Fic: Nothing to Remember (1/10) (Sherlock/Dollhouse crossover)
Title: Nothing to Remember
Author: arwen_kenobi
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For Sherlock: through series 2. For Dollhouse: None
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3 000 for this part. Entire fic will be ~ 35 000
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain but this incarnation belongs to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. Dollhouse belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy
Summary: Eighteen months after faking his own death Sherlock Holmes returns to London only to discover that John has sought refuge across the Atlantic and away from himself.
Author’s Notes: I realise that it says crossover with Dollhouse up above here but no knowledge of Dollhouse is required. I’m really using the concept and some of the characters and that’s all explained within. So if that’s the only thing holding you back from reading this do press on; I’d rather you stop reading because you don’t like it and not because you’re not familiar with Dollhouse. If you really would prefer a bit of a primer the Wikipedia article should serve you well. Enjoy! :)
“So, that’s all of it then?”
Sherlock snatches the offered towel from Lestrade and smashes it against his split lip. He hears the quiet pop of an ice pack being activated soon after and he grabs that before Lestrade can offer it for his aching head. He is lucky he isn’t worse off and he does not need a lecture better suited for Lestrade’s daughters to tell him so. He has missed Lestrade in his own way. The incompetence he had encountered while abroad had been incredibly staggering and he had often found himself wishing he had Lestrade at his side but there were just as many things he had not missed about him.
The capture of Sebastian Moran had been a two man job; he had known that going in. He had planned for it to be a two man job. The man he had had picked out to be the second man had been nowhere to be found and Sherlock had, regrettably, not had enough time to search all of London to find him. He had tried but he was only one man and London was London. He acknowledges that he could have recruited an alternate, an understudy in this final act of his performance, but he had fiercely rejected the idea of another man being at his side at this moment or at any other. What had solidified Sherlock’s decision to work alone had been the certainty that the act of asking another man to help would be more of a betrayal to his friend than the original one.
Well what of it, one small but insistent part of him had argued. He’d betrayed John enough. He’d played at being dead for a year and a half. He’d made John watch him seemingly commit suicide by leaping off a rooftop. He’d told Molly Hooper and his brother that he had faked his death and not John. He’d told Lestrade that had returned before he had told John...
It was a long list. He could argue his reasons but the betrayals remained. What was one more?
He’d not listened to that voice, his currently bloodied state certainly proved that, but its message remained.
“His address?” Sherlock interrupts Lestrade’s list of evidence and procedure and whatnot and brings him back to what really matters here and now. Lestrade stops talking much more agreeably than he would have in the old days, fishes his mobile out of his jacket pocket, and then starts scrolling through his contacts. He texts the information to Sherlock, who already has his own mobile in hand and at the ready. When he reads the text he cannot stop his face from scrunching up. “Eastbourne?”
“Don’t look at me. He said he wanted to get as far away from London as he could.”
“Have you been to visit?”
Instead of answering his question outright Lestrade says that they email back and forth from time to time. That’s a lie. From time to time really means ‘very, very rarely’ when it comes from Lestrade. Instead of snapping at him to be specific Sherlock allows him to continue even though he knows that he is not going to enjoy wherever this conversation leads. “I haven’t been to see him,” Lestrade finally answers. “He wants to keep his distance from everything and that includes us.”
“Still?”
“Look,” Lestrade snaps through Sherlock’s thoughts, “when John lost you he lost everything. Who he was, what he did, how he fit in the world, everything. There was no way he could go back to the way he was before.” He snatches the towel away from Sherlock and then, after a moment of consideration, reclaims the ice pack as well. Sherlock doesn’t know what Lestrade is trying to accomplish here. Sherlock thinks he knows better than Lestrade does exactly what sort of state of existence John had been lingering in before he’d met him. “You owe that man something more than an apology.” Lestrade bins the towel and ice. “That man, no matter what he does, is ruined for any sort of life without you. You had to have known that when you did what you did.”
