Sherlock Fic: The Ties That Bleed (2/2)
(1/2)
Mycroft’s assistant is in the car when John slides in, and he beams at her. It’s his favorite of them, the taller woman who makes a fantastic cup of tea. She of course has a BlackBerry in hand and only spares him a brief Hello and a smile, but that’s fine. John accepts that it takes a hell of a lot of time and coordination for four people (well, three and then an extra) to act as one, let alone take care of Mycroft (and therefore the government) while doing so.
Mycroft Holmes is the only person John can imagine being crafty enough to bond quadruplets. Not to mention find quadruplets who can be almost as crafty as Mycroft when they team up.
When they stop, Mycroft’s assistant exits the car first, and John is face to face with his least favorite location to meet Mycroft.
“No padded room this time, promise,” John’s favorite of the quadruplets says, shooting him a small smile before opening the townhouse’s front door. The interior is just as crisp and comfortable as John remembers it, thoroughly lived in and just as thoroughly clean. He’s surprised at how quiet the townhouse is this time around; last time it’d been a flurry of action, two of the quadruplets dragging him into the basement while Mycroft tried to convince him he’s gone, John, don’t waste your life just to have proof, he always said you were smarter than that-
“John,” Mycroft says from where he sits in the living room, as impeccably dressed as ever and with a newly-empty teacup in hand. “I don’t mean to call you a liar, but rest assured I have proof that Jim Moriarty is very dead.”
“It’s a copycat, then,” John says, not bothering to sit down in a chair Mycroft hadn’t offered. “You had a look at the case, I’m guessing.”
“A glance, yes,” Mycroft says, and sighs, putting the cup on a nearby table. His assistant (#3, as John’s labeled her) moves out of the room, barely noticed. “It does seem to be the same situation, but the technique was meant to be killed along with its creator.”
And Sherlock, John thinks, but keeps it to himself. Mycroft knows what he’s thinking anyway. He always does. “Then he must have passed it on to someone. Or maybe it’s taken them three years to rediscover it, I don’t know, but the point is that-”
“This has been happening for quite some time, actually,” Mycroft says, quietly. “Rarely, and mostly on the continent, and never as inelegantly as with the Adair severance. This is the first mistake the killer’s made in three years.”
Everything in John goes very, very quiet. He can feel Sherlock’s shade stirring, inquisitive, since John only really gets like this when he’s either about to shoot someone, or lose his temper.
“So Sherlock died for nothing, then,” John states.
“It was all for you, John, make no mistake of that,” Mycroft says icily. “Moriarty was escalating until he reached a point where he could kill you in front of Sherlock. Destroying Moriarty’s bond-breaking technique was a very distant second in his mind compared to avoiding that.”
“And you’ve just been observing it, then?” John glares at him. “You’ve just been standing by while people get ripped apart.”
“It’s being taken care of, John,” Mycroft says. “I have my best man on it. Now, is there anything else?”
John wants to punch him so fiercely that his knuckles are already aching. He breathes. He ignores the vague amusement of Sherlock’s shade. “No.”
“Then I wish you a good day, Doctor Watson,” Mycroft says, and Assistant #3 is politely ushering him out of the building, Mycroft not even glancing at him.
“He does have someone working on it, John,” the assistant says, that ever-present distant smile on her face, and shuts the door.
There’s no car waiting for him, and he doesn’t even know where he is precisely. It’s early enough in the day that there are still people walking to work past Mycroft’s townhouse, so he sighs. John is far too used to being the strange lunatic already lost on the streets at ten in the morning.
“Excuse me,” John calls out to a man just rounding the corner that leads to Mycroft’s townhouse, and the man freezes. For some reason, Sherlock’s shade suddenly feels terrified in the back of his head. John ignores him, putting as much friendly self-effacement as possible in his voice. “This may sound strange, but I was hoping you could tell me where I am.”
HOME/panic/longing/fury-at-someone-not-John/panicpanic/longing screeches into his head, and John can barely breathe from the force of it, as if Sherlock was right in front of him. Home pulses through him like a heartbeat, like something he could reach out and grab onto. Home, home, home, and John realizes the man in front of him hasn’t looked up or said anything or even moved, and it clicks. It makes sense.
He wants to scream and he wants to hurt him and he wants to throw him against a wall and kiss him like he can crawl inside his body and blood and soul all over again, but instead, he whispers out, “Oh my god.”
And instead of just standing there tense and still while projecting wildly at John, Sherlock Holmes immediately pivots and runs away from John, and god, John would know that stride anywhere.
“Get the fuck back here, you selfish son of a bitch!” John screams after him, throwing his cane to the ground, and runs after Sherlock like his life depends on it, because god help him, it does.
---
Fifteen hours after John was told Sherlock Holmes was dead, he was already lost to their bond, already twisted up in the remnants of their shared minds and curled up and laughing with a suspiciously quiet and withdrawn Sherlock on their metaphysical couch, laughing about how they’d said you were dead, Sherlock, how ridiculous is that? Isn’t that funny? Shouldn’t you be laughing too, Sherlock?
When your mind is trapped outside your body, your body has a bad habit of ignoring what it should be doing. John didn’t eat or sleep or drink or speak, he just stood in the middle of the room staring at the ceiling as his mind begged a shade to stop lying to him and just come home.
And, when John came back to his body because the shade had decided to leave him for some reason, he remembered that you couldn’t die until the person who bonded you was dead and he had a convenient pistol and sure, he was running low on ammunition, but it would only take one, wouldn’t it? Just one shot to the head. He’d only even need to put one bullet into the clip, and that was always the easiest to slide in. He watched the spring press down as he loaded one shiny bullet in and suddenly next thing he knew he was being dragged out of the apartment by two identical beautiful women, a third less identical woman grabbing the gun out of his hand.
