Plus One Year; or Older and Wiser
A tale
It's been a year. One year since. One year past. One year forward. A year older. A year wiser. Maybe even a year happier.
But not really.
He feels like he's been here forever. Like this. Then he feels like it happened just yesterday.
Every so often, he'll catch his mind still buzzing with the grief, the loss, the silence.
Once in a while he'll have himself convinced, against all reason and all rhyme, that the man is still breathing and out there. Battling the ignorant in some far off country far away from prying eyes. From the media who painted him so badly.
From John.
He'll have it all planned out. How he did this, how he did that. And then he'll remember…
Crack. Fall. Crunch.
And he'll squeeze his eyes shut against the onslaught of images, wish he was deaf to the brutal rush of sound. Impervious to the touch of a cold hand, a still pulse and a bloodied corpse.
John Watson will convince himself that Sherlock Holmes is alive, and then he'll find the flaws in his ideas and convince himself that no, he really isn't.
Mycroft is still the government. Lestrade is still DI. Donovan has risen though. She has her own team, and Anderson has carried on with his job.
Mrs Hudson still dithers around her home 221 Baker street. She still dithers and tidies flat b.
John still lives here. Regardless of the memories because most of them are good and he will cling to those until he loses them. Until his memory fades he will hold them in a little box above his heart while underneath he still feels the tug of the red cord from his ribcage*. A tug that means he's wishing again that the shadows he's been seeing are what he hopes they are.
Oh, the shadows.
They started a couple of months ago. Fleeting, flickering. Lunging across the walls behind him, silhouettes cast by the sunlight, the moonlight, the light from the windows, streetlamps. Hardly during the day but sometimes. Mostly when he makes his way home from the clinic or when he walks through the park, the streets, for air and quiet.
Sometimes the shadow will be close and sometimes far. Sometimes it will cast behind his, others in front.
Occaisionally there are many, most often there is one.
Tall, slender.
But all shadows when cast from behind are elongated and maybe it's all just wishful thinking.
He never finds himself frightened, though. Regardless of that fact he feels he should.
'You are being followed John Watson, or your mind is playing tricks. You should be scared for you life or you sanity. Why is it that you aren't?' The cold, blatant, reason of his mind will ask him, as he walks through the dark and the light.
'Because I feel I needn't.' The heart will answer. 'I hardly need fear death now, I can fear the pain of death, and the loss that others will feel but I myself need not fear it. And as for sanity, I rather think there has always been a certain deficiency of that in here. I should not miss what I feel I have already lost.'
The reason will get angrier; 'Sherlock Holmes was not your heart!' it will screech. 'Sherlock Holmes was not your head! Why do you do this to yourself? Continue to dwell on dreams of him living, breathing – '
And the heart will grow quiet but remain firm. It will end the mental debate with a simple heartfelt statement: 'What else was he if not my heart or head?'
What then was I to him?
It's a niggling, whisper of a question said by neith head no heart. An amalgamation of the two. This is John's question to himself.
And John does not have the answer.
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London is a large system and if one does not want to run into the trouble of meeting those one doesn't want to, it can be relatively easy.
Hire your own private car, get a p.a. and you still might find yourself trailed everywhere by a taxi cab.
Not odd for just on occaision, but all the time? The taxi always being there. Always a different driver, always a different plate. But a taxi behind you whenever you turn around.
Why is there a taxi?
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John notices that the shadow has been missing for a while now, maybe a couple of weeks.
An insolent part of his mind allows itself to wonder: What's he doing?
Hello Sherlockians, how're you? So this is the start of a story that'll go on for a while.
reviews are nice.