I Can't Decide
Bonus Prompt: Pop Music
By: quel-fromage| Team Yellow Captain
TW: Suicide and angst. Lots of angst. And feels
Songs used: Nuisance, I Can't Decide, I, Monster
I’m standing on the street. I can see him on the roof, perched like a raven ready to fly. But we both know his wings have been clipped. No matter how solid his understanding of physics even he can’t cheat gravity. No matter his understanding of biology he can’t cheat death. I look up at him, and whisper into the phone, “Ican’t decide whether you should live or die. You’ve caused me more pain than you know.”
“I’m not trying to be a nuisance,”he replies. Why would he say that? Does he not understand?
“It takes the truth to fool me.” Even though I’m not the detective he is I know he’s lying, about being a fraud, about lying to me. He’s lying about lying. The deceitful prick. If he dies, if he jumps, it’s because he has to. Sherlock always plays by the rules. “Oh, you’ll probably go to heaven,” I try to laugh down the phone.
“It takes the truth to fool me,” he replies, using my own words against me. We both know wherever he goes it isn’t heaven.
“I won’t deny I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone,” I tell him. He has to know. It’s a bitch convincing people to like you. It was hard enough convincing myself. I can’t decide whether you should live or die. I was so alone. I needed him. I needed him to live. No wonder why my heart feels dead inside. It’s cold and hard and petrified. Just like your skull, sitting at home. It wears your scarf now. The same one I can see wrapped around your neck.
I’m no longer talking to him, the living, breathing, Sherlock Holmes. I’m talking to a wraith. I see the scarf and the image of him in my mind turns blue. I’m talking to a blue wraith. Were we searching for the truth in all of it or were we debating just to win the argument? It always felt like I was fighting against him as much as with him. But I’d never needed someone like I needed him. I once told him what I said when I thought I was going to die. I thought then my words were weak, my thoughts hindered by fear and pain. Nothing aside from his name left my lips as he fell. My heart died so surely and suddenly nothing could emerge from my despair but his name.
“And you have this dream every time you sleep?”
John was pulled abruptly into the present. The lump remained in his throat, the stinging tears in his eyes. His therapist examined him closely. He squirmed under her stare. He felt uncomfortable, exposing his emotions to an almost stranger. He still didn’t understand them himself. He mumbled an affirmative
“Did you bring the letter?”
John reluctantly reached into his pocket and pulled out a much-crumpled piece of paper. “I felt ridiculous writing it.”
“Did it help you?”
“It hasn’t yet.”
“Have you read it?” John shook his head. It had been hard enough to write. And she expected him to have read it. “Read it to me.”
“No.”
“John,” she cut over him as he tried to argue. “If you want to work out these unhealthy emotions you need to dedicate yourself to the process. I warned you from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be easy.”
“You know what, I don’t think I’m interested then.” John returned the letter to his pocket and fumbled for his cane. His limp had gotten worse, and he now needed the stick everywhere he went.
“Sit down, John. We don’t have to read the letter yet, if you aren’t ready. But if you give up now you never will be. Do you want to feel like this forever?”
“Feel?” John replied almost angrily. He still sat back down. “I hardly feel anymore.”
There was concern in his therapist’s eyes. He stubbornly ignored it. She was being unprofessional. He didn’t need her pity, just her help.
“Have you met anyone?” She barely looked up from the notes she was making in her book. It meant John didn’t have to hide his discomfort. She guessed it from his silence anyway. “What’s the problem?”
“I love that girl.” John paused as he tried to find the words. “But every time I get home after seeing her, something tells me that I’ve seen him. I can’t get him out of my mind.”
“Picture him in your mind. Tell me what you see.”
“He’s a wolf in disguise but I can’t stop staring in those evil eyes.”
His therapist smirked. “You’re eloquent today. You’ve been listening to a lot of music haven’t you?”
“I fail to see how that is relevant,” John replied defiantly. He had decided to try her methods but he wasn’t going to respond to her teasing.
“It’s a sign of your attempts to cope. Why do you think you see him, keeping thinking about him if you love someone else?” She leaned forward, notebook abandoned. She was curious. He was no longer a patient. He was a curiosity. “What did he do to you?”
“He ate my heart.” John’s response was automatic. He still had the image of the wolf in his head, and the lyrics of the song in his mind. “I can’t love her.” Could I love him?
