Necessary Faith
By Alecto Perdita
Chapter 12 - Now I must live without you
Rating: PG-13
Posted: May 19, 2012
London is unseasonably cool on the second anniversary of Sherlock's fall, and a sudden realization leaves John staggering and gasping for air.
Sherlock has been dead for two years; Sherlock has been dead for longer than John had actually known him in life. The gut-wrenching epiphany sends him flying out of Mary's house (she watches him go silently with expressions of pity and longing, he hates it and needs to get away from her) and into a pub in Central London (always London because that's where Sherlock thrived).
The grief that he thought he'd shuttered away in the back corner of his mind breaks through and washes the rest of the evening away in a rush of pain and liquor. The world presses in on him, insistent on trapping and reminding him. Dear God, he's not done mourning Sherlock yet. Dear God, he may never stop.
He hasn't been healing, not if that renewed and gaping hole burning in his soul is any indication. He hasn't moved on. He isn't letting go.
In his time traveling with Mary, he had simply been putting his mourning off—delaying the reality again and again. He had taken every hunt, every job as an opportunity to distract himself and postpone what he should have done to shed his grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, where had he stopped? He might have done them out of order. Does he need to start from the beginning again? Let's go back to the start: ...).
How long had he been using Mary as a substitute? Why the hell did she let him do that?
The rage, now adrift with no real target, clenches his heart, his lungs, every cell in his body in a vice grip. As throwing a fit is likely to get him sectioned or arrested, he vacates the bar as the bartender and every patron around him threw him increasingly worried glances. Which is why he's now climbing over the cemetery's iron-wrought gates in an attempt to visit Sherlock's grave well after midnight. He stumbles, he trips, and he stubs his toes on unseen obstacles in the dark. But he keeps moving.
"You bastard," John snarls at the headstone lit only by the light of the moon. He doesn't bother to try and control the volume of his voice. He needs Sherlock to hear him through six feet of earth. "You fucking broke me. You put me together after Afghanistan just to break me again!"
Silence.
"All I do now is just run. I'm kidding myself if I say I'm not still chasing after you. Maybe I've always just been deluding myself, thinking I would catch up to you someday. You and that brilliant mind of yours."
He allows himself to slump against the headstone. It's hard and cool against his forehead when he leans against the engraved name. It's mad, throwing himself at Sherlock's grave like some besotted and doomed heroine in a Shakespearean tragedy. But he's too drunk to care. Too angry to give a damn about what others think.
"Why'd you leave me behind?"
The next morning, the groundskeeper finds him passed out by the grave. He lectures John on the inappropriateness of it all and how dangerous it is to fall asleep outside like he did. Mary isn't home when he returns to her house; it's a school day so she's at work. But John's skin feels two sizes too small and London is once again collapsing around him.
He leaves her a brief note on the fridge before packing everything back into the Corsa and flees the city as if hellhounds are nipping at his heels.
-x-x-x-
Demons lie; this is doubly true when they're caught in a devil's trap.
John repeatedly firms the notion in his mind. It doesn't happen often—just often enough.
"I can give him back to you if you let me out." The eyes are always inky black (completely dark as the blackness eclipses the white of their eyes) when they try to entice him like that. Sometimes, they pucker their lips in offer of a contract.
John's no fool.
Worse yet are the ones that try to kindle the spark of hope he can't possibly afford: "He's not dead. He faked it. Sherlock Holmes is still alive. I can tell you where he is."
John hates the latter type more. His hands shake as he douses them in more holy water than necessary, voice booming when he chants.
-x-x-x-
John's birthday in July passes again with little fanfare. At this time last year, he and Mary had been too engrossed in a job involving a trickster and continually emptied blood banks to notice. They celebrated afterwards by treating themselves to a holiday weekend in Bath (cut short by the re-emergence of said trickster, but that's a story for another time).
This year, he is passing through Chelmsford (his hometown) on route to Norwich. A sudden nostalgia and the day drive him to seek out his childhood home. Some other family is living here now (the exterior has been painted white when it had been a soft blue in his youth), though no one is currently home.
