A thin layer of dust was all that was left now, coating the apartment like fallen memories: here, they first discussed moving in, here, their first case, here, hours wasted watching his idle fingertips pluck at such fortunate violin strings. Now no tunes met the air – just a cold silence, and the melancholic patter of rain on the tall windows. He wanted to disregard the sentiment and find it irrelevant, just as he always had, but instead the words hung heavy in his heart.
"Goodbye, John."
"No. No... Sherlock!"
His own screams jolted him forward two years. Where was he now? He shut his eyes and tried to focus on anything but his face, or to see it in any other way than their last eye-to-blood-stricken-eye. His nightmares still called his name, over and over with pitiless repetition, trapped between yelling in anger and begging in anguish.
But no amount of heart break would bring back Sherlock Holmes.
For a while it had felt like it could. If he just grieved long enough, if he wept his soul into his calloused, trembling hands, then maybe the shadows would reach out a nimble hand, and drag him back to wherever his friend now lay.
But every day and every night he would still wake up alone and with the bitter acrid taste of loneliness running down his throat.
Mrs Hudson had finally left him alone to soak in the past after an age of belittling him with all kinds of questions into his personal life. No, he hadn't found a "new man", whatever she was implying with that. No, he hadn't settled into a house of his own – just struggled between a string of flats and rentals that his nightmares had urged he move on from. Yes, he was still in therapy. No, it didn't help him much. Everything had always been leading him back here, to 221b Baker Street, chasing after a mind-numbing hope that he'd be sat here, waiting for him to return.
"Thank you for coming home," he would say in a semi-sarcastic tone that John had long ago learnt to read care into. His eyes would hold that bored adoration, and seem to ask if he'd remembered to buy milk. And then he'd wave his bow invitingly towards his old tartan-cloth-covered chair, waiting before the crackling fire, and add, "I'm sorry that the chairs are all worn; I left them here, I could have sworn..."
Instead the grate was cold, and his imagined attempts at heart-warming social protocol were replaced by the man's usual disdain and antisocialism. John's blood ran cold – as if it was so horrendously rude of him to go and die. Yet the more he thought about it, the more in character it seemed.
He shut his eyes and let the words echo in his grief-barren mind. Dead. Sherlock Holmes was... dead. His head rolled on his neck in a furtive twitch and he drew on the dense air, stubborn resilience kicking up against the overpowering negativity.
He knew he had lied about lying. John wasn't that stupid, no matter what his late flatmate had always professed.
Heavy, hesitation footsteps drew him on, stepping over to the dormant fireplace and trying not to meet his own pale gaze in the foggy mirror, as though afraid he had lost his reflection. He lowered himself carefully into his old armchair, the dust rising around him like trapped spirits.
If he wanted to weep now, his eyes forbade him. His once-bloody heart was run dry by mourning. Staring resolutely ahead, he wondered if it were so insane to picture his best friend sat across from him, one last time. He wondered what he'd say when he saw he'd come back. Would he comment on his rampant weight loss, his thinning, bleaching hair, his exhausted posture? Would he dare to conclude it was all his fault?
"These are my salad days, slowly being eaten away," John made to explain, his voice hoarse and his words pointless: no one was listening, he knew that, yet for his own stability he told himself that there was a chance someone might hear. That maybe somewhere, in a sky of his own, he was watching, shaking his head, pitying him for all it was worth; Dr Watson was not a man to be pitied, but now he wanted to be, just this once.
His speech abandoned him suddenly, and before him he saw the empty chair, still remembering his indent but now pavement cold. The good soldier let his head fall into his hands with a pained chuckle, all his humour long since dead. Tears stung, but to no avail. He bit back the urge to break down and plead. He knew there was no point.
"Just another play for today," he uttered, trying to recall a single one of Ella's coping techniques: each day, every day, one at a time. If he could survive today, he could make it through tomorrow.
That was the theory.