Sherlock had not known for sure but he had suspected. He had decided that a living John was better than a dead John and that was that. He regretted the methods behind keeping John alive but did not regret the final product. “He’s a resilient man,” is all the justification he offers.
“Yeah well six months without you was plenty for him so off to the sodding Downs he went. He’s probably hoping to bore himself into acceptance.”
Now would not be a good time to mention that they had spoken of retiring together on the Downs when the time came once or twice. He looks at the address once more to commit it to memory, pockets his mobile, and starts to head off. Lestrade’s arm shoots out with a speed Sherlock had forgotten it possessed and holds him in place. Sherlock does not try to pull out of its grip. Strange.
“You go as yourself.” It’s an order and not a warning. The tone is not one that Lestrade uses on his daughters now. This tone has been silent for some time now but Sherlock recognizes it as the one specially meant for the mostly homeless and hopelessly drug addicted Sherlock Holmes. “No tricks and no dramatic reveals. Just you and you alone and you’d best be ready to be killed if he decides that’s what needs to be done.”
It is both a figure of speech and an actual fact all at once. Sherlock has died for John, has been dead for John, and he has relatively recently become fine with the fact that one day he might have to play the actual part. Going by John’s hand is not his first choice but if John pulls his gun on him he has no plans on running.
“I won’t.” Lestrade holds him tight for a second or two and then lets him run back to Baker Street.
=====================================================================================
Mrs. Hudson is waiting for him with open arms, literally and figuratively, when he arrives. Sherlock suspects she has been waiting at the window for his arrival because she throws the door open before he’s even reached it. He allows her to hug him once they’re inside and the door is closed and she squeezes him tight and tuts him for being so silly and brave and for being gone so long. Sherlock returns the embrace with more feeling than he’d been expecting and allows it to continue for much longer than he would normally. Comfort has been something he has denied himself for so long so he feels, strangely but not surprising, no shame in taking the bucket loads of comfort being offered to him by his landlady. Mrs. Hudson quiets and just holds him when she realises what this hug really is and only lets go when Sherlock’s hands fall to his side.
He’s offered tea and a sit in Mrs. Hudson’s own flat but Sherlock insists on upstairs. She tries to talk him out of it but he won’t hear any of it. He deserves to find whatever he finds up there. Mycroft told him that John had moved away initially but then had moved back. John had moved out again on the six month anniversary and had left Mycroft no forwarding address. Mycroft had of course found it out and had John under surveillance but had not sought him out. “He made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. I have obliged him as much as I am capable of doing considering your request of me.”
Sherlock had asked Mycroft to watch over John and despite the fact that Mycroft has done so he cannot help but be suspicious. He reminds himself that it is unwise to theorize without data and steps into the flat after Mrs. Hudson. It is eerily neat. It screams order and military and regiment. Nothing of his has been moved. Sherlock sees that the laboratory equipment had been moved and then brought back and returned to their proper places but other than that the place could very well serve as a museum. The only things missing are the experiments themselves and those had only been moved due to public health regulations. Also Sherlock’s violin is missing but Sherlock suspects sentiment rather than theft in that absence.
“He kept everything the same,” Mrs. Hudson is telling him. “He moved, worked, and cooked around everything. I packed some things up but he brought it all back before I could give it all away. I told him more than once that it wasn’t healthy but he didn’t listen to me. Didn’t listen to anybody. Then he up and left with nothing but a note with a forwarding address for any post he got.”
Lestrade had made it sound bad but Sherlock had wondered how much of that was true and how much of it was to drive home a point. Mycroft really hadn’t told him anything at all and he never believed anything Mycroft told him when he asked him directly. Mrs. Hudson would never lie to him. He sits in his old chair and Mrs. Hudson, after a moment of consideration, settles in John’s. “Was it bad?” he doesn’t mean to sound as quiet and, alright he’ll admit it, as nervous as he does but it can’t be helped now.
