Work Text:
Sherlock Holmes woke all at once, going from blackness to full awareness with such shocking speed that, for a moment, he did not move from his prone position on the floor. His eyes had opened as soon as he popped from the darkness of unconsciousness and he was scanning his surroundings, the feeling of alarm rising in him as he realized that they were completely unfamiliar.
He was laying flat on his stomach on the floor, face turned to the left. His palms were on the floor next to his shoulders, almost as if he'd been bracing for impact, his elbows cocked up behind him. His hips were slightly twisted, one leg bent and the other out straight, which would make sense if he had fallen and tried to catch himself. Nothing hurt, though, so he couldn't have fallen.
And he had no idea where he was.
Slowly, he braced his palms against the polished wood tiling of the floor and pushed, rising to his knees to scan the room.
He was in the kitchen of a house, the counters cleared of everything except a closed breadbox and a kettle on the stovetop. It looked as though someone had recently cleaned the counter, in fact, it was so void of crumbs and dust. A quick sniff of the air brought him no odor beyond the scent of grass and a faint, rich sweetness that he couldn't quite place.
The chairs at the kitchen table were pushed in neatly and the dark wood of the table was unmarked and as clear as the counters with the exception of one thing: a large glass-and-wood hourglass, sturdy and dependable looking. Pale golden sand was trickling from the upper bulb into the lower, although the upper bulb was still almost completely filled. Sherlock stared at it for a moment, almost unable to look away. He felt compelled to lift the hourglass, but he was still trying to figure out where he was and the hourglass would not help him with that.
Still...
He reached out, brushing his fingers against the upper glass bulb of the hourglass. The sand stopped falling as soon as his fingertips brushed against the cool, shining glass and he jerked his hand back, startled. Instantly, the sand resumed its pattering into the lower bulb. It was bizarre and fascinating, but it would not help him understand where he was. Despite his strong desire to take the hourglass in hand, he turned away from it, scanning the empty kitchen again, hoping that he had missed some subtle clue. But, there was nothing else to see, unless he started opening drawers.
Impossibility number one: there was no way he could have gotten into this kitchen under his own power without remembering it.
Impossibility number two: the kitchen was brightly lit by the daylight shining through the windows and the open back door off to one side. It had been nighttime last he remembered, so he'd either been kept in a drugged sleep or he was asleep now and dreaming.
Sherlock rose slowly to his feet, glancing quickly down at himself: Belstaff coat over a dark suit and a white button-up shirt with the top two buttons undone. A quick touch at his hip pocket revealed both wallet and mobile were still in their accustomed spot. The only thing out of place was the red thread at the top buttonhole of his Belstaff: it was beginning to unravel, a tiny red tail poking out from his coat. He'd need to get that mended once he got back home, but for now it was an unimportant detail.
So, he had not been mugged and then dropped into a strange place. There were no sore spots on him, no points of pain where he might have had a needle slipped in to administer some drug to him, which made 'dreaming' a much more likely option.
He reached up and slapped himself across the face with force, the sting of it making him open his mouth and roll his jaw, trying to lessen the ache. However much his jaw now hurt, though, he was still in the day-bright kitchen. So, apparently not a dream.
He stepped to the back door, glancing out over the visible scenery: an open lawn of thick, lush grass dotted with a riot of colorful wildflowers, the droning hum of far-off insects, a smudge of lightness that could be stacked wooden boxes far beyond the corner of the house in which he stood, and a copse of trees in the distance that wrapped around the right side of the house and blocked the rest of his view. No cars, no visible road, no clues to his whereabouts.
"Have you finished taking in the scenery?" a familiar voice asked from behind him, and Sherlock spun, anger surging in him, taking in the tall, well-dressed man standing in the doorway that led out of the kitchen to the rest of the house.
"Mycroft." He spat the word, stepping away from the open back door to stand on the opposite side of the table from his older brother. "What am I doing here? I was in the middle of a case - the middle of the night - we were going into a drug den..." Sherlock stopped, eyes widening as he stared at his older brother. "John. Where is John?"
"You remember him," Mycroft said, sounding pleased. "That's good. You have a chance, then."
