Work Text:
Find yourself at my door,
Just like all those times before.
You wear your best apology.
But I was there to watch you leave.
+++
She's started up the stairs before she sees him. Her arms are wound carefully around two big paper bag of groceries - fresh vegetables and fruits spill over the tops, and the bags are stamped with the logo of the organic market around the corner.
Watson doesn't drop the groceries when she sees him sitting on the steps up to the building she's lived in for the past year - she doesn't scream, she doesn't burst into tears, she doesn't fly into a fit of anger. She would never be so uncontained as all that.
All he gets from Watson after three years away is a slow blink. Sherlock isn't sure if he's relieved, or if it’s the most terrible imagining of all his nightmares.
"I suppose you'd better come in, then."
He follows her up to her apartment.
+++
He sits at Watson's kitchen table and waits while she puts away groceries.
He doesn't offer to help.
He doesn't know the words.
If he opens his mouth, his organs will fall out.
Watson clears the groceries away with surgical precision. Meats and dairies go away first - she places her newest milk bottle and yogurt cups behind the older ones, and puts the new meat in the freezer. She cleans, peel and cuts all the fruit, putting each small mound into its own container, which are then precisely stacked in the fridge. She transfers the vegetables from the eco-friendly brown paper wrapping to Ziploc bags, and places those in the crisper.
Sherlock loathes every second of the process. Watson hates cooking, preferring meals comprised of cold ingredients and maybe use of the toaster. She supplements take out meals with home made salads - and if she's not having take-out, she prefers to eat vegetarian. She doesn't replace the milk until it was several days past empty, and she never sorts the groceries.
Someone has stolen his Watson. Sherlock rather suspects it was entirely his fault.
She sits down across from him, crossing her legs smoothly and clasping her hands together on the unblemished surface of the wooden table. Her gaze is even - she is cool, calm, collected, and entirely sure in meeting his eyes.
Sherlock doesn't feel even a fraction as composed.
"Tell me, Sherlock," she instructs quietly, and Sherlock is reminded of their first day at the precinct, being calmly ordered to turn over a sample for drug testing. Watson was just as uninvested in him then.
Still, Sherlock is helpless to do anything but obey. He tells her his story, about the explosion that buried him in the rubble of the factory. About Mycroft dragging him out with his bare hands, and the police misidentifying the body of Moriarty's minion as his at the hand of a friend in the morgue. About dismantling international criminal networks behind the mask of being a dead man, because no one would believe Sherlock Holmes was alive when Joan Watson was so-
"Alone," Watson breaks in, tone calm, not judging, just presenting facts. Sherlock dips his chin, out of words. They sit in silence for a while, as Sherlock gives Watson time to decide what she wants to yell at him for first. This is not unfamiliar to Sherlock - the longer Watson was quiet before she yelled, the more fantastic his mistake. He hoped this wouldn't be another instance where she was silent and vicious for days - the dressing down she'd given him on that occasion had nearly driven him to tears.
Far sooner than Sherlock expected, Joan sighed.
"Thank you for telling me what happened, Sherlock," is all she says.
And Sherlock feels flayed open.
'Thank you for telling me what happened'. She didn't thank him for telling her the truth - meaning she had never accepted the lie. All she had ever had was the unsolvable mystery of his death, and now she had the story of a brother and a friend in the morgue.
Of course, when Sherlock does manage to speak, he doesn’t make it any better.
"I must say, Watson, I had thought you would be... Angrier."
Watson cocks her head to the side, like she doesn't understand how he could think that.
"Its been three years, Sherlock. More that enough time to grieve the dissolution of our... Whatever we were to each other."
"Partners, Watson," Sherlock whispers, voice hoarse, "We were always partners."
Watson humms thoughtfully. "You know, I think its pretty obvious that we weren't. I also had a lot of time to think about the word 'partners', its etymology and connotations... And I'd say we were more... Colleagues. Wouldn't you agree?" Watson reaches for her purse, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter - she shakes one free, puts it between her lips and lights it, in a smooth, practiced motion.
Sherlock just shakes his head violently, viscerally rejecting the statement with every fibre of his cellular make up.
Watson smirks, a tiny bit, and for the first time since Sherlock has known her, she wears the arrogance of a surgeon like an armour, a second skin. She flicks cigarette ash onto the table. A thin curl of smoke snakes towards the window.
"Did you go back to surgery, then?" he croaks.
Joan shrugs. "I was only ever really good at one thing in my whole life, Sherlock."
"You were a brilliant detective, Watson."
She laughs, and it sounds like ice cracking under his feet.
They sit in silence for a long time, Watson still smirking, and Sherlock's heart breaking to itty bits. Her cigarette burns down slowly - she's only taken three draws from it, seemingly content to watch the whole thing crumple down to ash. She doesn't shake it free.
"I wanted to come back," Sherlock says. "Every day I was gone, all I wanted was to come back."
Joan stubs out the cigarette, leaving a scar on the table.
"No you didn't."
Sherlock doesn't have it in him to lie again.