Again she pauses and this time it’s because she wants to spare his feelings. He tells her that he needs to hear it and then she says that it had been bad. “He was awful,” she whispers, strained. “Like his heart had stopped beating but the rest of him hadn’t caught on to it. He did what he could. He tried to work, he tried to get going, he fought to clear your name like I’ve never seen anyone fight for anything and when he managed that he was worse. I think he thought that if he cleared your name he’d get you back, even though he knew it was impossible.”
He remembers the haunted man he’d seen at St. Bart’s. He remembers what sort of life he’d deduced John had lived once he’d been invalided home. Lestrade was not one prone to florid turns of phrase but he finds that what information Lestrade had relayed to him in Camden had been correct. “I wanted him to live,” he tells Mrs. Hudson.
“He did try but you didn’t leave him with much to work with. You change people, dear.” She folds her hands in her lap and fixes her gaze on them. “You make it impossible to go back to what they were.” She’s not sure whether that’s a compliment or a curse and Sherlock is unable to find out himself. He gets up and takes one of Mrs. Hudson’s hands . He waits until she looks up at him before he speaks.
“I will fix it.” He will do what he has to do. He will do anything to fix John, to make John understand why he did what he did. He does not hope for forgiveness but he hopes for them to understand each other. He hopes for John to come back to London with him because John changes people too and Sherlock cannot go back to the way he was before either.
Mrs. Hudson smiles, the gesture is hopeful but there’s doubt behind her kind eyes. “I hope he lets you.”
=================================================================================
Sherlock throws a bag together and is on the last train to Eastbourne out of Victoria Station. He knows that he should take the opportunity to sleep now after the journey from France to England and everything that’s happened since but his mind will not quiet. His mind never does but it does not still enough to allow for sleep. By the time the hour and a half journey is over he has deduced everything about the train, the staff, and the passengers, and he knows he is dangerously close to getting tossed out before the train stops.
It’s half one in the morning and even he knows that it is more than a bit not good to knock anybody up at this hour unless it was an emergency but he sets off to find John’s new place of residence (a flat? a house? What was he looking for?) but finds that now his tired brain demands to rest. It refuses to read street signs and locating the tiny numbers on the buildings becomes impossible. He finds the nearest inn and pays double for the late hour before he collapses on the bed fully clothed.
Much to Sherlock’s ire, when he rises the next morning, he still cannot find the address. He checks it twice from his phone. He refers to the scrap of paper in the good doctor’s handwriting that Mrs. Hudson passed on to him before he left and texts his brother to be sure. All three sources say the same thing.
That does not make the address magic itself into existence. Shortly thereafter he comes to the conclusion that there is no Doctor John H. Watson in practice in Eastbourne at all. He tries every doctor in the area over the weekend he spends there and not a single one is John. No one in the area even looks like him. He calls Mycroft and asks, heatedly, about his security and how it is managing to keep tabs on an address that does not exist and a man who is not here. “My latest report says he’s at work at Eastbourne General Hospital.” Mycroft for all his own brilliance is a fundamentally lazy man and cannot be arsed to be sure of his own sources sometimes. He parrots back what is in front of him because believing the alternative is unacceptable.
Sherlock has evaded security five times today alone looking for John at the hospital. “He’s not on staff there.”
Mycroft’s voice goes cold and tells him that he’ll text him back with the correct information. Sherlock may not like his brother but he can’t help the smile that crosses his face when he imagines what awaits his staff. He considers looking up Harriet Watson but outright dismisses her as knowing anything about her brother. No matter how bad John was he would never reach out to her for help. He cannot let the possibility slip from him though so he texts Mycroft to try her. He has never met John’s sister and he would like to keep it that way.
While he waits for Mycroft to get back to him he sets himself up at the nearest coffee shop with his laptop and hacks into John’s email. There is nothing of importance there. There are a few scattered emails from Lestrade and John’s sister but nothing of any importance. Lestrade is trying to be helpful and carry on as normal and Harry is demanding visits, and money, and host of other irrelevant things. This is really the extent of his communication aside from some extremely irritating spam and some work related emails as well. Mostly committee work for purchasing new equipment it seems for job he apparently does not have. Something about the sender buzzes in Sherlock’s brain but he lets it lie in favour of conducting some research into John’s campaign to clear his name. His last instruction to John had been to believe that he was a fraud but he had not been able to. If he’d played along Sherlock could have been home sooner but John had believed in him more than Sherlock could ever have anticipated.
