A/N: Completion of that odd last one, and getting odder. -csf
.part two of two.
'Is John with you?' Lestrade forfeits the usual burdensome greetings to ask of Sherlock, already roaming the grass expanse behind the tall detective with wary eyes.
'Paying the cabbie.'
'Are you sure he wants to come, I mean to this cemetery of all places?' The inspector scratches the back of his head. Uncomfortable, Sherlock muses.
'Why wouldn't he?' the younger detective shrugs. The truth is he doesn't know what the inspector is alluding to, and it bothers him to be put on the spot like that. Too little clues, and human emotions are such a murky field of study.
The inspector doesn't insist, raising his hands in mock surrender. 'I'm glad you're here, anyway. Maybe you can make some sense of the case, Sherlock. The preliminary DNA analysis to the detached limb you found dangling from the tree branches shows it belonged to a male.'
'Not the owner of the grave', Sherlock comments drily.
From behind him, John adds tersely: 'Hardly the first time someone pretends to have died to all their friends and family.'
'Yes, John, brilliant but useless. Anything else to add?' the consulting detective snaps coldly in his habitual detached manner from when his brain processes hypothesis and theories, adjusting facts and evidence, at high speed.
He misses Greg's worried glance over his shoulder. He never turns to follow the sound of a quick turn or the receding footsteps on the frosty grass.
Instead he rides the euphoric wave of deduction to its conclusion.
'Oh, it's so simple! Simple!'
'Sherlock?'
The inspector seems to stop himself from trailing away, Sherlock has already forgotten why Lestrade's attention is not on this brilliant, magnificent case – and why is John not there?
'Bigamy, Lestrade! Cherchez the husband! It's always the husband. Well, one of the two husbands. A crime of passion. She marries twice, but can't keep up with two separate domestic settings. One husband finds out, threatens to expose her, or kill the other – whatever. She decides to take matters into her own hands. She kills him, fakes her death and buries him! Remember, she was a medical examiner, she had the knowledge of how to preserve a body, fake her death, smuggle the male corpse into the casket, and get away with it. Cherchez the wife too, coincidentally a widow as well. Bigamy is a nasty habit. She may have added a couple more husbands to her collection by now!'
'Yeah, sure – but where are you going, Sherlock?'
'Isn't it obvious? To retrieve my assistant!'
.
Powerful, even footsteps marched upon the grass. The frosty ground tried to obliterate the marching steps of John Watson, to no avail. Broken twigs, soggy leaves and a general direction towards the more covered area of trees and shrubberies are all Sherlock needs to find John from the vestige trail of plant devastation.
Soon, under the gracious wide canopy of an evergreen he finds his friend. The area feels oddly familiar. It takes Sherlock 0.3 seconds to place it correctly in both their life histories.
John is standing reverentially in front of a black marble gravestone bearing the name of Sherlock Holmes. Right, this is now a dangerous minefield, and at least a little embarrassing for Sherlock.
The detective hesitates to make his presence known. It's his name upon the gravestone and yet it feels as if he's intruding on some private encounter of John's. Perhaps because he missed all the previous ones but one.
Before Sherlock can step forward, make his presence known, and say something inevitably wrong, the solder shudders visibly and allows his knees to buckle onto the wet grass beside the plot. The detective winces sympathetically, but the soldier doesn't react to the harsh impact, all his attention focused on the mesmerised sight of black marble. Slowly John sits on his haunches in silent contemplation.
Sherlock would rather have John shouting at his fake grave than this devastating sight of forlorn devotion.
In a disgusting symmetry of the universe, once again only a naked tree separates the two men, keeping one locked in the position of spectator, and the other in the excruciating pain of loss.
.
'It's been a while, Sherlock', John says so quietly the wind ruffling the spiky leaves nearly drowns out his small voice.
Sherlock wonders if he's watching the repetition of an old habit of his Absence years. He feels guilty, he won't know, John will never tell him.
Guilt seeps through his body, like toxic black mould. Sherlock tries to swallow down the lump in his throat, tastes like bile.
'I miss you, mate.'
Now that's just silly. Sherlock is back and they go together often. What can John be referring to? Sherlock has talked it to death, pun not intended, and they are so very close again. It's not like old times, and Sherlock recognises that. They both changed. They both carry more burdens. But John trusts him again, doesn't he? Sherlock never stopped trusting John, no matter what John may think because of the necessary deception.