"Remember him? Of course, I remember him. What have you done with him, Mycroft? The last clear memory I have is opening the door to the abandoned house and John was next to me."
"Stop asking questions and look around you," Mycroft said, resting the tip of his umbrella on the wooden floor tiles between his feet and clasping both hands on the handle.
"I've already looked -"
"Look again," Mycroft urged, and Sherlock scanned the room again, eyes narrowing. It looked the same: blank, empty, utterly without clues except for the hourglass on the table. It had poured nearly half the sand from the top glass bulb into the bottom bulb now. In fact, the trickling sand was the only thing in the room besides Sherlock and Mycroft that was moving at all. Everything else was absolutely static and unchanging.
That was when Sherlock realized that Mycroft himself was not actually moving. He was standing absolutely, perfectly still, something no living person could manage. Everyone twitched or shifted their weight from time to time, blinked their eyes. Even if they were deeply asleep, the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed kept them from being still. But Mycroft was not moving at all, not even to breathe.
Sherlock frowned. "I'm dreaming. Was I knocked out on the case? Am I riding in the back of an emergency vehicle right now?"
"No, Sherlock. You are not asleep." Mycroft's voice was still pleasant. "You are not unconscious. You were not knocked out on the case. When you opened the door to the abandoned house, you triggered a rather impressive homemade bomb that had been left there for a certain consulting detective and his retired-Army doctor partner. The main force of the explosion came out the front door when you opened it. You were caught in the blast. You are dead, Sherlock."
Sherlock wanted to deny it, but as Mycroft spoke, the memory was washing over him in a drowning wave of images, sounds, and scents. He could remember the mist of rain chilling his skin as he was reaching for the knob of the front door that led into the supposedly abandoned house; John pulling his gun from the back waistband of his jeans as Sherlock's fingers touched the cool metal of the knob, ready to protect Sherlock in case the man they were pursuing was actually inside the drug den, the shift causing the pleasant scent of John's rain-damp hair to waft across Sherlock. He could remember pulling the door open with the scent of John's hair in his nose and hearing the concussive blast as the bomb within went off. He could remember the horror of pain absolutely overwhelming his mind as he flew back from the door, his vision going black so swiftly that he did not feel when he landed. He was not imagining; he was remembering.
Sherlock leaned both palms against the dark wood top of the kitchen table, panting for breath as understanding shuddered through him. Dead. He was dead.
"Where's John?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
"He was caught in the blast, as well. This part is important, Sherlock; pay attention." Mycroft's voice had gone sharp and Sherlock looked up, despite the shock and horror overwhelming him. "John's body is as good as dead. His soul, however, is still tethered to it. You have time to get to him and save him, but not much." Mycroft paused, pulling a pocket watch free of a pocket of his grey pinstriped suit and glancing at it. "Not much time, though. You may ask whatever questions you have on your mind now."
"Questions?" Sherlock took a breath, staring hard at the man standing in the kitchen doorway. He looked and sounded exactly like Sherlock's older brother, but unless Mycroft's power extended far beyond the British government, there was no possible way that the man in the doorway was Mycroft Holmes. "Who are you? You aren't my brother."
"No, I'm not. This is the form your mind chose for me for this conversation. I am... I'm responsible for easing the journey of souls from their lives to their afterlives. You and John Watson are my assignments now, and it should have been easy; you should both have shown up here where I could explain everything and help you get settled. Instead, he is clinging to his failing body, and you must retrieve him."
"Me? Why am I meant to retrieve him? You're the one whose job it is to 'ease souls from their lives to their afterlives.'"
"It is your job because of who you are to him and who he is to you," Mycroft explained patiently, and Sherlock felt himself tense.
"He's my best friend -"
"Sherlock. You are dead. The time for prevarication is long past."
Sherlock's jaw tightened almost painfully and he glared at Mycroft for several long, silent moments. Finally, he whispered, "I am in love with him."
"Yes, and he is with you. It's a shame the two of you never acted on it in life; you had the very best chance of happiness together, something very few humans actually have." Mycroft tapped his umbrella on the wooden tiles thoughtfully. "Still, if you get there in time, there is still a chance for you both."
