Fic: Dissolution (3/3)
The end!
After a month, he gets a call one evening from D.I. Lestrade. “Look, I know this is a bit weird, but - we’re going for a beer, and you ought to join us.”
“Who’s us?” John says, feeling wary. Is Sherlock back from his travels? He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the police since his last time out with Sherlock. He never did find out what Sherlock told them.
“The usual crew. Not Sherlock, god, he’s still in France or something, isn’t he? Anyway, just come out. We’ve been talking, and it would be good to see you.”
John hesitates only for a moment. He has no better offers and nothing else on. There’s supposed to be a match on tonight, anyway; he might as well watch it at a pub. “All right,” he agrees, and thirty minutes later he’s at a table with the whole crew. Donovan’s there, chatting up some new bloke on the squad, and there’s also the two interchangeable guys who always blocked the scenes off early. No sign of Anderson. Lestrade’s across from John and he tilts his head in greeting. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and John almost thinks he’s telling the truth.
John signals the waitress and orders a pint. “I have to tell you right off, if you’re here to find Sherlock, I’ve got no idea where he is.”
“Oh, I know that,” Lestrade says. “And good on you for it.”
“That woman was off,” Donovan says, catching John by surprise. “Lori or whatever? Never did like her.”
“You never did like me, either,” John says, and she grins.
“A little, I did.” She clinks her pint against his. “Anyway, cheers, doctor. Looks like you found a life after all.”
It’s so inaccurate that it sets John’s teeth on edge. What he has now isn’t a life - it’s still the broken pieces of what had felt like a life. He’s got work sometimes, at least, but his life is nothing like it used to be. He looks at his hands until Donovan turns back to her new friend.
“I thought,” says Lestrade, sliding a slim black notebook across the table, “that you might be bored.”
John looks down at the thing. It’s not a notebook after all - it’s some kind of information packet. A brochure, perhaps, but a thick one. “What’s this?”
“You read medicine at uni, right? Not quite what we’re looking for, but it’s close. There’s an opening for a forensics man. Terrible hours, not great pay, lots of time mucking about in the country cleaning up old bones.” Lestrade meets his eyes. “You’d be good at it.”
“Me? I’m not a detective,” John says. “I’m not a scientist.”
“No, but you’re level-headed and quick, and you don’t flinch at the sight of blood. Beyond that, I don’t think your live patients can provide quite the challenge that these can.” He smiles. “Think about it.”
“I can’t - “ John sighs. When Sherlock comes back, it will be a problem. He can’t sit there and watch him and not care. Really, though, it’s a little tempting. He’s begun to think things are getting better because, although he still misses Sherlock every day, he sometimes misses the action more.
But when he thinks about this -- about the training it would take, about the regular hours, the regular pay, the regular colleagues -- his mind resists. There is a small, regrettable voice in the back of his head telling him that taking such a regular job would only get in the way, once Sherlock is back, once they are together again.
“I’ll think about it,” he finally says, and Lestrade smiles again.
“While you’re thinking about it,” he says, “you should show your face sometimes. We’re always here on Thursdays.”
“All right,” John agrees. It’s something else to do.
***
After six weeks, he gets a postcard. It’s stamped from Switzerland and has a sketched picture of the Alps on the back. It’s in Sherlock’s scratchy handwriting.
You’re not now and never have been in need of a head examination.
Very sincerely yours,
SH
The address is correct to the letter. John throws it in the bin by the desk, then picks it out that night before he goes to bed. He locks it into the metal case where he keeps his gun; he tries not to think about either of them.
***
At five thirty one morning soon after, there is sharp knock on his door. It’s a Friday; John is feeling a bit muzzy from a meet-up at the pub the night before. He’s still giving Lestrade’s offer some thought, but tomorrow he's filling in for a man at the nearest surgery. He doesn't have time for this.
He pulls himself out of bed and over to the door when there’s a second knock. It’s not a great building, and the women two doors down have drunken boyfriends who are often lost.
The man on the other side of the door isn’t a drunken boyfriend, though. It’s Mycroft. He’s well dressed and sharp eyed and he looks entirely too tall standing in the narrow hallway under flickering blue lights.
“This is a bit more dreadful than I’d expected,” Mycroft says, after John has invited him in out of stunned surprised courtesy.
“Yes, thanks,” John says. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s why I’m here that’s dreadful,” Mycroft says. He straightens his tie. “John, my brother has been lost.”
“Lost?”
“He is believed to be dead,” Mycroft says.
John laughs. Mycroft has said the phrase with such disdain that there’s really no other natural reaction to it all. Then he looks at Mycroft’s face and sees it doesn’t match his words, that his mouth is pulled into a horrible twist and his eyes are nearly shut. The man’s skin is pale, his hair is damp. He looks undone - or what undone would look like on someone as buttoned-up as Mycroft.
“Believed - but what -“
“Fell over the Reichenbach Falls,” Mycroft says. “With Professor Moriarty. He, by the way, is dead. I’ve seen the body.”
Mycroft says seen the way others say killed or crushed or obliterated. John grabs the back of the nearest kitchen chair. He swallows hard. Sherlock - dead? “Do you - you said ‘believed.’ Do you really think he is?”
Mycroft hesitates for a moment, then says, “I do. I believe I do.” His voice is lower and softer than John has ever heard it. “It’s been inevitable,” he says after a moment. “I always knew - and I told him -“
“Bollocks what you told him,” John mutters. “You’ve been there? You’ve seen where this happened?”
Mycroft nods. He raises his hand, and it takes John a moment to figure out what he means - he’s pointing to the reading chair, and John waves him into it. He doesn’t collapse, exactly, but something bends in Mycroft that John wasn’t even sure could flex. “Reichenbach Falls,” he says. “Dreadful place. The climb took me the better part of two hours. It’s very gray, very high up. Rocky. Terrible. No idea what he was thinking, going all the way up there.”
