Chapter Text
...and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. --Walt Whitman
1. Newark
John awakes, disoriented, in a bed that is not his own. The rough sheets tangled around his waist smell of cheap, unfamiliar detergent.
The air is stale and too warm. The dip of his lower back is damp with pooled sweat.
“Sh’lock?” he mutters, his voice slurred and drowsy.
“Go back to sleep.” Sherlock’s voice is quiet, but thick and dark as treacle, vocal cords roughened from stress and sorrow and lack of rest.
John scrubs at his eyes, tries to reacquaint himself with reality. “What time is it?” he mutters.
“Six minutes past three.”
“Morning at home, then.”
“Splendid grasp of time zones,” Sherlock murmurs with a touch more acid than necessary. He rolls his shoulders, shifts in the cheap desk chair he has pulled up next to the window. The blackout curtains are parted to reveal the car park outside the door of the motel room. He sighs, closes his eyes, runs fingers through lank hair. “I know your internal clock says to get up and have a cuppa.” His tone is softer. “But you must try to sleep. Four hours won’t do, and I need you functioning at full capacity tomorrow.”
John doesn’t bother asking why. “What about you?” he says instead. Sherlock doesn't answer. Even in the low light, John can see he is still fully dressed, down to jacket and shoes. The second bed is tightly made, completely untouched. “Sherlock. You need to sleep. You’re running on fumes.”
“I don’t need to rest,” Sherlock mutters dismissively. “I need to think.” Without another word he turns away from John, steepling his long fingers under his nose, returning his gaze to the window and the dreary, glare-washed landscape beyond.
John almost says the last thing Sherlock needs to do right now is focus on his thoughts; what he needs more than anything is sleep, oblivion, a moment of reprieve from the waking nightmare of the past nine days. But he knows it won’t make a damn bit of difference. Sherlock is going to do what Sherlock is going to do, and John feels a passing moment of gratitude that at least this time Sherlock deemed him important enough to be included, at least physically if not mentally.
He probably only included me because he needs a confidante, and I'm all he's got now -- now that Mycroft’s --
John can’t bring himself to finish the thought.
“I could keep you company,” he offers lamely.
“Thank you. Truly. But no. What I need you to do now is rest.” Sherlock swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and turns his head briefly to look at John. “Go back to sleep. Please.”
The harsh light and inky darkness throw shadows across Sherlock's too-sharp cheekbones, the hollow at the hinge of his jaw. He looks almost ghoulish, undead, a mysterious figure carved from living stone.
John’s inner thoughts turn a touch melodramatic, perhaps, under emotional duress.
Outwardly he merely sighs, nods, turns his back to Sherlock and rearranges himself on the hard, unfamiliar mattress.
God, how he hates motel rooms, hates the weird smell that seems to permeate them all, hates the thin stiff sheets and cheap pillows and unhygienic duvets. He can't sleep deeply, can't shut off the vigilance, his body and brain on alert, attention snagging on every unfamiliar light and shadow and rattling, thumping noise.
The unfamiliarity of it all is viscerally wrenching to a man like John, a man who, for all his love of danger and intrigue and adrenaline, is still in so many ways a creature of hearth and home and habit.
It’s all just… so, so strange. So wrong.
Wrongness is here to stay, he thinks. This is the new normal. This is where the two of us live, now, in a world gone utterly, inescapably wrong.
In a world without Mycroft Holmes in it to set it right.
John feels certain he won’t be able to fall back to sleep, not now, maybe not ever again. He's still so tired, though, and within minutes, he finds he’s drifting off despite himself. His worn body gives in as he slips into a restless slumber, terrifying memories melding seamlessly into troubled dreams.
***
In a rubbish-strewn abandoned warehouse near the river, the bitter enemies faced each other one last time.
John felt frozen in place, unable to move as he stood beside Sherlock. His eyes were transfixed in shocked horror on the gun his wife (his pregnant wife, due any day now, Jesus Christ) aimed point-blank at Sherlock’s chest.
He knew what she was capable of -- he has seen the evidence of it with his own eyes, symbolized by the round red cratered scar marring Sherlock’s pale torso -- but to witness it firsthand was somehow profoundly horrifying in a visceral way he’d not imagined.
Sherlock stood still, his posture relaxed and open. On the surface, he was all calm confidence -- but this close, John heard the shallow, rapid respiration that betrayed his true fear underneath.
His gun was tucked into the waistband at the back of of his trousers. If he reached for it, he knew Mary would pull the trigger and end Sherlock's life for good.
