Cape of Ivory, Kisses of Forgiveness

Epilogue

'John and Sherlock'

John opened his eyes.

It was like a spontaneous reawakening, just a sudden transition from deep sleep to complete awareness. His mind was blank for a while, not really thinking, but just staring at the high domed ceiling without wondering where he was or who he was.

Like his waking up, the ignorant bubble popped and he blinked his eyes, then turned his head and sat up. It took him three seconds to see that he was alone, naked and not in Baker Street. He felt exposed, even if he was under a thin blanket that spread across the wide bed. He looked around the room and found it familiar yet very foreign.

He thought back. He remembered his name and he remembered falling, meeting Sherlock, and getting kidnapped—

He jerked in his bed, remembering it was his own in the Blue Palace. John sprang up and lunged for a flying robe and was comforted that his wings were not present on his back. He stopped before a mirror and looked at his shoulder and side.

The scars were still there, tracing where the black poisonous lines had been, but it looked more like a jellyfish sting than a stab and poison wound. He traced his fingers delicately along one of the thicker scars and whistled. He pulled on a robe over his head and felt better with his body covered.

He looked around his room. Wide, tall and it looked like a cathedral. Light filtered in through the thin membrane of the ceiling and lit up the room with a soft glow. The bed was wide with thin blankets and as soft as a cloud, though it wasn't on a frame like the human's were. It just lay on the floor but it was softer than any human material.

He pushed open the doors and hurried along the bright corridor, which was open to the sky. There were open arches as well there for Angels to take off as well without having to take off without a fall or a running start.

The Palace was beautiful. It was built on a stabilized cloud that Angels had firmed with their minds and magic. It was towering, open, painted with mosaics and portraits of the Royal family. He ran lightly down the main corridor to the dining hall and was met with his mother, Regina Amoris.

"Merci!" She yelped and ran to him and threw her thin, pale arms around his neck. He blushed and diverted his eyes when she ran to him—ahem, revealing, remember—but hugged her back.

"I'm so happy to see you awake!" The Queen said in the Angel language. The words sent a chill down his spine. How long had he been sleeping?

"Mother?" he said, gripping her arms and looking in her beautiful blue eyes. Sharper in color than his, but wide and innocent but experienced with almost two thousand years of memories behind them. "How long have I been sleeping? Mother, please!"

She put her hand on his cheek and said, "Oh, Merci, almost three years. You were so heavily poisoned that it took so long to drain your body of it, but when you had healed you just didn't wake up. We tried everything, but nothing could awaken you."

John knew why. Sherlock hadn't been there to wake him with his touch. "Three years?" He whispered. No, no, no. He knew that was twice as many years as earthen years, so he had been away from Sherlock for almost a year and a half.

He pulled back from her and held his head. He was happy to be back, so happy to see his mother again, he truly was, but he had promised Sherlock he would come back and he intended to see his friend again.

"Merci?" the Queen murmured, coming closer to him again. "What's wrong?"

"I need to go back," he murmured.

"What?"

"I need to go back to Earth," he said, louder and looking at her.

She recoiled in shock and disgust. "You're not well," she said. "You've only just awoken and you're confused—"

"I am not," John said indignantly. "I'm at my most lucid, mother. I promised Sherlock—my friend who kept me alive on Earth—that I would come back after I woke. I will not leave him alone. I refuse. I have to go back. Mother, listen to me! I can come back and forth. I can be an agent, someone who keeps the humans safe as well. Wait, has there been a war?"

The Queen raised her face from her hands, and her eyes were glistening with tears as she answered, "No. We have been communicating for the past three years over negotiations. It's not working out though," she murmured.

John rubbed his face and paced away, then back again. "Mother," he said, "I have to go back. I have to keep the humans safe. There's no one better—I have a life down there! I'm Doctor John Watson and I live with Sherlock Holmes and I help him solve cases! I have friends and enemies and people who know me. I know the humans, I know their habits and I know their governments and the way their minds work. Please, Mother, give me your blessing."

She wiped her eyes and whispered shakily, "You're going to go either way?"

