Chapter Text
Week One
This time it was different.
He didn't redevelop his psychosomatic limp. His leg was still fine. He would almost have preferred it. Something else to worry about. He even went to see his therapist once more, asking her for an explanation.
"You need to get it out."
He really did try. He needed any help he could get, even from his therapist. He wouldn't get over it, this time. He knew.
He struggled, finally choking out his name. Speaking that one monstrous sentence aloud was already too much. He broke.
Closing his eyes, he was back. Watching his inner movie. Couldn't let go. Took his time... Lived through it one more time.
NO.
Too many strangers had been muckraking, lately. He desperately clung to his memories. He wouldn't sell them to his therapist for these meagre breadcrumbs of a little peace of mind. His memories were all that remained. Sharing them would mean transforming them. Changing them into something perhaps more healthy. Changing them, getting over them, losing them.
'No.'
He could not share his memories of their last day.
He would not let him go one more time.
He. Would. Not. Lose him.
He would keep their story inside, even if it tore him to pieces.
Last time his life had been in pieces. This time it was his heart.
"Sorry. I can't."
Why were there no visible signs to deal with?
'Ask a question to distract her.' In the end he felt worse.
As he had half expected, she could not provide him any conclusive explanations.
"Your subconscious doesn't work that way,"was all she could offer.
'Obviously,' he thought, immediately flinching, ... feeling reminded of him.
He never wanted to talk to her again. After all, she was no good, he had been told from the beginning: "Fire her. She's got it the wrong way round."
Mycroft Holmes could see through everyone only five minutes after he made their acquaintance.
He could ask him about this bloody not-limping leg. Mycroft would know why. Hadn't he known the reason for his tremor instantly, back then at their first meeting in that dodgy warehouse?
He intended to never speak to him again in the future, come what may!
Seeing through people gives you certain responsibilities, he believed.
Having a brother who was supposed to be the British government did not automatically prove to be an advantage. In fact, it had led to a disastrous outcome. He had never quite come to terms with that man, never been able to fully comprehend the brothers' relationship.
He had finally labelled it as sibling rivalryand tried to ignore the subtle threat he always associated with Mycroft.
Over time he had almost convinced himself that the man wasn't that bad.
After all, hadn't John been told that Mycroft was constantly worrying about his little brother?
So he tried to appease his doubts regarding Mycroft, repeatedly.
The disaster had proven him wrong. Now he saw the"arch-enemy" in him again. John fully blamed him for sacrificing his brother on the altar of his own selfish ambitions.
And Mycroft never denied it, never defended his betrayal.
There were times he truly hated the man with a vengeance.
Mycroft had been the one to go to the mortuary in order to identify the corpse. Mycroft had arranged the funeral.
That's what relatives were supposed to do, and John even hated him for that. For having the stamina to go through all of it without any visible signs of grief, whereas he himself was hardly able to struggle through his days.
"You're in shock," she told him.
Not the blanket type of shock that leaves you shivering and shaking with cold.
This went deeper, would take longer, she said.
"Take your time. Get over it, heal. You need to talk about it."
He couldn't. All he could do in those early days was fight back the ache.
He hurt so deep inside that every breath took an effort.
He had always been a man of action, a soldier. All he ever wanted to do was move, find a solution, find a way out. Anything but accept a hopeless situation. Anything but give in.
When he finally had been forced to come to terms with being retired because of a psychosomatic limp, and a tremor in his left hand that would forever deter him from performing surgery, he had met the challenge and faced civilian life. Still the soldier, all limping and trembling, but never giving up.
He had struggled to get over his nightmares, found himself a flat-share and a proper job so that he could afford his rent. He had fought hard.
That was how he wanted to be seen.
But if he was honest, he had to admit that he hadn't been able to clear up the mess his life had been on his own. It had only become better after he had met him.
With him life suddenly was exciting again. He could simply forget about the past, about his disabilities... and that was when they suddenly vanished into thin air.
Life had him back.
Now he saw everything shattered within less than two years, again.
He could no longer fight back.
This time it was different.
This time his heart had a limp.
He could not move on.
He didn't know which direction he should turn. There was no way out.