But putting theory into practise never was so easy: there were variables, complications, unexpected results that he could never find the time to explain. He would express them as null values, or mistakes in the method, or random errors. Every time he would evaluate his work he would always put it down to that one factor: human error. Being human, these were errors he felt he was allowed to make – but it would seem he was alone in that opinion.
Every new scar was a new failing and a new shame that the world held over him. It was always "try again, do better next time". Be better, next time. Until he had reached the point where he didn't want there to be a next time; didn't want to fail again. But what choice did he have?
He knew Sherlock had lied about lying: he knew Sherlock had not died without purpose. This he considered time and time again, trying to seek resolution in his darkest hours. But what would the great Mr Holmes die for? To be right? To be respected? No – he had declared himself to be wrong and slandered his own reputation before he... That only left one conclusion. John was as proud of his deduction as he was terrified of it.
Sherlock had died to protect him.
Whenever he thought of that, such pain flooded his conscience, a torrent of guilt and regret he had taken to drowning away with spirits. Not only had he killed him, but the one meaning of his death had nearly led to his own. He had wilfully tried to waste his best friend's final efforts. If Sherlock had died to protect him, he had failed: his martyrdom had endangered John's life more than anything he had ever had to suffer before.
The irony tasted like blood coagulating on his tongue. That aftertaste made him want to do better, to be better, even when he found himself submerged under waves of alcohol.
If Sherlock had laid down his life for him, he should be honoured. It was the closest thing to humanity he had ever seen in him, he thought, with a dry smile.
"Oh, but I'm proud of you, but I'm proud of you..."
Meanwhile, a dead man stood on the curb across the street.
His usual brand of forced apathy was singed with anxiety. Everything he had once known was safely locked behind that imposing black door, the golden numbers still bold as brass. The bleak skies could not herald such a momentous occasion as his return to Baker Street: he had tied off all loose ends, traipsed across the world on a one-man mission to save his own. Now the last ragged string waited just a few steps away – but he feared it was too frayed to fix.
Mycroft has always updated him, but the magnitude of the situation could never be expressed by text. Each mention of... the word... made him recoil into bitter self-loathing, but pride and a futile desire for optimism had always made him believe he wasn't guilty, and blotted out the fragments of the sentences.
"John ... another attempt. I don't know ... He misses you ... more than life ... Perhaps ... are you done yet, brother?"
Now as the lights flickered to life after so many months of cold filaments the long-ignored shame set in, riding with it a desperate desire to resolve this mistake. His mobile was silent in his rain-soaked pocket, having let it run out of charge in his hesitation.
It wasn't like a case, wasn't as simple as murder: this was the brutal complexity of suicide, hanging over him for two years now, slitting through his logic, overdosing his uncertainty.
How could he possibly justify himself to the most sensible and good-natured man he'd ever had the phenomenal fortune to meet? He did not know. But he did know that he had to try.
Bundling his bedraggled coat tighter around his thin frame, he stepped into the road, and across to the other side with shuffling steps. Every footfall was a promise, and one he could not take back. He drew ever nearer, his gleaming shoes bouncing off the rain drops, refusing to look down today.
"Nothing left to make me feel small," he muttered to himself, again gazing up at the illuminated windows, wishing to glimpse him standing there before he would burst into his quiet remembrance and break reality into shards. But now was no time to hold back. After all he had been through, he had earned this return. "Luck has left me standing so tall..."
He stared like a blind man into the dullest of nights, unaware of the darkness except for that inside himself. The cold seemed to seep into his bones, splintering his marrow and freezing and shattering all that was good. He felt the warmth being whittled away from him, breaking down his very heart. The empty apartment drew the life from him.
So overwhelmed with death, so obsessed with the last moments with him...
He had cursed him. He had thought he felt nothing, when in truth... he had felt it all. As he considered that, acid stung in his eyes. All of it. All he had never been able to say, afraid of the reaction – wasted. Lost. Futile and pointless as his being there.