"I thought you said I was dead?" Sherlock asked, lifting his head as he focused on Mycroft.
"And will remain so. But you are very much alive here," Mycroft said, raising one arm to gesture around the kitchen and out towards the backyard. "Move on to your next question, Sherlock; time is running out."
"You said I have time to get to John; what am I meant to do?"
"Save his soul before it is lost. He is holding on to his body so fiercely that, unless you get to him before his body gives up completely, he will never separate from it. He will be doomed to an eternity as a shade, tethered to his earthly remains with no hope of moving on."
"A ghost?"
"If that is what you'd like to call it," Mycroft said agreeably. "Time, Sherlock. One last question."
"How do I get to John?"
"Everything you need is contained within this kitchen. In fact, you have already seen the pieces of his salvation. Think."
The kitchen was blank, though, Sherlock thought with frustration. There was nothing to give him any sort of clue... except the hourglass, the only thing in the entire kitchen besides himself that was moving. Even it would not be moving long, he noticed; the upper bulb was nearly emptied now. He reached forward and wrapped his hand around the glass and the golden sand immediately stopped falling. He lifted it from the table, noting how surprisingly weighty it was in his hand.
"Well done," Mycroft said, smiling faintly. "I can help you with the second part of this puzzle: you have a loose thread on your coat. Pull it free and wrap it around the narrow center of the hourglass. Leave a tail hanging off of it, though."
Sherlock's eyebrows drew down at the strange request, but he reached his free hand up to tease the thread free, tugging until it began to unravel from the buttonhole, loop after loop coming away from the heavy wool of the Belstaff. It came free with a nearly imperceptible pop and he lowered the hourglass to the tabletop to steady it so he could wrap the loose thread around it.
"Don't let go of the hourglass until the thread is wrapped," Mycroft warned. "The sand left in it is all that holds John Watson's body to life."
Sherlock paused in wrapping the thread to look up at Mycroft, murder on his face. "You couldn't have said something sooner? There's barely anything left!"
"You touched the glass. You saw the sand stop. You chose to step away from it to try and find clues in an utterly blank room. As in life, you had all the time in the world for John Watson, but chose to turn away."
Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, fighting off his rising anger directed at both Mycroft and himself. It was true; he had chosen to turn away from the hourglass, despite it's pull on him. But, he did not have time right now to be angry at either himself or Mycroft - or, whoever he actually was. Only John mattered now. Taking a steadying breath, he finished wrapping the thread except for a short dangling tail and looked up at Mycroft, waiting.
"Good. Now throw it out the back door."
"You said not to let it go -"
"Until you had the string wrapped. The string ties him to you and will slow the fall of sand as long as the two are connected. Throw the hourglass out the door."
Sherlock hesitated a moment and then turned, throwing the hourglass into the bright daylight beyond the door. It tumbled end over end and then suddenly slammed to a stop, seeming to catch against something in midair. There seemed to be a shimmer below it in the air, like a heat mirage on a road in the summer.
"That is your doorway to John Watson. You must convince him to come back before the sand runs out of the hourglass," Mycroft said, stepping silently up behind Sherlock. He pointed and Sherlock followed his gesture, squinting at the hourglass suspended against the bright blue of the cloudless sky. Sand was, indeed, falling again, but very slowly now. Only a few grains drifted from the upper bulb into the lower bulb each second, moving with the slowness of leaves falling in the autumn.
"How do I convince him?" Sherlock asked, turning to look back at Mycroft, but the man was gone. Sherlock was once more completely alone in the kitchen. He took a deep breath and stepped out the back door and down a few rough stone steps, his feet sinking into the heavy grass of the lawn. He moved purposefully towards the heat shimmer beneath the hourglass, watching as the sky and grass seemed to flutter and twist. The tail of the string wrapped around the thinnest center piece of the hourglass was fluttering faintly in the warm breeze that flipped playfully at the hem of is Belstaff. As he approached, he realized that the red thread was very slowly unwrapping itself from the hourglass, the tail growing longer as he watched. The sand in the glass falling, the red string around the glass unwinding... time was truly running out.
Sherlock took a deep breath and stepped into the shimmer.
