The dying of the light
A/N I was lying in bed last week after having read a bunch of very angsty Sherlock fics, and trying to sleep when John Watson decided he wanted to die. So, at nearly 2 AM I switched the light on, grabbed my notepad from my desk and yawning while I tried not to ponder how I was going to function at work the following day, I wrote this down.
Warning: suicide attempt and some graphic depiction of violence. And a lot of angst.
The metal was cold against his lips. It tasted like metal and dust as it settled on his tongue. Slowly he bit the barrel down to hold it more firmly into place, in spite of knowing it would not slip. His hand was much too steady - his whole body and mind had been steadier, sharper in the past three days than in the whole of the seven weeks since it had happened. His fingers clutched the grip tighter, bruisingly, and John squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to think about it. But the moment his eyelids dropped he saw it with the same perfect clarity he had in every single waking moment.
And he almost pulled the trigger there and then. If only to stop himself from seeing the memory. Him falling through the air over and over and over again, his broken voice talking through the speaker of John's mobile phone. And lying.
After all they had been through together.
After all, the last conversation he had had with Sherlock had been a poor attempt to make him believe he had been nothing but a fraud. And the desperation which had laced Sherlock's voice had been burned on the back of John's skull, etched into every thought he had had since that morning. It made John's breaths turn into something leaden inside his chest and his hand shook making the barrel of the handgun rattle against his teeth.
He snapped his jaw shut around the weapon, swallowing the saliva which had gathered in his mouth in spite of the dryness of his throat while his finger lingered on the trigger. It had been seven weeks since he had last spoken with Sherlock, since he had heard his... no, he couldn't, he still couldn't make himself think the word, never mind he had left a note of his own.
A farewell.
His lips quivered around the barrel. Unlike Sherlock's, his was a simple sheet of white paper left it in the middle of the kitchen table, a corner safely tucked under Sherlock's microscope to make sure it would not be moved by a draught. Half a page of carefully constructed sentences. Simple and to point. Assurances that this was no one's fault, that they should not blame themselves – after all it had been a long time brewing, way before he had met Sherlock, before he had been given a reason to be alive and now, now John had come full circle back to the starting point. The finish line.
He stared at the bathroom tiles letting his mind drift through the memory of the past three days, washing all the dishes, folding his clothes, getting rid of the perishables in the fridge – and all the body parts which Sherlock had left, never to be experimented upon... His hand shook as his breath clutched somewhere midway up his windpipe and he exhaled through his nose. He had done every chore he had been able to think of, throwing away the garbage, making sure the gas was not on. Almost as if were going away for a holiday, John had made sure no one would have to deal with the chaos which would have been left in his wake.
That no one would have to clean behind him. Which was why John was balancing on the edge of the tub, his handgun scratching the roof of his mouth. It would be easier to get rid of the stains, to wipe away any sign John had ever been there.
Like he had been wiped away.
In the span of a single day Sherlock's entire life had been erased, twisted into something grotesque, until there had been nothing left but Sherlock himself. And before those twenty-four hours had been done with, he had been gone too. Dead.
He was dead. Sherlock had killed himself. And John really wished he could scream – he wished he had the energy to rage, rage against all that, to curl his fingers into fists and hit the white tiles that lined the wall in front of him until his knuckles bled. But there was nothing left in him. Just a dull sense of emptiness, like his insides had been scrubbed out and his body had become a bleached out sack of flesh and bone which still persisted in living. In spite of him being dead already.
He had died seven weeks before, there on the pavement in front of 's when his fingers had curled around Sherlock's wrist and there had been nothing. There had been nothing, nothing...
John's eyes fluttered closed and he felt the emptiness claw at him almost viciously, stealing away his breath. It was... it was the worst of all his memories. Sand and blood and severed limbs, explosions and screams and soldiers crying out for their mothers, it all paled in comparison to those brief few moments John had held Sherlock's lifeless wrist. After he had fallen, coat billowing as gravity had pulled him down, down until he had hit the pavement. And John, he had been helpless, he had been there and he had been helpless while the most important person in his life had flown down to his death robbing him everything in the blink of an eye.
