"Put him in the chair. Careful now-"
John heard, though muffled, as the black veil that had encompassed his vision gave way to reveal warped shapes and sounds whirling through the room. He blinked methodically to rid his vision of the neon spots bursting and popping in front of his face as a shoulder slid out from underneath his arm pit. Grunting, he felt a hand plant itself firmly on his chest and push him into the back of a ridiculous velvet chair.
"-absolutely not, don't be absurd. He's regaining consciousness anyway. John - John, are you alright?" Came the inquiry as a hand grasped his shoulder and shook it lightly. "Certainly not like you to faint."
"Mycroft."John acknowledged internally, though why he was in the presence of Mycroft Holmes was completely outside the realm of his current understanding.
"Are you feeling nauseous, John?" Mycroft asked as the timbre of his voice hit John like a can of nails. "Get the water, Sherlock."
Sherlock? Why would he even play...?
And like the launching of a snow globe into a cement wall, John felt the realization burst and shatter into a thousand shards of glass, all piercing through him at break-neck speeds. Eyes flashing open, he keeled forward from the chair and spun around, eyes landing dizzily on the glossy, Gothic curls and sinister black wool of a figure standing behind the chair.
Sherlock. In all his alabaster, shadowed glory.
"No." John said again; though this time it was deplete of any kind of vulnerability, and dangerously full of a new kind of red-light fury. "No, no- I won't fucking believe this! Mycroft, what the hell-"
"John-" Mycroft began, but was abruptly cut off mid-sentence.
"It was all a trick, John. It was deception - a con, a sham, whatever you want to call it, but before you decide anything, you must know that it was all absolutely necessary." Came the cool baritone of Sherlock's voice, and John felt his face would suffer third-degree burns from the titanium-burn of Sherlock's scrutiny. John glanced at Mycroft, only to find his head held high in resolution and his lips thinned in self-defense as John realized that Mycroft had known about whatever "this" sick charade was the entire time.
Eight whole months, and Mycroft Holmes watched from a distance as he fell apart in every way possible - watched him as he struggled to get out of bed and find new reasons to breathe while simultaneously fighting the urge not to succumb to every psychosomatic ailment on the planet. Eight months of crumbling, rebuilding, crumbling all over again- a hundred misplaced emotions a day, followed by the terrifying nightly process of second-guessing everything that he and Sherlock had built during that perfect and maddening time they spent together.
Who had known? Who the fuck else had known?
And then John pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, hissed in anger, and turned to make his way out the door.
"John, I can assure you that what Sherlock said is tr-"
"Sherlock!" John bellowed, turning around to face him with an accusing pointer finger. "...is dead. He died eight months ago, so I don't know who that is, but that is not Sherlock." He barked, half-heartedly waving at Sherlock as the detective remained frozen. "Do not speak to me about Sherlock Holmes again." John seethed, reaching for the door handle as Sherlock abruptly strode forward, slammed the door shut from behind and planted himself directly in front of John.
"John." Sherlock spoke, verging on irritation, capturing John's gaze in an iron hold. His eyes were tired and shadowed with the trials of survival, but John couldn't find it within himself to tear his eyes away from the ever-living, breathing color of Sherlock's irises. John knew Sherlock could crawl half-dead through all nine circles of hell and that eye color would still flare with the particles of a solar, crystallized life-force.
It was wrong. So critically wrong to the very core and John was well beyond the fury.
They had been here before. They had done this before, this same dance - once upon a time in the beginning; a drugs bust in the flat, when John had first discovered Sherlock's manic flirtation with cocaine (and God knew what else.) Lestrade was there -Donovan and Anderson as well, and Sherlock had visually plead with John to shut up about the drugs, because John didn't yet know Sherlock to be the shades of dark that he really was.
But that was millenniums and ago. That was before-
But the silver-mint nebula of Sherlock's irises along with the clenching topography of his jaw and the Cupid's bow on his Bottacelli mouth was indescribably accurate and striking and so stupidly physical in front of his face - Sherlock. Always, always crowding every available inch of space that John could possibly call his own. He used to accept it- maybe encouraged it, and might have even loved it in the most secret of ways. But not now, not after the damage.
"I can't accept this." John ground through clenched teeth, and Sherlock's eyes flashed with the radiation of a super nova. "I won't."
"You see but you do not observe, and you have to observe, John." Sherlock spoke, willing John to understand and believe and deduce. But John didn't want to deduce, he had made his peace with deductions. Shifting his midnight orbs away from the magnetic authority of Sherlock's scrutiny, John reached behind himself and grappled shakily for the door handle.
