Not THE Funeral, YOUR Funeral

Part 2

Disclaimer: They're not mine!

…..

Sherlock sat in a high-backed arm chair, his hands palm-to-palm under his chin, his eyes on John. John stood in the doorway, his bag halfway off his shoulder, his keys dangling in midair, swinging patiently as they waited to be set in their usual place on the small table. After a moment of silence Sherlock dropped his hands and gave a small, single nod.

"John," he said in greeting, as if acknowledging a coworker at an after-hours event.

"…Sherlock," John replied in the same tone.

Silence reigned for several long seconds. The bag was not set down, the keys slowly swung to a stop, hooked precariously over John's frozen right index finger.

"So… you're not dead then," John said slowly in an emotionless voice.

"Obviously not," Sherlock said without a hint of apology, and something in his tone suggested he didn't feel he should have to dignify John's statement with a reply.

"Right. 'Obviously.'"

The two men lapsed back into silence for a beat.

"Oh, come on, Sherlock!" John burst out, finally dropping his bag unceremoniously in the middle of the floor. He pointed his keys at Sherlock and went on in a rush, much louder than necessary, "You're seriously going to sit there and offer me no explanation as to your apparently fake suicide, your complete and utter absence for over a year—a year now, Sherlock!—and you just, you show up, and you're just sitting in my chair like none of this happened? Where have you been?" he bellowed, not pausing to let Sherlock answer any of his questions. "And why did you do it in the first place? And why—why did you—you just—"John interrupted himself, his eyebrows raising in disapproval. "I bet you even went to your own funeral! Jesus! You would be the only person who'd go and be able to watch all of his friends grieve and weep and—" He stopped midsentence, tossed his keys onto a side table angrily and forced out a frustrated breath. "You probably treated it as some sort of experiment! An experiment on grief and human emotions! Because obviously you don't have any!" he roared. "How did you like your funeral? Eh? Did you enjoy it? Think we did a good job? Were you entertained? Did you sit in the back in dark glasses and a fake mustache, eating popcorn?"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous John, popcorn? Really?" Sherlock rolled his eyes and looked out the window.

"Of course! Popcorn would have been too much," John said, his voice laced with sarcasm. "But I suppose I was spot on with the dark glasses and fake mustache then?"

"I didn't go to the funeral," Sherlock offered, looking back at John.

"Your funeral, Sherlock. It was your funeral. Not the funeral. Your funeral. Just like it was your grave I visited," John barked. His words had venom behind them, but Sherlock seemed oblivious to the harsh tone.

"Do you at least accept my apology?"

"You haven't apologized yet, Sherlock!" John howled.

Sherlock looked momentarily puzzled. "I haven't?"

"No!" John crossed his arms in exasperation.

"Oh. Well, then. I'm sorry."

John remained in the doorway, glaring at Sherlock, who watched him impassively for a moment before narrowing his eyes. "So we're good then?"

"No, Sherlock," John said firmly. "We're not good. That's not enough."

"But I apologized."

"What did you apologize for?" John asked pointedly, arms still crossed over his chest.

"For…" Sherlock's eyes darted to the left, then back to John.

"Why am I upset with you?"

"John—" Sherlock started in a patronizing tone.

"No. You're going to have to work for this. You have no idea what we've all-what I've been through these past twelve months."

"Yes I do, " Sherlock answered, without missing a beat. "I know exactly what you've been doing the last twelve months."

"You—" John dropped his arms and looked toward the ceiling in resignation. "Of course you do. Because you've been watching me." It wasn't so much a question as a statement. "You've been watching me for the last twelve months while I thought you were dead." John walked to the couch and sat heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Does that strike you as at all unfair?" Sherlock remained silent. "Right then. You're simultaneously one of the most brilliant and most catastrophically stupid people I've ever met." John was rewarded when Sherlock scowled at the insult.

Sherlock waited for John to continue, but he seemed to have stalled, stuck on the couch with his head in his hands. Sherlock ventured, "John, I'm sure I've given you a serious shock by my—I suppose—somewhat unnecessarily dramatic reappearance—"

"Gross understatement," John mumbled.

"—but there's a case I'm working on that I need someone's help with, and if I have to have any more to do with Mycroft than I already have recently, I'll—"

"Mycroft knew?" John asked, his head snapping up.

"Yes," Sherlock answered.

"But…you hate your brother," John pointed out.

"Yes," Sherlock repeated.

John's lips formed a very thin line as he exhaled sharply through his nose. "The number of enemies you have in this world, Sherlock, is staggering," he began slowly. "The number of people whom you vehemently dislike is even larger. So when I say that I believe Mycroft tops both of those lists, I understand the magnitude of what I'm suggesting."

"Your point?"

"Mycroft was the one you went to. He was the one who got to speak to you; the one who was spared the grieving process. He got to be in on the joke." John spat the last word. "All the while, your flatmate…really, your only friend in the entire world…I was the one who had to not only have a completely futile last conversation with you, but actually witness your suicide?" Sherlock opened his mouth to reply, but John cut him off. "No, you don't get to interrupt me. You're going to sit and listen to this, and you're not going to say a bloody thing until I'm done, do you understand me?" Sherlock gave a single nod and folded his hands in his lap.

"I watched you fall," John started again, "I watched you die. I watched you commit suicide right in front of me, and now after a year you're sitting here asking for me to accept your apology like it's as easy as fetching the paper. I need you to understand the gravity of this.

"Watching you on that ledge…I have never felt so panicked, and helpless, and frantic in my entire life. I've been to war, I've seen horrible things, I was shot. I came back with a limp, and yes, I understand that it was a psychological issue. I know that. I had some therapy for it, didn't seem to help, but I ran around London with you for one night, and it was gone. Fantastic.

