Fiction: Waiting
Title: Waiting
Rating: G
Pairings: John/Sherlock
Warnings: None
Word Count: 366
Summary: Post Reichenbach Falls. Sherlock's view. An homage to the Raymond Carver poem Waiting.
Waiting
(an homage to the Raymond Carver poem by the same name)
From death it's a long walk, through years of secrecy, travel, rough and furtive, down interminably long roads, bleak passages strewn with the bodies of your enemies howling in protest, some from jail, some from the grave, each one a reminder of your choice, of where you are and where you are not, midnight wanderings past fallow fields and obscure towns, foreign in their ways and tongue, places warm and hospitable yet unable to thaw your too-numb heart, on ice for the duration 'til the necessary is done, kept frozen, vigilantly, lest the temptation of vengeance catch hold and corrupt you past redemption.
But now, back in England, back in London, your steps quicken with new spring, new life while passing Regents Park, its boating pond reflecting a hard thin ghost of yourself, then past the Chinese whose faint familiar odors churn up memories so powerful they almost knock you flat, but you press on, your strides lengthening and you feel as if you're almost floating down Baker Street, past the sign for Speedy's and up the stoop to the door, the black one, address shining in bronze, the same one you have opened countless times in fevered dreams of home.
You enter quickly, without hesitation, otherwise your life will be ruined forever, but remember to take the stairs, all 17 of them, silently, because you feel it's always your duty to surprise and amaze him, even now when it's least appropriate, perhaps even hurtful. But you do it anyway because then, when you open the door and see him emerge from the kitchen, forehead furrowed all the more from the press of time, those three years of undeserved grief, you'll see the shift (just the start of your penance), excruciating in its slowness, the cycle of shock-anger-hurt playing over and over across his face in an unending loop. But you wait for it to end, and it does, because John, the one who loves you and is stronger than you'll ever be, at last sighs and, with a hint of that easy smile that puts the sun to shame, says, "What's kept you?"
Waiting by Raymond Carver
Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There's a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there'll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There's a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It's not that house. It's
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It's
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing the sun in her hair. The one
who's been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
"What's kept you?"