Disclaimer: I own nothing having to do with the BBC nor the Sherlock series.
I feel hollower now than ever before. They saved me from the death that bullet wound promised me, but days later, as I wait for the release forms to go through so that I can be invalidated home, I wonder if they should have just let me die; if that would have been better.
I have nothing to go back to. I don't know how to be anything other than what it seems I've always been. I won't even be able to stay in London, not without Harry's help. God knows she won't be giving it. I don't think they even called her when I was on my deathbed. If they did, they probably didn't reach her. There's too much going on in her life for her to be worried about mine.
The paperwork gets pushed through and I'm on my way. They've set me up with an advance so that I can rent a little place or stay at a hotel for a few weeks until I work out what I'm going to do. They've insisted I see a therapist. I'm back to regular visits with Ella. It's like nothing's change even though I know everything has.
She says the limp is false, all in my head, and I know she's right. Knowing doesn't make it stop though. Knowing makes it worse. As if I don't have enough issues already, I get to add limping around with a cane to the top of the pile and know that I don't even have a real reason to be doing so. Interestingly enough, people speak less to me now. I've decided it has to be the limp. Sure, little kids stare, but that I can handle. It's their parents—their mother's—pitying gazes and sympathetic words that set me over.
I get by. The first—and only—visit with Harry had been something I could have lived without. She had been drinking, as usual. She told me that she and Clara are officially done for. I've her old phone. Although, old's not really the word for it. It's too new for me. The engraving feels odd, if and when I make calls or send texts. As I run my fingers over it, I think that it could be worse. Sure, there's nothing here for me now, but that's only because there was nothing to leave behind before. I'm better alone. I'm better without anyone to let down.
I've got to get a job. I can't carry on like this, staring down at my trusty old Browning and knowing it would do the job if I had the guts. I've a blank screen and a blinking curser glaring at me. What is this life? Not one. What is this not-life? I survived a shot when so many others did not. I was saved from the pull of death, just barely. What have I done to prove it was worth it? Nothing.
It's a job or a bullet. I need something. I know I need something. With nowhere to be, I wonder if ought to be anywhere. Back in Afghanistan I was needed—what good is going to a damn therapist if I can figure this all out on my own?
I see Mike sitting on that bench as I walk by. I don't want to speak to him. I don't want to catch-up. I don't want him to ask me what I've been doing since I got back, because the truthful answer to that I find to be a shameful one. I just want to keep walking—limping—by and living my life. Some life it is.
Mike recognises me; of course he recognises me. He calls out my name and I pretend not to hear him, hoping he'll leave off and think I must not be whom he thought I was. No such luck. He calls out again and the nice, polite solider in me forces me to stop and turn towards him.
We exchange hellos; his self-deprecating, just like the Mike I remember. And, again, just like the Mike I remember, he jumps straight in with the questions that most would consider rude to ask at all, let alone so directly and immediately in a conversation with someone he or she hardly knows anymore. A horridly angry, timorous voice speaks up and I let it.
"I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at. What happened?" he asks, all gall and no glitter.
"I got shot," I say, a little grimace stretching the corners of my mouth before I can bury it.
Soon, he's suggested we get a coffee from the cart vendor a little ways down the path and sit down for a chat. That same ornery, capricious part of me that just wants to turn its back on the whole world in this moment considers telling him I've somewhere I have to be. The honest gentleman in me smiles and accepts his offer.
We speak a bit more and, as I tell Mike—speaking volumes about myself that he clearly cannot read—that I am not suited to be anyone's flatmate, he gives me a funny look and an "I know something you don't know" chuckle. Before I know it, he's whisked me off to one of the labs on an upper story at St Bart's and I've laid eyes ears and soul on what I know is my last hope at a real, true, honest-to-God life worth living: Sherlock Holmes.