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“Baker Street? He isn’t there.” Mycroft deployed his basic bureaucrat voice, the one for deflecting petty irritations or concealing complexities from lesser minds. Significant now for its emphasis on indifference over smugness, considering this was something Sherlock apparently should have deduced long ago. Sherlock adjusted the lay of his jacket’s fine cloth against its buttons and disregarded the uptick of his heartbeat. “I suppose one might note that turnabout is fair play,” his brother murmured as he turned to lift a dark grey folder from the sideboard in his dungeon-cum-office. He paused, as if balancing the weight of something far heavier than a few sheets of paper, and offered it up to Sherlock. “But then fairness is hardly a factor in anything we do.”
Sherlock’s generic Mycroft-scowl deepened but curiosity won out, and he accepted the folder, flipping it open one-handed. The top page slid off 90 degrees, and he caught it with his other hand, the image in the upper right corner causing both fists to clench and crinkle the pages. John, angry and exhausted, hair uncharacteristically unkempt, and dressed in some sort of simple uniform. At first glance his attire could be confused with surgical scrubs but on second, identified as institutional wear of the sort found in prisons and…the sheet’s header confirmed, closed-ward mental-health facilities. Not the style typically worn by the staff. Below, an array of diagnosed pathologies: Depression, alcohol-induced psychosis, PTSD, suicidal ideation; followed by notes on relevant details and similarities to previous assessments. Current status: Actively suicidal, with three attempts confirmed in the previous year, two of those while in hospital.
“It would appear that the interlude as your companion merely deferred the inevitable for John Watson. In the period immediately prior to his present hospitalization, he accumulated an impressive series of escalating petty criminal charges stemming from excessive drinking and lack of suitable — well I say suitable — outlet for his anger management issues. It seems I gave you less credit than you deserved, as you apparently provided that outlet, suitable or not. I had no idea that creating sufficient chaos in the home to spark outbursts of aggressive vocalization multiple times a day had actual therapeutic value. You might consider a career change should dithering over crime scenes ever lose its appeal.”
Sherlock continued to study the folder’s contents, flipping back to the earliest pages at Mycroft’s reference to the “present” hospital stay and ignoring his brother except for extending a arm at the mention of John’s criminal activity. He didn’t acknowledge Mycroft’s ensuing silence or shift his focus from the file he perused. His outstretched hand remained steady, waiting. When the interval had exceeded a full minute, Mycroft’s shoulders twitched, and he reached across his desk to pass over a second folder, which Sherlock laid on top of the first to continue his study. The police record began roughly four months after the events on Bart’s roof and listed an unfamiliar address as John’s residence. He stuck out his hand again as he continued to scan and rescan the evidence before him, flipping back and forth between the two folders to reconstruct a chronological order of events.
Mycroft sighed audibly then and slid a third folder across the desktop but did not immediately pick it up. “The past is past, brother. There is no strategic value in examining these data.” Sherlock snapped his outstretched fingers, and Mycroft responded with the obligatory eye-roll before giving the last folder to his brother. It was thicker than the others, and Sherlock adjusted his grip as he examined the photographs and surveillance data, the pace of his review slowing as he progressed through the set. He inhaled sharply once before reaching the end, but other than the unremitting movement of his eyes, his expression remained impassive.
“Evidence of sentiment will tell you only that sentiment existed,” Mycroft continued. “A fact of which you were well aware and indeed exploited to the full extent of your ability, to remarkable success, I will add. John Watson performed his duties admirably, the more so for never having been informed of his task. Which predictability was, if you recall, a key element of our plan. Once you departed, more and less dearly, I kept you informed of the status of each benchmark and goal necessary for a successful resolution.” Sherlock slowly and deliberately aligned the pages in each collection before closing the folders in succession and holding the stack with both hands as if he were to present it — but to whom? — his mouth pressed in a tight line. “Your presence here now is surely sufficient and adequate confirmation of that success.”
Mycroft squared his shoulders and levelled his chin. “As is his. That was your stipulation, was it not? The continued survival of John Watson.” He pulled the folders from Sherlock’s unresisting hands and returned to sit at his desk, his expression only somewhat less pompous than the portrait of the Queen above him. “Mission accomplished.”