Before, he had been almost dead himself – before Mike had introduced him to the most infuriating and peculiar man he had ever men, before he had run through London chasing a cabbie, before he had killed a man to protect him, before his life had suddenly begun making sense again. He had been almost dead before, edging closer to the very place he was now, to the rim of a tub pressing uncomfortably against his buttocks while his mouth was filled with the metallic taste of the gun he was holding between his lips - while a bullet sat lodged inside, ready to be fired through his palate and tear through bone and brain matter only to break free at the back of his skull.
Before Sherlock, he had been dragging ever closer to this exact scenario for weeks, months, while Ella had suggested blogging and countless pointless activities that had been as dull as the pain surrounding the gaping hole which had been John for long, too long. The gaping hole Sherlock had somehow managed to fill with more than just danger and adrenaline – which he had filled with life, with purpose. He had made John feel necessary. And in the shortest of times Sherlock had become the very centre of his universe, the one point which had pulled like gravity every other aspect of John's life.
But he was gone now. Vanished, cold body buried in a closed casket. And the thought of that brilliant mind just being gone, of all his quirks, all his idiosyncrasies having simply been wiped away from the world along with everything else – along with John – was too much.
It was too much. It was wrong. It was... it was Moriarty winning, destroying Sherlock. And John had no strength to rage even though he should. He should he pissed off because that... that... all words fell short of describing Jim Moriarty. He had single-handedly taken away everything from John. Everything. Even the vengeance which his anger had demanded once the notion of Sherlock being dead had finally settled inside him. The notion that he would never see him grin almost childishly, or frown in annoyance, that he would never hear him calling someone an idiot. That he would never call him an idiot again. That John would not hear him play his violin at the oddest hours of the day or the night. That he would not watch him deduce the impossible from a crime scene. That he was gone. Gone. And nothing, no amount of raging, pleading, of drinking himself into a stupor would bring him back. Sherlock was dead and John was dead too.
He only needed his body to catch up.
John exhaled, feeling the smooth metal of the trigger under his finger and he willed the joint to move. A heartbeat and then it would all be gone. All the pain, all the horrible emptiness inside him. It would be gone and John would be forgotten. Slowly, his presence would fade from the memory of those who had been close enough to care. They would bury him in a closed casket and he would be lowered six feet under the ground - like Sherlock had been. And Mrs. Hudson would no doubt cry, but John couldn't find it in him to feel any remorse. No, they would cry, because that was what people did at funerals. And then weeks would pass, and months, and years and bit by bit John would vanish.
And life would go on.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Just pull the trigger, John. He exhaled through his nose and willed his muscles to move. To pull the joint inward, towards his palm. To be gone. His hand shook and he squeezed his eyes, feeling every muscle in his arm tense, but his index wouldn't move. The tremor travelled upwards into his shoulder and chest and as he kept breathing shallowly thorugh his nose his finger would not budge. Would not move.
Suddenly he exhaled through his mouth and his hand fell limply against his thigh, pulling away the gun. He couldn't do it. He slid down the side of the tub curling around his knees as a sob tore out of his mouth. He couldn't do it. He couldn't bloody do it. His body shook as he dropped the gun, clutching his fingers around his shins. He couldn't do it. After all he had been through John couldn't. Because there, in the smallest corner of his blank mind there was a part of him that wanted to live. That could not accept the utter defeat of having everything torn away from him, of disappearing like a coward. And John couldn't do it. He was denied even this peace. His throat was raw as another dry sob tore out his mouth and it was wrong, it was unfair. All was unfair. Why couldn't he be given at least this way out? Why? He pressed his forehead against his knees so hard it hurt while his chest kept heaving in sobs. John hated the world, hated Jim Moriarty. Hated Sherlock for being gone.
Why did you have to die?
Only he could never hate him. No couldn't. It was the farthest from what clawed inside his aching chest. From what pulled him apart with every moment, with every shade of memory which flickered against the back of his eyelids. With every nightmare – with every dream where Sherlock was still there. His nails dug into his shins and he wanted this pain gone, he wanted to rip his chest open and let it drain, pooling at his feet. He wanted to pick the gun and put a bullet through his brain. But he couldn't. Pain was all he had been left with and like the memories of Sherlock it would not go.
There was no release for him. No escape.
Just the empty sound of his sobs echoing from the bathroom walls.
Chapter title taken from "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas