Good Days, Bad Days And The Seconds That Matter

{Year One}

My friend assures me, "It's all or nothing"

I am not worried,

I am not overly concerned.

It's comforting, in a painful way.

It'll only make it worse, they tell him, but it helps to dull the edges so he ignores them the way he ignores all of it. The stillness; it breathes out and chokes him.

"What else can I do?" he asks when they tell him to stop, that gentle tone of voice that he's come to be such good archenemies with.

(Real people don't have archenemies.)

(So this can't be real. Simple deduction.)

They don't have an answer to that, not even his therapist. He has an appointment today that he's not going to attend. He's in the middle of a breakthrough, the world slowing down and fading.

There is nothing but the problem.

Funny, that he should understand now, after it's too late.

John lets himself in quietly, key turning near silent in the lock. The streets are deserted, that certain hour after the last of criminals and teenagers have cleared out, but before the earliest of the early birds.

He wakes up like clockwork; it's too quiet and too late, always too late.

He misses Afghanistan, sometimes.

John enters on light feet though there is no one to disturb. Mrs. Hudson is out in the countryside, visiting her daughter and her newest grandchild.

A pretty little boy with dark curls and eyes that are the wrong color and John smiles painfully, tightly, when she shows him the picture. He hugs her goodbye before she gets in the cab and ignores the way he checks the driver for concealed weapons and murderous intentions.

Pretends he's not obsessed, that it doesn't hurt as it pulses in his blood.

He's good at that.

So here he is, reliving the past and building the picture of a better future with newspaper clippings and scribbled notes and theories that he won't show anyone, not his therapist, no. That would not end well.

The living room wall is, bruised and abused as it is, completely covered. Little push pins dot the walls like hiccups, expected but still surprising as he runs his hand along the surface. He pushed each one into the hard wood, pushed and pushedandbreathed and felt the way reality gave way under his fingertips.

(He's crazy, possibly. Don't think about it.)

'Russian Assassin Diatchencko Ludmilla Arrested'

'Mysterious Guardian Angel Saves Boy From Fire'

'Kitti Riley: Was Sherlock The Fake Or Was She?'

They all fit together somehow, he knows it, they must. The real question is—can he be clever enough to figure it out?

Ways to fake one's death go to the left.

Possible sightings go to the right.

And in between, shades of gray. A single picture, a reminder of what he's looking for.

More often then not, they come looking for him at Baker Street.

He tells them, exasperated and more than a little bit angry at all the wrong people that, I don't live here anymore.

It's scripted, a comforting morning routine.

Because they come looking for him at Baker Street and they find him, don't they?

Fast asleep at the kitchen table and Lestrade doesn't mention his living room walls or the blood on his hands where he slipped and the pin slid into his fingertips; reality is sharp and metallic.

There's blood on his knuckles too, and John notes distantly that he should get them checked out.

(He has his bad days.)

And so John complains and gets his jacket from the closet, changes his socks and pretends he doesn't notice the newspaper article Lestrade leaves for him beside the coffee machine.

Right next to the sugar.

Logically, he knows that the station hasn't changed. It's still the same old Scotland Yard, has been for decades now.

It feels much too empty and he's constantly turning to ask if—

He absolutely hates the looks on their faces, the way the ones that were there before whisper to the ones that weren't. He hates that there are ones that weren't, faces that he doesn't bother getting to know.

(New faces mean another week, another month.)

"Yeah, that's John Watson," they'll say in an undertone as he passes by, runs back to Lestrade because at least he gets it, he doesn't learn their names either, "You know, Sherlock's…"

They always trail off, maybe because they realize that he can hear them. Mostly, because they never could define it either.

('Till death do us part.)

(He always cries at weddings.)

It gets worse when he goes but he can't stop and nobody else does either.

Well, Lestrade's boss tries and John punches him again, the same way, and finds himself kissing the window of a another police car window and he turns to say I've always got your back and stops because he remembers that it's lie, he didn't. He bites his lip until it breaks and bleeds because if he doesn't, he'll do something he can't take back and, if he could go back...

