1024 words / Prompt: Empty
Let’s say it didn’t happen that way. Instead, let’s say John looks up a moment sooner, and sees Sherlock approaching. He has a minute to process what he sees instead of realising it later, when the waiter is rambling on about vintages and stranger’s gazes….
Maybe he’s just had a thought about Sherlock, about how he wouldn’t be sitting here with a ring box if Sherlock hadn’t died. He might be a bit sad, trying to buoy himself up to smile when Mary returns, and he looks up to check whether she’s on the stairs yet— and he sees Sherlock instead.
And Sherlock— let’s say he’s had a giddy thought about pretending to be a waiter, but now he’s seen John’s face and isn’t sure what to do. He’s come through the door, and the headwaiter’s phone is buzzing, and he’s just staring at John.
Maybe John thinks it’s an hallucination. Maybe he’s seen Sherlock (ghost? Vision? Hallucination?) before now— across a crowded street, disappearing into a Tesco or coming up from the underground. Maybe he’s heard that voice. (Sitting in his chair one evening, a voice drifts up from the street below— he can’t even make out words, but he knows. By the time he’s out the front door, looking around, wild-eyed, there is no Sherlock in sight.)
He’s not good at deducing things like this, but when he sees Sherlock, he might notice something, a detail he wouldn’t have imagined. He looks tired, thin, sad. Not the way John usually remembers him.
If John tries to remember him, it’s always with his coat swirling, his collar popped, his hair a bit windblown. It’s the Sherlock who gives him that smile, the one he reserves for John, who has no idea what it means. But he knows that it’s only for him.
Let’s say that here and now, on the edge of this knife, about to change his whole life, giving it to a woman who has been good to him, saved him from drowning in grief— let’s say that when he sees Sherlock, he realises that he’s not certain.
Maybe he doesn’t really love her. They could get married and he’d learn to love her. But she might grow tired of him, impatient if he keeps talking about Sherlock, or even silently missing him. He should be over that by now.
Maybe she isn’t who she seems to be. He wonders what Sherlock would deduce if he got a look at her.
He wonders if he wants to know.
Let’s say that Sherlock, when he sees John’s awful moustache, realises that it’s too late, that John has moved on. He’s had this thought before, if he’s honest with himself. He got careless in Serbia because he kept thinking two years, two years, too long...
He’s looking at John and he’s suddenly ashamed. Never ashamed that he loves John, but ashamed that he never said, that it was always something he put off saying because he had calculated the possibility of John loving Sherlock at nil. Even if he once might have been open to that (unattached, like me…), how could John love Sherlock now, when he’s grieved for two years, believing a lie that Sherlock orchestrated? John is alive, and that’s all he wanted. What he wants now, he sees he can’t have, and he’s ashamed.
His face flushing, he turns back the way he came in, pushes past several people waiting to be seated. He flees the look on John’s face. He’s mortified that he came here, thinking he’d make John laugh, see him smile, and sweep him away, back to Baker Street.
He’s got on with his life.
Outside, he stands on the pavement, deleting the happy scene he’d imagined.
Is that sentiment talking?
Everything will be different now from what he’s imagined. He might hail a taxi and go home—
But it isn’t home now. It’s an empty house, without John.
Imagine John now, seeing the hallucination turn away, exit the restaurant. He doesn’t think about Mary or the ring or what he’s going to say to her. He stands, stumbles away from the table, then runs towards the door.
He sees him from the back— a tall man wearing a dark coat, the collar up, curly dark hair. His head is bowed, his shoulders slumped.
But at this moment, before he takes another step into a new life, he’d rather make a fool of himself than dismiss the possibility that it could be him.
One more miracle, for me.
If anyone could be that clever, fake his own death, and return—
Sherlock raises his head, gathering himself for what’s next. There is no solution. He can’t go back, so he must go forward. He’ll see John at some point, and he’ll apologise. If he’s lucky, John will accept his explanation. But they’re in different timelines now: John moving into the future, Sherlock stuck in the past.
He raises his hand to hail a cab.
Imagine: a hand on his back, tentative, trembling.“Sherlock?”
Imagine: the face he always looks for, the voice he still hears. “John?”
Let’s say it happens this way.
John doesn’t hit Sherlock. He falls into the arms that are already open to receive him. He weeps. He curses. He laughs. And weeps some more.
Sherlock doesn’t make fun of John’s moustache. He doesn’t make a joke about tuxedos, or say, short version, not dead. Instead, he reaches for John, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…
John forgets about Mary. He hugs Sherlock.
When Sherlock asks, “Your date?” John hits his forehead, pulls out his phone and sends a text. Something’s come up. I’m sorry. We’ll talk tomorrow.
John forgets about Mary, again. He looks up at Sherlock, who is smiling now, giving him that look, the one that’s only for him.
Sherlock can’t let go. He’s not sure what comes next, but he’s less afraid now, and maybe he can finally say it.
John remembers every time he went to Sherlock’s grave, never able to say it.
Let’s say it happens like that.
