John's been dead for three weeks when Sherlock discovers a coping mechanism.
The needle eases into him as his eyes flit shut, and he rides the rush into brilliant, hypersensitized oblivion. But instead of opening his eyes and using the high to enhance some wild escapade out the door or through the flat, his lids press tighter and Sherlock Holmes goes inward.
John made fun of the "mind palace" on more than one occasion, but with just the right amount of cocaine, the memory technique becomes an escape.
The palace is not so much an actual location as it is a filing cabinet. As Sherlock wanders the halls, he's vaguely aware of a misty kind of surrounding, like the scenery of a dream, but the information is what's most important. It's all ordered, labeled and organized (chemicals, anatomy, physiology, social behaviors, blueprints/maps, dictionary in English, French, German, Spanish) but some of the nooks and crannies are empty, representing deleted information. When he glances upward, a ceiling flits in an out of view, mirroring 221B, then Scotland Yard, then Buckingham Palace, then a mindlessly wild expanse of stars, which for the briefest moment steals his breath away.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
He turns when he hears his own voice, rich but ghostly.
"I thought you didn't care about things like that." John's voice joins the echo, and Sherlock turns immediately to follow it. He then comes upon himself and John stepping briskly down a corridor, just as they had on the night that this happened, bundled against the cold and gazing at the stars. Calmly, Sherlock slips up to the two figures and steps inside the one that mirrors his own, finding himself submerged in the memory as clearly as if it were really happening again.
"Doesn't mean I can't appreciate it," Sherlock murmurs, and then steps out of the memory and goes on his way.
Down a fork in the hall and into a small alcove, he tips open a trap door to find himself in Central London. The sky above is insipid, pouring a light drizzle from clouds that can't be bothered to move on. Before him, the road has been cleared of cars and taped off by the Yard. He can see an apparition of himself lying in the middle of the lane, sprawled out and entirely motionless. Approaching himself, Sherlock glances at the coat which he has long since stopped wearing (bloodstains not appropriate apparel) and lowers himself down into the ghost of his body, becoming one with the memory. He can feel the buttons of his favorite shirt against his skin, the coat's pristine hem playing around his knees. The lazy patter of rain forces involuntary blinks upon him every once and a while, but he is otherwise undisturbed.
A sharp sigh breaks from his throat when John's shoes approach.
"Sherlock?" John has that look of indignant confusion which the detective always seems to drive him to. Sherlock hadn't realized he missed it so much. "What the hell are you doing? Where did the bodies go?"
"Removed them," Sherlock drones. "I've already collected the useful data and the coroner would have taken them, anyway."
"Sherlock, you're going to make the yarders angry and I—"
"Lay down."
John blinks. "What?"
"Lay down. There were two bodies. I need you to be the second."
John looks around as if for someone to excuse him from the ridiculous request, but seeing no one, sighs and drops with a grunt to his knees. He then spreads himself out, conforming to the body-shaped tape on the asphalt just as Sherlock has done next to him.
They're still for a stretch, Sherlock in watchfulness and John in relative incredulity. The doctor opens and closes his mouth a few times before turning to Sherlock.
"Um..." he licks his lips in the pause. "Now what?"
"I observe."
John huffs, looks up at the sky, and back to Sherlock. "What are you possibly expecting to—"
"The victims both died of blood loss. They laid here for a long time. They must have been looking at something."
"Cars ran over them, Sherlock, that's why they were lying here."
"That's no good reason."
John turns fully to balk at Sherlock. "Cars ran over them, for God's sake!"
"Yes," groans the detective, "but they were lying like this before the first car hit them. Why would two people dressed in black lie in the middle of a London street at night, especially one as busy as this?'
"I don't know, Sher—"
"Then don't interrupt. Let me figure it out."
The ensuing silence takes on something entirely different than the first, and Sherlock is unsure whether it's actually a part of the memory or whether he's feeling it right now. He didn't pay attention to feelings, then, but now he's clinging to them, gleaning them from the shadow of John's coattails. He watches John's face, which shifts about from interest to frustration to boredom, all the while keeping Sherlock in his sights. Had John always looked at him that often? He'd been aware of the attention, but he'd never quite noticed that searching sort of disbelief, as if the vastness of his intellect was alien to John. But it was, wasn't it? And that was why John was dead. He just had to test it his theory on someone he thought inferior, didn't he? But how could he have miscalculated so direly? The good doctor was hardly inferior. In many ways, Sherlock is sure he'll never be as good a man as his friend was.
"That's brilliant!" John is saying. "How—"
In the memory, John is interrupted by the explanation, but now it's quiet, because Sherlock's just staring at a man who's only alive in his mind. His recollections continue on without him, the detective's ghost standing up and departing with John on its heels. Sherlock tries to follow, to dive back into the memory, but something's holding him back, calling him to reality, bleak and raw and no I want to stay I want to stay I want to stay!"