“And he - what, fell?”
“He was followed, of course. He must have known - he did know, he’d left for the continent to avoid the man, I took him to the airport myself - but, he’d been traveling. He stayed overnight at a small hotel, woke the next morning and made the hike with a companion.”
John swallows and finally sits down himself. “Lauren?”
“What? No, no,” Mycroft says. “That was over long before he left. No, a gentleman of my acquaintance whose charge was to oversee his safety.”
“A bodyguard?”
Mycroft hazards a thin smile. “Quite. Ineffective as such, but it’s a proper name. They made it to the top of the hill, and then Sherlock turned him back. He’d forgotten to post a letter.”
It’s then that John feels the full weight of it all: the postcard. He stands and crosses to the closet, draws down the box with his gun, and takes the card out. He reads it again, then hands it to Mycroft.
“Ah, yes,” he says. “I imagine that’s it. So he did know. Of course." He clears his throat and studies the head of his cane. “He was followed by Professor Moriarty himself. I assume you’ve read about the arrests?”
John hasn’t. He hasn’t seen the paper yet that morning, and he doesn’t buy the Sunday Times anymore. “Ah. Forty-five separate criminals were arrested last week. All of this was the work of my brother. It had been his intention that Moriarty would have been among those arrested, I believe, but he escaped. It’s not surprising. He was rather a brilliant match for Sherlock.”
The rest of the story is mundane. A struggle. A fall. Moriarty’s battered, bloated body washed up within a day; Sherlock’s hadn’t, but his coat and scarf were found in the water; his cigarette case and gloves were found at the top. “He’s left the dispensation of his property to me,” Mycroft says, finally rising. “I rather think it won’t surprise you to learn he’s left nearly everything to you.”
“To me,” John says. It is surprising. “What - ah, what does that even entail?”
“Very little of value,” Mycroft says. “But perhaps you might venture to Baker Street in the near future and find what you think you might desire to have.” He looks at his hands for a moment. “There will be a memorial service,” he says. “Our mother has insisted. I’ll send you the details when they are arranged.”
John nods. He reaches out and clasps Mycroft’s hand, and as he does, he wonders if Sherlock had already foreseen this end when they’d last spoken. “I can’t believe it,” John says.
Mycroft nods. “And yet it is true.” He leaves, and John is suddenly, shockingly, very very alone.
***
There’s nothing left to take from Baker Street. Mycroft failed to mention that the whole place was set on fire the night before Sherlock’s death, and what’s left is simply soggy, ashy bits of books, the couch, the few things that Sherlock still had in his room. There are beakers broken and melted into the old kitchen table. John draws his fingers over the surface anyway. They had breakfast here. He made tea there. They argued over shopping. They once stood with the refrigerator door open and kissed for ten solid minutes, and at the end, Sherlock said, “I think we should visit someplace cold soon, don’t you?” and they both laughed.
The stairs are nearly impassable; John finds his way through the treacherous broken boards and into Sherlock’s room. It is destroyed. The bed looks as though someone poured kerosene on it, it is so thoroughly burnt. Sherlock’s armoire has suffered a similar fate, though inside, John finds a few pieces of clothing still more or less intact. He takes a single shirt, charcoal gray, and crumples it to his face. The tears he expects don’t come. It doesn’t smell like Sherlock, but instead like smoke and fire and gas. He lets it fall to the floor. He won’t mourn like this.
He mourns, instead, in a pub. He’s had to call Lestrade himself - Mycroft apparently has deigned only to notify John - and the detective is surprisingly emotional. They meet for scotch just after lunch, and within two hours, they are drunk and have been joined by a dozen officers John barely knows. It is a quiet sort of mourning. Lestrade takes him through the most recent case, the arrests, the network, the relentless tracking. “You knew he was being followed, then?” John asks.
“We didn’t,” Lestrade says. “He did, though. He told me last time he was here.”
“He was here?”
Lestrade nods. “Early last week. Beat up a mugger. I thought it was just a mugger, you know, but - it must have been part of the whole thing.” He sighs and sips at a new glass. “I thought he was going to see you, actually.”
John shakes his head. “It’s been two months.” He tells him about the card, and Lestrade smirks.
“Cryptic bastard,” he says, voice full of regret and affection. “Can’t even say good-bye in the normal fashion, can he?”
But John thinks he had done, in the best way he could. He starts to wonder about everything, then; how long ago did Sherlock realize this was the only ending that was possible? When exactly had he decided it would be an even exchange to give his life to take Moriarty’s? Had he known before he’d left London? Had he known before - before he’d made John leave?
He decides that last is probably ridiculous and revisionist, and yet he can’t let it go. It isn’t impossible. This is - was - Sherlock bloody Holmes he’s thinking of. Nothing is really off the table.
Except, apparently, reconciliation.
***
Sherlock’s memorial service is held in a small, quiet church on the edge of a small, quiet village where John’s never been. He meets Sherlock’s mother for the first time when she walks up to him and wraps her thin arms around his shoulders and buries her face against him, sobs shaking them both. Mycroft pulls her away with his usual expression of distaste, but he does then keep an arm about her. John never has the chance to tell her how sorry he is.
Lauren does not come. John wonders whether she was invited. He sent word to the staff at Bart’s, though, and Molly is here. She must have known.
