Title: Get Your Epitaph Right
Characters/Pairing: John, Sherlock
Rating: K+ serious stuff
Summary: He wanted nothing to do with talking to or punching a ghost. He wanted to be left alone.
A/N: Thank you to all the people who favourited and added this to your alerts. It might not be a review, but it indicates interest :) Thank you to I'mNotCrazyTheWorldIs, spinner12, and enchantednightingale for your reviews. Also to marble eyes for the proofreading points. They are most treasured. It all happens in my head, just not in chronological order or in a way you all would understand.
John pushed the key in, unlocking the door to 221B. Mary had told him she was chaperoning the school dance that afternoon, and would not be able to call on him, as usual.
She must have told Mrs. Hudson as well because the post wasn't on the floor like it usually was when he got in. Mary usually picked it up for him.
John realized as he wearily closed the door there were probably only a few things in the house that were edible for a dinner. He should have remembered to get takeaway - but he'd been so exhausted after the clinic, he was only anxious to get home. It was only just as he turned the corner that he'd remembered Mary wouldn't be there. He turned to make his way up the seventeen stairs. Slowly. His hand still shook on the railing from him forcing them to be steady earlier. There had been a patient that needed twenty-three stitches, and he'd even had to have the nurse do the last ten. He tossed his keys on the counter, where sure enough was the post. Including The Daily Mail. He looked at the top fold and started the coffee pot.
Ordinary news. Mundane. Celebrities. The Weather. But his mind wasn't really on what he was reading. He was absorbed in other thoughts. He must have slugged a ghost - or at least a torturous doppelganger. Maybe some lout who'd read the blog. Sherlock was dead. He tried wresting the image of him lying on the gurney, looking like a broken puppet - but he was a broken puppet. A broken puppet of Moriarty's.
What possesed someone like Sherlock to recant. Moriarity must have threatened something dreadful.
John was no idiot. Sherlock had been hiding something - he'd always been concerned for Mrs. Hudson. He might not have shown it, but he'd at least said hello to her when she had been downstairs. John was tired of feeling guilty about things that weren't his fault - he didn't even want to talk to the wretched man. Besides, Sherlock was dead.
The dead don't speak. Damn it all, he was not going to cry again. He wished that Mary hadn't taken up on the chaperoning. Then he wouldn't be alone with his terrible thoughts at the moment. He hadn't told Mary what was wrong, as many times as she had asked. That he'd seen Sherlock again. She'd probably think he needed to go in hospital for a check, but John wanted nothing to do with such things. He told her he'd just had a horrible flashback, and it was nothing. Happened every year, didn't it?
He watched the coffee brew. Watched the silent teakettle out of the corner of his eye. He always heard the whistling - that or the plucking of the violin - in his dreams. He'd gotten so used to hearing it, waking up from a nightmare to silence was still very strange. Even after three years.
But now that teakettle sat empty. John did like his tea, but he seemed to have it more rarely now. He had become partial to Columbian in Afghanistan - the local's tea was quite strong and bitter. The pot finished its cycle and he poured himself a mug, then carrying the post under one arm, limped into the living room. He was just about to set his cup on its coaster and sit and read the rest of The Mail before he considered ordering takeaway, when he heard a voice. An all-too-familiar velvet tone. The last person he wanted to talk to right now.
"Hello, John." He knew Sherlock was sitting in his chair, facing the window. His fingertips pressed together in contemplation - an open notebook and a fountain pen in his lap. Scribbled notes - things crossed out. Things added.
John didn't want any part of it. The post had dropped from under his arm. He carefully set his cup where it belonged, least he throw the hot liquid at Sherlock and risk burning himself. "And break a perfectly good cup?" John looked out at Baker Street below, but he did not see the cars or the people rushing about on their mobiles. He only saw Sherlock, broken on the gurney. Blood pooling into the gutter. What he always seemed to see whenever he closed his eyes. "I don't want to talk to you. Get out of my apartment."
He expected a justification. A defense, that it was his apartment too. But Sherlock didn't say such things. "Not until you hear what I have to say. Then if you still want me to go -"
John cut him off, turning around slowly because of the cane. "Alright. But you're going to answer my questions first."
"Very well," Sherlock gave a single nod, his fingertips still pressed together. He knew what John was going to ask. He knew John wanted answers before excuses. And he had a right to feel in such a way. This was really, the only way Sherlock could possibly hope to piece things back together. It was a strange feeling to want to - normally he didn't waste emotion on such things.
