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Most times John walks in a sort of daze. He doesn’t like to see people, to see London and the streets full of life. Not anymore. He just doesn’t care. He could be in the middle of the Afghan battlefield for all he cares. Life around him feels barren, empty, meaningless, as fake and unreal as the scenes in the ads.
But sometimes there are things that unexpectedly – unwantedly – catch and stir his attention, things that somehow awaken his soldier’s instinct, that make him feel as focused, sharp and alert as he hasn’t been in a long time. A shadow briefly disappearing into an alley, the noise of steps on the pavement behind him, the fleeting glimpse of shapes and colours. They might seem meaningless, petty and completely random, but deep-down he knows only too well they’re not. His senses react – as swift and efficient as they were during the war or when he was chasing and fighting criminals – to what reminds him of Sherlock. His senses crave what he has lost; the same way a desperate man craves water in the middle of a desert.
Something triggers the reaction; it can be the height of a passing stranger, the shape of a hand gripping the rail on the tube, a shade of pale blue when he happens to make eye-contact with someone. For a split-second he can see Sherlock, he is absolutely sure he sees him. And it’s a curse. Because he misses him and it hurts. John doesn’t want to call it a hallucination; he prefers to think of it as a mirage. It sounds more exotic, and it doesn’t mean he’s slowly going mad. Because a mirage is something you can’t avoid seeing, whenever a determined set of conditions – factual circumstances – are present. It’s a trick of light (just a magic trick, he had said then) but you’re bound to fall for it. Then the interpretation of what light and heat are producing varies: one can see an oasis, or a city, even a person.
He even has dreams about it, about this whole mirage thing. He walks through a desert – but he knows it’s not really a desert, it’s London, empty, decayed, abandoned, and he’s the only one left there. Left to endure loss, grief and solitude. Solitude made worse by the fact that he remembers exactly how it was before, how he felt when they were together. He still hasn’t forgotten that, and he never will. Still John knows that Sherlock is there, at the end of the journey, waiting for him, beyond the mirage. And he knows he will get to him, eventually. Even though it probably means putting a bullet in his own head with the same gun he used to save Sherlock’s life that time when they still barely knew each other.
One evening in June, a month he hates now, John sees him. Of course it’s not Sherlock, it can’t be. He’s been dead for 2 years and a couple of days. This time he knows he can’t call it a mirage anymore, because the young man he is staring at is real, no doubt about that. The shock paralyzes him and chases all of the air out of his lungs. He feels bewildered, and like he’s drowning. Most of all, he can’t quite believe his own eyes.
The young man is sitting on the pavement, a paper cup in front of his crossed legs. His dark jeans are baggy, dusty, and obviously not at all like anything Sherlock would wear. He wears a shabby black hooded jacket, and the hood hides his head, but John can see that his hair is wavy and ginger, a shade lighter than the beard on his lean face. His skin is fair, but not as pale as Sherlock’s.
John got only a glimpse of his eyes, but he feels absolutely sure those eyes are exactly like Sherlock’s. He would go as far as swearing that these are Sherlock’s eyes (he can’t forget them, he would recognise them anywhere), and if those are his eyes, it means that the young ginger-haired man sitting there is Sherlock. But it is impossible. Or is it?
John can’t stop staring at him, even though he knows it is inappropriate and he must look weird, but he can’t bring himself to care. He just wants to know. But the man is now keeping his head down, his shoulders rounded, and John can’t quite see much of him. Sherlock would be able to deduce his whole existence, from the corner of the country where he was born down to the moment when he started living on the streets. But John isn’t Sherlock, and the only things he knows about that man are that he is thin (hardly surprising), most likely tall and in his late thirties (just like Sherlock would be).
In the end he just limps away, confused and upset. He is not sure why he feels so shocked. He knows that man couldn’t be Sherlock. Still, those eyes haunt him. And something else bothers him too. Because while he stood there staring at the young man, he didn’t even catch the chance to ask him for money, he just adjusted the hood on his head, and kept his head down. Could it be actually unusual? Or is he only becoming paranoid?
John doesn’t want to think about it too much. It’s useless, thinking that it really looked like the young man didn’t want John to have a look at his face. Because it can’t be. He doesn’t know that man. Why should he be afraid of being recognised? He can’t be Sherlock. Because Sherlock is dead. And he wouldn’t be living on the streets of London like one of the many homeless anyway. Would he? Still, he knew some of them and he even employed them to solve a couple of cases. But it doesn’t make sense. John doesn’t want it to make sense. Because the thought hurts him, because while that would mean that there is still hope, it would also mean that none of what he knows is true. It would mean that Sherlock lied to him.
John tries to keep the image of that homeless young man out of his head as best as he can. But now he slows down, without even wanting to, whenever he sees young men begging or just sitting down with defeated or defiant faces waiting for spare change. None of them is the young man he saw that June evening. None of them reminds him of Sherlock.
And sometimes, when he dreams of finally reaching Sherlock at the end of this desert that is his life, he is not the elegant, dark-haired consulting detective he used to know, but the ginger-haired young man in shabby clothes. But somehow – these things happen in dreams all the time – John knows they’re the same person.
And then, when he wakes up, the only thing John knows is that he’s probably much closer to madness than he had thought.