Now he had to cling to his delusions and beliefs that he had never left at all. If he didn't blink, if he didn't let his mind waver, would he see him there again? His figure seemed to sculpt itself from the shadows, the swirling dust mocking his hair, the impressions in the leather holding his body. His scent lingered all around, dampened and forgotten by time but still just drifting in the air. It wasn't enough to be real – but it was enough to imagine.
Lost in reverie and blissful illusion, John recited the words he'd say, if the dead cold walk:
"Gold... always believe in your soul; you've got the power to know you're indestructible... Always believing..."
He shook his head as though to cast off the ghosts clinging to him; he could have sworn he heard the door's hinge, or a key turning in the lock, but he knew by now that his loneliness preyed on his senses. He felt the present blur into what he wanted it to be, caught up in melodramatic longing as the words tumbled forth.
"'Cause you are gold – I'm glad that you're bound to return; there's something I could have learned... You're indestructible: always believing."
He wanted to reach out but feared disturbing the fragments of memory which combined into his image. And so he just waited for the moment to pass, with all the rest.
Sherlock clenched his leather fists as he took the first step over the threshold and up the stairs, wary of their creaks of return. He didn't want to sneak up on him or startle him, nor make him suspicious and wary; he didn't want to call out in case his voice faltered to say his name again after so long. He felt like a grave robber, committing sacrilege by invading his partner's private mourning.
But he had nothing left to mourn now, not in reality. John believed he was dead, and Sherlock knew that corrupting that belief would undoubtedly have ramifications. He had, of course, considered his every possible reaction – and dreaded each in turn.
In John's mind, he wasn't meant to return; in John's mind, he had fallen. While not strictly true it was also not wrong. There could be no apologising for what he had done to him. There was no way they could make up the lost time. There should never have been anything to apologise for, but what else could he have done?
He didn't want him to appreciate his sacrifices or even accepted their necessity.
All he wanted now was to be back.
"After the rush has gone, I hope you find a little more time," he whispered with a sigh, climbing ever nearer the precipice, when a gently smile graced his thin lips to recall their late-night adventures, and the possibilities that were now creaking open for him – "Remember, we were partners in crime."
He reached the door, lying open. John had never expected anyone to follow him into his uncertain haven. He paused on the boundary, holding his breath, his heart pounding heavily in his chest, reminding himself that he could turn back... until a sniff from the old armchair left him reeling. He was so close.
Shutting his eyes for a second, he was overwhelmed with hesitation. He needed to take one more step, one more! And then he would see that he was alive. Then one of the great problems of their lives would be solved. Irrelevant of his reaction. It was one more step that he had to take.
Unceremoniously, he took that step.
At first he didn't look round, convinced it was only a shade of his delirium. But in his silence, the presence seemed to rise and fall, breathing life into the dead room, and seemed to stroke his shoulder with an alien feeling of warmth, comfort, opposing the hollow denial he was so used to.
He lifted his head from his hands.
Turned.
No.
No, it wasn't.
How could it be?
It wasn't.
He drew himself to his feet.
Like an animatronics the dead man's head turned and his eyes – his gleaming, opal eyes, so real, so alive! – locked onto his own.
It couldn't be.
He walked over on crumpling knees like a parched man towards a mirage.
He waited like a statue carved from fear.
Why was he not saying anything?
Had he done it wrong?
Was there any way to do it right?
In a breaking voice, never having been so uncertain of something so vital, he murmured, "It's... only two years ago..."
As if the idle years had meant nothing. A vacuum of time, which could now be erased.
Sherlock.
It was him. As far as he cared, it was him. If he had lost his sanity he now condemned it to stay lost, because his blissful disillusion had brought Sherlock home!
Dizzy, he flung his arms around him, the warmth of the living, breathing man soaking through to his veins till hot blood coursed his body again. He was drenched through with rain, dribbling down to his marble skin, his hair lank down his slender neck, his eye brimming with a life he thought he had lost.
