Author's notes: Those who needed two handkerchiefs last time might need three today.
Thanks to my three betas GoSherlocked, Katzedecimal and Grizzi. I hope you know how much your support means to me.
The problem is that once I saw how broken he is, I cannot un-see the signs that prove it. I see the circles underneath his eyes that grow darker because he doesn't sleep enough. I see that he does not kiss me or touch me because he doesn't dare to love me any longer. I see that he lets me feed Emmi and take her to bed and change her nappies because he doesn't dare to love her êither. And I see that he sees it, too, and suffers.
And it hurts me to see him like that, knowing that I cannot help him. And he sees that, too, and it hurts him even more.
And he sees how broken I am. He sees that I no longer play the violin because I cannot bring myself to stop considering music as communication. He sees how I flinch when his mobile rings because people no longer call me, knowing I won't be able to answer. He sees how I try not to look at him longingly when I miss being close to him. He sees all that and it hurts both of us that he does.
We are definitely destined to fail.
For a while, we manage to stumble along but in the end it doesn't take much to tip the scales. It starts when Emmi hits her head on a toy block when she manages to turn from her belly to her back. I try to comfort her but (for the first time) she clearly stretches out her arms for John. He is as surprised as I am and takes her without complaint. (Too surprised to find an excuse, maybe.)
For the next hour, she refuses to be held by me and clings to John instead. He holds her, plays with her but tenses with every passing minute. Then Emmi grows tired and becomes crotchety and fidgety but still refuses to come to me. So John tries to remain calm. It wears him out rather soon. He is in the kitchen with her, trying to wash her sticky hands when his mobile rings. And rings. And rings.
"God, can you answer it?", John shouts without thinking - and we both freeze.
Because I can't, really. It is an unknown caller who would surely not know what to make of it if his call is answered by nothing but silence. After a second, I recover from that little panic attack. When I finally find a solution to the problem (I could get the mobile, put the call on speaker and hold it in front of John) after two more seconds, the mobile stops ringing.
John turns around to face me, emotions running across his face. He opens his mouth (to be angry with me) and closes it again. He opens his mouth once more (to apologise) and closes it again. He starts fidgeting and after a moment he snaps and storms out of the flat with Emmi in his arms.
They stay away for more than two hours.
There is a lot you can fail to do in two hours. You can fail to deduce who had called John. (Client? Most likely.) You can fail to play the violin once more. You can stare at your mobile and in the end fail to type a text saying "Please come home". You can fail to calm down.
When they finally come back, I instantly see something has changed in John. (Even with my deduction skills still down. He is emanating change out of every pore of his body.) He is serious and calm. There is something absolutely not good about it.
Emmi is sleeping in John's arms. He places her in his chair (She is nearly too tall to lie on it. When did she grow that much?) and sits on the sofa. "Please sit down, Sherlock," he says.
I don't want to. I want to tell him to stop being that serious. I want to tell him that everything will be all right eventually. I want to hold him and kiss away whatever it is that he intends to tell me now. But I can't and so I simply sit down next to him.
He reaches out for my hand and takes it in both of his. The first time he initiates physical contact in more than a month. That should be good. Why does it still feel like disaster is going to strike any second? "Sherlock," he starts, and stops again. Purses his lips, looks at his feet, takes a deep breath.
"Sherlock, I can't ..." No, this is not going to end well. I shake my head, trying to signal him to stop but he is determined. "Sherlock, I can't go on like that. It's not ..." His voice breaks and it is perfectly all right for me to be close to tears because he is, too. He caresses my hand, avoids my glance. How can he be so tender when he is about to shatter everything we have?
"It does not get any better and I don't see …" No no no.
"Please don't think it is your ..." Please not. There is a single tear running down his cheek and I concentrate on it because there is no way I could stand looking into his eyes now.
"I … I need ..." To get away from me.
The terrible thing is that I understand him. He is damaged so deeply that my own damage is too much for him to handle. If he leaves now, there is the oh so slight chance that he will make it.
Understanding does not stop me from shattering, though. I try to nod, try to let him know that I understand. He also nods. I tell myself fiercely that I can handle it. He has to take his time. And when he is all right again, or better at least, he will come back and we can …
"The remover will be here soon," he goes on and my head snaps up. I cannot help but stare at him. Removers? What do we need removers for? How long is he going to stay away?
And then I see it in his eyes. (What a terrible moment for my deduction skills to start working again.) He does not really believe that he will heal. He does not believe he will return.
It is incredible how much you can break when you thought you were broken already.
Then suddenly the removers are there, and then his things are gone, and Emmi's things, and then the removers are gone, and John is standing in the living room with Emmi in his arms they will be gone soon, too, and I don't know how I am supposed to handle goodbye.
"I am sorry," John whispers, and he really is. He allows me to hug him one last time, and I manage to kiss Emmi goodbye and pet her hair and they are gone, too.
I remain standing in the living room for nearly an hour. Then (without thinking) I pick up my violin because playing is how I deal with pain but as always the bow stops just before it would touch the strings and the pain gets worse and worse. When I turn around, my eyes fall on the chair that will never be John's chair again and I become so angry that my hands start shaking. Before I know what I am doing, I am smashing the violin against the armrest, again and again and again and I don't even stop when the instrument is completely shattered.
