"Another mysterious death has captured the attention of the Luxembourg City police force"
"The circumstances of the apparent suicide of famed detective Sherlock Holmes have been revealed and finitely confirmed."
"After much intense investigating the Yard has announced Richard Brook to be an alias for the infamous crime leader James Moriarty"
"A poisoning in Parliament has left questions in the minds of many in Scotland Yard"
"A strange and unfortunate car crash left tow well known Italian businessmen dead on site"
John sighed and turned off the telly, reaching for the morning's paper after a long drawl from his cuppa.
AN INVESTIGATION LEAVES INSPECTOR LESTRADE OF SCOTLAND YARD BAFFLED
FAMOUS FRENCH BANKER FOUND DEAD IN HIS HOME STUDY
ANONYMOUS TIP LEADS SWEEDISH FORCES TO WELL HIDEN CRIME RING IN THE ALPS
BULGARIA BUILDS NEW PRISON TO ACCOMADATE GROWING AMOUNT OF PRISONERS
WE BELIEVE IN YOU
A HEARTWARMING SCENE UNFOLDS IN THE CENTER OF LONDON WITH A CANDLELIGHT VIGIL TO A FALLEN HERO
John scoffed, "Hero. If he were to hear you call him that."
Looking down into his cup of tea, John let his mind wonder back to a better time. An easier time. A time with him.
John sighed and shook the memories from his head, lifting the warm cuppa to his lips for another drink he muttered, "Don't you know heroes don't exist." He downed the rest of the brown liquid from his mug and held it in his mouth a moment as he lowered the cup back down to his lap, letting the slight bitterness mull around on his taste buds and comfort them, before swallowing it down thickly. Letting out a gasp and a small uneasy chuckle, John stood from his seat, "And even if there were, he wouldn't be one of them."
He made his way to the sink and set the cup to the side for washing. Sherlock was a hero. Even if the git would never admit it himself.
His mind again wondered to the more recent events.
He still did not really know what had caused Sherlock to make the fall, but he had a pretty good hypothesis once a certain familiar handy man had turned up on the front doors of Scotland Yard, bloody and very much dead. A henchman for Moriarty no doubt. Killed in the process of confessing to a captor unknown.
John's mind flashed back to that day so easily. That man had been with Mrs. Hudson. So close. Too close. It would have been a breeze to eliminate her right there. But he hadn't, and Mrs. Hudson was still very much alive and kicking today.
John's jaw clenched in the thought. He was a threat. OBVIOUS! Moriarty had used him as leverage to get Sherlock to jump.
"I'm a fake"
The strangled words resounded in his ears. He did not believe them then, he did not believe them now. Time had made no change to his resolve. Three years it took. Three years of searching, three years of struggling, three years of utter silence, three years without peace.
Three years to convince the bloody stupid press that Sherlock was real. Three years to convince himself he could go on without him.
And he had.
After three long years, he had found the right answers. He had overcome the pain. He had turned the press. Now one call rang in his head.
Sherlock, time to make good on that miracle.
The warm metal turned slowly cold, protesting against the loss of a warm body rest on.
John watched, captivated by the glimmer, as it swayed with the slight ruffling of the wind.
Memories good and bad commanded his attention, blazing through his head. Some receded faintly to the back, while the more painful ones took to the forefront of his revelry. John cringed, and he felt the phantom pain return to his leg. It had been harder to fight off the pain lately.
John sighed and rubbed at his leg, it was bitter times like this that he wished his brain was more like a hard drive and he could just delete unwanted information, unwanted memories, from it.
For a moment he entertained the idea of trying to create a mind shack again.
Definitely not a palace, nothing close to that. His mind wasn't that extravagant, but a shack would work just fine. Nothing too big, nothing you could get lost in. Just big enough for the important things.
He would have a whole room for Sherlock.
John shook his head a bit again, clearing it a bit before he approached the black stone in front of him.
"I know you're out there, Sherlock. At the forefront of all this madness. Only you could be. The genius you are. Coming up with clever ways to kill people."
He shuffled on his feet, looking around discreetly.
"Ugh, I hope no one heard that." He muttered warily, taking one final sweep of the sunlight field. His focus rested once again on that ebony mirror that resembled his friend so perfectly. Hard, cold, mysterious, alluring, revealing everything in the one who stood in front of it. Everything that had described Sherlock.
"Look, I know you don't need them. You've done such a good job on your own already. But, I want you to have them anyway. Just so I feel like I'm with you, keeping you from, well from, from... being dead."
John's voice turned to a hushed whisper of breath. Gruffly trying to clear his throat, he swallowed and stepped forward resolutely.
Ceremoniously he laid the old chain over the cold stone, caressing the tags that defined him one last time.
"I asked for a miracle, Sherlock. I know I did. But if I know one thing for certain in this crazy world, it's that you can make the impossible seem like child's play. The time is right, Sherlock. Time to stop being dead."
A/N: I've never done an author's note before. How exciting!
Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I promise Sherlock will finitely make his appearance in the next one.
Please review!
( P.S. I own nothing of BBC Sherlock. Only the angst in my heart that flows onto the page. That is mine.)