"Now, after you died..." John trailed off. "Sorry. Yeah, that's going to take awhile to stop saying that. I know now that you didn't die, but that doesn't erase the last twelve months of dealing with your…loss. As far as I'm concerned, you died. You may not be dead anymore—" John sighed, "—but you died. You did."

John cleared his throat before picking up where he'd left off. "After you died, I went back to therapy. And this time, they didn't tell me to start a blog to deal with my progress, and they didn't give me a cane. Therapy wasn't much help at all, actually, in the beginning. No-one can help you get through watching a friend do what you did. You have to do it all yourself. One day at a time, one hour at a time, one excruciatingly long blink after another.

"You know I gave your eulogy? Mycroft said it would be more appropriate coming from me, and now that I know you two were in on it together, I understand why. Though I suppose even if he had been actually grieving he still would have gotten up there and given the most dry, heartless speech one could possibly imagine," John finished, his eyes trailing the room as his train of thought drifted.

Sherlock cleared his throat, and John's eyes snapped back to him. With a pointed finger, he said, "No. Nothing from you yet, I'm not finished. You haven't spoken to me in twelve months, you can bloody well wait another five minutes." John stood and began pacing the room in an accidental imitation of Sherlock's movements when he was thinking through a problem. "You said you've got a case you need my help with tonight, but I don't know that I can go with you." He stopped in front of where Sherlock was seated. "Your death…what I went through…it was a type of injury. And you can't distract me from this one. You can't distract me until it goes away. Running off with you tonight and solving some impossible mystery won't fix this. I don't know that you can make this limp go away."

Sherlock remained still and silent for several moments until finally he raised his eyebrows at John, politely asking for permission to speak.

"Yeah, I'm done. Have at it," John said with an exhausted slump to his shoulders. He walked back to the couch and sat, then swung his legs up and laid down, as if the last fifteen minutes had taken every last piece of energy he had in him.

"I'm sorry, John. I assure you, what I did was necessary. I didn't mean to hurt you."

John didn't move. "Hurt? No, 'hurt' would have been if you told me what was really going on as soon as you'd done it. This was something else. This was cruel, Sherlock. Even for you."

"John—"

"How did you get in here? I've had the locks changed," John interrupted.

"Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock answered.

"Oh, for the love of—how many people knew you were alive?" John asked, flinging an arm over his face.

"Mrs. Hudson was told today. Before that, only Mycroft and Molly."

"Molly, too?" John asked, exasperated.

"She was necessary."

The pair lapsed into silence. After several minutes, John asked quietly, "Have you seen your grave?"

"It's not my grave."

"Have you been to your grave, Sherlock?" John asked with more force.

"It's not my grave, John," Sherlock insisted.

"It is your grave. Just like it was your funeral—which, hang on, why didn't you go to your funeral?"

"Are we changing subjects?"

"No."

Before Sherlock continued, his eyes lit on a familiar case in the corner of the room. "You kept my violin out?"

"Still not changing subjects," John said, wiping a hand across his face in frustration.

"Yes. I had no particular desire to go, but following you one day you stopped by the grave—"

"Your grave. I was at your grave."

"You stopped by my grave. Soon after it happened. You were talking, speaking to me, I assume, but I couldn't hear what you were saying from where I was standing. I presume it was the usual, you missed me, you're sorry that I died, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah."

"No, Sherlock, that's exactly my point," John interrupted. "You're utterly dismissing the important parts. What I said over your grave was important. And I can tell you now, it wasn't 'blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc.'"

"Then what was it, if it was so important?"

John looked momentarily at a loss for words. He stopped with his mouth open, ready to reply, before closing it after a moment and furrowing his brow. "Well, I'm not going to repeat it to you now. That would just be… awkward. Besides, I don't know that it would have as much weight—I mean, now that I know you're alive, asking for you to 'not be dead' seems somewhat redundant."

"You went to my grave—"

"Good, your grave," John interjected.

"—where you presumed my corpse to be lying, to ask me 'not to be dead'?"

"See, now, this is why I can't tell you what I said. It was all very meaningful and moving at the time, let me assure you." John crossed his arms with finality.

"You looked...agitated," Sherlock continued, without being prompted. "The hunch of your shoulders, the redness around your eyes. I could tell your speech was choppy—you kept starting and stopping—it seemed like you couldn't finish a sentence. You were obviously very upset. Your face was drawn, you'd lost weight, likely hadn't been eating well, nor sleeping well—"

"I was destroyed," John interrupted quietly. "Watching your friend commit suicide right in front of you—listening to what are presumably his last words—being able to do nothing to stop it-that destroys a person."

"I'm sorry, John," Sherlock repeated, his voice soft.

John turned his head to regard him closely for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. I know you are." He stood up with a sigh and grabbed his keys from where he'd flung them earlier. "So," he said, clearing his throat, "tell me about this case we're solving tonight."

…

Wheew! I started this knowing it was going to be short, but with NO IDEA where it was going in the second chapter, or how I was going to end it. Been working hard on several ideas this past week, but this one spoke to me most.

The line "John, I'm sure I've given you a serious shock by my—I suppose—somewhat unnecessarily dramatic reappearance—" is just about exactly what Holmes says to Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Empty House, the very short story that involves the reveal that Holmes did not, in fact, die by falling off a cliff with Professor Moriarty. It's a super quick read, and I recommend it, since the first episode in series three is apparently based on it. It's funny...Watson even faints. (I didn't think our version of John would do any such thing, so I didn't borrow anything else from the original story.)

Hope you enjoyed!