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Science and Faith	By : ambersue Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3734 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock (BBC). The show and all characters belong to BBC, Moffat, Gatiss, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't profit from a thing.

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I hear the angels talking, talking, talking,
Now I’m a dead man walking, walking, walking,
I hear the angels talking, talking, talking,
Now I’m a dead man¹

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“How long has it been now?” A ribbon of smoke uncurls from the Woman’s lips as she speaks. She didn’t smoke when she was living in London—bad for business, tasting like an ashtray— but her clientele here is far less illustrious. For a woman who makes her living exploiting other people’s vices, she seems to deny herself most of her own.

Sherlock is glad she’s picked up the habit. It makes the package of cigarettes in his breast pocket feel less indulgent.

“How long since I left, you mean? It’ll be three years next month.”

“Since you left. Is that really how you think of it?”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s unkind.”

She arches an eyebrow. “You already know it is. Don’t pretend with me, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Now that would be foolish. Can’t lie to a liar.”

“Quite the opposite, Mr. Holmes. Liars are the easiest to fool.”

His eyebrows draw together, his lips pursing thoughtfully around the filter of his cigarette. “And why is that?”

“Liars always assume everyone else is just like them. If you want to fool a liar, tell them the truth.”

His lips twist, but it’s not really a smile. “The truth, then.”

“You lied to the world, Mr. Holmes.” She flicks ash onto the pavement. Meets his gaze. “Oh, you had your reasons, and how very noble they were, indeed. But don’t pretend you were kind.”

“I won’t. Still, it’s hardly out of character, me being unkind.”

“Mmm.”

“The work is almost done now, anyway. All of Moriarty’s agents save one have been…eliminated.”

The Woman’s cigarette pauses on its way to her lips. “And what then?”

“After I’ve dealt with Moran? I’ll go back, I suppose. Won’t that take the wind out of Mycroft’s sails.”

“Do you really think he’s still waiting for you?”

“Moran is a foxhound—he won’t stop until he’s got his fox or his master calls him off, and as the latter is hardly an option anymore, yes, I suppose he is still waiting. As for Mycroft, I’d hardly call it waiting, but—”

She interrupts, the corners of her mouth turned down. “You know perfectly well I’m not talking about Jim’s lapdog or your big brother.”

His breath catches, and he hides it behind a flippant gesture, blowing a long stream of smoke through his nose. Yes, he knows what she’s asking. In the gathering dark, the glow of his cigarette stutters through the air between them. A thousand quick retorts are on his tongue: He’s probably just grateful to have a flat free of superfluous body parts. Or: Perhaps he’s improved his poetry enough to win himself a wife.

And: Why wouldn’t he be waiting? What other choice does he have?

Has he miscalculated? John is a constant—has been a constant since they met. Even in his exile, John is the fixed point around which he orbits. John doesn’t have to try, doesn’t have to be near him, doesn’t even have to know he’s alive; the man’s friendship is his anchor, and Sherlock has never thought about it as anything but permanent.

He realises his silence is betraying his sudden doubt, and hates himself for letting her see it. Hates her for sowing the seed in the first place.

The Woman’s smile is wicked, with a hint of sadness underneath. “Poor John. How have you managed it, all these years? Lying to a man that honest?”

What if John is not a constant? What if John is a variable? For the space of exactly three heartbeats, he can feel the whole chemistry of their friendship dissolving in a chaos of broken bonds and shed electrons, can almost see the double-helix of their entwined lives unraveling itself before him.

Sherlock says nothing. Loudly.

“It’s a bit like kicking a kitten, really,” says the Woman, and her cigarette makes a red dot beside her mouth, punctuating the off-hand statement with just a hint of fire.

***
After the first time, he only went to the grave on the anniversary. John went more often, but Sherlock couldn’t risk being seen in the vicinity of London. Hard enough getting in and out once a year. But he needs it, needs to see that John remembers him, that John is still there. Otherwise all his errands elsewhere seem largely pointless.

Which isn’t logical. Taking out Moriarty’s web of agents is anything but pointless. Sherlock is saving innocent lives, and more importantly, he’s protecting himself. How can ensuring one’s own survival be pointless? The fallacy bothers him, but he already knows the reason for it.

John would call it sentiment; Sherlock calls it inconvenient. Out loud he calls it that, and if he smiles a bit to think of it, if a psychosomatic warmth spreads through his chest at the thought of John still caring, well…perhaps he is a bit human, after all.