Forty-six minutes later he rose from his chair. The session was done. He would not see his therapist again. Therapy was over.
No use for her to poke around inside his skull.
He wouldn't allow her to drag anything out. His memories were all that remained.
And he wouldn't share them.
The days went by in a haze.
"It's all a bit of a blur."
Week Two
It was the funeral that ended his lethargy.
Seeing Mycroft again was like a punch in the face.
Later he realised that his reaction was fairly predictable, but that day he felt so overwhelmed with impotent rage, he could hardly contain himself.
He longed for his gun.
That was what kept him upright, what prevented him from drowning in tears.
Clench your jaw or crumble in front of them all. Not that too many people cared to attend his funeral at all.
"I don't have friends." How right he had been.
Of course Molly was there, stone silent with an agitated expression on her face.
Funny, he thought... he would have expected her to indulge in a more weeping, wet sort of mourning.
Mrs Hudson made up for that, sniffing and snuffling, red-rimmed eyes telling the tale of the past week.
He didn't care for the sympathetic glances they gave him, didn't want their compassion.
Lestrade looked deranged, twinge of conscience clearly gnawing at him. He could hardly look him in the eyes.
'Better this way,' he thought. Someday he would certainly give him a mouthful, he promised himself.
What kept him going through the ordeal was nothing but his bloody-minded determination.
He saw clearly what he was supposed to do with the rest of his miserable life:
'Go and find whoever is responsible for his death.'
'Punish them.'
Crying, weeping was for later, silently, alone.
First he had to find the culprit.
The thoughts of a soldier.
Reality seemed worlds apart.
He could never recall how he crept home that day.
He found himself in the shower crying out loud in agony, sniffing back his snot, wishing the water pouring over him could wash away his despair as easily as it did the physical detritus of his grief.
Then he went silent again, seeing no use in all this bluster.
"Think!" he could hear him say.
And so he sat down in his armchair, barefoot, damp hair, staring into the void, face to face with an abandoned seat. Trying desperately to ignore it. Shutting off the image of the other man in his typical exaggerated pose.
Perched on his chair, hands clasped under his chin.
Contracting his limbs in order to concentrate his thoughts.
So, Mycroft had given his brother's secrets away.
There was simply no way to justify it.
Had it prevented something like the start of World War III?
Not the big issues, then. They had been widely known. Even the police had been well informed about his promiscuous drug consumption.
'Must have been the small details, weaknesses, events in his past even I don't know anything about,' he guessed.
"He's got my whole life story. That's what you do when you tell a big lie."
It would have been easy to fool the public, subtly sowing doubts by wrapping up lies in established facts. Creating a fabric so tightly woven, only very few people would be able to tell the right from the wrong threads.
True, he had been obsessively proud of his achievements, radiating pleasure over every solved case. But all that had ever mattered to him had been his work, not the people he helped thereby.
True, he had seemed to become increasingly intrigued by the idea of being the focus of people's interest. That had been a direct result of John's blog.
Despite his perpetual nagging he seemed to have enjoyed the regard of the public.
Yet, hadn't John time and again complained about the fact that he didn't seem to care enough about what people might say? How often had his bored indifference annoyed him to no end?
"I don't understand - why would it upset you?"
It was simply out of character for him to be bothered too much by libel and slander.
Statements like "Of course. I am a show-off" in the presence of a client, or "I don't care what people think" certainly did not come from a man with low self-esteem.
"Why is it always the hat photograph?" He had been arrogant, even vain, but certainly not troubled with public opinion.
Completely oblivious, never caring how to behave himself with journalists, he wouldn't have given a fuck what they scribbled in their damned papers.
He was easily infuriated, never intimidated.
This conspiracy, sophisticated as it was, could never have provoked the collapse.
If anybody could have, he would have sorted it out!
'Nobody could be that clever.' - 'You could.' - Still his firm belief.
Had he ever resigned? Had he ever given a case up as a lost cause?
He had not even tried this time. Had done nothing in the first place to wash clear his name.
That was so very unlike him.
He should have swirled through the city like a whirlwind, flying high on his own brilliance.
