A/N: Guys I am SO SORRY about what happened with that weird formatting in the previous chapter. But I've deleted it and reposted and hopefully everything is fine now. My thanks to those of you that alerted me to the problem, and to all of you for sticking with Sherlock and John and I when things got weird;) Enjoy!
Sherlock
Mycroft brought me home. I hadn't been to my childhood home in years (parents always came to London to see me, and I always made sure that was when John was out. Mummy is just as smart as me or Mycroft. She'd have seen right through the way I feel about John in an instant, and I couldn't have that) and I found that there wasn't much I missed.
Correction: there were other things in my life that I missed more.
Mummy and Dad were smotheringly attentive. ("Really, Sherlock! Pretending to be dead for nine months! And going to get yourself beat into nearly a pulp, what will we do with you, love.") I did my very best to pretend that I hated it, but know they didn't believe me for a second. However I think Mummy, at least, saw how anxious I was to be getting back home.
Back to John.
Which is why I am now (twelve hours after arriving back in England) in one of Mycroft's private cars, speeding to London, at the insistence of my parents. Fact: sometimes, when on the receiving side, sentiment is not the beast of a thing that I make it out to be.
Mycroft is not with me. I declined his accompaniment. While I understand the fact that Mycroft and I lost all connection when I was kidnapped back in Serbia, and while I understand that he couldn't possibly have gotten there faster than he did, I still fail to understand why he stood there and watched them whip me. In my (factually correct) opinion, that's taking childhood grudges just a step too far. So the car I sit in now is empty, the slick leather seats cool to my touch in spite of the heated air filling the cabin. I lean slightly forward, elbows on my knees, hands steepled under my chin. The seat belt that Dad told me to wear hangs unbuckled beside me.
Nervous. I'm nervous.
John thinks I'm dead. (Rightfully. For all intents and purposes, that fall killed me.) (For all intents and purposes, I'm still supposed to be dead.) (But I want to see him. Need to see him.) (He won't tell.) What if he has moved on with his life, like Myroft said he had? Found a new flatmate, a new friend, a new love... (I swallow dryly. Shift in my seat. The wounds on my back tug, and I wince.)
Heart rate: accelerating. Accelerating, and he isn't even here, isn't even touching me or even looking at me. Phantom-John hasn't been back since Mycroft retrieved me from that Serbian prison. Don't know if I'm relieved or disappointed. A bit of both. Relieved because I won't have to not look at him, disappointed because even that little, false bit of John was better than nothing.
"You'll have the real thing soon," I say aloud to myself. My own voice startles me. Car is silent, nothing but the smooth whir of tires on unblemished asphalt and soft breathing of the driver to distract me. (Driver doesn't look back.) (I bet Mycroft paid him to ignore me.) (Arse.)
Gingerly, I lean back (careful not to put too much weight on the barely-healed wounds) and turn my head to the left. Scenery spins past the window in a blur. I give up trying to focus on it and let my eyes shift, lids growing heavy as everything swirls together. It's a dark purple night out there. Silently, I urge the driver to go faster. Fact: we are still thirty one minutes and twelve-point-fifteen seconds away from John's flat, and it's already ten o'clock in the evening. John goes to bed at eleven o'clock but begins his bedtime routine at ten thirty seven, and I know how much he hates being interrupted.
Although, I suppose being interrupted by one's dead ex-flatmate is rather less annoying than being interrupted by one's living, current flatmate who simply wants you to hold the corpse up while you throw darts in its eyeballs.
With each minute that passes, I feel my nervousness grow. Inexplicable. Fact: I am John's friend; heard him say so to everyone when he was trying to take my pulse. Fact: He seemed very distraught at my grave back after I first fell. Fact: he is better with me in his life. So, logically, I should have nothing at all to be nervous about.
(I remember Evelyn. Remember how I almost ruined his life that night.) (But then I bought him milk. He liked the milk.) (And then I hugged him, and he let me, and he called me perfect, which is factually untrue but made me feel wonderful and warm inside anyway.)
We are almost at his flat. I see, through the dimness of the atmosphere, rows of careful, modern buildings, flats that are one story and only two sided. The suburbs. Complete with shrubs and porridge-colored siding. The most un-John Watson place that I have ever seen. The car coasts to a stop in front of one of these identical buildings and I open the door with hurried movements, pouring out of the heated space and into the cold air outside, and only half register the pain that I feel in my back and ribs. Walk, faster than I have ever walked, up the sidewalk and to the door.
Mycroft got John's address. Gave it to me. (Debate saying thank you.) I memorized in in point-two seconds, and it swims before my eyes now even as I see it appear on the door in front of me. 177A, Fletcher Row.
Raise my hand. (Shaking. Hard.) Lower my knuckles to the beige door, once, twice, thrice─
Door swings inward.
John.
John
I pick up the remote and aim it absently at the telly. Click the little red button in the top right corner and wait for the screen to lighten from dark black to dark blue and then, at last, to come slowly into existence. (It's one of those old tellys that makes weird zapping noises and flashes the picture in a grainy way ever few minutes, but I don't pay attention to it even when it's on, so that doesn't matter.) As Time Goes By is on, some old re-runs, and Judi Dench scowls out at me while she gives someone hell. It's oddly comforting, and so I turn the volume up while I go make a cuppa.
I lean one hip against the counter while I wait for the kettle to sound. Probably shouldn't be drinking anything right before bed, but the last week has been one of the worst ones since he left, and so I'll risk having to get up a few times in the night for some comfort.
I don't know why I've suddenly fallen into some sort of relapse these past few days. All I know is that every waking second I've spent counting the months and weeks and days and hours and minutes since the last time I saw him. The last time he saw me.
Nine months, six days, and seven hours
It's a bit anal, I know. I also don't care.
