Prompt: Actually, two prompts that got muddled up in my head. (1): Maybe because of Reichenbach or some accident Sherlock dies and John can't accept it. John goes to great and terrible lengths, defying nature, to bring Sherlock back from the dead. Give me angst! Give me horror! Make me cry! and (2): When Sherlock dies at Reichenbach, John brings him back to life by eating human hearts in his dreams.
Beware of character death, gore, inappropriate medical use of puppies ...
The first night John returns home after – After.
The flat is still and silent and though nothing in it has changed it is somehow devoid of the sense of home it had – before. John looks at everything in a stunned, silent daze, picks up cushions and moves abandoned mugs and gently picks at the bullet-marked wall before he collapses upon the sofa like a puppet with its strings cut.
He stares at the ceiling and doesn't say a word, as if he is some fairy tale princess who can win back her beloved with her silence.
He thinks of Sherlock, how any minute now he will walk in and curl beside him on the sofa, how they will push at each other awkwardly and entwine their limbs and fold together to fit: John's mouth will touch Sherlock's long throat, brush against his jaw, Sherlock will reach up and angle his arm to bury his fingers in John's hair, and he'll turn his head and say –
John feels his face contort: his mouth open, wordless, his eyes squint shut, hot and itchy.
He gasps, wet and ragged, and presses his shaking hands against his eyes.
(His hands smell of blood; he can feel it flaking against his skin.)
"Sherlock," he croaks, but all it does is give the darkness more weight.
John looks up from his book (peeling red foil images, the heart repeating, wavering almost into words, a title) and stares at himself, six years old, puppy in his hands, held up for inspection, please may I keep it?
In his father's voice, John says, no, Johnny.
John watches his features crumple, tears flood his eyes and spill over, drip from his chin.
what do you want a puppy for, anyway? He hears his father ask. oh, you'll dote over it now, but just who is going to end up cleaning up its shit, eh?
I'll look after it, I will, he swears, hugging the puppy close to his chest, where it whimpers softly and presses tiny paws against his heart. I'll feed it and clean up after it an' everythin', please daddy.
In his father's voice, John says, put it down.
John kneels and puts the puppy on the kitchen floor. Its paws skitter against the cheap linoleum, it bumps against his feet and falls onto its hindquarters and complains with an irritated yelp.
In his own voice, John asks, "Do you love it?"
I'll be good forever, I won't ask for Christmas presents or anything, please,
"How much do you love it? Enough to give your heart?"
please daddy
John's hands are steady on the scalpel, on the saw, cracking open ribs, cutting the heart loose from its moorings.
The puppy cowers in the corner, red in its fur.
The heart is surprisingly tender, warm and red and raw as it slips down his throat in torn pieces. It tastes like potential and tears and when he's finished chewing and wiped his chin, finicky as a cat, it occurs to John that his child self still needs a heart to carry on with.
The puppy wriggles and flails and howls between his lungs as he closes its cage of bone, muffles its voice by folding the muscle and flesh back over and he can't hear it at all as he stitches the skin neatly closed and Harry says, "Gonna pine for fourteen years, Greyfriars Bobby?"
"Fuck off, Harry," John says, his dog-heart growling in his chest and Sherlock is walking beside a waterfall, rolling a cigarette he won't smoke and saying something John can't hear over the roar of the water and down John sinks with flesh between his teeth, down down down.
When John wakes up, his palm is over his heart and he feels it beat against his fingers (lubdub), surprised somehow by its rhythm.
He sits up and wrinkles his nose at his clothes, yesterday's leavings, and staggers to the shower. The water is hot as it never is when Sherlock is awake first, as he always is, and John presses his hands against the slick tiles and counts his breaths.
When he emerges again, clean clothed, hair damp against the nape of his neck and skin tight and dry, he feels a bit more like the man he used to be, which is better by far than feeling like a new one.
He walks the flat, collecting mugs and cutlery for the cleared out sink, and wipes dust with a worn cloth, helping nothing and merely moving it around, but he leaves the body parts and chemical apparatus and doesn't do more than glance at the acid-stained kitchen table, because Sherlock always gets tetchy when John calls biohazard and throws out his 'experiments' and it's not worth it, all things considered.
(Anyway, he's pretty sure the only experiment going on is 'how far can I push John before he puts his foot down?' – and he has long since grown immune to the smell of rotting flesh.)
He thinks about taking a walk along the river, or calling Harry, or going to the surgery.
His phone is silent in his pocket and he turns it off when he realises he is waiting for Sherlock to text.
the soul is seven-parted, explains the Ibis in its whispery voice. there is the ha, the sheut, the ren, the ba, the ka, the akh and the ib. It is the ib we are here to judge.
The hall in which they stand is endless, John thinks: his voice will echo forever.
you must understand. first: the heart is ib, spiritual, and the heart is haty, physical.
John holds Jim Moriarty's heart in his hands and knows the weighted feather is not enough to balance the scales. He washes it in river water and dries it like a newborn. Between his palms it beats and cries out in an old tongue (oh my heart of my mother – oh my heart of my being – do not rise up against me as witness).
the word for when a heart dries up is wesher, informs the Ibis.
Gently John places the heart (ruby-red and glittering, black and liquid at its core), upon the golden scales, opposite the vast feather he cannot look at directly, and watches, blank-faced, as they tip and swing.
the heart that is powerless, dark with anger, is depet; a bitter heart is deher.
It is a heavy feather (if John looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see a goddess curled there upon the scale), but Jim Moriarty's is a heavy heart, and the scales tip and fall, and into John's hands the heart returns, cracked and screaming. John smiles at Moriarty's wide-eyed, open-mouthed howl of outrage, and bites down, hard, flooding his mouth with bitter black blood.
aq is for the heart that perishes, says the Ibis, voice dry as an empty river bed. John tears at Moriarty's heart with blunt teeth and Moriarty screams and screams and
the heart on the scales is ib and haty both; thus can Ammet find sustenance in flesh.