* * *
John paced the diagonal of his room with jerky, uneven strides, banging his hip against the metal bed frame at each pass. Its edges were rounded, of course, but the blood-thinning effects of one medication or other would at least allow him the achievement of bruises. The vivid turbulence of anger would succumb to dullness soon enough, dragged under by the brute force of pharmacology. Which brought its own respite from the grind of perpetuity, at least. For now, though, he would seize the fury and ride it as far into his next bloody psychiatric evaluation as it would bloody take him.
He hated answering questions and couldn’t fucking remember what they were asking about anyway because he had been in whatever it’s called when you drink enough. Blackout. That’s what it’s called? Can’t remember shit. Fucking meds. He had nothing to say about all the times he drank to oblivion — that was the fucking point, wasn’t it? — and there were plenty of those times long before the one that ended in hospitalization and counted as the first attempt in his official medical record. He snorted; if that’s what passes for suicidal behaviour, he’d been dancing with his own demise since he was fourteen.
Nothing much to remember, anyway; his intent was never more elaborate than drinking as much as he could. Suicide by ineptitude is what Sherlock would have called it, scoffing at such lesser mortals. Weak minds unable to take responsibility and do it right. Unimaginative, idiotic, unworthy of consideration. Lacking the courage of their convictions. And if anything brought John Watson to rage, it was being called a coward when he knew damn well the accusation was true. So he drank and started fights and broke whatever he could get his hands on, and if he didn’t end up sleeping it off in a jail cell, he continued to drink and fight until his body stopped responding.
In hospital, there were medications to hoard and medical staff to manipulate. Once through detox and committed for six months thanks to a shamefaced, vindictive, and temporarily sober Harry (who hadn’t been to visit after week three), he had nothing to do but dig the hole deeper. His sessions with mental health professionals proved surprisingly helpful to identify all the reasons it made sense to take responsibility and push himself through this long slide to oblivion as quickly as possible. A few of the more seasoned patients shared their experiences and wisdom, which he now knew to acknowledge with respect. Reminded him of some of the blokes he knew in Afghanistan. Everything reminded him of Afghanistan, now. Again.
And then he considered Sherlock, and the dust motes of evidence he’d painstakingly collected: on Lestrade’s face after pint number five, when he could be coerced into sharing an early Sherlock tale or two; in Mycroft’s icy determination to control every stray variable in his brother’s path; behind Donovan’s bitter grim commitment to comeuppance; between the lines of exasperation and worry around Mrs. Hudson’s eyes. If Sherlock had wanted out, he would have succeeded. John’s chest convulsed in a sharp bark of laughter, and his heart clenched, lurching him forward to curl around it. What Would Sherlock Do, indeed. He didn’t have roof access here, but there were other options. Any competent prospective suicide would discern at least seven viable methods from the resources you have at your disposal, John. He’d do it for Sherlock.
He tried to do it for Sherlock. And of course, as it was the story of his life, he failed, again. He’d failed at being the dutiful son, the supportive brother, the successful doctor, the valorous soldier. Whether John drank with his father or tried to make him stop, he was a disappointment for being too small, too educated, too independent, too different. He’d failed at overcoming battle stress and gunshots despite every other member of his unit getting out alive and whole. Hell, they were all still there, doing the work they’d chosen and doing it well. All right, maybe not James, but if John had been there, that wouldn’t have happened either. It would have been John leading those kids, and the failure landing where it belonged.
He’d done all right as dogsbody and remedial companion to a genius who needed an audience. Until that genius needed something more, which he of course failed to provide. And now here he was, still, except a hundred miles further back from where he’d been, and means for a quick escape. After two attempts, he had to accept he just wasn’t smart enough to beat the system from the inside. If he couldn’t die in here, then he’d have to fake it until they let him out so he could do it right on his own. Like he was going to. Before.
But then the brief window of adrenaline-induced clarity faded along with the tiny bruise from the needle the nurse had jammed into his arm, and he sank into the black depression that followed. Two weeks after being revived on the floor of the “closed for repairs” staff loo, John was pretty sure he was dead enough for nothing at all to matter ever again.