On the third anniversary of his death, Sherlock Holmes stands in the cemetery where his tombstone rests and waits to see his friend. He is calm and collected as the sun begins to edge over the horizon and the fog swirls sluggishly around the hem of his coat. He is only the slightest bit concerned as the sky shifts from dove-grey to white-gold and the fog dissipates and there is still no figure beside his grave.

John is a creature of habit, but trains run late. Even if he’s chosen a taxi this morning—not likely; if his East London flat is any indication, John’s trying to save money, and an Oyster card is cheaper—but even if he has, traffic is unpredictable. There are at least six perfectly legitimate reasons for John to be late. An accident, higher-than-average traffic congestion, oversleeping, illness, death, or…

As the sun clears the horizon completely, the London sky takes on its more customary damp-cement shade, and his graveside remains wholly unvisited. Sherlock’s agitation ratchets up another notch. His six reasons narrow to three. Oversleeping wasn’t much of a reason anyway. John’s not prone to lie-ins, especially not on workdays.

Alteration in routine—why? Illness, death, or…

The third possibility is still hard to say, even to himself. John’s shift at the clinic will have started by now. He’ll have to come in the evening now, if he’s still planning on coming.

Of course he’s planning on coming. He’s John, he’s my John, and he always—

But he can’t even finish the thought, because it sounds like a lie. Damn the Woman and her insinuations. He sinks his chin into his scarf, flips up his coat collar, and turns away from his tombstone.

Death is unlikely. Not impossible, but certainly not likely. Illness is a possibility, although it would have to be something rather dire to keep John from this appointment. Which leaves the last. Sherlock forces himself to acknowledge that John may be moving on.

Panic is immediate, but expected, and Sherlock tries to quell his rising frustration. John can’t be forgetting, because if John is letting him go, who is left to hold onto him anymore? Sherlock feels carefully laid plans beginning to unravel, and he starts to weave the stray threads into something new.

If John is a variable, the whole scenario must be rewritten. He is confident in this. Moran is still out there, and it will be a risk, returning before the job is done. But if he doesn’t come back now, is there a reason to come back at all?

He needs to get to East London.

***
John’s flat is depressing. The shades are drawn, and the sunlight filtering through the drapes paints the sitting room an ocher-yellow. Sherlock has only been here once before, the night before he left London. He stood in John’s room as the doctor slept, considering waking him, admitting the lie, telling him not to worry. But Moriarty’s agents were still watching, and as the Woman had correctly observed, John is a terrible liar. His grief had to be genuine.

Now he makes a slow circuit of the flat, his gloved fingers trailing over the detritus of John’s daily life, his sweeping gaze taking in the changes the last three years have wrought. A bloody shirt in the bedroom hamper is alarming—that certainly didn’t happen at the clinic. Molly had mentioned John was doing something for Mycroft—Sherlock allows himself to sneer at Mycroft’s audacity, using his John for his own ends—but she had been vague about the details. A cursory examination tells him the blood is not likely John’s—something medical, then. Patching up stray Secret Service agents, no doubt. It is very John Watson, he supposes, finding yet another way to serve queen and country.

John’s Sig Sauer is still in his nightstand drawer, cleaned and loaded. On top of the nightstand is something new: a photograph of John and a woman. This is one Sherlock does not recognise. Not surprising—women like John, and he likes them, and without the chaos of Sherlock in his life, it is almost a foregone conclusion that John should have a serious girlfriend. Still just a girlfriend, though—Molly would have mentioned if they were more. He also notes that there are no feminine touches to the décor of John’s flat, no extra toothbrush in the bathroom, no lacy underthings in the hamper that speak of a life truly shared. John spends his time at her flat, not the other way ‘round. He is a part of her life, but she is still only orbiting his. Interesting.

Sherlock studies the photograph. John’s girlfriends have never concerned him much, beyond the fact that they distracted John from important cases and made him lose his patience with Sherlock rather more quickly than usual. But if this one is somehow responsible for John missing their appointment this morning, Sherlock has to know.

