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Fic: It's Natural To Be Afraid, part I
Title: It's Natural To Be Afraid, part I
Author: tunes84
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Characters: Sherlock, John
Word Count: 6,300 (in total), < 2,600 for part 1
Summary: Refusing to accept the obvious, Sherlock searches for what he believes truly happened the night his world was shattered.
Warnings: Major character death, lots of angst.
A/N: I've been working on this for months now, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
patster223 , and I'm finally (mostly) finished. I'll be posting every few days, as I'm still editing the last section. The inspiration for this story comes from the song, "It's Natural To Be Afraid" by Explosions In The Sky.
Sherlock chooses not to remember his life before John, let alone what it would be like without him. Sometimes he’s not sure if that’s for the best, but he’s not about to change it. John just is, and always will be.
He has to.
The wind has picked up, blowing the lingering mist into Sherlock’s eyes as he walks side by side with Lestrade down a dark, soaked sidewalk, away from the brighter city lights. Soft murmurs, questions, float through from bystanders and echo off the buildings surrounding the crime scene tape that is stretched from one end of the street to the other. The police cars’ lights reflect in the rain puddles, blurring the street, making everything around him blend and bleed into one.
“I’ll go see what this is about, then you and I need to get back to that double murder.” Lestrade looks pointedly at Sherlock, who is hardly paying attention to the Inspector, instead focusing on the new crime scene. “I need you on this, Sherlock, don’t get sidetracked. Please don’t make me beg.”
Sherlock glances sideways towards a broken bottle and waves the detective off. “I’m guessing a simple mugging, anyway, hardly worth my time. There’s a pub over there, he was probably drunk and never saw it coming.”
Lestrade lets out an irritated breath, choosing to just walk away. Sherlock is grateful. There are more pressing matters he needs to keep his mind on at the moment, more interesting puzzles, like a double murder in an upscale London flat.
Much more interesting than a boring mugger case, anyway.
Sherlock, looking up at a cracked window that glistens from the earlier rain storm, takes his phone from his pocket and opens his recent contacts. John is number one.
Double homicide. Much less boring than whatever else you’re doing. Meet me at the Yard in 15. SH.
He presses send, only to hear a familiar chirping sound seconds later. Sherlock straightens, taking in a deep breath as he hears Lestrade’s voice, hushed, cracked, “Cover the body, cover the damn body!”
He has to have gotten that wrong (not that he would admit it to anyone but himself). Plenty of people in London have the same message tone, it was hardly worth the little fright-no, slight concern he suddenly feels in the depths of his subconscious. Lestrade obviously wants to cover the body because of the persisting mist, to preserve the evidence. Of course, that’s what it is.
Yet, Sherlock can’t seem to feel his feet enough to turn around and test this theory.
Don’t be ridiculous, get a hold of yourself, he scolds, letting out the deep breath he had taken in just before. He replaces the phone inside his pocket and walks not unsteadily, just wearily, towards the body.
“Sherlock, I don’t-“ Lestrade begins, cut off by Sherlock’s sharp glare.
“Don’t what?” Sherlock asks, his tone frustrated and low. The way Lestrade is looking at him, like he is vulnerable, makes his annoyance level jump off the charts.
“I think you should sit down,” Lestrade offers, his voice soothing, as it would be to some sort of idiot child who has lost his mum.
Sherlock stares at the sheet, at the small circle of blood that’s soaking through the fabric, growing on it like the growing lump inside the pit of his stomach. “Take the sheet off,” he demands, aware that his voice can only manage a whisper.
“Sherlock, please,” Lestrade practically begs, putting a gentle hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.
Sherlock snaps.
“TAKE IT OFF!” he cries and reaches down, ripping the sheet off the body with an intensity that frightens everyone within viewing distance.
The sheet floats down behind him as Sherlock stares at the body before him. Blond hair wet and matted to the forehead, eyes and mouth open like he’s shocked, so obviously it came as a surprise. Blood stains his knitted jumper, the wound long from a knife. Killed, not a mugging. Murdered.