"Yes, mother," he said and took her hands in his. She nearly came undone there but held it in. She replied, "I can't, Merci. I can't. I love you, and I can't let you go down to those beasts with my blessing. I'm sorry. No son of mine, no Prince of the Blue Palace will be willingly down on that land."

John set his jaw and let her hands fall. "Then goodbye, mother. Probably for a long time." He turned without another word and walked to an open arch, summoned his wings and dove off the Palace balcony.

He stretched out his wings with a startling snap and stopped his descent quickly. He glided on a current and then flapped and streamlined his body to make him fly faster. He heard cries of happiness and joy around him, announcing that the Sleeping Prince had awoken. He did not acknowledge these but kept on flying further away.

John now had to face the problem of getting through the Howlers. He flew lower and lower, through the clouds and closer to the Howlers. He pursed his lips as he flew and then smiled, and screamed.

After only a few seconds of his piercing scream did he sense the Howlers disperse, and a column of light was opened to shine down on the Earth. He folded his wings and dove down the light. He kept his limbs tight and wings even closer. He didn't dare even shift a feather as he fell, because if the Howlers touched him he knew he wouldn't be as lucky as before.

John closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, desperately hoping he would clear the Howlers quickly. His entire body was tingling, like he was expecting a violent touch but felt none. Then, he was clear.

He felt the slight change around him. Thicker, warmer air and a less hostile feel around him. He opened his eyes and spread his wings, then hid in a cloud belt as he flew over the ocean. It took him almost four hours of straight flying to reach Great Britain. When he flew over land, he smiled and landed on his old Baker Street flat.

He climbed down the front of the building—it was night, no one saw him—and when he opened the door he was met with the mind of Geoff Lestrade in the upper flat. No Sherlock, but he didn't worry about that right away. He cautiously went up the steps and opened the door.

Lestrade was coming out of the kitchen and dropped the glass in his hand and stared at him. They started at each other for a good minute before Lestrade said, "J-John?"

"Hello, Lestrade," he said.

"Dear God! Is it really you? How are you here? You went missing almost two years ago!"

"Well, I'm obviously not missing any more. Lestrade, where's Sherlock?"

Lestrade stopped his rant at his calm, steady words. John was mentally soothing him, and with his calm words Lestrade came back down to Earth.

"He left," he said.

"Left? Left where?"

"He just…left," Lestrade said unhelpfully. "Two weeks after you went missing. He said he couldn't stand it. He went mad, John. Locked himself in his room and didn't let anyone come in. Then one day I came by and he had packed a bag and said he was leaving. Didn't say where, just around, and that he wouldn't be back for a while. That's it. I haven't heard from him since."

John rubbed his face and sighed. "Thanks, Lestrade. I'll be leaving then—"

"What! No, you have to come to the station—"

"I don't have to do anything, Lestrade," John said severely. "I'm going to get Sherlock." With that, he turned and walked out of the flat, with the Detective Inspector watching after him, openmouthed.

-Fallen Angel-

Sherlock closed his eyes.

He cradled the soft feather to his chest, curling over it almost protectively. The feather was soft, so soft, and smooth and ivory with a tinge of blue. It glided under his fingers like silk and comforted his aching heart.

He felt empty. Alone. Lost. Heartbroken.

Sherlock had often scoffed the people who wailed about their hearts being stolen, broken, hated the people who said it was really a feeling. A heart could not break. It was impossible. But now, as he sat alone on the horrible bed in Switzerland, he felt a dull pain in his chest that had never left since John left. His heart breaking. A feeling of loss, an emptiness and loneliness in his mind, in his bones, and couldn't bother to even stand.

He had been running. Running from what reminded him of happier times. Everything in his flat had reminded him of John, from the tea mugs to his jumpers to his molted feathers stashed under his bed. So he locked himself in his room.

But that hadn't helped. For God's sake, the damned window had reminded him of John. So he decided to leave London. He went abroad, to America and India and back again. But the very sky held the memory of his Angel firm in his mind, and he could never outrun it. He was desperate to find something else to occupy his mind, anything, and eventually settled on destroying Moriarty's empire.

Which was what he was doing for the past six months. Moriarty had left a long chain of command behind, but within six months he had tracked down and killed three operatives. But even though he found a purpose, he couldn't resist the evil temptation of his past.