'Miss how things used to be.'
Sherlock's gaze hardens. Why is John so hard to understand, so illogical, so... emotional?
'Miss that you used to need me. I was important then. But now... It's like you are determined to take care of me now. And I try to let you, Lord knows I could do with—' John gulps, looks down, where his restless fingertips draws abstract patterns on the fresh dirt.
Sherlock is fluent in nine languages and passably speaks another seven, but here he can only hope to grasp any meaning behind that abstract speech with the soil.
'It's hard for me to open up. Doesn't take the world's greatest detective to see that.'
'No, don't do this, John', Sherlock whispers. 'Stop it. You aren't damaged, I don't see you broken.' And, sure enough—
'I'm a mess, Sherlock. You keep me around out of guilt, and what's worse, I let you, because I don't think I could bear to see you leave again. I was a soldier, I killed people. I always thought I was strong. But you just crumbled all my defences.'
John keeps silent a long while, and Sherlock uneasily wonders if John has fallen into a strange eyes open doze, when finally—
'You jumped right off that ledge, and I felt I died with you that day. When you came back, you were alive, but I never got the memo, I had been dead for three years! Three years... Do you know how hard it is to start the heart after three years in suspended animation? Maybe you do. You never faulted me for finding me slower, older, my aim being skewing to the left just a fraction, you just close your eyes to all that, and wait for me to return to where we left off. It's been a while. You must be disappointed by now.'
John laughs bitterly. Then in a fit of energy that cuts the lethargy, he glances around in the empty cemetery, ensuring no one is in sight. He unearths his gun from hiding, getting up in a fluid motion entirely made out of coiled frustration, and aims straight at the large girth of the old tree trunk behind which Sherlock hides.
Hmm, maybe John saw him and he's mad for being listened to in what was clearly meant to be a solitary monologue to a gravestone? Sherlock bravely risks a quick peek.
No, John's gaze is wild, unfocused, unseeing, but fiery, burning in cold flames. Not the type of fire Sherlock associates with being busted by his flatmate, though.
John fires all his rounds in quick succession, flaking off pieces of bark. The bullets sinking in the truck's soft wood. The tree is too thick for any of the bullets to travel through, Sherlock just cowers behind it, feeling each impact shaking its core.
It's all over in a flash, then John pockets the gun. Sherlock winces, the hot barrel must be burning against the soft skin on John's back, but the soldier stoically walks away in a mission accomplished daydream.
Sherlock walks out of hiding and checks the tree trunk. A mocking smiley face, like the one in 221B's wall. And John's not right. His aims is deadly precise on the target, a bull's-eye of battering metal projectiles.
.
Sherlock thought he had taken care of everything. He had a comprehensive plan, he was following advice – detestable activity, but for John he would follow advice from Lestrade, Molly, Mrs H, even Ella, the therapist. He had given John time and space. Hadn't pressured or crowded John, had given John's slow regular mind time to readjust to yet another plot twist.
Sherlock was alive; it baffled Sherlock how John wouldn't just he happy about it and move on.
But no, Ella said trust needed to be rebuilt. That she herself would probably have socked him; and that he couldn't just break into her house, she had an office and an assistant to take appointments.
Greg further said that if John barged into Sherlock's room at two in the morning ranting about a missing toothbrush Sherlock shouldn't be upset, John just needed to make sure Sherlock was still home, still there, and that it would subside; and since when did Sherlock sleep anyway?
And the rare occasions John turned around in his morning dressing gown, spotted Sherlock in the armchair, all blood draining from his face and dropping his mug, shattering porcelain against the kitchen floor, were becoming rarer.
Sherlock was never as upset that John had forgot his comeback (again) as he was for causing John the distress in the first place.
But now, because of the body snatching case, it all seemed to have return to the starting point. John was nervous, jumpy, checking shadows, starting when Sherlock initiated talking over the silence, banged a door, or was just sat in his armchair when John entered the living room. It even got worse. This morning John had entered the kitchen with sleep blurred eyes, muttering "morning, Sherlock", had put some bread on the toaster and boiled the kettle. So naturally, Sherlock finally realised his stomach was rumbling. Hadn't eaten since a muffin the morning before. John finally emerged from the kitchen five minutes later, stopping dead at the start of the living room rug, fixing a blank stare to his flatmate's presence. He looked down on the mug he was sipping from with a strange expression. And Sherlock knew then. There wasn't a second mug. John had forgotten Sherlock again; not out of anger, hurt, spite, or any other unnecessary emotion. John had blanked Sherlock's existence, reverting to type, to the Big Absence.