Blonde hair, brown eyes, pleasantly symmetrical facial features. Slim and small, she makes John feel taller standing beside him. Her earrings are real diamonds, two karat studs. The watch on John’s wrist is a Breitling. Not things John would purchase—he has neither the taste nor the pocketbook—so they came from her. The watch must have been for this past Christmas; John’s birthday would have fallen early in their relationship, too soon for lavish gifts. The earrings she bought for herself, or they were a gift from someone else—but no. Her face is turned to the camera, but her head is tilted toward John, her shoulder pressed into his arm. Her body language spells infatuation. She wouldn’t be wearing a gift from an ex-boyfriend on a night out with a man she clearly adores.

Cut and quality of her dress are expensive. Taking it all together, she’s well-off; too young to have worked for the money—rich family, then, probably raised in West End prep schools or boarding schools in France. A rich girl infatuated with a former Army doctor, so she appreciates more than money, likes John for his warmth and his inability to put himself before others. Probably does some kind of charitable work herself to relieve her guilt at feeling more privileged than others.

Sherlock wishes John were here to confirm his deductions. Most people assume that because he is arrogant and narcissistic he is also incapable of being grateful for flattery.
The truth is, he’s lived most of his life with only his internal monologue to congratulate him on his own brilliance, and after eighteen months of John involuntarily blurting out praises when Sherlock gave vent to the whirlwind of his intellectual steam, he finds he desperately misses the affirmation.

Sherlock sighs. In the photograph, John is smiling, and his happiness hurts Sherlock in a way he does not quite understand. But there is a tension there, also. John’s hand around the woman’s shoulder is tighter than it should be, as if he’s trying to convince her—convince himself?—he wants her there.

Don’t project, he reminds himself. Merely observe. Photographs are a poor way to study body language, capturing the moment but not the context.

He shakes himself, tearing his mind away from the picture and refocusing on the task at hand. How can he re-enter John Watson’s life without causing him more damage than he already has? John is physically sound, but when it comes to empirical evidence regarding the effects of resurrected corpses on the psyche, there is, perhaps not surprisingly, very little data.

Sherlock knows a mind most easily accepts new things when delivered in small doses, incorporated into the familiar. He reaches into the valise he’s brought with him. He made a quick trip to Baker Street to gather his supplies—thank God Mrs. Hudson has yet to completely clear out 221B; she’s gotten rid of his equipment and many of his books, but the stranger items, the more personal, she hasn’t yet touched. He’d thought of knocking on her door, announcing his return to her, but no, he would have to break it more gently to her, at her age.

Besides, John must be first. It shouldn’t matter—logically, the order in which he tells people he is not dead is not important in the least. But he knows he can’t trust logic in this instance. John is first.

He leaves his token on the bookshelf, disrupting the neatly organised medical journals. The alteration in the familiar pattern should draw John’s attention. The item itself should get him thinking. Sherlock will have to watch and wait, observe John’s reaction and determine his next step.

He glances around the flat to make sure he has left no other traces of his presence, then hurries out the door. The skull on the bookshelf keeps watch over the sitting room, awaiting John’s return.

***

“Have you told John yet?”

Molly’s eyes are bright. They are in her cramped flat, a space Sherlock knows well after spending the first few weeks of his supposed death sleeping in her bed while he dealt with the international network of thugs that had taken up residence on Baker Street. Molly slept on the couch, naturally.

Molly has made tea—breakfast, which Sherlock sips politely even though he fervently wishes it were Earl Grey. And John says he has no decorum.

He shakes his head in answer to her question.

“Oh,” she says, deflating. “But you are going to?”

He fixes her with a look. Even Molly can’t misinterpret the expression for anything other than what it is meant to convey: Of course, you idiot.

She wilts further under his disapproval. He can almost hear her brain casting about for a way to impress him.

“I don’t think he went to the grave on Wednesday,” she says after a moment.

“And why is that?” He knows this is a bit cruel, but he only knows because John would have told him to stop. The knowledge is not enough to keep him from indulging.

“Usually he comes by after. Not really to talk about you, but I think he likes to be around people who knew you. He’ll pop in, say hello, make chit-chat, and then he’s off again.”

“But not Wednesday.” Sherlock’s mind wanders from the conversation. John must have noticed the skull by now, but Sherlock hasn’t noted any change in his behavior. John must be in some kind of denial.

“No. Do you think that means he didn’t go?”

Sherlock needs to add more stimuli, provoke a response from John. He says to Molly, “He didn’t go.”

“Oh.” Another frown as she realises he already knew.

Molly stares at the table for a few moments, turning her mug in her hands. When she speaks, her words are not what he expects.

