CHAPTER TWO
A week later…
SHERLOCK
Things were not as they should be. It was unsettling. And much, much more, to tell the truth.
Sherlock had thought that with his return (after the inevitable lots of tiresome, repetitive explanations) everything would simply fall back into how it had used to be.
He had known a few people would sincerely mourn him and had felt a momentary (yet irrelevant, because he had no other option anyway) twinge of guilt about it; but it hadn't occurred to him that their pain wouldn't be 'cured' by his return. Happy ending implied that life went on somehow happily, right? Wasn't it how it was supposed to work?
And, as far as nearly everything and everyone was concerned, he had been right. The people he knew had been genuinely happy — even Anderson, mind you. They had moved back in right away at Baker Street, and clients were queuing once more in front of their door for their help. They were still 'invited' on cases by the Yard. Even the papers that had dragged his name through the mud following his disappearance were now praising him (not that he found this bit in the least important; but he was enumerating facts, and that was a fact).
But the most important — what had been the hardest to quit, what he had missed the most, and what he had fought to be free to reclaim — felt amiss.
John.
John wasn't fine.
And so Sherlock wasn't too, then.
He had first thought it must simply be from shock, but the situation wasn't improving by the day, on the contrary…
Things that had used to be easy and natural felt now awkward and forced. There was distance where there had used to be instinctive, direct connection. And it felt sometimes as if John actually couldn't stand his presence.
And it was actually painful.
Because — Sherlock was by now used to admit to himself — John was the one Sherlock cared for the most, and by far.
(Not that Sherlock liked that fact — frankly; it was infuriating, the way John had sort of taken over everything… In the beginning, Sherlock had even tried to build a separate mansion in his mind dedicated to John. But John had kept popping back in uninvited, and after months of struggling Sherlock had finally abandoned the project to fix him somewhere. And so, for about three years now, John didn't have 'a room' — no one would be large enough anyway probably. But wherever Sherlock went, John was with him. It had sometimes felt embarrassing — for example when John would be able to prove that some conversation he claimed they had had, in fact, had never taken place. But it had helped keeping him sane and focused, for those long, long thirteen months when the only John he could talk to had been the one in his head.)
And caring was not an advantage, indeed. Because now, Sherlock wanted to talk to the real John; but it seemed that he wasn't available anymore, unfortunately.
Sherlock though didn't regret his decision. He had made the only good choice possible to save them all by then, and it had been worth it. And even if the price to pay was that John had estranged himself from him, it would still be worth it; because the alternative, them being dead, John being dead, was simply too horrible to considerate.
But Sherlock had never been one to surrender without a fight, right. So, he would try to fix this. The time for action had come, before it would be too late. He had no real idea how to act though, because sentimental issues weren't his forte; but he would try his hardest to mend what needed mending.