Grayscale - part 1
Grayscale
you led me here and then I watched you disappear
Shock, they say. It’s shock.
Of course it’s shock, John almost screams at them. My best friend just jumped off of a bloody building right in front of me.
It’s not okay. It’s not. It’s not alright.
John’s not okay. How is any of this supposed to be okay?
In the year and a half that John has known Sherlock, it has never once crossed his mind that Sherlock could actually die (would bloody kill himself, fucking hell). It was too human. Pedestrian.
Dull, something in the back of his head says. It sounds suspiciously like Sherlock. John chokes back a half-hysterical giggle.
John’s not sure how, but he somehow manages to function on autopilot and get himself back to their (but it’s not theirs anymore, is it? Because Sherlock had jumped, fell, cracked and broken and dying - blackredbluegrayivorygonemissingdead - ) flat.
It’s his flat now, John supposes. God.
And there is the chair in front of the desk, Sherlock’s chair, stiff and uncomfortable and in exactly the same position as it was two nights ago, and John can practically see Sherlock perched in it, tapping away at John’s stolen laptop -
John blinks harshly and tries to push away the blurring in his vision. He is partially successful.
Sherlock can’t be dead, if only because the world will never be quite right without him. He took up too much space with his brilliance, even his silences always finding a way to be meaningful and make John feel like an idiot next to him. A world without Sherlock is a world without color - wrong.
He swept into John’s life like a hurricane, uprooting everything and rebuilding it as he saw fit. He’d shown John parts of London that he hadn’t even known existed. Sherlock loved London, much as he loved the Work and order and even people, at times. Sherlock loved and treasured things in his own way. Despite his constant denials, Sherlock did care. Not like other people did, certainly, and not about the same things, but that didn’t make it any less valid.
Sherlock was intrigued and stimulated by the mysteries of the Work, and John would have bet his life savings that somewhere he got satisfaction out of helping people as a direct result of the Work (My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?). London was his home and his world, and Sherlock knew every bit of it, even the abandoned tramways and trash-filled alleys. He never bothered memorizing things he didn’t like. Remembering everything was practically a confession of undying adoration from Sherlock. He wanted to organize everything and keep it (reasonably) safe and clean. Even Sherlock’s mind was neat, manhandled into the form of the Mind Palace by his stubbornness and need for order, for things to fit into categories and make sense. As for people - well. Sherlock would not have spent a lifetime studying something he hated. Sherlock did make connections and care about people, despite his own assertions to his status as a sociopath. That time with Molly in the lab, Sherlock had honestly been trying to help and honestly confused as to why she had run away. That Christmas, after a full three weeks of no cases, Sherlock had started deducing one of Molly’s presents and figured out it was for a romantic attachment of sorts. He went up and red the tag and immediately stopped, apologizing to her in a rather Sherlockian way and kissing her on the cheek. Sherlock had regretted his actions had hurt someone. Then there was Greg, who Sherlock had always treated with slightly less contempt than any other officers at the NSY. And John knows Sherlock cared about him. He was bullocks at showing it, certainly, but it was true. They’d lived together for too long and John knows him too well for Sherlock to have managed to hide something like that.
So yes, Sherlock loved. Even if he himself and the rest of the world never recognized it for what it was.
John’s mind is scrambling, grappling for a way out of this horror. “It’s just a trick. A magic trick,” Sherlock had said, and then there was Irene Adler, who had faked her own death convincingly enough to fool both of the Holmes brothers. If she could do it, Sherlock certainly could.
But why? Why would Sherlock be so desperate as to jump off of a building, survive, and not contact him? He wouldn’t. Sherlock always took John with him. Always.
There is no denying the reality of this nightmare, not anymore. John has listened to Sherlock’s last words, seen him fall, felt his cooling skin and despairing over the lack of a pulse.
It all just feels so wrong.
John notices distantly that his left hand is shaking again as he dials Harry and asks if he can stay with her for a bit.
John spends the next week in the spare room at Harry’s flat, only leaving to eat or go to the bathroom. He’s blank and lost and it’s horrible, and John’s not even trying to pretend none of those things are true. It’s just the way it was before Sherlock except so much worse.
