John awoke the next morning – a still cloudy, still dreary Saturday morning – to find the flat empty except for him. John limped silently around the flat, looking for anything that might tell him where Mary had gone off to. When he found nothing, he resolved to sitting at the dining room table, losing himself in aimless thought, almost instinctively tapping his cane on the chair he sat in.
When did his life become this? He was becoming so dreadfully useless to the world, forced to do little activity because of his leg, and, now, forced to sit alone at the table with nothing but silence.
He was willing to place the blame for his inactiveness on himself – You should've taken more initiative and gone out more, John – but reasoned that it wasn't just his fault.
He wasn't willing to think about the person he placed the rest of the blame on. His dreams sufficed enough without the thoughts in the waking world. Enough for a lifetime.
He would take the dreams over this any day. Because at least in the dreams, he did something.
John blinked, looking down at his lap, where his left hand was curled in a fist. It was shaking.
"Tremor's back," he said flatly, uncurling his fist and examining his unsteady fingers. He said it as though he were expecting it. As though it had to happen sometime. Vaguely he wondered if anything new will arise from all of this. If his opposite hand, his legs, his whole body, will start to adopt this nervous shaking.
How useless he will be then.
He couldn't stay like this any longer. He couldn't. He couldn't allow himself to become that useless. He ached to do something, to act again. In the back of his mind he knew that he would return to the military, if the war were not over. He would return to a land of fighting and death and paralyzing fear just to do something.
He forced himself out of his chair, grabbing his coat as he made his way out of the door of the flat. He wasn't sure where he would be heading, but he had to get out before he drove himself insane. So he hurried down the stairs as fast as his limp would allow, and emerged into the gray London atmosphere.
He and Mary lived in a different side of London that, at first, took John a while to get used to. It was a quieter sector, still alive with people and cabs, but a bit less so. Compared to Baker Street, their little flat in Paddington was much less active and exciting.
Not that he was comparing it to Baker Street.
He walked at an annoyingly slow pace, his leg already starting to ache but he refused to stop or wave down a cab. He continued to walk, and he felt pretty sure he knew where his feet would be taking him.
"John?"
John blinked when he heard the voice from behind him, but he didn't slow his pace. There were bound to be hundreds of John's in London. And he really didn't feel like talking to anyone, regardless.
"John Watson!"
Now he had no choice but to turn around, and instantly recognized the man hurrying up to him, a small smile on his face.
"'Morning, Greg," John said neutrally as the detective inspector approached him. "What are you doing so far from home?"
"There's been a few murders over on Sussex Gardens. Well, elsewhere, too, but more recently there," Greg Lestrade explained, starting to walk alongside John.
John felt his heart pound a bit faster at the word "murders," a more than familiar feeling.
"Rather interesting, this case. It was reported by victims who had somehow escaped being killed – although they refused to say any names for fear that they would be – but others have been. It's like this guy has a fifty-fifty chance of killing someone or not," Greg continued, shaking his head. "We've got no leads, and I've already been to Sherlock-"
"You've been in contact with him?" John asked suddenly.
"Following his reappearance at yours and Mary's flat, yeah. Gave him a few choice words he won't soon forget. Tried to get him on cases, but he's refused every one of them. I've been to him four times about this current one, but he hasn't agreed to anything yet."
"Maybe it's too 'dull' for him."
"I don't know. A serial killer with this kind of manner of killing? Seems right up Sherlock's alley." Greg sighed, rubbing the back of his neck absently. "I'm heading over there right now. He's beginning to scare me – more than usual. You probably know that, since you've probably been to see him frequently."
John narrowed his eyes to stare at the pavement, not responding.
"You have been to see him, haven't you?" Greg asked slowly, catching John's silence.
"We haven't been on the best of terms lately," John said vaguely, staring at his trembling hand.
Greg noticed his hand for the first time, and said, "So you're not on your way to see him?"
"What? No. I just…fancied a walk." John finally looked up, but stared straight ahead instead of turning to Greg.
"So you don't know how he's been…." Greg sighed again. "He's not himself. Mrs. Hudson says he hasn't left the flat since apparently going to your place weeks ago. She worries about him, so she goes up to check on him, apparently. Says he's in the same position as always – only moves to make some deduction that usually proves to be….well….wrong."
Somehow this caught John off-guard. He turned to look at Greg's worried face and asked, "What do you mean, 'wrong?'"
"Yesterday when I was over there he made a comment that I had evidently taken a pair of shoes from the evidence locker down at the Yard. Said the shoes looked different from my usual ones…. I didn't have the heart to tell him I hadn't been in the evidence lockers in weeks."
