Fic: String of Beads II (Sherlock BBC)

[keep_counting]

Title: String of Beads Part II
Characters/Pairings: John, Lestrade, Molly, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft. Pre-John/Sherlock
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for the entire first and second seasons, swearing, allusions to suicide and death (nothing worse than what's on the show). Reichenbach-spoilers
Genre: Angst/Fluff/Romance/Friendship/Angst
Word-count: 3,238
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N: The next chapter will be up in about a week. This is post-Reichenbach and what happens after for John.
Summary: And he'd thought Sherlock was a little too late in proclaiming his feelings - turned out John was even later

Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V

It’s raining outside.

”You know why I’m here,” he’s incredulous, but not really. She’s a therapist, and she’s meant to force these things out of him.

Even if he really doesn’t want to. Even if, every single time he as much as thinks about it (and he thinks about it all the time) it hurts.

Hurts. Hurts. Hurts.

“I’m here because….”

“What happened, John?”

He closes his eyes. It’s a bad move. He sees St. Bart’s and a tall, dark form standing on the roof, holding a phone. He hears Sherlock’s voice, in his ear, as loud as if he was standing right next to him. He’s not. He’s standing on the roof-top, ready to jump.

He’s dead and buried in the ground.

“Sherl…”

“You need to get it out.”

“My best friend…” I can predict all the fortune cookies.

“Sherlock Holmes…” No, you can’t.

Almost all of them.

“…is dead.”

~

The nightmares are the worst.

There’s blood and horror and Sherlock dying. Sherlock killing himself.

There are bombs and swimming-pools and giant hounds with blood dripping from their jaws and Moriarty sitting in a crown and clapping his hands in delight.

There’s Mycroft putting a gun to Sherlock’s head, and there’s Lestrade pulling the trigger, their arms pierced by threads, long strands of rope that lead back to a throne on which sits puppet-master Jimmy, the gay bloke from IT, wriggling his fingers and making his subjects dance to his every tune.

He’s dead as well. Hole blown through his head. John’s seen the body. He had to help identify it.

Moriarty’s dead body laughs at him in the darkness.

Sherlock’s remains motionless.

John wakes with screams stuck in his throat every night and the faint echo of voices telling him that Sherlock wouldn’t have done this if John hadn’t pushed him away.

~

“It’s all yours,” Mycroft tells him, standing tall and straight and more out-of-place than ever before. “The flat, all of his things. He left it all to you.”

John blinks. “Except for the things you conveniently smuggled out last night?”

Mycroft actually looks surprised, for the shortest of seconds, then he smiles.

“Yes, except for those things. Top-secret, you understand.”

John doesn’t return the smile. “Of course I do.”

“You are still angry with me.”

“Of course I am.”

Mycroft opens his mouth, then closes it again. Iceman he might be, but it’s clear from his face that there is something he very much wishes to say.

“I think you should know,” he says, then closes his eyes firmly, and opens them again, looking directly at John now. “I think you should know that, whatever has happened in these last few days, whatever came of it, my brother did care for you.”

“I know he did.”

“Ah, yes he informed me about…”

“Shut it.”

Mycroft looks a bit miffed at that, but ever the older brother, he sighs and gives John an over-bearing look.

“Best not to regret too much then?”

“Mycroft… please leave it alone.”

“Ah. Too much too soon?”

“Yes,” John says firmly, teeth clenched. He’s starting to want to punch the older Holmes-brother, an urge he has surprisingly never had with this particular member of that family before.

“You are still angry with me,” Mycroft states, not as the reason for the leadings of this conversation, but as simple fact.

It hurts to have someone as observant as Sherlock in the room with him.

“Yes.”

“Very well,” Is all the response he gets, Mycroft turning around in something akin to defeat. “Good-day, Dr Watson.”

“Mycroft,” John stops him as he nears the door. “What you said…”

“I knew my brother like I knew the back of my hand,”

“No, about what you implied, or… or didn’t say,” John stands up, ignoring the phantom-pain in his leg, ignoring the slight tremor, not caring that Mycroft without a doubt notices.

“Whatever happened, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t true. Richard Brooks, Sherlock… Sherlock jumping,” his voice cracks, but he remembers being strapped to a bomb and dying patients under his hands and stands up straight. “It was all one big lie, and I am not going to rest until the world knows that Moriarty was not a fake.”