He misses Sherlock’s funeral. Mostly because he’s not sure if he’ll be able to face Mycroft (the man who gave Moriarty the tools to destroy Sherlock, to drive him to That - ) or the press (vultures, cruel and heartless, too willing to accept a lie about the man who is responsible for taking nearly half of England’s enemies off the street) without punching someone. John is on thin ice as it is, being the ‘Fraud’s’ companion, without having to deal with assault charges as well.
Molly stops by to talk to him at Harry’s flat and invites him to get coffee. Just to talk, she insists. John believes him. The events of That Day have left them both too raw to even consider something like that. John accepts, if only because he’s tired of Harry’s pitying gazes. They sit and nurse their drinks in silence. Molly’s red-rimmed eyes match his own.
“I just,” she stutters out as they get up to leave. “Just - John. Call me if you need anything. I mean it. Please.”
He tries to smile but can’t. He acknowledges her offer with a quiet, hoarse thanks, and takes a cab back to Harry’s flat.
He ends up going back to his therapist. She doesn’t say anything either way about her thoughts on Sherlock’s guilt, and John is pathetically grateful for it. She does what she can, but it’s not enough, and they both know it.
John visits Sherlock’s grave with Mrs. Hudson next Thursday. She tells him he can keep the flat and she’ll lower the rent so he can come back, when he is ready.
He finds himself in front of the headstone and begs, “No, please, there’s just one more thing, one more thing; one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t. Be. Dead. Would you do - ? Just for me, just stop it. Stop this.”
His voice stats cracking halfway through and John doesn’t even attempt to try at stop the tears from falling. He waits for an answer. There isn’t one. John forces himself to stay strong, nods once, and marches away. Right now, reverting to his military training is the only way John knows to keep himself together.
Molly is waiting in front of Harry’s flat. She gives him a watery smile and a travel cup of tea. She sips her own quietly. John stays outside with her until they both finish, when he flees into the building.
John moves back to Baker Street a month later. He can’t give up what little he has left of Sherlock. A child grasping for wisps of fog slipping away in the morning sun. He is utterly miserable. John hasn’t heard a word from anyone he’s gotten to know in the past year and a half except for Molly. Mycroft and Lestrade are silent with guilt, and pretty much everyone else thinks Sherlock was a fake. John is grateful that his own name is forgotten quickly; Sherlock had always been the one who drew the spotlight, despite how much he hated it. Sherlock was different in some unquantifiable way, striking in a way that John most certainly isn’t.
He takes up a job as a trauma doctor at Bart’s, speaks when spoken to, and generally ignores the rest of the world. There are moments when he sees somebody in a long coat or a tall, dark-haired stranger, and his throat closes up and he wants to crumple. John knows none of these…ghosts are Sherlock. There’s always something wrong. Too clumsy, too casual, too tactile, always too something. John would recognize Sherlock anywhere and he’s not here. Not anymore. John knows him too well to be unable to notice if he really is.
Does he, though? Does he really know Sherlock? The man beneath the funny hat and long coat and bespoke suits. Before That Day, John would have said yes unquestioningly, without a second thought. But now he can’t, can he? Not now. Not when Sherlock has killed himself, left his broken, bloodied body lying on the pavement, glorious mind destroyed and lost forever. John never thought he would do that, never saw the darker parts of Sherlock that must have existed.
Sometimes he feels sick, wonders if Sherlock had faked the call to get John to leave so he could carry out his plan. John can’t help but torture himself with the what ifs. He will always wonder if there was something, anything he could have done to stop That from happening.
“You machine!”
John flinches automatically at the memory. He wishes he could take that back more than anything (except maybe wishing Sherlock alive), longs for a world where that wasn’t the last thing he said to Sherlock before that blasted phone call. In his darker moments, John wonders if it was those parting words that forced Sherlock to the edge, to that desolate place where Sherlock felt his only option was to jump.
John cleans his gun daily and keeps it loaded. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to press it to his chin, swallow the bullet downdowndown and never know anything else ever again. Mrs. Hudson would be distraught. He doesn’t know if Harry would notice. The rest of the world would move on without him and forget. Because that’s what John Watson is without Sherlock: forgettable, plain, normal, useless. He no longer has a purpose and he hates it. His purpose is dead and gone and never coming back, and there are moments when John wants to do nothing more then follow him.