John paces his cell, hands clenched at his side because they're shaking and his shoulders are shaking, his world is crumbling all around him and he just can't anymore.

An hour in, he realizes that he's limping. He collapses on his knees.

(Dear god, let me live.)

"You've got to stop," Lestrade tells John when he's released from the cell, not looking at him, and John can tell how many days he hasn't slept by the stains on his tie.

He understands now; it's too late.

"But… thank god you hit him before I did."

He still can't say the name.

His name.

Flinches when he hears it, until most people catch on and know better. He would laugh at them, John knows, and the human condition of going out of their way to spare others discomfort.

Or: the human condition of awkwardness when they don't know what to say.

When they don't know how to label things, especially relationships. People make a lot of assumptions at his expense and he lets them because he can hear a voice in the back of his head asking him why does it bother you?

And so all these normal, average people ask him everything in round-about ways and he answers back the same because it's to much effort to say the things he means and in the end, he is just average too.

He was normal, once.

(His hand won't stop shaking.)

They ask him, going for a walk and they mean, visiting him again?

Yes, the answer is always yes and John pastes a smile on his face and tries to honestly pretend that he's going to get more sugar. And these people, with their human condition, will tell him to cut back on the coffee, really now John.

Bad for the system, sleeping will help, figured you for a tea drinker.

(This will break you, forget about him, you're better off like this anyway.)

(They're missing the point; it's too late)

John ignores the things they're really saying and stays up until six in the morning going through Mrs. Hudson's neatly stacked boxes—too many of them, too few, and everything he picks up is a memory and they all hurt—before he finds it.

The violin, polished and so terribly undamaged, unchanged, that he puts it down quickly before he does something he won't forgive himself for.

He should start a list, write it all down lest he forget something.

Please let him wake up and not remember any of this. Let him delete it out of his brain, forget it all, shove it off his doorstep like the people who show up with their bright eager smiles, responding to an ad he can't remember putting out.

He laughs; do they really think they can take his place? Fill his shoes?

Wiping tears from his eyes, he was laughing damnit, he leans against his cane in an empty room filled with boxes of folded memories, crystallized and framed and tucked away in the dark corners of his mind.

As he is constantly reminded, he doesn't use most of his brain. Might as well take advantage of that.

(Was. Was constantly reminded.)

Except it gets harder. The clinic fires him when he doesn't show up for a week without calling in, caught up in a case that they don't ever find the killer to and that hurts even more than when they tell him.

Failure, he whispers and Molly hugs him tightly.

She tells him: don't worry, he'll find something better, really, he just needs time and he knows that they're not talking about the same thing but he still shakes his head, laughing bitterly.

Something better.

His hand is shaking, shaking against the back of her white lab coat and she is sobbing into his neck, tears trickling down his skin and John is torn—jealousy, of wanting to keep all the pain in the world for himself, or relief, because the world has a lot of pain and his cane is cheap plastic, easily broken.

She won't meet his eyes and there is shame in every line of her body as he hands her a handkerchief and asks her if she'd like to go to dinner sometime, just to talk.

Molly says yes, then no, and he wants to ask but the human condition and the fact he hasn't slept in thirty-seven hours keep his mouth shut.

"You know where to find me," he says, "If you change your mind."

Thank you, she might whisper as he closes the door.

All in all, he's doing just fine.

John goes back to the grave again, trailing footprints in the dusting of snow.

The cold bites and claws at his bare hand as he wipes the clinging snowflakes off the black stone, as he traces the carved arching letters, reality cold and hard against his hand when he pushes.

He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips; it's breaking.

So he pushes, harder and harder, until his hand stops shaking and his body starts. Shaking because he never learned to deal with things healthily, probably never will and this is beyond his abilities and he needs help. He needs help.