He protested, of course, and explained what was happening. He wasn’t mad, he just needed to know, and Sherlock wasn’t dead, it wasn’t like he’d die. He’d be in a hell of a lot of pain but he’d get better. He couldn’t die if Sherlock was alive, and he had to be. He was still in John’s head. How could someone still in his head be dead?
“It’s called a shade, John,” one of the identical said, the less-identical woman taking her place as the identical woman pulled a syringe out of her purse. “He’s dead. He’s gone. It’ll all be fine, you just need to relax for a bit and we’ll help you.”
“I don’t need help, I’m fine,” John protested, and the woman injected the needle into his bare arm. It was the first time John noticed he was naked. He absently wondered where his clothes went.
And when his eyes opened again, he was dressed and covered in a blanket on the couch and there was no Sherlock still, but John made himself some tea and sat back down to wait, since the other man was still so present in his mind that he’d undoubtedly be walking through the door any moment now, any at all.
Mrs. Hudson visited and made sandwiches and cried for a bit, and then cried more when John tried to explain the situation to her, which made no sense. Why cry when he was just out and about and would be back any moment now? The Sherlock in his head was good about telling him he’d be back soon, and why would he lie? Besides, they had important things to discuss, like being married and in love, and John could forgive him for needing some space after how John treated him so horribly. John just wasn’t used to relationships that didn’t seem to take any work beyond…whatever they did. And John would kiss him when he came through the door. He was fairly sure he wasn’t reading that wrong, in the other man’s head. And that gave him an idea, and he slipped into their bond and when Sherlock finally appeared, looking tired and apprehensive and saying What, John? John kissed him, and Sherlock froze, and John kissed him some more until Sherlock disappeared looking even more apprehensive.
And then Mycroft showed up, and told him that the Sherlock in his head wasn’t the real Sherlock and was just a ghost impression of him left in their shared soul and that the real Sherlock wasn’t actually coming back, and John took the opportunity to punch him in the mouth for telling filthy cruel lies about his brother, and the assistants had dragged him into a car and into a house and into a basement and into a room with clean puffy white walls and no way to test whether or not they were telling the truth because he couldn’t see a way to kill himself. Until Sherlock died, John couldn’t. It would be proof. It would be proof, because Sherlock couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. He was still alive and well and sitting in John’s head, quiet and guilty and alive, god damn it.
They sent him somewhere when he started laughing and screaming at Sherlock, somewhere that calmed him down by not letting him feel anything, and it was there that Lestrade visited. They sat John down in a chair and one of the orderlies was in the corner and Lestrade had to take a deep breath before telling John that they’d found what was left of Jim Moriarty after trolling the Thames for the past few weeks and that there was still no sign of Sherlock, but they didn’t have much hope since Moriarty’s body had been anchored to the rocks with a chain that had had the scraps of a Sherlock-sized shoe still trapped inside it. It looked like he’d sunk down with Moriarty, and something had dragged his body away. Lestrade didn’t think they’d find it.
“But he’s still alive, in here,” John had said, desperate, tapping the side of his skull where Sherlock lived and breathed and made acerbic remarks about the food they served. “He’s still here, Lestrade, don’t you see?”
Lestrade hadn’t been able to look him in the eye after John said that. “Alive and in your head are very different things, John.”
And John knew there was truth and honesty and integrity in the man in front of him and in the man’s words, and god, he didn’t want to hear it, but it was true, wasn’t it? Sherlock didn’t have to be alive for him to still be a part of John. They shared a soul, after all; in some ways John was Sherlock.
“Please no,” John had whispered.
For some reason, that made Lestrade look at him again, understanding and still strong. “It’s easier to think he’s just on a very long holiday, but it’s not true, and it’s not going to help you make what’s left of him happy.”
John wanted to scream at him, wanted to call him a liar, but he had a point. He tried to smile at the other man. “They told me he’s called a shade, did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Lestrade answered, patient.
John didn’t think he was crying, but he still had trouble telling what his body was up to sometimes. “I’m going to have him haunting me until the day I die.”
“God forbid you leave his ghost as bored as he must be in this place, then,” Lestrade pointed out, smiling just a bit. “You’ll get better, John. He’d have wanted you sane and healthy and you know it.”
And John did. John did know Sherlock’s shade was unbearably bored, and that there was no way he’d have wanted John locked up just for believing his own head more than what everyone else was telling him. He wasn’t sure that Sherlock was dead, was far from believing that the Sherlock in his head was just a shade, but he could at least accept that Sherlock wasn’t with him physically and didn’t seem likely to return in the near future.
He cleaned himself up, slowly and carefully layering levels of their separation that he could accept and move on from - Sherlock was not physically present; Sherlock could be far away from him; Sherlock could be taking a very long time to come back; Sherlock might never come back; Sherlock could, theoretically, be dead - and slowly, John was sane enough to function again. Lestrade stayed close to John when he was released and helped out, and John stayed close to Lestrade when his help wasn’t entirely necessary anymore.
Ten months after they told John that Sherlock Holmes was dead, he was almost able to listen.
---
John H. Watson is fucking fantastic at chasing after Sherlock Holmes. He’s been perfecting the art since 2010 and after Sherlock died (except no he fucking didn’t and John is going to hit him so hard he’ll break his hand as soon as he grabs the other man) John took it upon himself to keep up the work of mental roadmaps, even if he couldn’t keep up the running. It’d been slow going, observing and noting every major change in the streets while limping along, but when danger and necessity calls he can run with the best of them.
John may have no idea where the hell they started at or where Sherlock is going, but he does know that in two streets he’ll hit construction, and unless Sherlock’s taken up free-running, John will catch him.
