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Through all of our struggles, through all of our fights and rows, through all of our hardships, of all the hurt we’ve thrown at each other, the silence was the worst.
I remember too vividly one occasion when I was walking home with a post-case adrenaline high a few weeks after the wedding. The London traffic was a cacophony in my ears, citizens were bustling out and in shops, talking blaringly, the trees were losing a fight against wind, unfamiliar footsteps tramping about the earth.
Yet there was still a silence I detested. One I had to start getting used to. There weren’t any sounds of his voice, of his laughs and giggles, of the distinct sound of his shoes against the pavement, of his jacket’s fabric brushing over my coat’s wool.
There was only a grotesque silence.
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Life before The Fall, as we now call it, was a life I thought I never had. I never thought the kind of excitement I needed could be found elsewhere than the army.
Unbeknownst to me, I had unknowingly been spoiling my teeth on reality’s sweet dreams, running around London with a genius of a madman, solving crimes, pints at the bars with Lestrade, quarrels with Sherlock, dinners with my flatmate and Mrs. Hudson, being kidnapped by the British government, my entire time spent with Sherlock was just a sweet dream to me back then, the period after I started living in baker street up until The Fall.
And then that dreadful day at my therapist’s, where I started again as if I had just returned an invalid from Afghanistan. If not worse. I was spitting blood when I spoke those dreaded words.
I grieved for him for two years. Even after I met Marry, I couldn’t shake away that he was part of me. As I learned later that, I too, was a part of him. A part of him that was gone.
I was left a broken man. Little did I know that the future held things I never imagined possible.
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I had done many great things, both right and wrong. I have done many things for you, my dear John, I am no devil. For a devil is the spirit of evil. I am no devil, neither am I a machine. It is not my mission to lie and neither had I killed Marry for I swore an oath to protect you and her. Life finds a way.
I know you are cognizant of this fact.
And come to think of it, you are no devil either.
Yes, I had bled under your hands. For I deserved it.
Yes, I had suffered under your sayings. It is rare that people’s sayings get to me, but hearing you calling me a machine, hearing you accuse me of things, hearing you say the words, they had cut deep John. As if I gave you a road map straight to my heart. But I do forgive you, as you forgave me for all the hurt that I have caused you.
Yes, you had killed a man.
But you are no more a devil as you are no more a saint.
For if you were, we wouldn’t be retiring in Sussex.
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I didn’t only hurt Sherlock, I had hurt myself hurting Sherlock. I had hit him hard. I remember the day the same way I remember killing my first enemy at war. My knuckles were red with blood, skin tearing and a slightly bluish bruise formed. That was nothing compared to what I did to his face. Bruises and blood splashed his face the same way they splashed my enemies, and I had hated myself. Hated myself for doing him the same as I did to my enemies for Sherlock, my partner is life, is not my enemy, but quite the opposite, and so much more.
I also remember drinking. Heavily. Both after his death, and in hardships. I didn’t want to become like Harry, and I didn’t. But I had drank. And I had been drunk. I’m still disgusted at myself for how I succumbed to drinking like Harry did.
I did leave him. Was prepared to leave him. Acted on the action. Delivered my cane to his room. I must have thought if I couldn't have him the way I wanted, and because of the way he is now, and because he killed my wife, which he really didn’t, that I should leave him
I was nothing but lost and in a dark pit.
If the cards we show when the dark is close is who we really are, then I am not the best person, am I? But, quite certainly, I have come a long way. I have grown. Not so say who I was back then has disappeared. Not in the least. But I am wiser.
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In the past, the statement “discretion is the better part of valour” was very true for me. I took it to heart for John to never find out. To not break him after I rebuilt him with his ruins.
So I had taken it upon myself to wander in the remaining holes trying to find myself.
Without my conductor of light, I had found myself in dim lit holes.
Had I known that John had succumbed to dim lit pits himself, I would have taken my confession with me and went to him before the wedding took place.
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He was leaving me again. Yes, he was. But it was for my sake. For me to be happy with my unborn baby and an assassin of a wife. He killed Magnussen for me. And now he was leaving for me. But what he didn’t get, that instead of making me happy, this was crushing me. Every time he left, he would leave with a piece of me.
I wanted Sherlock to see Rosie right when she was born. I wanted him to watch her first steps alongside me. I wanted him to hear her first words.
It's easier to love when you're winning at large, and everything's going your way. A coward would only say such a thing. I could have told him right then and there that I loved him. But I didn’t. He was flying to eastern Europe with no guarantee of coming back alive. But then what? If I told him that I loved him. What would I do with his corpse? What would I do with unexplored romantic love?
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I remember going back to 221B. Seeing Mrs. Hudson again after so long…
I went up to the flat. There was dust flying around, and the sun’s rays going through the blinds…
But there was…
Mostly there was just an unbearable silence.
No rustlings of a mad genius conducting an experiment, the harsh grinding tunes of the violin or exclamations such as: “Tea John!” or “Oh John you’re an idiot, dating a psychopath!”
No more violin melodies I wasn’t aware of before he faked his suicide that would calm me after a nightmare.
No gunshot sounds burning a hole through the wall.
I would have traded anything to hear those gunshot sounds again if only it meant he would be back.
But alas, I am quite pleased with how things turned out at the end. When Sherlock’s out at town, there are the bee's, that he keeps buzzing to keep me company.
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But in the end. We are together. We are one. We conquer our hardships. We get past them. And what lays beyond them is better than what we ever experienced.
It's us against the rest of the world.
No matter what.
Always.