* * *
Sherlock left Mycroft’s lair without speaking another word. Before those folders disrupted his plans, he’d been itching to get back to it all, his city, his work, himself: Free at last from the pertinacious, suffocating bindings of Moriarty’s monstrous web and the equally constrictive interference of Mycroft’s backseat driving. He wanted to slip into his coat like he was putting on his own skin again and stride forward decisively, answering to no one and acting only on his own clear, precise determination of what to do next. And obviously, obviously, John would be at his side. He picked up his pace. When had John become a key element in his own self-image? How had it come to pass that Sherlock Holmes, alone, was rendered incomplete? Was this somehow Mycroft’s doing? No, no. Mycroft would never have recognized the conundrum that was John Watson as anything other than distraction. He himself had appreciated the value of John’s contradictions from the first, and yet he had still overlooked this. John was….He shook head and the last feeble filaments of self-delusion dissolved into the evening mist.
Night had fallen, and lights glimmered on wet asphalt and slick vehicles. London offered itself up to him; the city buzzed and glistened with the energy and undercurrents that had animated his soul since his first visit as a child. He flicked his fingers irritably as he strode the pavement, as if trying to clear them of treacle. When he had to stop for the traffic light he considered his hands a moment, palms up, and brushed them together repeatedly, then flexed his fingers in and out of fists. The light changed, and he moved ahead of the straggling pedestrians around him, but half a block later he slowed his pace, resigned, and stepped sideways into the lee of an arched entrance to an alleyway.
He could sense the sticky residue of cobwebs dangling just beyond his peripheral vision; lank, dusty strands lingering behind every thought.
Two weeks.
John’s last attempt — or, more accurately, perhaps, and above all things he must not relinquish accuracy — John’s most recent attempt was just two weeks ago. At that time Sherlock’s own survival in Serbia had not been entirely guaranteed, although his intent had been rather the opposite of his captors’.
How narrowly averted was the reality in which Mycroft had a fourth and final folder on John? Two weeks. What had John’s intent been?
What was it now?
Had some part of John wanted to be stopped? What if he hadn’t been stopped? What if he had been successful?
Mission accomplished.
It came to him then, that other scenario, a fourth folder. The existence of John’s death certificate would instantly extinguish all feeling beneath the thin shell of proud, redeemed, disdainful consulting detective — the only one in the world — that had only just begin to coalesce around him again. He couldn’t read the document or grasp its conclusion; his comprehension simply sank into a viscous, matte black bog of sentiment. Deletion was the only logical recourse.
The indignity of Mycroft witnessing this belated termination of caring would serve to bolster and reinforce the barrier protecting him, but it would remain brittle, weak. A post-John-Watson Sherlock Holmes could not simply revert to his pre-John self, although it would be simple enough to present such a persona to the Lestrades of the world. He’d done as much during his deferred-John experience of the last 700-odd days. He’d been planning to process and excise all of the suppressed emotional…muck over the course of the first month of glorious reinstatement at Baker Street, delving into the deep storage of his mind palace, secure in the knowledge that John would have his back. It had been impossible to handle such things while he was dealing with Moriarty’s treacherous legacy and sundry deadly weapons launched in his direction. He couldn’t risk that level of vulnerability, couldn’t let down his guard inside or out, not until he was home and safe.
Home and safe. Concepts that meant nothing without John, he only now understood. Idiot.
The weight of that realization dropped all at once on his shoulders, and the one not-quite mended knee threatened to buckle before he pressed his back harder against the stonework. And immediately shifted forward away from the resulting sting and bite of the unhealed relics hidden underneath. No relief for the wicked, not now. He would have to continue on, ever moving as he had been before John dropped into his path and redirected his course. It wasn’t the best long term plan, but then it didn’t have to be. He hadn’t bothered to plan for the future for most of his adult life, after all, and he was now returned to his solitary ways, without the bother of considering or consideration from anyone else. Alone is what I have.
No, John had said. No.
The pain surged through him then, shocking him out of that waking nightmare. He blinked rapidly, accessing his recollection of those last few minutes with Mycroft. No final folder. That hadn’t happened. He straightened his spine and stepped away from the grimy alley wall, irritably brushing off the back of his coat. John was not dead. And Sherlock would make sure he stayed that way.