Mycroft is studying him intently, more intently than he has since phone-boots and abandoned warehouses.

“You cannot even know for sure.”

“Yes, I can,” John hisses. “I know.”

He sits himself back down, staring hard as Mycroft. He’s almost sure the other man is smiling slightly as he leaves.

~

John is woken three nights later by his phone ringing, a shrill tone that bores into his skull and makes him groan. He’s aching and desperate for some proper sleep, all his attempts thwarted by nightmares and images of broken and bleeding bodies lying on London-streets.

It’s a hidden number, and he’s pressing it to his ear before he can even think of what he’s doing, his heart hammering in his chest for some reason.

“Hello?” he mutters, his voice bleary with sleep.

There’s no response. He thinks he can hear quiet breathing on the other end, but that’s all. Suddenly he’s very awake.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

The line is disconnected with a click and a dull tone and John is left staring at the bright screen, the only thing to light up the darkness.

Caller ID: Hidden.

Probably a wrong number.

Probably.

~

“So?”

“Yeah?”

“That sound like something you might want to do?” Mike leans forward, his glasses foggy from the steam of his coffee-mug, a friendly, open smile on his face. It’s Saturday and John has gotten next to no sleep, his entire being feeling like it’s been stretched to the limit.

“Yeah. Maybe,” John mutters, thinking of the position as a teacher at St. Bart’s that Mike has just offered him. He supposes he doesn’t have much else of a choice, really, the work at the clinic something he’s already given up on. “Might even be interesting.”

He wants to say ‘fun’. Because it does sound fun, to anyone who haven’t seen their best friend jump to his death merely six weeks ago.

“I think I’ll take it,” John says, and feels something akin to happiness for the first time in what feels like… a very long time.

~

He starts sorting out the flat, an enormous tasks that Mrs Hudson luckily helps with. There’s an unsurprisingly large amount of police id’s as well as three of Lestrade’s wallets even, and John returns them to Scotland Yard, avoiding the other man’s eyes all the time he’s there.

He doesn’t avoid Donovan’s eyes. He makes sure to look at her, satisfied when she focuses on the floor instead, hanging her head. Not brave enough to stare back.

“Really, the most obscene things in the most obscene… oh!” Mrs Hudson’s shrieks, staring. “Oh…” her tone becomes softer and she turns to look at John, silently handing him the paper she managed to pull out of Sherlock’s drawer. “You… that is…” she turns and walks hurriedly out, tears shining in her eyes. John wonders if there are in his as well, because what he’s looking at has suddenly gone a bit blurry.

It’s a drawing. Of him.

It’s like looking at a photograph, every shade of his face and posture captured perfectly in grey pencil on cream-coloured paper. He’s sitting in a chair, leaning slightly forward, looking at something in the distance, one eyebrow raised as if in thought. It’s dated, scrawling numbers indicating that it was finished only two weeks before its creator had….

It’s a master-piece.

He wants to throw it out.

He wants to rip it apart and burn it and never set eyes on it again. He wants to erase all memories of it, wants it out of his life, right this instant.

God, how could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so arrogant, so selfish, such an utter child in the face of this? When two people loved it each other, it should be simple. And John’s cruel desire to see Sherlock as hurt as he had been had ruined any chance they might’ve had.

He’d even told him, hadn’t he? He’d lied, said he didn’t love Sherlock anymore, and screw that Sherlock could see through it, John knows how hurtful words can be, real meaning or not. He still said them and then went on to claim that he still didn’t want anything with Sherlock. If anyone should have jumped off that roof, it should have been him.

It comes in crashing waves, sorrow and grief and confusion and now guilt, because he pushed him away, because he left him there, because he wasn’t fast enough to get there. Why hadn’t he done something? Why hadn’t he said...

And he’d thought Sherlock was a little too late in proclaiming his feelings.

Turned out John was even further behind.

~

Six months and a new flat, shared with a cat this time.

“Are you going to destroy the furniture?” John pointedly asks it, right before it proceeds to shred the Union Jack pillow.

