III. Odd

When you first told me, I found myself speechless. And for me to admit that, one can imagine how much at loss I was. Oh, I surely did know what lie I was supposed to tell you, but I couldn't bring myself to tell you that I was happy. You wouldn't believe it either. I wasn't, I most definitely wasn't. I wanted to burn our house down.

At first, I was angry. Of course I was angry. I was angry because I'd spent too much time refusing to regard my situation, expecting it to go away. To stay there and listen to those words coming out of your mouth was just too infuriating. It just got too obvious that I was still completely and irrevocably in love with you. Thinking about it now, I have to admit that it was naïve of me to think that I could ever not be in love with you. You're always telling me that I must be the most stupid genius in the world. I ought to be. No, I am sure I am.

While I listened to you tell me you were getting married, I felt my blood run cold and hot at the same time – and I didn't even think that was possible. Well, these emotion-things can be rather unsettling. I wanted to shout at you, to pin you against the wall, to ask why. Why? Why do you have to be so obtuse and boring like that? Why do you have to bend to such social conventions? Why can't you just stay here forever? Why?

The first thing I thought about was to throw you out of the window and to phone Lestrade to pick you up. I've never hated you like that. I felt my fury blinding me and I had to brace myself not to throttle you until you change your mind. I was so mad at you, so mad. I was so mad that I thought I was going to kill you. Kill you or kill myself.

How could you think of doing such thing to me? To us? What about the work? What about my healthy, my safety? So much for a healer! How could you think we didn't have a relationship? We did have one. You saw it, but you didn't observe, not really. We were together. At least, I thought we were.

I cheated death and I came back for us. And then this...

Of course I just stood still and pretended I wasn't listening. I don't think you bought it for a second, but you left it alone for some hours. You went to mind your own business, make tea, read your stupid novels. You left me there with my own thoughts. I rather think that you didn't know exactly what my thoughts were, because the very idea of you knowing how I was suffering and not doing anything about it pains me.

You left the flat and didn't come back for hours. I know you went to see her, maybe to tell her I was being as insufferable as always. Maybe you told her that you couldn't wait any longer to move out, to run away from me. Did you tell her that? I doubt it. I can't possibly have been so blind about this. I can't possibly have read everything wrong.

You left me there alone, but I couldn't stay angry with you for long. I was being left behind, you were leaving me, and I couldn't stay angry. I couldn't stand the thought of being angry with you. Why would I be? You were leaving me, it was probably the brightest thing you've done in years. Maybe Sally Donovan was right all along and you convinced yourself that you should stay away from me. Who wants to be stuck with the freak?

I know I am a selfish bastard, but I want your happiness much more that I want mine. There's no such thing as happiness for me, I already know that much. These things are too subjective and unquantifiable for me to know or pursuit. What I can tell is that I was never as close to it as I was while you were here. And I knew that. So you deserve every bit of happiness you can get.

And I am not it. I never was, was I?

While I stood alone in the living room, I allowed myself two preposterous tears thinking about a time when I thought I could see some signs of your feelings for me. At that moment I just didn't know any more. It was interesting to see how afraid I was when I realized I couldn't trust my own methods to deduce you anymore. You were a second Baskerville to me. You made me doubt myself and for that I hated you again for some seconds. My brain, my observations, my deductions are what I have. If I can't trust them, who am I?

It had to be you to make me feel utterly lost and uncharacteristically sad. It seems unfair to me that a sociopath would find himself with tears in his eyes. But then again I never believed in such stupid things as karma or any mysterious justice. The facts were there, and I had to deduce everything again and convince myself that I made a mistake the first time. You possibly never understood the depth of the relationship we had. Or you probably just never loved me, and I let myself think you did, because I wanted you to.

When you came back home that night and told me for the second time, I let my fake smile do the work. I still couldn't bring myself to tell you I was happy for you, because I wasn't. I was not, I would never be happy for this. Not for the first time, I was glad to think that you were so used to my lack of empathy that you wouldn't mind.

From that moment on, the only thing I could feel was sadness. Raw, pure, human sadness. Disgusting. Of course I didn't show. I continued my work, my experiments, my life, pretending that I was not mortified. I am good at this. Mycroft now calls me too many times, and Mrs Hudson now looks at me with those puppy eyes. It's quite unbearable. What do they expect me to do? To have an emotional breakdown?

Please. I can't.

I am not a normal person, I can't just have a breakdown, expose my broken heart, ingest high levels of sugar and move on. There's no such thing as "moving on" after you. The only thing that does exist is pretending I've never felt what I've always felt and what I still feel every time I look at you and I'll always feel. I'll pretend. I'm pretending my whole life. I tried to think that maybe being away from you would be less disturbing than staying close to you and not having you. It's stupid. I would do anything to stay close to you. But that isn't my choice to make any more.

At least one of us is happy.

I hope you're happy, John, because all this has to be worth it.

I hope that every time I catch you looking at me with your sad eyes it's because you miss our life as flatmates.

Of course it is. It couldn't be any other thing. I don't know why I insist on thinking otherwise.

I do hope you're happy. I would vanish off your life just to make sure you're happy.

You have to be happy, because I can't accept the possibility of suffering like this for nothing.

You have to be happy.

Of course you are. You're a married man, you have a beautiful, boring wife, maybe you'll have kids, and live a normal life.

Is this what you've always wanted? I could never give you this.

I hope this is what you really want, John, because I would give you any other thing, I gave you everything I could. This is the one thing I couldn't give you.

And to think that I used to plan our retirement in Sussex... We and the bees. Ludicrous.

I hope you're happy.

At least one of us is.

ooOOoo

This fic was written because I was sad after all the setlock and the wedding stuff.

Of course I knew Johnlock wouldn't be on the show, of course! But I get sad every damn time, with the books, the movies, and any adaptation. In my mind, these two characters have romantic feelings for each other – even if they aren't necessarily sexual. I think there's more affection between them than between many canons of romantic novels. I'm sad for Sherlock.

All this said...
I'm not hating anyone here, I don't send hate to anyone – least of all to Amanda. So if you're reading this and you're sending hate to her, stop, please, because it's silly and you're just embarrassing yourself. Fans have true feelings invested on the show and on the characters. (It's only fiction, but it isn't, is it? We write about this, we talk about this, we freak out, we cry.) So, I don't like to see things turning into mockery. Thank God we have fictions, so we can write happy Johnlock endings until we run out of free space on the damn internet! (It's not the case here, as you can see.)
Anyway, try not to send hate to anyone, because it's really not nice. And either way, I know the next episodes will be brilliant like all of the others were.

I couldn't resist the urge to name this fic as a sign of rebellion, though. Ha. (:

Thank you so much for reading! Any feedback would be great! (;