Chapter Text
John wakes on day sixty-three and wonders if he’ll ever wake up without counting days ever again.
He knows there’s something he’s missing in all of this, in Sherlock’s last, calculated, and unbelievable words, something jagged to hold onto, something to catch and hold against his heart, to buoy him in the long days to come. To help stave off the regrets that claw at him, threaten to drag him under with constant twilight repetition of every single tender and heated and unsaid thing that had built up in his heart for eighteen months, despite his best efforts to shed them.
The flat is quiet, sunlight filtering through half-opened curtains, dust shimmering and swirling in the slight breeze from the cracked window. It’s a picture-perfect summer morning, and all John wants to do is go back to bed, hoping, as he’s hoped every morning for sixty-three days, that when he next wakes up, it will have all been nothing but a horrible, twisted, unbelievable dream.
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It isn’t, though, and John knows it. Day sixty-four looks a whole lot like day sixty-three when John wakes again and pulls on his trousers and shirt. He makes tea and toast, because now the bread is in the breadbox and tea is in the tin, the kettle is actually working and John doesn’t have to go on a hunt for the last unbroken or uncontaminated mug. He swipes a hand across the spotless worktop to brush off crumbs and takes his breakfast to the table, pulls out a chair and sits down with a sigh.
It’s too quiet without all the clattering noise Sherlock would make at any hour of the day, so John switches on the news just to have something to take up the echoing space left in the flat where books and butterflies and bubbling chemicals used to reside. The lump in his throat looms large, so he takes a sip of tea, only to find that it’s stone cold for the fourth morning in a row. He hates that he does that, gets lost in reverie, but he can’t seem to stop himself, can’t shake himself loose enough to simply live, to get on with his day without finding large chunks of it taken up by grief.
Regardless, he does have responsibilities, so he pulls on his shoes, locks the door and makes his way to work. To absolutely no one’s surprise he sees the woman with the green bag is there on the tube platform, waiting. He gets in and takes his usual seat in the corner at the front left, and she sits on the right, drops her bag and rummages around for a novel. He wonders how far she’s gotten in “Pacific Passion” by today.
She smiles at him over the top of her book; a quick, flirtatious quirk of her lips. Oh.
John manages to smile back but hopes he doesn’t encourage her. Once, perhaps, he’d have crossed the aisle and teased her about her choice in reading material, charmed her number out of her and taken her on a date in one more attempt at moving past a hopeless infatuation with dark curls and a quicksilver mind. But it would be no more possible now than it was even then, not when his dreams, sometimes chaste and sometimes not, of Sherlock still don’t abate, day after monotonous day.
The train stops with a jerk, and John tries not to jostle people on his way off. He leaves the station and walks the rest of the way to Bart’s, midway through the third week on the job and his first attempt at some ramshackle construction of a life. Working in the morgue wasn’t what he’d expected to be doing and isn't really what he wants to be doing, but it seemed appropriate, given all that he’s encountered and learned over the last two years. When Mike had mentioned over a quick pint one evening that the morgue had space for an assistant and trainee, well. Why not? He certainly doesn’t need the money, Sherlock had seen to that, but going back to school for pathology is better than sitting on the sofa being miserable.
"Morning John!" Molly says, ponytail twitching over her shoulder as she turns to pull her white coat on. "Had two in overnight so I've got the space cleared. You did say you were done with Mrs. Blevins, correct?" Molly's fingers fly over the keyboard, bringing up Mrs. Blevins (77, died after being hit by a car) and giving her approval to John's report.
“Yeah,” John says and stands over her shoulder, examining the work list for the day. Two autopsies and associated paperwork, lovely. Hopefully they’re still fresh. He has trouble with the ones that aren’t. “She’s ready for release.”
“Good, her family is waiting for the report. They’re filing a lawsuit against the driver, it seems.”
“Okay.” John still isn’t good with more than one-word sentences these days, so the relative isolation of the autopsy bay in the basement is a pretty soothing place for him, even with the never-ending, , ghostly presence of Sherlock. Perhaps because of it.
John finds himself ruminating about the last time he saw Sherlock in Molly’s office, nonchalantly draped in her visitor’s chair and doing his best to awkwardly charm her out of an autopsy report. Something had changed in her since Christmas, something that straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin and made her give Sherlock a wry twitch of the lips and a roll of her eyes before letting him examine the report.
John never did find out what it was, and he hasn’t yet thought to ask.
“I said, d’you want to have dinner tonight?” Molly says again and John starts, refocuses. “I mean, nothing fancy, just a Chinese, but, well, I thought you might like some company.”
John panics for a moment. “Ah, Molly, I … I don’t think—“
“No!” She says, and looks horrified. “Oh no, not like that! I mean, I thought, well, I hate for you to be home alone so much, John, really.”
“It’s fine, Molly. It’s kind of you, but I’m doing okay, most days. It’ll just take time.”
“Oh, okay. That’s fine, then. But I’m here if you need me.” She flashes a nervous smile, and John nods back, and they both go to work without another word said.
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Ten hours later and John’s ready to call it a day. His back hurts, his shoulder hurts, and, after the introspection of the morning, he’s been thinking of Sherlock much more than usual. It’s just … it was so pointless, and senseless, and he tries not to go over those last two days of insanity every single moment, but he misses Sherlock so much it’s a crushing weight on his heart, and it brings him near tears at unexpected moments.
It’s good he works in the basement, he supposes.
