A/N: So yes it's been ages but I promise, even though it will take me eons, I really do mean to finish this fic. All I can do is lavish appreciation on those of you that still stick around to read it, and keep writing it. It really means a lot to have people following the story so I can be reminded that some readers are actually interested in it. Thanks guys!
At least ten pills lay heaped on his hand. John stared at the pile for a long time.
It was astounding how clear everything was now.
The press couldn't hound him, Moriarty couldn't touch him, the past couldn't pain him. Sherlock wouldn't be alone.
That was the best reason to do it. If it was only a way to escape his misery, he might feel that this course of action was too cowardly, but the image of his friend's lonely tombstone told him that what he did was alright.
He allowed himself to continue referring to Sherlock as his friend, even if he hadn't been much of one in return. It was too hard, impossible, to think of the detective of just that – a detective, a flatshare, a colleague, a genius – and nothing more.
It made him sick to think how dependent he had become on someone who couldn't possibly have felt so strongly in return, but the pills in his hands could cure that nausea so he let himself dwell in his thoughts a while longer.
It was liberating, in the way that it was healing to rebreak bones to set them properly, to free his mind from the tightrope sanity it'd been clinging to. He could wonder how Molly was feeling, and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft, Harry and his father. He could think about how they'd feel after, when all the tabloids would screech about the second suicide at 221B. And it didn't matter that he couldn't fix it, any of it, because he would finally have relief from the ever-present burden of a doctor to 'make it better.'
Resting in peace seemed like an easy enough thing to do.
His phone buzzed. Startled, his hand jerked and scattered chalky tablets across the floor. He didn't get up to check it, thinking instead of Sherlock's phone.
"That's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?" Sherlock had said, so wry and bitter. Shouldn't he leave one then? Hadn't he always thought himself to be more 'people' than Sherlock? John thought wildly of Molly for a moment but discarded the idea. The newspeople would be the only ones to profit from something like that.
But there. If he had nothing left to do or say, then there was nothing stopping him.
He poured more pills into his cupped palm, remembering how terribly separated he had felt days ago, as if six feet of dirt was an impossible distance too far to travel. Now in his imaginings, Sherlock's tombstone had a companion and his grave no longer seemed so lonely.
Of course, he had only his imagination to tell him what Sherlock's grave looked like since he'd never gotten the chance to say his goodbyes.
If ever his time was his own, it was today. With no schedule to keep, John decided it was time to take one last detour.
Carefully, he returned the tablets to their bottle. Instinct told him to hide it, but no one would be in the flat to find it and draw conclusions and deliver roaring lectures about life and safety and responsibility.
He left the bottle standing on the table in the center of the flat. No one could intervene anymore.
"Your services are no longer required," Jim said into his phone. "No, that is not a veiled threat. A threat sounds like me telling you I will turn you into shoes if you don't stop talking right now."
The silence was satisfying. He hung up with a smirk. Amid all the salivatingly sweet press surrounding him these days, it was good to be reminded that he could still inspire bone-quivering fear. The look on John Watson's face outside St. Bart's, that had been lovely. He didn't have to be a genius – although, of course, he was – to see the man reliving the events of the night at the pool. None of the boring people in the crowd could see it though, the horror that he only barely managed to hold back.
Jim was actually a bit surprised at how strong his reaction had been. That night, Johnny had kept it clamped down, stiff upper lip, all that. His hands had been chained behind him when Jim finally got to him in one of the locker rooms. Even with the restraints, Jim's men gave him space; he'd apparently landed some good punches before they'd managed to subdue him with the tasers. Jim had no such compunctions. He'd specified that there be no visible marks, and he had to verify that his directions had been followed.
Circling around the trussed up doctor, Jim couldn't see anything, and really, it hardly mattered since the parka would be covering so much. It was the principle of the thing, though, quality control. He swooped his head in, nearly touching noses with his captive, who, to his credit, only jerked back with a sharp intake of breath, rather than sobbing in fear as most of the others had done.
"I don't know what he sees in you," Jim said coldly. "Of course, give it time, there won't be much left too see."
With the sing song back in his voice, Jim had straightened and turned away, so he couldn't see John's reaction. It was so simple to picture it though, all these people, so similar. The confusion, the outrage, the repulsion. Panic always won out in the end though. He could hear John's breathing become more heavy as the third stage set in and the criminal allowed himself a triumphant sneer.
But then the chuckles started.
"That's what this is about? Deluded fanboy, eh? Sherlock was right, the first thing he said about you."
Jim rounded on his, shouting, "Sherlock doesn't know anything about me!"
He'd been right, the shock on Sherlock's face later had been perfectly clear. At the time, though, he had grabbed the army doctor's shoulder and dug his fingers in, demanding, "What did he say? What does he know about me?"
John's face went white from the pain in his weak shoulder. Jim released him and wiped his hand off on the man's sandy hair.
"He doesn't know anything," he reaffirmed quietly. Raising his voice, he strolled from the room. "Gentlemen, help Dr. Watson into his costume for the evening, won't you?"
That night, as the hours stretched on and Jim crooned in the ear of his captive, he had reflected on what separated him from the man who the whole show was for. Though Sherlock Holmes might be able to paint a stranger's life in broad strokes, it was in specificity that one could spot the difference between a charlatan and a true psychic. Jim had done his research.
Sherlock could tell you that you'd been in a war, that you didn't get along with your family. Jim could tell you about that time in the field that explosions had shook the ground so much that your hand slipped and you'd sliced open the man you'd been trying to save, or about how your father had a mean streak when you were younger and even though the cigarette burns had faded, you still knew exactly where the scars were.
He'd explained to John his role in the evening's performance, and what would happen if he didn't play along. How it'd be just like what happened to his buddy Cartwright when that IED killed him, but actually better, since John was at the center of the explosion and would be completely and immediately torn apart, not left waiting while shrapnel ate through his face.
Crackling through to his side of the radio was only a furious silence, markedly stiller and stronger than the silence of fear that he was familiar with. But then Sherlock had come and things became much more interesting and Jim hadn't wasted any more time thinking about the boring pet. Now that he had broken his favorite toy, Jim was a tiny bit relieved that John Watson wasn't quite as boring as he looked.
The business with his Sherlock double floating around had been a dull letdown of course. He'd sent the man to follow the doctor whenever he left 221B and hadn't managed a single reaction. Jim wasn't sure what exact meaning he could pull from that – could this mean perhaps that John had good reason to cover up any reference to his flatmate or had he simply gone mad enough to disregard the occurrences as ghost sightings? Jim also wasn't sure which explanation would please him more. Either way, it had been time to call his man off and move on to his more active plan of attack.
Extraordinarily good timing, he congratulated himself, as, minutes later, he climbed into his chauffeured car. His men had informed him that John Watson had left his flat and it was clear that the game was now on.