Author's note: John is not all right.
The next morning I sit in our backyard, staring at my mobile. It should not be that difficult, right? Because after all, it is John I want to call.
And yet … What if I am not healed enough? What if he is not willing to take care of me, happy that he at least is all right again? What if he thinks that I am not good for Emmi, even in my half-healed state?
Why didn't he try to contact me at least once?
After a while, Daddy joins me (unobtrusively). He sits down next to me and pretends to be incredibly occupied with reading a German newspaper. I cannot help but smile (a little).
After another while, I get over my (fear? No, hesitation. No, really fear!) and dial John's number. I hear it ringing three times before he answers, "Hello?"
Oh, how I missed hearing that voice.
I suddenly realize that I am unable to deduce him and to concentrate on talking at the same time. So I decide to record the phone call in my mind and just go ahead boldly, "Hello, John."
There is a moment of silence on the other side of the line. Then I hear John again, "Sherlock. It is ... good to hear your voice." Something is resonating in that sentence. Something I need to analyse later on.
Because now I have to face a problem I didn't anticipate: I don't know what to say next.
"How are you?" comes out of my mouth before I can say something more profound. It sounds stilted to me. Still better than silence.
John does not answer for a while. I hear him breathing hard. "Sherlock ..." he starts and falls silent again.
Do I need to fill the gap? That has never been necessary between the two of us.
"I am happy to hear you talking again. I really am," he finally says. Another (painful) moment of silence. Then, "But I can't talk to you. I'm sorry."
He is not all right. He is not all right. My mind starts spinning. Only now do I realise that I always assumed he would heal faster than me. But he sounds like he didn't heal at all.
No, he sounds even worse than when he left.
I try not to give up. "That's ... all right." (It's not. Absolutely not. Because he is in pain.) After a moment I dare to say, "I'll call you again later, and then ..."
"Don't!" he hisses. Then, calmer, "Sherlock, I can't ... I can't. Please don't."
Now I am completely at a loss. There are loads of answers on my mind but none of them makes it all the way to my mouth. Instead, I feel a heavy lump forming in my throat. I cannot guarantee that I won't start crying at any moment. (He is not all right.) But he needs to know that Mary had told us nothing but lies. I need to tell him.
We are both holding the line. My mouth opens and closes a few times. I don't find the words I would need now. After some agonising moments, Daddy takes the phone out of my hand.
"Hello, son" he says and walks out of hearing range.
John is not all right. Somehow, I have always assumed that he would heal faster than me. That he would be only waiting for me to be all right again.
I cannot stand to think about the emotional implications any longer. So I do the only thing I really know how to do. I go inside my mind palace (Baker Street, living room) to deduce him. (Replay his lines, one by one.)
1. "Hello?"
There was fear in his voice. He did not expect me to call him. Rather someone who found his number on my mobile. Someone who wanted to inform him of my hospitalisation or my attempted suicide or my suicide.
2. "Sherlock. It is ... good to hear your voice."
His brain needs a few seconds to adjust to the (unexpected) fact that I am able to talk again. He is relieved that I am better. He enjoys hearing my voice but restrains himself from being too happy about it. He still believes that terrible things will happen to people if he loves them.
3."Sherlock ..."
An expletive. He needs time to consider what to say next. He is going to say something that will hurt me and tries to soften the impact. He still cares for me a lot even though he doesn't want to.
4. "I am happy to hear you talking again. I really am,"
He really is. But he wishes he weren't. He still loves me and desperately tries not to.
5. "But I can't talk to you. I'm sorry."
Because talking to me would inevitably intensify the love again. The love he is trying to bring to an end.
6. "Don't!"
Panic. He has realised now how much he wants me to call him again. How much he wants me to come to him. How much he misses me. How much he loves me. How terrible the punishment will be for both of us.
He still believes her lies.
7."Sherlock, I can't ... I can't. Please don't."
It breaks his heart to say that. But he welcomes the heartbreak because a proper heartbreak leaves the heart numb. A broken heart is less at risk of loving again.
It is hard not to give up hope. Really hard. In my mind palace, I sit down in my chair and stare at his (as much as you can stare when tears are blurring your vision). I can feel his pain, worse than my own. I love him. He tries not to love me and fails. And with Mary's horrific plan B playing out, his ongoing love for me is destroying him.
When I finally come out of my mind palace, Mummy is sitting next to me. It is late afternoon already. I blink.