Some days, he finds himself furious sat the world - at Lestrade, Mycroft, Donovan, and Anderson; at Moriarty; at himself, and even Sherlock. John hates all of them in turns (except for Sherlock, John could never hate him) for driving the world’s only Consulting Detective to his final solution. When he’s angry at Sherlock, it’s because the stupid, arrogant tosser has left John here alone to pick up the broken puzzle pieces of his world.
It’s horribly ironic that Sherlock, made of silver and black and white as he was, with only the occasional splash of purple or blue, took the color of John’s life when he left. With Sherlock gone, the world appears to John in shades of gray, unflattering and horrible and boring.
And Christ, he just wants Sherlock back. John longs for there to be two tea cups because there are two people, not because John’s forgotten he’s alone now. He wishes to be racing through the alleys of London after Sherlock on yet another totally mad adventure. John even misses the cluttered kitchen table and the body parts in the fridge. John would gladly, happily accept every oddity of Sherlock Holmes just to have him home again in 221b Baker Street.
But Sherlock his gone, never coming back from the sidewalk in front of St. Bart’s. John would be a liar if he said the thought alone doesn’t make him want to throw up and hide away from the world for a couple of days.
He moves the gun to his drawer of his bedside table.
you left this emptiness inside and I can’t turn back time
John hovers in a stagnant state of depression and can’t bring himself to move on. He sees Sarah a couple of times. She looks at him sadly and says, This is harsh, but you have to get over him.
And that, John knows, is exactly the problem. He doesn’t want to get over Sherlock. John knows the way he’s been living isn’t healthy. He’s not sure he cares, but then John’s mind conjures up an image of Sherlock curled up in his chair and glaring half-heartedly at him. Sherlock sighs over his steepled fingers and mutters, Get out, you’re driving me mad. Only one of us gets to stay in all day.
Sherlock would be furious at him, John realizes. He’d have wanted John to be a functional, happy human being. The bastard. Why else would Sherlock have tried to force-feed him that ridiculous lie, that last, hitched, I’m a fake?
He’d been trying to make it easier for John to move on. John wants to punch him.
If Sherlock had thought even for a moment that anything could make something so agonizing as his death easier on John, he’d definitely been a moron.
Damn him. Damn him for thinking that John would ever believe something so obviously false.
Can he do that one last thing for Sherlock? Can he manage to lead a semi-healthy life, even when the most important piece is missing?
John lets out a choked sob. He would have done anything for Sherlock. Still will, really. And maybe, just maybe, John can live for him too, even when he’s no longer here. He knows it’s not going to get easier. The colors in his once-vibrant world will never return to the way there were when 221b housed two people instead of one. John has never liked taking the easy way out, even if Sherlock did, in the end.
It’s miserable and difficult and it hurts like hell, but John starts to interact with the rest of London - the city Sherlock loved, even he would never admit it - again. He ends up at the pub with Mike one week, and sets up a semi-regular schedule for meetings in the coffee shop with Molly. John starts speaking to his colleagues. The few that mention Sherlock in a negative light learn very quickly not to.
Eventually, he stops keeping his gun loaded, but its home is still in the drawer next to his bed.
It’s been five months exactly since That Day when John gets the text from Greg.
im sorry i haven’t contacted sooner. very busy. can I come over? need to talk. - Greg L.
Five months ago, John would have ignored the text. But by now his anger has had time to settle, and John can be more rational about it. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be polite.
Fine. Say a single bad world about Sherlock and I’ll deck you before kicking you out. JW.
John smiles sadly when he notices he’s taking to signing his texts the same way Sherlock did.
i don’t believe any of that crap. google #ibelieveinsherlockholmes or #believeinsherlock if you haven’t already.
John frowns down at his phone, but does as Greg suggests. What he finds is - amazing. Touching. It brings up a lump in his throat and he misses Sherlock so much it hurts, but John hasn’t been so thankful for something in a long time.
ibelieveinsherlockholmes is a social phenomenon, apparently starting only a week after Sherlock’s death with the appearance of graffiti (yellow spray-paint, familiar - what was that boy’s name, Raz?) all over London, declaring things like Moriarty was real and believe in Sherlock Holmes - don’t listen to the lies. It quickly spread through Sherlock’s clients and old acquaintances, even a few anonymous officers in the Yard, gaining support from well over half. People point out that someone with Moriarty’s resources could have easily hacked into online databases - and even paper ones - to create a believable fake identity. Perhaps even more convincing is the fact that Richard Brook is Reichenbach in German. John is not the only one that thinks that is too much of a coincidence. (Some people believe that there is such a thing as coincidence. What dull lives they must lead.)
