in.
After the second session, his therapist had asked him if he was in love with Sherlock, and his first reaction was to tell her to piss off. Then she had asked him what he thought it meant that he was on suicide watch in a mental hospital a year after the man's death. He told her he knew that throwing himself off that roof would be the wrong way to kill the pain, but there was something so poetically just about it that it had begun to feel inevitable.
He wasn't in love with Sherlock, not by any definition he understood. There had never been any kind of physical attraction, but the intense emotional bond was unlike any he had ever felt. Sherlock had been the most important person in his life, and his loss had left a gaping hole that would never heal.
His final session with his therapist had ended with him signing out of the hospital. He wasn't angry. He had simply realized that there was nothing more the therapy could do for him. He had accepted that the loss would always be part of him, like the phantom pain of an amputated limb. He would learn to live with it. The knowledge didn't make him feel any better, but he never spent another night camped in front of Bart's contemplating the roof. And four months later, he met Mary Morstan.
And now, back in the mucked up present, he had finally come to a decision that he should never have had to consider. He knew what he was going to say to Mary, and there was really no good reason to wait another week to say it at Sherlock's parents' house. Nothing would change between now and then, and there was good reason to think that delaying the inevitable was just going to make everything more difficult. He didn't even need to pack anything. His clothes were still at home with Mary. Everything he'd bought to live here could stay. All he had to do was walk out to the street, and hail a cab. Sherlock would be just as fine without him now as he would be in a week.
He walked out to the kitchen and found the notepad.
S, There's no sense dragging this out. You know where I am, if you need me. J
He left the note on the counter, then pulled on his coat and stood at the door to look back at the familiar living room and the life he was leaving behind. The one he'd thought was lost once before. He'd been wrong then. He wasn't now. A moment later, he swallowed the ache in his throat and closed the door behind him.
Sherlock was standing at the kerb facing him when he came out of the door. Sherlock came toward him and stopped just out of reach. John cleared his throat. "I thought you left."
"Where were you going?"
"I was..." He looked away from Sherlock's intense gaze. Those damned eyes were like lasers. "I wrote you a note. I thought it would be easier if I just left now. There's no sense dr-"
Sherlock stepped around him and pushed the door open. By the time John followed him inside, he had already cleared the landing.
When John caught up with him, he was standing in the kitchen with the note in his gloved hands. Head down. Reading.
John stopped in the doorway. "Sherlock."
It was several more seconds, much longer than it would have taken him to read the note, before he looked up. The pain in his eyes flashed so quickly that it couldn't have been there for effect. A moment later, his expression was unreadable. "I think it would be best to stay with the plans we've already made." He placed the note back on the counter and went out to the living room.
John followed and found him hanging his coat on the door hook. He took the scarf off and balled it up in one of the pockets. The gloves went in the other pocket. He turned around to face John. "If you feel the need to alter what we've already set up, I would appreciate being included." He walked to the hearth, crouched in front of it, and started poking at the fire.
John watched him for a long moment. "I'm sorry. I thought it would be easier if I just-"
"You were wrong," Sherlock cut him off, the comment having been addressed to the fireplace. His back was to John, and there was something in his voice that sounded like anything but anger.
If this was real, the implications were troubling. "Are you having second thoughts about this? About me leaving?"
Long pause. Sherlock kept fiddling with the fire. "No."
And then suddenly, he stood up and rubbed his hands together briskly. "I'll make some tea." And he headed out to the kitchen. "I'll bring you a cup," he called back to John. His voice sounded completely normal, but his smile was glassy.
"Yeah, okay. Thanks." John took off his coat and tossed it at the chair by the desk, then sank into his own chair by the fire. Silence from the kitchen instead of the sounds of tea making made him glance over his shoulder to see what he was doing. Sherlock was standing in the doorway, watching him. He lifted his gaze to the window as soon as John turned his way, but he was just a second too slow.
He brought two cups of tea a few minutes later. The rest of the evening was back to normal, as was the remaining week. John never caught another glimpse of whatever had been going on with Sherlock. Not until Christmas Day, when the world ended for the last time.
It's dark, but John doesn't remember the sun going down. Darkness split by the blinding spotlight from the helicopter hovering thirty feet off the ground in front of them. The prop wash is blowing Sherlock's coat out behind him like a flag of surrender. Hands raised in the air over his head, on his knees next to the body on the black stone patio. Laser sighting dots dance over Sherlock's head and chest like fireflies on a summer night.
John shakes his head, trying to clear the fog. Catch up, dammnit.
Get away from me, John! Stay well back!
Give my love to Mary. Tell her she's safe now.
Mycroft's voice shouting at the armed men to stand fire.
Trying desperately to comprehend what just happened.
And then everyone is moving, and Sherlock is face down, arms cuffed behind his back. Multiple rifles, inches from his head.
John still hasn't found his voice when they jerk Sherlock to his feet and start marching him off.
John barely notices the hands patting him down, searching him for weapons when the only one he's ever had is on the ground next to the body where Sherlock dropped it.
Why would I bring my gun to your parents' house for Christmas dinner?
Cuffs click on, but with his hands in front of him.
Sherlock is being pushed into a black van with no windows, just a few feet away from where they've just marched John to a waiting car.
"No, I have to go with him." John's voice comes back at top volume, but no one is listening. "Sherlock! Wait, you can't do this. Let me go with him. Please."
No, he's my friend. He's my friend. Please. Just let me...
Sherlock doesn't look back. The van doors close, and the reality of it all finally sets in.
It's over.
END OF CHAPTER 11