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I live in the drabbest, coldest flat in London.
I hadn’t really noticed, while she was alive.
“Perhaps you were busy noticing other things. Brighter things. Brighter people.”
“No,” is my soft reply, but my argument is thin and weak.
I have too much time, now, in this suburban flat, to notice the cold and the grey and the stillness. The ridiculous discomfort of our kitchen chairs, the dull chrome of the appliances.
“A kitchen full of biohazards and body parts. Not good for a baby, John. Though a depressed father with anger issues certainly isn’t high on the list, either.”
I spit the words out before I consider whether I should. “Well, if you hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be this way.”
Mary scoffs at me. “Come on. You know that’s not true.”
I laugh humourlessly, bitterly, because I don’t know the truth about myself anymore.
“Yes you do, John.” Mary’s eyes peer into me like cold marble. “Because I am you, and you’re me. Don’t forget that.”
I’m always in danger of forgetting.
Rosie is strapped in a highchair next to me, and I’m doing my best to feed her. I’m not having much success. More food seems to be getting on her. She beats her fists on the tray with more enthusiasm than I’ve felt in months.
“I wish I could forget everything at the moment,” I say back coolly, feeding Rosie her next bite. “But you won’t seem to let that happen.”
“The truth will set you free,” Mary says.
“How very cliché,” I reply.
“Some things are cliché for a reason.”
I ignore her and wipe Rosie’s face again, gazing down at my daughter with no emotion. I know that I should feel something when I look at her, but I don’t feel much of anything anymore.
My daughter. (The words should have meaning.)
My dead wife. (The words should have meaning.)
“You used to know,” Mary says, “what it was like for things to have meaning. But it seems you’ve slowly forgotten since the day you watched him fall from the rooftop.”
I’m always in danger of forgetting.
I scowl at her. “You’re the most annoying ghost I’ve ever met.”
“You’re annoyed with yourself,” she reminds me casually. “And this is easier than it was with him—you know it.”
She’s right. (I’m right?) It is easier. His ghost had been a noose, keeping me in a choke hold of memories with no chance of escaping.
I’m not so sure I’d wanted to.
I don’t long for her like I had longed for him.
I don’t feel as though I’ve lost the half of me that had made me greater than whole.
***
Weeks after Mary dies, I find a new therapist to help me get through the process of mourning her.
“Him. You’re mourning him.”
I suppose I’ve never actually stopped.
”It’s always about Sherlock,” Mary reminds me.
It’s always. About. Sherlock.
“I seem to be reminding you of your friend,” the therapist muses.
“Not necessarily a good thing,” I reply.
She thinks she’s being clever.
Deducing me? Is that what therapists do?
Analysing? Yes, that’s the word.
I don’t want to talk about him.
Talk to me about my wife. Tell me how to make it all mean something.
She wants to know how long it’s been since he and I have spoken.
I don’t know how fucking long it’s been.
“Four weeks, three days, two hours, thirty-six minutes, seventeen seconds,” Mary goads from the right corner of the room.
“Piss off,” I mutter under my breath.
***
Mrs. Hudson says he isn’t doing well.
And I feel something.
Protectiveness. (Oh, hello, it’s been awhile.)
Don’t want it.
Mrs. Hudson says he needs me.
The thing is, I already know.
The thing is, I need him too.
But there is no “letting Sherlock Holmes back into your life.” Not for me. Letting him into it is always, always
“letting him consume it.”
“Can’t Sherlock talk to someone else? Molly? Greg?”
“They don’t matter,” Mrs. Hudson sobs. “You do.”
No. No. I’m the one who hurts him.
Isn’t that what I do best?
I’m the one who abandons him when he needs me.
I’m the one who stands outside as he puts drugs into his body.
I’m the one who kicks him while he’s down.
“You would never do that,” Mary says. “That’s not the John Watson I know.”
Wouldn’t I? Or is it simply an irrational fear that haunts me?
No, I would never do those things.
I have trouble figuring out what’s actually real.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
***
When I see him, he looks thinner than I remember.