“Stop, damn you!” John shouts at Sherlock’s back, and the man swerves down a side-alley. John nearly twists his ankle when he changes course, and it gives him a slight twinge in his step, but he runs through it, following the beat of home, home, home as they run through London. “Sherlock! I know it’s you, get back here!”
amuseddisbelief/longing/panic/determination/anger-at-someone-not-John slams into him, and the force of it makes John’s step halt, makes him shudder violently for a moment, because there’s an undercurrent there, a promise that John can’t quite pick out since Sherlock (the bastard) is intentionally projecting loud and obnoxiously to throw John off.
And, damn the man, it works. By the time he gets his own mind back under control, he can’t tell where Sherlock went. All he sees is yet another street with no Sherlock on it, just like millions of others he doesn’t need.
He calls Lestrade before he realizes he’s doing it, and Lestrade picks up before John can think better of how he sounds when he says, “Sherlock’s alive and I just chased him around London.”
Lestrade is quiet.
“I’m not hallucinating,” John snaps. “I could feel him, Greg, I could feel him responding to what was happening to the person in front of me, not just what was in my head. He’s alive and-”
“Where are you, John?” Lestrade asks.
John looks around, huffing out a laugh. “I have no idea. I have to find him, I don’t know where he got to but he can’t have gone far, I can still feel him breathing. It’s fading, but I can feel it.”
“I’m going to trace your phone and come get you, alright?” Lestrade says, sounding tenser than he should. “I need you to promise me you won’t try proving he’s alive or try to find him before I get there.”
“Of course,” John says, grinning at the woman walking past, who gives him a nasty look. “We’d move faster in a car.”
Lestrade sighs. “Just stay there, John. I’ll be there soon,” he says, and hangs up.
As the adrenaline and feeling of Sherlock fades, John starts to feel lost.
---
John had slowly pieced his life back together. Their life together, really. He was living for two, for himself and the shade, and it was difficult to differentiate between them sometimes. Sometimes, Sherlock’s shade was close to taking control of John’s body. Most of the time he didn’t really care when it happened - they shared a soul, and it was the least he could do for the man’s ghost.
At least, that had been his opinion until New Scotland Yard saw it happen.
When the shade took over, John would lose himself a bit. In a lot of ways, it felt like being wrapped in Sherlock’s soul, like they really were inseparable and nothing could ever break them apart. He knew it wasn’t exactly healthy to let your dead friend’s ghost possess your body just for the chance to feel like he wasn’t gone, but when you lose the person most important to you and there’s even a small chance of feeling like they aren’t gone, you take it.
He knew that Lestrade was the only thing really keeping him from either shooting himself in the head or constantly walking around half-possessed, because Lestrade was the one who politely reminded him that Sherlock was gone and would help him walk his way back to being John Watson instead of the remaining half of an Underlord. It was Lestrade who would check in on him, would invite him out for drinks or dinner or just a quiet night away from the flat. It was Lestrade who kept him sane, and John was many things, but ungrateful was never one of them.
They’d gone out for drinks, John and Lestrade, and when Donovan had stopped by the two had started talking shop. It was only natural, considering they were up against a hell of a case (which was why Lestrade had called John in the first place - nobody was quite as good at handling crime-related trauma as John Watson was), and Sherlock’s shade had perked up, intrigue drifting into John’s mind, and John had let go. John had let the shade take over and take the back seat in his own body -
And come back to himself with a slap to the face from a shocked-looking Donovan, Lestrade still holding John’s shoulders like he’d been shaking him.
“John?” Lestrade asked, looking into his eyes intently.
“Yes?” John asked, frowning. “What, was he really that irritating this time?”
“What do you mean, this time?” Donovan hissed out, looking around the very quiet bar. “You’re regularly possessed by a dead man?”
“It’s not like I mind,” John protested. “And this is the first time he hasn’t just snapped away when someone needs to talk to me; he’s usually surprisingly well behaved, for Sherlock.”
Lestrade’s hands clamped down hard enough to bruise, hard enough that John winced at the pressure against his scar. “I’m not going to pretend I understand what happened to you two, but he’s dead. I know he’s in your head, but he’s gone, John.”
John sighed. “I know that.” Mostly.
“You need to stop letting his ghost possess you, alright?” Lestrade asked, treating him like a very slow witness to some horrific crime. “It’s not healthy.”
“It’s just wrong,” Donovan contributed, giving John that close-lipped smile she always wore when there was something particularly fucked up going on.
John didn’t want to agree, didn’t want to admit they might have a point, but he nodded. “Alright. He was just excited, is all.”
“No he wasn’t, because he’s dead, John,” Donovan said. They all said it, over and over again. Sherlock is dead. Sherlock isn’t coming back. Sherlock’s shade inside his head was just that, and John might have been going insane, yes, but that didn’t mean it changed the facts.
“I’m sorry I upset you both,” John said, leaning back in his chair and trying to breathe.
Lestrade finally let go of him, looking awkward and a bit confused. “I know you miss him, and I miss him too, but you need to let the dead stay dead.”
He nodded as was appropriate, and apologized, and left not long after it would be socially acceptable. John would never be able to explain the shade to Lestrade, and he didn’t want to try.
---
Lestrade’s hands are pressed tightly around the wheel when he arrives, his old car a familiar enough sight that John simply opens the door hops into the passenger side seat. “I’m not hallucinating,” John says.
“I know you believe that,” Lestrade replies, pulling back onto the road. “Hallucination or not, do me a favor and take it easy for the rest of the day. That shade in your head might be playing tricks on you again.”
John sighs. “I don’t see how that’s likely, considering I’ve never hallucinated Sherlock until now, when I’m about as stable as I’ll probably ever manage to be.” He looks over at Lestrade’s white-knuckled grip as they turn a corner. “It’s not just my mind, Greg. It couldn’t be.”