“Read me the letter.” This time John didn’t resist. His fingers trembled as he withdrew the scrap of paper and unfolded it but he never considered stopping. He’d felt stupid writing it and he knew he was going to feel stupid reading it. But he had to try. He couldn’t go on like this anymore. As he started speaking he found the words hard to get out. With every sentence it got easier and easier.
First of all, I’m sorry John. I’m sorry to leave you. I know you’ll never believe that I am fraud, that I invented Moriarty, that my ego led me to this. I never said it but I needed you to believe in me. Despite the apparent confidence I had in my intelligence you were the only person who gave me true confidence. I never intended to hurt you. I thought I was helping you, that I was healing you. I never thought that it would be the other way around. I never realised how wrong my life was before you came in and fixed it.
These words don’t mean anything anymore. No matter how many times I say I didn’t intend for this, I have the potential to be the guiltiest. I didn’t plan this but I know I could have prevented it. I don’t know how, but I should have been able to. I failed you. For that, and everything else, I am sorry, and I beg your forgiveness. My greatest strength is also my strongest weakness. You made me human. Without you I would have driven myself to the edge a lot sooner. You will always have my inexpressible and eternal gratitude for this.
None of us want to hear about where we go wrong. It’s too late for that anyway. I just think we can do better than this. If I were there, if I’d survived, I would tell you we can and we will do better than this. You’ll just have to do better without me. You always were capable of better. You have to move on.
I hope you can forgive me. I hope you can forgive yourself. If you can’t believe anything in this letter, if I have betrayed you too thoroughly for you to believe anything I’ve ever said to you, please believe this. None of this is your fault. You could not have saved me from my fall. But you saved me as surely as if you had caught me.
Forgive me, my friend. I always have and I always will care for you.
“This is good, John. This is very good.”
He couldn’t bear her enthusiasm. It wasn’t good. Did she not understand? Writing down what he had needed Sherlock to say to him didn’t make the words real. Writing down what he felt on a piece of paper didn’t get rid of the emotion. It didn’t help ease the pain in his heart. It didn’t bring him back. Nothing could bring him back. He carefully folded the letter and returned it to his pocket. He was vaguely aware that his therapist was still talking.
“Where are you going?” Her question managed to register in his mind as he stood. “We still have fifteen minutes.”
“We’re done.”
“I beg to differ...”
“With all due respect,” John retorted in such a way that showed he clearly didn’t think much respect was due, “If I say we’re done we’re done.”
“Alright, well keep up with the walks and I’ll see you next week.”
“Nope. I said we’re done.”
“John...”
He barely paused at the door. A brief surge of guilt broke through the ever-hanging black shade of sorrow. “Thank you for your help, doctor. But this really isn’t working. I have to do this on my own.” I was used to being alone. I was used to relying on myself. Why did you have to come along and change that?
221B Baker Street was dark. John hadn’t moved since he’d gotten back from his appointment so the curtains were still open. The scant amount of moonlight that filtered through the window was the only illumination in the room. Mrs Hudson had gone to bridge. No one else ever visited anymore. John was well and truly alone. His pistol lay on the table in front of him, the barrel gleaming in front of his blurred eyes. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He hadn’t cried at the grave. It hadn’t been real then. Only the quiet and empty Baker Street was real. Here his pain was tangible, a weight on his shoulders that he couldn’t shake off.
I can’t decide if I should live or die. He had feared death when he was in the war and had no control over how and when it would come. Sitting on his couch, gun just in reach, he wasn’t scared. There was no room in his heart for fear. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The apartment was reconstructed in his mind as perfectly as if he’d had his eyes open. Except in this version Sherlock was sitting in his armchair facing him. There was a smile on his face, the genuine smile Sherlock had only worn when he thought John couldn’t see him. But the figure was a wraith, wrapped in blue like the one from his dreams.
Still with his eyes closed, John reached forward and wrapped a hand around the grip of his gun. The wraith in his mind reached forward and closed his own hand over John’s.
“I can’t decide if I should live or die.” John’s voice trembled as he spoke. He yearned for a reply more than he’d needed anything before.
“Live, John.” Very real hands were holding his own, gently pulling the gun from his fingers. His eyes opened slowly. The wraith in his mind materialized before him. Despite the darkness, despite his state, John knew that his best friend had come back to him.
“You fucking bastard.”