* * *
Ella observed her former patient, dismayed by the unhealthy combination of fluid retention over pallid gaunt features and worse yet, the utter absence of resistance in his dull eyes. She’d been prepared to meet silent sullen John Watson, or possibly even spitting-mad passive-aggressive John Watson. She flipped through the records she’d been given by the attending psychiatrist to review his medications, glancing up at John repeatedly, expecting to see his distrustful glare. Instead, she noticed the occasional tremor in limbs, the slack muscles of his face, and the full three seconds it took for him to blink and register her presence when she finally spoke his name.
“Hello, John. How are you doing? It’s been a while.”
His brow creased slightly, and he slowly closed and opened his eyes again. She wasn’t sure he knew who she was.
“John, do you recall the last time we met?”
“It wasn’t…?” He turned his head to the side slowly, a half-negative. “It wasn’t….You weren’t here. Before. It was. After.”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Afghanistan.” He lifted his chin, sudden anxiety almost animating his face for a moment. “This isn’t. Afghanistan. You…” The grey sky visible through the clear panes at the very top of the high window in the consultation room caught his gaze. “People think….It doesn’t rain there. But. It does rain. In Afghanistan. Not like here….But it does…” His voice trailed off.
“Where is ‘here,’ John? Where did we meet?” His face shifted slowly down from the window towards her but continued past without making eye contact. He seemed to be looking at the floor behind her.
“A box. A room with a door. Places to sit. More like a tomb than a coffin.” An affectless cough. “I’ve been dead. Like that.” His forehead drew down and his eyes began to tear up. “I can’t get it right—I’m doing it all wrong. He showed me how. And Afghanistan. But. I….It doesn’t….I don’t work…” His face fell slack again, tension eased, but she couldn’t say there was relief in his expression. He didn’t seem to notice the tears that had slipped past his lashes.
“John.” She pushed a bit more force into her voice, and he looked up, blinking. “It was raining the last time I saw you, do you remember?” He frowned slightly. “Do you remember what we talked about? Why you came to see me?” He pursed his lips. “Tell me what you remember, John.”
He looked down at his lap, mouth pressed flat once more, and then took a loud breath and scrubbed his face with his hands, the sudden movement over as quickly as it began, but his voice was stronger. “It was about. The nothing. The war, and coming back after. Broken and nothing. There was something at night. Not. Sleep. Not good.” He stopped and frowned again, perplexed. “That’s not now.” It was halfway between a statement and a question.
“No, that’s not now, you’re correct. That was almost four years ago. You came back from Afghanistan about four years ago. Has it been on your mind recently?”
He shrugged and pushed his fingers against his temple. “It’s all right here.” He swallowed. “Always.”
“We can certainly work on intrusive memories from Afghanistan again, if that’s a concern you have now. That was the focus of our sessions back when you first returned to London. But we met again more recently. About two years ago. Do you remember that? What happened two years ago, John?”
A flash of fury sharpened his gaze from absent stare to direct glare and then it was gone so quickly, if she hadn’t known him before she would have doubted what she saw. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in denial. “There’s.” He seemed to simultaneously resist speaking and fight that resistance. “It doesn’t matter. He.” Hard swallow. “Was there. We worked. I— It was better. But that’s.” Fists clenched and then released, his hands limp in his lap. “It’s gone. He’s— ” Chin dropped, head sagging. “Tired,” he muttered.
A line in the file jumped out at her, transcribed from an observation session following his first suicide attempt at the hospital; he’d been manic and agitated once the sedation wore off. I wish I’d never met him. If I hadn’t met him then, I would have been long gone by now.
“John. John. I need you to listen to me now. I have some news. Information you need to know. Do you trust me, John?”
That got his attention, and he looked up under raised eyebrows with incredulous skepticism. She had to repress the urge to smile with relief at the familiar expression. “Well. You’ve known me for some time now. Do you believe I would lie to you?” she clarified. He shrugged.