Something very different had been going on, John felt sure all of a sudden.
Coming to this conclusion, he grudgingly had to admit that, bad as it was, Mycroft and his betrayal could hardly be the real reason for the catastrophe.
These nights he cried himself to sleep, no bullet for Mycroft.
No penance.
No peace of mind for himself.
Week Three
A new routine in life. His new dedication. Sitting in his chair brooding, day after day.
Of course there had always been Moriarty.
Easy to blame a dead man.
Moriarty had long since been known to be the criminal mastermind behind this conspiracy. It had been obvious that his sinister game had but one destination: the total distraction of the one man who was his intellectual equal. He had planned and carried out every detail of his assault so minutely that there had not been any chance to escape his spider's web, it seemed.
And yet, he had been the one who in the end had blown his head away on that rooftop.
He had died first.
That was a fact.
There had never been the slightest doubt that the man had shot himself.
Even without the help of a consulting detective, Anderson and his team could not have misinterpreted the mess they found up there. The evidence they turned over to the forensic doctor on duty clearly said suicide.
Lestrade had told him, under the pledge of secrecy.
Lestrade seemed to be troubled enough these days. No use in pestering him any further.
Of course the inspector had been in the dark about the why. He had never been in the know, he certainly was not in this case.
One could almost feel sorry for him...
"How will you ever manage without him?" he couldn't restrain himself from saying.
"Perhaps you should have thought about it beforehand. Wasn't too clever to turn your back on someone you need so desperately, was it?"
He regretted his lack of self-control immediately.
Lestrade knew for himself that the incidents of that dreadful night had ended his career.
Yet John could not feel sorry for him.
He was too cold inside.
They had come to question him as a witness.
They had found his phone up there.
He had watched him as he lowered his arm and dropped it on the roof.
He could still see the picture in slow motion when he closed his eyes. He still saw him holding out his hand...
He could hear himself cry out his name... loud!
Desperate!
He had to shout so that he could hear him, ... he had dropped his phone...
'No.'
They had found John's was the last number he had dialled.
The time matched the events up on the roof. They needed to make sure that Moriarty had not forced him to jump at gunpoint, so they said. Needed to confirm that "Richard Brook" had shot himself first.
'They're actually calling him "Richard Brook", can you believe it?' He giggled, hysterically.
They could now prove that "Richard Brook" was not a murderer.
Two suicides.
As to the reasons they could only speculate.
"But we all knew the Freak, didn't we?"
He could have killed Sally Donovan for that one.
He had grown stone-cold after that comment. Had confirmed their expectations.
Yes, he had received his last call; yes, he had clearly been alone up there; no, nobody had attacked him.
They did not dare to ask him what he had said.
He would never have told them.
Week Four
He went home.
To do his thinking.
He knew quite well that he could never know what really happened between those two men on that dreadful morning. He would never be able to deduce which direction their conversation had taken.
Knowing them both he had to admit that they had in certain ways been equals.
Like two sides of one coin, completely opposite, never touching and yet so close to each other.
Both preoccupied with crime, both burning for their professions, both strange kinds of lunatics, standing outside society, never taking no for an answer.
Both genial in their ways, never to be compared to ordinary minds.
He felt he could never speculate what had driven them that day.
Moriarty was not his concern, but never in his life would John believe that he had even considered throwing his life away due to the gossip of that petty lot.
Why had he not struggled to find a way out?
Why had he not even tried? And the one question, over and over again:
Why had he sent John away in the first place?
"Alone is what I have. Alone protects me," he could still hear him say.
He wanted to scream at that.
Had he really, for once in his life miscalculated?
How far could he trust him?
This was different.
These questions were different.
They led him onto dangerous ground.
Had danger ever stopped him?
Something had happened up there. Moriarty's plan had backfired.
So why did he jump?
John refused to accept that it was the only way out for such a proper genius.
There was always another way.
He couldn't kill himself now, much as he felt like it, could he?
Ah, yes, this had been him all over, feeling thrilled by the hazards, indulging in danger, not bored for once.
Is there a difference between swallowing a poisoned pill and jumping from a hospital roof?
