Note: After forever and a million years -most of it spent trying to find the last Chapter 20 I wrote and realizing I guess I must have not actually written one- I am deciding to finish this story. Please bare with the short chapters until I get back into the swing of things, yes?
Chapter 20
Silent and cold. The freezing droplets of chilled rain dripping through the storm grate down into the basement hitting his body like pebbles in the cold. His eyes cracked open, frozen hands running over him. For a moment, he thought they were John's, rough and strong. But they weren't the warmth that the doctor was; that his doctor was.
His eyelashes fluttered, frozen together as his skin shimmered a light purple beneath the overflowing water collected in the tub. A hollow moan of a warped, otherworldly visage in his ear, fingers along his jaw.
His eyes slipped shut again, letting the fingers guide his head back. A pair of stretched black lips claimed his, frostbit tongue caressing the insides of his cheeks. The taste of the monsters mouth was like nickel and graveyard soil as whatever warmth he had left was pulled from him desperately. When the beast failed to get more than a small gust of life from the ghost, it keened into Sherlock's parted lips devastated.
"I'm already dead you bloody idiot." Sherlock lifted his arm, swiping the creature away, sending them skittering into the darkness of the basement. "For being splinters of myself you're absolutely moronic." Grabbing the sides of the tub, he ripped himself from the bottom of the porcelain, leaving bloodless fistfuls of flesh along the base.
Yanking his feet up, he gasped, the pads of his heels and the balls of his feet and toes stretching and ripping clean, making him stumble as he lifted his leg and stepped over the edge onto the half frozen, water covered, concrete floor of the basement. All flesh submerged beneath the surface black and all flesh that met the waters top, bruised.
He made his way upstairs, feeling the heat as he climbed each step. He began to shiver, body shaking as his spirit recognized what heat felt like and yearned for it.
Pushing the door open, the air hitting him like an inferno that burned every nerve in his body. He stood, arms held out away from his body, black and rotting; then with a toss of his head let off a hellish scream as the pain overtook him. A pain he'd never felt upon coming back from a crash.
It didn't last long before the door behind him shut and he was hobbling through the house, bottoms of his feet making it difficult to keep his balance as he stepped onto exposed nerve and muscle -and on some toes, bone. He went straight for the stairs, racing up the wooden steps and to the bathroom where he flipped the hot water on and stepped in, black skin peeling from the sudden temperature difference and falling in clumps into the bottom of the tub.
He ground his teeth against the pain, but there was something in the back of his mind that distracted him. Something warmer than the hot water that seared his ghostly flesh. Something hotter than the fires that cooked his senses; no, this made his body quiver. Hands that ran over his back and shoulders. Lips on his neck and at his jaw, and as he doubled to get away from such hands, grab his hips.
He needed John.
Sputtering hot water from his burned lips, he shut the shower off. His soaked curls hung down into his face as his body shivered in the now freezing room. His hips ached as the emptiness inside of him pushed at the walls.
How long had he been out?
How long had he been away, leaving John alone?
Grabbing a towel, he made his way downstairs again, hoping to find the doctor home -or at least any sign of where he'd gone, but there was nothing. There were no signs that'd he'd been home in a while; instead of the scent of his cologne floating through the air on the dust stirred from the counters and old walls, it was a sweet smell of cinnamon bismarck and hemp.
Everything else was the same except clean and warm.
Wrapping in the towel he had grabbed, he looked at the laptop he had received for Christmas -still wrapped in it's original box- and sat down. It only took a couple of moments for him to pull it out and set it up; password, date, time -it was a few simple buttons and questions hissed into the abyss. And once it was all up and running, he brought up the calendar in the lower right hand corner of the screen.
It was January fourth, 2015.
Sitting back, Sherlock tried to remember back to the last date he remembered -which proved to be a little more difficult than he liked to admit given he didn't care what the date was, he just did the cases and let John or Scotland Yard take the credit. But he remembered the year before he went out. December 25, 2013. Christmas day spent with John -one date that would always be stuck in his mind because of their...well...
"I was out for a year." He muttered, lips resting against his hands. He stared at the calendar, part of him hoping that if he stared at it long enough, the numbers would switch and he'd have only been out for a couple of days. But even then, he knew that that wouldn't have been right given John had been a husk for 2 months.
Well, that made the news a little lighter; knowing he was only out for 9 or 10 months instead of a full year. But all the same, that was all time he wished he hadn't missed.
But where was John?
Standing, he vanished, making his way upstairs for his clothes. Slipping into them he came back down, looking along the bottoms of his feet for a moment to make sure that the healing process was going smoothly, and minus a few raw pieces and the entire bottom being hideously red and painful looking, it was going splendidly.
He made his way back out for the kitchen, bringing up a webpage in his laptop. How was he going to get a hold of John to let him know that he was awake?
He wasn't sure if John had sold the house -although all of his belongings being here still pretty much concluded that he did, indeed, still own the house- or if he'd even bought himself a new mobile. Again, knowing John as extensively as he did, he was almost positive the doctor had purchased a new mobile. And a fat load of good that did him, Sherlock didn't have one and the house didn't have a phone so that was purely out of the bloody question.
He could always make a page on that Facechatter site thing that John was on.
But that would be a colossal waste of his time.
Oh!
