Unintended Consequences Part II
TITLE: Unintended Consequences
CHARCTERS: John, Sherlock, Greg, Mycroft
RATING: General.
WARNINGS/KINK/CONTENT: None.
GENRE: John and Greg POV
WORDS: 1,750
CHAPTERS: 2/3 (complete)
SUMMARY: A 'Return' fic - what starts as an ordinary day for John ends with and unforseen outcome.
The law of unintended consequences - intervention in a complex system tends to create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes
Chapter 2 of 3 No spoilers for series 3
Usual disclaimer applies - I own nothing and have just borrow the characters for a while from the Conan Doyle estate and various BBC bods.
I started this fic an absolute age ago - well Nov 2012 to be exact; then somehow Christmas - two Christmasses - got in the way! This is my take on what could have happened at Sherlock's return, though undoubtedly Gatiss and Moffat did a much better job than I ever could. It was largely writtten before The Empty Hearse went out but last bit was finished subsequently (hate to post when a fic is half-finished).
The first bit is betaed but not the second and third. If I sent it out to my lovely betas, who are all very busy, then I might never post. Apologies for any major clangers.
John felt like a stranger in his own skin. His body was something volatile and perfidious - a stolid mass holding him hostage while his thoughts raced and collided with each other. He looked up at Greg, his eyes wild and searching, but found no solace in the inspector’s look of concern. How long had they been sat there? It was difficult to think. Moments? Maybe hours? Mrs. Hudson still had her arm round his shoulders. He turned to her, ever so slightly, and she pulled the blanket up around his neck. The rough wool rasped his skin but her touch anchored him in reality, steering him back from the maelstrom raging in his head.
“It’s ok, dear,” she said, giving him a reassuring squeeze.
No, Mrs. Hudson, it’s not ok, he thought. It is never going to be ok.
He drew his hand down across his face, wincing slightly as the flesh over his scarred knuckles cracked open anew. Sherlock was alive. He had been standing right there, over by the armchair. He was real, solid, irrepressible - his presence pervading the flat like a rain storm at the end of a long hot August. Then somehow is had all shifted, returned to that swirling miasma of loss, reproach and guilt that had begun two years ago.
“Is there any news?” he asked, looking anxiously from Lestrade to the Detective Sergeant standing over by the doorway.
“Not yet, John,” Lestrade replied. “But he’s going to be alright. That bastard’s got nine lives!” he smiled awkwardly.
John let his chin drop forward onto his chest and tried to piece things together in his head.
The evening had started much like any other. He took the tube back from Charring Cross to Baker Street and then popped into M&S to grab a bottle of wine and something for tea. It was a bit of an extravagance but he couldn’t be arsed to walk all the way over to Sainsburys on the Edgware Road. It was pissing down and his shoulder ached.
Jugging the carrier bag and his briefcase, he stood on the step of 221B rifling through his pockets for the door keys and swearing under his breath. Where the hell were they? Just how many pockets does the average man need? Finally he found them and let himself into the hall, wiping his feet on the doormat. He called out a brief greeting to Mrs. Hudson.
“Oh, John dear,” she replied from the murky depths of the house. “It’s a real shocker outside. You must be soaked. Don’t forget to wipe your feet, love”. He smiled ruefully to himself and started up the stairs.
As he neared the first floor landing, a familiar frisson of fear rippled through him. The back of his neck prickled and his heart thumped in his chest. Something was wrong. There was nothing obviously amiss. Everything looked pretty much the same as he had left it that morning, but the feeling of apprehension was inescapable. Cautiously he had approached the flat, the creak of his shoes on the floorboards sounding painfully loud in ears. The door was locked and there were no sign of tampering. No tell-tale finger marks on the brass doorplate which he habitually wiped clean each time he left the flat. No footprints visible in the film of dust which covered the threshold. But still he couldn’t quell the nagging feeling that something was wrong. Wishing he had his gun, he had carefully turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
“Hello, John.” A tall figure stood haloed in the light seeping through the sash windows from the street lamps below. The familiar voice pinioned him to the spot. Sherlock.
He took a small step backwards, incredulity mixing with euphoria. Then he felt the blood rushing in his ears and his hands becoming damp with sweat. The room spun wildly out of compass and he had an odd sensation of falling.
The next thing he remembered was a painfully bright light and a sharp stabbing sensation in his right wrist, emanating up into his elbow. Sherlock was leaning over him and tapping the sides of his face gently; a look of sharp concern etched on his face - that impossible, stupid, infuriating, remarkable, beautiful, face. John blinked, trying to process the myriad of thoughts and emotions careering through his mind at breakneck speed.
“You’re not dead,” he said blearily, a statement more than a question. He dared the apparition in front of him to dissipate into dust motes.
“So it would seem,” Sherlock replied with a slight shrug.