There are about a half dozen folks from the police, another half dozen that John recognizes as regular sources of Sherlock’s. There are a few relatives, all dressed in proper black and speaking a clipped, disdainful English that John recognizes almost immediately. He is dressed himself in a new black suit, black tie, and shined black shoes, none of which he can afford, and none of which he ever plans to wear again. This is it: one-time only. Widower’s weeds, he thinks, and takes a seat near the front of the church. He turns the program over in his hands and sees the small inscription that Mrs. Holmes will have put on Sherlock's headstone.
Ecce homo, ecce signum.
His Latin is a bit rusty, but he gets it by the middle of the service. Behold the man, behold the proof. John doesn’t love it. They aren’t burying Sherlock today, after all; Sherlock himself would be appalled that anyone thinks there’s sufficient proof of his death. Without a body, it’s hard to believe he’s really gone.
He doesn't believe it, and he decides that this is his right. He was the closest thing Sherlock Holmes ever had to a real partner, whether Sherlock wanted to believe it or not. Whatever happened between them, as John sits there and listens to dreadful music and a cold eulogy from a chaplain who clearly never met Sherlock, he knows they weren't done. Sherlock can't just be gone, because they weren't over; things between them hadn't concluded. He can't be dead. He wouldn't want to leave things this unsolved, this unexplained.
But he has. For the first month after the service, John expects him to pop up, to be just around the corner, to be leaning against the meter. He is not. He is not ever going to be. He tries to convince himself of this, but he is not successful. It's sick, he decides. He can't be unloyal even now, now that the man has gone and done the worst thing he could: hurt John and left him completely alone.
One day, when he is off from work and idly reading a translated version of Blick online, he realizes something must change. He gets his coat. He considers his gun. He leaves the flat and walks to the newsagents, where he buys a pack of gum and copy of The Daily Mail, and then he walks from there to Bart’s.
Molly is in the morgue. She looks surprised to see him, more surprised when he asks to speak with Lauren.
“She’s gone,” she says. “I thought you knew. Not long after - well. After he,” and she clears her throat. John’s eyes tear up sympathetically. “Anyway, she went back to Germany, I guess.”
John nods. He briefly imagines himself hiring a car, driving through the night, arriving on her doorstep. Molly tells him there’s no forwarding address. That wouldn't be a problem. There's always Mycroft.
Sick, he thinks, and he nods and wishes her good night.
“John, if there’s ever anything -“
He nods. “There won’t be, but thank you.”
***
John is not proud, looking back, of how the next year goes. It’s not that he slides into particularly poor behavior; it’s simply that he fades. The few things he’s been doing to get himself out of the house stop, almost completely and certainly abruptly. He doesn’t turn up for the pub night anymore; he doesn’t answer his phone when Harry calls. The only thing he still manages is a talk with Peg now and then. Her husband/ex/whatever is causing her trouble, now, too, and so they are able to talk about their woes in a handy tit-for-tat way that keeps the memory of Sherlock, and the pain, alive in John. He needs that, really, because otherwise he thinks it would be possible to just stop.
“Stop what?” Ella, who he’s started seeing again, says.
“Stop caring,” John says automatically.
“About Sherlock?”
John can’t imagine that ever being true, but he nods. Then he says, “Or about everything. About anything. This - this hurt, it’s all I’ve got left of him, now. It feels a little disloyal to let it just... dissolve.”
Ella is troubled enough by this to prescribe him something and suggest he think about perhaps going to stay with his sister or “someone who can help you, John, who can keep an eye out.”
John realizes he’s going to either have to find a life or start convincingly faking having one in order to keep Ella from shifting him into a psychiatric ward somewhere.
The latter, he decides, will be easiest.
***
So he does it. He tells Ella about Peg. He tells Peg about Ella. He tells Peg, also, about Sherlock, not just the bad stuff -- the vague references to "my ex" and "my old friend" are thrown out, and he starts using his name. He calls Harry again and lets her come over and babble about his terrible flat and his terrible luck, and later he tells Ella that it's working, he's really reconnecting with everyone.
She seems to believe it. John is secretly pleased that he's become so good at lying. He thinks Sherlock will be -- would be proud.
He goes on a date, then two, with a woman from Peg's sewing group. She's very nice -- thin, pale, nervous -- and John knows he could sleep with her and feel almost nothing. Relief, maybe, but not much more than that. He doesn't do it, but god, he comes close.
He misses Sherlock that night. He sits on his bed and remembers the man's laugh, the man's hands, the man's ghostly eyes. He wonders, for the first time, if he should never have left him. They could have made it work, maybe. John could have stuck it out. The thing with Lauren wasn't real -- it wasn't what they had. Sherlock knew that, he'd had to. John would bet his life that she didn't get a postcard from Switzerland.
It doesn't comfort him, suddenly, to realize that he believes this, now: he was Sherlock Holmes's last thought.
***
On the one-year anniversary of Sherlock’s death, John stays in London. He considered not being there. He thought, perhaps, of buying a ticket to Switzerland. He thought of going to Rome. Instead, he gets up, has a quick coffee from a kiosk, works six hours for a doctor on vacation, and stops at the chemist’s on his way back to fill his anti-depressants. He doesn’t always take them, which he knows is a bad idea, but that night he takes two and sleeps fitfully. In the morning, he gets up and does most of it over again, and the next night, he makes a stir-fry for Peg and her oldest boy and they watch a BBC documentary about the war. The lad gets choked up and John tells him it's all right, it's fine. "You should have feelings about this," he says. "It's normal, though it hurts."
The boy seems to trust him. John is never sure why anyone would. Regardless, when he mentions the conversation to Ella, she seems cheered. "Maybe that's something for you," she says. "Maybe working with veterans."
"Maybe," John says, and that night he really thinks about it. He makes a list of pros and cons, and realizes again the only reason he's stuck with this temp work so long is that it leaves his time free for cases. Cases he doesn't have; cases he will never have again. It would make sense to do something more stable. It would, he thinks, but he can't.
