Chapter-3

THE TRUTH

Harry then left them both alone saying she will go and help Mrs. Hudson downstairs. And before going she motioned to the untouched tea cups and asked them both to drink that up. But after she left, the remaining two people left in the room were more than happy to just sit there and stare at nothing. Well that was when someone's phone started to ring. Sherly then got up and found that it was Harry's phone which she had left on the kitchen table.

She found that it was Harry's phone in the same way she had done the first time she had deduced that John's phone was gifted to him by someone who was an alcoholic, as this phone too had scratch marks but this time they were very fine lines indicating of addiction withdrawal tremors.

...

Sherly thought it would be much less nuisance to pick up the phone and tell the caller that Harry wasn't there, than to silence the call making the caller to call again and again or worse, to panic and call everyone else and disturb them. So she picked up the call and had just said "hello" to begin the conversation, when the female voice on the other end started to talk in a rush of sentences even before she could tell them that she wasn't the one to whom they were intending to speak.

But in all those flood of words what Sherly heard and understood made her want to maintain the façade. The woman on the other end most probably seemed like a fertility expert at Bart's and John's acquaintance but did not seem to know Harry personally since she was saying that she had gotten this number from Mike Stamford. She was saying that she was sorry for calling at such distressful time and disturbing her but that the matter was of utmost importance and she did not want to call John directly.

She told that it was regarding the IVF samples John and Mary had given 2 days before and that they generally implant it into the womb of the surrogate mother mostly after 3 days and in certain cases it may be done even after 5-7 days later. But in any case, the maximum time they can keep the fertilized sample in the lab is for another 4-5 days only and if it isn't implanted before that, it would all go to waste. And since that day was the third day, she wanted to know the next step they wanted to take after considering the recent turn of events.

...

Sherly was totally dumbstruck hearing all that. She did not know what she was supposed to do. Seeing John's condition she could not speak to him regarding this then, as that will only break his heart further thinking that now his family would never be complete. But atlast she said to the woman on the phone that she wasn't Harry and that she was just trying (albeit very, very feebly) to tell her that from the very beginning but when the other woman started to apologize for jumping into conclusions, she decided that it was better to pacify her than for her to call them again and disturb them. So she said that it was nothing to worry and that she was John friend and that she will discuss with John and let them know later.

When Sherly came back to sit on the sofa processing what she had just heard, John's curious eyes were fixed on her, wondering whom was she speaking for so long on Harry's phone. She just gave him a shrug thinking that John would think it was another condolence message for him. She could see the way sadness seeped into his eyes again as he assumed exactly that. She hated to see that expression in his eyes, the expression he had when he had visited her grave during all these years. Atleast she had comeback, the miracle that John had wanted had happened… but now, there was no humanly possible way, Mary could come back and this expression would always be etched into her best friend's face every time he thought about Mary and she couldn't do anything about it.

John then turned his face to the side to discreetly wipe away those escaping tears but his tear stained cheeks and red eyes were betraying him. He then spoke with an voice which was full of stuffed up emotions that were begging to break free. John asked the question Sherly most dreaded but sooner or later expected to hear from him. he asked, "Why?"

That seemingly simple, single word of questioning had innumerable answers and not all of those were even clear to Sherline herself. What could she say to him when she herself did not understand why the self proclaimed sociopath, Sherline Holmes was willing to jump of a building to protect him? True that Moriarty had said about the other two too, but to be frank it was kind of overkill; she would have gladly jumped just for John alone and it was kind of established fact after the pool incident and the incident with the Americans at The Woman's house.

She could not understand when and how this seemingly ordinary doctor broke into her great wall of self defense to create a permanent place for himself in it. She had never had friends, acquaintances yes, but never friends; at least that is what she had thought until one Dr. John Watson waltzed into her life with a psychosomatic limp and killer shots. He had been there as a true friend for her and in the true sense of the word. He was not a lover in disguise of a friend; he did not want or expect the relationship they had to turn into something else, even though she knew anyone other than her John would have wanted that. It was one of the many things she liked about him. But what she liked the most was that he was always the same; a constant, an unchanging factor in the equation of her life; he was the anchor to her ever wandering mindscapes.

It had taken a fraction of a second for all these thoughts to run through the mind of Sherline Holmes after she heard John's question. She then decided that what John needed was plain facts and the emotional reasons behind them were better left unsaid because if someone truly understood her emotions it would be her John more than anybody else.

She then started to tell him about Moriarty's plan and her own plan to fake her death. She told him that she was expecting Moriarty to attack him as he was threatening her with his 'IOUs' which was him indicating that he was planning to harm everyone who was close to her heart. So she then went to tell him all about how she roped in Molly's and Mycroft's help to stage the elaborate scene on the roof of Bart's that day. On hearing Molly's and Mycroft's names, she could hear john suck in an angry sigh of breath. His eyes were glistening in fury and betrayal but she decided to continue without a pause before John lost his cool and the truth remained unsaid. So she went on to tell about how when she jumped the people below caught her safely in a net and then replaced another dead body matching her descriptions when John had come to check her pulse. The much needed time delay was also preplanned as it was one Mycroft's man on the bicycle who had hit John on the road causing his fall. She told him that she had to act it all out because those people who were planted by Moriarty were still having their eyes on her while she was jumping and making John believe was the only way to save all their lives.

And before John could ask her all the obvious questions, she herself decided to answer them beforehand by saying that she couldn't intimate him about her living status and whereabouts as the threat on all their lives especially his was still out there as Moriarty's right hand man who was controlling his empire now was still roaming free. She then paused and added with a smug grin, "Or well had been, atleast till yesterday."

John had heard a lot to digest and his emotions were like as if they were on a roller-coaster ride with sudden ups n downs and little steadiness in between. And by the time he processed the end words almost five minutes had passed. So when the meaning of those last words Sherly had said dawned on him, the enormity of the whole incident too dawned on him. The spoken and unspoken reasons for why his best friend had lied to him started to become clear from the fog which had clouded his mind. Five minutes were not enough to process this whole three years worth of happenings, but for now atleast the basics of all how and why these things happened had become clear to him. He may or may not agree to many of the things that had happened or the way they happened, but atleast for now he was calm enough to speak to his long lost friend without feeling the necessity to break all those incisors and canines of her's.

So when he found his friend crawling slowly towards him on the sofa, he just turned and smiled a ghost of the smile before pulling her by her shoulders towards him and laying his head on the said shoulders with a relieved sigh.

That is how Lestrade, Harry and Mrs. Hudson found them both after few hours; with John resting his head on Sherly's shoulders and she in turn resting her chin on his head and both of them sleeping soundly and calmly even in their odd position. The sight brought the much needed smile on all the three's faces and they silently agreed upon leaving them like that for few more hours.

AN: Reviews are welcome asusual. :)