Stolen.
Somewhere behind him Sherlock can hear unimportant voices trying to drown out the more important thoughts that actually matter. He blocks them out, focusing on the information, on the pieces that will somehow fit the puzzle once everyone just shuts up!
He keeps his concentration on the scene, goes over all the details that are now more important than they were just a few minutes ago. On his knees, Sherlock shakes off the heavy hands trying to pull him up without uttering a sound. His nose sits mere inches from the wound, staring at it, burning it into his mind and storing it under “critical importance” with a dozen other pieces of information from this horrifying crime scene. Hand locks, unnoticed, around the damp mobile which is lying next to the body and he holds it so tightly that his fingers might very well break from the stress of his grip.
Sherlock.
A voice nags in the faintest corners of Sherlock’s memories, too new to be old, but too old to remember life without it.
Go home, Sherlock.
He lets the hands around his shoulders finally stand him upright and he turns to Lestrade. Poor, distraught Lestrade, his face the color of the now wet sheet underneath their shoes.
“Sherlock?” he questions, ready to recoil.
Sherlock rolls his shoulders back, out of the Inspector’s hands and takes a few steps to the side. Leave, he thinks. Just leave. With one more sweep of his eyes over the scene for any missed evidence, Sherlock Holmes lifts his head and walks back up the street towards those brighter lights, away from the flashing cars, the crime scene tape, and the body now framed before his eyes for eternity.
Shattered. The world has shattered.
-x-
The mist has disappeared by the time Sherlock stands before 221B. He had run out the door in such a hurry earlier that it now stands wide open, waiting for him to step inside. It’s taunting him, really, so open and empty but he tightens his hold on the phone in his pocket and steps through. Nothing is out of the ordinary, yet everything is completely different. The noise in the street below the open window sounds different, the feel of the air inside the flat is different, even the moments of absolute quiet don’t sound the same.
Disgusted, Sherlock scans the room and notices every meaningless thing he had noticed before but hadn’t cared about. John’s old cane against the wall by the door, John’s newspaper sitting on the cushion of the armchair, his computer left open and glowing softly on the small table by the sink. He walks slowly into the kitchen, his eye catching on a half-filled cup of tea left on the counter from the morning. Running his fingers over the rim, Sherlock notices his hand isn’t steady. With a deep breath, he tears himself from the memories and begins to run through the facts.
Facts don’t have feelings.
Something about the wound seems vaguely familiar to Sherlock, but every time it flashes in front of his eyes he pushes it down again. The image of John, so loud and vulgar in his vision, is something he doesn’t want to remember.
He stabs his finger on a piece of plastic that is peeling off the phone in his pocket, remembering that it was there and might be useful to him. Taking it out, he starts to scroll through the recent messages.
“Some might call that an invasion of privacy.”
Any other voice may have made Sherlock turn around in surprise. He keeps scrolling, though, never breaking his concentration.
“You shouldn’t have stolen that, you know.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes and clicks on a suspicious message. “It’s a piece of the puzzle, John.”
John.
Still without looking up, Sherlock imagines his flatmate shaking his head. Dead end, he says to himself, and clicks the next message.
“How do you know there even is a puzzle?”
How? Sherlock thinks. Finally lifting his head, there’s nobody in the flat but himself. “There has to be,” he breathes, unsure of whom he’s trying to convince. There has to be a reason because anything else just doesn’t make sense.
Sherlock clicks a few more messages, none of them particularly threatening or out of the ordinary. Instead, he opens up the sent folder on John’s phone, finding that most of the texts are to him, and begins to read through them.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” John’s voice asks from somewhere behind him.
Sherlock closes his eyes and thinks for a moment before saying, “Because. It makes you less dead.”
There is silence in the flat again. Not even the sounds from the street could penetrate the barrier of blood pumping inside Sherlock’s ears as he clicks the phone off and puts it back inside his pocket. With a sigh, he simply states, “Stop staring at me like that, John.”