"What, Sherlock, dear?" Mrs. Hudson is standing over him (hair and makeup fixed quickly, wanted to look nice, had minimal warning). "You want to stay where? Oh, you look awful! Are you alright?"
"Fine!" Sherlock sits upright in agitation and realizes that his high must have worn off several hours ago, as the sun has skipped to the other side of the sky since he receded into his mind.
"What's going on? Why are you here?"
"Oh, Lestrade's been calling you, dear! Suppose you didn't notice," she titters, unaware that something uncomfortable and heavy is settling in Sherlock's chest. "He's got a case for you, and that's just the thing, isn't it? I'll just bring him up now, you wait here." Mrs. Hudson pats his hand and bustles off.
There are approximately three seconds of stillness before Sherlock is rushing. He knows Lestrade won't let him work on anything if he sees this flat and its occupant in their current condition, but he'll be damned before he lets the stimulation of a good case slip by. So he darts about, (cover needle marks with nicotine patches, hide cocaine, pick up broken skull, change out of John's jumper into suit, close John's laptop, sweep Internet Detective Blogger Commits Suicide articles beneath couch, use eye drops to alleviate drug-induced irritation, splash face with water to look clean), then drops with artificial nonchalance into his chair just as Lestrade steps in. The DI casts a wary sort of glance around, as if he expects John to accost him from behind. Sherlock almost expects it, too.
"I suppose you're coming to check up on me." Sherlock steeples his fingers before his lips, cutting his eyes in Lestrade's direction. The man seems weathered (trouble with the wife, unrest at the Yard— John's absence? likely, John Watson had friends, friends: plural).
"Well, yeah, I am." Lestrade sighs, pockets his hands. His head hangs a bit.
"Brought a case?"
"I may have." Lestrade eyes Sherlock like he can't quite believe he's real, like he thinks SherlockandJohn were such a unified entity that there is no existence of one without the other. That may also be true, Sherlock thinks. "You clean?"
Snorting, Sherlock peels up his sleeve to reveal the nicotine patches. "Please."
Annoyance colors Lestrade's features, but it's a tired sort of annoyance, the kind Mummy had looked upon Sherlock with when he let the bird out of its cage again. "We've been over this. That doesn't really mean anything."
Sherlock glares. "The case?"
"People usually attend their loved ones' funerals." The DI's lips press together hard, a challenge gathering in his folded brow.
Sherlock scoffs at him and re-crosses his legs. "I didn't love—"
"Bloody hell you didn't, everyone did. He was a good man, John Watson. A very good man."
Sherlock finds himself unable to look Lestrade in the eye. His fingers fidget violently. He feels trapped, angry, vicious. "Case?"
"Got one or two. You'll have seen one in the papers— if you've been reading the papers, I mean."
"Of course I've been reading the papers," Sherlock scoffs. Lestrade gives him a pitying look (damn it Lestrade knows Sherlock has been reading about John's suicide in the paper), and it does little but set Sherlock on the edge of fury. He will not be pitied.
An uncomfortable sort of silence passes in which Lestrade glances at John's chair like he's planning to sit in it, and Sherlock prevents him from doing so with a challenging rise of one brow. He wonders, briefly, if John would have made some kind of intervention here ("Would you like some tea?" "Have any leads?" "Sherlock isn't just some heartless machine, you know, so don't look at him like he is one.") but John's dead and gone so Sherlock breaks the silence himself.
"I assume the case you're referring to in the paper is the homicide/child kidnapping."
"Yeah—"
"Simple domestic. Husband did it. Didn't like the custody arrangements."
"What—"
"There was enough in the paper. I'll tell you the evidence if you give me something interesting."
Lestrade shakes his head. "Sherlock, I won't be bribed—"
"It's not a bribe, it's an incentive."
They stare at each other in a sort of stalemate, though Sherlock knows he will win, as he always does.
But he doesn't quite expect the next question.
"Why haven't you been on the Hound case? Seemed like you had a lead before..." Lestrade is either too weak or too decent to finish, but Sherlock is neither so he says it himself:
"Before I killed John?" He stares the DI down, daring him to say something, to agree or defy or change the subject entirely. But it's just quiet.
"I can't give you a case until I'm one hundred percent sure that you're fine, Sherlock," Lestrade says after a long moment. And though he doesn't say it, it is obvious that Lestrade knows Sherlock will never be fine (fine [fahyn] adjective, of superior or best quality; of high or highest grade).
"Get out," murmurs Sherlock, closing his eyes. "Just get out." When his lids flick open, he partly expects Lestrade to still be there, but he's not, and that's just as well.
Sherlock returns himself to his preferred mode of survival in moments (no suit, wearing one of John's jumpers, needle poised over crook of arm), and it's not long before he's gone down the rabbit hole again, catching killers by starlight with John at his side. And that's as close to fine as he thinks he'll ever be.