"Where is Daddy?"
She looks at me carefully. "He … left with the two o'clock ferry. Needs to pick up a few things we forgot back home. He will be back in two or three days."
I know Mummy is lying. I know she knows that I know. We both pretend I don't know she is lying.
Because it is really obvious that Daddy has left for Scotland to look after John.
###
The next morning, Mummy is busy cleaning the house (extensively). That leaves me space to face some things I have avoided so far. I need a proper setting to face them. So I pack a thermos jug filled with hot chocolate, put on my (ridiculously yellow) rain-coat and drive all the way to the beach in the north-west. There is a lookout in the dunes with a bench and a notice board. It tells you where exactly London is from here.
(I do not need that information but I feel somehow closer to home here.)
There is rain and wind and sand blowing into my face and the smell of salt and seaweed in my nose and the taste of hot chocolate in my mouth. The perfect stage for facing some of the demons still locked away inside my mind.
There is a (terrifying) room in my mind palace where I stored every memory I could not delete but had to block. The accessible memory of Mycroft's death for example is extremely limited but inside this room everything must be waiting for me to look at it. I would prefer to keep it inaccessible. But John is not all right and he needs me to be all right for both of us.)
So I take another gulp of chocolate and open the door.
There is a gigantic flat screen in that room. It starts showing me every devastating detail I have blocked. How John covered Mycroft's body with a blanket because I (completely irrationally) feared that he would freeze. How the police had interrogated us and refused to listen when I told them my deduction. (I clearly remember my rage about that now.) How Mycroft's men took over the investigation.
How I collapsed when they took his body away. How Daddy and John had to carry me inside the bathroom to take a shower after thirty-eight minutes. How scared John was for my sanity.
All the holes in my memory are filled now, one by one. Not just the facts, but also the emotions. It is a painful and heart-wrenching process but I experience a strange peace of mind when it is done.
I finally drive home to find Mummy working on the unknown sailors once more. When she deduces my state of mind, she definitely doesn't cry with relief secretly while preparing dinner.
###
I follow the same procedure the next day. Only this time I go through everything that happened down in that cellar.
It causes a pain in my heart that is different from what I felt yesterday. Different but not less painful. There are so many details I need to wrap my mind around. The deeper I analyse Mary's actions the clearer it becomes why John and I are suffering so much, even weeks after her death.
There are a few extremely painful moments I have to watch again and again, until they slowly start to lose their terror. (John's face when he stops himself from saying "I love you" for the first time. The feeling when I was lying on the ground after being tasered to near death. My relief when my legs gave in.)
Then I watch Mary's corpse and I am finally able to deduce what exactly happened behind my back. (I had been unable to deduce it right away and later could not find a way to ask John about it non-verbally.)
It is crystal clear to me now. (My deduction skills are working again. A unmistakable sign of my healing.) John was lying with his head in her lap (watching me not giving in just yet) when his bonds tore. (I recall now the way the ropes were lying on the ground). He let the ropes fall to the ground without moving much.
Mary must have been busy watching me because he was able to take her by surprise. (I recollect a sound and then her first scream.) He pushed her and got up at the same time. She fell backwards, her head hitting the ground.
Then (the blood on his shirt and on the ceiling and on the wall) he took her knife before she could recover and (the way the edges of the wound were smooth, not lacerated) cut open her throat before she could even try to defend herself. She was (the gurgling sound I heard) alive for eight point seven seconds afterwards, her body (her fingerprints on his shirt) fighting for life but (his fingerprints on her arm) John mercilessly pushing away her hands.
(Eight point seven seconds can be a long time when you know that you have been killed. Mycroft had fought death for nearly twenty-two point three seconds.)
She was (the position of her head before it lolled to the side) looking into John's face (her eyes wide open) when she died.
It was a short but painful death that came out of the blue for her. (Is it all right to be satisfied by that knowledge?)
When I am done with Mary I watch Big Boy's corpse. It was lying on the floor of the living room when John brought me upstairs. (Very easy to deduce.) John had taken a piece of firewood (stapled right next to the cellar door) and hit him on the head (the way his skull was deformed) nine times. The first one (the way his legs were sprawled out) had sent him down, the second one (the way he must have flailed his arms the second he died) killed him. John (being a soldier and a doctor) knew it instantly and (blood even on the ceiling) kept on smashing the wood down on his broken skull (hot boiling rage) seven more times.