Incredible, rushed, blushing apologies befell on the consulting detective as John took stock of his extraordinary miss. Sherlock would have none of that. He could make his own breakfast, thus giving John time to collect himself. As he brushed past the blushing doctor, John recoiled from the physical contact; just the slightest brush of sleeves and forearms and John backed away in shock.
In John's rewinding mind Sherlock was still a ghost, a deceitful materialisation of death.
This had to stop, the detective vowed as he busied himself with the kettle, and kept an eye on the flatmate curling up on his dilapidated armchair, John's tea and toast ignored and growing cold.
.
'Why are we back at the morgue, Sherlock? Where's Molly?'
'I don't need her', Sherlock declares, uninterested.
'Does she know we're here? Dammit, Sherlock, you've not taken a shine to this corpse snatching business, have you?'
Sherlock's turned away face morphs into a maniac grin. Yes, John knows him so well; but, coincidentally, he's also wrong.
'John, I brought you here to help fix a mess I created', he declares bravely. Solemnly.
'Right. Which one?' John asks, brightly. The detective feels a layer of the heavy load he carries metaphorically lift from his shoulders just for that brief appearance of the John-grin. John could fix the world with his bright smiles.
'John, we're here', says Sherlock as he hoists himself on a cold metal slab previously unoccupied, 'for you to autopsy me.'
A cold shiver runs down the doctor's back, and his knees visibly wobble before he gets himself under control again.
'Not funny, mate.'
'Not joking. Except, of course, I won't be dead, and you won't be literally cutting me open. It's more of a mind exercise. I want you to visualise me alive instead of dead on Molly's slabs.'
John closes his eyes shut tight, breathing regularly but hard, as if walking himself through calming exercises.
'Come on, John, haven't got all day', Sherlock presses him, grabbing John's left hand, John's dominant hand, and placing it on his chest, over his heart. As he expected, John relaxes fractionally as he senses the steady heartbeats under the dress shirt.
It'd figure Sherlock would make himself the best dressed corpse in the morgue, given the choice.
It's not the purple shirt he was wearing when— It's not the same purple shirt. This shirt is navy blue, and it too shines as a semiprecious gem over Sherlock's heart. Top buttons undone it even assumed the graphic form of a heat shape with the suit jacket singed at the lean waist.
John's eyelids flutter close as he feels the tendrils of warmth from the skin beneath the silky shirt.
'Scalpel?' Sherlock recalls John back to the morgue, as a helpful corpse.
'You really bring up the whole fake death thing and then trust me with sharp instruments to stab you with?' John smirks.
'Yes. I intend to be the helpful sort of corpse, John. This is a living autopsy, after all.'
'Always outshining the competition, huh?'
'I get bored when I've got nothing to do.'
'Are we seriously going to pretend—'
'You didn't get to do it the last time, and we prearranged you'll get to do it one day.'
'I'm not sure I could. I was just talking shit', John admits frankly.
Sherlock's smile is soft. 'Then the time is now.' Gently, flexible and slow, Sherlock lays back on the sterile clean metal slab. 'What would you do first?'
'Oh. Hmm. Second year med school has been a while back, let me see. Obviously we start by checking the serial number attributed to the corpse. Got to have the right corpse.'
'Naturally. Hi, I'm Sherlock Holmes. Positive identification, John. Next?'
'I need to check you're definitely dead.'
'You will.'
'No, I mean it. It's the next step.'
'We'll be here all day, John!'
'You started it!'
'John.' Sherlock needs to calm him down. John is getting frantic from this conversation alone. From Sherlock's dark curls spread on the chromed surface, from the prone position on the cold slab. When Sherlock sees the hint of terror in John's eyes he also observes resignation, and finally he understands that this is the mental image John's mind has haunted him with for three years. Sherlock, cold, dead and alone on a slab. The detective frantically tries to fix this before it spirals out of control. 'John, I'm talking, that means I'm breathing. And look at my arm. I've got goose bumps from the cold slab. Look at my eyes, my pupils are reacting to light stimulus. I could go on. I'm alive.'