“I am not lying. I am not trying to trick you. All right?” Another, smaller shrug, as his focus slipped again. “John. I have to tell you that I had an unexpected encounter this week. A man came to see me at my office. I am here today to tell you what he told me. You might find it difficult to believe.” John’s face remained impassive, but he shifted his jaw from side to side.
“The man told me he was forced to fake his death to keep other people safe. It was a terrible deception. Necessary, he believes, but terrible nonetheless.” She could see his chest shudder and hear the shaking breath from his nose. “Do you understand what I’m telling you John? The man I saw, who told me this story. He was abroad for a long time but is home now that the danger to his friends is over.”
“No,” he forced through clenched teeth, curling his shoulders down towards his knees, his hands coming up to cup the back of his head.
“Breathe, John. Can you sit up? Give your lungs some room. This is difficult, I know, but you are doing well. Take a breath.” She waited and watched as he uncurled his spine and slowly drew breath, in and out, three times. He didn’t lift his head, but his eyes were open, staring at his feet. He shifted his left leg slightly.
“All right. Here we go. Keep breathing.”
“Breathing is boring,” he muttered through his teeth and leaned forward again, bracing his hands on his knees.
“Your friend, John. Sherlock.” A flinch. “Sherlock Holmes did not die two years ago. I met him in person, in my office, and believe this to be the truth.” John rocked back and forth in time with his breath, the movement smooth and controlled, so Ella continued. “He believed he had to pretend to be dead, to protect the people close to him. That threat has ended, and he has come back to London after a long time away.”
She paused, observing John’s steady rocking and the uneven flicker of his eyelashes just visible against the profile of his averted, tear-streaked face. “He really is alive, John, and he would very much like to see you again.”
* * *
Ella had suggested they meet in a neutral location and offered a meeting room in the office building that housed her regular practice. She would be available to mediate if needed but would not join them unless asked. Sherlock had arrived first and perched on one of the extra chairs set against the side wall instead of claiming one of the five seats around the small oval conference table. John hadn’t sat down at all, alternating between standing with fingers tapping the table top and walking back and forth along the wall opposite Sherlock’s position.
“You know what convinced me she hadn’t lost her mind too?” Sherlock winced at too. “She told me she’d asked if you could give her a token, some tangible evidence to prove this batty story was real. And you said you didn’t have anything like that. And she said she suggested maybe the hat. And then she jumped out of her chair and flailed her arms around, like — like you always did — and for a moment I thought she really had lost it, and then she heaved a great theatrical sigh, like you always did, because, she said, she couldn’t put your reaction to the hat into words.”
“But I did give—!”
John scowled, shaking his head. “—Yes, just like that, sit down, I know. Sit down! And then, she sat down and put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the key to Baker Street.” His exasperation slipped away, dragging down the corners of his mouth. He took a steadying breath. “My key, with the little pockmarks on the end bit from that time you splattered the acid bath over the kitchen table. I kept it for a long time, kept it in my pocket even after I moved out. Constantly rubbing my thumb over it til it got a bit raw.” He tightened his mouth and rubbed his forefinger over the end of his thumb. “And then one day I thought I needed a clean slate, needed to stop drinking, needed to move on. That lasted all of a week before… Anyway, I mailed it back to Mrs Hudson, and she left me a guilt trip on my voice mail a week later, why didn’t I come round anymore, all by herself, she misses her— Well. I suppose you got an earful of that, yourself.” Sherlock twitched half a nod, avoiding eye contact.
“So. Yeah. Ella gave me the key, my key, that had to come from Mrs. Hudson, and that had to mean somebody had to get it from her. Ella wouldn’t have thought of that. Mycroft wouldn’t have condescended. And nobody else would have bothered with any of it.”
There was a long pause. Sherlock shifted in his chair. “And that convinced you.”
“Isn’t that why you gave it to her?”
“Well.” His voice sounded small, rueful. John frowned. Sherlock was clearly capable — and willing — to sham anything. “I admit I was theorizing ahead of the facts. That is. Again.”
“Again?”
“That is, no, I didn’t know it would convince you because I hadn’t accepted Ella’s assessment that you would need convincing.” He glanced up quickly and away. “She has been wrong about you before.”