That’s when Sherlock finally picks up his head and turns. Faithful John, breathing John, dead John stands there, staring. The blood stain on the front of his jumper doesn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock.
“Don’t you find this a bit odd, even for you, Sherlock?” he asks, so John-like.
Sherlock shrugs. “Not really,” he answers truthfully. Why should it be?
“Visualizing your dead flatmate?” John scoffs, clearly agitated, just like Sherlock remembers. “That’s not okay.”
“I need an assistant.” Sherlock continues to stare at the wound as he talks. “I need you, John.”
“No, you don’t.”
“To find your killer.”
“Well, I can’t just give you the answer, if that’s what you want.” John’s voice has raised in his frustration and Sherlock smirks.
“Since when is that ever what I want?”
The frustration turns to weariness and John lets out a long breath. He looks up, that painful fondness in his eyes cutting through Sherlock’s thickest walls. “Are you going to be all right?”
It’s a simple question that he isn’t sure he knows how to answer, so Sherlock settles on, “Of course.”
“Sherlock,” John begs, as if there’s something more Sherlock can offer him. What more can he offer him?
He throws his hands out and turns away from John. “What do you want from me, John? Am I to lament your absence and cry in your room? Write mournful poetry of our time together? Is this the proper way to grieve for you?” His voice is raised, but he isn’t shouting. He simply sounds desperate and, oh, how he hates to sound desperate.
There’s a knock at the door and Sherlock realizes he is alone once more. He looks around quickly, suddenly feeling quite exposed. Straightening his collar, he goes to open the door.
“Good evening, Sherlock.” Mycroft. Just who Sherlock didn’t need to see at this moment.
“Why are you here?” Sherlock snaps coldly. He knows exactly why, and it aggravates him.
“You know why,” Mycroft answers, causing Sherlock to roll his eyes and contemplate slamming the door shut right in his face, hopefully snapping the point off the umbrella he’s leaning on in the door frame. “I heard about what happened and I was concerned,” he adds, which also adds to Sherlock’s annoyance.
“It’s barely been an hour,” Sherlock mumbles.
Mycroft nods. “Yes, well, news does spread rather quickly these days. May I?” He gestures towards the inside of the flat. Sherlock reluctantly steps aside, aiming a slight kick at the umbrella before turning quickly towards the window. Ignore him, he thinks, and he might just go away.
However, life has taught him that dealing with his brother is never that simple.
“Who were you shouting at, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks as he places his jacket on the hooks behind the door.
Sherlock stares at the empty armchair John had been sitting in just 12 hours ago. “I was thinking. Loudly,” he lies, shrugging his shoulders and avoiding eye contact. “Don’t make yourself comfortable, either, you’re not staying.”
“I thought you might need help with arrangements,” Mycroft offers, ignoring Sherlock’s last comment. “I can arrange for John’s sister to come and collect his things. After the funeral, of course.”
Those words suffocate him, clouding his thoughts so he can’t think clearly. A funeral, and John’s things, gone from Baker Street? He can’t think about it, he can’t imagine it empty, without John.
Without John.
“We’ll wait for the investigation to end, and then we can begin-“
Sherlock interrupts his brother, that pounding back inside his head. “Why are you here, Mycroft?” he demands again, loudly, finally looking Mycroft in the eye. For a moment they stare at each other, a battle of wills to see who can hold out the longest. Mycroft is the first to turn away and Sherlock can’t help but feel a little triumphant. Somewhere in the back of his mind he can see John rolling his eyes.
“I’m worried. About you,” Mycroft says, his voice soft.
Sherlock, however, can’t care about this right now. “Then worry somewhere away from here. I have work to do.”
Mycroft narrows his eyes. “You’re not thinking of investigating this, are you?”
