A STUDY IN OPPOSITES


"Everyone wants to fall in love.

But I think more people are in love with the theory of love.

If you're looking in from the outside, it looks so beautiful.

On the inside, it's scary because it can take over your life.

It's the strongest emotion, but also the darkest.

It can put you on a high for days, but it can wrap an anchor around our feet

and drown you in less than a minute."

Calia Read, Breaking the Wrong


"So, go ahead and break my heart again

Leave me wonderin' why the hell I ever let you in

Are you the definition of insanity?

Or am I?

Oh, it must be nice

To love someone who lets you break them twice"


The sound of the violin breaks against the pregnant silence with the violence of a gunshot. There is no trace of any delicacy in the way the bow darts briskly over the strings of the instrument, plucking them as if to imprint marks, bruises on them: it is no longer a companion to be honored, venerated, but rather a banner of misfortune, a weapon that wavers in the hollow of the palm, a bow that stretches and stretches... until it breaks.

The melody is a succession of crescendos and diminuendos, a tangle of pauses that taste like a farewell, a succession of octaves that follow one another in a play of shadows that strips the iris of its colors - that wounds the ear with unheard-of rage. It is one of Paganini's Caprices, John recognizes it from the way the notes whirl around each other to take his breath away, but he cannot remember which one: the music reaches him almost muffled, a veil of melancholy makes it alien to an inexperienced ear, but it is an alternating melancholy, which rests on the arpeggios and resurfaces together with the mordents, like the discontinuous glow of a lighthouse in the night.

The last note hovers in the air, suspended in the prelude of an imminent detachment: it has the taste of a last kiss, of a repudiated trust, of an unspeakable regret... of a past that muddies the present, gnaws at it, and poisons it, and empties it of all meaning. It has the sour taste of a leap into the void and the pungent smell of asphalt burnt by the sun, of memories that follow one another like frames of a faded life... it has the fleeting scent of columbine folded over an empty tomb.

Now that silence has pervaded every nook and cranny of the flat - it has frozen the quivering of his heart - John finds it difficult even to breathe. Once upon a time - when the war was just a vacant error in a history book and death was just an opalescent veil waiting patiently at the end of a crossroads - Harry would have told him that lobelia camas were sprouting in his lungs, but the path of life has crossed his middle, the innocence of the daisy has dissolved along with its crystal petals, and John feels those same petals tearing at his flesh, budding under his skin, making space between his limbs in an exhausting annihilation.

Burnt heath.

Buds creeping into his veins, soaking into his blood, clogging his throat, bursting into his mouth, mending his tortured lips, opening into his pupils.

Flowers of evil.

His heavy footsteps echo in the room that is too empty, too bare. The grey walls reflect the storm raging over London - bearing down on him, helpless, a rock of courage engulfed by the tumultuous ocean. It's raining, but John doesn't bother to close the windows, and now drops of dirty water are seeping through the grooves of the uneven floor.

It's the tears he can't cry.

It is the impotence of a sorrow that he cannot externalize, that devours him from the inside, that feasts on the splinters of his heart - the bitter agony of bile on his tongue.

There is nothing left to testify to his passing, there, in those chambers choking with the weight of nostalgia for what has not been: John has taken care to burn the mourning of what might have been with the disenchantment of what was.

Now, the spicy scent of the last raspberry tart has been replaced by the acrid stench of ash.

Neither of them ever liked smoking.

There is a mirror, in the long corridor outside the bedroom; it had belonged to Mrs. Hudson when she was young, with a thick frame of fake gold, a little peeling at the sides - phony and ruined like all things that transcend the boundaries of time. John wonders if this is how he too will become, on a hazy afternoon far from this moment, a shell of flesh frayed by wear and tear; if those who look at him - in passing, with hated compassion and even more yearned-for indifference, with the repugnant inquiring gaze of an adult or the juvenile one of a child - will see only crystal cracked under the weight of betrayed trust.

