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Dear S.,
I’m writing this only because my bloody therapist has insisted I do it. Not a personal blog, just a regular old wordpress account which neither DI L. nor anyone else will ever stumble upon. I haven’t the faintest idea what she expects this to achieve. You’re dead. It’s not like you’ll ever read these. No one will. Only me. A constant reminder that you’ll never read them and bitch about the science, John! What about the Science?!?! Or criticize my spelling or grammar or general syntax. You really are an annoying dick.
Were.
Fuck.
JW
Dear S.,
You have been dead for two months. I have finally moved back into Baker Street. I wasn’t going to. I really couldn’t afford it. But after I stopped showing up at the private practice, I was let go. Turns out A&E had an opening for a general practitioner and it’s twice what I made before. I suspect MH. So, I can make the rent and besides, I couldn’t just leave Mrs. Hudson. She said that losing one of us was unbearable enough. I had to stay.
I packed away most of your things. Haven’t touched your room. But I cleaned out the refrigerator. Threw out your questionables, because really – why did you have a jam jar full of earlobes? One more damn question you’ll never answer. Shrink thinks that I should send you some texts. Says that there are things I still need to say to you, even though you’re fucking dead and can’t hear me.
So far, I don’t honestly see how texting empty words to a broken phone is going to make anything better. But for the first few weeks after… well, I did take to calling your voicemail. I just needed to hear your stupid, poncy, insufferable, self-rightous… Shit. Hell, I’m actually hitting the keys so hard, they’re starting to stick.
I’m still angry, S. And I don’t know how to make that anger go away.
JW
Dear S.,
Finally tried texting your phone. You didn’t text back. Unsurprisingly, because you’re dead. No one reads this blog. Good. It means I’ve kept it relatively well hidden from the people who really should not be reading it.
You know, while I was poking through all your old stuff (yes, I went into your room) I found your secret book collection. Fiction, S.? Not only that, but Urban Fantasy fiction? Really? I mean, granted; the pages were worn, covered in margin notes, long sections were crossed over with the word “BORING” and every time one of the characters even thinks about doing something magical, you start writing down formulas on the side of the page to try and disprove their entire world to them. It made me laugh. Then it made me miss you.
Also, the text went like this:
JW: this is stupid.
SH:
JW: You’re dead.
SH:
JW: this was a waste of my time.
SH:
JW: I wish you hadn’t died.
SH:
You never texted back.
JW
Dear S.,
So, I found some of your old books from university; an ethics book you wrote all over and an Advanced Chemistry book that looks as if you slept with it like a teddy bear. I also found some pictures of you, ones you certainly never showed me. I suspect MH of having taken several of them. You’re smiling very stiffly when you seem to remember the camera is there at all.
I suspect the woman beside you in your graduation photo was your mother. She was lovely. I wish I could have met her. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
There is a book, buried under all of your old school shit that had a lock and no key. I suppose I shouldn’t open it. All that bollocks about the secrets of the dead… what would you do? Come back to life and yell at me for snooping? Ha! If I thought that would work… well, I’d do it right now. Fuck.
More texts (because my therapist is slightly more screwed up than I am)
JW: I don’t expect you to answer.
SH:
JW: I want you to know that I do not stare at my phone waiting for a reply that I know won’t come.
SH:
JW: You fucking bastard…
JW
Der Shhhh.,
It wuldn’t do to have the world over kno who I am refering to. Ths must be the vrebose kind of drunk txting for the man with the masive intlecct that slaptered all over the ground. Fuck, Shrlock, how could you do it? How culd you make me wacth? If you just had to go and kill yurself, why did I have to see it?
Do you kno wat hapens to peple who watch the people they love kill themslves? It fucks us up, you bstard. I broke into yur stupid jornsl.
JW
Dear S.,
Bloody hangover. Jesus, I can’t believe I actually wrote that last night. Fine, you can bitch about that post. Fine. Good.
Well, as it says, I broke into your journal. I was drunk, curious, so on and et cetera. I had to know. Fucking Christ, S., why didn’t you tell me? Especially about SW? I can’t believe we actually did a case for that asshole. Is that why you were so keen to introduce me as your “friend” to him while you call me a “colleague” to everyone else? Because he made your life miserable?
God, I even know what you’d say to me right now if you were alive. You’d be pissed I violated your privacy (hypocrite) and you’d be evasive and just a general dick about it. Then you’d clam up and refuse to speak to me for the next three days until L. dragged you out of your mood with some new case and you’d drag me along in a whirlwind of excitement I bloody miss that. I bloody miss you.
JW
Dear S.,
This blog got one hit. I don’t know if I should delete it or not. I don’t want anyone reading this. I don’t want anyone to derive any kind of enjoyment from these blogs because I write them as a way to get over losing my best friend.
My best friend. Because I couldn’t see what everyone else seemed to see. You and I… No. I won’t – can’t – start thinking like that. If I do, I’ll go insane and I will never know if I’m having these thoughts because I truly… or if it’s because you’re dead and I’ll never have to face that kind of rejection.