He was in a hospital room. John was laying in the bed just in front of him, almost completely obscured by gauze, plasters, wires, and tubes. What little of John he could see made Sherlock suck in a sharp, painful breath. Mycroft had said John's body did not have much longer, and as Sherlock stared down at it now, he could see the truth of those words. The small bits of John that were not occluded by medical detritus were horribly bruised, burned, and so swollen that the familiar wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth were completely smoothed out by the puffed skin.
"Sherlock." The word was a whisper, full of longing. One of the monitors beeped loudly just as Sherlock looked up, noticing a beautifully whole and unbruised John leaning against the wall on the far side of the room. Sherlock glanced back down at John's body, comparing it to the whole John across the room, unable to believe that two Johns could exist in the same room, one looking so utterly destroyed and the other looking so completely perfect.
John had begun to push himself off the wall as he'd spoken, but he stopped, slumping back again as he stared at Sherlock looking fixedly down at his body. "Thought you heard me for a second. Stupid... but I'm trying to hold on. I'm trying to... trying to come back to you, Sherlock. I won't stop fighting."
"I did hear you," Sherlock said, stepping away from the broken John in the hospital bed to move around the foot of the bed. The unblemished John across the room shoved off the wall, his eyes going wide.
"Jesus, you heard me? No one can hear me - how did you...?" John stepped past his own body in the hospital bed, reaching out to grip Sherlock by his biceps, squeezing hard enough that Sherlock felt it through the heavy wool Belstaff. Sherlock stared down into John's familiar, lined, worn face and felt a swell of relief in his chest; they were both dead, but he was still here with John. His John.
"I'm dead, John. You're nearly dead. That's how I heard -"
"Stop. Stop, no, you aren't. You can't be..." John's voice faded, his face twisting in pain. He gripped Sherlock's arms through the coat harder, giving Sherlock a little shake. "You aren't dead. You're right here. I'm touching you, you idiot."
"Because you're nearly dead, too. John, what do you remember?"
"Not much. We were at the drug house... you were opening the door. Then I was here in hospital, except I wasn't in my body and... and I knew I had to hold on. I had to survive because I couldn't die. I still have... still have things I have to... to say..."
"There was an explosion." Sherlock brought his own hands up, resting them very lightly on John's waist against the softness of John's heavy oatmeal jumper. He could see the memory breaking across John's face, his expression going from confused to horrified. The grip on Sherlock's biceps tightened to the point of pain and John sagged slightly.
"I saw you... you were dead but I was trying to stop the bleeding anyway and then I was getting nauseated and couldn't focus and I realized I was bleeding, too..." John's voice was thin, weak, and absolutely sure of the memory. Sherlock rubbed his palms very lightly against the cable knit of the jumper where it pressed against John's waist.
"I died. You are dying. It's time to go, John. We can't stay here."
"Are you really Sherlock Holmes?" John asked, taking a step back and pulling his hands away, causing Sherlock's hands to fall from his waist.
"Of course, I am," Sherlock said, "although I can't blame you for being suspicious; I just had a conversation with someone who looked and spoke exactly like Mycroft, but wasn't actually him."
Speaking of the not-Mycroft reminded Sherlock of the hourglass and he turned, looking back to the opposite side of the hospital bed. There, against one wall, the hourglass was hovering above a shimmering disturbance that broke up the smooth line of the doorway that led into John's hospital room. There was almost no sand left in the upper bulb now and the red thread was almost completely unwound, the tail long and fluttering in an unfelt breeze.
"John, we have to go," Sherlock said urgently, stepping towards the shorter man. But John stepped back from him, his face suspicious and eyebrows drawn down as he stared hard at Sherlock. Sherlock could feel the first niggling of panic digging at him. He had to get John out of this room, but short of dragging him bodily away, Sherlock had no idea how to get John to move when he so clearly didn't want to.
"I don't know that you're actually Sherlock. I don't know anything except that that's my body and if there's any chance that I could recover, I'm not leaving it," John said, his voice harsh.
"John, you are dying. You will not be recovering from this." Sherlock gestured towards the still form on the bed, the gauze, plasters, tubes, wires, burns and bruises all underlining his point.
