Chapter Text
Sherlock and John had been moving toward each other for months. With each case, each narrow escape, each adrenaline-fueled final deduction, the two men closed the distance, a distance that had been negligible from the start.
And it was fine. Both were aware of what was happening, and neither felt inclined to change course. Distances closed. That's what they did. Distances over toast in the morning, in the taxi in the afternoon, on the couch in the evening. Distances hunched over files, working in the lab, grabbing a coffee. Hands touched, thighs grazed, glances lingered. It was all fine.
As the distance closed, Sherlock softened. He certainly didn't become stroppy, or sentimental, but he softened in ways that must have seemed monumental to those who knew him well. A 'thank you' here, an 'I'm sorry' there, small words with untold significance. He slowly allowed himself the tiny luxuries of involvement, of trust, of need.
Sherlock softened, and John healed. A shared meal here, a private joke there, a request for help now and then, and John could feel the loneliness seep out of him, could feel his sorrow lighten. The intangible losses of life-before-Sherlock melted away, and were replaced with purpose.
Both men laughed more, smiled more.
If people around them talked, it was not with malice. They could count their true friends on one shared hand, and if those friends chided, or teased, or insinuated, it was all right. John protested less, and Sherlock tittered less. Where one went, the other followed. Indeed, to see one without the other seemed a bit not right.
Still, there were times. Times when Sherlock bent a rule too far, or left too big a mess, or was a bit too not good. Times when John's patience ran too thin, or his expectations were too high, or his disappointment reached too deep. Even these times, though, added to the layers of the strength of who they were becoming together. Crises forged understanding, understanding paved connection, connection closed the distance.
They may have gone on this way indefinitely, inching toward each other one brushed fingertip at a time, sipping out of the same tea cup, steadying each other's footsteps in slippery alleys, if something had not happened. If Sherlock had not died.
As soon as John had stepped out of the taxi and followed Sherlock's instruction to look up at the rooftop, he knew. He couldn't comprehend it, but he knew. He couldn't fathom it, but he knew. As the words formed in his mouth, he saw Sherlock toss the phone down behind him, saw him spread his arms like wings, saw the great Belstaff flood out behind him, saw the impossible. The words, but I love you, never made it past the terror lodged in his throat.
The first few months were intolerable, and then, when they were over, he couldn't remember them. He felt, rather than remembered, the thick fog of grief, the heavy waves of it breaking over him again and again, but he could not remember the specific details of those months. He imagined that people came and went, that they talked to him, that he talked back. He was sure he must have worked, and showered, and slept, and possibly even eaten, but he had no real proof. His existence was hinged on regret, and loss, and emptiness.
The months crept by, grey and dull and sodden with the burden of living. Then those months turned into a year, and on the anniversary, when it all became that much too much, when he began to envy the ledge of the rooftop for its lonely, hideous secret, he made a plan. A plan to leave it behind him, and seek peace behind the veil.
The first letter arrived three days later, smudged, grimy, and crumpled, but neatly sandwiched in a clean, richly textured envelope. There was no stamp, no postmark, no seal.
John,
Stay. I will explain.
SH
Twelve months had passed. Twelve interminable months. He knew he should be thrilled with this knowledge that Sherlock lived, should have been bolstered by it, but his grief slid seamlessly to rage, and then he had just one more thing to resent. John sat with that scrap of a letter for a very long time, through darkness and dawn, and then he ripped it into shreds and burned it in the fireplace, watching the ashes of it rise up the blackened chimney, releasing the Phoenix.
The second letter came seventeen days later.
John,
You were in danger. He would have taken you from me, would have killed you.
Please.
SH
Again, John burned the letter, inhaling the smoke and tasting only bitterness at the dead man's words. The selfishness of it. Better that John live without Sherlock than Sherlock without John? Was that it? Now they were both effectively dead. This void was worse than the one that followed Afghanistan, this one made that one feel like a dance, a song.
The third letter arrived thirty-nine days after the first.
John,
You hate me right now. You may never forgive me. It was a chance I had to take, so that you could live.
Stay,
SH
John burned that letter in the kitchen sink, stuffed into a cloudy test tube that had held god knows what the last time it was used. The ashes weren't cool yet when John snapped open his mobile phone and punched in the numbers for Mycroft. Mycroft didn't answer, didn't return his call, but the next morning there was one short text:
Trust him. MH
John decided to write his own letter, and he knew that in the same way Sherlock's unstamped, unsealed, unforgivable letters had come to him through Mycroft, that his own might find its way back through the same twisted channel.
Sherlock:
One year, not one word. Stay dead.
JW
He took a taxi to the Diogenes Club and walked in unannounced, past the room of unspeaking, ancient men sipping tea, past the ante-chamber where Anthea sat molesting her phone, and through the heavy wooden doors that held the desk and person of the office of the British government. He tossed his scrawled, sealed response onto Mycroft's desk, and left, closing the doors soundly on the words, “John, you must know I can't...”
That night he sat in the flat that he had shared with Sherlock, in his chair, and he drank. He drank until he could barely see, the Glenfiddich numbing his tongue and his pain, burning holes in his gut and his grief, slowly prying the lid off of his secrets, secrets he did not remember having. His belly burned with it all, and he knew that if something did not change, and soon, he would be the only one to blame for his own eventual demise.
Sherlock was gone. Sherlock had left, and John was dead inside, and what did it matter if Sherlock ever came back? They would never overcome this. John would never understand the lack of trust, the betrayal. He had been a fool to have been so … happy. God, he thought, he had been so foolishly, naively, happy. And it had all been a lie. It was time to move on. If he had ever expected closure he had not expected it to come like this, with the knowledge that Sherlock lived, and that it no longer mattered.