I think it’s time to start packing up your room. Maybe find a new flat share. Maybe start dating again. You left a hole that can’t be filled. But I know that if I just keep going the way that I am – get up in the morning, work, go home, drink, sleep, rinse and repeat – I’m going to really lose it and that would do nothing but annoy and confuse you.
You never did pick up on the finer points of tact, did you?
JW
Dear S.,
I know right now that this is not going to be easy to write. It’s been weeks since I updated this bloody blog and there seems to be one reader who just keeps coming back. I suspect it’s MH. Upon a reading of previous posts, I realize I suspect MH of quite a lot of things. I think I got that from you.
I went on a date two nights ago. A woman I met at A&E. A nurse. She was stunning with blue eyes and black hair and pale skin. She was taller than me. Who isn’t? We had dinner and drinks and sex. It was a wonderful evening.
But every moment felt wrong. I was in the wrong bed with the wrong person and doing all the wrong things. I didn’t want to be shagging this woman. I didn’t want to be shagging at all, and especially not with a woman who was ten years too young with eyes that were too blue and hair that was too long and skin that was too…
Jesus, what have you done to me? How bloody long did I feel like this before you died? How many girlfriends did I ignore until they went away and left me with the one person I wanted as a constant? How long did I resent and envy IA for having all of your attention?
Everything hurts. I want you to come home. I want you to just do one last miraculous thing and not be dead anymore because for God’s sake, S., I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Not alone. Not for the rest of my life.
I close my eyes to sleep and all I can see is that you’re falling and bleeding out and dying right in front of me. And there was not a fucking thing I could do to save you. I hate you for it, I hate you for putting this on me. For making me watch. You don’t do that to the people you love, you bastard, and that’s the worst part.
The very first case we worked together, you asked me what my last thought would be if I were dying. Now I want to know… what was yours?
What was your dying thought, Sherlock? Fucking rise from the dead and tell me. Just tell me.
JW
Hands shaking violently, John Watson closed the lid on his laptop and the three-day-old post in which he’d begged a dead man to tell him his dying thoughts. This was too much, all of it. Come the weekend, he was going to pack up Sherlock’s room and delete the blog, and move on with his life. Not that he didn’t say that every night, but he was a doctor he was self-aware enough to know that he was slowly self-destructing.
He’d write a goodbye. One last bog and he’d put his time with Sherlock Holmes in the grave beside his best friend. Where, his therapist told him, it belonged. He was going to move on, he was going to live his life and let go of his friend’s ghost.
But first…
Dear S.,
I am writing this as a goodbye. It’s time. It’s just… time. My therapist, well, she’s a shade off useless but she might actually be right about this. I have spent the past year blurring the lines between what is actual emotion and what is survivor’s guilt.
The only thing I am sure of is that I loved you. I loved you as a brother, and a friend. I was in love with you. Even if I didn’t know it, everyone around me certainly did. I don’t think the most brilliant man in the world could possibly have missed that detail when even his brother knew it the first time he met me.
I don’t think I’d know it now if not for the fact that you died. It’s amazing, the kind of clarity that comes with hindsight. I will probably never get over you, but I can let you go. I have to. This has gotten unhealthy on my end. I still rely on you to keep me whole. I’m clinging to the ghost of a memory. I can’t do that anymore.
Goodbye, Sherlock. I know you never believed in the afterlife, but I have to. Because how else will I see you again? That right there is something to live for and look forward to.
I love you.
John H. Watson
John had barely hit the “Post” button when there was a knock on the door. A commanding, persistent, annoying knock on the door. Pounding, really.
John sighed. It was probably Mycroft, timing to the millisecond when John posted his final blog just so that he could scold the good doctor about writing such horrible sentimentality. John was tempted to yell at him to piss off, but he heaved himself out of his chair, upending the Union Jack pillow as he shuffled unenthusiastically to the door and wrenched it open with an epithet about cake weighing down his tongue.
What he got was a mouth full of soft lips, a stray black curl tickling his cheek bone and the smell of ink and embalming fluid and utter madness that still ghosted through 221B Baker Street a year later. It was, to John, the smell of adventure and friendship and home.
“You, John,” Sherlock whispered against the doctor’s stunned lips, “My last thought, my only thought since that day, has been of you.”
John, running on instinct as his mind sputtered and sizzled and utterly shut down, curled white-knuckled hands into the lapels of the dead detective’s coat, breathing in those phantom smells and thinking that if this was a dream please god don’t ever wake him.
In the deepest part of his thinking mind, he knew that he was going to be furious when the rest of his brain kicked back in. He knew he was going to push Sherlock (because on some level, he knew this was no dream, even if it was all muddled with grief and shock) away and probably punch him right in his deserving face.
But that could wait until his heart stopped slamming against his ribs and his lips no longer tingled from the force of Sherlock’s kiss. Which, John hoped, was never.
Dear J.,
An anonymous post on the secondary blog of Doctor John H. Watson read,
It came down to a choice between my career, my intellect, my reputation and my life… or yours. The decision was not a difficult one to make. I chose you. I jumped. I love you.
Forgive me.
SH