"But if I walk away from my body..." John trailed off, turning to look at his broken shell with sorrow on his face, stepping towards it as if drawn against his will.
"It is going to die whether you are standing next to it or not," Sherlock said, throwing another glance at the hourglass. No time. There was no time.
"If you're really Sherlock, tell me something that only he and I know," John demanded.
Sherlock's face went blank with panicked shock. What was he meant to say to that? Tell John about a case? Tell John about a conversation in 221B Baker Street that only they had been there for? Tell him something they both knew but hadn't voiced? Try it all. Try anything. He had no idea what would happen to him if he were still here when the hourglass ran out of sand, but he knew what would happen to John, and he couldn't let it.
"You encouraged Irene Adler to put on anything, even a napkin, when she first greeted us in the nude. I once told you that I preferred my doctors clean-shaven and you responded that it wasn't a sentence one heard every day." Sherlock threw his arms wide, stepping towards John slowly. "I am myself. I am William Sherlock Scott Holmes."
"Still not a girl's name," John murmured, staring at him doubtfully, and Sherlock gave a surprised laugh. John glanced away from him again, eyes drawn down to his body. Sherlock could see the struggle on John's face and he looked back to the hourglass. There was one loop of red thread left around the thin glass center. Time was up.
"John, please believe me: I am Sherlock Holmes. You are my best and only friend. I once told you that we had created a frankly ridiculous story of murder, mystery, and mayhem. I said then that you were moving on to a bigger adventure... but, John, this is the bigger adventure. And, if you do not come with me right now, we will not be able to experience this new adventure together."
John glanced up for a moment, but then his eyes were drawn inexorably back to his empty shell. He watched the rise and fall of his chest powered completely by the medical ventilator over his mouth and nose, his spirit seeming to breathe in time with his body.
"John, please. If you don't leave, then I won't leave. We'll stay here together, and while I'm not entirely sure what that entails, I get the impression that it is a horrible existence."
John was staring down at his body, refusing to look away from the broken shell. Desperately, Sherlock reached out, catching one of John's hands in his own and holding to it tightly. "John, there is only one thing I did not tell you while we were alive, but I think you always knew it: I love you. You, John Watson, are the one love of my life and, apparently, my afterlife."
John's eyes shot up to Sherlock's face, wide and surprised. "You...?"
"Love you. I regret that it took death for me to finally tell you, but now I have. Please, John, trust that my regard for you is as deep as yours is for me and come with me now."
Slowly, John's fingers tightened on Sherlock's and he stepped away from the hospital bed and closer to the taller man. Sherlock led him quickly around the hospital bed and towards the shimmer, tugging him through before John could say anything.
They stood on the brilliant green grass, a cottage ahead of them across the lawn. Behind him, Sherlock heard something heavy thump to the ground and he turned, keeping John's hand held in his own. The hourglass was resting in a patch red clover, the red string still in the air but fluttering down towards the ground, twisting on the warm breeze.
"Where are we?" John asked, twisting his head to take in the scenery. "It looks like Sussex. Are we in Sussex?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Sherlock said, turning to face John again. "But wherever we are, it can't possibly be bad if you're here."
John smiled slowly as he turned to look up at Sherlock, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. "You really do love me?"
"And have for a long time. I never said anything because I was... scared. What if I was wrong about your feelings? What if you rejected me? What if you didn't reject me and I ruined everything?"
"Idiot," John said, his voice soft and fond as he smiled up at Sherlock. "I've loved you since I agreed to die with you at the pool."
"I know," Sherlock said, bringing one hand up to cup against the side of John's face, amazed that he was allowed to do this now. He stroked his thumb lightly across John's lips, smiling when John pressed a soft kiss to the pad of his thumb.
"This is our afterlife, then?" John asked, still looking up into Sherlock's face.
"Is this okay?" Sherlock asked, suddenly worried.
"This is Heaven," John said, pressing up on his toes and leaning in to Sherlock until their chests pressed. Their lips met softly for the first time, the warmth of John's mouth against Sherlock's filling his entire being with a slowly pulsing heat from that one point of contact, and Sherlock had to agree: this was Heaven.