"Fallen by Sarah McLachlan"_
He woke up swathed in white, and his thought was that he'd died. There came a smile on his face to think the task was done. This was better. Nature won and now he rested there. Waiting there in death, in the soft cool silence, the peace of the forgotten.
Yet then, there are still those scrawling purple scars, with the faded shape notes scrawled along them. They are gilded in the sunlight. The sun that dripped golden and filled up his upturned palms with the wealth of the morning.
John stood in the window. The sun poured over him. Anointed him in the oil of pure daybreak_ benediction. He turned. His face caught in the celestial virtue that had given this morning wake.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it?" John asked. The silence in the room added volume to the obvious question. Sherlock could not muster his voice from his body_which feels as if it is made out of cotton.
"To keep you alive, when you're trying to die...Death is what you want isn't it, my dear friend?" John sank to the seat beside Sherlock and took his hands.
"You want it because you could feel it. The power of death and life...A choice, that, mm?
You had a choice for a moment, didn't you, Sherlock? To escape all of it. The responsibility, the memory...To make it someone else's problem for a while. It seemed like the right thing to do_Left you delirious, did it not?…"John fell quiet. His face was rife with sadness.
"Am I being cruel? Keeping you alive? Making you stay?" John shook his head, an incredulous look crossing all the highways of the lines of his face. So much stress there. A lifetime of incredulous expressions, searching for the answer to the war-torn world that he has seen. This is an answer that Sherlock can't give him, master of riddles or no.
"I_um…"Sherlock bit his lip. John was deeply upset, but he smiled with good spirits all the same. He pulled Sherlock's hands to his chest and laid them over his heart.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it? That there's still so much of the march of life here...When you are well and truly dead inside. Knowing that you gave all that made you alive inside to me…Saved me from worse than...Well, I don't know. From worse."John shook his head, breath sputtering like a candle going out in a sudden gush of storm.
Sherlock gasped, unsure what to say. John leaned closer. The sun bathed them both now. Hid them in her hand, in heaven's blind spot. John put his hand on Sherlock's chest.
"Tell me honestly. Do you want to die? Has it gone that far?" John held his breath.
"I_I…"
"Be honest. I won't hold it against you, right or wrong…"
"Well, no. And yes! It isn't...There is no simple solution to this problem. I want to live because I feel the need to protect you from the web my life subtly spun around you. And then...And yes...I do wish to die. I wish for death because..."Sherlock groaned. Why was this so hard to say?
John tilted the bed to a sitting position. He nodded, listening intently.
"I wish for death because I have fallen...Fallen into her trap, as it were. She stalks me...Death. She preys_ a lion, waiting in the brush. She waits for me, John. Death. So near my feet, so eager…"Sherlock's lips twisted in embarrassment.
"I wish for her because she is my familiar. Because it is easier to imagine death than something far worse now...Something far more frightening…"Sherlock clenched his teeth. John nodded.
"What's that?" John smiled, raising his eyebrows. Sherlock laced his shaking fingers around John's wrist and gasped.
"Healing. God_! God, it scares me. There seems no way to be redeemed from what I have become, John. From what I was before...I...Death. Utter transformation...or silence at the end of it. Death and her sting is easier to me than the yawning, open highway I need to take to be made whole…"Sherlock shook his head.
"Or was it that I have never been whole? That I filled the chasm of human conscious, of a heart's formation with you…? I told you once that you were terribly conducive of light on your own and I meant it. I don't think I saved your life. I think you loaned me a life force and I have merely given it back." Sherlock sank exhaustedly against the sheets, eyes like daggers as they stared up at John. John sighed.
"Is it torture, then? Is healing torture if I'm the one to try and guide you?" John bowed his head. Sherlock just stared.
"Why?"
Silence. John knew what the question was. Why do you love me? Why do you stay? What does this mean?
"I don't know...I've never known what it was exactly. It's just. It's just you, I suppose. Maybe Life needs Death to draw it out. Perhaps it was your lack of center that gives me purpose. Your empty that keeps me vibrant… So maybe, you can go on being a sneering hollow of a man, and I can go on filling the Void. If healing is too painful, then...I say let it be." John shrugged.
Sherlock looked out the window at the sun. Suddenly, he smiled.
"Seems fair. That is if you get me out of this bloody hospital…"