Mendacity chapter 33

Sherlock rolled over and searched his room. New John stood at the window and Sherlock noted that his opacity was incomplete from his jumper down. "John, you are fading. Is everything alright?"

John turned and smiled. "You are healing. Your grief has lessened and I… will fade."

Sherlock pushes himself into a sitting position, "No. I can't do this. Not without you. Please don't leave me?"

His imaginary John shook his head and snorted slightly with amusement before his focus returned to the window. "I'm not really here. I can't leave until you are ready. It would be best for you to move on. You can't hide me forever. They may be old and unable to pass up a loo or work a mobile phone without their glasses, but they are not stupid. They know something is off about you. You have to stop sneaking around corners to talk to me, and in truth, if I am fading, that is a good sign."

"No. I need you." Sherlock replied.

"Sherlock, it has been two months. I am not asking you to forget me. I am keeping my place in your mind palace, but we both know that I am not quite what you want. I am sorry. Life goes on and you will one day move on and that doesn't mean you will forget me, it just means that you have accepted—"

"I don't accept," Sherlock spat.

He stood up and moved near his apparition, careful not to touch him, yet his eyes filled with tears and his fingertips buzzed with the desire to reach out and cup John's face. He'd learned not to follow these impulses. John was not real, yet he could forget that fact so long as he kept his hands away. Watching his fingers pass through John had shattered his ability to pretend that New-John was as real as his three elderly companions. Oh the mirage was not perfect, he certainly noticed that nobody spoke to John or understood why Sherlock randomly chuckled at times, but seeing John let Sherlock's heart rest from the ever present guilt, anger and sorrow long enough to function.

"You must not fade away. Not now. The others depend on me. I won't say that they are incompetent, but neither are they capable of seeing this through if I am operating at less than full function. If you fade, it will distract me. If I am distracted, I may get them killed. Please." Sherlock looks away on the last word, knowing that he is arguing with himself alone doesn't diminish his humiliation that he is begging a small insane part of his mind to not get well.

"You know that I am dead. Time will do what it is meant to do. I have no power over this. Sherlock, I don't want you to mourn me at the expense of your sanity. Can't you understand that this," John said waving his hand between them, "Is not healthy? I am a tool for you to find peace. I am not and can't be your peace with the fact you are going to lose your mind."

Sherlock rolls his eyes in the dark room and his hands yank at his hair in frustration. "Then stop this unbearable transparent version. The moonlight is shining through you and if I have to look upon you in terror that one day I won't have you, I may as well let Mycroft lock me away right now. My sanity is the last thing I care about at this time. What does it even matter in the long run? It's bad enough I know I can never touch you again and will never know the taste of your skin. I can still feel you in my dreams…your lips, your heartbeat … in my dreams, you are warm. I…I would rather be insane and delusional than have to face … that I made a mistake that cost you your life. I don't have time for that kind of pain right now. I have followed your rules. If you leave me…" Sherlock trailed off, letting the unspoken threat play across John's face.

"You realize that you are threatening your own mind that if it chooses to heal, you will destroy it? That is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say," New John said glaring up at his friend with that mother-hen fierce anger he'd so often turned on Sherlock when he was intentionally misbehaving.

"Possibly. Never-the-less, it is the truth. I hate this. We are eliminating the crumbs and I have let the meaty-bits slip away. This will take years at this rate. My plan was better."

"Your plan was suicide, Sherlock. Your plan had no possibility of success."

"Oh, it would have been quite successful. I can assure you that my goals would have been remarkably efficient in liquidating all his vital structural support. The web would be forever broken. It was faster and if I had simply gone on alone—"

"You'd be dead. Right now. You would actually be dead and have accomplished nothing!" John shouts in frustration.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows and his lips part slightly as if he had just slapped a third nicotine patch on his arm as he sighs "God, yes."

John peeps up at him as if he's pleased Sherlock agrees with his assessment. "Yes and that would be a bit not—"

"I'd be with you. It would be over by now and I would be –"

"Bored! You would be bored with no escape. Death is boring, Sherlock."

"This is boring! Where… ever you are…isn't. Oh, John…I…I miss you. This phantom of you is all I have that makes this whole thing remotely bearable. How do I keep this up? I was at least a wasp in the web before. I am wasting my time freeing flies and tapping out false motions while the web grows stronger. I have to work my way." He has begun pacing with edgy energy.

John's voice goes calm and moderate, "There is no hurry now, mate. You were rushing because you wanted to go home. You were taking terrible risks and you know, some of what you did was more than a bit not good. I'm not saying they didn't deserve to suffer. But you know for a fact that there were several occasions that you…"

"That I what?" Sherlock slowed his pacing and focused his attention on John, trying to deduce an unchanging memory, yet forgetting for an instant that this John could only exude cues Sherlock's mind created.