“Why now, Sherlock?” She watches him. “After all this time, why does it have to be now?”

“You would rather I didn’t come back?”

“No! It’s not that, it’s not that at all. Just—why now? Something’s changed.”

Molly is good at reminding Sherlock that even a person of average intelligence is capable of observation and deduction. The problem is the average person only employs these skills, only acquires them, with someone they care about, whereas Sherlock can’t turn these observations off. He reads strangers the way a woman reads her husband after forty years of marriage. The way Molly reads him.

He schools his face to stillness. “The job is almost finished. It just seems like time.”

“Almost finished. So not completely, then.” She leans forward imperceptibly, and for a moment she is not a doe-eyed schoolgirl with a crush—she is a terrier with a rat, intent on protecting her home, her master.

“Sherlock, you broke his heart. It’s taken him all this time to pick up the pieces. He likes this woman. Please don’t ruin it for him.”

His mouth is open, and he hides his astonishment by sipping her disgusting tea. Guilt ripples through him, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. He cannot meet her gaze.

After a moment, she moves away, and he is able to breathe again. She puts her mug in the sink and turns to pluck his from his hands.

“You don’t like it anyway,” she tells him when he tries to protest.

***

Sherlock follows John to Kensington on Thursday night, mentally lavishing himself with praise for being right about the woman’s obvious wealth. Molly had told him the woman’s name—Mary—but it was hardly important enough to warrant space in the memory palace, so the knowledge came and went at its leisure. Her flat is four floors up, and she and John stay inside the entire evening. No opportunity to study their body language, then.

John doesn’t leave until nearly one o’clock in the morning. Sherlock ignores the flash of irritation that jolts through him as he notes John’s rumpled clothing, his hair sticking up in odd places, the silly grin that slides onto his face when he is not paying attention. But he takes heart at the knowledge that even on so late a night, when John has work the next day, he does not spend the night with her. John is happy with her, and clearly sated, but not content. Sherlock wonders if the woman has noticed. She’d have to be a fool not to, but then John has a habit of dating idiots.

Friday night is even more frustrating. Mycroft steals John away to god knows where, and Sherlock has to wait hours for him to return. He passes the time by leaving another trinket in John’s flat. Larger, a focal point of the room. John won’t be able to miss it.

Sherlock leaves as the black sedan pulls up, returning John from his late-night exploits. He pauses to note the look on John’s face: exhausted and exhilarated. Jealousy grips his chest with white-hot fingers. The only time he’s seen that look on John’s face is while they’re on a case, after a brush with death or a brilliant capture. He’d imagined—foolishly, he now realises—that he was the only one who could make John feel that way. It’s a feeling John needs, a feeling he thrives on, but if he’s learned to get that fix from something else—someone else…

Oh, yes. He has been gone far, far too long.

***

The flat beside John’s is empty, its occupant visiting his sister in Bristol for the weekend. The flat is a mirror-image of John’s, and Sherlock echoes John’s movements from the entryway to the kitchen. He pauses there, listening to the faint sounds of John preparing himself breakfast. Sherlock glances at the doorway—the sitting room wall is not visible from here, so he can’t hope John has seen his newest gift.

John’s footsteps pad toward the bedroom, and Sherlock follows his path through the neighboring flat. They have to cut through the sitting room to reach the bedroom, but Sherlock hears no gasp of surprise, notes no hesitation in the rhythm of John’s steps. He still hasn’t seen the wall.

The bedroom is on the opposite side of the flat, too far for Sherlock to hear clearly through the walls as John collapses into bed. A short time later he hears a faint rumbling that may be John’s snores or may be his imagination. Sherlock lays down on the couch in the sitting room to wait.

He passes the hours examining the information he has collected about his last quarry. Colonel Sebastian Moran, high-ranking affiliate of the late Moriarty. Rumors connected the two as more than just business associates, but Sherlock hasn’t seen any evidence to confirm or refute the claims.

News of Moriarty’s death spread quickly through his criminal network. The newspapers reported it officially as a suicide, but there was always the implication that Sherlock had been involved. At least it was one claim the newspapers didn’t have entirely wrong. Reactions among his associates had been varied: some simply faded back into the dark corners of their respective communities. Some seemed grateful to Sherlock for removing the competition. But a handful, a dangerous few, vowed revenge. Moran was the leader of that contingent.

