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Sherlock Holmes is falling.
Blue eyes, pale and much too wise for their years, widen just a bit as he stumbles forward and hot pavement greets the skin of his face; a feverishly warm friend.
“Out of the way, Freaklock!” are the voices above him, sing-song and in unison, “And stay off the field!”
Sherlock Holmes is eight years old, and he’s fallen. For a moment, he simply lays there, idly watching uniformed feet scurry past him.
Eventually he scoots up against the fence of the vast schoolyard, watching his classmates charge past him to spread out across the large playing field. He doesn’t imagine they’ll get much of a game going within the twenty minutes allotted for Play Time.
Sherlock finds the concept of Play Time to be a nuisance in its entirety, anyhow. It’s full of loud sounds like shouts and ringing bells and scuffing shoes, and when one is trying to study chapter twelve of one’s brother’s biology textbook, such loud noises are quite distracting indeed.
Sherlock draws his knees up to his chest and rolls up the leg of his corduroy trousers. Eyebrows knitted in curiosity, he absently trails a finger along a fresh, bursting cut on his left knee. When Thomas Stevenson had pushed him over, Sherlock hadn’t the time to brace himself properly. Stupid, he chastises both himself and the other boy. He won’t ask for a bandage from his overly cheery teacher Mrs. Simmons, however. The blood is interesting to watch–more interesting than the dull daily droll of his peers kicking a ball to and fro—so he’ll wait for Mummy to patch it up later.
Later on, Mycroft notices the blood stain on his trousers. “Mummy won’t be pleased,” he says slowly, and, well, Mycroft hadn’t been pushed to the ground today, had he? He asks, “What happened, Sherlock?”
“Leave it,” Sherlock says simply, turning away from his brother and crossing his arms over his chest. And then, because he can’t help himself, “Why are people so . . . “
“Cruel?” Mycroft finishes and Sherlock wonders if that’s indeed the word he’s looking for. People and the words that describe them have always been a struggle for him. “They don’t understand people like us, Sherlock. And they never will.”
Sherlock says nothing. Mycroft is fifteen and knows mostly everything, so this, Sherlock thinks, must be true enough. And he hadn’t experienced anything so far to disprove it. Sherlock wonders briefly if that’s what he wants. Does he want to be playing footie with the other boys? Does he mind being called a freak?
He doesn’t know.
So Sherlock Holmes stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks straight ahead, understanding that he’ll never be understood.
* * * * * *
Sherlock Holmes is falling.
There is the sensation of diving through the air, exhilarating, pumping, complete. He likes this, oh, he likes this; he knew it’d be quicker doing it this way, quick like his ever-running mind, but he certainly hadn’t imagined this.
The faster it comes, the better the high.
The needle in his hand, dripping with promises of cocaine and euphoria, dangles loosely between his fingers.
Sherlock is twenty-three and he is falling higher and higher, because there’s nothing else to do. Nothing else to keep him from the boredom.
He doesn’t remember running out into the London air, faster and faster as if he could run forever. He doesn’t remember what happens when it all goes black, but when he wakes, Mycroft is there wearing something like disappointment on his face.
“I’ve got to keep an eye on you,” he says as if he’s discussing the new play at the local opera house, or next week’s weather forecast.
Mycroft is thirty and practically is the government and he’s all Sherlock has, and Sherlock hates him.
“If I hadn’t found you, Sherlock, I daresay you would’ve gotten yourself killed.”
Sherlock shrugs. “Alive is boring.”
Mycroft narrows his eyes and says, “Isn’t it just?”
* * * * * *
Sherlock Holmes is falling.
He’d almost had Arnold Winters, dammit; he’d cornered him with every bit of evidence there was to muster. It had been so obvious that he’d killed his three co-workers; why hadn’t anyone else noticed the dirt on the right elbow of his button-down? Being a consulting detective has its limitations, and one of them is that the entirety of Scotland Yard is so profoundly stupid.
Now Arnold Winters is darting among the dark London alleyways, and Sherlock is too busy battling with the abominable force of gravity as he stumbles into the wall to chase after him just now.
Sherlock is thirty-four and staggering into the concrete wall, because for some reason Arnold Winters had been quick enough on his feet to skid past Sherlock’s grasp, all but throwing him halfway across the street in the process.
He hadn’t been caught off-guard. No. Sherlock is never caught off-guard. But the surprise force of the much larger man had certainly made things . . . tricky. Dizzy and head reeling, Sherlock briefly thinks that eating in the last three days may have been a wise decision. He mentally shrugs it off.
He takes a deep breath, about to start running again, when a hand clasps his shoulder. He whirls around in defense, but before he can do anything else, a calm voice says, “You all right?”
In front of him stands John Watson: thirty-seven, doctor and soldier and blogger, unusually calm in the face of dangerous situations like these. Sherlock knows flatmates don’t typically spend their time chasing criminals around London, but he figures he and John are an exception to that convention.
“He’s getting away,” Sherlock replies flatly in between sharp intakes of breath.