“I’m not thinking at all because you won’t leave and let me think!” Sherlock cries, exasperated. It amazes him how Mycroft doesn’t see this. How Mycroft can just stroll in here as casually as if he were coming for tea, speaking of John’s death as if he were asking about the weather. John’s death, his murder, his absence as if Sherlock will just let him go completely.
As if he never even existed. Mycroft was trying to take him away, to give him away, as if he were never even here.
“Leave,” Sherlock growls, fire in his throat now. Swallowing hard, he adds, “I need you to leave.”
Mycroft licks his lips and nods. He looks as though he were expecting this and it makes Sherlock uneasy and absolutely infuriated.
“I’ll give you a few days, then,” Mycroft says as he grabs his jacket from behind the door. “You know where to reach me.”
Sherlock turns his back to his brother and doesn’t say another word. He waits for the door to shut behind him, watches through the window as Mycroft gets into his car before grabbing the letter opener off the mantle and throwing it, with a loud cry, across the room.
Sherlock stares at it, glinting in the light from overhead as it protrudes from the wall.
“Nice throw, but that was just a bit uncalled for.”
Sherlock twists his lips into a small smirk. “It helps me think.”
He looks at John just he is wiping his hand down the side of his face. “Yes, anything destructive seems to help you think,” John mutters before falling into his armchair. “You do know Mycroft is just concerned about you?”
“Oh, spare me,” Sherlock groans. He sits opposite John and puts his fingers to his temples. “He only concerns himself with things of national importance.”
John puts his hands up in defense. “All right, I’ll leave it alone for now.”
They’re quiet for a while, John looking through the newspaper he hadn’t finished browsing that morning and Sherlock thinking on the sofa. It’s easy, normal. Safe. Controlled.
“So what are you thinking?” John asks a little later. “Moriarty?”
“Hmm? No, not his style,” Sherlock answers with a shake of his head. “The wound, though, seems familiar. The position of the body, as well. Two, maybe three patch problem.”
John laughs. “You’re brilliant, Sherlock. You’ll figure it out.”
Yes. He’ll figure it out.
He has to figure it out.
Part II
Author: tunes84
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Characters: Sherlock, John
Word Count: 6,300 (in total), < 2,600 for part 1
Summary: Refusing to accept the obvious, Sherlock searches for what he believes truly happened the night his world was shattered.
Warnings: Major character death, lots of angst.
A/N: I've been working on this for months now, for
patster223 , and I'm finally (mostly) finished. I'll be posting every few days, as I'm still editing the last section. The inspiration for this story comes from the song, "It's Natural To Be Afraid" by Explosions In The Sky.Sherlock chooses not to remember his life before John, let alone what it would be like without him. Sometimes he’s not sure if that’s for the best, but he’s not about to change it. John just is, and always will be.
He has to.
The wind has picked up, blowing the lingering mist into Sherlock’s eyes as he walks side by side with Lestrade down a dark, soaked sidewalk, away from the brighter city lights. Soft murmurs, questions, float through from bystanders and echo off the buildings surrounding the crime scene tape that is stretched from one end of the street to the other. The police cars’ lights reflect in the rain puddles, blurring the street, making everything around him blend and bleed into one.
“I’ll go see what this is about, then you and I need to get back to that double murder.” Lestrade looks pointedly at Sherlock, who is hardly paying attention to the Inspector, instead focusing on the new crime scene. “I need you on this, Sherlock, don’t get sidetracked. Please don’t make me beg.”
Sherlock glances sideways towards a broken bottle and waves the detective off. “I’m guessing a simple mugging, anyway, hardly worth my time. There’s a pub over there, he was probably drunk and never saw it coming.”
Lestrade lets out an irritated breath, choosing to just walk away. Sherlock is grateful. There are more pressing matters he needs to keep his mind on at the moment, more interesting puzzles, like a double murder in an upscale London flat.
Much more interesting than a boring mugger case, anyway.
Sherlock, looking up at a cracked window that glistens from the earlier rain storm, takes his phone from his pocket and opens his recent contacts. John is number one.