Lestrade doesn’t reply, not really. He takes a deep breath and says, “Lunch and a nap would help, I think.”
John glares at him, wants to snap out that you’re my friend, not my father, but he keeps his mouth shut as they drift through the traffic of London, Baker Street and the police radio buzzing through the car the only things John can concentrate on other than Sherlock. He knows Lestrade was hurt by Sherlock’s…disappearance, and that he actually cared (cares?) about the other man, so John can’t understand why Lestrade refuses to even consider that John might be right.
Then again, all the insane raving a few years ago probably destroyed any credibility John might have on the subject.
“You might as well come in for some lunch,” John says as Lestrade pulls up smoothly in front of 221. “I’ll make you a sandwich, and I know Mrs. Hudson has some of that disgusting bread you like.”
“Potato bread is not disgusting,” Lestrade replies, just like every other time, but shakes his head. “And I’m still on duty. The Adair murder’s still an active case.”
“And it would still be active if you were eating a sandwich,” John points out.
Lestrade can barely repress the smile. “Get out of my car, John. And take care of yourself. Rest, alright?”
“See you around,” John says, accommodating the request he get out of the vehicle and easily ignoring the rest. “Keep me updated on the case though, will you?”
“I’ll consider it,” Lestrade says before driving off, and John can take him at his word - it’s the same tone of voice he gets while working through a problem, and lord knows John’s become one of those recently.
John can’t help but wonder if this will be the rest of his life, right here - Lestrade picking him up from yet another breakdown, and then leaving John to have another when he has to face the more normal ghosts of 221B. Maybe he should leave the Adair case alone - hell, leave every case alone. He knows he saw Sherlock, he knows he did, knows he felt and heard and chased after him, but at the same time he was just as certain that Sherlock was alive and well when they’d had to lock him up.
He sighs, shrugging his jacket off and hooking it on the back of the door, staring at the empty rung where he still expects to see a long wool coat, waiting for action.
“God,” John breathes out, and rests his forehead against the empty space. Sherlock’s shade stirs, and John ignores it. “I really am hallucinating this, aren’t I.”
And that’s when the bullet shoots into his back, travelling straight through his heart, and probably the door as well.
What fantastic aim, John finds himself thinking as he falls to the floor, Sherlock’s shade screaming in his head.
---
He’s been shot before, of course. This is the third time he’s felt a bullet rip through his body, and the third time it should have killed him.
The first time, he’d felt completely alone, no matter how many people were around him. There had been hands grabbing his vest, the feel of coarse packed dirt beneath him as he was dragged away from the firefight, the sound of people dying, people who needed help more than him. He’d tried to shake the hands off, tried telling them he had a duty they were taking him from. Instead of listening, they’d thrown him into one of the trucks and gone off to get themselves blown up.
John had been alone, then, bleeding to death on crates of useless ammunition and clutching his pistol, for all the good it would do him. His eyes were heavy, and between one blink and the next, he was staring at a white tent roof, no bullet to be found but in the weakness of his body.
The first time he was shot, he woke up alone.
The second time, he was anything but alone. Even when the bullet slammed into his throat, he could feel Sherlock, in his mind and grabbing him as he choked on his own blood on his way to the cement floor. It was...comfortable, in a way. He’d have been fine dying like that, enveloped in comfort and Sherlock, but it was the sense of panic that made him decide it was a damned good thing he was unkillable.
The second time he was shot, he woke up wrapped in Sherlock, at peace.
The third time - this time - he’s alone in a way he wasn’t in Afghanistan, haunted and vulnerable in an empty apartment. The only change he makes to the entire place in the three years since Sherlock’s death is the spray of red on the door and the pool of blood he makes when he falls to the floor.
The third time John is shot, he wakes up furious.
The hospital bed is almost comfortable, Lestrade is seated next to the bed with his arms crossed and is almost glaring at the very much alive and uncomfortable-looking Sherlock Holmes, who is standing in the corner of the room. Sherlock’s hands are shoved deep into a black jacket’s pockets, and he looks exactly the same as when John was chasing him down only a few hours ago.
Well, he thinks it was a few hours ago. Dying messes up his perception of time.
“John,” Sherlock says the moment John’s eyes open. From the way he says it, John’s tempted to think Sherlock is the one who just got shot - he sounds shocked. “Are you alright?”
“We’re meant to be dead,” John says, or tries to at least. His mind is still hazy and his mouth seems wholly uncooperative with the shouting he wants to do. He’s fairly sure the ‘meant’ and ‘dead’ come through at least, since Greg’s face becomes stormy and what was only a halfhearted glare of disapproval becomes a stern glare of you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself.
Sherlock is prodding at their link, too, albeit gently. John has a feeling that’s because he can feel the fury coming through on John’s end. “Well. I’m alive, so you are too.”
John’s fairly certain he’s only wanted to punch someone more than this moment twice. Considering the circumstances of the past two, it’s only the weakness and the fact he’s attached to an IV that keep him from crawling over there and punching Sherlock in the highest organ he can reach. The heart monitor is beeping fast enough that Greg looks worried and a nurse actually comes in to check his vitals.
“What happened? He was doing fine just a moment ago,” the nurse snaps, checking John’s pupils.
“His dead boyfriend decided to visit,” Greg says.
“Husband,” Sherlock corrects. “And I’m obviously alive.”
“Not for long,” John mutters. Naturally, nobody but the nurse hears.
“Well, stop agitating him,” the nurse says, pointing an accusatory finger at Sherlock. “I can’t kick the police out, but I can remove you, so watch it.”
John likes this nurse.