And this time, she wouldn’t miss her target.
He tried desperately to think of something, anything, to say to try to buy another moment, change her mind, stay her lethal hand.
Before John could open his mouth to speak, however, footsteps echoed softly from the shadows of the cavernous room.
“No more of this, Mary,” Mycroft said coolly, confidently as he emerged from the shadows, the assuredness of his tone belied by the tightness around his eyes. "All of this nonsense ends. Now."
“This was always the endgame, Mycroft,” Mary says, her aim still trained on Sherlock, not wavering a fraction. “You strolling in here at the last moment like you own the place doesn’t change that. It doesn't change a thing.”
Mycroft gave a final sidelong glance to Sherlock that spoke volumes, a lifetime of hidden sentiment revealed without a single word. “This is finished, Mary. We’re done here. You think you have the upper hand, but you don’t. Not anymore.”
“You’re changing the terms of our agreement?” Mary asked. Her voice was civil, even conversational yet still, somehow, dripping with utter contempt.
“I am indeed. Your offshore accounts are frozen, your passports flagged.”
"You think so?"
"I know so. You're done. Drop the gun."
Mary gives a brief, nasty laugh and shakes her head. “As usual, your hubris blinds you to the reality of your situation.”
“That may be true,” Mycroft replied neutrally, “but understand this: you're finished.”
“We're not done until I say so." Mary cocks her head slightly, as if considering. "Sherlock is the heart of the Holmes Brothers. Everyone knows that. And carrying the metaphor a bit further, that makes you the head, doesn’t it, Mycroft?”
“Yes," Mycroft said, his voice tighter now, careful, wary. “I am the head, and you know I will negotiate to keep Sherlock safe. Tell me what you want in exchange for his life.”
A flash of frustrated, vengeful anger flared in her cold blue eyes.
“Yours,” Mary said. In a single instant she shifted her aim away from Sherlock and fired.
The world exploded in sound and confusion, as the loud crack of the shot echoed in his ears at the same time Sherlock cried out, an inhuman wail of terror and rage.
Mycroft dropped to the ground, as suddenly and completely as a marionette with cut strings.
John pulled his weapon and in one fluid motion, trained it on Mary in the same moment she again took aim at Sherlock.
His finger trembled on the trigger as he thought of the baby in her belly.
Time stood still for an endless split second, a tableau somehow frozen in eternity.
Then time somehow resumed as she turned and ran, shockingly fast on her feet despite her gravidity.
Sherlock, staggered forward, collapsed to his knees beside his brother. He took a deep, ragged breath, then exhaled and shook his head, as if to clear it of fog. He grabbed his brother's shoulder, shook it.
“Mycroft,” he rasped, sounding almost angry. “Mycroft. Get up. This is ridiculous.” The edge of jagged terror in his voice grew sharper as he shook him again. “She’s escaping. We have to catch her. Get up this instant.”
John dropped to one knee, pressed fingers to Mycroft’s carotid artery, searched for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find.
“Mycroft.” Sherlock was pleading, pinwheeling on the edge of hysteria. “You can’t do this. You can't. Please. Get up.” He looked up at John, eyes wide and terrified as one of his gloved hands grabbed at John's jacket in a fiercely strong grip. “John. Do something.”
“Sherlock,” John said helplessly, dread and horror spreading thick and black through his veins. “I can’t.”
Distantly, John heard voices shouting and the pounding of feet as agents poured into the building.
Sherlock pulled Mycroft's lifeless body into his arms. His cries of anguish were tight and strangled with grief, almost soundless, little more than agonised, suffocated gasps.
Mycroft stared with sightless blue eyes, his dark pupils fixed and dilated.
The hole in his forehead was neat, round and perfectly centred. A river of blood flowed from the back of his skull into the fine wool of Sherlock's coat.
***
Sherlock is gone when John wakes.
It's late morning, bright sunlight filtering under the blackout curtains. His body is leaden and aching, his mind fuzzy with the confusion of the time change, the internal and external clocks still at war with one another.
He’s always been shit with jet lag.
After a piss and a gulp of lukewarm water from the bathroom tap, he fumbles with the ridiculous in-room coffee pot, finally succeeding in coaxing out a brew that is somewhat coffee-coloured in appearance and smell, if not exactly taste. He’s on his third cup of this somewhat pointless concoction when Sherlock returns, tossing plastic bags onto the untouched bed nearer the window.