But he can start to imagine a day when he might.
***
Four months later, on a Tuesday, John works late. He gets home after dark. He walks in, gets his mail, unlocks his door, and starts to sort through the various depressing bills before he’s even turned on the light. He flips it on and heads for the kitchen, desperate for a cuppa. He grabs the kettle, adds water, and then keeps going through the mail. At the bottom of the stack, there’s a postcard.
It has a picture of the Swiss Alps on the front. John swallows and steadies himself on the counter.
We talked of traveling, once. To see an exhibit. Do you remember?
It hits him like a wave, a cold ocean wave; he is shivering in his kitchen, holding the card. The kettle begins to whistle but it can’t be hot yet, it hasn’t even been a minute. He’s just standing there, holding the postcard. It is stamped from Switzerland. He is covered in cold sweat.
He doesn’t think about what he does next. He packs: pants, trousers, three shirts, a book. His passport. His gun. His shaving kit and toothbrush. An extra sweater. His phone, his computer, his charger. He puts the gun back after a long moment, then tucks the postcard into his front jacket pocket and runs out the door.
He takes a cab to the train station and gets a ticket on the Eurostar to Zurich. He wakes to the brutal Swiss landscape. He’s been here before and thought it beautiful, but now the entire country makes him cold and nervous. When they arrive in Zurich, he learns there will be a four-hour wait for the next train to Rome. He’s able to secure only a two-person cabin with no guarantee of privacy, but that’s fine. He takes a cup of tea and a sandwich in the cafeteria while he waits on his train. He sips his lukewarm, godawful tea and begins to wonder what in the world he’s doing here. Rome is gigantic; the world is gigantic. Sherlock, also, is dead. This could be a trap. Perhaps they never caught all of Moriarty’s men. John was foolish not to call anyone - but who would he call?
If this is it, he thinks, if there is nothing there, if it is a trap and this is the end, then let it be. Let me fall and fail chasing this hope, that he is still out there, that I won’t believe the proof until I’ve seen it myself.
In his cabin on the train, he is joined by an elderly gentleman who speaks only Italian. John is rubbish at languages other than his own; he proved that in Afghanistan, again and again, so he just nods at the man and tries to show he’s interested only in sleeping by turning his head to the window. It will be dark soon. They will travel the mountains after dark. John will be glad to get out of the country.
The train lurches forward. The old man’s book falls to the floor, and John bends to get it for him. When he hands it over, the old man doesn’t take it immediately, leaving John leaning close.
“You haven’t even said hello, John.”
John looks straight at the old man’s eyes. They briefly smooth, as do the lines around his mouth. There’s a fiery blue in his eyes that John hasn’t seen - that he has dreamt of for a year. Maybe longer.
“Hello,” he says, and Sherlock smiles.
“You came.”
“Yes, I - of course,” John says. “You died.”
“Of course,” Sherlock says. He takes off the wretched little cap, and with it comes the scraggly white hair. It takes only the quickest pulls to also remove the rubbery flesh that rounds out his cheeks, and then it’s just Sherlock across from him, smelling like glue and baby powder, wearing a shabby suit, and looking so very, clearly alive.
“Where have you been?”
“A bit of everywhere, and also nowhere. It’s a terribly boring story. I’d meant to travel for longer, but it does become a bit tricky to go anywhere on a dead man’s passport.”
John nods. “You - at the Falls. I was told you’d died.“
“I did rather think to,” Sherlock says, too matter-of-factly. “It seemed fitting. And he wouldn’t go without immense - encouragement.”
“But?”
“But, I survived. It took some work. Some time. But I did make it through.” He looks at John in a fully appraising look. “I see you’re about the same.”
John isn’t sure what he means. The same as he was when Sherlock left, or the same as Sherlock - fighting for survival, not always succeeding? It could be either or both.
“I have wanted to see this exhibit for a while,” Sherlock says, leaning back in his seat. “But I’ve thought that it wouldn’t be the same without you.” His eyes meet John’s. “Nothing is.”
“That’s what you’ve learned? From dying, from - from all of this?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says. He looks, just for a moment, confused, or frightened. Unsure.
“Good,” John says. “Never do any of it again.”
“I promise.”
***
Later, in their hotel in Rome, they lie in bed and John looks at Sherlock’s body, really looks at it. He’s thin and pale; he has new scars on his chest and back and a long, ugly incision mark on his thigh. From this, he’s sure Sherlock would be able to tell someone’s entire missing year as a story. John can’t tell anything much except Sherlock has been out in the world, hurt, possibly hungry, and alone. He traces the incision on his leg. “Broken,” Sherlock says. “Rather badly.”
John nods. He rests his head on Sherlock’s stomach, facing him. “Why did you do it?”
Sherlock touches his hair. “I didn’t think you’d want me back. I am, after all, rather horrible to you.”
“I didn’t want you back,” John says. He watches that register, watches Sherlock’s face twitch with the tiniest spark of hurt. “But I also did. Every day.”
“I will hurt you again,” Sherlock says. “Never - never like that. I will be faithful, John. God knows you’ve been more faithful than I’ve deserved.”
“Yes,” John says. “I’ll probably hurt you, too. But for Christ’s sake, let’s be alive to do it.” He catches Sherlock’s hand, makes it still. “I don’t want you running around without me. It’s not right.”
“That’s good,” Sherlock says. “Because I don’t want to do it alone, and you're the only person I've ever wanted at my side.”
It will be exhausting, John thinks. It will be hard. He won’t trust Sherlock for a long time - but he already does. Sherlock came back from the dead to be with him, and him alone.