He's trespassing, but it's hard to give a damn after hunting for almost two years (breaking and entering is a necessary part of every hunter's repertoire). He jumps the fence and makes a beeline for the backyard. He smiles. The giant oak tree and the tree house still stand as the yard's centerpiece.
Before he and Harry were constantly at each other's throat, they spent hours hiding in their tree house. Then Harry hit puberty and it became John's refuge from her. He is grateful for the childhood he had; it was neither traumatic nor blissful. Just utterly normal. He runs a hand down the tree trunk and smiles to himself. Now his life is utter madness and he knows he wouldn't have it any other way.
Because having met and lost Sherlock is still infinitely better than the idea of never knowing him.
-x-x-x-
Come August, John makes the effort to return to London for Mary's birthday. They go out to dinner at a quaint French bistro in Soho. She's doing well, looking far less haunted than months ago. John can't help but wonder if this was what she was like before Will's death. Through appetizers and waiting for their entrees, conversation stays light and comfortable. John talks about Ireland (where he was for the last month) and Mary tells him about the preparations for her new full-time position at an independent school to start in September (teaching Latin of all subjects!). In public and away from the pub, they've always tried not to bring up hunting or either of their emotional traumas.
Which is why John is caught extremely off-guard when she brings the topic out of nowhere.
"Do you love him? Are you in love with him?" she asks abruptly while swirling the Chardonnay in her wine glass. Her brow is pinched together in concentration.
They both know exactly who she's referring to.
"Sorry, it's just that I'd never asked before. I had always assumed," she drops her gaze to the table before continuing. "And you never gave any indication otherwise."
John remains frozen with his fork poised at his lips. She's looking straight at him now, studying him and trying to deduce the answer out of him. For some reason, a familiar sort of irritation rises to the surface. It's the sort of feeling he hasn't really had in a very long time. He sets the silverware back down with a clatter and disturbs the rest of the dinner setup.
"Christ, Mary, it wasn't like that. Sherlock and I never—"
She rolls her eyes before cutting in. "I know that. I know you two weren't officially together. Why are you being so defensive now? You never reacted like this before."
We're not a couple.
Yes, you are.
She's right, of course. It has been a long time since he had such an immediate and visceral reaction to assumptions about him and Sherlock. Doubly so in regards to Mary's assumptions He's never talked to her about his feelings regarding Sherlock (irritation, purpose, joy, contentment, moremoremore until his veins are too clogged with emotions) beyond his best friend and one of the most important people in John's life in recent years. It's not hard to imagine how she's filled in the blanks, not when he spent the last two years acting like a bleeding widower.
He's also never corrected her before—until now.
He finds that he's looking over his shoulders at all the other diners, but no one is paying any special attention to him. And why would they? After two years and four months, Sherlock Holmes is finally old news. He is merely an oddity preserved mainly in the annals of Internet history, and Dr. John Watson is just a footnote in Sherlock's sparse entry.
They weren't a couple, not even close.
I consider myself married to my work.
"John?" She leans in across the table to capture his attention again.
"I don't know, Mary. Does it really matter? The man's dead."
John is resigned to reality now. Sherlock is dead. Sherlock will stay dead, because John is no longer sure he's willing to pay the same prices to bring the man back as he was a year ago.
A wealth of emotion flutters across her face (pity, worry, astonishment, too many and too quick to catalog) as she tightens her grip around the stem of the wine glass. "Of course it matters! It matters a lot!"
Her impassioned outburst startles him, but all he can do is stare at her. In return, she continues to hold his gaze and searches his face for something. He doesn't know if she's found what she's looking for, but she sits back in her seat several minutes later.
They pass the rest of the meal in complete silence. But her question plagues and mocks him all night—and for the days to follow.
Do you love him? Did you love him?
Can you love him?
In the end, John has no answer. Just the sick and twisting feeling that the world—even as it continues turning—has tilted too much on its axis without the weight of Sherlock Holmes to stabilize it.
Just a heads up that there might be a bit of a delay before the next chapter is posted. While I already have a bulk majority of the rest of the story finished, there is one scene in particular that I'll probably be struggling with. So look forward to some brief cameo appearances by the boys of Supernatural coming next chapter!
Thank you for everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and alerting!