.
now with worldbuilding notes, since you guys seem to like that.
Mycroft’s assistant is in the car when John slides in, and he beams at her. It’s his favorite of them, the taller woman who makes a fantastic cup of tea. She of course has a BlackBerry in hand and only spares him a brief Hello and a smile, but that’s fine. John accepts that it takes a hell of a lot of time and coordination for four people (well, three and then an extra) to act as one, let alone take care of Mycroft (and therefore the government) while doing so.
Mycroft Holmes is the only person John can imagine being crafty enough to bond quadruplets. Not to mention find quadruplets who can be almost as crafty as Mycroft when they team up.
When they stop, Mycroft’s assistant exits the car first, and John is face to face with his least favorite location to meet Mycroft.
“No padded room this time, promise,” John’s favorite of the quadruplets says, shooting him a small smile before opening the townhouse’s front door. The interior is just as crisp and comfortable as John remembers it, thoroughly lived in and just as thoroughly clean. He’s surprised at how quiet the townhouse is this time around; last time it’d been a flurry of action, two of the quadruplets dragging him into the basement while Mycroft tried to convince him he’s gone, John, don’t waste your life just to have proof, he always said you were smarter than that-
“John,” Mycroft says from where he sits in the living room, as impeccably dressed as ever and with a newly-empty teacup in hand. “I don’t mean to call you a liar, but rest assured I have proof that Jim Moriarty is very dead.”
“It’s a copycat, then,” John says, not bothering to sit down in a chair Mycroft hadn’t offered. “You had a look at the case, I’m guessing.”
“A glance, yes,” Mycroft says, and sighs, putting the cup on a nearby table. His assistant (#3, as John’s labeled her) moves out of the room, barely noticed. “It does seem to be the same situation, but the technique was meant to be killed along with its creator.”
And Sherlock, John thinks, but keeps it to himself. Mycroft knows what he’s thinking anyway. He always does. “Then he must have passed it on to someone. Or maybe it’s taken them three years to rediscover it, I don’t know, but the point is that-”
“This has been happening for quite some time, actually,” Mycroft says, quietly. “Rarely, and mostly on the continent, and never as inelegantly as with the Adair severance. This is the first mistake the killer’s made in three years.”
Everything in John goes very, very quiet. He can feel Sherlock’s shade stirring, inquisitive, since John only really gets like this when he’s either about to shoot someone, or lose his temper.
“So Sherlock died for nothing, then,” John states.
“It was all for you, John, make no mistake of that,” Mycroft says icily. “Moriarty was escalating until he reached a point where he could kill you in front of Sherlock. Destroying Moriarty’s bond-breaking technique was a very distant second in his mind compared to avoiding that.”
“And you’ve just been observing it, then?” John glares at him. “You’ve just been standing by while people get ripped apart.”
“It’s being taken care of, John,” Mycroft says. “I have my best man on it. Now, is there anything else?”
John wants to punch him so fiercely that his knuckles are already aching. He breathes. He ignores the vague amusement of Sherlock’s shade. “No.”
“Then I wish you a good day, Doctor Watson,” Mycroft says, and Assistant #3 is politely ushering him out of the building, Mycroft not even glancing at him.
“He does have someone working on it, John,” the assistant says, that ever-present distant smile on her face, and shuts the door.
There’s no car waiting for him, and he doesn’t even know where he is precisely. It’s early enough in the day that there are still people walking to work past Mycroft’s townhouse, so he sighs. John is far too used to being the strange lunatic already lost on the streets at ten in the morning.
“Excuse me,” John calls out to a man just rounding the corner that leads to Mycroft’s townhouse, and the man freezes. For some reason, Sherlock’s shade suddenly feels terrified in the back of his head. John ignores him, putting as much friendly self-effacement as possible in his voice. “This may sound strange, but I was hoping you could tell me where I am.”
HOME/panic/longing/fury-at-someone-not-John/panicpanic/longing screeches into his head, and John can barely breathe from the force of it, as if Sherlock was right in front of him. Home pulses through him like a heartbeat, like something he could reach out and grab onto. Home, home, home, and John realizes the man in front of him hasn’t looked up or said anything or even moved, and it clicks. It makes sense.
He wants to scream and he wants to hurt him and he wants to throw him against a wall and kiss him like he can crawl inside his body and blood and soul all over again, but instead, he whispers out, “Oh my god.”
And instead of just standing there tense and still while projecting wildly at John, Sherlock Holmes immediately pivots and runs away from John, and god, John would know that stride anywhere.
“Get the fuck back here, you selfish son of a bitch!” John screams after him, throwing his cane to the ground, and runs after Sherlock like his life depends on it, because god help him, it does.
---
Fifteen hours after John was told Sherlock Holmes was dead, he was already lost to their bond, already twisted up in the remnants of their shared minds and curled up and laughing with a suspiciously quiet and withdrawn Sherlock on their metaphysical couch, laughing about how they’d said you were dead, Sherlock, how ridiculous is that? Isn’t that funny? Shouldn’t you be laughing too, Sherlock?
When your mind is trapped outside your body, your body has a bad habit of ignoring what it should be doing. John didn’t eat or sleep or drink or speak, he just stood in the middle of the room staring at the ceiling as his mind begged a shade to stop lying to him and just come home.
And, when John came back to his body because the shade had decided to leave him for some reason, he remembered that you couldn’t die until the person who bonded you was dead and he had a convenient pistol and sure, he was running low on ammunition, but it would only take one, wouldn’t it? Just one shot to the head. He’d only even need to put one bullet into the clip, and that was always the easiest to slide in. He watched the spring press down as he loaded one shiny bullet in and suddenly next thing he knew he was being dragged out of the apartment by two identical beautiful women, a third less identical woman grabbing the gun out of his hand.