In six months John, and Lestrade and Mycroft it would appear, had brought the world back to his side. He’d published a book, of course he would accept the book deal when Sherlock wasn’t there to berate him during the writing process, and had assisted with the inquest that had followed after the jump. All the evidence was there if one knew where to look and it seemed that John had known how to get Mycroft moving and pull away the man Richard Brook until Jim Moriarty was all that remained.
There are few attempts at interviews that he manages to pull up. John looks as bad as he’s been described. The man is haggard and haunted and looks not long for the world himself. He never responds to any questions except for the same sentence that had been his final blog entry: He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.
You’ve ruined him for any life after you.
You change people, dear. You make it impossible to go back to what they were.
Before Sherlock has an opportunity to get angry at John and his stupid, bloody, loyalty his mobile chirps. Sister also has Eastbourne address. Return at once. MH.
What have you found? SH
Cannot be discussed like this. Text when you’re at the Diogenes Club. MH
“Cannot be discussed like this” when said by Mycroft meant “I haven’t found anything yet but I will by the time you get here.” This was his brother asking him for an hour and half, closer to two considering the additional tube ride to the Diogenes Club, to sort what has happened. There is one thing that Mycroft must know though.
Is he alive?
Sherlock is pulling out of Eastbourne station when he finally gets a reply.
Yes.
Sherlock lets out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding. He is not relaxed, he will not be until he sees John alive for himself, but at least knows that all of this has not been in vain. He can find John, he will find John, and we will accept whatever punishment John sees fit to give whether that’s a bullet in the brain or a kick out the door.
A John Watson who is alive and hates him is worlds better than a John Watson who likes him and is dead. He has been theoretically ready for this since fleeing England and now it’s time to see if the theory hold true or if John will surprise him yet again.
Part Two
Author: arwen_kenobi
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For Sherlock: through series 2. For Dollhouse: None
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3 000 for this part. Entire fic will be ~ 35 000
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain but this incarnation belongs to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. Dollhouse belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy
Summary: Eighteen months after faking his own death Sherlock Holmes returns to London only to discover that John has sought refuge across the Atlantic and away from himself.
Author’s Notes: I realise that it says crossover with Dollhouse up above here but no knowledge of Dollhouse is required. I’m really using the concept and some of the characters and that’s all explained within. So if that’s the only thing holding you back from reading this do press on; I’d rather you stop reading because you don’t like it and not because you’re not familiar with Dollhouse. If you really would prefer a bit of a primer the Wikipedia article should serve you well. Enjoy! :)
“So, that’s all of it then?”
Sherlock snatches the offered towel from Lestrade and smashes it against his split lip. He hears the quiet pop of an ice pack being activated soon after and he grabs that before Lestrade can offer it for his aching head. He is lucky he isn’t worse off and he does not need a lecture better suited for Lestrade’s daughters to tell him so. He has missed Lestrade in his own way. The incompetence he had encountered while abroad had been incredibly staggering and he had often found himself wishing he had Lestrade at his side but there were just as many things he had not missed about him.
The capture of Sebastian Moran had been a two man job; he had known that going in. He had planned for it to be a two man job. The man he had had picked out to be the second man had been nowhere to be found and Sherlock had, regrettably, not had enough time to search all of London to find him. He had tried but he was only one man and London was London. He acknowledges that he could have recruited an alternate, an understudy in this final act of his performance, but he had fiercely rejected the idea of another man being at his side at this moment or at any other. What had solidified Sherlock’s decision to work alone had been the certainty that the act of asking another man to help would be more of a betrayal to his friend than the original one.