When his girlfriend cheated on him, he bought a dog. When he sister started to drink, he introduced himself as an only child. When his father died, he joined the military.

He doesn't deal well, not at all, rational as he is often praised to be, raised to be.

When he left the military he found Sherlock.

What the fuck is he supposed to do now?

"I miss you."

{Year Two}

I am not worried.

"If it's love," she said, "then were gonna have to think

about the consequences."

He has his good days.

It's just, he can't remember exactly when the last one was. Not that means anything; time isn't reliable right now, all wavering midnights and waking up on different day than he went to sleep with.

Or maybe those were the women.

It's hard to keep it all straight in his head, to keep his balance and properly up and down when the world revolves around his living room wall, drawing him in closer and closer.

Gravitational pull and other things that Sherlock never bothered to learn.

(The things that he never bothered to say.)

(John thought there would be more time to try.)

So it must not be important and he dismisses Mrs. Hudson's worried chatter and Lestrade's gentle insistence.

It gets not so gentle after a while.

"John, for fuck's sake!" Lestrade shouts, throwing his hands in the air, "You can't keep doing this to yourself, mate. He wouldn't want you to."

It's the last part that stings.

Because, how dare Sherlock have any say in his life anymore? He left, jumped, lied.

John goes anyway though; he's too tired to argue anymore and his neck hurts from staring up at the wall, the missing pieces flickering at the edge, casting long shadows and getting him nowhere.

He returns to his own flat for the first time in weeks, throws together the rest of his belongings into a single rucksack and heads out the door.

He'd never been the sentimental type, caring for pictures and the like.

(If his father hadn't cured him of that, the army certainly did.)

(If you keep something, you lose it.)

He's halfway back to Baker Street when he realizes he's already forgotten the other address.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror, it's obvious he's lost weight. His favorite jumper hangs just a little too loosely on his frame and his face looks gaunter, older. Like he's aged years in a night, in a moment.

A long, plunging moment that ends the only way it can, the way it can't, with a terrible—

A knock at the door, and John flinches away from the reflection of his eyes.

Lestrade stands on the other side of the doorway, optimism grating and gratifying, as he looks John up and down, grinning.

"'Atta boy, John. We're going to have a proper night."

He doubts it. He smiles back.

It turned out more eventful then he expects, smoothed over by waterfalls of alcohol. Soon, everything loses its edge, becomes a little bit softer. A little bit easier to deal with.

(He thinks of Harriet and wonders.)

Women must be attracted to his pain, sense it like shark can smell blood and panic, because within seconds a young blonde has seated herself next to him, sympathetic smile all white teeth and red lips.

"Looking for someone, baby?"

John tries not to wonder what Sherlock could deduce from her.

All he can read is hungry.

Lestrade doesn't get his obvious distress, or, more likely, completely ignores it, winking at him openly and clapping him on the back as he slips by, whispering, "Good luck."

And then he's gone, greeting a crowd of men in the corner with easily familiarity.

"So what it'll be, hon? You busy tonight?"

They go back to her place.

He dreams of white skin and dark hair and blood drawing lines between them, between realities. There's a poison apple too, rotting somewhere and maybe that's the ugly taste in his mouth when he wakes up.

Snow White, just another fairy tale twisted beyond recognition, and Sherlock would laugh at the comparison but he doesn't because it's not funny.

It's just a reality he can't wake up to escape from.

His vision wavers, untrustworthy, head and heart pounding louder and louderandpulsing with sharp white pain.

White.

He stumbles forward, the world tilting around him like it's coming to an end and if he gets to Sherlock it will be okay, it'll all be okay if he just reach him and shake him awake, because he's faking, he must be. The edges of his vision blacken and blur at the edges.

Black.

There are people in the way and he screams for them to move. He's on his knees, Sherlock's face cradled in his hands and there's blood everywhere, dear god, let it be his own.

Red.

There are people and they're trying to pull him back, pull him away and it's harder and harder to fight them off because things blur together in watercolor splashes, unreal and unreliable.

