Fic: I Think I've Come A Long Long Way To Sit Before You Here Today (1/3)
Title: I Think I’ve Come A Long Long Way To Sit Before You Here Today
Author: arwen_kenobi
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock (eventually), Lestrade/Mycroft (background)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8 431 this part (18 143 overall)
Warnings: Character deaths (minor and major), some potentially graphic descriptions of murders, ghost fic
Summary: One year after John is killed Sherlock starts to wonder whether John has actually gone anywhere.
Part One
19 -20 December 2012
It was exactly one year since John had bled to death in Sherlock’s arms during a blizzard and Sherlock was doing his best to not notice it. December the nineteenth was just another day in December. This year it was a mild day: crisp wind, the kind that got you right to the bone if you let it, with a grey sky and a high of eight degrees. Wonderful weather if Sherlock had any opinion on the weather. What was the point of complimenting or complaining about the weather like anyone’s approval or disproval would influence things either way? Idiotic. Almost as idiotic as Mrs. Hudson sending him chocolate biscuits and a poinsettia today. Really? What was that meant to accomplish? Was it some gesture to replace the one’s he had thrown at her last year when she’d tried to hug him?
He still doesn’t understand why she’d been so upset. What sort of reaction had she been expecting? John had been gone nearly seven-
Stop it. Today is December the nineteenth and it is just another day.
He stops the thought and goes about examining the crime scene. Robbery. The victim’s father is clearly responsible, the angle of the table and the discarded Pepsi can tells it all, but he continues staring at it. If he continues to look busy and snap at someone every few minutes then Lestrade will not say anything. Hell either be too frustrated to bother or simply too scared. Everyone is scared of him now. He had murdered a man with nothing but his bare hands and a scalpel; more so with the hands than the scalpel. That had just been some finishing work. Finer details if you preferred...
More than a bit not good. He’d done something that had needed to be done and there was no need to look back on it at all. Pleasure, pain, sadness, joy, rage, none of it mattered. It had needed to happen so he had made it happen. Again, why had everyone been so surprised? Sally Donovan had once said that one day they’d come to a scene and there would be a body that he himself had put there. Not that he’d left much mystery as to motive or suspect with that one. An infant would have seen it and understood.
Everyone had always assumed that one day Lestrade would have to bail Sherlock out of something using the plea of insanity. It would be a front, of course, and either he’d pull some strings or Mycroft would and that would be it. No one had ever thought that they would be pleading insanity for real and that Sherlock would be agreeing with it. He knew he could have fought it or had it waved away but he chose not to. He also chose not to even ponder escape or other means of getting himself released.
Sherlock chose the hospital over the howling quiet of Baker Street. He chose the padded walls and pills in paper cups. He chose arts and crafts and no nicotine patches and a room filled with nothing but himself and a narrow bed. It was boring. Maddeningly so but that had been the point. He had allowed himself to be committed because he had hoped to be driven mad. That and to stop himself from inflicting on himself what he done to Michael Gray but no one needed to know that.
He’s finally bored himself enough to leave the scene. He breezes by Lestrade before he can put a hand on his arm and invite him out to some pub to drink and reminisce. This day does not deserve recognition. It is just a (horriblevileevilsadsoulcrushing) day in December. No reason to treat as anything otherwise. He never goes to the pub with Lestrade. He used to. He used to back when there were three chairs at the table. He used to do many things when there was one extra spot there. He doesn’t even take cabs anymore because the empty seat screams louder than the horns of the cars around him. It never used to be this way, he remembers. He had enjoyed being by himself and doing things where things were set for one.
John had changed all that and then had had the cold bloodedness to leave him with the knowledge that he had been lonely. Now he knew exactly what he had been missing.
John was not cold blooded, he took that back. He knew for a fact that John had warm, hot, blood. Especially when it was busy gushing out of a torn abdomen and trickling out of the corner of his mouth and when it’s covered in his hands as he’s trying to stop it.
He gathers he must have shouted ‘NO’ by the way the street is taking notice of him now. He hustles down the street to his (their) flat and flies up the stairs. The minute he locks the door he hears Mrs. Hudson coming up after him. He ignores the banging, and the calling, and the threats to call Mycroft. Mycroft and her were in cahoots nowadays. It was horrifying. Horrifying in a very splendid way, he had to admit. He was sure John would approve.
There it was again. He sighed and made himself some tea. He hated Earl Grey but John had loved it (especially black) so that was all he drank now. He raised the cup, took a sip, gagged a bit and kept drinking. The gags soon silenced completely and then, slowly, turned into quiet sobs. John should have been here with him today. He should have been with him at that crime scene and he should damn well be sitting here with him sipping his own blasted Earl Grey so Sherlock wouldn’t have to do it for him.
What happens next makes perfect sense though explaining that to Lestrade and the three policemen who come to the door shortly after he’s finished takes some doing. On this night last year he had watched his best friend die. Then he had savagely murdered the man who had caused it. Then he had spent eight months in an asylum doing his best to be driven truly mad. When that had not worked he had shut it out. Mostly.
He had not grieved, he knows that. He had missed John’s funeral because he had been in hospital by then. Sherlock may claim he is a sociopath but he is far from it where John is concerned. He is just a little late in expressing his grief.
He promises Mrs. Hudson he’ll have the flat cleaned up and pay for the damages. His mobile rings as the sentence leaves his mouth and his brother tells him that he’ll send some men to replace the furniture, most of the appliances, and to fix up the walls. Sherlock is ordered go out with Lestrade for a pint on pain of having to go visit Mummy for a few weeks.
He chooses Lestrade. He even drinks. He drinks to the point that he remembers little except for throwing up most of it onto his new carpet and into the sink. He stumbles into bed and wakes up the next morning with a hangover worthy of some of Anderson’s wild nights. He is making himself some more toast, the tea was already waiting for him, when Lestrade arrives to check on him.
“Perfectly alright,” he assures him. He observes the dirt on Lestrade’s knees and the bits of greenery underneath his nails. Lestrade has been to John’s grave and has done some pruning. Lestrade is a bit of a gardener when he’s not working at the Yard - him and his oldest daughter often do so together - and he has appointed himself maintainer of John’s grave. Sherlock has never actually visited the spot, he can mourn John just fine without having to stare at the dates (6 August 1971 - 19 December 2011) marking just how brief a time John had on Earth, and how brief a time (29 January 2010 - 19 December 2011) they had together.
Lestrade is expressing his astonishment that Sherlock managed to get home in one piece. “Well done on getting some food down, you look like you have a monster of a headache.”
There is no use in denying the obvious. “It was much easier in a clean flat. I am much obliged for that, I am sure it was unpleasant.”
“I’m not passing your thanks onto Mycroft about that blow up,” Lestrade scolds him. “You can do that yourself.”
The day Sherlock thanks his brother for anything will be a cold day in the hell he most certainly does not believe in. “I was referring to the second mess.”
“You trashed the flat again?”
He has seen John do this for his sister once. John had denied that he had cleaned up or cared for her after one of her more amazing drunken rages and it hadn’t been to protect her dignity. He’d been treated like a common servant and he played the part of dutiful brother to make his sister feel guilty the next morning. It had not been a task he had relished but it had kept Harry sober for a few weeks. Harry had cleaned up after herself after that.
Lestrade is not quite as easy to read as John is (had been) but Sherlock would know just as easily as Harry had if Lestrade was lying to him. Lestrade had not seen up to his rooms last night. He had perhaps led him to the front door but not up the stairs. Nor was he responsible for the hot pot of tea and the first round of toast.
When Mrs. Hudson seems to have had no part of it he decides that it must have been Mycroft. He does not thank his brother.
Late that night he pays his respects at John’s real grave. He stands in the alley where John died, where most of Sherlock had died, and leaves a single lily resting on the pavement. He stands there, alone and unmolested, until sunrise.
19 - 20 December 2013
He is at the Yard waiting for Lestrade to get copies of the autopsy for the Spencer boy when he first sees the shadow. A shadow maybe is not the most accurate word. It is just a movement out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was just the constables bustling in the shadowy part of the office behind him but the office is empty aside from him and the few constables in front of him. He eventually identifies the shadow as a dying light bulb and snaps at one of Lestrade’s underlings to fix it. No one moves.
He harrumphs and busies himself with looking through the papers on Lestrade’s desk. There is nothing very important here. He flips through assorted case files, a few reports...a to do list proves interesting - it seems Lestrade and Mycroft are finally moving along with things - until Lestrade whacks him on the head with the victim’s diary, which has miraculously reappeared, and leads them out into the night.
The shadow continues to follow him. He says nothing to Lestrade and keeps his body language neutral as they return to Spencer’s flat and search it for the third time for the memory sticks. Lestrade eventually finds them and Sherlock takes them back to 221b to poke around with. It seems it is merely another copy of the diary but some of the dates and names are altered. Some events are also slightly different in the digital copy than on the paper one.
He settles in for a long night of cross referencing, and it seems code breaking, until he finds himself dying for a cuppa. When he gets up to make his phone buzzes with a text message.
Need me?