Well what of it, one small but insistent part of him had argued. He’d betrayed John enough. He’d played at being dead for a year and a half. He’d made John watch him seemingly commit suicide by leaping off a rooftop. He’d told Molly Hooper and his brother that he had faked his death and not John. He’d told Lestrade that had returned before he had told John...
It was a long list. He could argue his reasons but the betrayals remained. What was one more?
He’d not listened to that voice, his currently bloodied state certainly proved that, but its message remained.
“His address?” Sherlock interrupts Lestrade’s list of evidence and procedure and whatnot and brings him back to what really matters here and now. Lestrade stops talking much more agreeably than he would have in the old days, fishes his mobile out of his jacket pocket, and then starts scrolling through his contacts. He texts the information to Sherlock, who already has his own mobile in hand and at the ready. When he reads the text he cannot stop his face from scrunching up. “Eastbourne?”
“Don’t look at me. He said he wanted to get as far away from London as he could.”
“Have you been to visit?”
Instead of answering his question outright Lestrade says that they email back and forth from time to time. That’s a lie. From time to time really means ‘very, very rarely’ when it comes from Lestrade. Instead of snapping at him to be specific Sherlock allows him to continue even though he knows that he is not going to enjoy wherever this conversation leads. “I haven’t been to see him,” Lestrade finally answers. “He wants to keep his distance from everything and that includes us.”
“Still?”
“Look,” Lestrade snaps through Sherlock’s thoughts, “when John lost you he lost everything. Who he was, what he did, how he fit in the world, everything. There was no way he could go back to the way he was before.” He snatches the towel away from Sherlock and then, after a moment of consideration, reclaims the ice pack as well. Sherlock doesn’t know what Lestrade is trying to accomplish here. Sherlock thinks he knows better than Lestrade does exactly what sort of state of existence John had been lingering in before he’d met him. “You owe that man something more than an apology.” Lestrade bins the towel and ice. “That man, no matter what he does, is ruined for any sort of life without you. You had to have known that when you did what you did.”
Sherlock had not known for sure but he had suspected. He had decided that a living John was better than a dead John and that was that. He regretted the methods behind keeping John alive but did not regret the final product. “He’s a resilient man,” is all the justification he offers.
“Yeah well six months without you was plenty for him so off to the sodding Downs he went. He’s probably hoping to bore himself into acceptance.”
Now would not be a good time to mention that they had spoken of retiring together on the Downs when the time came once or twice. He looks at the address once more to commit it to memory, pockets his mobile, and starts to head off. Lestrade’s arm shoots out with a speed Sherlock had forgotten it possessed and holds him in place. Sherlock does not try to pull out of its grip. Strange.
“You go as yourself.” It’s an order and not a warning. The tone is not one that Lestrade uses on his daughters now. This tone has been silent for some time now but Sherlock recognizes it as the one specially meant for the mostly homeless and hopelessly drug addicted Sherlock Holmes. “No tricks and no dramatic reveals. Just you and you alone and you’d best be ready to be killed if he decides that’s what needs to be done.”
It is both a figure of speech and an actual fact all at once. Sherlock has died for John, has been dead for John, and he has relatively recently become fine with the fact that one day he might have to play the actual part. Going by John’s hand is not his first choice but if John pulls his gun on him he has no plans on running.
“I won’t.” Lestrade holds him tight for a second or two and then lets him run back to Baker Street.
=====================================================================================
Mrs. Hudson is waiting for him with open arms, literally and figuratively, when he arrives. Sherlock suspects she has been waiting at the window for his arrival because she throws the door open before he’s even reached it. He allows her to hug him once they’re inside and the door is closed and she squeezes him tight and tuts him for being so silly and brave and for being gone so long. Sherlock returns the embrace with more feeling than he’d been expecting and allows it to continue for much longer than he would normally. Comfort has been something he has denied himself for so long so he feels, strangely but not surprising, no shame in taking the bucket loads of comfort being offered to him by his landlady. Mrs. Hudson quiets and just holds him when she realises what this hug really is and only lets go when Sherlock’s hands fall to his side.