Keeps my mind off of the other things that I'd be thinking about otherwise. Things like smashed skulls and strings of blood, wide, glassy, staring eyes, red against pale skin, billowing coats and wheeling limbs and crunching noises...
My stomach heaves, once, and I turn quickly to face the counter, fingers digging in tightly to the granite slab. Tip my chin down and remind myself to breathe. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight, repeat until heart is still and lungs aren't broken. Just like Ella told me. (Ella's a shite therapist, but her universally taught, universally learned breathing techniques are alright.)
And I am embarrassed, standing here alone in my kitchen in my socks and trousers and jumper, having a panic attack because my dead best friend won't leave my mind alone. Not when I'm awake, and certainly not when I'm asleep.
Three knocks come, muffled sounding, hesitant, on my front door. I debate ignoring it. Just standing here and not moving and staring at my kettle until whoever it is goes away, and then I can go back to wallowing in grief and self-loathing. But something about that idea seems dangerous, and so I force my feet to move until I'm standing in front of my door.
There is someone there on the other side. Waiting for me. Probably just one of the neighbors.
My heart is doing that thing where it tries its best to take up residence in the middle of my throat.
I reach out a shaky hand and open the door.
When I see who is standing on the other side, I'm transported back to that day nine months, six days, and seven hours ago: a red light of warning is flashing over and over behind my eyelids, blaring a death knell in my ears, and the pit of my stomach feels like the ocean, roaring and roiling. My knees turn to liquid and I slump sideways, catching myself on the door frame.
This cannot be happening.
"Hello, John." He says it simply. (He says it at all, which is the real marvel.)
This cannot be happening.
Shaking, my eyes rove over every inch of him in seconds, scanning, checking, drinking him in. He is thinner than he was, cheeks sunken in, and his bony wrists stick out, twig-like, from under the cuff of his coat. His shoulders are slightly hunched. Seems stiff. And his eyes─fuck, his eyes─they're staring out at me in that way, sending something toward me that tunnels straight into my chest and hooks me, pulling me forward─
And before I know what I'm doing, I'm on top of him.
Not in the way that I'd think about as I sat there in my chair all those evenings and watched him romance his violin. (I always told myself that I was just lonely. Would go out, meet a woman, date her for a while, and then be thinking those exact same things about the wrong person again come two weeks.) No: this way is throbbing fists and red-hot rage, the back of his head slamming into concrete as I throw him to the ground and knock the top of my head into his chin. His is bony beneath me, and as my heart races and my blood rages audibly through my veins, all I want to do is wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze and feel his pulse at the base of his neck, feel his short breaths lap (wet, hot) at my temples─
He's dead. He was dead. He is dead. I saw him, saw it with my own eyes, Christ he made me watch. Nobody, not even Sherlock goddamn fucking Holmes could have survived that plunge, that stomach turning crunch of these same bones under my hands on cold, hard pavement.
He makes a sound like a groan as I take my fist and slam it, over and over and over again into one of his gorgeous cheekbones. My other hand digs into his right shoulder and holds me up as I lift myself to give me some leverage. Down, down, down, until finally I see blood, feel puffy skin, unnaturally hot on my bleeding knuckles.
I realize that I am screaming something as I attack him (he isn't fighting back. Why isn't he fighting back? I'm going to kill him if he doesn't do something soon, I don't think I can stop myself, and then he really will be gone) but there's such a cavernous roaring in my ears that I can't hear a thing. Seems to upset him, though, or maybe it's just the fact that I have both of his shoulders in my grip now and I'm straddling his hips (again: still not sexy) as I lift him up and then slam him down, his neck whipping loosely. His eyes are open and they're huge and they're wet, and he's biting his lips so hard that I see blood there, too, and I want to lick it off─
"John," he says finally, the single syllable coming out more of a moan than an actual word. His throat hitches, and a drop of blood trickles from the cut high under his eye and down one thin cheek. Immediately after he says my name he bites his lips hard one more and his eyebrows crash together as he winces. Like he can't believe he actually said something. Like it's the worst thing he's ever done.
Slowly, the screaming red lights that flare inside of me die. I let go of his shoulders. Breathing?... barely, him, entirely too hard, me. He falls against my sidewalk. Head makes a thunking noise.
I sit back. Shake. Hard.
He keeps his eyes open. Shaking too. Harder than I am. I think he's crying, but he doesn't look like he knows.
(In fact, the bastards staring at me like... like...) (God, why is he looking at me like that?)
I'm still furious. I still want to wrap my hands around something and squeeze all of the breath out of it. I just don't know if I want it to be him.
I'm standing, suddenly, with no memory of how I got to my feet. Backing away so fast that I trip over the threshold and stumble backwards through the open door. I stare down at him and he stares back at me, his arms and legs sprawled, his neck kinked, his face swollen and bruised and bloody, and he smiles.
"Get out of here." It's on a whisper. I can't make myself say anything louder because my throat is hoarse and burning from whatever I've just been yelling at him. "Go back to wherever the hell you were, Sherlock Holmes, and never come into my life again."
He sits up slowly. I can tell it's a struggle but he doesn't ask for help. Props himself up with visibly shaking arms. "John..." (Whispered, too.)
"You," I say. Feel the cold seep in through my socked feet. Feel his blood on my hands. Burning."Have ruined me."
Sherlock opens his mouth slightly. His swollen bottom lip drips with thick scarlet and taunts me. "I'm sorry─"
"Go to hell."
I slam the door.
Once it's closed I fall to me knees and bury my head in my hands and let the sobs that I've been holding back for months wrack me. And it is only much later, after I feel so empty inside that a breeze would blow me away, that I let myself look outside.
He's gone. Nothing but a few drops of blood remain.