A military man, Moran was calculating and careful. He enjoyed violence, but he didn’t let his desire for cruelty get in the way of what was necessary—he wouldn’t kill unless he was certain he could get away with it. This made him difficult to goad. Moran clung to shadows, felt little need to boast. He didn’t mind taking his time to ensure a job was done correctly.

Moran didn’t know, as yet, that Sherlock was alive, but he suspected. He was too smart not to notice that the criminals suddenly meeting with various accidents were the same criminals who had shared his loyalty to one James Moriarty. Once Sherlock made his return public, Moran would come for him. It was up to Sherlock to anticipate his move and lay a trap for him. He had several ideas, but until the man was actually here—

A sound from John’s flat rouses Sherlock from his thoughts. John is awake. Footsteps, still heavy from sleep, shuffle their way into the sitting room. Pause. Has he seen it?

The footsteps retreat to the kitchen, and Sherlock bites back a curse. Hell, John, even you can’t be this blind! A few moments later, and there is the sound of a kettle boiling. The footsteps return to the sitting room. There is a creak, a rustling of fabric as John sinks into his armchair.

Sherlock’s body is mimicking John’s movements again. This flat has no armchair, but Sherlock stands in the spot where it would be. He is facing the wall between this flat and John’s, the wall where he hung that hideous cow skull. John, in his flat, must be staring directly at it. What is he thinking? The silence from the other side of the wall is deafening.

Another creak as John rises from the chair. Sherlock tenses. John’s footsteps approach the wall, and Sherlock closes the distance. The detective puts his hand out against the wall, where he imagines John is reaching out to touch the skull. Sherlock feels the distance between them keenly; so close, and so far—a few inches of drywall and wiring, three years of silence and lies.

The first sob makes Sherlock jump, snatching his hand back from the wall as if burned. The sound crawls down his spine, down his throat, choking the air from his lungs. No, John, he thinks. No, I didn’t mean for it to hurt you! Which is true, but he can see now that no matter what his intentions, this is what he has been doing to John these last three years—hurting him. Saving him, yes. But also killing him.

Sherlock presses his forehead to the wall, his hands, as much of his lanky body as he can, as if he could embrace John through the wall. When John’s sobs finally subside, Sherlock pulls away, his fingers brushing across his cheeks. They come away damp.

***
Sherlock listens as John phones Mrs. Hudson. It’s the first time he’s heard John’s voice since…he’s astonished to realise he’s not sure. John puts on a fair show for his former landlady, but Sherlock hears the tension underneath. John lies to Mrs. Hudson about the reason for the call—doesn’t want her to worry, thinks he’s going crazy—then lies again to get off the phone. The first lie is the John he knows, protecting someone he cares about from something unpleasant. The second lie is a different John. Avoiding something, running from something. Mrs. Hudson can be annoying, but John was never anything but patient with her. It is half a second before his brain supplies the reason. Of course. Mrs. Hudson wanted to talk about him. John doesn’t want to tell her he didn’t go to the cemetery. Doesn’t want to talk about Sherlock at all, it seems like.

Sherlock feels cold, and it has nothing to do with the temperature in the flat.

The next call is for Lestrade. John sounds more normal, more familiar. He laughs, and it doesn’t sound like desperation. And—ah. It’s the first time, aside from the sobbing earlier, Sherlock hears John acknowledge that something odd is happening to him. Good. He needs to talk about it. Sherlock can’t restrain himself much longer. Now that he’s seen John, seen how close he’s come to moving on, it’s all that Sherlock can do not to beat down his door in his rush to re-insert himself into his life.

Sherlock does not follow John when he leaves to meet Lestrade. He returns to Molly’s flat for the night. His next step is crucial—John is acknowledging what’s happening around him. Now he has to push him toward the right conclusion, reassure him that he’s not going mad, rekindle his belief. God, when did that belief fade? Sometime in the last year, Sherlock imagines, when belief became a hindrance instead of a help, an anchor weighing him down instead of a hope that buoyed him up.

Tomorrow. Sherlock can give him until tomorrow, and then he’ll tell him. Not at his flat, no—more familiar ground. Somewhere he’d already half-expect to see Sherlock. Which means a return to Baker Street. Sherlock smiles. He already knows exactly how he’ll get John there.

***
1. The Script. Science & Faith. Sony Music Entertainment UK, 2011.
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