John raises his hands a little. “Take it easy. Lestrade’s got his whole team chasing him down too--”
“You and I both know Scotland Yard is incompetent--”
“—And you look as if you’ll faint on the damn pavement. Bloody hell, just take a second.” John doesn’t tend to back down when he’s in Doctor Mode, or so Sherlock has observed in living with him for the past—has it really been almost a year?
Nonetheless, he shakes his head. “I’m fine. We’ve got to go, John.”
He trips forward, and it’s John who catches him by the arms, staring up at him with a look that says, I told you so.
They stay there for a moment, Sherlock catching his breath while John catches him. And then they’re off again, side by side.
Later that night, when Arnold Winters has long been taken away in handcuffs and the streets are quiet, Sherlock can’t help but think how for the first time, as he fell and slipped and stumbled, there’d been someone there to catch him.
“Tea?” John offers from somewhere in the kitchen.
Sherlock says, “Yes,” and thinks how maybe this is what ordinary people call friendship: having someone there to catch you.
Sherlock tells himself that he dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes, but if it lingers in his mind the rest of the night, it isn’t as if anyone needs to know.
(He doesn’t know just yet how many more times John will catch him when he falls, in every possible way. That is a story for another time.)
* * * * * *
Sherlock Holmes is falling.
He knows it’s not for long. He knows it’s not forever. But all the words burn in the back of his mind as St. Bart’s Hospital speeds past him. Words of truth, words of lies; it all bleeds together now.
John, stay exactly where you are.
Sherlock--
I’m a fake . . . I wanted to impress you. Nobody could be that clever.
You could.
Words. Words of trust, of blind faith that is so human. John’s words, reverberating as he falls. Because John has always been so very, very human and so very, very ordinary. In all the right ways.
Jim Moriarty won’t win this time. The consulting criminal had used the very threads that pieced together Sherlock’s life against him, and now, Sherlock is doing what he knows he has to do to make right of everything.
“Sherlock!” he hears John shout, and there is shock and pain and grief in the man’s voice.
Sherlock is thirty-six and falling: for the sake of the years of hard work that kept him on his feet and off the drugs and within sanity; for the sake of the foolish, ordinary people who’d suffered at the hands of James Moriarty and those who may still; and—-Sherlock curses the sentimentality of it all-—for the sake of those who’d stuck around along the way. Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade . . .
John.
His last fleeting thought as he plummets from the roof of St. Bart’s into an elaborate plan to perform the greatest magic trick of all, is that this all just may be worth it.
Sentiment. How dull. But he can’t fight imagining John Watson catching him this time, despite his knowledge that he can’t.
And later, when he hovers over Molly Hooper filling out the fake autopsy, and when he stands hidden in the graveyard as John Watson mourns a fake loss that wears heavily on his shoulders and in his heart, Sherlock feels like he’s still falling.
* * * * * *
Sherlock Holmes has been falling all his life.
It isn’t something he’s really thought about, and now that he does so, standing with his hands folded behind his back in the too-sunny cemetery, he isn’t sure if that’s good or bad.
Sherlock is thirty-nine and falling, but not in the conventional sense of the term. As he stands before John Watson after having explained everything (the suicide-that-wasn’t, the snipers aimed at Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and John, John, John don’t you see I had no choice, the search for Moriarty’s men, the proof needed to clear his name), his thoughts are falling into unfamiliar territory.
He looks at John-—tired, aged with sadness, anger and betrayal boiling behind his stoic stance--and feels an ache in his heart despite himself.
And he says, “I am sorry, John.”
“You’re sorry?” John replies, and his voice wavers a bit, and Sherlock sort of thinks it’s worse than yelling, “It’s been three years, Sherlock.”
“I’m aware of that.” Sherlock steps forward, not breaking eye contact with the worn man in front of him. “I had to be sure it was safe to come back. Safe for me and . . . for you.” His words are falling, tumbling from his mouth. “Everything has been made right again, now.”
“But not for you.”
Sherlock blinks incredulously for a moment. John had gone and done something brilliantly human as always, reaching in and grasping at the dreaded emotion buried behind Sherlock’s words, bringing it to light.
Sherlock thinks of falling. He thinks of being pushed to the concrete in primary school, he thinks of pushing himself into the glorious Fall of Cocaine and into the Fall of Jim Moriarty. What was it all for? He leans forward, averting his eyes to the grass below, and says in a small voice, “I can’t stop falling, John.”
John’s voice is just above a whisper. “Not falling,” he says, “running. From boring. From everything.”
Sherlock remembers being a boy of eight, Mycroft’s words ringing in his ears: They don’t understand people like us, Sherlock. They never will.
Sherlock wants John to be wrong, but it turns out he’s chosen today to be extremely perceptive.
John understands.
Sherlock keeps his head bent, wondering what to do about all this. This is not a mystery he can solve. Then, as if on cue, John’s voice, ringing in the quiet:
“Stop running, Sherlock Holmes.”
Sherlock feels the warm sensation of John’s lips on his forehead, lets the other man run a hand through his hair in a way that feels like home.
And for the first time, everything is perfectly, blissfully still.