I only stop because Mrs Hudson comes in. My anger is burned away, and my legs buckle, and suddenly I am crying in her arms, and she is soothing me, and I cry out my pain at losing John and losing Emmi and losing the violin Mycroft gave me after rehab and losing Mycroft and losing my voice.
Later I briefly wonder if it is a good sign that I was not crying silently but with loud sobs, but I am too heartbroken to give it much thought.
###
Time loses meaning afterwards. I know that I spend the first night crying, but after that, all days blur together like wet colours on canvas. Well, colours … A paralysing artwork made of grey and gainsboro and darkslategrey and black.
I spend days on the sofa, bringing my brain into an empty non-thinking state.
I spend other days walking around London, non-thinking, unseeing.
I spend days not knowing what I am doing, only realizing that somehow, between waking up and falling asleep, I have somehow moved, at least from one room to another.
I spend days looking around the flat aimlessly, only to accidentally find a sock or a toy block or a dummy that was left behind. Those days are the worst.
On the last day I spend walking around London, I am deeply lost in non-thought when I feel someone yanking at my coat. Violently. I stumble, nearly fall back and then there is shouting and a horn, and only then do I realise that I nearly ran in front of a bus.
My brain starts working again, briefly. The bus was driving with a speed of 32 miles. It would have hit me right into my left side. I myself was moving with about 6 miles, so the impact would have smashed my head before my body would have been slung onto the other lane. Traffic on that lane: high. Chance of survival: zero.
My unknown life saviour is still holding my arm, speaking at me in a high pitched voice. I try to free myself politely, try to thank her without words and soon the endless stream of pedestrians part us and she is gone. I continue my walk for a long time. There is a turmoil inside of me but I cannot put my finger on what it is that I am feeling. Thankfully, my brain moves back into non-thought state.
Then suddenly a thought hits me with the brutal force of an unpleasant epiphany.
My legs buckle and I only barely reach a nearby bench before my body starts shaking violently. There is a ringing in my ears that goes on for a long time. It could be that I even threw up in public but if I did, I immediately deleted that memory again, so I cannot tell. The taste in my mouth hints at it, anyway.
I was angry at that woman. For a moment, when I realised that I nearly died, I was angry at her for saving me.
I don't know for how long I have been sitting on that bench before I feel strong enough to raise a cab to take me home.
Home.
Not a home any more, only empty rooms. Rooms that suffocate me, filled with memories that drown me. Unbearable.
I sit down on the sofa and take refuge in my mind palace, where Mycroft is waiting for me already. He is looking sad (once more, no surprise here). "What are you doing here, little brother?" he asks, knowing exactly what I will answer.
So I ignore him and turn to the door that has once promised a peace of mind. As always, it is locked.
When I give up and turn around again, Mycroft is still there. He shakes his head. "Look at how much you have changed since I died. You have never been a quitter before," he states.
But this is unfair. I might give up a bit too easy but I am still here, right? I might have been angry at being saved but I did not attempt to kill myself on purpose, right?
Mycroft gives me a sardonic smile. "Oh please. The most observant man in the country does not see a huge red bus right next to him?"
He has a point there but as always that does not make it better.
I look at the closed door once more. "What is behind it?" Mycroft asks. Oh, as if he doesn't know. He smiles, "Of course I know. But you are missing an important point of what's behind that door. So tell me, where does that door come from?"
Damn. Mycroft can still catch my attention by being cryptic, even though he is dead. I sulk but play along.
The door is a real door, taken from my memory.
"What memory?"
Holidays. Summer holidays with our parents, always leading back to a little island abroad, years and years in a row.
"And where does the door lead to?"
Outside. It leads into the garden of our house there. From the garden, you can see the ocean and the beach, smell the salt water and hear the sea gulls.
"A soothing place for you, right?"
Yes. I first came here in my mind palace when Redbeard died. Without that garden I would not have made it through rehab once.
While I am waiting for the next question, Mycroft is waiting for me to understand something. But what?
When I fail to come up with something intelligent, he asks, "When was the backyard destroyed?"
Now I am confused. What a strange question. We stopped travelling there when I grew too old for family holidays, but as far as I know, the house still exists,, most likely still belongs to my parents even, and so does the backyard.
Once more, Mycroft waits. And then I see what he is trying to tell me. Of course. The backyard still exists. I can no longer access the place in my mind. But I could go to the real backyard.
I would have to leave …
"Baker Street?" Mycroft asks, his voice soft, and he goes on, "Or John? Do you want to be here in case he comes back?"
I can't help biting my lip. Yes. I want to be here, in case ...NO, I want to be here if, I mean, when John comes back.
"Do you really think you can heal here, going on like that?" Mycroft implores. "What if John does really come back one day? He should not find you like this, right?"
No, he shouldn't.
###
It takes twenty-eight minutes to make Mrs Hudson come upstairs, look at my laptop and understand what I want. (Opening tabs on your laptop is not really communication, right?) It takes another thirty-two minutes for her to make the necessary phone calls and fifteen minutes for me to pack all I need (not much). Eighteen minutes cab ride to the car rental service (a mini cooper, because daddy's cars were always too small for us back then), and five minutes between signing the contract (signing is not communication either, right?) and starting to drive out of town.
Author's note: And now it is finally time for things to get better. Hang on. :-)