Authors Note:Gah I'm getting pretty terrible for being late, I'm sorry loves! The next one will hopefully be up sooner! "If You Could See Me Now" by The Script was on repeat for this chapter, so feel free to listen to that as well.
Knocks were curious things.
John was a soldier. Sometimes. John was a doctor. Sometimes. John had considered himself to be the only consulting detective's assistant in the world. Sometimes. What was important to remember was that he could be a soldier, or a doctor, or a consulting detective's assistant at any given moment. He was made up of all three. A killer, a healer and one to spot the difference.
A soldier knew that if something felt off-balance that they should get back up, patrol the area, secure the perimeter. A doctor knew that if something seemed not quite right that they should dig deeper, look more closely, find the signs of life and preserve them. A consulting detective's assistant knew that a soldier and a doctor were likely to miss all the important parts because they did not observe, didn't think it through.
So John tried to think but his head felt too fuzzy.
Knocks were curious things.
If John had ever been the brave one, it didn't feel like it then.
Feeling the sleek feather-light weight in his hand, his eyes skimmed over to the coffee table. The old scratched phone lay there undisturbed from the night before.
"Wrong phone," he said dumbly. Glad for a moment, before he remembered that there was nothing unusual about the circumstance, that no one had heard him say that. Obvious.
Someone had called Sherlock's phone. And wasn't that odd because people don't call the long departed. Which put the count at two unsettling occurrences.
Not just someone though. Wrong phone, right voice.
Smooth as the sky over a desert, deep like a bullet wound 3.7 centimetres off fatal.
Wrong phone, right voice. An impossible voice.
Dead as the desert under an endless sky, dead as a bullet wound not 3.7 centimetres off anything.
Knocks were curious things.
If John had ever been the brave one, it didn't feel like it then. It felt like phantom limbs moving and pain all in his head. Psychosomatic. It felt like not breathing because if dead things needed air then John could do without. It felt like the cold metal of a doorknob and the disappointment in his hand when cold metal didn't mean a trigger.
Knocks were curious things. They happened without warning. They could come softly or make the frame of the door shake with their fury. They could be there today and gone tomorrow. Hurricanes.
They could be answered or ignored. But sometimes-soldiers, sometimes-doctors, sometimes-consulting detective's assistants were never any good at ignoring danger. There was only one other option and a hand lightly tanned from the wrist down twisted the handle of a door instead of pulling the trigger on another gun.
If the voice on the phone hadn't forced his body into shock, what was standing at the top of seventeen stairs would have. Dark brown almost black hair, slicked back except for the fringe hanging loosely straight in the front. A far too casual button up shirt that appeared to be made of light-wash denim but also looked incredibly soft so John guessed cotton. Form fitting black jeans, actually denim this time. And a pair of canvas shoes which reminded John of the twenty something's who always messed up his order at the coffee shop. The whole package over a tall frame, too skinny yet visibly more solid than the memory it brought up. Added muscle, a strange thing for a corpse to have.
None of it fit the mental image John had of his flatmate, which was good considering it couldn't be his flatmate. "You're dead," he said, some part of him making a mental note that he really needed to stop saying dumb things out loud.
Had his life been a movie, the type dead flatmate's claimed would only lead to a world full of Anderson's if gone unchecked, this would be the moment. When he would hit this strange dead thing until the world went red and there was nothing strange about being dead anymore. When he would cry until drying up like a raisin was a way and he'd personally invented it. When he'd say more dumb things like get out or stay.
John said nothing. Numb. The corpse watched him with invading eyes. Eyes too powerful to be called a mere tropical storm. Hurricanes.
But that wasn't possible. Corpses didn't hold storms and Sherlock was dead. Three years made that pretty obvious even to, especially to, John. Clear as blood on pavement, as apparent as a pulse that wasn't there, as simple as blank eyes containing not even a gust of wind.
Forget the evidence to the contrary. Forget optical invasions, visible pulse points, intact skulls, the gentle in's and out's of air in a set of lungs which should not exist. Three years said so.
"You're dead," he repeated with no uncertainty, a command in the words willing the corpse to explain itself at once.
