Sherlock (BBC) Fanfiction: Pressure on the Fracture Line
Pressure on the Fracture Line.
Summary: (Follows The Reichenbach Fall.) Sherlock finally comes back, and he finds out that’s easier said than done. (Or: John can’t believe his eyes. No, really, he can’t.) One shot.
A/N: S2 SPOILERS! Warnings for some psychological fuckery.
Reason I wrote this? People kept telling me to write about the reunion and I wondered, What is the worst, most horribly depressing reunion scenario possible? Thus, this was born. Enjoy~.
*Insert maniacal laughter.*
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Everything shuts down apart from the bare minimum. Eat. Sleep. Smile at Mrs Hudson. Go to work. Buy groceries. Eat. Sleep. Balance the budget. Ignore the empty seat across from him. Ignore the clean kitchen table. Ignore the violin case. Eat. Sleep. Work. Clean his gun. Clean his gun again. Sleep. Nightmares. Work.
Survive.
-
He knows enough to say he’s going into shock. PTSD. Once again, a soldier thrust out of the war zone.
He’s useless, now.
-
John reads a lot these days. Mostly fantasy novels because scientific journals and non-fiction texts remind him of Sherlock. Almost makes one wonder why he doesn’t read cheesy romances in hardback, but hell, John didn’t read those before Sherlock.
He reads because for a few weeks he couldn’t stand to watch the television, couldn't bear to log online, and a habit formed. He reads and reads and reads until his eyes lose focus and he can fall asleep.
Eat. Read. Sleep.
It’s enough, most nights.
-
Sometimes though, he wakes up screaming.
Don’t-
-
He is a doctor and he knows the signs of depression well enough, thank you very much. So he makes an effort. He goes off to see Mike over a coffee, see Bill at the pub, chat to Sarah about seeing a movie (as friends), even finds his way to Harry’s place to share an awkward late lunch, and makes sure to have tea with Mrs Hudson at least three times a week.
None of them discuss Sherlock, and he’s fine with that, he really is.
Once, he goes back to talk to his therapist and Ella’s kind, she really is, but she’s as helpful as she was the last time. This is to say, she doesn’t help him at all.
-
He talks to Lestrade, talks to Mycroft, even tracks down that bloody journalist and has a word with her. None of them have heard from either Moriarty or Brook since Sherlock’s death and John can only wonder what that means.
Only wonder, because there’s nothing left for him to do now.
(Mycroft tells him to stay safe, but all John can hear is, you’re a civilian now.)
-
It really does feel like he has been discharged all over again. Perhaps it’s a little worse, somehow, knowing that miracles really don’t happen twice and madmen like Sherlock were one in a million.
Late at night, when John is on the edge of consciousness and sleep, he will wonder:
Did Sherlock just delay the inevitable?
-
It gets easier.
-
He doesn’t need a flatmate.
-
He doesn’t need a best friend.
-
He’s fine. Everything’s fine.
-
John’s never been good at lying, even to himself.
-
For a while, John tries to pick up a few people, but the relationships hardly last any longer than a few weeks. His partners tell him he’s distant, and he can’t blame them.
He’s still scared.
-
He’s just going through the motions.
-
Eighteen months-
of laughter and car chases and gun fire and criminals and of running and deductions and cups of tea and criminal masterminds and cases and quiet nights in with crappy telly and plucked violin strings and body parts in the fridge and of friendship, trust and loyalty
-all disappears in the time it takes for a man to fall from a rooftop.
(Spoiler alert: it doesn’t take that long at all.)
-
He wouldn’t change anything for the world.
-
On cold days, his shoulder aches and he thinks, no, not even that.
-
At the seven month point, things inexplicably start to change. People around John notice that he is smiling more, laughing more, readily engaging in conversation about the weather or the news and it almost seems like John has moved on.
Not quite, but close enough.
Sometimes, when John is doing something, he’ll tilt his head nearly imperceptibly and think, I wonder what Sherlock would think-say-do?
A different voice in his mind-a lower, husky baritone-begins to answer him.
-
Imaginary friends are the coping mechanisms of the lonely.
John agrees, but that doesn’t mean he wants it to stop.
-
Objectively, he knows it isn’t real. This version of Sherlock is not a constant nuisance, rarely crying out calls of bored to break the peace. This version of Sherlock can’t carry out questionable experiments in the kitchen or torture violin strings in the early hours of the morning.
This Sherlock usually lets John hold him in the nights, sometimes, which is nice but undoubtedly different.
This Sherlock is warm and gives his smiles freely-though only to John, for him and him alone-and he seems happy; content.
That, out of everything, convinces John that all of this-the conversations, the touches, the looks-none of them are real. He looks at his leg though, psychosomatic limp sporadically present, notably gone when Sherlock is there, and figures, real or not real, it doesn’t matter.
