Work Text:
Remembering the Fall
The storm has been raging on for weeks, both inside and outside the flat. The two men sit by the fire, pointedly avoiding each other’s gaze. It has been three years since the blood was washed from the pavement, three years since John Watson’s world had tipped and teetered, like a precious vase at the edge of a table, always a hair’s breadth away from disaster. Now that Sherlock is back, John should feel safe, stable, but he doesn’t even trust the ground he walks on.
John remembers the fall. Sees it every time he closes his eyelids, and his stomach drops with it. He tries to forget the pain he felt when half of his heart was wrenched from him and smashed to the ground. But however hard he tries, he still wakes with a jolt in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. Gasping for life.
Sherlock spends his days tiptoeing around the flat. The silence lies thick and heavy over 221B Baker Street, like a duvet in the summer. He tries not to disturb John’s half-life, tries to ignore the muffled screams and sobs that come from his room at night, because Sherlock doesn’t know how to comfort him. Sometimes he makes it halfway up the stairs before cowardice overcomes him and he creeps away, hating himself.
Sherlock remembers the fall. Hears the pain in John’s voice on the other end of that phone call. Knows that John never doubted him, and loves him all the more. Sherlock knows that he didn’t deserve John, always took him for granted, and maybe that’s why he’s trying so hard now. He asks Mrs Hudson to teach him how to make coffee, and sets out a mug on the kitchen counter every morning for John. He tidies away all his experiments involving body parts and illegal chemicals and moves them to St. Bart’s. Sometimes he even does the shopping; though he still finds it extraordinarily dull he amuses himself in the supermarket by deducing everything he can about his fellow shoppers and muttering their life story just loud enough for them to hear. This frequently leads to heated arguments, and he misses having John around to intervene before he gets thrown out of the store.
He feels ashamed when he returns home empty-handed and sees the disappointed look on John’s face. Sherlock has failed him once again, and hates himself for it. But somewhere deep in his heart he knows – desperately hopes – that John somehow still cares for him; otherwise why has he not left?
John never considers moving out of 221B. It is home now, everything is familiar here. The bullet holes in the wall, the skull on the mantelpiece. He talked to that skull when Sherlock was dead. He remembers what Sherlock said when he first came to the flat: ‘Old friend of mine. Well, I say friend…’ That’s how John feels now. He cared for Sherlock, thought he felt the same way. But Sherlock left him. He saved him, and then abandoned him.
John doesn’t feel the tears streaming down his face. It is only when he draws in a shuddering breath that Sherlock looks up from the fire and sees the sorrow etched into John’s expression.
“John –”
“Three years” John interrupts. “You selfish bastard.”
Sherlock is silent, this is the first time John has spoken to him since he returned a month ago. He knows John has been waiting a long time to say this, so he leans forward in his chair to listen.
“You were dead. Dead, Sherlock. You told me you were a fake and then you jumped. You died and you left me here. I sat in this flat for three years knowing that I couldn’t join you, because I had to stay strong for everyone you left behind. For two weeks reporters would crowd around the front door waiting for an exclusive, constantly calling me up to ask for a statement. Because everybody believed you were a fake. Believes you are a fake. Why else would you jump? They gave up after that, lost interest. You were just a passing story, another nutter committing suicide. Everybody’s forgotten about you now.” John’s voice has risen to a shout, but he doesn’t notice, too caught up in his rage at Sherlock sitting there so calmly. “But what about me? I couldn’t forget. There were reminders everywhere. In the flat; in every place in London there had been a crime scene; in everyone we’ve ever known: Mrs Hudson, Molly, Mike, Lestrade, Mycroft.” He trails off and stares into the fire, unable to finish.
Mycroft, who had visited John every week for three years after Sherlock died. Checking up on him, making sure he was eating, encouraging him to leave the flat once in a while. He had even paid his rent and bills, since the surgery fired him after he hadn’t returned to work after the allowed two weeks of compassionate leave. Every visit John would tell him he didn’t need looking after, but Mycroft never listened and came back every week without fail. John understood why he kept coming back. To stop him doing anything stupid before Sherlock had tracked down Moriaty’s associates and returned to the land of the living. Obviously Mycroft had been in on the whole ruse. How else would Sherlock have been able to disappear for so long?
He feels the hot prick of tears in his eyes again but doesn’t attempt to hold them back. He wants Sherlock to know how much he hurt him.
“You rescued me Sherlock. Since Afghanistan I sat in that tiny bedsit, waking every morning from a nightmare about the war, seeing my friends die and not being able to save them. Using a walking stick. Staring at my laptop for hours on end with nothing to write. A gun in my desk drawer. Too much of a coward to use it.”
John’s face is full of sorrow, and Sherlock’s heart aches for him. He knows what he did was for the best, and it was to protect John.
“You saved me Sherlock. You gave me my life back, and when you jumped you stole it all again.”
Suddenly the stress and emotion of the last few weeks is too much for John and he slumps in his chair, eyes closed.
Sherlock rises from his seat by the fire, and crouches in front of John. He takes John’s hand in both of his and looks into his friend’s face.
“I had to protect you. There was no other way. I would never have put you through all this if there had been.”
John feels the heat from Sherlock warming his cold hands, and the pounding in his chest has the force of a thousand heartbeats.
“John, I will never leave you again.”
John lifts his chin to look directly into Sherlock’s eyes and sees the sincerity of his words.
For the first time in three years, John Watson feels safe.