He clutches at Sherlock's hand—people will talk; let them—and swears: I won't let go, I promise, just wake up, wake up.

Except there is blood, so garishly red that it can't be, and it's wet and he slips and suddenly Sherlock is gone and for a moment, a moment, there is a fluttering pulse.

And then he is gone.

(Red and white. Black.)

John Watson wakes up, drenched in sweat, twisted in his sheets.

He's doing fine. Just fine.

Things go missing.

John comes home early, earlier then usual, after the latest kicks him out, screeching and clawing at his face.

He called her the wrong name.

(It's not his fault; it's gravity.)

So he pushes open the door, hand pressed flat against the worn wood grains, and freezes, knowing immediately that something is wrong. Something has moved, shifted, changed unexplainably.

He takes a cautious step inside, ready for an attack.

"Mycroft?" He calls out cautiously.

Nobody answers but the kitchen window is open, the one he knows he closed before going out, and the air stirs the newspapers on the table that he hasn't gotten around to reading yet.

John grins; the first real one is weeks.

(This. This is a good day.)

(He told you so.)

Twenty pages are missing and he reads through them all, meticulously. Line by line until he finds exactly what he's looking for.

It's under the bold headline: Political Extortion Scandal Uncovered

There's a picture of the disgraced member of parliament, fleeing from the paparazzi, eager to snap him up and eat him alive. John knows the feeling all too well and bites down on his bitterness sharply.

Because in the background, blurred past the point of reasonable recognition is a face.

He's not reasonable.

He can hear violin music.

Trilling notes falling over each other like water, something he's never heard before and tasting so familiar that he licks his lips.

(It tastes like coffee and sugar.)

Balanced on the knife-edge between consciousness and dreams, John clings to the music with his fingertips, unwilling to let it go. The crescendo is hard to swallow, all jagged edges and thick lines. He might be crying.

He opens his eyes to silence.

The violin is on the bedside table is where he left it, exactly as he put it, down to the incorrect positions of the tuning pegboxes. A test, deliberately left.

The window is shut tight, locked from the inside as well.

Nothing is disturbed, everything is perfectly in it's place.

John laughs anyway.

A good day, he thinks, a very good day.

He's close. Really close.

The pictures are shifting, clicking and it tastes sweet when he bites down on his tongue, accidentally, because his mouth has forgotten how to smile properly, after all this time—too much of it; enough seconds to drown in—and he can't stop laughing.

John is bent double, laughing and breathing and maybe crying, just a little bit.

(Two years is a lot of seconds.)

"I've got you, now," John says loudly because he can, because there's nobody to disturb here.

Mrs. Hudson's children, bless them, have convinced her to stay out in the countryside with them, indefinitely. She still writes him weekly, sending pictures and telling him funny stories about the little boy whose name he keeps forgetting.

You know, John never wanted children.

When he was younger, before, he used to worry secretly that there was something wrong with him, with his chemical make-up. The sex part wasn't broken, no, but the idea of settling down with someone was, well, strange.

The role of raising a child, it fit him badly.

Like those shiny black shoes that his father uses to make him wear to church. It's not that he couldn't live with it, and he'll admit, they looked nice, made him look older and more responsible, normal, but they'd itch.

There'd always be relief when he could take them off again.

There are a years between that boy and who John is now; there's even more seconds. People change but not that much and if he had to say one thing, just one thing that's different, that separates then and after and before, it's this:

He knows what he wants.

Listen closely and don't blink because you'll miss the most important part.

The part where he's not crazy and the walls covered in newspapers and pictures and conspiracy theories are somehow connected and he does it himself with red thread, stretching it between the white and black of facts because it's poetically just and if nothing else, he is seeking justice.

Justice is shades away from revenge; he will drag Sherlock from the grave with broken fingers if he needs to.

Rest in peace? He hiccups, a little drunk, over my dead body.