He protested, of course, and explained what was happening. He wasn’t mad, he just needed to know, and Sherlock wasn’t dead, it wasn’t like he’d die. He’d be in a hell of a lot of pain but he’d get better. He couldn’t die if Sherlock was alive, and he had to be. He was still in John’s head. How could someone still in his head be dead?
“It’s called a shade, John,” one of the identical said, the less-identical woman taking her place as the identical woman pulled a syringe out of her purse. “He’s dead. He’s gone. It’ll all be fine, you just need to relax for a bit and we’ll help you.”
“I don’t need help, I’m fine,” John protested, and the woman injected the needle into his bare arm. It was the first time John noticed he was naked. He absently wondered where his clothes went.
And when his eyes opened again, he was dressed and covered in a blanket on the couch and there was no Sherlock still, but John made himself some tea and sat back down to wait, since the other man was still so present in his mind that he’d undoubtedly be walking through the door any moment now, any at all.
Mrs. Hudson visited and made sandwiches and cried for a bit, and then cried more when John tried to explain the situation to her, which made no sense. Why cry when he was just out and about and would be back any moment now? The Sherlock in his head was good about telling him he’d be back soon, and why would he lie? Besides, they had important things to discuss, like being married and in love, and John could forgive him for needing some space after how John treated him so horribly. John just wasn’t used to relationships that didn’t seem to take any work beyond…whatever they did. And John would kiss him when he came through the door. He was fairly sure he wasn’t reading that wrong, in the other man’s head. And that gave him an idea, and he slipped into their bond and when Sherlock finally appeared, looking tired and apprehensive and saying What, John? John kissed him, and Sherlock froze, and John kissed him some more until Sherlock disappeared looking even more apprehensive.
And then Mycroft showed up, and told him that the Sherlock in his head wasn’t the real Sherlock and was just a ghost impression of him left in their shared soul and that the real Sherlock wasn’t actually coming back, and John took the opportunity to punch him in the mouth for telling filthy cruel lies about his brother, and the assistants had dragged him into a car and into a house and into a basement and into a room with clean puffy white walls and no way to test whether or not they were telling the truth because he couldn’t see a way to kill himself. Until Sherlock died, John couldn’t. It would be proof. It would be proof, because Sherlock couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. He was still alive and well and sitting in John’s head, quiet and guilty and alive, god damn it.
They sent him somewhere when he started laughing and screaming at Sherlock, somewhere that calmed him down by not letting him feel anything, and it was there that Lestrade visited. They sat John down in a chair and one of the orderlies was in the corner and Lestrade had to take a deep breath before telling John that they’d found what was left of Jim Moriarty after trolling the Thames for the past few weeks and that there was still no sign of Sherlock, but they didn’t have much hope since Moriarty’s body had been anchored to the rocks with a chain that had had the scraps of a Sherlock-sized shoe still trapped inside it. It looked like he’d sunk down with Moriarty, and something had dragged his body away. Lestrade didn’t think they’d find it.
“But he’s still alive, in here,” John had said, desperate, tapping the side of his skull where Sherlock lived and breathed and made acerbic remarks about the food they served. “He’s still here, Lestrade, don’t you see?”
Lestrade hadn’t been able to look him in the eye after John said that. “Alive and in your head are very different things, John.”
And John knew there was truth and honesty and integrity in the man in front of him and in the man’s words, and god, he didn’t want to hear it, but it was true, wasn’t it? Sherlock didn’t have to be alive for him to still be a part of John. They shared a soul, after all; in some ways John was Sherlock.
“Please no,” John had whispered.
For some reason, that made Lestrade look at him again, understanding and still strong. “It’s easier to think he’s just on a very long holiday, but it’s not true, and it’s not going to help you make what’s left of him happy.”
John wanted to scream at him, wanted to call him a liar, but he had a point. He tried to smile at the other man. “They told me he’s called a shade, did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Lestrade answered, patient.
John didn’t think he was crying, but he still had trouble telling what his body was up to sometimes. “I’m going to have him haunting me until the day I die.”
“God forbid you leave his ghost as bored as he must be in this place, then,” Lestrade pointed out, smiling just a bit. “You’ll get better, John. He’d have wanted you sane and healthy and you know it.”
And John did. John did know Sherlock’s shade was unbearably bored, and that there was no way he’d have wanted John locked up just for believing his own head more than what everyone else was telling him. He wasn’t sure that Sherlock was dead, was far from believing that the Sherlock in his head was just a shade, but he could at least accept that Sherlock wasn’t with him physically and didn’t seem likely to return in the near future.
He cleaned himself up, slowly and carefully layering levels of their separation that he could accept and move on from - Sherlock was not physically present; Sherlock could be far away from him; Sherlock could be taking a very long time to come back; Sherlock might never come back; Sherlock could, theoretically, be dead - and slowly, John was sane enough to function again. Lestrade stayed close to John when he was released and helped out, and John stayed close to Lestrade when his help wasn’t entirely necessary anymore.
Ten months after they told John that Sherlock Holmes was dead, he was almost able to listen.
---
John H. Watson is fucking fantastic at chasing after Sherlock Holmes. He’s been perfecting the art since 2010 and after Sherlock died (except no he fucking didn’t and John is going to hit him so hard he’ll break his hand as soon as he grabs the other man) John took it upon himself to keep up the work of mental roadmaps, even if he couldn’t keep up the running. It’d been slow going, observing and noting every major change in the streets while limping along, but when danger and necessity calls he can run with the best of them.
John may have no idea where the hell they started at or where Sherlock is going, but he does know that in two streets he’ll hit construction, and unless Sherlock’s taken up free-running, John will catch him.