Pale. Drawn. Shaky. High. Obviously, he’d gotten high because
“You left him,” Mary says. There is nothing in her voice.
The urge to take him into my arms, overwhelming, beating against my mind.
These wishes of mine, like fever dreams.
Wanting to touch him, to hold him, to let him hold me. To go
back
To how things had been.
John and Sherlock,
against the rest of the world,
and to be whole,
and to be alive,
and to be
healed.
Don’t look at me Don’t talk to me I miss you I love you I just want to protect you—
Mary laughs from her corner.
“Protect who?”
She bloody well knows the answer.
“Sherlock,” I say to her. “You know how it is. It’s always about Sherlock.”
“Yes. Always,” she says. “Always Sherlock. Even on the day I
died in your arms.”
I don’t think that’s the way it should be.
I used to know the difference between right and wrong.
When I take his wrist in my hand, and look at the bruised mapping of scars on his arms, I think I will
cry, think I will
raise his wrist to my lips and kiss it, think I will
let my tears land on his skin so they can wash away the scars,
But I don’t.
I only speak to him in angry words that aren’t my own.
“Always the soldier,” Mary says. I flinch at her words.
He tells me to examine him, as though it’s a simple thing, like
five years ago, when he’d gotten injured on a case, and we’d been sitting in the kitchen while I patched him up, as though
touching him
wouldn’t be the hardest and the easiest thing I could ever do, as though
touching him isn’t the same thing as hurting him
As though he isn’t fucking dying.
I don’t know. I don’t know why—I don’t know—I don’t know anything anymore.
I don’t know who I am.
I just want to protect him.
I couldn’t protect him when he’d jumped off the roof.
”He was busy protecting you, John.”
I couldn’t protect him when Mary had put a bullet in his chest.
”I’m the one you chose, John.”
I couldn’t protect him.
”You couldn’t protect me, John.”
He rattles off some deductions—
infuriating, wonderful and brilliant and all of that could never change, even though I’ve changed, and we’ve changed,
God. I miss you. I miss you. I miss us.
“When will you miss me?” Mary asks.
I only miss the person I thought she was.
“You miss the person that he is,” she says.
Is. Present tense.
“You still know who that person is. You’ve always known. Even when others didn’t. You spent time and energy trying to show it to others. Don’t let yourself forget.”
I’m always in danger of forgetting.
***
We’re at his flat. (Our flat?)
Words flying fast and false and bright in the air between us.
I don’t think I can stay here and not watch him and not have him and not hurt him.
He doesn’t want me to leave. He pleads with me silently, glib response after glib response, his eyes sad, his posture defeated.
God help me, I want him back in my life.
God help me, I truly need him.
I turn to leave anyway.
And then—
Oh. I haven’t heard that sound in years, yet it instantly sends a thrill of jealousy down my spine.
I freeze, hands curling into loose fists as I turn around to face him.
He’s talking immediately. Short little words, false little looks of confusion—a deflection if ever I’ve seen one.
“Oh, the posh boy loves the dominatrix!” coos Mary from her corner.
“John?” Sherlock says softly, eyes raised to mine as I approach his chair. He is uncertain, but hell, so am I.
“I’m gonna make a deduction,” I say. He’s encouraging, but puzzled.
Maybe he thinks I’ve snapped.
Maybe I have.
“Happy birthday,” I breathe.
I’ve shaken him; feels good to do that. He lowers his eyes, and sips delicately at his tea. I want
to hold him so badly that I ache and I ache, but
I don’t.
This isn’t about me.
It’s always about Sherlock.
He sighs shakily. “As I think I’ve explained to you many, many times before, romantic entanglement, while fulfilling for other people—”
“Would complete you as a human being.”
I just want him to know—
I’ve messed everything up, but he doesn’t have to do the same.
Because she wants him, and she’s alive, and it is so incredibly easy to lose that,
The way I lost him.
“That doesn’t even mean anything,” he says.
It means something. It always does.
“She’s not the one who completes him, you bloody moron,” Mary says in my ear.