Within five weeks of losing John, and in the back streets of an American town, he injected a lethal dose of cocaine into his arm. He woke up, two days later, where he had fallen.

And as he looked into a mirror in Switzerland, he saw a gaunt, haunted skeletal face staring back at him. The ebony curls limp and dirty, the cheekbones drawn and casting high shadows in his jaw. Eyes sunken deep within his skull, staring with a pained and haunted look. His limbs were gangly, pale, and puncture marked hundreds of times, and his bones stuck out at every point on his pathetic body. Every rib was visible, hips sharp and jagged, bones in his arms and legs visible and barely and muscle left over the thin bones.

Now he sat on the bed and holding the only thing he had let himself bring of John, contemplating on how to kill himself. He couldn't take this pain anymore, the fracture in his heart, or the skeleton that stared out at him from any reflective surface.

Sherlock held the feather in one hand and a fatal dose of cocaine and heroin in the other. He stuck the needle in his arm without a second thought, a whispered apology to his Angel on his cracked lips, let the feather drop and he keeled over onto the dirty bed.

-Fallen Angel-

A dark figure entered a deathly quiet room, the only light the moonlight filtering in through closed blinds, and glided on silent feet to the single bed. The figure reached out, still silent, so very silent, and rubbed two fingertips across a pale cheek that lay on a filthy pillow.

The figure reached another hand out and cupped the face that lay too silently on that bed, held it soft between their warm hands, and tilted the unmoving head towards him. Lines of moonlight fell across the face and added another set of shadows to the sunken features.

With the thumbs stroking across the sharp cheekbones, the figure leaned down and gently captured the cracked lips of the unmoving man and held him like that for some time. The figure pulled back and pressed a hand to the chest, over the still heart, and willed it to start again.

The figure had not been gone long. Not even ten minutes. But long enough, the figure thought, and pressed his hand harder down and shot a sharp jolt into the man's heart. He kissed those lips again, willing his own life force to restart that brilliant brain again.

The heart started with a viscous pound, and the brain sparked to life again. The figure did not pull his head back as he stabilized the very awake and very aware man beneath him. When he did, the man once dead opened his eyes and saw the face of an Angel above him, the taste of Angel on his lips, and the magic of that Angel in his once broken heart, mending the crack there.

John Watson carefully climbed onto Sherlock's bed and straddled those jagged hips, his cape of ivory covering both men, Angel and Man, both of them letting loose who they really were, and who they really wanted.

Sherlock Holmes was never happier and terrified in his entire life. And he would never have it any other way.

-Fallen Angel-

Sherlock was awake when John opened his eyes. There were trickles of light falling into their room, on the bed, and when John turned his head to look at Sherlock he saw his quicksilver eyes already looking at him.

His arm was protectively around the human's bare shoulders, and said human was curled against him with his head and mop of curls resting on his healed shoulder. The bony fingers were absently tracing the scars lacing his body and the quicksilver were following the diluted blue.

"Are you here?" Sherlock murmured, diverting his eyes and focusing on the spidery scars.

"Yes," John answered, not for the first time.

"For good? You're not just a hallucination?"

"No, I'm really here," John murmured, burying his nose softly in the obsidian curls.

"Will you stay?"

"Forever." John paused, and ghosted his lips against the human's ear as he whispered, "Semper per omnia sǽcula."

Sherlock's spine stiffened in pleasure at the binding promise and he let out a soft, pent up sigh. He closed his eyes and smiled.

Here is where I draw the conclusion of this fancy little tale. I do hope you have enjoyed this story. But there is one thing I seemed to not have covered. And that is the identity of me, your delightful little narrator.

Well, dear readers, that's for you to decide.

Done! Fin!

That's the end of My Fallen Angel. I'm a little sad to see it go, but I have in mind of a sequel that would depict the adventures afterwards.

But think about this: If Sherlock was dead, and John revived him literally from death, what does that make Sherlock? If he literally has John's magic in his veins and in his heart keeping him alive, does that make him an Angel? Or a half breed? He's certainly not just a human anymore.

Excuse any mistakes, and I don't own Sherlock.

Do tell me how I did. The magic number hasn't been reached yet!

Stay Happy,

Spirit