He’s offered tea and a sit in Mrs. Hudson’s own flat but Sherlock insists on upstairs. She tries to talk him out of it but he won’t hear any of it. He deserves to find whatever he finds up there. Mycroft told him that John had moved away initially but then had moved back. John had moved out again on the six month anniversary and had left Mycroft no forwarding address. Mycroft had of course found it out and had John under surveillance but had not sought him out. “He made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. I have obliged him as much as I am capable of doing considering your request of me.”
Sherlock had asked Mycroft to watch over John and despite the fact that Mycroft has done so he cannot help but be suspicious. He reminds himself that it is unwise to theorize without data and steps into the flat after Mrs. Hudson. It is eerily neat. It screams order and military and regiment. Nothing of his has been moved. Sherlock sees that the laboratory equipment had been moved and then brought back and returned to their proper places but other than that the place could very well serve as a museum. The only things missing are the experiments themselves and those had only been moved due to public health regulations. Also Sherlock’s violin is missing but Sherlock suspects sentiment rather than theft in that absence.
“He kept everything the same,” Mrs. Hudson is telling him. “He moved, worked, and cooked around everything. I packed some things up but he brought it all back before I could give it all away. I told him more than once that it wasn’t healthy but he didn’t listen to me. Didn’t listen to anybody. Then he up and left with nothing but a note with a forwarding address for any post he got.”
Lestrade had made it sound bad but Sherlock had wondered how much of that was true and how much of it was to drive home a point. Mycroft really hadn’t told him anything at all and he never believed anything Mycroft told him when he asked him directly. Mrs. Hudson would never lie to him. He sits in his old chair and Mrs. Hudson, after a moment of consideration, settles in John’s. “Was it bad?” he doesn’t mean to sound as quiet and, alright he’ll admit it, as nervous as he does but it can’t be helped now.
Again she pauses and this time it’s because she wants to spare his feelings. He tells her that he needs to hear it and then she says that it had been bad. “He was awful,” she whispers, strained. “Like his heart had stopped beating but the rest of him hadn’t caught on to it. He did what he could. He tried to work, he tried to get going, he fought to clear your name like I’ve never seen anyone fight for anything and when he managed that he was worse. I think he thought that if he cleared your name he’d get you back, even though he knew it was impossible.”
He remembers the haunted man he’d seen at St. Bart’s. He remembers what sort of life he’d deduced John had lived once he’d been invalided home. Lestrade was not one prone to florid turns of phrase but he finds that what information Lestrade had relayed to him in Camden had been correct. “I wanted him to live,” he tells Mrs. Hudson.
“He did try but you didn’t leave him with much to work with. You change people, dear.” She folds her hands in her lap and fixes her gaze on them. “You make it impossible to go back to what they were.” She’s not sure whether that’s a compliment or a curse and Sherlock is unable to find out himself. He gets up and takes one of Mrs. Hudson’s hands . He waits until she looks up at him before he speaks.
“I will fix it.” He will do what he has to do. He will do anything to fix John, to make John understand why he did what he did. He does not hope for forgiveness but he hopes for them to understand each other. He hopes for John to come back to London with him because John changes people too and Sherlock cannot go back to the way he was before either.
Mrs. Hudson smiles, the gesture is hopeful but there’s doubt behind her kind eyes. “I hope he lets you.”
=================================================================================
Sherlock throws a bag together and is on the last train to Eastbourne out of Victoria Station. He knows that he should take the opportunity to sleep now after the journey from France to England and everything that’s happened since but his mind will not quiet. His mind never does but it does not still enough to allow for sleep. By the time the hour and a half journey is over he has deduced everything about the train, the staff, and the passengers, and he knows he is dangerously close to getting tossed out before the train stops.
It’s half one in the morning and even he knows that it is more than a bit not good to knock anybody up at this hour unless it was an emergency but he sets off to find John’s new place of residence (a flat? a house? What was he looking for?) but finds that now his tired brain demands to rest. It refuses to read street signs and locating the tiny numbers on the buildings becomes impossible. He finds the nearest inn and pays double for the late hour before he collapses on the bed fully clothed.