Unlisted number. Bloody Mycroft and his attempts at being subtle. He knows what day it is today and he can’t stop to worry about it now. He furiously texts back and informs Mycroft exactly how much he is in need of him. There is work to be done and the game is on. John would certainly not have approved of last year’s anniversary so he might as well do something that John would have approved of.
He once told John that there was no such thing as heroes and if there were that he certainly wouldn’t be one of them. It was a rare thing indeed when he admitted being wrong but he had to allow for the existence of heroes now. He had known a fair few in his time and he knew that now. He knew enough of them that he still believed that he shouldn’t be counted in their numbers. Any man who got his best friend killed does not deserve to be called a hero. Yes, Lestrade had called him one onceand so had a few of his clients. Even Anderson had said so once when he thought Sherlock had been out of earshot.
He is not a hero. He had once pursued these cases because they saved him from the overpowering boredom of his life. Now he did them because he had to keep busy. Had to keep his mind going and had to be distracted enough to not catch on that John was absent for too long a period. He had learned how to do chores and other various menial tasks and he even had a part time job with Molly at the morgue in an effort to distract himself. He also was now more than happy to deal with any and all of the idiots that Mycroft had working for him.
Most days, the approach worked. It was when he was alone in the flat at night that he was reminded of the fact that he was alone. That there was no one who wanted to watch action movies with him, no one to stumble upon his experiments, no one to complain about violin playing at four in the morning, no one to celebrate another case closed with him, no one to eat Chinese with him, no one to laugh with, no one to be truly impressed with him anymore, no one for him to be truly impressed by anymore...
He drinks the Earl Grey, gags a little bit, and goes about his night. It’s a tedious business but it has its own charm and challenge. Finally the words just blur too much together for his overworked brain - it’s nearly daybreak now and he hasn’t slept in two days. He shuts the laptop down, puts his cup in the sink and leaves the notebook pages and printed pages scattered all over the couch.
He sleeps until the next morning. When he goes downstairs his papers are neatly arranged and the dishes are done. There is also a fresh cup of coffee and some toast and jam waiting - Mrs. Hudson he assumes, so much for the old ‘landlady not housekeeper’ argument. He leaves the food and sits down again. He’s had his rest and his senses are sharper when he’s hungry. This one is hard going.
“If I can see it you certainly should be able to,” John gripes. “It’s the names, not the events.”
“The names are meaningless,” Sherlock argues. “It’s George in here and Michael in the other. Dave here and Matthew there...”
“You’re a musician and you’re missing this? Really? “
“I hardly call George Michael music, Dave Matthews has its merits but...”
Suddenly if all falls into place: Michael instead of George. Dave instead of Matthew. He grabs his mobile and orders a complete referencing between Spencer’s music collection and all the suspects collections. Correlations needed to be made. Donovan and one of the other Yarders get that done in record time and Spencer’s killer (his girlfriend’s twin sister) is soon in custody. There is an accomplice and Lestrade and a few of his men are out getting her.
That light is still flickering. This time Sherlock is staring right at it. It’s a new bulb but it flickers anyway. Perhaps the lamp needs to be replaced.
As he leaves the Yard it hits him that he had a complete conversation with a dead man. Auditory hallucination, he decides. He always thought the best with John around him. This case had been difficult so his subconscious had conjured up John to walk him through it. He tells himself that all the way to the alleyway until he has to admit that he really is not sure at all about the whole experience.
The street light above him flickers and that makes him even more uncertain. “John?” he whispers into the night.
The light flickers again. Sherlock raises a hand heavenward and waits for something. Anything. A touch, a change in the air, the light to flicker again, anything at all to confirm what he never believed in before. Nothing happens and he hears nothing else for the hour or so he waits. No lights flicker on the way home or anywhere else.
Later that night, in either a dream or in a brief period of semi consciousness he sees John sitting on his window ledge. He has the loneliest, saddest, look on his face. He has never seen John look like this before. He reaches out a hand toward his friend. He isn’t sure it’s possible for John to look even sadder but he does as he sighs and shakes his head. His lips move but he’s fading away too fast for Sherlock to read them. He asks, begs, John to stay but his dear friend vanishes and Sherlock falls asleep.
When he wakes the next morning he is still not that he believes but he knows that he does not not believe.
12 -20 December 2014
Sherlock’s maternal grandmother had died when he was six. Grandmère Vernet had been his favourite relative and he had felt her loss keenly. Mummy believed in heaven and hell and such things and told young Sherlock that one day he’d see his beloved grandmère again. He had believed his mother until the funeral. Everything the clergyman was saying made no sense. How was any of this possible and how could anyone be positively sure that they’d see their loved ones again? Or was it all darkness and oblivion after all?
As usual, Sherlock had launched himself into books to find his answers. He came out with the belief that what most of his family believed was a comfortable fantasy they told themselves to make death easier. Death was the end. That was all. Life proceeded to do nothing but confirm this. He had been present at countless murder scenes and had seen many men killed. There was nothing there afterwards. No indication that any part of these people survived whatever had been done to them.
John had changed many things about him for good or ill. Trust him to shatter his conceptions of death. Or at least crack them since he still is very unsure about what exactly what he experienced last year. Unfortunately as the morning of the twelfth of December dawns Sherlock knows that four nights of staking out a drug smuggler in the rain have caught up with him, so he has more immediate concerns than life after death. He feels like he has been run over multiple times by a bus, or perhaps has spent a week or two as the floor of a London cab. Whatever the simile he feels disgusting. He pulls the sheets over his head and sleeps right into the next day where he actually feels worse.
This could be a combination of the fact that he is so ill he can barely open his eyes and the fact that Mycroft is standing over him. “I trust you will not be joining us at Gregory’s for dinner then?” It shows how ill he is when it takes him a moment to remember who Gregory is. Sherlock does not know why Mycroft feels the need to have this formal introduction type of dinner. He has known Mycroft his entire life and Lestrade for what feels like it. The fact that they now spend a great deal of their free time together is none of his business nor is it an impact on his life. He does however resent seeing them together because it brings back the thoughts he had had of John. Feelings that he was fairly certain that John shared as well and that neither of them had ever mentioned before the nineteenth of December of 2011.
He tells his brother that he is surprised to see him at a sick man’s bedside. Mycroft is more than a bit terrified of getting sick. It is really quite funny to see how quickly Mycroft will locate exits or step back if he sees anyone pull out a tissue. His assistant, Sherlock suspects, was chosen due to her titanium immune system. She does not get sick. Ever. Sherlock is sure to enjoy what happens when Lestrade eventually gets the cold that is circulating through the Yard. Will Mycroft come within three feet of him then, he wonders.
“Sherlock?”
He grumbles and then pulls the covers right back over his head. He hears banging around in the kitchen and then hears the tea and medication put his bedside table. “I want this gone by the time I check on you later tonight.” He snakes an arm out to snatch the medication, downs it by itself, and makes no move to grab the food. Mycroft sighs and takes his leave. He hears another sigh shortly after the door closes; an exasperated one instead of his brother’s close to piteous one. He is not worrying about this right now and hums a bit of Mendelssohn to himself as he falls asleep again.
He was roused some time later by a painful stab in his side. He groans in pain and does his best to ignore it. He feels it again, sharp and demanding, but it takes one more and what feels like a slap upside his head for him to get up and realise that it is a person who is poking him in the side. In the case of Mycroft and his fear of sick people it was more likely his infernal umbrella doing that job. He bellows something suitably scathing at his brother (he can only assume that it is because he can’t remember what he’s said) and shoves the toast, the freezing cold toast, in his mouth. He gets out of bed and nearly crashes into the wall as he turns the corner. He adds dizziness to his list of symptoms. He somehow makes it down the stairs, leaning against the wall and hanging onto the banister for dear life, to find no one there. There is also no evidence that anyone has been here in the past few hours but Sherlock would be a fool to trust his powers of observation when he can hardly see straight.
Oh, that’s new too.
He collapses onto the couch, pulls haphazardly at the Afghan that used to be John’s, and curls up into a ball and does his best to fall asleep again. His head is pounding and spinning and he knows he should go back to bed. He really should eat something before he makes it that far but he can’t coordinate his limbs to manage the simple task of walking let alone making anything.
He hears banging in the kitchen eventually. Quiet banging, or at least attempts at such. Whoever is here is making soup. It is either Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson but neither has said a word. The former would be checking over him to see how he was where Mrs. Hudson would be fretting like the grandmother that she was. He gives up trying to figure it out. There’s no real reason to.
He’s manhandled to a sitting position and a soup bowl is pushed into his hands. “Eat,” a distant, muffled, voice orders him.
“Not going to stay down,” he argues.
“It will. Eat half of it and I’ll get you to bed.”
He knows that voice. He hasn’t heard it in awhile but he knows it. He struggles to place it as he gratefully eats all of what he’s given. He even feels a little bit better. The voice congratulates him on a job well done and then hauls him up. They’re headed upstairs. He keeps his feet moving but all the steering and support is being done by his companion. He is too tired to keep his head up and lets it lull toward towards his support.
His head keeps going and he almost falls right over but for whoever is holding him up. He hears a sad sigh and then his head is moved so it’s hanging down. “Not today, Sherlock.”