Again, I feel better than I probably should.
The only memory I am not able to access is what Big Boy did to me (raped me) that last night. I try and try but fail.
This time, when I come home Mummy embraces me for a long time. And tucks me in when I go to bed.
###
On the morning of the third day, Mummy "accidentally" leaves her mail account open. There is a mail from my father, telling her that he will surely be home today. That he will reach the last ferry if the traffic stays low. That she should gently prepare me for the fact that he will come back without John.
She waits for me to hide my (profound) disappointment before she comes back into the living room. We do not have to talk about it. She knows my sadness and I know her pity.
I spend the day alone on the beach. The harsh November wind is blowing into my face. I only return in time to welcome Daddy because I am cold and miserable when night falls. Have I eaten something? Not sure. Anyway.
I do my best to put on my "it doesn't matter" face when he rings the bell because I really don't want to make him sad. He has gone all the way to Scotland and back and has surely done his very best to convince John to come with him. If he couldn't achieve it, no one could.
So I try to be grateful instead of sad when he comes in and -
My heart skips a beat. On his arm, cuddled against his chest, there is Emmi. Half asleep and curious at the same time. Five point six centimetres taller than when I last saw her. Her hair longer, now definitely golden. God, have I missed her.
She looks at me and starts to giggle. Her little arms are flapping in delight. (Both giggling and arm-flapping are new achievements. She looks wonderful that way.) Daddy is barely able to hold her and she somehow squirms her way into my arms. (A miracle that we do not drop her in the process.)
She presses her face against my throat (is it a hug? She has learnt to hug!) and for a few seconds, my world is perfect. She smells like baby and starts telling me interesting stuff about her journey. "Awawawawa," she says seriously (another achievement).
"Really?" I ask and she looks at me with surprised delight.
"Dabawada," she goes on happily (while I ignore Mummy kissing Daddy and then starting to fuss over all the stuff Emmi will need).
There is no way to put Emmi down or hand her over without making her cry so the two of us stay together until she falls asleep in my arms way too late. In the meantime my parents have put up the travel cot Daddy had brought along, unpacked Emmi's clothes and nappies, gone to the supermarket to buy baby food and built a corner for her to play in the living room.
I bring her to bed (her cot, standing in my room of course) and go back to my parents only to see them ordering a buggy on the Internet. When I enter the room, they both sober.
"John didn't want to come," I state matter-of-factly. Daddy gives me a pained look.
"I'm sorry," he says gently and I shake my head. No need for him to be sorry. He tried. That is more than most people would have done.
But there is more he wants to tell me (I deduce from the look on his face). Unpleasant things I will not want to hear. We remain silent for a while. Without a word he takes an envelope out of his pocket.
I suspect a letter from John but find a certificate. Signed by John, endorsed by Mycroft, only three days before his death. Why have I never seen it before?
(Memory: John and Mycroft on the morning of his death. Smug. Satisfied with themselves. A surprise for me, forgotten in the aftermath of death and torture and suffering.)
The certificate makes me the legal father of Emilia Grace Watson in case something happens to John.
In case something happens to him.
My stomach clenches unpleasantly. I think of him, alone in the Scottish country side. He has just given away the last person who grounded him. I remember finding his gun gone when he had moved out with Emmi.
Oh John, please don't.
I fail to speak for some time but Daddy is patient.
"How was he?" I finally ask. I do not dare to voice the actual question, "Do you think he will kill himself, now that he is completely alone?"
Daddy thinks about the answer for a while. (His hand on my knee. Comfort. ) "You need to trust him," he says. "I know it is hard for you, but still. He is stronger than he thinks."
Which means that Daddy has observed what I could only deduce from afar. John is in danger and there is nothing I can do to help him.
Or is there? I could call him (against his wish). Write to him. Send pictures of Emmi to remind him of his responsibility. Could go to Scotland myself and ...
"Don't." Daddy tells me quietly. "I have told him where to find us if he wants to. But he needs to take that step on his own."
I hate it when Daddy is painfully right.
That night, I lie awake in bed for a long time, wondering what I will do if John … No, what I would do if John really … Then I listen to Emmi's soft breathing for a little eternity.
I guess that she will be the reason for me to go on now, no matter what.
Author's note: Thanks once more for all who follow, comment, give kudos and read. It is so amazing how many of you there are now. 3
And of course thanks to my three wonderful betas. Your support means the world to me.