-
Pain is in the mind.
-
Reality fragments, but less than you would think. John lived around Sherlock while he was living, is it really so surprising that continues whilst he is dead?
-
The sugar pot always empties and refills, not because John likes it in his coffee, but Sherlock does. John is still in the habit of drawing out two mugs, making enough for two.
Sherlock tells him repeatedly, amused, that he can’t drink his mug, you should know that.
John nods and smiles and tells him, “It’s the thought that counts.”
-
Mrs Hudson still shoots him subtle, worried looks, and John goes to Sherlock’s gravesite with her one Sunday morning.
This time, he doesn’t say anything, just touches the cool stone and moves on.
Anything he has to say to Sherlock, he can, when he’s back at 221B Baker Street and no one is there to see.
-
In a weird way, they’ve changed roles. Instead of John helping Sherlock, Sherlock is helping John with his work. The patients roll in, secrets tattooed to their skin, stitched in the lining of their clothes, braided in their hair, and Sherlock reads them, recites them, amused and derisive and one day while on a break, Sarah tells him that it’s nice to see he’s always smiling when he’s come in to work.
A ghost of a hand is touching his shoulder, gently, a pressure there that isn’t there, and John nods and says, “I’m as happy as I can get, I think. Which is happy enough.”
-
It’s been a year and a half and word on the street is that Moriarty’s dead, someone shot him in the head, someone poisoned his tea, someone slit his throat in the dead of night. There are rumours in the homeless network-a few of which John still talk to-and recounts of a bloated body found in the Thames, stories of a body hanging from the arms of the Big Ben, a corpse found in the Eye. It seems like even in the whispers of death that Moriarty’s presence is inescapable in London.
Sherlock is sitting on the couch and he is laughing. “Moriarty is as dead as you are, John. Don’t let your guard down.” And John isn’t quite sure that night whether those were his own thoughts or Sherlock’s words, but ultimately they boil down to the same thing, don’t they?
“I want to kill him,” John says, and not for the first time. It won’t be for the last time, but Sherlock smiles, humouring him, and asks not for the first time and not for the last time, “How would you do it? How would you kill the man that killed me?”
John’s answer always changes though. There are a million ways John wants that man to die, but he knows deep down that he won’t be able to carry out a single one.
-
No one ever moves in to cover Sherlock’s portion of the rent, and Mrs Hudson never asks.
However, one mention of a tight budget to Sarah and John suddenly finds himself with a new job-better hours, better pay-and it is too coincidental not to reek of Mycroft’s interference. He would complain, he really would, but it hits him, then, that without Sherlock, there wouldn’t be many people for Mycroft to look after, to banter with, to care for in his own twisted, manipulative way.
John thinks about calling Mycroft, to say thank you, to ask him out for a drink, to just tell him he knows, he gets it, really, losing a best friend is like losing a brother, almost, but in the end John does nothing. It’s not that he forgets, it’s just easier not to think about it too hard.
-
A late ride on the tube has John meeting face-to-face in a painfully awkward encounter with Henry Knight, who steers polite conversation with all due tact, but his mere presence dregs up the memory of Sherlock. It does not need to be said, because without Sherlock they never would have met and perhaps Henry would still be waking in the nights screaming for a demon dog to stay away from him and John would still have nightmares of Afghanistan instead of a war in central London.
John spends that evening shouting at Sherlock, who stands there and takes the verbal abuse, all of it, the screams of why did you jump, why did you leave me, don’t you have a fucking heart-and John is worn away by time, by the rasp of his throat, but a sudden heavy onset of fatigue, and for hours afterwards he simply holds onto Sherlock, who isn’t there, he knows, but he so desperately wishes that he can almost feel warmth and a heartbeat running underneath his fingertips.
-
The next day, he is smiling. No one notices that it isn’t real. It doesn’t matter. People see what they want to see, and Sherlock says, no one observes, and John counters with, if they looked a little closer, they’d see I’d be talking to someone who didn’t exist.
Sherlock, the arrogant sod, disagrees, claiming, “I only need to exist to you. They don’t matter.”
-
Someone has left a note at the gravesite, a slip of paper that reads, I believe in Sherlock Holmes, and John scrunches it up, scowling, suddenly hugely, irrationally angry. He believes in Sherlock, too, never ever considered him to be a madman or a liar or a crook and what did that give him? Nothing but a media backlash and a hole in his chest the size of his fist, eating him from the inside out.
Life isn’t a movie, there is no pixie powder, there is no magic where belief can bring back the dead like Tinkerbell, there is no point to believing, and his bad leg collapses and he is kneeling before Sherlock’s grave and Sherlock is standing beside the tombstone looking as pale as a spectre with the saddest expression on his face and John can’t breathe.