Now he knows the voice. He knows the step too, even though he notes that there are no feet next to him as they travel down the hallway. He shuts his eyes as he is put in bed and opens them once he’s covered up. He believes he sees a very familiar back clad in a very familiar oatmeal coloured jumper walking down the hall.
He calls his friend’s name but he even he can’t make words out of that croak.
That’s the last thing that makes any amount of sense to him for some time. He can feel the fever burning through him even in his sleep. Time and place have no meaning to him anymore; all there is is the fire that is coursing through him. He is visited once by Lestrade, he thinks, and he can sometimes hear Mrs. Hudson coughing from down below so he imagines she has to have come in a few times but doesn’t remember seeing or hearing her.
The only reason time returns to him is the date. The nineteenth of December has been burned into him like a brand and no fever can burn that knowledge out. He needs to get up. He needs to get to the alley. He needs to remember what was so strange about last year so he can see if the same thing happens again this year.
Any desire to leave his bed leaves him as a blessedly cold hand settles on his forehead. A second one cups his face. “Sleep,” John’s voice orders him. “You don’t need to go out and see me. I’ve never left.”
“You can’t be here, you’re gone,” Sherlock whimpers, eyes still shut. “I let you die.”
“You didn’t ‘let’ me do anything, Sherlock. I died. It happens to the best of us.”
“You were the best of us.” His voice is horribly slurred but he means every word of it. He hadn’t told John anywhere nearly enough when he’d been alive. He doesn’t think he’d ever told him.
“I still am,” John grins like he’s known the whole time. “Death’s not the end. It just looks like it.”
When Sherlock is awake and the world is clear again he finds an empty chair by his bed. His flat, nor the voices of Lestrade and Mycroft, betray any signs of another visitor. He asks for John again and does not receive an answer.
On his first walk outside in several days he purchases a pocket notebook and writes down a quick note to himself.
He pockets the book and heads to the florist shop. He gets yet another lily and heads over to the alleyway. He lays it down and looks up at the lamp post again. It looks new.
“Hello, John.”
He smiles despite the tears pricking his eyes when the four month old light bulb crackles happily at him.
19 December 2015
John Watson is the world’s most practical ghost. It is a fact that should not surprise him but it does nonetheless. Granted it is in that special way that only John could surprise him but it is still surprise. He has not heard or seen him or felt him since last December but there have been enough little hints to his presence that scream “hello, I’m here!” as loud as if John were shouting at him.
Life and logic however prove to be very noisy. It was so easy to dismiss little things like books being moved or dishes being done. Sherlock has an interfering brother, a helicopter of a landlady, and a very concerned detective inspector for a friend. Said friend may end up being a brother in his own right in another two or three years if he does not guess wrong. That is beside the point. The fact is that any of these little helping gestures could have performed by anyone, including himself.
Logic is the real noisemaker here though. His beliefs and understandings coupled along with that. Hadn’t one of his prime tenants of belief been that if the impossible were eliminated whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth? It couldn’t be true if it had taken him years to sort out what all these gestures had meant.
He believes he has it puzzled out now. John had never left or if he had it had not been for very long. As far back as he could cast his memory he could come up with more than a few unexplained events. That was just from what he could remember himself - he knew full well that his memory was just as untrustworthy as the next human’s but he was rather brilliant. He also had discretely asked others: Mycroft, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson to give names.
He did not walk up to them and ask them point blank as he might have done. He had spent nearly a year on a psych ward by (mostly) choice before but he had no immediate desire to repeat the experience. What he didn’t ask flat out he observed. Lestrade had had a few bits of evidence turn up inexplicably a handful of times over the past five years. That was really all that he could determine. Mrs. Hudson had nothing happen to her that she could recollect, and what she could she wrote off as being due to her old age. John had stayed far away from Mycroft it seemed.
Sherlock thought he knew why, too. If anyone had any ability to put the pieces together before Sherlock did it would be Mycroft. John did not want to ruin this for him. He wanted Sherlock to know before anyone else. He helped Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade from time to time because it would be unnoticed. John wanted, wanted more than anything in life perhaps, for Sherlock to notice him.
Sherlock knows this now. He’s noticed and he is ready. He has made sure he’s tidied up the Lethbridge blackmail case as much as possible. The nineteenth is completely free for his use. So is the twentieth.
Charting from memory, his exceptional but also untrustworthy memory, the major appearances have all happened on the anniversary of the day John had stopped breathing. When John had stopped all of this had begun. Flipping through his notebook brings a handful of potential events but none approaching the anniversary days. He has always been strongest in December, and the fact that he hasn’t made any sort of noise in months means he’s been saving every last bit of it for tonight.
If the Sherlock Holmes from four years ago could see him now, he thinks as he waits in silence and stillness on the couch for John, he would be mortified. He thinks John himself would have been as well and smiles a bit. It makes his face feel funny.
“Been awhile since you’ve done that hasn’t it?”
He’s been waiting for that voice but it still surprises him when he hears it. He whirls to face the kitchen where John Watson is leaning casually against the wall. He is wearing his favourite pair of jeans and that damned oatmeal jumper. He looks completely solid and looks as though the past four years never happened, or at least had happened differently. John’s eyes are different though. They’re sadder, wiser, and he’s looking at Sherlock as if he’s the most precious thing in the world to him.
And Sherlock knows that he is and likely had been before he’d died. John had felt the same way about him and had chosen silence. Probably because he feared the rejection, or because he remembered being told that Sherlock was married to his work, most likely just out of plain old fear. Many of the same reasons Sherlock himself had kept quiet.
They had cheated each other out of so much, he realised. They had lost so much simply because they’d been afraid; and afraid of each other no less.
He has no answer for John’s question. No answer in words at any rate. He manages to get himself to his feet and sleepwalks over to John. He’s standing less than an arm’s length away from him now. One move and he could touch him. One move and he also could reach right through him. He doesn’t know how this works.
He decides he’s far enough into the unknown to stop thinking about things that way and he grabs John, fingers digging into wool and skin and John, and pulls him tight to him. John returns the gesture just as fiercely and the fingers that dig into his back feel just as real as the ones that had slipped off his cheek four years ago tonight. John is grabbing onto him like a lifeline and Sherlock is doing much the same.
He’s been lonely. So bloody lonely without John. He is going to have to put up with this for years. Decades maybe. The thought had never crossed Sherlock’s mind before now. He’s either been enraged, grief stricken, ill, or busy. That has been the point after all. Now here, in the impossible place that is in John’s arms, he knows what facing a lifetime without him means. It is as final as a death sentence.
He starts to cry. Quietly, mind you, burying his face in John’s soft shoulder and hoping he doesn’t notice. He’s embarrassed but he can’t help it. He almost wishes that certain members of the Yard could see him now, the ones who hadn’t been so keen to have a known murderer working with them. They may not have approved of how his grief had manifested then but he gathered if anyone could be held by the ghost of their best friend (object of affection) and not cry a little bit they deserved to be called a sociopath.
John, unfortunately, notices. “Hey,” he says. He forces Sherlock to look up and cradles his face between his palms. Sherlock keeps his arms wrapped around John’s waist. His fingers are a little bit chilly but not deathly so. Oh, god, he needs to stop thinking about death. He needs to stop that.
And now John is kissing him. Chastely. It’s a peck on the lips but it feels like someone has shoved an ice pack up against them. He muffles a bit in protest and John pulls back. “Sorry.”
Sherlock pulls him back and returns the kiss, also chastely. “Don’t be,” he says as he leans his forehead against John’s. “You surprised me.”
John snorts. Curious that he can still make that sound, Sherlock notes. It’s not like he can draw breath anymore... “That’s what surprised you? I’ll have to try a bit harder next time.” He leads them over to the sofa and gets Sherlock to sit down. After he does he watches as John regards the couch like it is going to bite him. John inhales sharply and very, very, carefully settles down beside him. He lets out the breath after a few moments. “Alright,” he declares. “This should work.”
Sherlock turns so he’s sitting cross legged on the couch facing John. John very slowly rotates so he is leaning against the armrest and facing Sherlock. Their knees are touching. They have never sat on the couch this way before. Usually John stays in his chair, the chair that Sherlock still will not sit in or offer to others out of habit, and Sherlock stretches all over the couch. On the times that Sherlock and John did sit on the couch together their were either on opposite ends or next to each other facing the TV, looking at the paperwork on the table, or whatever else they were looking at. Knees were touching there sometimes because they never had any sense of personal space. In this case, Sherlock knows there’s a meaning to the knees touching in this case and it’s not because he’s enjoying his company.
“Does tactile contact help?” he asks. John is doing three things at once: being visible, being heard, and being tactile. The previous Decembers he’s only done one or two of those at once. Performing all three must be quite the juggling act.
“You’re my anchor,” John agrees. “And the couch too, I suppose.”
Sherlock scoots so his knees are over top of John’s and he grabs his hand. It’s a little cooler than it was before. Not by much but just enough to notice. “Better?”
John nods but his smile is rueful. “I’m still going to be gone again by daybreak, Sherlock. Doesn’t matter how tight you hold onto me.”
Sherlock hangs his head. He had figured that out himself, naturally. After the nineteenth last year Sherlock hadn’t seen any signs of John until well into February. He supposed it would be even longer this time.