This is how the objects must feel, he thinks, the objects that are passed from hand to hand, from house to house, from village to village, forgotten by those who have owned them, handled them, even just glanced at them out of the corner of their eye, in the silent corridors, in the dusty rooms, on the walls like trophies.

This is how people must feel, he thinks, the people who see their love thrown to the bottom of a wardrobe, like a garment that has never been worn, trampled on like one tramples on what is superfluous, forgotten like one forgets what is unimportant, by the very people who gave them the illusion of being something more, not just blank pages at the end of an already finished book.

The pane of glass is completely cracked: silver streaks start from the centre, branching outward like the branches of a stem hanging over the waters of a placid lake.

John can't help but smile, a tired smile, the corners of his mouth curved downwards in a melancholy pose, a smile that remains confined there, between two folds of parched flesh, that doesn't make his cheeks ache - a beautiful, sun-breathing pain - and doesn't curl the skin around his eyes.

In his mind, like a buoy surfacing in the waves, the memory of flayed knuckles and shards of glass reflecting scarlet tears resurfaces. He had never believed that blood could float on the ocean.

It had happened shortly after returning to their flat, the roar of sirens ringing in his ears and the stillness of a dark spot against the leaden sky etched in his iris, a slide stuck inside a projector.

That time, he had had the mirror repaired, because the idea of seeing himself broken on the outside was unbearable.

When he had returned - but returned from where, from a wandering existence, from a web of deception and falsehood that he dragged behind him like a veil of lies? - he had not bothered to repair it. Perhaps because some things cannot be repaired: you only fix them by letting them go.

When he reaches the living room, there is a cup of tea waiting for him on his little desk - on what used to be his little desk. He doesn't think he has the right to consider it his property any more, just like the grey-walled room he has just locked, not when he has been deprived of all the junk that crowded its surface - a cedar candle, the miniature Venus of Milo bust to use as a pot holder, a keyboard that no longer typed S's and H's, a stack of books on pharmaceutical chemistry and criminal psychology... He could not part with it, no matter how hard he tried - erasing all traces of his former life would not have changed anything, would not have lessened the pain of loss or the guilt, so... unfair, that forced him into insomnia.

Each object is the spokesperson for a story, his, their story, even if not the one John would have liked to hear. In a fit of rage it seemed to him the most reasonable thing to do, because memory is fallacious, tempting, and John does not know how to dispose of those memories - they are spirals of smoke in the dawn of a new day, which he tries in vain to hold back between clumps of fingers - and yet it seems so cruel to part with those custodians of time - frosted shells that return the echo of distant words.

The tea has cooled, still waiting for a guest who has just arrived and is ready to leave.

Next to it lies the violin, a little on the bias, the fourth string broken, the bow abandoned over the neck, like the decomposed limb of an inanimate body. John knows every detail of that instrument, he could even trace its contours with his eyes closed, the same way he knows every detail of him.

There is a subtle, almost invisible scratch at the level of the soundbox, just like the scar on his left side, under the ribs; the tuck of the two effigies is a faint brushstroke on his shoulder blades, which stretch out like wings eager to feel the rush of the wind; the slight plucking of the E reminds him of his baritone voice - the rumble of the forest in a blizzard - or the way his laughter reverberates in his chest, a cascade of washed-out heather flowers.

The man's back is turned, his sibylline gaze fixed on the building opposite; there is a family gathered around the table in one of the few flats without closed shutters, a pack of playing cards scattered on the wood and a little girl pointing at them in fascination, emitting amused shrieks.

It could have been us, John thinks, with a naturalness that disarms him, because it's not at all difficult for him to imagine Rosie in his arms, her lips parted in a toothless ecstatic smile, a board game abandoned on the desk and...

«The number twenty-four.»

The voice that reaches him is flat, atonal, a placid lake in which John would like to drown. He doesn't ask for an explanation - he's too tired to do that, not after learning that silences are worth a thousand words, not after all those questions that are still waiting to be answered: instead, he just stares at the way his hands are intertwined behind his back, fingers arched as if ready to press the keys of a piano.

Ready to pull the trigger of a gun.