“Stop, damn you!” John shouts at Sherlock’s back, and the man swerves down a side-alley. John nearly twists his ankle when he changes course, and it gives him a slight twinge in his step, but he runs through it, following the beat of home, home, home as they run through London. “Sherlock! I know it’s you, get back here!”
amuseddisbelief/longing/panic/determination/anger-at-someone-not-John slams into him, and the force of it makes John’s step halt, makes him shudder violently for a moment, because there’s an undercurrent there, a promise that John can’t quite pick out since Sherlock (the bastard) is intentionally projecting loud and obnoxiously to throw John off.
And, damn the man, it works. By the time he gets his own mind back under control, he can’t tell where Sherlock went. All he sees is yet another street with no Sherlock on it, just like millions of others he doesn’t need.
He calls Lestrade before he realizes he’s doing it, and Lestrade picks up before John can think better of how he sounds when he says, “Sherlock’s alive and I just chased him around London.”
Lestrade is quiet.
“I’m not hallucinating,” John snaps. “I could feel him, Greg, I could feel him responding to what was happening to the person in front of me, not just what was in my head. He’s alive and-”
“Where are you, John?” Lestrade asks.
John looks around, huffing out a laugh. “I have no idea. I have to find him, I don’t know where he got to but he can’t have gone far, I can still feel him breathing. It’s fading, but I can feel it.”
“I’m going to trace your phone and come get you, alright?” Lestrade says, sounding tenser than he should. “I need you to promise me you won’t try proving he’s alive or try to find him before I get there.”
“Of course,” John says, grinning at the woman walking past, who gives him a nasty look. “We’d move faster in a car.”
Lestrade sighs. “Just stay there, John. I’ll be there soon,” he says, and hangs up.
As the adrenaline and feeling of Sherlock fades, John starts to feel lost.
---
John had slowly pieced his life back together. Their life together, really. He was living for two, for himself and the shade, and it was difficult to differentiate between them sometimes. Sometimes, Sherlock’s shade was close to taking control of John’s body. Most of the time he didn’t really care when it happened - they shared a soul, and it was the least he could do for the man’s ghost.
At least, that had been his opinion until New Scotland Yard saw it happen.
When the shade took over, John would lose himself a bit. In a lot of ways, it felt like being wrapped in Sherlock’s soul, like they really were inseparable and nothing could ever break them apart. He knew it wasn’t exactly healthy to let your dead friend’s ghost possess your body just for the chance to feel like he wasn’t gone, but when you lose the person most important to you and there’s even a small chance of feeling like they aren’t gone, you take it.
He knew that Lestrade was the only thing really keeping him from either shooting himself in the head or constantly walking around half-possessed, because Lestrade was the one who politely reminded him that Sherlock was gone and would help him walk his way back to being John Watson instead of the remaining half of an Underlord. It was Lestrade who would check in on him, would invite him out for drinks or dinner or just a quiet night away from the flat. It was Lestrade who kept him sane, and John was many things, but ungrateful was never one of them.
They’d gone out for drinks, John and Lestrade, and when Donovan had stopped by the two had started talking shop. It was only natural, considering they were up against a hell of a case (which was why Lestrade had called John in the first place - nobody was quite as good at handling crime-related trauma as John Watson was), and Sherlock’s shade had perked up, intrigue drifting into John’s mind, and John had let go. John had let the shade take over and take the back seat in his own body -
And come back to himself with a slap to the face from a shocked-looking Donovan, Lestrade still holding John’s shoulders like he’d been shaking him.
“John?” Lestrade asked, looking into his eyes intently.
“Yes?” John asked, frowning. “What, was he really that irritating this time?”
“What do you mean, this time?” Donovan hissed out, looking around the very quiet bar. “You’re regularly possessed by a dead man?”
“It’s not like I mind,” John protested. “And this is the first time he hasn’t just snapped away when someone needs to talk to me; he’s usually surprisingly well behaved, for Sherlock.”
Lestrade’s hands clamped down hard enough to bruise, hard enough that John winced at the pressure against his scar. “I’m not going to pretend I understand what happened to you two, but he’s dead. I know he’s in your head, but he’s gone, John.”
John sighed. “I know that.” Mostly.
“You need to stop letting his ghost possess you, alright?” Lestrade asked, treating him like a very slow witness to some horrific crime. “It’s not healthy.”
“It’s just wrong,” Donovan contributed, giving John that close-lipped smile she always wore when there was something particularly fucked up going on.
John didn’t want to agree, didn’t want to admit they might have a point, but he nodded. “Alright. He was just excited, is all.”
“No he wasn’t, because he’s dead, John,” Donovan said. They all said it, over and over again. Sherlock is dead. Sherlock isn’t coming back. Sherlock’s shade inside his head was just that, and John might have been going insane, yes, but that didn’t mean it changed the facts.
“I’m sorry I upset you both,” John said, leaning back in his chair and trying to breathe.
Lestrade finally let go of him, looking awkward and a bit confused. “I know you miss him, and I miss him too, but you need to let the dead stay dead.”
He nodded as was appropriate, and apologized, and left not long after it would be socially acceptable. John would never be able to explain the shade to Lestrade, and he didn’t want to try.
---
Lestrade’s hands are pressed tightly around the wheel when he arrives, his old car a familiar enough sight that John simply opens the door hops into the passenger side seat. “I’m not hallucinating,” John says.
“I know you believe that,” Lestrade replies, pulling back onto the road. “Hallucination or not, do me a favor and take it easy for the rest of the day. That shade in your head might be playing tricks on you again.”
John sighs. “I don’t see how that’s likely, considering I’ve never hallucinated Sherlock until now, when I’m about as stable as I’ll probably ever manage to be.” He looks over at Lestrade’s white-knuckled grip as they turn a corner. “It’s not just my mind, Greg. It couldn’t be.”