"Where have you been?" John asked, his tone angry - hostile - he paced even with the cane, trying to fight the energy that wanted to be channeled towards hitting Sherlock again.
"Istanbul, Jerusalem, Cyprus. Libya. India." Sherlock sighed. "And wherever else you might imagine." John didn't know about the saber scar that was still pink - dangerously close to his jugular - but he would tell that story later.
"So you faked your own death for a bloody vacation? God, Sherlock if you wanted to get away from me that badly you could've -"
"I did it to save you, John!" Sherlock's voice rose in a rare tempo of desperation. "All of you were in danger, even Mycroft's organization had been infiltrated. Unless I said it was all a lie, that Moriarty was made up, the henchmen knew to implement the orders." I'm sorry, but unless I died for you, this wouldn't have worked. The words wanted to come. But he didn't say them.
John had actually sat down, apparently a little less angry than he had been, though his knuckles were white from clenching his cane, and his left hand was still trembling. Sherlock knew John was staring at his black eye and split lip. And the lack of a bandage across his throbbing nose. Also John's accurate deduction that he'd refused it. "Why couldn't you trust me?"
"It has nothing to do with trusting you, John." He meant to say more, but John spoke again.
"Yes it does. You don't trust me otherwise you would have told me about this plan. You know I wouldn't have told a soul if you asked me not to."
"I know that. If I could've told you, I would have. I couldn't tell you, so I didn't." Sherlock seemed unusually subdued. "I couldn't tell you because I had to eliminate all of Moriarty's network. Unless one of them was watching you. I knew you would follow me across the world even if I told you to stay here. We couldn't risk being seen together until I was sure they were eliminated."
"You know I can't just pretend as though you haven't been gone for three years." John hadn't forgiven him yet, but at least he understood.
"I think you did quite well while I was away. Despite everything."
"No, I have not been fine, Sherlock.I've been practically going mad. I wanted you to be my best man, and you were dead and -"
"You dusted my instruments." Sherlock said the four words with significance. This time their eyes locked for a moment.
John shrugged. "It didn't seem as though you would like them collecting dust - and I somehow couldn't donate them to the science laboratory."
Sherlock could have ribbed him for being so sentimental, but the discussion was too fragile for a joke like that just yet. "You've been coping, trying to pretend I'd come back. Even though you knew better."
"You didn't leave me with anything else." There was bitterness in his voice. The remark was wounding. But he deserved that, he should have known John would take the absence personally, even after understanding why. It would be sometime before the soldier-doctor properly forgave Sherlock. If he ever chose that Sherlock deserved his forgiveness.
Honestly, beyond eliminating the rest of Moriarty's associates, reintroducing himself to his friends, and going back to his work, he didn't consider the fine detail of events, of having to repair the shattered trust. He considered that it would obviously have to be done, but there was no specific method to do it.
"Do you want takeaway?" he asked, in a voice that didn't quite sound familiar to him.
"Oh, sod off," John said, berating him for changing the subject.
Sherlock sighed. "I didn't mean for you to get it - I'll call for it if you like. Just didn't want you to eat alone. But if you want to," he tucked his notebook and pen into the pocket of his coat, "I'll go."
"I'm not eating alone, you're not just going to get out of it that easily." John said firmly. "Don't you ever scare me like that again. Or I will punch you where I am more likely to kill you myself." John waved his cane at Sherlock, serious about what he was saying. But there was relief even in the threat.
"I don't plan on dying anytime soon, John." The reply was half-amused. He wanted to see John smile again. He hadn't smiled yet - and Sherlock almost expected it.
"Well that's good, then." The tension in the room seemed thick.
"Right. What kind of takeaway then? Surely you get the corner's all the time. I'll go across town if you like."
"You don't need to make it up to me like that."
"You clearly haven't eaten properly in several months." Sherlock was dialing with his mobile. "You've lost weight, your colour is off, and you clearly rarely sleep."
John shook his head at Sherlock, hearing him give out the order. He could tell at times Sherlock bit back telling off the person at the other end - for being an idiot.
He had missed the eccentric detective. But it would be sometime before they were back to where they were.
A/N: If you have suggestions for a case they could work on in the next chapter, then please review and let me know. Must admit that I like writing them far too much :P