Double homicide. Much less boring than whatever else you’re doing. Meet me at the Yard in 15. SH.
He presses send, only to hear a familiar chirping sound seconds later. Sherlock straightens, taking in a deep breath as he hears Lestrade’s voice, hushed, cracked, “Cover the body, cover the damn body!”
He has to have gotten that wrong (not that he would admit it to anyone but himself). Plenty of people in London have the same message tone, it was hardly worth the little fright-no, slight concern he suddenly feels in the depths of his subconscious. Lestrade obviously wants to cover the body because of the persisting mist, to preserve the evidence. Of course, that’s what it is.
Yet, Sherlock can’t seem to feel his feet enough to turn around and test this theory.
Don’t be ridiculous, get a hold of yourself, he scolds, letting out the deep breath he had taken in just before. He replaces the phone inside his pocket and walks not unsteadily, just wearily, towards the body.
“Sherlock, I don’t-“ Lestrade begins, cut off by Sherlock’s sharp glare.
“Don’t what?” Sherlock asks, his tone frustrated and low. The way Lestrade is looking at him, like he is vulnerable, makes his annoyance level jump off the charts.
“I think you should sit down,” Lestrade offers, his voice soothing, as it would be to some sort of idiot child who has lost his mum.
Sherlock stares at the sheet, at the small circle of blood that’s soaking through the fabric, growing on it like the growing lump inside the pit of his stomach. “Take the sheet off,” he demands, aware that his voice can only manage a whisper.
“Sherlock, please,” Lestrade practically begs, putting a gentle hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.
Sherlock snaps.
“TAKE IT OFF!” he cries and reaches down, ripping the sheet off the body with an intensity that frightens everyone within viewing distance.
The sheet floats down behind him as Sherlock stares at the body before him. Blond hair wet and matted to the forehead, eyes and mouth open like he’s shocked, so obviously it came as a surprise. Blood stains his knitted jumper, the wound long from a knife. Killed, not a mugging. Murdered.
Stolen.
Somewhere behind him Sherlock can hear unimportant voices trying to drown out the more important thoughts that actually matter. He blocks them out, focusing on the information, on the pieces that will somehow fit the puzzle once everyone just shuts up!
He keeps his concentration on the scene, goes over all the details that are now more important than they were just a few minutes ago. On his knees, Sherlock shakes off the heavy hands trying to pull him up without uttering a sound. His nose sits mere inches from the wound, staring at it, burning it into his mind and storing it under “critical importance” with a dozen other pieces of information from this horrifying crime scene. Hand locks, unnoticed, around the damp mobile which is lying next to the body and he holds it so tightly that his fingers might very well break from the stress of his grip.
Sherlock.
A voice nags in the faintest corners of Sherlock’s memories, too new to be old, but too old to remember life without it.
Go home, Sherlock.
He lets the hands around his shoulders finally stand him upright and he turns to Lestrade. Poor, distraught Lestrade, his face the color of the now wet sheet underneath their shoes.
“Sherlock?” he questions, ready to recoil.
Sherlock rolls his shoulders back, out of the Inspector’s hands and takes a few steps to the side. Leave, he thinks. Just leave. With one more sweep of his eyes over the scene for any missed evidence, Sherlock Holmes lifts his head and walks back up the street towards those brighter lights, away from the flashing cars, the crime scene tape, and the body now framed before his eyes for eternity.
Shattered. The world has shattered.
-x-
The mist has disappeared by the time Sherlock stands before 221B. He had run out the door in such a hurry earlier that it now stands wide open, waiting for him to step inside. It’s taunting him, really, so open and empty but he tightens his hold on the phone in his pocket and steps through. Nothing is out of the ordinary, yet everything is completely different. The noise in the street below the open window sounds different, the feel of the air inside the flat is different, even the moments of absolute quiet don’t sound the same.