Obviously, this was much more elaborate, highly sophisticated. That went perfectly with a man who always had to impress the world with his floating coat and waving curls.
So, once again, just one last time?
"Wrong, wrong deduction." Anger and cynicism didn't gain him any peace of mind.
Instead his limping heart moved on firmly and steadily in the opposite direction.
For on whom had this arrogant, cool-looking-coat-collar-up-impressive-cheekbones-front-I'm-always-in-control-of-the-world-genius relied more and more in these last one and a half years?
Since shooting the cabbie that night, he had felt an ever stronger bond growing between them.
How else could he explain this loss he felt, how else could this hurt so much?
Week Five
And it did hurt. There were days he could hardly get up in the morning, faced with his now empty life.
He trotted to work and back, no longer speaking to anybody, did the shopping, did the cleaning, paid the rent, ate, drank, sent himself to bed, could not sleep.
Then there were days when the ever good soldier he still was promised himself that he would finally find a target to focus his wrath on, find the culprit, punish him and then move on.
Week Six
Realisation was creeping in subtly, hardly noticeable at first. Like cancer silently infiltrating healthy flesh, his thinking became contaminated by the weight of his own guilt. He had long ago heard the whispers of his own conscience.
The foggier his vision of the events after the fall became, the more clearly could he remember every conversation on their last day together.
He still winced each time he allowed himself to look back on their last dispute at the laboratory.
His outburst, due to wrung out nerves, exhaustion, lack of food and sleep, was nevertheless unforgivable.
"You machine!" he had shouted furiously.
And then colder, resigned, ...worse...
"Friends protect people."
Knowing what he did now, they were the most cynical words he could possibly have spoken.
How self-righteous, how pathetic.
Aside from that, how had he managed to outsmart him time and again?
Why had he failed to notice that morning? Futile regrets, now.
As a friend he should have known his ways better, should have realised the phone call was fake, should have thought twice.
'Accuse him of not caring for Mrs Hudson!'
'I mean honestly, Mrs Hudson of all people!' How could he be so blind?
He should have become suspicious, should have known him better, should have trusted in his heart.
Who on earth should have known he had one, if not him?
Even Moriarty had known him better, it seemed.
He would never have allowed his landlady to be harmed.
Turn around, slam the door, leave your so-called friend to die.
Cry. Out. In. Pain.
And that was only the tip of the iceberg.
He had been trying to train him in the art of human sentiments these last few months, yet he himself had overlooked the signs.
"Can't you see what's going on?"
He couldn't that night, ...as always.
He had obviously underestimated the stress the man had been under since Moriarty had emerged again.
"I know you're real." His affirmation had not convinced him.
"A hundred percent?" The piercing look he had given him, desperately trying to find out how deep his confidence in him had actually been.
Not deep enough, he knew now.
Calling him an "annoying dick" in reply had helped him to get over his own awkward feelings...
It had definitely eased the tension, suddenly much too tangible.
It might even have produced a quick smirk on his face.
But it had certainly not been the answer a friend in need required.
Failure.
Excerpt from the manual 'How to Let Down Your Friend.'
In retrospect it had always been himself who had wiped away the faintest hint of mutual belonging with his constant sarcasm, sometimes with open ridicule.
These sorts of comments had long since become a kind of established tradition on his part.
From their first day to their last he had constantly disowned him. Always, almost too vehemently, denied any relationship between them, except for being random flatmates.
"I'm not his date", "colleague", not friend; the list went on, indefinitely.
Much more concerned about the fact that "people might talk", desperately trying to convince the world that no, he was "not actually gay!"
What he would give now to be able to apologise.
'Sorry' would never be enough.
The Woman had not been so wrong after all.
They had been a couple, sort of.
"... my hostage!" he had improvised that night.
"Hostage! Yes, that works - that works!" was his reply. And shortly afterwards, when he had taken his hand so that they could run faster, dragging them away from the police, again he could not help but ridicule their situation.
"Take my hand!"
'Grab him.'
'Run with him to the end of the world.'
"Now people will definitely talk!"
He had never replied, not that night, not on other occasions.
He had hardly ever reacted.