John pokes through them as Sherlock fiddles with one of the shrink-wrapped plastic coffee cups on the bathroom countertop. Inside one bag are worn jeans, tee shirts, a frayed dark green military jacket. In the second are pants and socks, toothbrushes, a comb and an electric hair trimmer. The third contains---thank God--a cheap electric kettle and a box of PG Tips.
“Goodwill and Walmart,” Sherlock explains tersely, pouring himself a cup of the brackish brew, tipping it to his mouth and gulping it down without seeming to notice the dubious taste.
John looks up at him and states the obvious, as is his role. “Trimmers. You’re cutting your hair?”
“In point of fact, you’re cutting my hair. I’m assuming you’re familiar with a basic induction-style clipper cut.”
“Of course I am. But why?”
“I need to avoid recognition at all costs. My everyday look is too...distinctive. Especially for America. And there are eyes everywhere, John. Make no mistake.”
“What about me, then?” John asks, more curious than annoyed. “Am I changing my look as well?”
“No need,” Sherlock replies, matter-of-fact. “You have the gift of an unremarkable appearance.”
“Really?” John says, narrowing his eyes a bit. “Do tell.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sherlock says. “Don’t look at me like that, John. You know what I mean.”
***
John cuts Sherlock’s hair.
It feels so strangely intimate, even after everything they’ve been through, to stand so close to Sherlock’s body in the tiny bathroom, to feel the heat radiating off his skin as John runs fingers through the thick glossy curls he’s always secretly longed to touch.
It is something close to sacrilege to slice through those waves with a number three guard, to watch the dark locks of hair drift to the tiled floor at their feet.
It makes something deep inside John ache, in a way he doesn’t fully understand.
When he’s finished, Sherlock looks both younger and older, achingly vulnerable and yet somehow dangerous, a sad child’s eyes peering out from the pale, angular visage of a cold, grief-hardened man.
It makes John feel lost, somehow, unmoored from their own lives, from who they really are.
Before stopping to think better of it, John runs his hand slowly over the back of Sherlock’s near-naked skull. The short dark hair feels like smooth fur under his fingertips.
He has to make a conscious effort has to suppress the shiver that runs through his body.
Their eyes meet in the rippled glass of the cheap, chipped bathroom mirror. A moment passes in silence, their breathing loud in the confines of the small room. John’s hand still cradles the back of Sherlock’s skull.
“John,” Sherlock murmurs, then again falls silent.
John can’t speak, can’t tear his fingers away from the feel of shorn velvet under his fingertips.
“It will grow back eventually,” Sherlock finally says several moments later. His voice is soft, coloured with a note of something hesitant, almost uncertain.
“Of course,” John says, dropping his eyes, finally pulling his hand away.
Somehow John can’t shake the feeling that’s not what Sherlock really intended to say, at all.
***
In the bus station there are NO SMOKING signs plastered on every vertical surface.
“Come outside with me,” Sherlock says.
In front of the building, Sherlock pats the pockets of his jeans and jacket. “Damn,” he says conversationally, surprising John with a shift into a American accent, inflected with a bit of a Southern drawl. It sounds completely, shockingly natural. “Must have left them in the room.” He turns and approaches a young kid standing nearby. He’s maybe nineteen, earbuds firmly in place, messenger bag slung over his shoulder, burning cigarette between his fingers.
“Excuse me,” Sherlock says, with an open, friendly “I’m not a creep” smile that doesn’t quite hang right on his face.
The kid takes out his earbuds, regards Sherlock neutrally.
“Don’t suppose I could trouble you for a smoke?” Sherlock asks.
“They’re Parliaments,” the kid says. “That cool?”
“I usually smoke Marlboro, to be honest. But whatever you have will do just fine.”
The kid fishes a battered pack out of his messenger bag.
“I’ve only got one left in here,” he says. “Take it.”
“Thanks so much,” Sherlock says.
“No worries,” the kid replies, putting his earbuds back in and walking away without another word.
Sherlock returns to John, fishes out the last cigarette from the pack and lights it.
"So." John gives him a considering look. "Florida?"
"Florida," Sherlock confirms.
They stand in silence as Sherlock smokes and John watches the passerby, mulling over the interaction with the kid.
A bus pulls up. The marquee reads PATERSON.
“This is us,” Sherlock says, stubbing out the smoke on the heel of his trainer before tossing it into an overflowing bin.
John follows him onto the bus, drops into the seat next to him. A few more straggling passengers climb on before the doors close and the vehicle lurches awkwardly into traffic.
“So what is it?” John asks.
“What is what?” Sherlock replies blandly.
“What you got from the kid. In the cigarette pack. What is it?”