It means something.
After a month, he gets a call one evening from D.I. Lestrade. “Look, I know this is a bit weird, but - we’re going for a beer, and you ought to join us.”
“Who’s us?” John says, feeling wary. Is Sherlock back from his travels? He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the police since his last time out with Sherlock. He never did find out what Sherlock told them.
“The usual crew. Not Sherlock, god, he’s still in France or something, isn’t he? Anyway, just come out. We’ve been talking, and it would be good to see you.”
John hesitates only for a moment. He has no better offers and nothing else on. There’s supposed to be a match on tonight, anyway; he might as well watch it at a pub. “All right,” he agrees, and thirty minutes later he’s at a table with the whole crew. Donovan’s there, chatting up some new bloke on the squad, and there’s also the two interchangeable guys who always blocked the scenes off early. No sign of Anderson. Lestrade’s across from John and he tilts his head in greeting. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and John almost thinks he’s telling the truth.
John signals the waitress and orders a pint. “I have to tell you right off, if you’re here to find Sherlock, I’ve got no idea where he is.”
“Oh, I know that,” Lestrade says. “And good on you for it.”
“That woman was off,” Donovan says, catching John by surprise. “Lori or whatever? Never did like her.”
“You never did like me, either,” John says, and she grins.
“A little, I did.” She clinks her pint against his. “Anyway, cheers, doctor. Looks like you found a life after all.”
It’s so inaccurate that it sets John’s teeth on edge. What he has now isn’t a life - it’s still the broken pieces of what had felt like a life. He’s got work sometimes, at least, but his life is nothing like it used to be. He looks at his hands until Donovan turns back to her new friend.
“I thought,” says Lestrade, sliding a slim black notebook across the table, “that you might be bored.”
John looks down at the thing. It’s not a notebook after all - it’s some kind of information packet. A brochure, perhaps, but a thick one. “What’s this?”
“You read medicine at uni, right? Not quite what we’re looking for, but it’s close. There’s an opening for a forensics man. Terrible hours, not great pay, lots of time mucking about in the country cleaning up old bones.” Lestrade meets his eyes. “You’d be good at it.”
“Me? I’m not a detective,” John says. “I’m not a scientist.”
“No, but you’re level-headed and quick, and you don’t flinch at the sight of blood. Beyond that, I don’t think your live patients can provide quite the challenge that these can.” He smiles. “Think about it.”
“I can’t - “ John sighs. When Sherlock comes back, it will be a problem. He can’t sit there and watch him and not care. Really, though, it’s a little tempting. He’s begun to think things are getting better because, although he still misses Sherlock every day, he sometimes misses the action more.
But when he thinks about this -- about the training it would take, about the regular hours, the regular pay, the regular colleagues -- his mind resists. There is a small, regrettable voice in the back of his head telling him that taking such a regular job would only get in the way, once Sherlock is back, once they are together again.
“I’ll think about it,” he finally says, and Lestrade smiles again.
“While you’re thinking about it,” he says, “you should show your face sometimes. We’re always here on Thursdays.”
“All right,” John agrees. It’s something else to do.
***
After six weeks, he gets a postcard. It’s stamped from Switzerland and has a sketched picture of the Alps on the back. It’s in Sherlock’s scratchy handwriting.
You’re not now and never have been in need of a head examination.
Very sincerely yours,
SH
The address is correct to the letter. John throws it in the bin by the desk, then picks it out that night before he goes to bed. He locks it into the metal case where he keeps his gun; he tries not to think about either of them.
***
At five thirty one morning soon after, there is sharp knock on his door. It’s a Friday; John is feeling a bit muzzy from a meet-up at the pub the night before. He’s still giving Lestrade’s offer some thought, but tomorrow he's filling in for a man at the nearest surgery. He doesn't have time for this.
He pulls himself out of bed and over to the door when there’s a second knock. It’s not a great building, and the women two doors down have drunken boyfriends who are often lost.
The man on the other side of the door isn’t a drunken boyfriend, though. It’s Mycroft. He’s well dressed and sharp eyed and he looks entirely too tall standing in the narrow hallway under flickering blue lights.
“This is a bit more dreadful than I’d expected,” Mycroft says, after John has invited him in out of stunned surprised courtesy.
“Yes, thanks,” John says. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s why I’m here that’s dreadful,” Mycroft says. He straightens his tie. “John, my brother has been lost.”
“Lost?”
“He is believed to be dead,” Mycroft says.
John laughs. Mycroft has said the phrase with such disdain that there’s really no other natural reaction to it all. Then he looks at Mycroft’s face and sees it doesn’t match his words, that his mouth is pulled into a horrible twist and his eyes are nearly shut. The man’s skin is pale, his hair is damp. He looks undone - or what undone would look like on someone as buttoned-up as Mycroft.
“Believed - but what -“
“Fell over the Reichenbach Falls,” Mycroft says. “With Professor Moriarty. He, by the way, is dead. I’ve seen the body.”
Mycroft says seen the way others say killed or crushed or obliterated. John grabs the back of the nearest kitchen chair. He swallows hard. Sherlock - dead? “Do you - you said ‘believed.’ Do you really think he is?”
Mycroft hesitates for a moment, then says, “I do. I believe I do.” His voice is lower and softer than John has ever heard it. “It’s been inevitable,” he says after a moment. “I always knew - and I told him -“
“Bollocks what you told him,” John mutters. “You’ve been there? You’ve seen where this happened?”
Mycroft nods. He raises his hand, and it takes John a moment to figure out what he means - he’s pointing to the reading chair, and John waves him into it. He doesn’t collapse, exactly, but something bends in Mycroft that John wasn’t even sure could flex. “Reichenbach Falls,” he says. “Dreadful place. The climb took me the better part of two hours. It’s very gray, very high up. Rocky. Terrible. No idea what he was thinking, going all the way up there.”