John stepped back, shaking his head as Sherlock slowly removed his hand from the door and tracked John's movements with a predatory, feline watch.
"Fuck you." Whispered John, eyes welling red as he reached for the door handle. "Fuck you, Sherlock."
"John, don't-" Mycroft drawled, but the harsh click of a door lock accented the sub-arctic silence, and Mycroft frowned as Sherlock flexed his hand, lit a cigarette, and fell glacially quiet. A painful minute of suspension passed before Sherlock visibly drew within himself again, statuesque and collected against the play-like theatrics of a morbidly-impossible resurrection.
"Surely you can see now that I wasn't exaggerating." Mycroft commented lowly, grimacing as Sherlock's response came in the form of a heavy, wounded exhalation of smoke into the small office. Sitting down at his mahogany desk, Mycroft began exhaustively flipping through several stacks of legal documents."He needs time, Sherlock."
"John will need more than time." Sherlock spat sarcastically, mouth molding around the cigarette. "He'll need sentiment. A hand-written apology or a ridiculous declaration of love, and even then it won't be enou-"
"I don't think you understand the depth of his grief, Sherlock." Mycroft interrupted, snapping a folder onto the desk for impact as an unapologetic silence pierced the room. "I know it was difficult for you, but you can't understand the pain of loss in the way that he-" He began, though flinching sharply as Sherlock slammed his palm on the desk and rounded on him.
"HE wasn't the only one who-" Sherlock barked, but aborted his sentence as Mycroft met him with a fierce and highly-unimpressed expression.
"John may have been countries out of your reach, Sherlock, but he was still accessible to you. For all intents and purposes, you were in a place that John could never reach. You don't have to agree, but at least be realistic about that kind of finality."
"I won't apologize." Sherlock commented with a fiery resolution. "If he expects me to confess to any kind of guilt for what I did, I'm afraid he will be sorely disappointed."
"No one expects you to apologize, Sherlock, but you shouldn't be so aggressive." Mycroft commented as he ran a pen across the paper he was reading. "John's grief is something that you will not -no, cannot know with deductions or data and experiments. I suggest you accept that gracefully before you say the wrong thing. Give him time." Mycroft emphasized the last word, an indication to Sherlock that he was entirely done speaking about this.
"What am I supposed to do until then?" Sherlock asked, eyes narrowing in agitation as he blew another round of smoke into the air.
"You wait. Just as he has."
Taking the stairs two at a time, John barreled down to the first floor and through the living room, cursing quietly to himself all the way.
"Dr. Watson?" Came the voice of Anthea, her head snapping up from the Blackberry as he whirled past her and slammed the front door with enough force to rattle the windows. Fumbling through his pockets, he tore Mycroft's borrowed phone out and began dialing clumsily as his breath came in short, white puffs of fog in the air.
"John?" Came the muffled voice of Lestrade after the fifth ring. "What the hell-"
"How long have you known?" He demanded breathlessly, and it was all he could do to refrain from littering his sentences with a few screaming curse words.
"Come again?"
"About Sherlock. How long have you known?"
And then the other end of the line was filled with a white static hiatus, and John laughed bitterly to himself. "That long, huh? Jesus Christ."
"...where are you, John?"
"Doesn't matter. All that bloody matters is why you didn't tell me Sherlock was alive, and there better be an amazing fucking explanation for this one, Greg."
"Trust me, mate, there is. You don't even-" He stopped then, and John found himself slowing in pace to wait for the ending. "Why don't we go out for a drink? This'll be long, John, and you'll need time with this one. This isn't...it's not easy."
John heard the hesitancy in his voice and berated his heart rate to slacken to a non-fatal pulse. It might have been the arctic night air, but John felt his anger steaming out through his pores, making room for the most overwhelming and all-consuming flood of relief that John had ever had the privilege of despising. He would think on it later, but for now all that he could possibly hear over the ringing in his ears was the panicked prayer of: "Sherlock was alive. Sherlock is alive. Sherlock. Is. Alive."
Glancing at his watch, John winced around the headlights of a car passing by and crossed the street.
"It's late, Greg."
"I know, but I don't imagine you'll be getting a lot of sleep tonight. Don't imagine I will be either, to be honest, now that that bastard's come back."
"Come back?" John huffed breathlessly, halting the current topic of conversation onto a new trail; which was utterly pointless considering the thousands of trails that he wanted - no, needed to explore as soon as humanly possible.
"I'll explain later. How soon can you meet?"
"Don't know, I just left Mycroft's. I'm walking home. Don't ask."
"Wouldn't dream of it. I'll send a car, just stay where you are."
"I don't know where I am." John replied, not acknowledging the double meaning in that statement.
"I'll find you."