John’s knees nudge his. “Hey, I’m always here. Even if you don’t hear me or see me I am always with you, Sherlock, one way or another.”
Sherlock isn’t sure what one way or another is supposed to mean. The whole situation is confusing and by rights he should be questioning John. He should be having John tell him everything that has happened to him in the past four years and everything about the experience of being a ghost. There should be experiments and tests and questioning and all those other things that Sherlock loves to do when faced with something he doesn’t understand or can’t explain. The fact that John is before him certainly falls into that category but he has no desire to question or understand why John is here. It really, really, doesn’t matter.
John, though, has always known him better than anyone ever has. He smiles and even flushes a little at what he knows Sherlock is thinking. At the same time he tells him that his current state of affairs is ‘interesting.’ Sherlock cannot help asking how.
“I’m an observer,” John explains. “I can watch and listen all I want but I can’t do anything most of the time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and that’s just how it is. It’s easier with you and you’re the only one who notices me, consciously anyway, but it’s not always a sure thing with you.”
John is lonely. One night out of three hundred and sixty five hardly makes up for being a shadow in the world. Sherlock knows full well that he would have gone mad within a week. Was this what was in store for them all? He is afraid to know the answer but he asks anyway.
John shakes his head. “There are a few of us around who choose to stay and a few of us who have to stay for whatever reason. There is somewhere else that we’re all supposed to go if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve never seen it though so I can’t give you any insight on that.”
Sherlock doesn’t need to ask whether John has to stay or whether he chooses to and he knows well enough to not even suggest to John that he go on without him. Aside from that Sherlock likes the idea that John is around him all the time and likes knowing that for sure. He knows that John is not leaving. John is stubborn and he has decided that he is going to sit here until, Sherlock presumes, the reason for him to stay here is longer breathing.
If there was a way to make that period shorter... it was so boring and oh so melodramatic but if he could make things easier for John...
The cuff upside the head happens at supernatural speed. He feels the assault but doesn’t see John’s arm reach out or pull back. “Don’t even think it, Sherlock,” he warns, all dangerous eyes and a dangerous voice, the voice that had told many villains to stop what they were doing or they would be dead. “I’ve been very proud of you so far. I’ll leave you alone here, so help me, if you end up with me by anything other than natural causes.”
“What about an accident?”
“So long as it is not a staged one, fine, but if I have my way you are living a good and long life.” The words are a promise. Sherlock wonders just how much control that John claims to not have on the living world.
“What if I don’t want live to an old age without you?”
“That’s too bad,” John says, still serious. “I don’t want you pining for me forever. I don’t want you counting down days until you can join me or trying to cut down the wait. I want you to live, Sherlock. You’re living now, I know you’re living to distract yourself right now but I want you living for you eventually. If me being here to kick you in the arse every year keeps you on that path I’ll hang around forever.”
All of it is true. All of it is true and Sherlock knows he needs it. There’s something else though so Sherlock waits, the unspoken ‘and?’ hanging between them.
John laughs nervously and rubs the back of his neck. The familiarity of the gesture makes Sherlock’s stomach clench. “Alright,” John admits. “And I don’t want to leave you either. I don’t want to go off into the whatever without you and I do believe I love you too much to leave you. Happy?” John shudders after the few moments when Sherlock says nothing. “God, that’s awful. Sappy, I mean. Christ, I’m a bad romance novel. “He buries his face in his hands and groans loud enough that Sherlock is almost expecting Mrs. Hudson to come running up the stairs.
Sherlock waits until John looks at him again and takes his hands. Colder than before; Sherlock’s watch informs him that it’s nearly midnight. “It is quite sappy but I can forgive you that. I can forgive you anything for this.”
And I love you too, he thinks. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I’ll love you forever. I’ll love you if I die tomorrow and I’ll love you if I live forever. It doesn’t matter. Such things could never matter to us.
“And I thought I was sappy.” John is laughing at him now but he is moved. Those are tears pricking his eyes.
“You can read my mind?” Sherlock asks.
“Not really but I know what you’re thinking anyway. I’ve gotten very good at reading you.”
Sherlock’s wristwatch beeps midnight and John sighs. A few more hours left until he faded into the background again. It is a dream for most people, Sherlock thinks, to have one more night with a loved one long gone. He also knew he would have several. What could they do though? What should they do?
They end up doing what they always did. Sherlock turns the telly on and they made fun of whatever awful film was on. During commercials, or during the dull parts of the film, Sherlock talks through his cases. Tells John about the finer details John may not have seen and updates him on Mycroft and Lestrade. That makes John laugh but he isn’t surprised.
They talk the night away, eventually ending up curled up together on the couch. As daybreak gets closer Sherlock can’t feel John on his shoulder and frequently looks over to if John is still there. John reassures him with a kiss but, soon, Sherlock can’t feel anything behind him but the sofa.
For the last two hours they shut the telly off. They just lay there facing each other on the narrow couch. Occasionally they say something to one another but they spend most of it in silence. When the sky starts to lighten John starts to hum and then to sing a little bit.
“I’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose
And my trigger is tight
May come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty
Make it shine so bright.”
He’s never really heard John sing. He’s heard him hum to himself or mouth along with the radio but never a proper sing, as much as one can in a whisper like this. John’s voice is leaving before he is apparently. At any rate it is surprisingly endearing. “What’s that?” Sherlock asks.
John stops sharply, not embarrassed but confused. Then he laughs a little when he realises what he’s been doing. “It was a free download they gave me at Starbucks or something. It gets stuck in my head a lot, probably because it was the last new song I really heard. Can’t remember the name of it now though.”
Sherlock flags the song in his memory and tells John to keep going. He’s curious to hear the rest and he just wants to keep hearing John speak before he was silenced for who knew how long.
John is happy to oblige and he fades from Sherlock’s view with the rising sun. He caresses Sherlock’s cheek and holds eye contact with him until there is nothing left for Sherlock to stare at. The last thing Sherlock hears of John is the chorus of that song whispered in his ear.
“I’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose
And my trigger is tight
May come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty
Make it shine so bright.”
27 May 2016
When he hears John again it is that song being whispered in his ear. He has heard the song multiple times by now (he’d bought the song the next time he’d sat at his computer), picking up exactly where he’d left off
He forgets he’s in the process of examining a corpse and Lestrade asks him if he’s okay. He shoos him away and finishes the song and his investigation. Anderson asks him what that song is on the way out and Sherlock says he doesn’t know. Really it is a harsh instruction to Google it and a staunch refusal to repeat the lyrics.
Most couples have a song, he gathers. It’s only fair that they have theirs. Even if they aren’t, really, a couple, and the song was chosen four years after one of them had died and more by chance than by actual selection.
He enjoys that they are still baffling other people despite everything. He knows John is also delighted, he can hear him giggling all the way back to Baker Street. “Crime scene,” he whispers under his breath.
“Public street actually, not that it matters.”
Sherlock scoffs at that but hears no reply.
19- 20 December 2016
John hasn’t done anything since Maay. Sherlock knows why and it’s all fine, really. A year without him has been good for him. He has to admit that much. Also it makes the night itself that much more important when he does appear.
They spend it much the same way. This time they’re laughing at Lestrade and Mycroft’s impending nuptials. They are booked for January 2017 since that’s the only time that Mycroft could guarantee he could clear his schedule. It’s going to be a quick ceremony at the courthouse - only him and a few of the Yarders as witnesses. John is doing his best to provide brother in law advice, as well as things that are certainly not good for a stag party or for a wedding gift. The Yarders are taking Lestrade out and Sherlock is expecting to attend. Sherlock has no desire to take his brother out and knows Mycroft would frown on this whole concept. John agrees. “Just send him something nice and not another diet guide, Sherlock, please.”
Sherlock promises to give it due consideration.
At some point in the evening John wonders about having sex like this. Sherlock rolls his eyes and calls him a typical male. They both, wordlessly, decide to not try. It probably wouldn’t work and it might even shorten their time together. Ironic considering this time they completely lose track of time and John vanishes in mid laugh.
The laugh echoes through the empty flat and Sherlock hangs his head. He goes for a walk in the early morning air to get out of that flat for a few hours. It feels like losing John all over again, to have wasted their time together this year like it was infinite.
He is a right devil to Anderson when he sees him and his current girlfriend on the street. He does not feel bad about it. Some people have all the luck.
23 June 2017
Sherlock Holmes has not taken a cab in years but speed is of the essence. He’s on the tail of notorious car jacker Emmett Ryder and he’s this close to being in his grasp. He pays the cabbie extra if he will ignore stop lights and when they reach the appointed street corner Sherlock pays him double what he promised and rushes down the busy street, thinking he’s solved it. That Ryder is going to be his in a few short moments.
He thinks that even has the car hits him and everything is white, hot, searing pain. Nothing hurts as much as this does. He needs to get out and away from this.
The blackness doesn’t have to ask twice.