He sat back down and typed in a quick address. The Blog of John H. Watson. For some reason the doctor had been absolutely tickled when he began writing his silly little ideas on this page. Stories that seemed like twisted fantasies of real events. It made a good crime scene look like a bloody romance novel.
"He stood face to face with the corpse, a distant sadness in his eyes. The look of a man who knew what it was to share the kiss of death. A man who had died all too soon, mourning in his own ways another life lost before the proper time." Sherlock read a loud from one of the random stories the clicked on. One of the newer uploads -though not the newest. "What rubbish is this," He muttered, resting his elbows on the table, hands clasped between his lips. "'He was silent, but just for a moment -a silence I've guiltily felt glad for so sparingly few times before- and then he spoke. His voice was like honey and warm cream as he stepped away from the cold woman who once had laughed, and cried, and sat on the sofa watching rubbish movies as we all had.
"'We're wasting time, John. Let's go.' Sherlock had a way of seeming off. Distant and cold and uncaring. He preferred to seem that way, actually, although, I had suspicions that had he been born in this era, the soft edges he had wouldn't exist. But a heart was a heart, and no matter how callous he seemed, I knew, without a doubt, that Sherlock Holmes had the most compassionate of hearts." Sherlock trailed off, thinking about the words, his eyes skimming over the rest of the story, not bothering to read it.
He knew how he felt about such kind words now, but he wondered how he would have felt months ago -or...months before he crashed- about them. Back before he felt devoted to John. Before he cherished his friends company and yearned to be with him -and admittedly, was starting to feel a lot of anxiety about being separated from him at the moment. Would he have felt this warm, or would he have snorted and dismissed it as silly emotions by a man who was nothing but a thick, meaty, strong -yet sensitive- dangerous ball of emotions?
He shook his head, not caring about his girlish crushes. He was a grown man -albeit a dead and ancient grown man- not a frivolous girl.
Scrolling to the bottom of the page, he typed in his name above the comment section and typed a simple and plain comment into the box beneath it.
I'm awake.
He hit enter and waited, staring at the screen, expecting it to almost be instant.
That was when suddenly, the front door opened. His head turned, surprised at how soon he actually showed up -figuring he must have just pulled in when he sent the message. But when he saw who walked in, he kept silent.
It wasn't John. Instead, it was a rather plain looking woman -rather plain being an opinion sullied by the unnatural beauty of this day and age than it had been back when women weren't as beautiful. She was older, probably 65, maybe 70, and she smelled of Cinnamon Bismarck and hemp.
Ah.
That was who the smelled belonged to.
He stared at her as she came in, hanging her coat up by the door and slipping her shoes off to slip into another pair of slippers. After a moment or two, she made her way through the entertainment room and his way. Stopping in the doorway, she stared at him, her hands clasped in front of her reserved like.
"Oh, hello." She greeted. "Sorry, John didn't tel me there'd be anyone here." She replied, her voice sweet and kind and directed right at him. He looked at her confused and a bit nervous. She could see him? That was...
"Oh, um, yes." He closed his eyes for a moment, fingertips coming to his forehead as if trying to shield the sun from his eyes or massage the oncoming of a headache away. "I am...Hector Hissilks." He replied, flashing her a quick smile, trying to put as much warmth in it as he could -to uneven out the indifference of her actually being there. "John didn't...tell me that...anyone else was...living here." He replied, looking at her confused and a bit hurt.
"Martha Hudson, dear. Pleasure to meet you." She smiled warmly. "Living here? Oh-oh heavens dear, no." She laughed, lightly touching his shoulder. "No, I'm the housekeeper." She replied. There was this...lively sparkle in her eye. Sherlock felt a rush of both clarity, confusion and relief flood over him all at once.
"The housekeeper?" He cocked an eyebrow. "Two questions, one, why is John not here to clean his own house? And two, why does he need a housekeeper for when he isn't here?" He turned, his eyes watching her very carefully.
"He hasn't really been staying here." She replied honestly. "Says it's too lonely, so he's off visiting his sister, Harriet. Poor dear's lost most of her hair by now. Chemo isn't taking very well so he's been playing the part of the good brother." She gave his shoulder a gentle pat before making her way into the kitchen. "Cuppa?"
"He's been lonely?" Sherlock hummed, feeling a slight bubble of happiness in a time he wasn't sure he should. Lonely because he missed him? Him of all people.
Well, obviously, with their relationship the level that it was, it shouldn't have been that shocking or surprising at all. But it was just...the confirmation that he would be missed if he was gone. It was a confirmation he didn't get very much when he had died -save for Lestrade and the few half hearted tales the DI spoke of when he was sure no one was listening. "So, why procure the help of a housekeeper in his absence?" He turned, looking at her as she filled a rarely used kettle full of water and put it on the stove.
"Oh, mainly because of the cat." She replied, turning and looking at him as she turned the stove on, letting the flames dance beneath the kettle.
"Ah, I forgot about the cat." Sherlock admitted, looking back at his laptop. "So he'd gone to live with Harry. I hope that isn't putting too much strain on her. Although, after what had happened, I supposed spending time together would be ideal." He hummed idly. Scrolling up, he refreshed the page, hoping that maybe John's reply would show up, but instead, all he got were a few others -Harry being one of them, Anderson another...a few people he had absolutely no interest in meeting ever.
"Oh no, he's not living with her, dear." The older woman replied, much to Sherlock's shock. "He's living with his girlfriend."