This is the part they didn’t show you in The Final Problem.
That rope was for Sherlock to climb down into the well to John. John had been struggling to keep his head clear of the water for a good while, and he was getting exhausted; hypothermia starting to set in. It was going to be another 10 minutes or so before the police arrived to unchain John and get all of them out of there, but that could seem an endless and fatal time for a fatigued man barely able to get a gasp of air.
Sherlock was quite a bit taller than John, so he took it upon himself to clamber down into the well and take on John’s weight so his friend could rest. How overwhelmed with relief he must be to be able to finally save his best friend from that cursed well. At this moment, it’s just the two of them, nothing else and no one else mattered.
(Discontinuity Error: I forgot to add the skull and some bones; I might add them later but who knows)
Your picture was so lovely. I hope you don’t mind, but it inspired me to write a story
“Sherlock,” John shouts. His voice hoarse and rasping, echos up that endless shaft above him, out into the small patch of night sky. He strains to hear a response. There is silence except for his own labored breaths, the low roar of the water pouring in and the slosh and slap of his arms flailing against the water that is closing around his neck, like algid fingers.
He felt weak even before the frigid water started pouring in. The drugs that had knocked him unconscious have not fully worn off and the chill of the water has numbed his muscles and sapped what little fight he had been managing to put on.
The metal bites into the flesh of his ankle as he jerks against the shackle anchoring him to the bottom. He can feel everything trembling as he tries to stay above the water. His lungs burn. His fingers scrabble against the slick stone wall, seeking some hold. The tips are bleeding, but that hardly matters.
He is going to die here.
“Sherlock.” His voice is so small; swallowed up in liquid darkness. He thinks of that smooth, black surface of Sherlock’s headstone. How he had placed his hand on it and bowed his head. How he had wept and felt like he was drowning and begged for Sherlock to come and save him… and he had come… but too late. John had already died inside. Had already buried his truths in a cold grave.
And now… when Sherlock comes - if Sherlock comes- it will be too late again.
His vision remains warped on the edges, like staring out of a fish bowl. That bleak irony is not lost on him. His weakened arms flail uselessly against the water. They are doing less and less to keep him buoyant. Exhaustion is quickly settling into every muscle and his legs have turned heavy, like stones, weighing him down.
“Please. Please, Sherlock,” he whispers. He touches the device nestled in his ear. It has been silent for far too long. Maybe Sherlock is hurt too. Maybe he can’t come. Maybe communication had been turned off because maybe, this time, Sherlock won’t try to save John - doesn’t want to. Always the bloody ‘damsel in distress’ and, just like in the prison when John had tried to warn Sherlock with ’Vatican Cameos’ and Sherlock chose to ignore him, maybe the time when Sherlock would trust words from John above all else had passed.
The panic swells in John’s chest along with the guilt, the shame, and the heartache. He knows that on some level he doesn’t deserve to be saved, yet again. Sherlock had saved him so many times and in so many ways and he had been downright vicious and cruel towards him. He had misdirected his grief and rage on the one person that had went through fire and hell for him time after time. And it had all been John’s attempt to kill his own feelings - to burn out his own heart so he could stop feeling. He really is an idiot.
John could never trust it. He had loved Mary… the Mary before the shooting… but that Mary wasn’t real… the woman playing the role of Mary, Rosamund, she had proven herself to be a very good actress. So he couldn’t tell what was the truth or the lie with her. It was all an illusion. They were all smiling and living a perfect (fake) life. He was playing along but there were so many lies.
The more he stayed with Mary and the more he tried to play the perfect part of husband and father, the more he realized what was missing. The woman on the bus… the woman he now knows to have been Eurus… reminded John of Sherlock in ways he hadn’t even been able to pinpoint at the time - just in the feeling she gave him. More so when she texted him… her smart, sharp and sometimes dark wit… He could almost pretend… that’s why he had texted her - kept texting her. It was wrong. He felt horrible and guilt-ridden… but with that light flirting he also had felt closer to happy than he had since before Sherlock jumped.
That day he texted Elizabeth (Eurus) that it was over, he had realized she was a stand-in for Sherlock. He realized he was never going to be happy with the illusion and that, even if he was terrified of being rejected by Sherlock again, he had to try. He had planned to tell Mary he couldn’t do it anymore. He had started to, there on the couch, before they got the text to come to the aquarium. Then, in the moment Mary had died in his arms he had been overwhelmed with grief, guilt, shame and anger because in that moment of deep anguish it all got twisted up inside him and it seemed that falling for Sherlock all those years ago cursed him to never be able to be the kind of man that could be worthy of all that praise Mary heaped on him in those final moments and all the kindness and self-sacrifice she’d shown in the end. Maybe she had been worthy of all of John’s love, but he had fallen for another long ago and he could not make himself fit that perfect image of happiness she had been trying to create for them both.
He had failed in so many ways.
Above all, he’d hated Sherlock for making him fall in love and then turning into a man that seemed capable of loving too late.
John yanks at his leg again, desperately. It isn’t suppose to end this way. Chained to the bottom of a well with the bones of a child beneath his feet. He thinks of calling out again, but it seems futile. There is no one to save him this time, and he only has himself to blame.
The last words John had heard through that device in his ear now echo through his mind. Sherlock’s voice; quiet and broken and raw with honesty, ‘I love you.’
It hadn’t been for John. Those words had been for Eurus, just as they had been offered up to Molly earlier. They’d never said those words to each other. They had come closest with Mary as a buffer of safety.
‘…I want to be up there with the two people I love most in the world,’ John had said when he asked Sherlock to be his Best Man.
‘…here you sit between the two people that love you most in the world,’ Sherlock had said in his Best Man speech.
That was as close as they could get - the brightness of their love dimmed into something manageable by reflecting it off another. They could not say it to each other directly because, as Molly confessed, saying it is too much when it is actually true. With Sherlock, it mattered. Saying it directly would change everything and that was always too scary a prospect. He was trying so hard to make it anyone but Sherlock, because Sherlock had already rejected him all those years ago and if he did again… that would be more than John could take. He wouldn’t risk it.
Now, as he strains on his tiptoes, his head tipped back, the water up around his chin, he thinks of those words from Sherlock being the last words he will ever hear. A warmth blooms in his cold, heaving chest.
Keep reading