Somehow John had thought that hearing Sherlock had been wrong for once in his life would amuse him. At one point, maybe, it would have. But now, for the first time, he felt extremely worried.
"So he never leaves, refuses to take cases, and makes inaccurate deductions?" John clarified, completely aware he was now walking with Greg straight in the direction of Baker Street.
"That's only the half of it," Greg said grimly. "He literally seems to be starving himself, he barely talks and when he does he usually stutters, and he seems….jumpy. Like anyone who walks into his flat is going to attack him. I don't know what happened to him in the three years he was gone, but it's definitely affected him."
Once again, John looked down at his shaking hand, and his sore leg. If all of this post-traumatic stress related ailments had been happening to him…. Sherlock was only human. He was bound to have some symptoms of distress upon returning….
But that didn't make sense. Sherlock had never, in John's history with him, developed any sort of psychological disorders after the worst of his cases. If anything, he became elated.
Then again, after the worst of Sherlock's cases, John hadn't regained his limp and tremor. Maybe this is something different from post-traumatic stress….
"Did something happen, John….in that time following his return that only you two know about?" Greg asked after a short silence. "Something –"
"He insulted Mary, for one," John interrupted, a touch of annoyance in his voice. "Forgive me if I can't let that go, among other things."
"What, like the fact he faked his death to protect you?" Greg's voice made John instantly feel both guilty and angry at once. "Like the fact he's spent three years away from you cutting away Moriarty's web to protect all of us? Have you even tried to listen to his side of things?"
"God, not you too," John said irritably. "Look, I don't know what you were expecting to happen between Sherlock and me once he returned – if you expected us to continue on and live happily ever after. But that's not how things work. He betrayed my trust and my friendship by outright lying to me."
"If he hadn't, we'd all be dead, John. You're being completely selfish –"
"Don't play like this is all my fault," John interrupted him again, his voice an angry growl.
"I'm not saying that," Greg said defensively. "It's the both of you. You both are refusing to sit down and talk this through, to try and get things to work again, and now he's a twitchy, sulky moron and you're a stubbornly angry, limping idiot. Both of you have shit to sort out. With each other. And maybe it's a damn good thing I ran into you today, because if I hadn't you wouldn't be going over there right now."
John clenched his fist, feeling the urge to angrily defend himself, but the words died before he even could form them. Greg's words, despite being utterly blunt, he knew had some ring of truth to them. John didn't want to see them as true, but Greg had reasoned well.
Not that the stubborn idiot named John Watson was going to ever tell him that.
"I'm not going to Sherlock's," he said, leaving no room for argument. "I'm –"
"Like hell you're not," Greg interrupted him fiercely. "I would never admit this to Sherlock, but the Yard needs him back. And you….you need to stop being so stubborn and fix things with him."
"I have places I could be other than Baker Street right now," John lied angrily, but Greg shook his head at him, his eyes hard.
"Not right now, you don't. If it's the last thing I live to see, I'm going to see you two fix whatever problems the two of you have been having. It's a no wonder he liked you so much, you're just as stubborn and stupid as he is."
John felt a rush of warmth flood his cheeks and face, but just as he looked up to spit another reply, he noticed he was staring straight ahead at Speedy's. Somehow they'd arrived at Baker Street. And John cursed his conscience for wanting to follow Greg here.
"You don't have a choice, so you're seeing this through," Greg said firmly, already walking ahead.
A thousand different feelings seemed to flood John at once. Anger, anxiety, and frustration among the prominent ones. And, more deep down, he felt….a strange form of anticipation.
Was he actually anticipating seeing Sherlock again? He couldn't deny this feeling was so similar to the feeling he'd felt last night, listening to the sounds of the night outside his flat. And it was a feeling so similar to the feeling he felt each time he and Sherlock were in pursuit of some runaway criminal.
But he couldn't possibly….John didn't….he didn't miss all of that. He could not possibly miss Sherlock Holmes….after everything he'd done….and everything John swore he would never do or feel.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his mobile. He didn't think about what he was doing, but the text was sent and he was limping after Greg before he could think twice.
Mary,
Don't know how long I'll be
Meeting with Greg Lestrade
Seeing Sherlock
I love you
-John
A/N: I'm just going to take this moment to thank all the lovely people who have followed this story and left such heartwarming reviews 3 You all are lovely, and I can't thank you enough for giving me the drive to continue writing this darned story ;)