John showers and changes and packs up his things, waves a quick goodbye to Molly and decides to walk home in the warm summer evening. Walking clears his head, keeps him focused as he watches the people on the street, wonders what Sherlock would have made of them all. Reminds him of before, when things were exhilarating and that, in itself, was normal.
He finally reaches the front door of the flat and reaches into his pocket to find his keys aren’t there. He pats himself all over—jacket, trousers, looks in his bag—no keys. John sighs. They must be back in his locker. He grumbles as he flags down a cab, irritated at himself for the waste of money to simply pick up a set of keys and reminding himself that if he’d just put his keys in his bag every single time, he’d never have this problem.
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He’s three steps from Molly’s office door (lights on, why are the lights still on?) when he hears it.
“… and I’m not even supposed to be here! What would you have done if I’d been where I thought I’d be, which is at dinner with John?”
John frowns, wondering who Molly is speaking with. She seems irritated, hurried and nervous, and as he resolves to knock on the half-opened door and ask if things are okay, John hears a voice he never thought he’d hear again, a voice he thought stilled forever just outside two months ago.
“I’d have trusted you to make the appropriate adjustments. You’ve done surprisingly well so far, actually.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” Molly snaps. “Glad to know I’m now an accomplished liar.”
There’s a pause, then John hears Sherlock’s voice again, much quieter and sounding almost abashed. “Just pull those three and show them to me, quickly, please.”
The metal drawer next to Molly’s desk squeals open, and John finally shakes off his shock and pushes through the door.
He gets a glimpse of Sherlock’s panicked face on the screen—pale, thin, and hair shorn off—before the video screen goes black.
“What the hell was that?” he demands, rounding on Molly in a fury. She curls back in her chair.
“I—I—I was speaking to someone,” she starts, and John’s vision goes red, hands shaking.
“That wasn’t someone. That was Sherlock. Sherlock! You know, the dead one! What the hell kind of game are you playing?”
Molly slides from her seat and edges toward the door. She looks terrified, John thinks, and perhaps she should.
“Look, it’s not my secret! I promised, John, I’m sorry, but I promised!” Her voice is high, panicked, and her eyes look glassy, like she’s fighting not to cry.
It’s funny how trauma can split the mind, make you feel outside yourself. John’s experienced that at least twice; he never expected to feel it again. But the fury, the fear, the expanding bubble of hope he’s trying to fight down has him lightheaded, and he wants to grab Molly by the arms and shake her until she spills everything he wants to know. “Tell me where he is, Molly,” he says, and his voice has gone dark and quiet.
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t! I swear! He said he needed to let people think he was dead for a while and that you and Mrs. Hudson and Greg were threatened. I did what he asked but I don’t know where he is now!”
John takes a step toward her, the need to force a confession consuming him, but when Molly flinches, lifts her arms to shield her head, John’s better sense resurfaces and he falls back, horrified. This is Molly, his boss, his friend. He leans against the wall, then slides down until he’s crouched on the floor, chest heaving and blood rushing in his ears. He tries to push his hair back and realizes his hands are shaking so badly he can barely control them.
“Jesus, Molly, I’m so sorry, I—I don’t know…” he trails off, trembling, drops his face in his hands and tries to breathe. Sherlock’s alive. Alive, gloriously alive and John starts to laugh, the sound stretched and awful and uncontrollable until he feels Molly’s gentle hand on his shoulder and looks up. Her smile is bright but a little worried, and as John grips her arms the laughter turns to tears and he cries until he’s empty, there on the floor with Sherlock’s secret-keeper in the center of where their story began, and ended, and began again.
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“So you’re sure he’s not in England.” John twists the cap off another bottle of beer. They’d retreated to Molly’s flat, the better not to be overheard. If John had learned one thing in Sherlock’s company, it was that you never know who might be listening. Her sofa is deep and squashy and John’s had enough beer he feels like he’s melting into it.
Molly takes a deep pull and drops her head back against the sofa cushions. “Pretty sure. He sort of sounded like he was in France last week – he’d answered the door in French, anyway, while we were talking. I suppose it could have been Belgium.”
John rubs his hand across his forehead. “You do realize he could be in Canada. Hell, he could be in Africa!”
“I know that, but I don’t think he’s that far away, somehow.” She rolls her head to the side to face John. “Believe me, I wanted to tell you so many times. I told him he was wrong to keep this from you.”
John sobers quickly. “Yeah, well, not the first time he’s put one over on me. I still . . . I just can’t believe how well he, well, the both of you, managed to fool me.” God, he still just feels so stupid.
“Only for that quick second, John, that’s why you were pulled away so quickly—he knew you’d notice if you’d had time to…examine. He put one over on everyone, John. But I’ve never seen him so afraid, so serious. He was very determined, and he trusted me to help him.”
“I’m glad he has you. But I have to find him. You know I do. He won’t come home just because I’ve found him out.”
Molly sits up and puts her beer on the pristine coffee table. “John, I’m not trying to, to discourage you, but I think there was a very good reason he left. He said you were being threatened. And you wouldn’t even know where to start!”
“Maybe not, but I bet I know who might.” John hauls himself forward, pulls himself out of the enveloping cushions and leans his elbows on his knees. He can feel the need for action coalescing in his bones, the yen to get out and do something that’s been banked far too long. He’s had two months to mourn and an hour to rejoice. It’s time.
Title From: The Head and the Heart, Rivers and Roads