"The pace with the suit and the pace," he greeted, and now the tears welled into raindrops, and words dried up on his tongue; he held him tight in his arms as if he'd never let go. His mind throbbed with delightful insanity, quickly drawing him back into that luxurious familiarity of bafflement. He felt high, careless of the comedown.
No longer cautious in his embrace, he held him in return, sweat prickling at the back of his neck rolling away easily as anxiety abated, leaning his cheek to his partner's ragged hair and nestling into his love as best he could. "You knew that he was there on the case," he responded as if in apology, somehow seeming unnecessary as the years rushed to meet them. His whisper echoed through the apartment, invigorating it, rejuvenated just by their being together.
John's woozy dependency was contagious, and as he inhaled his murky scent he held him closer, intoxicated by the reunion. His voice soon betrayed his secrets, so overwhelmed with adoration, so ready to say these words now, lest the opportunity be snatched away again.
"Now he's in love with you. He's... in love with you."
John stopped, reality crystallising around him, but sure that part was product of a ravenous imagination. He caught a breath, realised he was still in his arms, quickly becoming more than an embrace between friends. He let go, only to hold him at arm's length, sure he must have been lucid dreaming yet never feeling so awake. The words dug into his mind and buried themselves deep in his heart.
Yet he did not reply. Sherlock's gaze faltered; he stared at the rain-stained spatters on John's trouser legs. Still the sentiments flowed, now as though to qualify his last: "My love is like a high prison wall... and you could leave me standing so tall."
He wanted him to say something in returned, needed him to say something to satisfying his craving for his voice, but still he remained indignantly silent. Sherlock licked his lip, and remembered the moment when he'd had the chance to turn back. That chance was long gone now.
And so he drew a breath, and stared into his expectant gaze.
"You are gold," he told him, as though hurrying to add context. "Always believing in your soul; you've got the power to know you're indestructible, always believing. You are gold: glad that you're bound to return, something I could have learned; you're indestructible, always believing."
At first John spluttered a sigh, overwhelmed at the reflection of his own feelings, never having dared dream that the detective could have returned them to him; if he had considered Sherlock had shared his thoughts, he had never imagined he would speak of it. He had never let himself hope he would ever speak again. Yet now here he stood with wet eyes, stroking the raindrops from his partner's cheeks, the words filling his mind and taking over his sense, leaving himself only in a rush of relief and requited love, and he pulled Sherlock closer, smirking gently because he didn't care to question what he doing now – after all, Sherlock was alive, and that was being his questioning as well. He drew himself closer, lighting standing taller, tipping his head, letting his eyelids slip closed as he unhesitatingly kissed his lips, his own stiff and trembling as though he were snatching at grains of sand before suddenly realising that he had all the time in the world in his hands; he laced his arms around his neck as his uncertainty softened, a feeling of perfection taking him over.
Sherlock Holmes was home; Sherlock Holmes was his.
"My love is like a high prison wall, and you could leave me standing so tall..."
If at first he hadn't known how to react and had tried feebly to resist, instinct, deep-rooted after years of struggling to grow, now blossomed in his chest and his hands found his waist, holding him tenderly as rejoicing flowers popped open in his veins, life as he had never known it before coming into bright dazzling bloom, love tangling like a vine around his body and twining them together in an immortal embrace.
John, beaming now, nipped his lower lip and in his gasp found his tongue, kissing him deeply and passionately and suddenly knowing the taste of reality – vibrant and true – in his gentle moans, in a moment that could have lasted forever, their shared sentiment invigoration the room, echoing through time thereafter: they held each other as if to make up for all the times they should have held one another before, on all the lonely nights they had spent apart, enraptured in anguish. Now the pain of the past could fly away, the tears carried off by the wind, leaving them nestled together in a world where hope and belief reigned, and the words were engraved in their hearts:
"Gold – always believe in your soul, and you've got the power to know: you're indestructible, always believing. 'Cause you are gold – I'm glad that you're bound to return, something I could've learned: you're indestructible, always believing."