John's breathing slows a notch. Still sped up, but now more regular.
'I'm not sure—'
'Tell me how you'd do it, John. Not Molly or the other examiners. You tell me, John, what you'd do to me. I already said yes to you, now I want to know what you'd do to me.'
John smirks. 'Seriously? Innuendo again? Is it like a defence mechanism?'
Sherlock smirks too.
'Right. You gave your magnificent brain to science, so I wouldn't mess with it. Your luxurious curls are safe, mate.' A flat thumb gently trails over Sherlock's forehead, chasing away an errant curl, shepherding it with the rest, coming to rest over the temple. Its soft pressure is tantalising to the detective playing dead. Rough but warm skin, the digit of a fighter, a doer, but with the precise skills of a surgeon. The sensory overload nearly short-circuits Sherlock's hardware, startling him. In his haste to fix John, he forgot how exposed he'd be. He hesitates, and John seems to be expecting exactly that, waiting for the detective's nod before moving on any further. Which he does, eagerly. John's errant touch is ever gentle as it trails down the contour of the jaw, positioning Sherlock's head to face straight on the alien circle of white lights above the slab. The gentle pressure moves to rest over the jugular, again checking the pulse of life, reassuring John that Sherlock is alive.
'What next, John?'
'Chainsaw. Opening up the chest cavity in a Y formation. You know that.'
Sherlock's fingertips brush the taunt silk shirt to free the housed buttons, an allegory. John's hand stops Sherlock's bigger, bolder hand. They rest together over Sherlock's heart for a long instant.
'You're not breathing, Sherlock.'
The man on the slab blinks. 'Sorry. Tantalising business, a living autopsy, got me distracted.'
John smiles softly, probably quite unaware of the instinctive reaction betraying him.
'I can feel a heart beat. You have a heart, Sherlock', he taunts.
'Not true. I checked. I'm a cold machine, my flatmate says so.'
'He was wrong. And angry. There is a heart, I tell you.'
'Are you still angry, John?' Sherlock tilts his head to watch him.
The doctor slowly shakes his head. 'It was a nice gesture, this. But why do all this for me?'
'I wanted to give you a better mental image, to take away the one I put there that day at Bart's. I was wrong. We both know that now.'
'Wrong about what?' John whispers, almost fearfully.
'I need you. That's why I came back.'
John's knees buckle at last, a hand flies over his eyes, shrouding his pain from his friend's scrutiny.
'Don't ever do it again', he pleads. Exhausted, hurt, drained, a whimpering plead that barely sounds like John and yet it's John's molten core turned into broken words, spilling out at last. It's the John that Ella, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, and Molly never got to see, that Sherlock beckons out, hoping to heal him.
'I promise.'
John chuckles, quite unexpectedly, as he tries to clear his face with his sleeve. It leaves a web spray of tears on his lashes, and a smudge of congested red skin over his cheeks. He looks a mess, but is completely unaware, having turned his back on too much self-consciousness. 'You never promise things, mate. Promises are solemn to you.'
'Yes. They are', Sherlock assures him.
John sniffs and rears in his released emotions. 'Fine, you can get up now. You'll get a cold, laying in that freezing slab much longer.'
'Are you quite sure? I've got a fascinating gallbladder.'
'What? No, the mock autopsy is over!'
'I know. This gallbladder is kept in formaldehyde on a shelf in the storage room. A cleaner once tried throwing it away, luckily I stopped him in time. It's a very interesting gallbladder, John.'
John's smile sticks this time. Sherlock heart feels lighter, as he raises himself from the metal table, all the while studying his friend. Maybe it's still not the permanent cure, only a temporary fix. But John's smile is worth the trouble, and Sherlock will never stop fighting.
'Why is this gallbladder so special?'
'It glows in the dark.'
'Radioactive?'
'No, I tested it with a Geiger counter.'
'But then...? Phosphorescent bacteria colonies? Industrial dyes? Optical illusion?'
Sherlock glances at his doctor with calm admiration. Perhaps he is a touch fascinated with John's brain; while not being brilliant, it does fare quite well at times. Must be as luminous on his own as the gallbladder.
'Let's take it back to Baker Street and experiment on it to find out, Sherlock.'
.