"Liked it." John met his eyes for a moment then looked away, out the window again as if longing to be elsewhere.

Sherlock stopped in his tracks and shrugged, "And?"

"And you may have not liked who came home to London. It changes you and not for the better." John's chin lifted and his lips jutted forward. Sherlock knew he had more he wanted to say, but was attempting to control how much he shared.

Sherlock folded his fingers and pretended to suddenly understand what John meant. "Oh. In other words, you would not have approved of me. If you were still alive, you would tell me that you were disappointed that I had ruthlessly murdered those upstanding pillars of humanity? You think I would bring that version back to London…perhaps home to you? Would my new found skills eventually fulfill Sally's prophetic musings on my nature? You think that I would find infamy more amusing than I did fame?"

John glances at Sherlock, taking his measure before he speaks softly the bombs of doubt. "I think, Sherlock, that you have a line that is more fluid than I ever realized and that this may, still, do you more harm than you wish to admit. Violence can be as addictive as any drug and it has the similar side-effect of always needing a little more to replicate the endorphin surge experienced previously."

"Is that how it works? Is that why you killed Jefferson Hope? For the thrill rather than necessity? Are you really that good of a shot or was it my mistake to think it mattered which of us you ended that night? Your vote of confidence is most treasured. The real John never doubted me nor I him."

John crosses his arms and takes a very deep calming breath, "Yeah, well, I'm not him, am I? And before you accuse me of groundless suspicion, don't forget where I am. You keep very detailed files in here. Benefit of the doubt is harder to give when I see it exactly as you remember it."

Sherlock's eyes narrow and his face blanks in aloof disdain for John's words. "Taking a shower."

By the time he was out and dressed, the adjoining door was open and three elderly but fit gentlemen had invaded his space though the sun was not yet up. John was no longer keeping vigil at the window. The smell of tea and bangers and old man grooming supplies assaulted his nose. "Gentlemen." Sherlock said in greeting before flopping casually in the last unoccupied chair.

"Heard you in here talking…we were up so decided to get an early start," Grady Pauley said casting a wink at one of the others. He looked toward Sherlock innocently but the challenge of 'who were you talking with' crackled in the air.

Sherlock sighed. "I was discussing our situation with Mycroft. We are both concerned that our endeavors, though successful, have been rather mundane considering the expense involved."

"But we knew that in the beginning we were only to target the non-essential branches, gather data without disrupting any major operations. That has worked. We know more now than we ever dreamed of obtaining," Grady said with just the beginning of controlled defensiveness in his voice.

Sherlock didn't want to insult these men. They had been very useful and unperturbed by unforeseen logistic problems. He looked around the table and nodded. "Please be advised, I am not unhappy with our projects so far, however, you are all capable of far more than I expected. I assumed that there would be fatigue issues as well as a bit of retraining necessary. That has not been the case in my opinion."

"Are you saying three old dogs have impressed the pup?" Herbert Rainer asked puffing out his chest slightly.

Sherlock deliberately formed a calculated smile. "I am."

Sherlock waited for the preening to subside before continuing. "I therefore feel that we are capable of moving on to the next phase. You can all handle yourselves quite admirably and frankly your talents are wasted on these small potato criminals. I never meant to bore you all. I didn't realize all of you could be the fruitful equivalent to men twenty years your junior. Want to see some really exciting games?"

There was general assent at the suggestion.

Sherlock waited and softly added, "Could be dangerous?"

Grady winked at Sherlock. "I told you, he is exactly like his father, God rest his soul," he said to the others with a melancholy pride.

"My father was a great man. I would very much hate for him to accuse me of taking the path of anodyne progress. I leave the choice to you. You have far more experience than I. Shall we continue our painless little prickles or have we ended our boy's camp endeavors. Can you handle more?"

He got the response he hoped for and all of them exuded enthusiasm. If he weren't a sociopath, Sherlock might have felt a bit guilty fanning old men's egos in order to implement his own agenda, but playing by the rules had never suited him for long. It was time to move on to bigger tournaments that would actually do more to the web than pluck at the strings without getting the spiders attention. In the meantime, while he sent them in one direction, Sherlock intended to step up his own games. The humble gleaner may gather slowly, but combines were more efficient in cutting noticeable swaths in the vast fields.

Thank you dearly for the kind reviews and follows. Be sure to check out 'I think the cat is on fire' too - It's finished and has a bit of humor without wandering into the crack zone - and it is catlock but written in a way that isn't the average Cat fiction. Please do review - I tend to focus my time on what seems to have the most people waiting, so consider it like a vote that says "we want this one updated the most"