“And he - what, fell?”
“He was followed, of course. He must have known - he did know, he’d left for the continent to avoid the man, I took him to the airport myself - but, he’d been traveling. He stayed overnight at a small hotel, woke the next morning and made the hike with a companion.”
John swallows and finally sits down himself. “Lauren?”
“What? No, no,” Mycroft says. “That was over long before he left. No, a gentleman of my acquaintance whose charge was to oversee his safety.”
“A bodyguard?”
Mycroft hazards a thin smile. “Quite. Ineffective as such, but it’s a proper name. They made it to the top of the hill, and then Sherlock turned him back. He’d forgotten to post a letter.”
It’s then that John feels the full weight of it all: the postcard. He stands and crosses to the closet, draws down the box with his gun, and takes the card out. He reads it again, then hands it to Mycroft.
“Ah, yes,” he says. “I imagine that’s it. So he did know. Of course." He clears his throat and studies the head of his cane. “He was followed by Professor Moriarty himself. I assume you’ve read about the arrests?”
John hasn’t. He hasn’t seen the paper yet that morning, and he doesn’t buy the Sunday Times anymore. “Ah. Forty-five separate criminals were arrested last week. All of this was the work of my brother. It had been his intention that Moriarty would have been among those arrested, I believe, but he escaped. It’s not surprising. He was rather a brilliant match for Sherlock.”
The rest of the story is mundane. A struggle. A fall. Moriarty’s battered, bloated body washed up within a day; Sherlock’s hadn’t, but his coat and scarf were found in the water; his cigarette case and gloves were found at the top. “He’s left the dispensation of his property to me,” Mycroft says, finally rising. “I rather think it won’t surprise you to learn he’s left nearly everything to you.”
“To me,” John says. It is surprising. “What - ah, what does that even entail?”
“Very little of value,” Mycroft says. “But perhaps you might venture to Baker Street in the near future and find what you think you might desire to have.” He looks at his hands for a moment. “There will be a memorial service,” he says. “Our mother has insisted. I’ll send you the details when they are arranged.”
John nods. He reaches out and clasps Mycroft’s hand, and as he does, he wonders if Sherlock had already foreseen this end when they’d last spoken. “I can’t believe it,” John says.
Mycroft nods. “And yet it is true.” He leaves, and John is suddenly, shockingly, very very alone.
***
There’s nothing left to take from Baker Street. Mycroft failed to mention that the whole place was set on fire the night before Sherlock’s death, and what’s left is simply soggy, ashy bits of books, the couch, the few things that Sherlock still had in his room. There are beakers broken and melted into the old kitchen table. John draws his fingers over the surface anyway. They had breakfast here. He made tea there. They argued over shopping. They once stood with the refrigerator door open and kissed for ten solid minutes, and at the end, Sherlock said, “I think we should visit someplace cold soon, don’t you?” and they both laughed.
The stairs are nearly impassable; John finds his way through the treacherous broken boards and into Sherlock’s room. It is destroyed. The bed looks as though someone poured kerosene on it, it is so thoroughly burnt. Sherlock’s armoire has suffered a similar fate, though inside, John finds a few pieces of clothing still more or less intact. He takes a single shirt, charcoal gray, and crumples it to his face. The tears he expects don’t come. It doesn’t smell like Sherlock, but instead like smoke and fire and gas. He lets it fall to the floor. He won’t mourn like this.
He mourns, instead, in a pub. He’s had to call Lestrade himself - Mycroft apparently has deigned only to notify John - and the detective is surprisingly emotional. They meet for scotch just after lunch, and within two hours, they are drunk and have been joined by a dozen officers John barely knows. It is a quiet sort of mourning. Lestrade takes him through the most recent case, the arrests, the network, the relentless tracking. “You knew he was being followed, then?” John asks.
“We didn’t,” Lestrade says. “He did, though. He told me last time he was here.”
“He was here?”
Lestrade nods. “Early last week. Beat up a mugger. I thought it was just a mugger, you know, but - it must have been part of the whole thing.” He sighs and sips at a new glass. “I thought he was going to see you, actually.”
John shakes his head. “It’s been two months.” He tells him about the card, and Lestrade smirks.
“Cryptic bastard,” he says, voice full of regret and affection. “Can’t even say good-bye in the normal fashion, can he?”
But John thinks he had done, in the best way he could. He starts to wonder about everything, then; how long ago did Sherlock realize this was the only ending that was possible? When exactly had he decided it would be an even exchange to give his life to take Moriarty’s? Had he known before he’d left London? Had he known before - before he’d made John leave?
He decides that last is probably ridiculous and revisionist, and yet he can’t let it go. It isn’t impossible. This is - was - Sherlock bloody Holmes he’s thinking of. Nothing is really off the table.
Except, apparently, reconciliation.
***
Sherlock’s memorial service is held in a small, quiet church on the edge of a small, quiet village where John’s never been. He meets Sherlock’s mother for the first time when she walks up to him and wraps her thin arms around his shoulders and buries her face against him, sobs shaking them both. Mycroft pulls her away with his usual expression of distaste, but he does then keep an arm about her. John never has the chance to tell her how sorry he is.
Lauren does not come. John wonders whether she was invited. He sent word to the staff at Bart’s, though, and Molly is here. She must have known.