John traces the blood dribbling down to his wrist with his tongue and licks his fingers clean, one by one, mouth wet and warm and stained.
(wekh is the heart that is shrouded in darkness, warns the Ibis.)
He has eight missed calls and twelve unread messages. He listens to them all dutifully and deletes them one by one.
He gets up and walks out of the flat, blinking like something newborn in the sunlight, and lets himself be buffeted to and fro by indifferent pedestrians, each in their own untouchable worlds.
He walks and walks and doesn't care where he ends up, but he's smiling for what feels like the first time in weeks.
Harry wears her wedding dress, the white that John joked was false representation, and hums as she fiddles nervously with her hair, her back to the door.
In the mirror, John removes his top hat and turns it thoughtfully in his hands, his fingers looking rough and awkward against the grey woolfelt.
Johnny! Harry crows delightedly in greeting. looking very smart, she coos, and in the mirror she tugs at his morning suit fussily, straightens his already knocked askew tie, twiddles his cuff-links to be perfectly in line and John waits patiently, parade rest, and lets her work.
how do I look? she demands, and when she stands it in is in frock coat and striped trousers, sleek and shining, cravat a splash of crimson at her throat.
"Like a woman in love," John says softly, placing his hat on the table.
don't get sappy on me now, little brother, Harry teases, her smile lopsided, her lipstick just a little smeared. She'll fix it before the ceremony, bitching at John for not telling her.
John closes his eyes as he hugs her, folds her into his arms. "I love you," he says. "But you know it will only end badly, don't you? You know you don't need this, not like I do. I don't have one any more," and his hand finds the latches to her chest and opens it deftly to remove her heart from its snug organ-cushioned home.
"You don't need it, Harry," John says, tastes the lie like liquorice on his tongue, and her heart in his mouth is burned, rubbed with salt.
Harry is crying silently, hands seeking blindly in her empty chest, and John feels sorry for her, almost, almost doubts – but when he turns his head he can see Sherlock walking upon the shore, waves lapping at his ankles; beyond him the sea and sky stretch out into forever and the blur where they meet is something like hope.
"How are you doing?" Ella asks in her cool, professional voice, pen hovering over paper.
"Fine," John says blankly. "Fine." He resists the urge to move his leg and relieve its (phantom) ache.
"John," she says, barely strained patience.
John keeps his eyes focussed on her shoulder and says nothing.
"If you don't want help," Ella says, frustration leaking into her tone, "John, why are you here?"
John closes his eyes.
"I dream he'll walk in any moment," he says at last, and Ella smiles, relieved, thinking they're getting somewhere; John watches the clock and says 'mm-hm' and 'yes' and 'no' and 'maybe' and 'I don't know' in all the appropriate places.
He wants to say, I dream I'm eating hearts.
He wants to say, I know that if I take enough, sacrifice enough, I can have Sherlock back.
He wants to say, sometimes I think I need Sherlock to breathe, without him I can't focus, I can't see a thing – I think I'd give everything just to have him back, and I'm not sure it's right, but I can't change my mind any more, because in my chest my heart is dogged and loyal and bites at my ribs every time I think of stopping.
He wants the answer to be something simple, something trite, something true. It would probably sound like love is always sacrifice.
Sherlock beneath the water, his eyes open, hands outstretched, and John's single short scream repeating.
Says fierce-eyed Charon, the soul is two-parted: the ψυχή, your individuality, your personal immortality, lives in your head. It makes you what you are. Your θυμός is your heat, your motion, your life and lives in your heart; without your ψυχή you breathe but do not live, but without your θυμός all you are is the shade that enters the realm of Hades.
"Sherlock," John says, moans, keens, a dying animal. "Sherlock!"
Sherlock's fingers scrabbling at John's hand around his wrist, trying to pry him away, thin threads of blood curling in the ice-cold water, turning into words, believe me to be, my dear fellow, very sincerely yours -
"I won't," John tells him, "I won't, damn you – trying to make me – I won't let you go!"
The thread of his life has been cut, Charon warns, but without any expectation that he will be heard. John is not Orpheus, but the music in his head is much the same, a ceaseless beat (SherlockSherlockSherlock).
"Take it," John says, fierce and low, and when he presses his lips to Sherlock's, it is not his air he gives, but the hearts he has collected, sliding mouth to mouth slick with blood and heavy with significance. "Live, Sherlock,"
But Sherlock shakes his head, silver-coin eyes staring blindly, mouth moving soundlessly, reeling a list of deductions John cannot hear, and then John realises that he has forgotten – there is one heart above all others that Sherlock needs.
your heat, your motion, your life, it lives in your heart.
Tenderly, John reaches into Sherlock's chest, closes his eyes so he can't see the mute look of betrayal.
"I'm only going to give it back to you," he says, but he knows that's not the point. Taken from him and returned this way –
Sherlock's heart, fierce and barbed, tastes like metal, like air, like thought, and he shudders as he divides it carefully and swallows it down, fire and ice combining in his throat.
Sherlock shakes his head fiercely when he tries to return it, mouth clamped shut, no no no, and John has to force his mouth open, has to – because whatever Sherlock wants, it's nothing compared to how much John needs to see him live.
your fare, says the ferryman, and tips a shining coin into John's palm.
This is what will happen:
After months and months of not-living, John will wake to blood in his mouth and Mrs Hudson's scream.
He will wonder at the tears on his face, and the coldness in his chest, and walk like a man blinded.
He will open the door.
Sherlock will be there.