He believes in Sherlock, but sometimes he wishes he didn’t.
It would be so much easier, that way.
-
Two years have passed, and John sees Sherlock less. He still appears, in the periphery, the corners of his eye, a shadow that disappears if you blink too soon. He does not think of Sherlock as much and perhaps that is for the best.
All of that is forgotten, though, on those nights where Sherlock does show his face, knowing smile, too bright eyes.
“Where were you?” John asks, he always asks these days, but Sherlock never answers. Perhaps, he can’t. Perhaps, John won’t let him.
-
It’s been a week and John hasn’t seen Sherlock for more than a second. He flees from the scene and attempts at catching him amounts to fingers clawing at empty air. Mrs Hudson thinks he’s coming down with a ‘flu, you look so pale, and he shrugs and says something like, it’s the season for it.
The next day it’s snowing and he thinks he can see fairy lights blinking and if he concentrates, he can hear carollers singing. Mrs Hudson is out to see distant relatives and the flat seems emptier than normal. John calls Harry, twice, but she doesn’t pick up. John waits for Sherlock, but he doesn’t turn up.
John spends that Christmas Eve alone. He expects the same for Christmas Day.
-
Alone, he has time to think.
John finally makes up his mind and a weight is lifted from his shoulders.
He cleans the flat, humming Deck the Halls lightly under his breath.
-
Christmas morning is beautifully quiet, peaceful, so John shouldn’t be waking up so early, and he senses too slowly that someone is nudging his arm softly, someone that isn’t Mrs Hudson and instinctively he swings a punch and by the resounding crack it collides right on mark.
It takes him a moment to realise that Sherlock is lying unconscious on the floor, another moment to think, of course the bastard chooses to turn up now, and another to wonder why it hurts his knuckles so much to hit a figment of his imagination.
Well, first things first. Sherlock’s been running away so often, best to keep him in place for this.
-
“What did you do?” Sherlock asks him, sounding petulant and confused and almost afraid, rattling his wrist from where it’s cuffed to the radiator.
“Those are the handcuffs from the night we ran from the police,” John says amiably. If he says so himself, it was a stroke of brilliance to handcuff Sherlock to something. Perhaps that will convince his subconscious to keep the man in the same room with him for more than two minutes.
Though, it’s funny, John thinks, because Sherlock looks gaunt and tired and drastically pale, eyes too big and cheeks too sharp, not like the Sherlock John usually envisions. He’s so much more present, warm and solid under fingertips, and it’s almost jarring.
Something shifts in Sherlock’s expression, a familiar look of dawning understanding. He almost breathes out the realisation, “You don’t think I’m real, do you?”
John smiles at him. “No, I don’t. Thankfully, I’m not entirely insane.”
“John, John, John, it’s me, I’m Sherlock.”
“Of course you are,” John says, amused.
“I am,” Sherlock insists. His sudden change of behaviour only re-enforces John’s decision. This can’t go any longer. Soon, he’ll believe Sherlock is alive and where would that lead to?
“You’re dead,” he says firmly.
“Just let me go and I’ll prove I’m really not,” Sherlock says, and he is straining so hard against his handcuffs that John can see the pale skin at the wrist redden.
John picks up his gun, checks that it’s loaded, checks the safety is off and when he looks up again, Sherlock is shaking his head.
“John,” he says, and then he starts to yell, “JOHN! No, NO, don’t do this!”
“Why are you shouting?” John asks, curious. He feels suddenly very distant from himself. It’s not an unpleasant experience.
“So whatever minion Mycroft has outside can hear and they can come in and stop you from doing something very stupid,” Sherlock hisses and it makes John laugh.
“Only I can hear you, Sherlock,” John says. “Only I can see you.”
“No,” Sherlock gasps, tone changing to something pleading, more desperate. John has never heard Sherlock sound like that before. “I swear to you, the suicide was a lie, it was a fake, just wait-”
“I waited three years.”
“Then you can wait two more minutes,” Sherlock snaps, impatient, aggressive.
“I’ll see you soon, don’t worry,” John says in a placating voice. He never knew he would have to convince his subconscious this is a good idea; he thought he had made his peace with this hours before. “Goodbye, Sherlock.”
“Don’t-”
John takes the gun and puts under his jaw. He hears the gunshot sound and everything echoes for a split second, a burst of vivid light, the swiftness sensation of blinding pain and then-
“NO!”
(Please God, let him see Sherlock one last time. Please.)
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A/N: trololol ahahaha no regrets, I am a terrible person. :)
Admittedly, not my best work (holy run on sentences, Batman!), just something I churned out when I was feeling a tad sadistic. This is not how I imagined John would react post!TRF, but writing it was still fun.
Out of curiosity, how many of my readers hate me now for this? COME AT ME, BRO!