Had he ever wondered what this man might have felt, being rejected by him numerous times? Probably not.
Now he would gladly give his damned no-longer-limping leg, just to tell him how wrong he had been.
"Freak!"
"Weirdo!"
With everybody constantly prodding and nagging at him about how hellish living with his insane flatmate must be, he slipped up time and again.
Had he ever wondered what was wrong with himself?
What had made him the man he had become?
He'd rather push those notions aside.
He was much too preoccupied with watching him solving his crimes and blogging about it.
In the company of this incredible man, he could enjoy the distractions this dangerous city provided. Only since he knew him had he been able to banthe demons of his past which haunted him.
He had been healed from his sufferings...
Yet instead of paying him back with real friendship, he had only occasionally offered a weak "well, ... I'm never bored" to his brother and a bleeding nose for Lestrade's boss.
'Hypocrite!'
He could slap himself for all his lectures about caring and sentiment.
Who had probably cared more: the one who was always so concerned about his fellow citizens, or the one who had learned from an early age that caring was not an advantage?
Realisation drove him almost over the edge.
His culprit:
'Me.'
He. Had. Failed. Him.
And he could never tell him.
So many things unspoken...
Week Seven
This was when he finally faced what was left to do.
It wasn't as heroic or as dramatic as he would have wished, but grand gestures had never been his area.
He wasn't the type to commit a spectacular suicide, creating some broken-heart style headline for the yellow press.
He wasn't even the type to run amok, although shooting half of the New Scotland Yard staff did indeed appeal to him.
But he had a backbone, and if he had to soldier on, stumbling through the rest of his fucked up life, he now had to sort things out.
However, he made one mistake.
He never could recall when or why he had told Mrs Hudson that he was ready, finally...
He certainly regretted it when she asked him to take her along. As much as he liked her, it was hard for him to put up with her constant chatter these days.
He knew she just wanted to cheer him up during the cab ride, but right now he was hardly in the mood to acknowledge her brave attempts to banter about the havoc his ex-flatmate had constantly wreaked.
Thank God, she finally sensed his need to be alone at last.
Alone, with only an impersonal tombstone that did not arouse any memories of their past to distract him.
He attended to his duty.
At last he told him that he had been the best man, and the most human ... human being he had ever known, and that no one would ever convince him that he told him a lie.
"I was so alone, and I owe you so much."
He could never quite grasp afterwards what had driven him.
It would have humiliated him to the core had anybody been witness to his pathetically spluttered entreaty, desperately begging for one more miracle.
"Don't ...be...dead." His voice broke. "Would you do...?Just for me, just stop it." He gestured towards the grave. "Stop this."
He knew this was insane, but somehow it had just at that moment begun to dawn on him that perhaps, only perhaps, it might have actually been his mind which was suffering from a limp....
As always, several steps behind.
Weren't there too many inconsistencies, puzzles only he could have come up with?
Had he not been amazed by him from the beginning?
Had he not once seen a woman fake her own death?
He had always played the sentiments of others like he used to play his violin, intuitively but brilliantly.
He needed so desperately to believe in something.
He had failed him once, and look at them both! He would not let him down another time!
It might be too late, but deep in his heart he suddenly found that John Watson still believed in Sherlock Holmes...
He knew this was insane.
For God's sake, he was a doctor!
He had seen enough people die, thank you, enough for a lifetime, far too many.
He had been there, he had seen him fall.
The shattered body, blood all over the pavement.
He had looked into his eyes, staring up to the sky, broken, empty.
Not. Seeing.
He had taken his pulse.
Gone.
He had seen death before, he had been well schooled in this.
But for all that, something felt ...wrong.
It was almost as if he could again sense his analysing gaze at his back.
Feel his presence once again.
It felt surreal.
But he had nourished his doubts long enough.
He believed in him, he always had, always would.
His friend Sherlock Holmeswas still there.
Weeks. Months. Years.
From that day on it was different.
His heart at least had found its crutches.
Every now and then he could feel his presence.
Not often, not always as strong as the first time, in the cemetery, patting a tombstone goodbye.
But who knew, perhaps he was watching him from afar?