«I was playing Caprice number twenty-four, not five.» A sigh mists the glass window. «The middle tune can mislead the less experienced.»

John can't suppress the instinct to smile - that slightly incredulous, slightly proud smile he's always worn just for him - as his fingers race to loosen the knot on his collar.

«You've always been adept at deciphering people.»

Sherlock shakes his head weakly, the curly stems of black irises falling back on his high forehead.

«Not this time, I'm afraid.»

Suddenly, breathing is like having dozens and dozens of thorns stuck in your lungs. The unspoken words steal both their voices.

John knows what the other is alluding to - how he's aware he's left him to process a loss that never was - but the perverse urge to see the guilt eat him alive from the inside outweighs the urge to hear his apology.

This time, they are not enough.

«So, the time has come. You've decided.»

John's reflection nods, his cheeks streaked with raindrops. It's an image he's secretly grateful for, because it paints an emotion on his face that he can't quite bring himself to express. He's never been good at it, anyway; never as good as Sherlock.

The man asks no further questions, but stands there, motionless, legs trembling, a Laocoon gripped by the snakes of remorse, a marionette whose strings have been cut.

«And Rosie? Will... will I see her again?»

There is no denial to this question, but the tense silence that falls between them is more telling than any answer.

Sherlock's face contorts with bitterness, a parchment lapped by fire, and a silent plea blossoms in his aniseed irises.

«You can't do this to me, John. You can't cut me out of her life!»

«She was never your daughter!»

But it's not true, and John knows it, knows it as soon as those words of rancor spill from his lips: Rosie was the daughter Sherlock could never have or wanted to have, the future he had tried to foreclose on himself, but which caught up with him, and imprisoned him like the sweetest of traps.

The same ones he is so good at setting.

«Why?»

It is a barely audible whisper, almost addressed to himself, a secret that has no reason to be revealed, destroyed like the man before him - a lifeless breath.

For a moment, John is tempted not to answer, to leave him a slave to a never-satisfied question, to a maze of petty phrases, true in their venom and false in their meaning, as everything is true and false at the same time when uttered in a fit of rage - just as he had knelt at the foot of a lying tombstone, a secret spilling from his lips and death in his heart.

Because you turned your back on me, Sherlock, and forced me to watch you die, powerless before a jump into the void, to bury a body that was not your own. Because I cradled you in my arms, and felt the warmth of your blood and the chill of your skin. Because you tried to protect me, but all you did was hurt me. Because you were my first friend, and you will be my last love. Because I wanted to share the weight of the sky on my shoulders with you, but you never allowed it. Because I loved you, and maybe I still do, and yet I can no longer distinguish illusion and disillusionment, dream and reality.

Because I only wanted to be your family, but you didn't want me.

«Because you lied to me. You trampled on my trust, and betrayed it.»

Sherlock's arms fall back along his sides, his chest heaving in a shuddering breath.

«I can't give you what you want, John, not when I've only tried to do the right thing.»

«To appease your ego, or for me?»

«To protect you. Just... just to protect you.»

John shrugs, tentative to decipher what he's feeling right now. It's the answer he'd craved, dreamed of for four long, exhausting years trying to solve the riddle that was Sherlock Holmes, but then why does a burning disappointment crush his insides?

«I don't want your apology.»

«And I do not seek your forgiveness.»

It's a lie, yet another one, a defence mechanism that Sherlock has honed over the years, and yet John can't stop his own heart from skipping a beat: it's a perverse game that he himself started - to see a flash of pain hurt his eyes, to feel the thrill of seeing the man who cheated death defeated - but it was never a level playing field, not with him.

«Sometimes, what appears to be right can be wrong.»

It had been Sherlock himself who had spoken these words, when memories of an unjust war flowed into the labyrinth of John's mind, waters of murky guilt channelling into a maze of mournful memories - memories with no end, no way out, from which, at times, it seemed impossible to escape.

«And if what is right can be wrong at the same time, John, don't you think there is a kernel of truth in the lies too?»

«The lies you choose to believe,» is John's bitter retort - a blame he doesn't know he has turned against himself.