Sherlock gives a tiny, pleased nod, and John doesn’t miss the flare of the old spark in his eyes, his pleasure in the game bringing something cold and dormant in him back to life, if only for a moment.
“Well done, John. How did you know?”
“Your preferred fag is B and H. Again, not actually a moron.”
“Never once thought you were.” Sherlock pulls the crumpled pack out of his pocket, opens it and carefully fishes out a folded scrap of paper. “It’s a name. A name of a man who owes my brother quite a big favour.”
“He has information on Mary.”
“He knows the people who have information on Mary.” Sherlock refolds the note, stows it away in his jacket pocket along with the battered Parliament packet.
“So this man is in Paterson.”
“No,” Sherlock replies, and doesn’t elaborate.
The momentary spark in Sherlock's eyes flickers and dies as quickly as it flared. He lapses back into distant silence on the hour-long ride, giving John plenty of room--too much room -- to dwell on recent memories.
***
Sherlock didn’t speak a single word at the graveside service.
He was stone-faced, cold as Antarctica, a dry-eyed ivory statue sitting next to his weeping parents as his brother was lowered into the ground.
John, seated at his other side, pressed a reassuring hand between sharp shoulder blades. Sherlock neither pulled away nor acknowledged the gesture.
The service was more sparsely attended than John had anticipated, but even still, in the space of a single moment -- when John was distracted by the introduction of an elderly aunt --Sherlock somehow managed to slip away unseen.
After he realised Sherlock was gone, John looked across the room and locked eyes with Lestrade, who stood by himself, a respectful distance away from the knot of family members.
Even at a distance, their communication was nonverbal yet instantaneous.
-- Did you see him leave?
-- I thought you were watching him.
-- I was. I thought you were watching him, too.
-- I was. Goddammit. I knew this was going to happen.
John made brief excuses, checking to make sure arrangements were in place to get Mr and Mrs Holmes safely back home (“Of course, Dr Watson,” Anthea murmured, her tone measured and respectful yet still somehow sounding mortally offended that he felt the need to ask) before leaving with Greg to make a practised sweep of all Sherlock’s known haunts.
He knew it was utterly futile, but John couldn't stop himself from texting and trying to ring him, over and over, cursing under his breath every time he reached his voicemail.
“Fucking stupid reckless fucking bastard,” he muttered, stowing his mobile in his coat pocket, only to pull it out and try again minutes later.
As afternoon turned into evening, a damp drizzle started to fall. The pair tore through every known drug market in the city, visited the major homeless camps, made the rounds of every one of Sherlock’s known informants and “extrajudicial associates.”
With every blank look, with every terse shake of a head and every negative reply, John grew more and more agitated and frustrated.
Night wore inexorably on into morning.
“You need some sleep, mate,” Lestrade finally said as a thin sliver of dawn lightened the eastern sky.
John shook his head. “You’re a fine one to talk. You look like ten miles of bad road yourself.”
“I woke up like that, and anyway, if I’m ten miles you’re twenty. Let me take you home. You’re exhausted. He will turn up eventually."
"You think so?" John asked, wanting desperately to believe.
"I really do. Off his face, most likely, and this time I can’t really fault him for it.” Lestrade scrubbed a hand across his grey, creased face. “And when he does, he’s going to need you, I reckon, and in a spectacular way. Let me take you home to get some rest.”
John thought about the home he shared with his lying, murdering sham of a spouse, the tidy terrace house filled only with unhappiness, the nursery silent and shuttered behind empty windows.
A memory surfaced, unbidden; he recalled a sunny afternoon, a hugely pregnant Mary smiling and humming as she sat in a yellow painted rocking chair, folding onesies and blankets. The sweet memory faded as quick as it rose, however, followed inexorably by the haunting image of her pitiless blue eyes as she put a bullet into Mycroft’s brain.
She murdered Sherlock’s brother and stole John’s child, and at the thought of walking into the house he shared with her the bile rises in his throat, slimy and bitter. No, there was nothing left in that house for John, not ever again.
It could burn to the ground and John would honestly feel nothing but relief.
He was trying to figure out how to say this, or at least some part of this, when Greg said “Baker Street it is, then,” in a tone that telegraphed his understanding, mercifully sparing John from having to bare this raw, bleeding part of his soul. “He might turn up there sooner rather than later, anyway.”
John nodded, grateful and suddenly exhausted.
He let himself in with the key he had never taken off his ring, treading up the stairs as lightly as he could, hoping against hope he would find Sherlock inside sleeping or smoking or just sitting silently in the dark as he sometimes did when the things that dwelt in his mind grew particularly sharp claws.