Disgusted, Sherlock scans the room and notices every meaningless thing he had noticed before but hadn’t cared about. John’s old cane against the wall by the door, John’s newspaper sitting on the cushion of the armchair, his computer left open and glowing softly on the small table by the sink. He walks slowly into the kitchen, his eye catching on a half-filled cup of tea left on the counter from the morning. Running his fingers over the rim, Sherlock notices his hand isn’t steady. With a deep breath, he tears himself from the memories and begins to run through the facts.
Facts don’t have feelings.
Something about the wound seems vaguely familiar to Sherlock, but every time it flashes in front of his eyes he pushes it down again. The image of John, so loud and vulgar in his vision, is something he doesn’t want to remember.
He stabs his finger on a piece of plastic that is peeling off the phone in his pocket, remembering that it was there and might be useful to him. Taking it out, he starts to scroll through the recent messages.
“Some might call that an invasion of privacy.”
Any other voice may have made Sherlock turn around in surprise. He keeps scrolling, though, never breaking his concentration.
“You shouldn’t have stolen that, you know.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes and clicks on a suspicious message. “It’s a piece of the puzzle, John.”
John.
Still without looking up, Sherlock imagines his flatmate shaking his head. Dead end, he says to himself, and clicks the next message.
“How do you know there even is a puzzle?”
How? Sherlock thinks. Finally lifting his head, there’s nobody in the flat but himself. “There has to be,” he breathes, unsure of whom he’s trying to convince. There has to be a reason because anything else just doesn’t make sense.
Sherlock clicks a few more messages, none of them particularly threatening or out of the ordinary. Instead, he opens up the sent folder on John’s phone, finding that most of the texts are to him, and begins to read through them.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” John’s voice asks from somewhere behind him.
Sherlock closes his eyes and thinks for a moment before saying, “Because. It makes you less dead.”
There is silence in the flat again. Not even the sounds from the street could penetrate the barrier of blood pumping inside Sherlock’s ears as he clicks the phone off and puts it back inside his pocket. With a sigh, he simply states, “Stop staring at me like that, John.”
That’s when Sherlock finally picks up his head and turns. Faithful John, breathing John, dead John stands there, staring. The blood stain on the front of his jumper doesn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock.
“Don’t you find this a bit odd, even for you, Sherlock?” he asks, so John-like.
Sherlock shrugs. “Not really,” he answers truthfully. Why should it be?
“Visualizing your dead flatmate?” John scoffs, clearly agitated, just like Sherlock remembers. “That’s not okay.”
“I need an assistant.” Sherlock continues to stare at the wound as he talks. “I need you, John.”
“No, you don’t.”
“To find your killer.”
“Well, I can’t just give you the answer, if that’s what you want.” John’s voice has raised in his frustration and Sherlock smirks.
“Since when is that ever what I want?”
The frustration turns to weariness and John lets out a long breath. He looks up, that painful fondness in his eyes cutting through Sherlock’s thickest walls. “Are you going to be all right?”
It’s a simple question that he isn’t sure he knows how to answer, so Sherlock settles on, “Of course.”
“Sherlock,” John begs, as if there’s something more Sherlock can offer him. What more can he offer him?
He throws his hands out and turns away from John. “What do you want from me, John? Am I to lament your absence and cry in your room? Write mournful poetry of our time together? Is this the proper way to grieve for you?” His voice is raised, but he isn’t shouting. He simply sounds desperate and, oh, how he hates to sound desperate.
There’s a knock at the door and Sherlock realizes he is alone once more. He looks around quickly, suddenly feeling quite exposed. Straightening his collar, he goes to open the door.
“Good evening, Sherlock.” Mycroft. Just who Sherlock didn’t need to see at this moment.
“Why are you here?” Sherlock snaps coldly. He knows exactly why, and it aggravates him.
“You know why,” Mycroft answers, causing Sherlock to roll his eyes and contemplate slamming the door shut right in his face, hopefully snapping the point off the umbrella he’s leaning on in the door frame. “I heard about what happened and I was concerned,” he adds, which also adds to Sherlock’s annoyance.
