my life that you might live
Post-Reichenbach fic about John, because clearly there wasn’t enough depressing post-Reichenbach fic around already. I SENSED A NEED.
idk, when something makes me cry, I feel an overwhelming urge to write a story that will make it even worse. It’s a sickness with me. Maybe I should have a ‘rubbing salt into the wound’ tag.
Spoilers through The Reichenbach Fall, and BBC Sherlock doesn’t belong to me.
Thank you to zephy_magnum for the beta! Or maybe…sorry for making you beta this? BOTH, EITHER.
My Life That You Might Live
The funeral is unbearable.
Most of the funerals John’s attended have been military; they’ve had a smooth, ceremonial competence to them that he misses desperately. The unvarying structure is a relief-it permits the illusion that death is one more thing your commanding officers are prepared for and have fully under control. Military funerals are characterized by ritual and discipline. Silent respect. Quiet, dignified tears.
Civilian funerals are a madhouse by comparison. Rambling speeches, sobbing, confusion as to when things are meant to happen. Civilians don’t pretend to have any control over death; they’re bewildered and afraid and make no effort to hide it.
The last civilian funeral John attended was his mother’s. He remembers very little of it, but though it must have been horrifying, he’s sure it was less horrifying than this. Here, every confused face, every missed cue, the insultingly small number of people-they all remind John of his own failures. They remind him that it was his duty to prevent Sherlock from doing anything too insane, and he couldn’t possibly have failed him more comprehensively than this.
It’s nightmarish, so it has that much in common with the days that led up to it, the months that follow it.
* * *
John, says Lestrade, I know you’re having a difficult time-
Thank you. It’s important to be polite at moments like this. But I’ll be fine.
Right. Of course. Look, you have to believe that if I’d known he would-if it had even crossed my mind-
I know, John says. Greg, I know. And he does know, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking, I’ll never trust you again.
He also knows that isn’t fair.
* * *
Sometimes he believes he is fine. Surprisingly fine, considering he half expected life to just…stop. But of course it hasn’t; the world doesn’t care that John’s tired of it. If there’s any difference at all, it’s that everything seems slightly muffled, a bit flat.
And then there are moments of sharp clarity, moments when John’s walking down the street and notices a tall man with dark hair, someone in a dramatic coat, a determined walk, a deep voice, a knowing smirk-and he knows it’s Sherlock for a split second before logic dashes the awful hope. And abruptly it’s all new, all over again, and it stabs and twists and he has to put his back to a wall and make himself breathe.
He doesn’t cry in public. Crying in public is ridiculous. Everyone’s life is hard, he knows this. The fact that this is a bad month for him is no excuse to make a spectacle of himself. No excuse to make himself a burden. God knows Harry does enough of that for the entire family.
So he hides away in empty spaces, where there’s no one to see, and he breathes for a while. Until it doesn’t hurt anymore, or at least not as much. Until the edges blur. Until he’s functional. Then he gets on with life.
It should be so easy, walking, breathing, working. It used to be easy, he remembers. But maybe that’s the problem; maybe he’d be better off remembering less. He doesn’t plan to test that theory, though, because if he doesn’t have memories, he has nothing at all. If he can’t have the real thing, he’ll settle for ghosts.
He certainly prefers the ghosts to the black car with government plates that sometimes drives past, too slow for traffic. He stares at the tinted windows and defies it to stop, dares it to stop for him.
It never does.
* * *
You look…are you, um. On a diet?
Molly’s found him again. He’d love to know how she does it, if only so he can work out how to avoid her. She just appears once a month or so, and maneuvers him into coffee or lunch. He can’t imagine why she bothers. The only thing they have in common is a corpse.
Oh, no. Just lost a bit of weight. Been doing a lot of walking.
But-
It’s really nothing to worry about, Molly.
…You know he wouldn’t want you to be sad.
John isn’t particularly interested in hearing about what Sherlock Holmes would want. If Sherlock wanted something from him, he could be here, and he could ask for it. But he isn’t here, is he? Because he threw himself off the top of a bleeding hospital.
John realizes he’s glaring at Molly, and turns away.
Look, I. I know it’s not my place, but it’s not really anyone’s place, is it? That’s the problem. He wouldn’t-you know he wouldn’t be making you this unhappy if he had a choice.
None of this is Molly’s fault, and she shouldn’t have to deal with John screaming at her. Not even if she’s been the worst at mastering the tense shift, and it hurts every time she slips.
He did have a choice, John insists, as close to calm as he can manage. He had the choice to not jump.
Molly turns her coffee cup in a nervous full circle, staring at him helplessly, almost frustrated. Sometimes, she says, it’s not as much of a choice as it…looks like it is.
John has no idea what to make of that.