«No one is forcing you to do this, John! It was you who decided to believe in my death, I don't...»

«Stop it! Stop it, Sherlock!"» It's a desperate plea, one of those orders spoken when despondency takes over, when impulse overcomes all reason.

«Why can't you - why won't you - accept your mistakes? Just once, Sherlock... I'm begging you, just once, to let go, with me - you can do it, you can trust me...» the voice breaks into a hesitant question, the gloom of uncertainty hard to swallow.

Sherlock is on the verge of speaking, but something in John's ashen eyes makes him desist. «Why do you dwell on wanting to be a perfect man, when you're nothing but a man? A man who-»

A man I love as the mist cloaks the fields, so John would have liked to continue, in the invisibility of a winter evening, in the silence of the snow that silvers a barren grave, but the words die in his throat, too dangerous in their simplicity, too risky in the ardor they hold.

«I am the measure of all things.»

John shakes his head, bitterness welling up in the lake of his eyes.

«You are the measure of what you want to own, dissect and analyse, Sherlock.»

For a moment, silence descends again. Thunder reverberates in the leaden sky - a question that remains unspoken, for if ignorance is agony, then knowledge is perdition.

«Tell me, Sherlock: have I ever been anything more than a mere trauma to be examined? Than a curious case to keep track of?»

Sherlock's back is still turned to him, but his head is reclined towards the street below, briefly illuminated by the glow of lightning. How did they get to this point - when being distant is both a torment and a blessing? John's hand rests hesitantly on his shoulder, and he can feel the muscles dart under his tense palm, and he can recognize that smell of tobacco and sweat permeating his skin, reminding him of endless journeys spent on the uncomfortable seat of a train...

«Look at me. Please.»

His breath breaks against the back of Sherlock's head: he senses him stiffening, and it would be enough to slide an arm around his waist, his face in the crook of his neck - his lips on his cheek - but it is the fear of rejection that inhibits him.

Another flash of lightning casts a glimpse of light on the almost deserted street, and the squeal of brakes against the asphalt announces the stopping of a taxi in front of 221B Baker Street.

«Why won't you look at me?» John whispers urgently, his heart rattling in his chest like a caged bird, and Sherlock must have sensed it too, turning sharply and trapping his companion's face in the cup of his hands. His fingers are icy, and John almost feels the need to retreat, because that cold contact reminds him of another day, and another bloodless body in his arms... Sherlock slides his fingertips over his lips, the touch trembling, delicate, as if he were caressing the strings of his violin, and then goes up to trace the contours of his eyelids, in a slowness that does not belong to him.

When he begins to speak, their breaths condense into one.

«But I see you, John. I see you in the face of every stranger I scan to paint your features on. I have searched for you in the time that kept me separated from you - and I will search for you in every room of this house, ceaselessly, when you are far away now... for you are all my memories.»

A lone tear rests on Sherlock's index finger, and the man makes their foreheads collide: onyx and quartz collide, shining with tears that have struggled to see the dawn.

«Did you ever love me?»

A faint laugh vibrates in the man's chest - a laugh that tries to blunt the obviousness of the question.

«You're my best friend, John.»

His heart seems to lose a beat. It is with all the courage he has left - or the knowledge that he has nothing left to lose? - that he asks again:

«Have you... have you ever been in love?»

«I've been in love with the theory of love.»

He should be content, John, but man is not an easy animal to please - and even at the risk of being hurt, John decides in that very moment that he wants to cease fearing the truth.

«And now?»

«Now I'm in love with the idea of loving you.»

John closes his eyes tightly, squeezing his eyelids shut until the pain surpasses the one compressing his throat.

It has started raining again.

This time, even on his face.

«What...what does that mean?»

John doesn't need an explanation to understand what the other is telling him, but it animates him with an almost childlike need to be reassured, to be led by the hand through a dark reality he can't cross.

«What went wrong?»
«We. We... didn't work. I didn't work.»