Author's Note: Sherlock and John's 'song' is "Beggar in the Morning" by the Barr Brothers and it actually was the Starbucks Pick of the Week in early/mid December of this year. At least in Canada it was, not sure if that translates to the UK, but the song just sort of inserted itself. You can hear it here
Part Two
Author: arwen_kenobi
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock (eventually), Lestrade/Mycroft (background)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8 431 this part (18 143 overall)
Warnings: Character deaths (minor and major), some potentially graphic descriptions of murders, ghost fic
Summary: One year after John is killed Sherlock starts to wonder whether John has actually gone anywhere.
Part One
19 -20 December 2012
It was exactly one year since John had bled to death in Sherlock’s arms during a blizzard and Sherlock was doing his best to not notice it. December the nineteenth was just another day in December. This year it was a mild day: crisp wind, the kind that got you right to the bone if you let it, with a grey sky and a high of eight degrees. Wonderful weather if Sherlock had any opinion on the weather. What was the point of complimenting or complaining about the weather like anyone’s approval or disproval would influence things either way? Idiotic. Almost as idiotic as Mrs. Hudson sending him chocolate biscuits and a poinsettia today. Really? What was that meant to accomplish? Was it some gesture to replace the one’s he had thrown at her last year when she’d tried to hug him?
He still doesn’t understand why she’d been so upset. What sort of reaction had she been expecting? John had been gone nearly seven-
Stop it. Today is December the nineteenth and it is just another day.
He stops the thought and goes about examining the crime scene. Robbery. The victim’s father is clearly responsible, the angle of the table and the discarded Pepsi can tells it all, but he continues staring at it. If he continues to look busy and snap at someone every few minutes then Lestrade will not say anything. Hell either be too frustrated to bother or simply too scared. Everyone is scared of him now. He had murdered a man with nothing but his bare hands and a scalpel; more so with the hands than the scalpel. That had just been some finishing work. Finer details if you preferred...
More than a bit not good. He’d done something that had needed to be done and there was no need to look back on it at all. Pleasure, pain, sadness, joy, rage, none of it mattered. It had needed to happen so he had made it happen. Again, why had everyone been so surprised? Sally Donovan had once said that one day they’d come to a scene and there would be a body that he himself had put there. Not that he’d left much mystery as to motive or suspect with that one. An infant would have seen it and understood.
Everyone had always assumed that one day Lestrade would have to bail Sherlock out of something using the plea of insanity. It would be a front, of course, and either he’d pull some strings or Mycroft would and that would be it. No one had ever thought that they would be pleading insanity for real and that Sherlock would be agreeing with it. He knew he could have fought it or had it waved away but he chose not to. He also chose not to even ponder escape or other means of getting himself released.
Sherlock chose the hospital over the howling quiet of Baker Street. He chose the padded walls and pills in paper cups. He chose arts and crafts and no nicotine patches and a room filled with nothing but himself and a narrow bed. It was boring. Maddeningly so but that had been the point. He had allowed himself to be committed because he had hoped to be driven mad. That and to stop himself from inflicting on himself what he done to Michael Gray but no one needed to know that.
He’s finally bored himself enough to leave the scene. He breezes by Lestrade before he can put a hand on his arm and invite him out to some pub to drink and reminisce. This day does not deserve recognition. It is just a (horriblevileevilsadsoulcrushing) day in December. No reason to treat as anything otherwise. He never goes to the pub with Lestrade. He used to. He used to back when there were three chairs at the table. He used to do many things when there was one extra spot there. He doesn’t even take cabs anymore because the empty seat screams louder than the horns of the cars around him. It never used to be this way, he remembers. He had enjoyed being by himself and doing things where things were set for one.
John had changed all that and then had had the cold bloodedness to leave him with the knowledge that he had been lonely. Now he knew exactly what he had been missing.
John was not cold blooded, he took that back. He knew for a fact that John had warm, hot, blood. Especially when it was busy gushing out of a torn abdomen and trickling out of the corner of his mouth and when it’s covered in his hands as he’s trying to stop it.
He gathers he must have shouted ‘NO’ by the way the street is taking notice of him now. He hustles down the street to his (their) flat and flies up the stairs. The minute he locks the door he hears Mrs. Hudson coming up after him. He ignores the banging, and the calling, and the threats to call Mycroft. Mycroft and her were in cahoots nowadays. It was horrifying. Horrifying in a very splendid way, he had to admit. He was sure John would approve.
There it was again. He sighed and made himself some tea. He hated Earl Grey but John had loved it (especially black) so that was all he drank now. He raised the cup, took a sip, gagged a bit and kept drinking. The gags soon silenced completely and then, slowly, turned into quiet sobs. John should have been here with him today. He should have been with him at that crime scene and he should damn well be sitting here with him sipping his own blasted Earl Grey so Sherlock wouldn’t have to do it for him.
What happens next makes perfect sense though explaining that to Lestrade and the three policemen who come to the door shortly after he’s finished takes some doing. On this night last year he had watched his best friend die. Then he had savagely murdered the man who had caused it. Then he had spent eight months in an asylum doing his best to be driven truly mad. When that had not worked he had shut it out. Mostly.
He had not grieved, he knows that. He had missed John’s funeral because he had been in hospital by then. Sherlock may claim he is a sociopath but he is far from it where John is concerned. He is just a little late in expressing his grief.
He promises Mrs. Hudson he’ll have the flat cleaned up and pay for the damages. His mobile rings as the sentence leaves his mouth and his brother tells him that he’ll send some men to replace the furniture, most of the appliances, and to fix up the walls. Sherlock is ordered go out with Lestrade for a pint on pain of having to go visit Mummy for a few weeks.
He chooses Lestrade. He even drinks. He drinks to the point that he remembers little except for throwing up most of it onto his new carpet and into the sink. He stumbles into bed and wakes up the next morning with a hangover worthy of some of Anderson’s wild nights. He is making himself some more toast, the tea was already waiting for him, when Lestrade arrives to check on him.
“Perfectly alright,” he assures him. He observes the dirt on Lestrade’s knees and the bits of greenery underneath his nails. Lestrade has been to John’s grave and has done some pruning. Lestrade is a bit of a gardener when he’s not working at the Yard - him and his oldest daughter often do so together - and he has appointed himself maintainer of John’s grave. Sherlock has never actually visited the spot, he can mourn John just fine without having to stare at the dates (6 August 1971 - 19 December 2011) marking just how brief a time John had on Earth, and how brief a time (29 January 2010 - 19 December 2011) they had together.
Lestrade is expressing his astonishment that Sherlock managed to get home in one piece. “Well done on getting some food down, you look like you have a monster of a headache.”
There is no use in denying the obvious. “It was much easier in a clean flat. I am much obliged for that, I am sure it was unpleasant.”
“I’m not passing your thanks onto Mycroft about that blow up,” Lestrade scolds him. “You can do that yourself.”
The day Sherlock thanks his brother for anything will be a cold day in the hell he most certainly does not believe in. “I was referring to the second mess.”
“You trashed the flat again?”
He has seen John do this for his sister once. John had denied that he had cleaned up or cared for her after one of her more amazing drunken rages and it hadn’t been to protect her dignity. He’d been treated like a common servant and he played the part of dutiful brother to make his sister feel guilty the next morning. It had not been a task he had relished but it had kept Harry sober for a few weeks. Harry had cleaned up after herself after that.
Lestrade is not quite as easy to read as John is (had been) but Sherlock would know just as easily as Harry had if Lestrade was lying to him. Lestrade had not seen up to his rooms last night. He had perhaps led him to the front door but not up the stairs. Nor was he responsible for the hot pot of tea and the first round of toast.
When Mrs. Hudson seems to have had no part of it he decides that it must have been Mycroft. He does not thank his brother.
Late that night he pays his respects at John’s real grave. He stands in the alley where John died, where most of Sherlock had died, and leaves a single lily resting on the pavement. He stands there, alone and unmolested, until sunrise.
19 - 20 December 2013
He is at the Yard waiting for Lestrade to get copies of the autopsy for the Spencer boy when he first sees the shadow. A shadow maybe is not the most accurate word. It is just a movement out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was just the constables bustling in the shadowy part of the office behind him but the office is empty aside from him and the few constables in front of him. He eventually identifies the shadow as a dying light bulb and snaps at one of Lestrade’s underlings to fix it. No one moves.
He harrumphs and busies himself with looking through the papers on Lestrade’s desk. There is nothing very important here. He flips through assorted case files, a few reports...a to do list proves interesting - it seems Lestrade and Mycroft are finally moving along with things - until Lestrade whacks him on the head with the victim’s diary, which has miraculously reappeared, and leads them out into the night.
The shadow continues to follow him. He says nothing to Lestrade and keeps his body language neutral as they return to Spencer’s flat and search it for the third time for the memory sticks. Lestrade eventually finds them and Sherlock takes them back to 221b to poke around with. It seems it is merely another copy of the diary but some of the dates and names are altered. Some events are also slightly different in the digital copy than on the paper one.
He settles in for a long night of cross referencing, and it seems code breaking, until he finds himself dying for a cuppa. When he gets up to make his phone buzzes with a text message.
Need me?
Unlisted number. Bloody Mycroft and his attempts at being subtle. He knows what day it is today and he can’t stop to worry about it now. He furiously texts back and informs Mycroft exactly how much he is in need of him. There is work to be done and the game is on. John would certainly not have approved of last year’s anniversary so he might as well do something that John would have approved of.