* * *
He’s sectioning off London. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize it, but that’s exactly what he’s doing. Well, that, and also making himself something of an expert on CCTV blind spots.
Red zones include: Baker Street and environs, New Scotland Yard, Buckingham Palace, Barts. John stays well clear of red zones, and tries not to flinch visibly when they’re mentioned.
Yellow zones include places he and Sherlock only went incidentally, accidentally, not favored or especially memorable. On good days, John can walk through yellow zones and not expect to mistake every tall man who passes for his flatmate. (John had always thought of Sherlock as so unusual, so unmistakable and extraordinary, but now everyone looks like him. It’s amazing what wishful thinking can do.)
Green zones are places John and Sherlock never went, never discussed. John’s life is all but put on hold if he stays exclusively in green zones, but he can do it if he has to. And some days, he does have to.
* * *
It gets easier, love, Mrs. Hudson says, but John’s not sure what she would know about it. She’s only ever lived with one person, and she might as well have killed him herself.
Does it? he asks.
It’s the only thing it can do, at this point. She pats him on the cheek. Until he met Mrs. Hudson, John had only ever read about women who patted loved ones on the cheek.
* * *
John’s given Sherlock a thousand lectures on what exactly is going to happen to him if (when, if) he turns up again, miraculously not dead, laughing at the lot of them. The fact that Sherlock isn’t actually present for these lectures bothered John at first, but he’s decided he no longer cares. If he wants to shout at his dead flatmate inside his head, no one has to know, and no one can stop him.
They all say madness as if it’s such a bad thing.
John knows Sherlock, knows that if Sherlock’s not dead, he’ll show up at John’s flat one day with no explanation. He’ll just walk in. And John will most likely punch him in the face again, or possibly even shoot him, nothing fatal, just an ankle so the bastard can’t run. Maybe John will grab him by his absurdly long neck, slam him into a wall, and explain in detail what this has been like, how it’s felt to be bleeding out from a wound that doesn’t show. Explain that whatever Sherlock thought he was doing, he should have done it with John. That anything he needed, he could have taken from John. That his lack of faith is unbelievable, after everything. After everything.
John finds himself silently promising not to break Sherlock’s nose if he’ll only come home. He abruptly recognizes this as the bargaining stage of grief, and has to lock himself in his flat and laugh hysterically for hours.
For all his daydreams of reunion, John knows perfectly well that Sherlock is dead. He’s a doctor and a soldier; he knows better than most that everyone dies, that no one is immune. It’s nothing short of absurd to hope that Sherlock might be. Still, it’s one thing to know he’s dead, and another thing entirely to believe in the unthinkable.
(Sherlock hadn’t seemed remotely suicidal; none of his behavior made sense. If Irene Adler could fake her death, why not Sherlock Holmes?)
(But John watched him fall.)
(But Sherlock can do anything.)
(But John touched his corpse.)
If Sherlock is dead, John has questions instead of lectures, all of them are painful, and none of them will ever be answered. Why did you lie to me? Why did you leave? How did I fail you so badly? Didn’t you know I would have done anything for you?
When John’s father died, it shook his world to the foundation. Not because John was so fond of his father-he hated his father, to be honest-but because parents are a cornerstone, something to define yourself by. He didn’t know who he was without a father to hate, and the learning was slow and painful and confusing. It took years and the army and a few of his own brushes with death to work it out.
He was much more efficient about the process when his mother died-apparently practice makes perfect. With both parents gone, John and Harry were orphans, defined by what they’d lost. But John was still a soldier, he was still something. He managed to keep his balance, the second time around.
He lost it when the army was taken from him. He found it again by centering his life around Sherlock. And now Sherlock is gone, and here he is, back at square one.
John is tired of fighting this fight. If nothing else, the repetition is becoming annoying (boring, obvious). He’s not looking for balance anymore. He doesn’t need to be anything. John Watson, abandoned. Fine.
The boyfriend comments, he notes with bleak amusement, died with Sherlock. Suddenly no one wants to believe they were together, because apparently a grieving friend is less awkward than a grieving boyfriend. John considers doing an abrupt about-face himself; insisting everyone was right all along out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He manages to resist-the thought of follow on questions is too much. And the joke isn’t worth the trouble unless Sherlock’s there to laugh at it.
John finds that very little is worth the trouble now. Less every day.
* * *
Don’t be dead, he tells the gravestone, which, much like Sherlock, never listens. The idea that you’re dead is ridiculous, and I know you are ridiculous, but this is taking it too far. You see so much, Sherlock. You must’ve seen that I couldn’t even work out how to live before I met you, so how-
You think I’m like you, you think I understand things when I don’t, you think I can cope with anything, but I can’t cope with this. I’m not even sure it’s worth trying.
Sherlock, please.