John pressed his palms against his thighs, rubbing his hands against the denim in short, jerky motions. “Then why did you bother contacting her at all, if you think she’s an idiot?”
“That’s— I— I don’t. You held a certain begrudging respect for her, and after… I’d bungled things rather more seriously than I had realized. And I knew,” eyes briefly met and averted again, “that it would be easier gaining access to you by engaging the byzantine bureaucracy of the so-called mental health establishment rather than my usual means.”
“Nicking someone’s ID and barging in, pretending to be a psychiatrist, you mean.” John sniffed, his scorn more evident.
“Yes, well, I thought perhaps acting plainly might prove more persuasive in countering the side-effects of my deception.”
“Side—!” John shoved back against the table, fists clenched and shaking at his sides, and marched the five steps it took to reach the furthest corner of the room from Sherlock. After a moment facing the wall, he turned slightly to stare out the barred window. Outside, a woman pushed a rolling cart with a sticky wheel that clattered against the cobbles of a narrow side street.
“I apologize.” Sherlock’s voice was low, and the words came deliberately, without the rapid-fire confidence John had braced for, with umbrage. “I did not mean to belittle the experiences of those I. Left…behind. While I was — I was so focused on….I couldn’t let myself think about you, what happened, be distracted. The thin scraps of truth I accepted as complete in Mycroft’s communiques… ‘Risk management, Sherlock.’” He waved air quotes while droning in imitation of his brother, then let his arms fall as if the marionette strings were cut.
“When I returned, it was shocking to me. The breadth and depth of what I had missed — that, that is, what I had not understood.” John’s shaking had stopped, and Sherlock followed his gaze out the window. “I keep finding more of it. My ignorance. The ramifications of theorizing without fact. My scorn was — is — self-directed, intended to denigrate my own failure to perceive, to predict the full extent of the consequences.” He paused, swallowed. “Once I began to identify the scope of the situation, how many details I hadn’t considered, I didn’t know how to proceed. I could hardly rely on my brother for guidance. Ella was a logical option.”
“And yet when Ella told you I’d need proof, you didn’t believe her.” John’s shoulders tensed despite the loud breath exhaled through his nose. “So why the key?”
“It wasn’t meant as proof.”
“What, then?!”
Sherlock looked down to his hands resting motionless on his thighs. His fingers pressed into the muscle briefly and released, over and over. He had to get this right.
“An invitation. No, that’s wrong; the key is yours; an invitation would be insulting, and a statement of fact, presumptuous. A suggestion?” He shook his head, still looking at his own hands. Thinking out loud. “No. A request. Ah….” He cleared his throat and looked up to speak to John’s rigid back. He cleared his throat again, but only managed to whisper. “A hope.”
John kept silent for a long while. His whole torso expanded and contracted with the force of his breathing, the pace gradually slowing and quieting. Sherlock matched him, breath for breath, until John turned around to face him and waited until Sherlock reluctantly met his somber gaze. He gulped another breath as John stared him down. A horn blared outside, and John looked up to the ceiling until it stopped.
“I’m an injured veteran with PTSD. I have, uh, problems with alcohol. And, yeah. Fake deaths.” He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and opened them again. “Sometimes I’m angry for days on end.” His voice was gruff.
Sherlock tilted his head, eyes darting over John’s features under furrowed brows. John shifted his stance, with squared shoulders and hands clasped behind his back, and let himself be observed. He could feel his pulse heavy and a bit fast, but not speeding up, and he knew Sherlock noticed that too when his gaze slid past his neck and back to meet John’s eyes. John cocked an eyebrow, no deductions? Sherlock kept his mouth closed, pressing his lips a bit in reply to the unasked question. Holding his breath? John took another breath of his own and carefully let it out.
“Sometimes I’m angry for days,” he repeated, stronger, and took two steps toward Sherlock. “Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”
Sherlock’s lips parted, eyes blinking rapidly. He mouthed poten— silently and then snapped his mouth shut. He sat still for a long moment and then slowly rose to his feet, stepped forward, and assembled himself standing, finally mirroring John’s parade rest.
“And the best,” Sherlock breathed. “The very best.”
“I guess we’ll see,” John said, and stuck out his hand.