He once told John that there was no such thing as heroes and if there were that he certainly wouldn’t be one of them. It was a rare thing indeed when he admitted being wrong but he had to allow for the existence of heroes now. He had known a fair few in his time and he knew that now. He knew enough of them that he still believed that he shouldn’t be counted in their numbers. Any man who got his best friend killed does not deserve to be called a hero. Yes, Lestrade had called him one onceand so had a few of his clients. Even Anderson had said so once when he thought Sherlock had been out of earshot.
He is not a hero. He had once pursued these cases because they saved him from the overpowering boredom of his life. Now he did them because he had to keep busy. Had to keep his mind going and had to be distracted enough to not catch on that John was absent for too long a period. He had learned how to do chores and other various menial tasks and he even had a part time job with Molly at the morgue in an effort to distract himself. He also was now more than happy to deal with any and all of the idiots that Mycroft had working for him.
Most days, the approach worked. It was when he was alone in the flat at night that he was reminded of the fact that he was alone. That there was no one who wanted to watch action movies with him, no one to stumble upon his experiments, no one to complain about violin playing at four in the morning, no one to celebrate another case closed with him, no one to eat Chinese with him, no one to laugh with, no one to be truly impressed with him anymore, no one for him to be truly impressed by anymore...
He drinks the Earl Grey, gags a little bit, and goes about his night. It’s a tedious business but it has its own charm and challenge. Finally the words just blur too much together for his overworked brain - it’s nearly daybreak now and he hasn’t slept in two days. He shuts the laptop down, puts his cup in the sink and leaves the notebook pages and printed pages scattered all over the couch.
He sleeps until the next morning. When he goes downstairs his papers are neatly arranged and the dishes are done. There is also a fresh cup of coffee and some toast and jam waiting - Mrs. Hudson he assumes, so much for the old ‘landlady not housekeeper’ argument. He leaves the food and sits down again. He’s had his rest and his senses are sharper when he’s hungry. This one is hard going.
“If I can see it you certainly should be able to,” John gripes. “It’s the names, not the events.”
“The names are meaningless,” Sherlock argues. “It’s George in here and Michael in the other. Dave here and Matthew there...”
“You’re a musician and you’re missing this? Really? “
“I hardly call George Michael music, Dave Matthews has its merits but...”
Suddenly if all falls into place: Michael instead of George. Dave instead of Matthew. He grabs his mobile and orders a complete referencing between Spencer’s music collection and all the suspects collections. Correlations needed to be made. Donovan and one of the other Yarders get that done in record time and Spencer’s killer (his girlfriend’s twin sister) is soon in custody. There is an accomplice and Lestrade and a few of his men are out getting her.
That light is still flickering. This time Sherlock is staring right at it. It’s a new bulb but it flickers anyway. Perhaps the lamp needs to be replaced.
As he leaves the Yard it hits him that he had a complete conversation with a dead man. Auditory hallucination, he decides. He always thought the best with John around him. This case had been difficult so his subconscious had conjured up John to walk him through it. He tells himself that all the way to the alleyway until he has to admit that he really is not sure at all about the whole experience.
The street light above him flickers and that makes him even more uncertain. “John?” he whispers into the night.
The light flickers again. Sherlock raises a hand heavenward and waits for something. Anything. A touch, a change in the air, the light to flicker again, anything at all to confirm what he never believed in before. Nothing happens and he hears nothing else for the hour or so he waits. No lights flicker on the way home or anywhere else.
Later that night, in either a dream or in a brief period of semi consciousness he sees John sitting on his window ledge. He has the loneliest, saddest, look on his face. He has never seen John look like this before. He reaches out a hand toward his friend. He isn’t sure it’s possible for John to look even sadder but he does as he sighs and shakes his head. His lips move but he’s fading away too fast for Sherlock to read them. He asks, begs, John to stay but his dear friend vanishes and Sherlock falls asleep.
When he wakes the next morning he is still not that he believes but he knows that he does not not believe.
12 -20 December 2014
Sherlock’s maternal grandmother had died when he was six. Grandmère Vernet had been his favourite relative and he had felt her loss keenly. Mummy believed in heaven and hell and such things and told young Sherlock that one day he’d see his beloved grandmère again. He had believed his mother until the funeral. Everything the clergyman was saying made no sense. How was any of this possible and how could anyone be positively sure that they’d see their loved ones again? Or was it all darkness and oblivion after all?
As usual, Sherlock had launched himself into books to find his answers. He came out with the belief that what most of his family believed was a comfortable fantasy they told themselves to make death easier. Death was the end. That was all. Life proceeded to do nothing but confirm this. He had been present at countless murder scenes and had seen many men killed. There was nothing there afterwards. No indication that any part of these people survived whatever had been done to them.
John had changed many things about him for good or ill. Trust him to shatter his conceptions of death. Or at least crack them since he still is very unsure about what exactly what he experienced last year. Unfortunately as the morning of the twelfth of December dawns Sherlock knows that four nights of staking out a drug smuggler in the rain have caught up with him, so he has more immediate concerns than life after death. He feels like he has been run over multiple times by a bus, or perhaps has spent a week or two as the floor of a London cab. Whatever the simile he feels disgusting. He pulls the sheets over his head and sleeps right into the next day where he actually feels worse.
This could be a combination of the fact that he is so ill he can barely open his eyes and the fact that Mycroft is standing over him. “I trust you will not be joining us at Gregory’s for dinner then?” It shows how ill he is when it takes him a moment to remember who Gregory is. Sherlock does not know why Mycroft feels the need to have this formal introduction type of dinner. He has known Mycroft his entire life and Lestrade for what feels like it. The fact that they now spend a great deal of their free time together is none of his business nor is it an impact on his life. He does however resent seeing them together because it brings back the thoughts he had had of John. Feelings that he was fairly certain that John shared as well and that neither of them had ever mentioned before the nineteenth of December of 2011.
He tells his brother that he is surprised to see him at a sick man’s bedside. Mycroft is more than a bit terrified of getting sick. It is really quite funny to see how quickly Mycroft will locate exits or step back if he sees anyone pull out a tissue. His assistant, Sherlock suspects, was chosen due to her titanium immune system. She does not get sick. Ever. Sherlock is sure to enjoy what happens when Lestrade eventually gets the cold that is circulating through the Yard. Will Mycroft come within three feet of him then, he wonders.
“Sherlock?”
He grumbles and then pulls the covers right back over his head. He hears banging around in the kitchen and then hears the tea and medication put his bedside table. “I want this gone by the time I check on you later tonight.” He snakes an arm out to snatch the medication, downs it by itself, and makes no move to grab the food. Mycroft sighs and takes his leave. He hears another sigh shortly after the door closes; an exasperated one instead of his brother’s close to piteous one. He is not worrying about this right now and hums a bit of Mendelssohn to himself as he falls asleep again.
He was roused some time later by a painful stab in his side. He groans in pain and does his best to ignore it. He feels it again, sharp and demanding, but it takes one more and what feels like a slap upside his head for him to get up and realise that it is a person who is poking him in the side. In the case of Mycroft and his fear of sick people it was more likely his infernal umbrella doing that job. He bellows something suitably scathing at his brother (he can only assume that it is because he can’t remember what he’s said) and shoves the toast, the freezing cold toast, in his mouth. He gets out of bed and nearly crashes into the wall as he turns the corner. He adds dizziness to his list of symptoms. He somehow makes it down the stairs, leaning against the wall and hanging onto the banister for dear life, to find no one there. There is also no evidence that anyone has been here in the past few hours but Sherlock would be a fool to trust his powers of observation when he can hardly see straight.
Oh, that’s new too.
He collapses onto the couch, pulls haphazardly at the Afghan that used to be John’s, and curls up into a ball and does his best to fall asleep again. His head is pounding and spinning and he knows he should go back to bed. He really should eat something before he makes it that far but he can’t coordinate his limbs to manage the simple task of walking let alone making anything.
He hears banging in the kitchen eventually. Quiet banging, or at least attempts at such. Whoever is here is making soup. It is either Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson but neither has said a word. The former would be checking over him to see how he was where Mrs. Hudson would be fretting like the grandmother that she was. He gives up trying to figure it out. There’s no real reason to.
He’s manhandled to a sitting position and a soup bowl is pushed into his hands. “Eat,” a distant, muffled, voice orders him.
“Not going to stay down,” he argues.
“It will. Eat half of it and I’ll get you to bed.”
He knows that voice. He hasn’t heard it in awhile but he knows it. He struggles to place it as he gratefully eats all of what he’s given. He even feels a little bit better. The voice congratulates him on a job well done and then hauls him up. They’re headed upstairs. He keeps his feet moving but all the steering and support is being done by his companion. He is too tired to keep his head up and lets it lull toward towards his support.
His head keeps going and he almost falls right over but for whoever is holding him up. He hears a sad sigh and then his head is moved so it’s hanging down. “Not today, Sherlock.”