“Just text her,” I say emphatically. “Phone her. Do something while there’s still a chance.”
“There’s still a chance,” Mary urges.
“Because that chance doesn’t last forever. Trust me, Sherlock.”
You may have found the person who completes you, but getting to keep them is never a guarantee.
”Open your eyes. Just open your eyes and look at him,” Mary continues.
“It’s gone before you know it,” I say. “Before you know it.”
I don’t think I’m talking about Mary anymore, or the Woman anymore. I wonder if he knows that.
“He knows. He always knows," Mary reminds me. "He knows you better than you know yourself."
“She was wrong about me.”
“Mary? How so?”
“She thought that if you put yourself in harm’s way... I’d rescue you or something. But I didn’t. Not ‘til she told me to.”
“You did,” Mary whispers again. “You rescued him many times. You rescued him nearly the second you met him."
I'm always in danger of forgetting.
“And that’s how that works,” I continue. “That’s what you’re missing.”
Sherlock looks up at me again, a pointedness in his eyes, and I want to give him everything I possibly can.
“She taught me to be the man she already thought I was,” I say.
“You taught him just the same.”
And I want more.
I want him, I want to treasure him, I want to keep him.
“I’m not the man you thought I was; I’m not that guy. I never could be. But that’s the point. That’s the whole point.”
I’m not even sure who I’m talking to.
“It's very much the point,” Mary concedes.
I always
believed in Sherlock Holmes,
loved the part of him that nobody saw, that he didn't see himself.
I saw the best of him, because
That’s who
matters.
And
I love him. God help me, I love him.
It’s always about Sherlock, and
It's always been about Sherlock, and
It will. Always. Be. About. Sherlock.
”Tell him,” Mary says. “Tell him, John.”
The words only form as hot and thick tears, rolling down my face.
But he knows. He always knows.
He stands, crossing the carpet between us with slow, hesitant steps. He’s still so thin, still so drawn and worn—and yet it’s him who’s coming to me.
Sherlock, comforting me. Sherlock, trying to make me feel better.
I’m afraid he’s got it backwards.
I shuffle forward too, and he stops, his eyebrows lifted in surprise as I advance towards him. And once I’m near him—nearer to him than I’ve been in a long, long time—I can't stop.
My arms go up, and slide around his waist, and pull him towards me gently. I let my forehead tip forward until it rests on his chest. I hear him make a little noise of surprise before he’s holding me against himself tightly, fingers pressed into my skin.
And now that I’m holding him, I know I can never let him go again.
Not now that he’s clinging to me like his life depends on it, nuzzling the top of my head and wrapping me up in his long arms. Not now that I finally have him exactly where I want him.
He looks shattered: scared and sad and overwhelmed.
He’s shaking: so am I.
“John,” Sherlock breathes, ruffling my hair with his gentle exhalation. “John. John—”
God, I love him. I love him. I love him. I want to tell him.
Perhaps it’s too early for grand declarations.
Mary whispers from behind me: “The thing is: it’s not too late.”
And then she’s gone.
I hush him quietly, letting one hand wander to his curls. Cup the back of his head in my palm as I pull back far enough to look at him, and pull him even closer with my other arm.
“I love you,” I say.
“John,” Sherlock says, and it's nothing more than movement of his lips brushing my cheek.
I will always know my name coming from him, even if he only says it with a look—but this time, it is a grand declaration unto itself.
When I kiss Sherlock, everything shifts.
It’s the universe aligning, jigsaw pieces coming together; every muddled thing turning crystalline.
I know, with more certainty than I have ever known anything, that this is what we have always been meant to do.
He moans against my lips; his hands flex on my waist; fingers press tightly enough into my flesh to hurt, but I don’t care. Because Sherlock is in my arms, and I am kissing him.
And who I am
is exactly
this.
I am Doctor John Hamish Watson, 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, Father of Rosie, blogger, partner of the maddest man on the planet.
Lover, fighter, hero, pressure point, conductor of light.
With him at my side, I am the man he always knew I could be.
With him at my side, we are everything.