A/N: I don't know why, but I think I was inspired? I just feel the need to continue this story. My mind constantly nagged me about it until eventually I just decided it needed to be written, at least another chapter. Where it shall go from here, I can't tell you xD
He'd been spending the last few nights away from Mary and back in 221B. He wasn't sure himself why. He had a different life now, didn't he? Was there any reason to reattach old bonds?
Mary, bless her, knew John needed this, even when John wasn't so sure himself. It had been her idea, in the days following the engagement party, for John to go back to 221B to talk to Sherlock. Without this small push, John may have never gone back.
But he arrived to the flat to find himself alone. In fact, he was alone for a few days, arriving back to the same empty space. Only on the third day did he traipse up the stairs and open the door of the flat to find Sherlock Holmes stretched out across the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
"Where have you been?" John asked, moving to stand in front of the couch to stare down at the consulting detective.
"Out," Sherlock answered vaguely, not bothering to turn his head.
"No. Sherlock. Where have you been?" John paused for a moment to make sure Sherlock had heard and understood the question clearly. "Where have you been for three years?"
"Jumping right into that, are we?" Sherlock asked disinterestedly, and John felt a sudden anger pulse through him.
"Yes, Sherlock, I am. You….you were gone for three bloody years, and you show up so suddenly at – " John stopped, suddenly seeming to remember what had happened just a few days ago. Not only what had happened to him, but what had happened to Sherlock.
"You'll have to forgive me for the unannounced visitation….had I known you were….attended, I would've waited."
John could hear it in his voice that he would not have waited.
"Just…for God's sake, sod the engagement party," John said hastily, waving one of his hands. Sherlock turned his head slightly to look up at him.
"You mean you're not actually thinking about what happened?" Sherlock asked.
"I don't want to."
"You weren't yourself."
"Neither were you."
Sherlock blinked, turning his head away. He folded his hands under his chin, his legs crossing.
"For someone who claims to be above human emotions, you showed a lot of them," John continued quietly.
"As you say, John, I wasn't myself," Sherlock returned.
"So are you saying what you said was a lie?"
Above all else, this is what stopped Sherlock short. He turned back to look up at John again, and for a moment the two of them were staring at each other, as though attempting to read each other. To read three years of lost memories and emotions. To read three years without each other.
"It can be." Sherlock turned away again after a long moment of this.
John closed his eyes for a moment in annoyance. "What does that mean, Sherlock?"
"Whatever you want, John, that's what it means."
"That's not good enough!" John's eyes flew open, his hands curled into tight fists. "Sherlock, you walked into my life after three years and….and in one meeting, you manage to cry and – and imply that you love me. This isn't about what I want. This is about what you were thinking."
"I wasn't myself." Sherlock was starting to get defensive, but he would still not look at John. "None of that had to have happened if –"
"If I didn't want it to, I get it!" John interrupted fiercely. "But you still haven't answered me. Where were you? What happened to you that made you come back and….and act like that?"
Sherlock sighed deeply, his eyes shutting tightly. "It's complicated; you wouldn't understand."
Now John was becoming furious. "I'm not stupid, Sherlock!"
"I know you're not," Sherlock said at once. "But there is a difference between intelligence and understanding."
"Then let me understand! Help me understand."
Sherlock sighed again, his eyes opening and finally sitting up on the couch. "Is it of much importance? You are marrying Mary. Anything I tell you will be second to that."
"That doesn't mean I don't want to know where you were and how you survived and what you were doing, you….you insufferable machine!"
Sherlock turned to John for a moment before abruptly standing and moving past him into the kitchen. Without hesitating, John followed him.
"Mrs. Hudson's ridded of most of my possessions I see," Sherlock said absently.
"Brilliant deduction," John responded sarcastically.
Either Sherlock didn't catch it or he didn't care, because he said nothing in return. John let him examine the kitchen carefully for a few long minutes before speaking again.
"At least let me understand why you couldn't tell me," he said.
Sherlock had just managed to locate his chemistry set, but he stopped midway through trying to pry it out. John was slightly pleased with this differing reaction, because it was further than he'd gotten so far.
"It was dangerous," Sherlock said eventually, abandoning the chemistry set and turning away. "If you'd known, Moriarty would've known, and you would've died."
"You didn't stop to think maybe we could've worked something out?"
"Worked what out? John. There was nothing to work out. I had to die, and it had to be convincing, or everyone else would've died instead. Had I told you –"
"Did you tell anyone?" John interrupted him suddenly.
Sherlock's uncharacteristic hesitation was what confirmed the suspicion.
"Molly helped me. That was all," Sherlock said simply.
John was slightly wounded by this, and felt an anger towards Molly Hooper he knew wasn't fair, but he couldn't stop it.
"So you felt safer placing your trust in Molly Hooper than me?" he asked.
"As I told you, if I had entrusted you with any of that information, you would've died," Sherlock reminded him, slightly exasperated.
"So you chose a….a low-esteemed body bagger over your best friend?" John knew a second after he'd said the words that they were not fair, and that he really wasn't listening to what Sherlock was trying to tell him. But he was angry. Angry at Sherlock for everything he'd done. Angry with him crashing the engagement party and nearly ruining everything good that had happened to John since Sherlock's "suicide."
"You would've-"
"You just don't get it, do you?" Again John's words cut straight across Sherlock's attempt at a speech. And Sherlock didn't try and finish. "You don't understand the hell I went through after you jumped. You don't understand that what you said at the engagement party….that it broke everything I had tried to piece back together. You don't understand that Mary is the only thing I have. This isn't about you lying to me, Sherlock. It will never be about that. It's….It's…."
Sherlock watched him carefully, not bothering to try and speak, instead just letting John talk. John, at first, couldn't find the words, and when he did, he didn't stop to realize just how hurtful they would be.
"It's the fact that you just couldn't stay dead."
Sherlock's entire face blanched, looking stricken as though a whip had cut across his face.
"It…I'd finally found something, Sherlock, that…that made things so blissfully simple. And happy. And now I'm not sure if that's even there since you came back. You couldn't have just let….just let things be happy and simple for once."
"This….You think that this is my fault? That I somehow knew you were engaged?" Sherlock's voice was small, uncertain, sounding much like the child he so often was. "I never…. If I had known, for a second, that you were with Mary, I wouldn't have come back at all."
"Oh, for once the brilliant Sherlock Holmes isn't smart enough to deduce that much," John said scathingly, his voice trembling.
"I didn't, John, because I thought you were….I thought you loved me too."
All the color drained from John's face, and his heart seemed to stop for a second. The way Sherlock said the words. So surely, without uncertainty, with an air of his usual arrogance. But with a slight tremor that told John just how broken this man had become in three years.
"If I ever did, I would've had to let go." John spoke carefully, not to give anything away. "It's easier to reason with yourself that way. Surely….surely you know about that. Face it, Sherlock, your best reasoning tells you that would never be safe….or right, or good for either of us."
Sherlock, of course, must have caught what John is essentially saying, but he didn't reveal as much.
"It's easy to reason. Any fool can reason with themselves to tell them it's a bit not good. But I don't want to reason. Because….because I –" Sherlock's voice caught, and he turned away again. "Because, unreasonable as it is, I want you."
"Yes, well….you're going to have to find someone else to fulfill your fantasies, because I yield to reason."
Those were the last words John spoke before he turned and left, leaving Sherlock looking stricken, and a raging, sick feeling forming in John's stomach, and the urge to go back and tell Sherlock every unreasonable thing he'd trained himself to guard against.