He continued to gaze in disbelief until Sherlock, clearly uncomfortable under such close scrutiny, stood up in one fluid movement and crossed over to the fireplace, where he begun picking up objects from the mantelpiece.
“Not dead…” John repeated again, his voice trailing off. Then he shook his head, sitting up a bit too quickly. The room revolved for a moment and he tried to staunch the vague feeling of nausea that swum in his stomach. He couldn’t take this in. Couldn’t work out what was happening.
“It seems,” Sherlock turned on his heel, “that the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” he smiled sardonically.
John leapt to his feet, the haze in is head instantly replaced by an ice cold fury.
“But I saw you, Sherlock. I saw you dead. I saw your skull…,” he gestured vaguely in the air with his hands then let them drop. “I saw…”
“No, John, that is what you think you saw,” Sherlock replied, as if addressing a recalcitrant child.
“I buried you, Sherlock. I grieved for you.”
“You buried an empty coffin; though admittedly packed with ballast to precisely emulate my body weight at the time of death. That is allowing for certain post mortem fluctuations, of course.”
“You bastard,” John’s voice thundered. “You absolute bloody bastard,” he strode across the room, closing the gap between them. “I watched you jump. Do you know what that felt like, Sherlock? Have you any fucking idea? “
Sherlock craned his body back from both the verbal and physical onslaught. “I am sorry, John,” he replied, adjusting his tone slightly. “I didn’t mean to cause you any…,” he paused, “distress. But it really was unavoidable. Given events, I had to disappear for a while and Mycroft agreed that faking my own death was probably…”
“Mycroft,” John bellowed. “Mycroft knew all about this?”
“Well of course he did. I…”
“And who else?” he ranted, without waiting for a response. “Lestrade? Molly? Mrs Hudson? MI5? The fucking Queen? Tell me, Sherlock, where they all in on it? Did everyone know but me?
“Now you are just being absurd.”
“Absurd,” he stared menacingly into Sherlock’s face, paused to contain his anger, then began to pace the room. “Yes, I suppose it is bloody absurd. Absurd to spend the past two years feeling like I’ve been ripped open. Absurd to keep constantly running through all the ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’. Of waking up each day wondering if there was something I could have done. Of looking in the shadows, bloody hoping that one day you will come back. Of visiting that cemetery just to talk to you. Absurd to think that nothing could ever really be ‘right’ again. Of thinking I had actually lost someone remarkable. What happened, Sherlock? Did you just get bored?”
“No,” Sherlock snapped back, “of course not. Things were just…complicated. I had to disappear.”
“And you couldn’t tell me? That is the bit I just don’t get. It wouldn’t have taken much, just one word. Surely Mycroft and his bloody cartel could have got one word to me to let me know you were OK. Just one word to say you weren’t dead. I thought I was your friend, Sherlock,” John’s tone saddened. “Your only friend, but you couldn’t trust me enough with this?
“It wasn’t a question of trust,” Sherlock spat back in distain.
“So what exactly was it, because I would really love to know?”
“Things just got too complex.”
“So you said,” John shouted, “which is a pretty pedestrian response. Surely the great mind of Sherlock Holmes isn’t slipping?”
“You are willfully failing to understand, John, which just goes to prove my point.”
“Which is?”
“The web was tightening. You, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, you were you were …” Sherlock stopped and stared back at him.
“Were what, Sherlock? “ He demanded.
“You were …” a pained look flashed across Sherlock face, then his features settled into and icy calm. “A liability,” he replied.
John felt something almost tangible snap inside his head. There was a perceptible shift of colour; the blazing red of anger replaced by something dark and brittle. He raised his fist and struck out, punching Sherlock so hard that his head recoiled with the force of the blow. John watched him staggered momentarily but then returned to his previous position, his back held straight. Those cool blue eyes stared back at him defiantly, urging him to continue. Before John could gauge what was happening he found himself lashing out again. This time he felt flesh yield and split beneath his fist, but Sherlock just stood there, his head lolling a little, but offering no retaliation. He drew back his fist a third time but just before his punch hit home he saw the other man flinch. It was almost imperceptible but that tiny movement brought John back to himself. In that moment his anger cracked and dissipated, replaced by a surge of relief and emotion for this impossible man he thought lost. But it was too late to pull the punch. Instead, he twisted his torso, smashing his fist into the mirror above the fireplace. And sending a crack radiating across the surface.
Surprised, Sherlock recoiled as if the blow had landed. He stumbled back, his leg catching on the arm of John’s armchair and tipping him off balance. He threw his hands out to break the fall but they flayed in the air, grasping nothing. Clumsily he sprawled backwards, his body twisting at an odd angle as he tried to bring his long limbs under control. Then there was a sickening crack as his head hit the corner of the hearth surround. His body went limp and slumped awkwardly to the floor. John sprang forwards, feeling a new agony coursing along old familiar pathways like opiates through a thready vein. No, not again. This couldn’t really be happening all over again.