“No sorry, I promised Billy a dog,” Mrs Hudson says on the phone later that day, the sound of her young and recently orphaned nephew in the background, making noise. “Otherwise I’d love to take him.”

“Right,” John mutters, glaring at the pet as it toys with a piece of string on the floor. It looks cute. Harmless.

Bloody devil in disguise.

“Allergic, sorry,” Molly says, smiling as the cat nuzzles closer to her. She sneezes as they leave and calls John later that night to inform him that she feels like she’s been hit by a bus now, and could he please never take furry animals to the morgue again? Thank-you.

“A cat?” Lestrade mutters, eyeing the animal as if it is sitting and toying with a grenade instead of hanging in the air between them, John lifting it up for the other man to see.

“Yes, Lestrade,” John says. “A cat. Can you take him?”

“Are you going to guilt me into doing this?” Lestrade asks, and John stiffens.

“Possibly,” he stiffly says. “It’s a very mean cat.”

Lestrade tilts his head and smiles at John, a genuine smile.

“I have something I need to show you.”

~

It’s fucking fantastic, and that’s why John is so drunk.

It is quite possibly also the reason why Lestrade is so drunk, and really, John has a suspicion that Lestrade is much more drunk than he is, especially if one has to discern this on who is currently singing the national anthem wearing a towel on his head, and who isn’t.

“But really, seriously…” Lestrade mutters as he finishes the song, sitting down on the bar-stool and beckoning John closer. “Seriously, I think… I think…” he whispers now. “Think that Mycroft might have planted some of that… that evidence and all, but who gives a damn eh?”

John blinks, a strange mixture of surprise and relief at this little piece of information. Relief because it looks like he really does still have both Lestrade and Mycroft on his side, and he feels really good about that.

“So what do you think?” he asks, feeling just a little more sober now. “Is it going to work? Are we going to prove that Sherlock isn’t… wasn’t a fraud?”

“Hell yes!” Lestrade shouts and swings his beer and John laughs and drinks until he has trouble pronouncing his own name.

They sort of forget what ever happened to the cat.

~

“Hello?”

He can hear a train speeding by. It’s definitely a train, or some other vehicle moving at a rapid speed. The caller is on a train.

“Is anyone there?”

The line goes dead.

Tunnel maybe. Whoever it is doesn’t attempt to call back.

Hidden ID again.

~

There are, apparently, five stages of grief.

John is going through all of them the first Christmas without Sherlock. That’s why he opts to stay home instead of going to Mrs Hudson’s, because being at Baker Street without being at Baker Street is too much for even him to bear.

He wakes up on Christmas day with a hell of a headache and a distinct feeling that he got another of those strange phone-calls last night. He can’t remember what was said. If anything was said at all.

~

The phone-calls stops with that one, and he almost completely forgets about it, too busy working, preparing students and preparing the world, telling the world, shouting at the world.

We still believe in Sherlock Holmes.

He still believes.

And at night there are nightmares and Sherlock keeps shouting for John to look at him, and he wakes with a jolt, bathed in sweat and his heart beating like thunder in his chest.

Two and a half years has passed in the blink of an eye. An agonisingly slow and painful blink.

~

He sees Mycroft at least once a year, on Sherlock’s birthday, standing by the gravestone and smoking, telling John very deliberately each and every time that he doesn’t smoke.

There’s something else in his eyes every time, and John always feels like there’s something Mycroft wants to tell him something important, like he is telling him something important, but John is unable to listen or understand.

The brand of cigarettes he smokes is the same as the ones Sherlock preferred.

Mommy is there as well.

She’s not as tall as he would have expected, given both of her children’s height, but her hair is dark and her eyes are a piercing blue and she stands with a sort of dignity and smiles kindly and looks at John as if she’s dissecting him, but isn’t doing anything with the information she’s getting.

She smiles and hugs him like he’s an old friend every time. The first time she told him thank-you.

John suspects that neither Sherlock nor Mycroft has ever told her how bad he treated her son in those last few months.

He wonders if he should tell her. If he should mention that if he hadn’t rebuked Sherlock, if he hadn’t been so cruel, maybe Sherlock wouldn’t have jumped. Maybe he’d have been able to convince him to come down instead.

The nightmares are always the worst on Sherlock’s birthday.