There are about a half dozen folks from the police, another half dozen that John recognizes as regular sources of Sherlock’s. There are a few relatives, all dressed in proper black and speaking a clipped, disdainful English that John recognizes almost immediately. He is dressed himself in a new black suit, black tie, and shined black shoes, none of which he can afford, and none of which he ever plans to wear again. This is it: one-time only. Widower’s weeds, he thinks, and takes a seat near the front of the church. He turns the program over in his hands and sees the small inscription that Mrs. Holmes will have put on Sherlock's headstone.
Ecce homo, ecce signum.
His Latin is a bit rusty, but he gets it by the middle of the service. Behold the man, behold the proof. John doesn’t love it. They aren’t burying Sherlock today, after all; Sherlock himself would be appalled that anyone thinks there’s sufficient proof of his death. Without a body, it’s hard to believe he’s really gone.
He doesn't believe it, and he decides that this is his right. He was the closest thing Sherlock Holmes ever had to a real partner, whether Sherlock wanted to believe it or not. Whatever happened between them, as John sits there and listens to dreadful music and a cold eulogy from a chaplain who clearly never met Sherlock, he knows they weren't done. Sherlock can't just be gone, because they weren't over; things between them hadn't concluded. He can't be dead. He wouldn't want to leave things this unsolved, this unexplained.
But he has. For the first month after the service, John expects him to pop up, to be just around the corner, to be leaning against the meter. He is not. He is not ever going to be. He tries to convince himself of this, but he is not successful. It's sick, he decides. He can't be unloyal even now, now that the man has gone and done the worst thing he could: hurt John and left him completely alone.
One day, when he is off from work and idly reading a translated version of Blick online, he realizes something must change. He gets his coat. He considers his gun. He leaves the flat and walks to the newsagents, where he buys a pack of gum and copy of The Daily Mail, and then he walks from there to Bart’s.
Molly is in the morgue. She looks surprised to see him, more surprised when he asks to speak with Lauren.
“She’s gone,” she says. “I thought you knew. Not long after - well. After he,” and she clears her throat. John’s eyes tear up sympathetically. “Anyway, she went back to Germany, I guess.”
John nods. He briefly imagines himself hiring a car, driving through the night, arriving on her doorstep. Molly tells him there’s no forwarding address. That wouldn't be a problem. There's always Mycroft.
Sick, he thinks, and he nods and wishes her good night.
“John, if there’s ever anything -“
He nods. “There won’t be, but thank you.”
***
John is not proud, looking back, of how the next year goes. It’s not that he slides into particularly poor behavior; it’s simply that he fades. The few things he’s been doing to get himself out of the house stop, almost completely and certainly abruptly. He doesn’t turn up for the pub night anymore; he doesn’t answer his phone when Harry calls. The only thing he still manages is a talk with Peg now and then. Her husband/ex/whatever is causing her trouble, now, too, and so they are able to talk about their woes in a handy tit-for-tat way that keeps the memory of Sherlock, and the pain, alive in John. He needs that, really, because otherwise he thinks it would be possible to just stop.
“Stop what?” Ella, who he’s started seeing again, says.
“Stop caring,” John says automatically.
“About Sherlock?”
John can’t imagine that ever being true, but he nods. Then he says, “Or about everything. About anything. This - this hurt, it’s all I’ve got left of him, now. It feels a little disloyal to let it just... dissolve.”
Ella is troubled enough by this to prescribe him something and suggest he think about perhaps going to stay with his sister or “someone who can help you, John, who can keep an eye out.”
John realizes he’s going to either have to find a life or start convincingly faking having one in order to keep Ella from shifting him into a psychiatric ward somewhere.
The latter, he decides, will be easiest.
***
So he does it. He tells Ella about Peg. He tells Peg about Ella. He tells Peg, also, about Sherlock, not just the bad stuff -- the vague references to "my ex" and "my old friend" are thrown out, and he starts using his name. He calls Harry again and lets her come over and babble about his terrible flat and his terrible luck, and later he tells Ella that it's working, he's really reconnecting with everyone.
She seems to believe it. John is secretly pleased that he's become so good at lying. He thinks Sherlock will be -- would be proud.
He goes on a date, then two, with a woman from Peg's sewing group. She's very nice -- thin, pale, nervous -- and John knows he could sleep with her and feel almost nothing. Relief, maybe, but not much more than that. He doesn't do it, but god, he comes close.
He misses Sherlock that night. He sits on his bed and remembers the man's laugh, the man's hands, the man's ghostly eyes. He wonders, for the first time, if he should never have left him. They could have made it work, maybe. John could have stuck it out. The thing with Lauren wasn't real -- it wasn't what they had. Sherlock knew that, he'd had to. John would bet his life that she didn't get a postcard from Switzerland.
It doesn't comfort him, suddenly, to realize that he believes this, now: he was Sherlock Holmes's last thought.
***
On the one-year anniversary of Sherlock’s death, John stays in London. He considered not being there. He thought, perhaps, of buying a ticket to Switzerland. He thought of going to Rome. Instead, he gets up, has a quick coffee from a kiosk, works six hours for a doctor on vacation, and stops at the chemist’s on his way back to fill his anti-depressants. He doesn’t always take them, which he knows is a bad idea, but that night he takes two and sleeps fitfully. In the morning, he gets up and does most of it over again, and the next night, he makes a stir-fry for Peg and her oldest boy and they watch a BBC documentary about the war. The lad gets choked up and John tells him it's all right, it's fine. "You should have feelings about this," he says. "It's normal, though it hurts."
The boy seems to trust him. John is never sure why anyone would. Regardless, when he mentions the conversation to Ella, she seems cheered. "Maybe that's something for you," she says. "Maybe working with veterans."
"Maybe," John says, and that night he really thinks about it. He makes a list of pros and cons, and realizes again the only reason he's stuck with this temp work so long is that it leaves his time free for cases. Cases he doesn't have; cases he will never have again. It would make sense to do something more stable. It would, he thinks, but he can't.