John's hand snaps to grasp his arm, as if it were possible to make him eat those words - which conceal an unease that he can't deal with, a restlessness that rises like the tide, and which, no matter how hard one tries to ignore it, returns with every new moon.

«Don't say that, you mustn't even think it...»

Sherlock shakes his head. «It is, John, and you must accept it. Maybe we were meant for each other until now, and, we simply weren't able to take our chance.»

John nods slowly, and realizes that Sherlock is trying to muster the strength to ask his forgiveness - it's no longer about the lies revealed, but about a love that can never be reciprocated.

«You have nothing to apologize for,» he inhales deeply, «because as you are, from the first day I got to know you in your imperfect facets, I...» I love you, he wants to whisper to him, but cowardice takes over, and maybe... maybe Sherlock doesn't need to hear it. «If I have to let you go, here...»

...may I at least see you again in my dreams.

Sherlock tilts his head, like a curious cat in an eternal wait. John walks away some more, towards the suitcases set aside on the threshold of the living room.

«As much as I desire... as much as I desire you, you know I can't stay.»

A bitter smile outlines the other man's lips, but there is no sign of unexpected surprise: the pain in John's chest does not cease to deepen.

«I'll come back,» he adds impulsively, not thinking about how easy it is to make a promise, let alone break it. «One day, I'll come back to you.»

Sherlock is smiling openly now, the absurdity of that future impossible to ignore.

«One day, you'll find another pair of eyes to reflect yourself in, another mouth you'll long to kiss, another laugh you'll fall in love with.» Sherlock shakes his head weakly, and walks over to John, arms spread wide as if he intends to hug him.

He doesn't.

«One day,» he lays a hand on his shoulder, «one day you won't remember the exact shade of my eyes, or the sound of my laugh...»

Quickly, so quickly that John thinks he has imagined it, Sherlock gives him a kiss on the temple, then retreats back to the window. Just as before, he turns his back on him.

«One day, you'll forget you ever fell in love with me.»

John's luggage holds the weight of his heart, sinking with every step he takes - with every step that leads him away from Sherlock. The taxi awaits him like a sentence he cannot escape; the door slams behind him, breaking whatever ties still held him to 221B.

Once inside the car, John looks up at what has been his home for longer than he could ever have imagined. He lingers a moment, another, and another after that - finally, he waves to the driver to leave.

The curtains behind the window remain drawn.


"So, don't pretend that I'm the instigator

You were the one, but you're born to say goodbye

Kissed me half a decade later

That same perfume, those same sad eyes"


Notes:

Hello readers! It's been a long time since I've been able to write something out of the blue, and this one-shot has been a real breath of fresh air: I started sketching it towards the end of summer, but then, due to my new commitment as a beta reader and the beginning of school, I had to abandon it temporarily, picking it up again only in the last week.

As I've always said, I find it very difficult to approach characters from films or TV shows, so this was more of a two-pronged experiment - with the challenge of also using the present tense, which I fell in love with thanks to Erin Morgenstern's masterpieces.

"A study in opposites" was born from reading a headcanon about Ace!Sherlock Holmes, and therefore deals with the theme of asexuality, in generic reference to its spectrum; not having "direct experience" of the subject, I preferred to insert it in an almost implicit way, just to avoid hurting the sensibilities of interested and not - if I should have "misfired", I humbly ask for forgiveness and invite constructive corrections. It's a sort of what if?, imagining that John has not accepted so easily Sherlock's "betrayal", although, deep down, he understands the reasons... but, on the other hand, a torn heart is not willing to listen to reason.

Hoping not to have created an excessively pathetic or redundant atmosphere, thanks to all those who have dedicated some time to this story of mine!

N.B.:
- The excerpts at the end and beginning of the text are taken from the song "Break My Heart Again" by Finneas - an artist I only recently discovered, but who won me over immediately.

- The names of the flowers and/or fruits used are related to their meanings according to "The Language and Sentiment of Flowers Dictionary", by James D. McCabe: Columbine/Aquilegia - Abandonment; Lobelia - Malevolence; Raspberry - Remorse.