When he slipped into the flat, however, John knew instantly by the stale, still feeling of the air that Sherlock wasn’t there.
He dropped onto the sofa, wondering what the hell to do next.
A few minutes rest suddenly sounded like a really incredibly good idea. A fresh head, that’s what he needed. A moment to rest his eyes, and then --
He fell asleep within moments, his coat still on and shoes still on his feet.
He woke, startled, to Sherlock standing -- no, looming -- over him, vibrating with frantic impatience.
“Scared the shit out of me,” John mumbled, struggling to sit up. He peered up at Sherlock through eyes gritty with interrupted sleep. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Sherlock replied in a surprisingly (unsettlingly) crisp, businesslike tone. He was so very tense, his skin stretched too tightly across sharp bones. Of course, he smelled like far too many cigarettes, but he wasn’t visibly high to John’s trained eye. John sighed in relief.
“Sit down,” he said a bit blearily, running a hand through disheveled hair. “I’ll make tea.”
“No time,” Sherlock replied as he fished something small and rectangular out of his coat pocket and handed it to John.
A booklet. Deep blue cover, stamped in gold. Not British.
“A passport,” John observed. "American."
Sherlock didn’t actually roll his eyes, but managed to breathe in and tilt his head in a way that perfectly conveyed the same impression. “Yes.”
“A new one.” John opened the booklet to find his own image staring back at him -- a photo he didn’t recognise or remember, to be honest -- with the name alongside: Wallace, Joseph Patrick. He flipped through the blank pages to the back cover. Tucked inside was an Ohio driving licence bearing the same false name.
John stood slowly, his back creaking a bit in protest. He rubbed his arms against the gooseflesh suddenly pebbling his skin.
“Sherlock. What the hell is this about?”
“I’m going after her. To America. Her home country. It’s where she’s gone to ground, I’m certain of it. ”
John’s brows furrowed in...not confusion, exactly, but in a certain lack of full understanding that he really ought to be used to already. “And you -- you want me to come with you?”
“Obviously. I’d not have spent a frankly extortionate sum on those documents if I didn’t.” Sherlock paused, looked at him carefully, and for a moment the facade of cool purpose slipped just a fraction, revealing a glimpse of the unspeakable grief in the depths of those pale silver blue eyes. “I have to find her,” he said, softer, almost beseeching. “And she has your daughter. Your child, John. We can’t allow her to slip away.”
Sherlock’s gaze was imploring, close to pleading, and John knew with bone deep certainty there really wasn’t a decision here to be made. Of course his lot is cast with Sherlock. Of course it is.
Wherever Sherlock goes, whatever he does or plans on doing, John knew he could never bear losing him again. He swallowed, licked dry lips.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
“Right now,” Sherlock answered. “Flight leaves in fifty-three minutes. There’s a cab downstairs.”
“Oh,” John said, a bit poleaxed.
“If you don’t want to come --”
“Jesus, Sherlock.” John snapped, annoyed and afraid and completely, unquestionably devoted to the man. “Shut up. Of course I’m coming. Can we leave a note for Mrs Hudson?”
“If you can be quick about it, I suppose so.”
***
In a different -- and noticeably seedier -- motel, John wakes again in the middle of the night; his body won’t stop insisting it’s well past eight a.m. and he’s had an unforgivably late lie-in.
A tiny, smothered gasp for air catches his attention.
Sherlock is lying on the other bed, wearing only his jeans, curled tightly in a foetal position with his back to John. His naked shoulders tremble with each ragged breath.
John doesn’t know if Sherlock is crying, or desperately trying not to cry.
He thinks about saying something.
He thinks about going to Sherlock, wrapping his arms around his slim body, holding him and comforting him in his terrible sorrow. But the distance between them feels like an ocean, like the expanse of the cold Atlantic between here and London, and he has no idea how to cross that vast chasm, or even if Sherlock wants him to.
They are here together, the two of them against the world a thousand miles from home -- but John suddenly sees that in a profound way, each locked inside their private grief, they’ve never been more alone.
His heart is heavy with sorrow for both of them, but he’s helpless, powerless. He can’t do anything, really, but close his eyes and wait for morning to arrive.
It feels like cowardice.
He doesn’t think he sleeps, but he must have done, because next thing he knows he’s opening his eyes to morning sunlight and a short-haired, momentarily unrecognizable Sherlock putting the kettle on to boil.
John finds he’s not entirely certain if what he saw the night before was even real, or only part of another odd, disjointed dream.