~

“Hi, I’m your new neighbour,”

The man is tall, though not as tall as Sherlock, with sandy-blonde hair and a charming smile.

His eyes are blue and dead.

His name is Sebastian Moran.

John shakes his hand and invites him around for tea sometime, counting every second the man is in his flat, breathing a sigh of relief when he leaves again. He’s been there for three weeks, but John has never seen him before, their schedules never clashing. He hopes it stays that way in the future.

Mycroft kidnaps him the same day, the car driving him back to Baker Street and John is ushered into his old living-room. It’s frightening, because most of it looks as it should be. All of Sherlock’s stuff, all those things he didn’t know what to do with and gave to Mycroft, they’re all there.

“My brother would have liked it this way,” Mycroft says as a way of explanation, looking into the room and not at all caring what being back here is doing to John’s insides. Poor, battered old heart.  

“Would you like some tea?”

“Why am I here?” John asks, plopping down in his chair, hands tightening around his cane. Mycroft merely looks at John and stays where he is, not taking a seat. It strikes John yet again that the oldest Holmes-brother looks uncomfortable.

“I believe you have been introduced to a new acquaintance today?” he says, for some reason posing it as a question, as if the bastard didn’t already know everything about it. “A Sebastian Moran?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I didn’t like him.”

Mycroft smiles widely. “Good. That’s very good. Can I ask why you invited him up for tea?”

“Mycroft… seriously,” John sighs. “I don’t need permission from you to talk to other people. You’re not my keeper.” And then, deliberately to wound, he says: “You’re not my brother.”

Mycroft just cocks his head to the side at that one, studying John with the lazy manner of someone who knows you all too well.

“Sebastian Moran.” he says, in those careful, delicate tones of his. “He grew up in London, but disappeared when he turned sixteen. Mercenary, professional killer for hire and generally considered a madman. He is an agent of Moriarty’s. His second-in-command, you might call it.”

John stiffens. “And he’s here?” Even after his master had died?

“He is. We are as of yet, not sure of his motives, but I doubt he has anything good in mind considering where he has located himself.”

“You mean close to me?”

“I do.”

“Do you think…?”

“No,” Mycroft says firmly, guessing John’s next words. “Moriarty is dead. He still has henchmen all over the world. Or, well, he had. We have spent the last long while hunting them down. Moran is one of the last ones left and by far also the most dangerous.”

“But what would he want with me?” John mutters. “It’s been three years.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft says. “But your close affiliation with my little brother does make you an obvious target for those still hoping there is something to exploit from that past rivalry.”

“That makes no sense,” John countered. He could feel a headache coming on, and his heart was thundering in his chest at the thought of someone close to Moriarty living right next to him. He wanted to run away as fast as he could or go back there and shoot the bastard. Preferably both. “I don’t have whatever code Moriarty was using, I have no evidence from the cases, I have no part in this! What could he possibly want from me?”

He nearly shouted the last part, eyes raised to look at Mycroft. John stiffened.

He’d never seen Mycroft look this… this pale before. Out-of-place, sure. Bored, almost always.

Never down-right, uncomfortable, avoiding John’s eyes and swallowing heavily.

“He might…”Mycroft starts, then stops, and reminding John terribly of that day he had shown up at the Diogene’s club to accuse Mycroft of betrayal. He looked as guilty then as he does now, and it hits John that maybe Mycroft shouldn’t be saying what he is about to say.

Bugger that. John wants to know.

“He might hope to gather the whereabouts of a certain person from you.”

John blinked. “What?”

“John…”

Footsteps creaking on the floor, someone moving out of sight. John’s head snapped around, but he wasn’t able to see whoever it was, hidden behind a corner.

“Who’s in here?” the question is directed at Mycroft who clearly knows, and John stands up and tries to ignore the painful drumming in his leg, in his shoulder, in his head. In his heart.

“No-one but us,” Mycroft says. He sounds defeated. No use lying to a man as determined as John is in this moment. He clenches his hands into fists and turns in the direction of the sound, ready to march over there and pull out whoever is hiding.

He doesn’t have to do anything, however. The mysterious person does it for him.

Sherlock Holmes steps out of the shadows and stands in the sharp light of their living-room.