“It’s barely been an hour,” Sherlock mumbles.
Mycroft nods. “Yes, well, news does spread rather quickly these days. May I?” He gestures towards the inside of the flat. Sherlock reluctantly steps aside, aiming a slight kick at the umbrella before turning quickly towards the window. Ignore him, he thinks, and he might just go away.
However, life has taught him that dealing with his brother is never that simple.
“Who were you shouting at, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks as he places his jacket on the hooks behind the door.
Sherlock stares at the empty armchair John had been sitting in just 12 hours ago. “I was thinking. Loudly,” he lies, shrugging his shoulders and avoiding eye contact. “Don’t make yourself comfortable, either, you’re not staying.”
“I thought you might need help with arrangements,” Mycroft offers, ignoring Sherlock’s last comment. “I can arrange for John’s sister to come and collect his things. After the funeral, of course.”
Those words suffocate him, clouding his thoughts so he can’t think clearly. A funeral, and John’s things, gone from Baker Street? He can’t think about it, he can’t imagine it empty, without John.
Without John.
“We’ll wait for the investigation to end, and then we can begin-“
Sherlock interrupts his brother, that pounding back inside his head. “Why are you here, Mycroft?” he demands again, loudly, finally looking Mycroft in the eye. For a moment they stare at each other, a battle of wills to see who can hold out the longest. Mycroft is the first to turn away and Sherlock can’t help but feel a little triumphant. Somewhere in the back of his mind he can see John rolling his eyes.
“I’m worried. About you,” Mycroft says, his voice soft.
Sherlock, however, can’t care about this right now. “Then worry somewhere away from here. I have work to do.”
Mycroft narrows his eyes. “You’re not thinking of investigating this, are you?”
“I’m not thinking at all because you won’t leave and let me think!” Sherlock cries, exasperated. It amazes him how Mycroft doesn’t see this. How Mycroft can just stroll in here as casually as if he were coming for tea, speaking of John’s death as if he were asking about the weather. John’s death, his murder, his absence as if Sherlock will just let him go completely.
As if he never even existed. Mycroft was trying to take him away, to give him away, as if he were never even here.
“Leave,” Sherlock growls, fire in his throat now. Swallowing hard, he adds, “I need you to leave.”
Mycroft licks his lips and nods. He looks as though he were expecting this and it makes Sherlock uneasy and absolutely infuriated.
“I’ll give you a few days, then,” Mycroft says as he grabs his jacket from behind the door. “You know where to reach me.”
Sherlock turns his back to his brother and doesn’t say another word. He waits for the door to shut behind him, watches through the window as Mycroft gets into his car before grabbing the letter opener off the mantle and throwing it, with a loud cry, across the room.
Sherlock stares at it, glinting in the light from overhead as it protrudes from the wall.
“Nice throw, but that was just a bit uncalled for.”
Sherlock twists his lips into a small smirk. “It helps me think.”
He looks at John just he is wiping his hand down the side of his face. “Yes, anything destructive seems to help you think,” John mutters before falling into his armchair. “You do know Mycroft is just concerned about you?”
“Oh, spare me,” Sherlock groans. He sits opposite John and puts his fingers to his temples. “He only concerns himself with things of national importance.”
John puts his hands up in defense. “All right, I’ll leave it alone for now.”
They’re quiet for a while, John looking through the newspaper he hadn’t finished browsing that morning and Sherlock thinking on the sofa. It’s easy, normal. Safe. Controlled.
“So what are you thinking?” John asks a little later. “Moriarty?”
“Hmm? No, not his style,” Sherlock answers with a shake of his head. “The wound, though, seems familiar. The position of the body, as well. Two, maybe three patch problem.”
John laughs. “You’re brilliant, Sherlock. You’ll figure it out.”
Yes. He’ll figure it out.
He has to figure it out.
Part II