"Yes, and no."
John wondered briefly if maybe he had died the day before and this was just what happened after you died.
He wondered briefly if this was Heaven or Hell.
A Sherlock alive, existing in all the places John still was, had to be Heaven. But a dead Sherlock talking to a dead John might not have been. Especially considering how the dead kept insisting it was alive, which wasn't fair because John had died to fix that problem.
Why do you always have to be where I'm not he thought bitterly, consciously taking a step away from the dead or maybe not dead verison of Sherlock because he had learned that being close hurt something fierce.
"I'm here, I'm right here" the correct voice whispered and the words felt like a shutdown command in John's brain.
This Sherlock knew what he was thinking. This Sherlock did that thing with his voice that John had only ever heard through a phone but could still recognize instantly. Evidence to the contrary.
"You can't be. You're dead. I saw it, you made me see it. You're dead," he argued, doubt forcing him to look over this supposedly not dead body in front of him again.
It stood without an ounce of natural grace, unlike the Sherlock that John remembered. The posture was almost military except for the details. So just tense, intentional, purposeful control of limbs. Evidence to the contrary.
"I know what I did John. And I'm…I am sorry for that. But it was necessary."
It wasn't the logic of the word necessary, it was the emotion of an apology being stomped out by all that logic which made some piece of John's brain go why do you always do that Sherlock? like a flesh memory. Then he froze again but John could still see all the evidence to the contrary to disprove the theory that anything froze with him.
This was Sherlock. This was Sherlock Holmes answering a call that reached across a lifetime. Or possibly no more than a minute.
That did feel miraculous.
John Hamish Watson had gotten what he wanted. One more time. One more adventure. One more miracle.
That did feel miraculous, until it didn't.
"How…how could you do that? You were gone, dead, for three years," and an old bitterness seeped into the words without much effort. Even as his mind grappled with were gone and were dead instead of are gone and are dead. Tenses, he'd always been terrible with them.
"I can explain all of it I swear but it was all to protect you John. I couldn't let anything harm you, not when I still had the means to prevent it," the painful horrible wonderful miracle Sherlock said with such earnest that it made part of John want to hold onto the other man for at least a few decades. Another part of the doctor was busy clenching tremor free surgeon fingers into fists.
"You couldn't let anything harm me? Are you being serious right now? Christ Sherlock, you bloody well harmed me! You were fucking killing me! Or did you not notice? Were you too busy who knows where to see poor John Watson who doesn't even want to get out of bed because the world seems so god damn depressing without the great Sherlock Holmes? Did you're giant brain miss that? It always misses something doesn't it? Tiny detail, not important right?," John practically growled, unable to stop himself from lashing out the same way he sometimes laughed when what he wanted to do was cry.
It was a sick thrill of vindication to see the pain crumple Sherlock's face, to watch it mark the porcelain skin with all the sins against John. It felt fantastic and horrible at the same time because that is not how a miracle was meant to look.
"I have a gun Sherlock," the doctor added quietly, studying the floor with a newfound interest which John knew the detective could see through but was a comforting trick none the less.
"I have a gun and I would have used it. Bit not good, right? I would have though. It was three years and I couldn't let it go. I couldn't function, I couldn't move on. Three years, Sherlock. So I'd love to hear what you think makes any of this fucking okay. I'd really like to know what made you think I'd be right as rain until you showed up again. If you did at all, hell I don't even know if you'd have come back if I wasn't so fucking desperate," he said with more confidence, eyes glaring into the center of the storm defiantly as if daring the hurricane to deny the sometimes-soldier, sometimes-doctor, sometimes- consulting detective assistant any of it. Curse words and all.
"John…please," if he hadn't been in shock twice now, John would have been from the sight of tears in the corners of Sherlock's not-dead stormy eyes. He almost wanted to suggest plugging up such a leak because it could be a way, the research was still pending.
"You're dead and I'm dying. Yet here we are. Explain."
That did feel miraculous, until it didn't.
John imagined that was what loving Sherlock Holmes came down to.
Authors Note: Your thoughts are as desired as a triple homocide my darlings! The next update should be up in the next day or so