But he can start to imagine a day when he might.
***
Four months later, on a Tuesday, John works late. He gets home after dark. He walks in, gets his mail, unlocks his door, and starts to sort through the various depressing bills before he’s even turned on the light. He flips it on and heads for the kitchen, desperate for a cuppa. He grabs the kettle, adds water, and then keeps going through the mail. At the bottom of the stack, there’s a postcard.
It has a picture of the Swiss Alps on the front. John swallows and steadies himself on the counter.
We talked of traveling, once. To see an exhibit. Do you remember?
It hits him like a wave, a cold ocean wave; he is shivering in his kitchen, holding the card. The kettle begins to whistle but it can’t be hot yet, it hasn’t even been a minute. He’s just standing there, holding the postcard. It is stamped from Switzerland. He is covered in cold sweat.
He doesn’t think about what he does next. He packs: pants, trousers, three shirts, a book. His passport. His gun. His shaving kit and toothbrush. An extra sweater. His phone, his computer, his charger. He puts the gun back after a long moment, then tucks the postcard into his front jacket pocket and runs out the door.
He takes a cab to the train station and gets a ticket on the Eurostar to Zurich. He wakes to the brutal Swiss landscape. He’s been here before and thought it beautiful, but now the entire country makes him cold and nervous. When they arrive in Zurich, he learns there will be a four-hour wait for the next train to Rome. He’s able to secure only a two-person cabin with no guarantee of privacy, but that’s fine. He takes a cup of tea and a sandwich in the cafeteria while he waits on his train. He sips his lukewarm, godawful tea and begins to wonder what in the world he’s doing here. Rome is gigantic; the world is gigantic. Sherlock, also, is dead. This could be a trap. Perhaps they never caught all of Moriarty’s men. John was foolish not to call anyone - but who would he call?
If this is it, he thinks, if there is nothing there, if it is a trap and this is the end, then let it be. Let me fall and fail chasing this hope, that he is still out there, that I won’t believe the proof until I’ve seen it myself.
In his cabin on the train, he is joined by an elderly gentleman who speaks only Italian. John is rubbish at languages other than his own; he proved that in Afghanistan, again and again, so he just nods at the man and tries to show he’s interested only in sleeping by turning his head to the window. It will be dark soon. They will travel the mountains after dark. John will be glad to get out of the country.
The train lurches forward. The old man’s book falls to the floor, and John bends to get it for him. When he hands it over, the old man doesn’t take it immediately, leaving John leaning close.
“You haven’t even said hello, John.”
John looks straight at the old man’s eyes. They briefly smooth, as do the lines around his mouth. There’s a fiery blue in his eyes that John hasn’t seen - that he has dreamt of for a year. Maybe longer.
“Hello,” he says, and Sherlock smiles.
“You came.”
“Yes, I - of course,” John says. “You died.”
“Of course,” Sherlock says. He takes off the wretched little cap, and with it comes the scraggly white hair. It takes only the quickest pulls to also remove the rubbery flesh that rounds out his cheeks, and then it’s just Sherlock across from him, smelling like glue and baby powder, wearing a shabby suit, and looking so very, clearly alive.
“Where have you been?”
“A bit of everywhere, and also nowhere. It’s a terribly boring story. I’d meant to travel for longer, but it does become a bit tricky to go anywhere on a dead man’s passport.”
John nods. “You - at the Falls. I was told you’d died.“
“I did rather think to,” Sherlock says, too matter-of-factly. “It seemed fitting. And he wouldn’t go without immense - encouragement.”
“But?”
“But, I survived. It took some work. Some time. But I did make it through.” He looks at John in a fully appraising look. “I see you’re about the same.”
John isn’t sure what he means. The same as he was when Sherlock left, or the same as Sherlock - fighting for survival, not always succeeding? It could be either or both.
“I have wanted to see this exhibit for a while,” Sherlock says, leaning back in his seat. “But I’ve thought that it wouldn’t be the same without you.” His eyes meet John’s. “Nothing is.”
“That’s what you’ve learned? From dying, from - from all of this?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says. He looks, just for a moment, confused, or frightened. Unsure.
“Good,” John says. “Never do any of it again.”
“I promise.”
***
Later, in their hotel in Rome, they lie in bed and John looks at Sherlock’s body, really looks at it. He’s thin and pale; he has new scars on his chest and back and a long, ugly incision mark on his thigh. From this, he’s sure Sherlock would be able to tell someone’s entire missing year as a story. John can’t tell anything much except Sherlock has been out in the world, hurt, possibly hungry, and alone. He traces the incision on his leg. “Broken,” Sherlock says. “Rather badly.”
John nods. He rests his head on Sherlock’s stomach, facing him. “Why did you do it?”
Sherlock touches his hair. “I didn’t think you’d want me back. I am, after all, rather horrible to you.”
“I didn’t want you back,” John says. He watches that register, watches Sherlock’s face twitch with the tiniest spark of hurt. “But I also did. Every day.”
“I will hurt you again,” Sherlock says. “Never - never like that. I will be faithful, John. God knows you’ve been more faithful than I’ve deserved.”
“Yes,” John says. “I’ll probably hurt you, too. But for Christ’s sake, let’s be alive to do it.” He catches Sherlock’s hand, makes it still. “I don’t want you running around without me. It’s not right.”
“That’s good,” Sherlock says. “Because I don’t want to do it alone, and you're the only person I've ever wanted at my side.”
It will be exhausting, John thinks. It will be hard. He won’t trust Sherlock for a long time - but he already does. Sherlock came back from the dead to be with him, and him alone.
It means something.