Say It Now: a 1-shot Reichenbach return fix-it for @imnova & @notjustamumj
Summary: What Sherlock and John wrote to each other during the Hiatus.
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15 June 2012
I’m writing to you from a place I can’t name, but it does have a name, it isn’t beyond the grave. And though sometimes it feels like it might be hell, I am certainly alive in it. Which will be news to you, I hope not unwelcome news, whenever you may hear it.
In a meaningless tangle of contradictions, I am writing to you but cannot send this letter or even commit it to writing. My only option is to draft it, revise it, polish and store it in my mind palace, perhaps have it conveyed to you one day.
It is a year since I made myself fall from the roof of Barts. Since I lied to you, said goodbye to you. Almost a year since I heard you say goodbye, from the cypress shadow near an empty grave. You didn’t hear me, but I promised to come back as soon as I could. A meaningless promise: I know now I can’t be sure of getting back at all, let alone promising to.
In any case, I thought my return would be so much sooner. What presumption, what hubris!—I thought it would be a few months, six at the outside. It’s twelve now and I am no nearer to returning to London, to life.
Should I tell you in this letter what my task was, what my motivation was for pretending to die, for leaving you behind? Perhaps not. It’s all receded into the obsolete now. What’s left is only remorse, solitude, and homesickness.
Is there such a thing as Johnsickness?
read the rest on AO3–along with a rec for a Reichenbach return fix-it one-shot from both of the birthday writers
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Happy birthday, imnova (NovaNara on AO3) and notjustamumj (notjustmom on AO3)! Thank you for the years of brilliant fic, Johnlock and other, and the fandom friendship and solidarity. You deserve all the best a birthday can offer.