There are stories from people Sherlock knew dating back to his Uni days, talking about how intelligent he was, how strange, almost all of them concluding that Sherlock was no fake.
The Yard has reopened all of the cases Sherlock helped with. Many of them have since been closed, verdict unchanged. If the online reports are to be believed, every day is a little closer to conclusively proving what John has always known: Richard Brook was a lie, and Sherlock Holmes was the truth.
Almost before he realizes it, John is opening his blog and typing up a new entry with an almost unfamiliar fervor. He writes about the Sherlock Holmes he knew and the websites he’s found. At the end, John links a video from YouTube showing the original London graffiti and adds, he was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.
Once John posts this, he texts Greg back.
Thank you. I can get Sherlock’s case notes. JW.
thank god. need everything to prove this once and for all. be there asap. -Greg L.
John swallows once and walks into what used to be Sherlock’s bedroom. Mrs. Hudson boxed the belongings she didn’t know what to do with - case files, books, notes. They’re all labeled, and John murmurs a silent bless for Mrs. Hudson. He’s not sure if he can go through all of these along without breaking down, so he ends up lugging the boxes that should contain case-related material into the living room. John waits as patiently as he can for Greg to ring the doorbell. It happens something like five minutes later, which John uses to get rid of the packing tape keeping the boxes shut.
John considers going down to open the door, but stops when he hears Mrs. Hudson greeting Greg.
“John?” he calls.
“Come on up!” John yells back as he opens the door. Greg trots up the last steps two at a time and smiles a little when he enters the room. It’s weak, and uncharacteristically nervous for the DI. John does his best to return it, but something such as a smile still feels uncomfortable and fake on his face.
It must show, because something in Greg’s face saddens and it suddenly seems like he has aged years instead of months since That Day. John motions towards the two chairs, still exactly the same as they were when Sherlock was still alive.
John sits down first, taking Sherlock’s chair so he doesn’t have to deal with seeing someone else sitting in it. “So,” John begins, “why now?”
Greg sighs, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. “These past few months have been hell. Sherlock consulted on at least a hundred cases, if not more. All of them had to be reopened. Once it’d been proved that those weren’t fake, I had to call up Mycroft to get enough evidence and pull to reopen Sherlock’s case. Not to mention practically everyone was trying to get me demoted until I proved Sherlock had government clearance far above police cases.”
John frowns. “Sherlock had government clearance?”
“Got it sometime while taking cases for Mycroft, I suppose. Sherlock worked with the government for a while before I found him, apparently,” shrugs Greg.
That…makes sense. Sherlock would have hated it, though, working for his brother - unless whatever drove the two of them apart happened during that time period.
“So,” Greg starts and pauses clumsily. “Shall we..?” He waves a hand at the boxes.
“Yeah,” John sighs, and gets up to crouch by the closest one. He opens it and pulls out the first thing he sees: a file filled to bursting with photographs and notes. The notes are mostly on foreign languages and symbolism while the photos are obviously from the Blind Banker case. John passes it to Lestrade. “From when he was trying to figure out the Black Lotus’s cipher,” he adds.
It continues like this for a good half hour. Sherlock kept everything and everything he’d had a physical copy of for a case. The files were mostly photographs, articles, and biographies. Only a few of them were personally written in Sherlock’s distinctive large, loopy handwriting. It’s not the most conclusive thing in the world, but it will help explain some of Sherlock’s thought processes and establish several alibis.
In the end, Greg packs the most relevant folders - mostly about Moriarty - into a box. “I’ll have someone pick up the other ones later,” explains Greg.
John only nods. Some tired, resigned part of him withers a bit more at the prospect of forfeiting another piece of Sherlock.
Greg levels him with a kind, sympathetic look. John suddenly wants him to go away, doesn’t want anyone else treading on eggshells and swallowing their pity around him. Greg stands and asks, “Can you come over to the station at noon? There are some other things that need to be discussed.
“Sure,” John agrees immediately. There are very few things he won’t agree with to help clear Sherlock’s name. While he may want to punch Donovan and Anderson, going to the Yard is hardly one of those.
“All right. See you then,” Greg says as he makes his way to the door.
“Yeah,” is all John can give in response.