Now he knows the voice. He knows the step too, even though he notes that there are no feet next to him as they travel down the hallway. He shuts his eyes as he is put in bed and opens them once he’s covered up. He believes he sees a very familiar back clad in a very familiar oatmeal coloured jumper walking down the hall.
He calls his friend’s name but he even he can’t make words out of that croak.
That’s the last thing that makes any amount of sense to him for some time. He can feel the fever burning through him even in his sleep. Time and place have no meaning to him anymore; all there is is the fire that is coursing through him. He is visited once by Lestrade, he thinks, and he can sometimes hear Mrs. Hudson coughing from down below so he imagines she has to have come in a few times but doesn’t remember seeing or hearing her.
The only reason time returns to him is the date. The nineteenth of December has been burned into him like a brand and no fever can burn that knowledge out. He needs to get up. He needs to get to the alley. He needs to remember what was so strange about last year so he can see if the same thing happens again this year.
Any desire to leave his bed leaves him as a blessedly cold hand settles on his forehead. A second one cups his face. “Sleep,” John’s voice orders him. “You don’t need to go out and see me. I’ve never left.”
“You can’t be here, you’re gone,” Sherlock whimpers, eyes still shut. “I let you die.”
“You didn’t ‘let’ me do anything, Sherlock. I died. It happens to the best of us.”
“You were the best of us.” His voice is horribly slurred but he means every word of it. He hadn’t told John anywhere nearly enough when he’d been alive. He doesn’t think he’d ever told him.
“I still am,” John grins like he’s known the whole time. “Death’s not the end. It just looks like it.”
When Sherlock is awake and the world is clear again he finds an empty chair by his bed. His flat, nor the voices of Lestrade and Mycroft, betray any signs of another visitor. He asks for John again and does not receive an answer.
On his first walk outside in several days he purchases a pocket notebook and writes down a quick note to himself.
He pockets the book and heads to the florist shop. He gets yet another lily and heads over to the alleyway. He lays it down and looks up at the lamp post again. It looks new.
“Hello, John.”
He smiles despite the tears pricking his eyes when the four month old light bulb crackles happily at him.
19 December 2015
John Watson is the world’s most practical ghost. It is a fact that should not surprise him but it does nonetheless. Granted it is in that special way that only John could surprise him but it is still surprise. He has not heard or seen him or felt him since last December but there have been enough little hints to his presence that scream “hello, I’m here!” as loud as if John were shouting at him.
Life and logic however prove to be very noisy. It was so easy to dismiss little things like books being moved or dishes being done. Sherlock has an interfering brother, a helicopter of a landlady, and a very concerned detective inspector for a friend. Said friend may end up being a brother in his own right in another two or three years if he does not guess wrong. That is beside the point. The fact is that any of these little helping gestures could have performed by anyone, including himself.
Logic is the real noisemaker here though. His beliefs and understandings coupled along with that. Hadn’t one of his prime tenants of belief been that if the impossible were eliminated whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth? It couldn’t be true if it had taken him years to sort out what all these gestures had meant.
He believes he has it puzzled out now. John had never left or if he had it had not been for very long. As far back as he could cast his memory he could come up with more than a few unexplained events. That was just from what he could remember himself - he knew full well that his memory was just as untrustworthy as the next human’s but he was rather brilliant. He also had discretely asked others: Mycroft, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson to give names.
He did not walk up to them and ask them point blank as he might have done. He had spent nearly a year on a psych ward by (mostly) choice before but he had no immediate desire to repeat the experience. What he didn’t ask flat out he observed. Lestrade had had a few bits of evidence turn up inexplicably a handful of times over the past five years. That was really all that he could determine. Mrs. Hudson had nothing happen to her that she could recollect, and what she could she wrote off as being due to her old age. John had stayed far away from Mycroft it seemed.
Sherlock thought he knew why, too. If anyone had any ability to put the pieces together before Sherlock did it would be Mycroft. John did not want to ruin this for him. He wanted Sherlock to know before anyone else. He helped Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade from time to time because it would be unnoticed. John wanted, wanted more than anything in life perhaps, for Sherlock to notice him.
Sherlock knows this now. He’s noticed and he is ready. He has made sure he’s tidied up the Lethbridge blackmail case as much as possible. The nineteenth is completely free for his use. So is the twentieth.
Charting from memory, his exceptional but also untrustworthy memory, the major appearances have all happened on the anniversary of the day John had stopped breathing. When John had stopped all of this had begun. Flipping through his notebook brings a handful of potential events but none approaching the anniversary days. He has always been strongest in December, and the fact that he hasn’t made any sort of noise in months means he’s been saving every last bit of it for tonight.
If the Sherlock Holmes from four years ago could see him now, he thinks as he waits in silence and stillness on the couch for John, he would be mortified. He thinks John himself would have been as well and smiles a bit. It makes his face feel funny.
“Been awhile since you’ve done that hasn’t it?”
He’s been waiting for that voice but it still surprises him when he hears it. He whirls to face the kitchen where John Watson is leaning casually against the wall. He is wearing his favourite pair of jeans and that damned oatmeal jumper. He looks completely solid and looks as though the past four years never happened, or at least had happened differently. John’s eyes are different though. They’re sadder, wiser, and he’s looking at Sherlock as if he’s the most precious thing in the world to him.
And Sherlock knows that he is and likely had been before he’d died. John had felt the same way about him and had chosen silence. Probably because he feared the rejection, or because he remembered being told that Sherlock was married to his work, most likely just out of plain old fear. Many of the same reasons Sherlock himself had kept quiet.
They had cheated each other out of so much, he realised. They had lost so much simply because they’d been afraid; and afraid of each other no less.
He has no answer for John’s question. No answer in words at any rate. He manages to get himself to his feet and sleepwalks over to John. He’s standing less than an arm’s length away from him now. One move and he could touch him. One move and he also could reach right through him. He doesn’t know how this works.
He decides he’s far enough into the unknown to stop thinking about things that way and he grabs John, fingers digging into wool and skin and John, and pulls him tight to him. John returns the gesture just as fiercely and the fingers that dig into his back feel just as real as the ones that had slipped off his cheek four years ago tonight. John is grabbing onto him like a lifeline and Sherlock is doing much the same.
He’s been lonely. So bloody lonely without John. He is going to have to put up with this for years. Decades maybe. The thought had never crossed Sherlock’s mind before now. He’s either been enraged, grief stricken, ill, or busy. That has been the point after all. Now here, in the impossible place that is in John’s arms, he knows what facing a lifetime without him means. It is as final as a death sentence.
He starts to cry. Quietly, mind you, burying his face in John’s soft shoulder and hoping he doesn’t notice. He’s embarrassed but he can’t help it. He almost wishes that certain members of the Yard could see him now, the ones who hadn’t been so keen to have a known murderer working with them. They may not have approved of how his grief had manifested then but he gathered if anyone could be held by the ghost of their best friend (object of affection) and not cry a little bit they deserved to be called a sociopath.
John, unfortunately, notices. “Hey,” he says. He forces Sherlock to look up and cradles his face between his palms. Sherlock keeps his arms wrapped around John’s waist. His fingers are a little bit chilly but not deathly so. Oh, god, he needs to stop thinking about death. He needs to stop that.
And now John is kissing him. Chastely. It’s a peck on the lips but it feels like someone has shoved an ice pack up against them. He muffles a bit in protest and John pulls back. “Sorry.”
Sherlock pulls him back and returns the kiss, also chastely. “Don’t be,” he says as he leans his forehead against John’s. “You surprised me.”
John snorts. Curious that he can still make that sound, Sherlock notes. It’s not like he can draw breath anymore... “That’s what surprised you? I’ll have to try a bit harder next time.” He leads them over to the sofa and gets Sherlock to sit down. After he does he watches as John regards the couch like it is going to bite him. John inhales sharply and very, very, carefully settles down beside him. He lets out the breath after a few moments. “Alright,” he declares. “This should work.”
Sherlock turns so he’s sitting cross legged on the couch facing John. John very slowly rotates so he is leaning against the armrest and facing Sherlock. Their knees are touching. They have never sat on the couch this way before. Usually John stays in his chair, the chair that Sherlock still will not sit in or offer to others out of habit, and Sherlock stretches all over the couch. On the times that Sherlock and John did sit on the couch together their were either on opposite ends or next to each other facing the TV, looking at the paperwork on the table, or whatever else they were looking at. Knees were touching there sometimes because they never had any sense of personal space. In this case, Sherlock knows there’s a meaning to the knees touching in this case and it’s not because he’s enjoying his company.
“Does tactile contact help?” he asks. John is doing three things at once: being visible, being heard, and being tactile. The previous Decembers he’s only done one or two of those at once. Performing all three must be quite the juggling act.
“You’re my anchor,” John agrees. “And the couch too, I suppose.”
Sherlock scoots so his knees are over top of John’s and he grabs his hand. It’s a little cooler than it was before. Not by much but just enough to notice. “Better?”
John nods but his smile is rueful. “I’m still going to be gone again by daybreak, Sherlock. Doesn’t matter how tight you hold onto me.”
Sherlock hangs his head. He had figured that out himself, naturally. After the nineteenth last year Sherlock hadn’t seen any signs of John until well into February. He supposed it would be even longer this time.