Lestrade doesn’t reply, not really. He takes a deep breath and says, “Lunch and a nap would help, I think.”
John glares at him, wants to snap out that you’re my friend, not my father, but he keeps his mouth shut as they drift through the traffic of London, Baker Street and the police radio buzzing through the car the only things John can concentrate on other than Sherlock. He knows Lestrade was hurt by Sherlock’s…disappearance, and that he actually cared (cares?) about the other man, so John can’t understand why Lestrade refuses to even consider that John might be right.
Then again, all the insane raving a few years ago probably destroyed any credibility John might have on the subject.
“You might as well come in for some lunch,” John says as Lestrade pulls up smoothly in front of 221. “I’ll make you a sandwich, and I know Mrs. Hudson has some of that disgusting bread you like.”
“Potato bread is not disgusting,” Lestrade replies, just like every other time, but shakes his head. “And I’m still on duty. The Adair murder’s still an active case.”
“And it would still be active if you were eating a sandwich,” John points out.
Lestrade can barely repress the smile. “Get out of my car, John. And take care of yourself. Rest, alright?”
“See you around,” John says, accommodating the request he get out of the vehicle and easily ignoring the rest. “Keep me updated on the case though, will you?”
“I’ll consider it,” Lestrade says before driving off, and John can take him at his word - it’s the same tone of voice he gets while working through a problem, and lord knows John’s become one of those recently.
John can’t help but wonder if this will be the rest of his life, right here - Lestrade picking him up from yet another breakdown, and then leaving John to have another when he has to face the more normal ghosts of 221B. Maybe he should leave the Adair case alone - hell, leave every case alone. He knows he saw Sherlock, he knows he did, knows he felt and heard and chased after him, but at the same time he was just as certain that Sherlock was alive and well when they’d had to lock him up.
He sighs, shrugging his jacket off and hooking it on the back of the door, staring at the empty rung where he still expects to see a long wool coat, waiting for action.
“God,” John breathes out, and rests his forehead against the empty space. Sherlock’s shade stirs, and John ignores it. “I really am hallucinating this, aren’t I.”
And that’s when the bullet shoots into his back, travelling straight through his heart, and probably the door as well.
What fantastic aim, John finds himself thinking as he falls to the floor, Sherlock’s shade screaming in his head.
---
He’s been shot before, of course. This is the third time he’s felt a bullet rip through his body, and the third time it should have killed him.
The first time, he’d felt completely alone, no matter how many people were around him. There had been hands grabbing his vest, the feel of coarse packed dirt beneath him as he was dragged away from the firefight, the sound of people dying, people who needed help more than him. He’d tried to shake the hands off, tried telling them he had a duty they were taking him from. Instead of listening, they’d thrown him into one of the trucks and gone off to get themselves blown up.
John had been alone, then, bleeding to death on crates of useless ammunition and clutching his pistol, for all the good it would do him. His eyes were heavy, and between one blink and the next, he was staring at a white tent roof, no bullet to be found but in the weakness of his body.
The first time he was shot, he woke up alone.
The second time, he was anything but alone. Even when the bullet slammed into his throat, he could feel Sherlock, in his mind and grabbing him as he choked on his own blood on his way to the cement floor. It was...comfortable, in a way. He’d have been fine dying like that, enveloped in comfort and Sherlock, but it was the sense of panic that made him decide it was a damned good thing he was unkillable.
The second time he was shot, he woke up wrapped in Sherlock, at peace.
The third time - this time - he’s alone in a way he wasn’t in Afghanistan, haunted and vulnerable in an empty apartment. The only change he makes to the entire place in the three years since Sherlock’s death is the spray of red on the door and the pool of blood he makes when he falls to the floor.
The third time John is shot, he wakes up furious.
The hospital bed is almost comfortable, Lestrade is seated next to the bed with his arms crossed and is almost glaring at the very much alive and uncomfortable-looking Sherlock Holmes, who is standing in the corner of the room. Sherlock’s hands are shoved deep into a black jacket’s pockets, and he looks exactly the same as when John was chasing him down only a few hours ago.
Well, he thinks it was a few hours ago. Dying messes up his perception of time.
“John,” Sherlock says the moment John’s eyes open. From the way he says it, John’s tempted to think Sherlock is the one who just got shot - he sounds shocked. “Are you alright?”
“We’re meant to be dead,” John says, or tries to at least. His mind is still hazy and his mouth seems wholly uncooperative with the shouting he wants to do. He’s fairly sure the ‘meant’ and ‘dead’ come through at least, since Greg’s face becomes stormy and what was only a halfhearted glare of disapproval becomes a stern glare of you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself.
Sherlock is prodding at their link, too, albeit gently. John has a feeling that’s because he can feel the fury coming through on John’s end. “Well. I’m alive, so you are too.”
John’s fairly certain he’s only wanted to punch someone more than this moment twice. Considering the circumstances of the past two, it’s only the weakness and the fact he’s attached to an IV that keep him from crawling over there and punching Sherlock in the highest organ he can reach. The heart monitor is beeping fast enough that Greg looks worried and a nurse actually comes in to check his vitals.
“What happened? He was doing fine just a moment ago,” the nurse snaps, checking John’s pupils.
“His dead boyfriend decided to visit,” Greg says.
“Husband,” Sherlock corrects. “And I’m obviously alive.”
“Not for long,” John mutters. Naturally, nobody but the nurse hears.
“Well, stop agitating him,” the nurse says, pointing an accusatory finger at Sherlock. “I can’t kick the police out, but I can remove you, so watch it.”
John likes this nurse.
.
now with worldbuilding notes, since you guys seem to like that.