Much to Sherlock’s ire, when he rises the next morning, he still cannot find the address. He checks it twice from his phone. He refers to the scrap of paper in the good doctor’s handwriting that Mrs. Hudson passed on to him before he left and texts his brother to be sure. All three sources say the same thing.
That does not make the address magic itself into existence. Shortly thereafter he comes to the conclusion that there is no Doctor John H. Watson in practice in Eastbourne at all. He tries every doctor in the area over the weekend he spends there and not a single one is John. No one in the area even looks like him. He calls Mycroft and asks, heatedly, about his security and how it is managing to keep tabs on an address that does not exist and a man who is not here. “My latest report says he’s at work at Eastbourne General Hospital.” Mycroft for all his own brilliance is a fundamentally lazy man and cannot be arsed to be sure of his own sources sometimes. He parrots back what is in front of him because believing the alternative is unacceptable.
Sherlock has evaded security five times today alone looking for John at the hospital. “He’s not on staff there.”
Mycroft’s voice goes cold and tells him that he’ll text him back with the correct information. Sherlock may not like his brother but he can’t help the smile that crosses his face when he imagines what awaits his staff. He considers looking up Harriet Watson but outright dismisses her as knowing anything about her brother. No matter how bad John was he would never reach out to her for help. He cannot let the possibility slip from him though so he texts Mycroft to try her. He has never met John’s sister and he would like to keep it that way.
While he waits for Mycroft to get back to him he sets himself up at the nearest coffee shop with his laptop and hacks into John’s email. There is nothing of importance there. There are a few scattered emails from Lestrade and John’s sister but nothing of any importance. Lestrade is trying to be helpful and carry on as normal and Harry is demanding visits, and money, and host of other irrelevant things. This is really the extent of his communication aside from some extremely irritating spam and some work related emails as well. Mostly committee work for purchasing new equipment it seems for job he apparently does not have. Something about the sender buzzes in Sherlock’s brain but he lets it lie in favour of conducting some research into John’s campaign to clear his name. His last instruction to John had been to believe that he was a fraud but he had not been able to. If he’d played along Sherlock could have been home sooner but John had believed in him more than Sherlock could ever have anticipated.
In six months John, and Lestrade and Mycroft it would appear, had brought the world back to his side. He’d published a book, of course he would accept the book deal when Sherlock wasn’t there to berate him during the writing process, and had assisted with the inquest that had followed after the jump. All the evidence was there if one knew where to look and it seemed that John had known how to get Mycroft moving and pull away the man Richard Brook until Jim Moriarty was all that remained.
There are few attempts at interviews that he manages to pull up. John looks as bad as he’s been described. The man is haggard and haunted and looks not long for the world himself. He never responds to any questions except for the same sentence that had been his final blog entry: He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.
You’ve ruined him for any life after you.
You change people, dear. You make it impossible to go back to what they were.
Before Sherlock has an opportunity to get angry at John and his stupid, bloody, loyalty his mobile chirps. Sister also has Eastbourne address. Return at once. MH.
What have you found? SH
Cannot be discussed like this. Text when you’re at the Diogenes Club. MH
“Cannot be discussed like this” when said by Mycroft meant “I haven’t found anything yet but I will by the time you get here.” This was his brother asking him for an hour and half, closer to two considering the additional tube ride to the Diogenes Club, to sort what has happened. There is one thing that Mycroft must know though.
Is he alive?
Sherlock is pulling out of Eastbourne station when he finally gets a reply.
Yes.
Sherlock lets out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding. He is not relaxed, he will not be until he sees John alive for himself, but at least knows that all of this has not been in vain. He can find John, he will find John, and we will accept whatever punishment John sees fit to give whether that’s a bullet in the brain or a kick out the door.
A John Watson who is alive and hates him is worlds better than a John Watson who likes him and is dead. He has been theoretically ready for this since fleeing England and now it’s time to see if the theory hold true or if John will surprise him yet again.
Part Two