John’s knees nudge his. “Hey, I’m always here. Even if you don’t hear me or see me I am always with you, Sherlock, one way or another.”
Sherlock isn’t sure what one way or another is supposed to mean. The whole situation is confusing and by rights he should be questioning John. He should be having John tell him everything that has happened to him in the past four years and everything about the experience of being a ghost. There should be experiments and tests and questioning and all those other things that Sherlock loves to do when faced with something he doesn’t understand or can’t explain. The fact that John is before him certainly falls into that category but he has no desire to question or understand why John is here. It really, really, doesn’t matter.
John, though, has always known him better than anyone ever has. He smiles and even flushes a little at what he knows Sherlock is thinking. At the same time he tells him that his current state of affairs is ‘interesting.’ Sherlock cannot help asking how.
“I’m an observer,” John explains. “I can watch and listen all I want but I can’t do anything most of the time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and that’s just how it is. It’s easier with you and you’re the only one who notices me, consciously anyway, but it’s not always a sure thing with you.”
John is lonely. One night out of three hundred and sixty five hardly makes up for being a shadow in the world. Sherlock knows full well that he would have gone mad within a week. Was this what was in store for them all? He is afraid to know the answer but he asks anyway.
John shakes his head. “There are a few of us around who choose to stay and a few of us who have to stay for whatever reason. There is somewhere else that we’re all supposed to go if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve never seen it though so I can’t give you any insight on that.”
Sherlock doesn’t need to ask whether John has to stay or whether he chooses to and he knows well enough to not even suggest to John that he go on without him. Aside from that Sherlock likes the idea that John is around him all the time and likes knowing that for sure. He knows that John is not leaving. John is stubborn and he has decided that he is going to sit here until, Sherlock presumes, the reason for him to stay here is longer breathing.
If there was a way to make that period shorter... it was so boring and oh so melodramatic but if he could make things easier for John...
The cuff upside the head happens at supernatural speed. He feels the assault but doesn’t see John’s arm reach out or pull back. “Don’t even think it, Sherlock,” he warns, all dangerous eyes and a dangerous voice, the voice that had told many villains to stop what they were doing or they would be dead. “I’ve been very proud of you so far. I’ll leave you alone here, so help me, if you end up with me by anything other than natural causes.”
“What about an accident?”
“So long as it is not a staged one, fine, but if I have my way you are living a good and long life.” The words are a promise. Sherlock wonders just how much control that John claims to not have on the living world.
“What if I don’t want live to an old age without you?”
“That’s too bad,” John says, still serious. “I don’t want you pining for me forever. I don’t want you counting down days until you can join me or trying to cut down the wait. I want you to live, Sherlock. You’re living now, I know you’re living to distract yourself right now but I want you living for you eventually. If me being here to kick you in the arse every year keeps you on that path I’ll hang around forever.”
All of it is true. All of it is true and Sherlock knows he needs it. There’s something else though so Sherlock waits, the unspoken ‘and?’ hanging between them.
John laughs nervously and rubs the back of his neck. The familiarity of the gesture makes Sherlock’s stomach clench. “Alright,” John admits. “And I don’t want to leave you either. I don’t want to go off into the whatever without you and I do believe I love you too much to leave you. Happy?” John shudders after the few moments when Sherlock says nothing. “God, that’s awful. Sappy, I mean. Christ, I’m a bad romance novel. “He buries his face in his hands and groans loud enough that Sherlock is almost expecting Mrs. Hudson to come running up the stairs.
Sherlock waits until John looks at him again and takes his hands. Colder than before; Sherlock’s watch informs him that it’s nearly midnight. “It is quite sappy but I can forgive you that. I can forgive you anything for this.”
And I love you too, he thinks. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I’ll love you forever. I’ll love you if I die tomorrow and I’ll love you if I live forever. It doesn’t matter. Such things could never matter to us.
“And I thought I was sappy.” John is laughing at him now but he is moved. Those are tears pricking his eyes.
“You can read my mind?” Sherlock asks.
“Not really but I know what you’re thinking anyway. I’ve gotten very good at reading you.”
Sherlock’s wristwatch beeps midnight and John sighs. A few more hours left until he faded into the background again. It is a dream for most people, Sherlock thinks, to have one more night with a loved one long gone. He also knew he would have several. What could they do though? What should they do?
They end up doing what they always did. Sherlock turns the telly on and they made fun of whatever awful film was on. During commercials, or during the dull parts of the film, Sherlock talks through his cases. Tells John about the finer details John may not have seen and updates him on Mycroft and Lestrade. That makes John laugh but he isn’t surprised.
They talk the night away, eventually ending up curled up together on the couch. As daybreak gets closer Sherlock can’t feel John on his shoulder and frequently looks over to if John is still there. John reassures him with a kiss but, soon, Sherlock can’t feel anything behind him but the sofa.
For the last two hours they shut the telly off. They just lay there facing each other on the narrow couch. Occasionally they say something to one another but they spend most of it in silence. When the sky starts to lighten John starts to hum and then to sing a little bit.
“I’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose
And my trigger is tight
May come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty
Make it shine so bright.”
He’s never really heard John sing. He’s heard him hum to himself or mouth along with the radio but never a proper sing, as much as one can in a whisper like this. John’s voice is leaving before he is apparently. At any rate it is surprisingly endearing. “What’s that?” Sherlock asks.
John stops sharply, not embarrassed but confused. Then he laughs a little when he realises what he’s been doing. “It was a free download they gave me at Starbucks or something. It gets stuck in my head a lot, probably because it was the last new song I really heard. Can’t remember the name of it now though.”
Sherlock flags the song in his memory and tells John to keep going. He’s curious to hear the rest and he just wants to keep hearing John speak before he was silenced for who knew how long.
John is happy to oblige and he fades from Sherlock’s view with the rising sun. He caresses Sherlock’s cheek and holds eye contact with him until there is nothing left for Sherlock to stare at. The last thing Sherlock hears of John is the chorus of that song whispered in his ear.
“I’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose
And my trigger is tight
May come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty
Make it shine so bright.”
27 May 2016
When he hears John again it is that song being whispered in his ear. He has heard the song multiple times by now (he’d bought the song the next time he’d sat at his computer), picking up exactly where he’d left off
He forgets he’s in the process of examining a corpse and Lestrade asks him if he’s okay. He shoos him away and finishes the song and his investigation. Anderson asks him what that song is on the way out and Sherlock says he doesn’t know. Really it is a harsh instruction to Google it and a staunch refusal to repeat the lyrics.
Most couples have a song, he gathers. It’s only fair that they have theirs. Even if they aren’t, really, a couple, and the song was chosen four years after one of them had died and more by chance than by actual selection.
He enjoys that they are still baffling other people despite everything. He knows John is also delighted, he can hear him giggling all the way back to Baker Street. “Crime scene,” he whispers under his breath.
“Public street actually, not that it matters.”
Sherlock scoffs at that but hears no reply.
19- 20 December 2016
John hasn’t done anything since Maay. Sherlock knows why and it’s all fine, really. A year without him has been good for him. He has to admit that much. Also it makes the night itself that much more important when he does appear.
They spend it much the same way. This time they’re laughing at Lestrade and Mycroft’s impending nuptials. They are booked for January 2017 since that’s the only time that Mycroft could guarantee he could clear his schedule. It’s going to be a quick ceremony at the courthouse - only him and a few of the Yarders as witnesses. John is doing his best to provide brother in law advice, as well as things that are certainly not good for a stag party or for a wedding gift. The Yarders are taking Lestrade out and Sherlock is expecting to attend. Sherlock has no desire to take his brother out and knows Mycroft would frown on this whole concept. John agrees. “Just send him something nice and not another diet guide, Sherlock, please.”
Sherlock promises to give it due consideration.
At some point in the evening John wonders about having sex like this. Sherlock rolls his eyes and calls him a typical male. They both, wordlessly, decide to not try. It probably wouldn’t work and it might even shorten their time together. Ironic considering this time they completely lose track of time and John vanishes in mid laugh.
The laugh echoes through the empty flat and Sherlock hangs his head. He goes for a walk in the early morning air to get out of that flat for a few hours. It feels like losing John all over again, to have wasted their time together this year like it was infinite.
He is a right devil to Anderson when he sees him and his current girlfriend on the street. He does not feel bad about it. Some people have all the luck.
23 June 2017
Sherlock Holmes has not taken a cab in years but speed is of the essence. He’s on the tail of notorious car jacker Emmett Ryder and he’s this close to being in his grasp. He pays the cabbie extra if he will ignore stop lights and when they reach the appointed street corner Sherlock pays him double what he promised and rushes down the busy street, thinking he’s solved it. That Ryder is going to be his in a few short moments.
He thinks that even has the car hits him and everything is white, hot, searing pain. Nothing hurts as much as this does. He needs to get out and away from this.
The blackness doesn’t have to ask twice.
Author's Note: Sherlock and John's 'song' is "Beggar in the Morning" by the Barr Brothers and it actually was the Starbucks Pick of the Week in early/mid December of this year. At least in Canada it was, not sure if that translates to the UK, but the song just sort of inserted itself. You can hear it here
Part Two