Work Text:
Six months was a rather long time, in retrospect. He’d held out six months and a week, just to annoy Mycroft with an inaccurate calculation of his estimated time of death. But a week was pushing it and he felt the strains it held on his mind, as he was waiting for nothing but inevitable death. He had even started missing the dull, boring slur of having absolutely nothing to do, back in the days in London.
London – ha.
There was one last task at hand. One last thing that needed doing. It would be like untying the rope and giving up on a shipwreck. That’s really all he was now, after all. And soon he’d be floating and drifting off to god knows where – “and after that?” “I don’t know.”
He could picture his John vividly, but it was hard to get the angle right and have him look back. Sherlock’s eyes opened as he gave up on trying to live a moment that had passed, now more than two and a half years back. It had been so simple. The kind of simple that was good and comforting, rather than insipid. He had never quite found the likes of it anywhere, but there, with John in 221b.
Mycroft didn’t believe in charity cases, not even in that of his little brother. His far away, very dead little brother. Yet he was torn between two evils and who was he really fooling when he had ever considered it a choice. It was not.
One quick look and it was clear Sherlock had never intended for this letter to be found. It had been an accidental uncovery. A pile of stacked papers, folded up sloppily and shoved away somewhere, hidden away, never intended to be read. Sherlock’s final theatrical exit, done in complete solitude. Alone. Oh, Sherlock… can’t break the habit, not even when no one is looking.
So, perhaps the letters hadn’t been so subtly badly hidden after all.
The next day Mycroft visited John and he handed him the pile of papers. A cruel act. “If you find the time,” he instructed, with an accompanying empty smile. “You might find them worth the read.”
And off he was.
John had been excited at first. No matter the oddity in which these letters had received him and the strange commentary Mycroft had given to them, he had ignorantly believed them to perhaps be Sherlock’s version of a postcard. They were far from it. Not a word about the weather.
Instead it sounded more like a man confessing his sins to a faceless priest through an unclear window. Only John could not make up his mind about which his role in this was… the sinner or the priest?
The reason I survived a bullet to the chest was not because it was well placed and not shot with the intention to kill me, or because Mary called the ambulance first. It wasn’t because they worked magic at the hospital, though I’m sure they tried their bests. It was because I was told – I told myself – realized, I suppose you call that – that you were in danger and I could not disappoint you.
He found himself shouting at the pieces of paper after his third read through, as if that would somehow get the words through to Sherlock. That idiot. That git.
When I say it is always you, John, I mean it in every sense I can possibly give those three, that was scratched through, four words.
His mind was swirling with Sherlock’s voice and he realized to his utter horror that there was nothing, nothing at all in all of those pages, that he hadn’t known. He’d known it all, but he had denied it all. And that made him so very guilty of denying Sherlock.
I never intended to hurt you, I do hope you know this.
“Oh, you can’t just go from self-obsessed arrogant twat to selfless best friend and expect me to – to what?! – to choose you?!”
Anger was easier than sadness, but it was short-lived. The letters ended up on the table, last page turned up and John was staring at it from a while off.
I haven’t found the right words yet and you can be sure now I never will, so do not hold hope that I will ever be able to explain to you what you are, John Watson. To me, I mean. Because obviously you’re a human – man – forty two – you know all of this.
What I think I’m trying to say is that I wish you and your loved ones the best of luck and the greatest happiness and I hope your life may be long and good.
And I love you.
Your best friend, if you haven’t found another, though I’m sure they won’t be as much fun, though possibly less annoying.
Sherlock Holmes
“Oh God no…” John breathed. “Sherlock… timing!”