John laughs at that, at the irony, forgetting for a second that he is taking a sip of wine or something—it's wine, the only things in the fridge now are what he puts there himself—and spills it over the carpet.

He can't get the stain out.

Funny, how seconds can last like that.

"So," John says out loud, because his head is a bit crowded and he can't risk this getting lost, stored in the locked swimming pools and back rooms, "Sherlock faked his death."

He listens without meaning to, waiting for an answer.

His windows are locked from the inside and he can only distantly hear traffic from the street below. It's okay though. He smiles anyway.

"Most likely some kind of drug that induces a coma-like state, temporarily shutting down or slowing the body's systems, including the heartbeat."

(His own is racing; his hand is still.)

"During the—" John falters for a moment, like stumbling over something in the dark you knew was there but still couldn't avoid, "the fall, Sherlock launched himself into the nearby truck, landing on a material that absorbed most of the shock."

He thinks back, the memory worn and curling in at the edges like the pages of an old book.

There is Sherlock, stepping forward, coat rippling around him like a halo. John is too far away to tell really, but he thinks the eyes are closed. There's a ripping, sand-paper feeling in his throat, like he's swallowing ashes.

John knows he's shouting but he can't hear anything. His eyes lock on Sherlock, on the ground, on the dying space between them.

Next, the collision.

The biker comes out of nowhere and if sanity hadn't lost meaning already, it does now. There are too many directions and the only one John cares about is the righteous pull of gravity and why there is a crowd gathering upsidedown.

John smiles bitterly, "You planned that part too, didn't you?"

If only he had gotten a look at the biker's face…

All it took was a few seconds. A few seconds between flying and falling and breaking, between heartbeats and silence. Funny, you know. How important they are.

"Not all the shock was absorbed though, accounting for the blood. Sherlock most likely suffered a mild to moderate concussion depending on the angle of the fall. Later, before the morgue and—"

He stumbles again.

"—before the funeral, Sherlock woke up and replaced himself with a fake, maybe even with his brother's help."

Somehow, he doubts it. John can barely stand to think about Mycroft, it stands to reason that Sherlock can't either.

Then again, Sherlock is more rational then he is, especially when it comes to his own death.

"Which brings us to the last two questions," John concludes, turning to the wall with his hands behind his back and his shoulders straight, as if he were back in the army, debriefing his commanding officer.

"How long 'till Sherlock clears his name? And…"

John stalls, unlocking backdoors and pool rooms and the smell of chlorine overwhelms him briefly. When you go looking for something, sometimes you find things you wish you hadn't.

There are walls of facts here, and maybe he looks the wrong way sometimes for the sake of his sanity and his knuckles and, yeah, the cold violin he keeps on the kitchen counter.

(Sometimes you ask a question because you want an answer.)

"…why won't he let me help?"

(Sometimes you don't.)

{Year Three}

And I guess I'm gonna have to live with that

But I'm sure there's something in a shade of grey

Or something in between

"I figured you out," he says.

There is no response, of course, there never is because he is talking to stone and as much as he has trouble telling apart reality from facts and wishes from dreams, he is not crazy. Just slightly lost.

He knows the way here, eyes closed.

Sometimes, he feels like a grieving widow, kneeling here day after week with flowers that wouldn't mean anything to him anyway.

Sometimes, he feels like a slighted mistress, promised a happily ever after only to have it snatched from his fingers at the last moment. But that'd be stupid, wouldn't it? There were no promises made, not between them.

(He always cries at weddings.)

(He didn't, at the funeral.)

There was only ever sugar in coffee and the cold hard truth, the ugliness of it but also the relief.

Sherlock only ever lied to him once.

John lied to him all the time.

(People will talk, definitely. It doesn't mean anything.)

"You're alive," he continues because he likes to think that Sherlock is watching him.

John likes to think that he cares.

See, Sherlock never lied to him, only once and that doesn't count because there's no way he could have expected John to believe it anyway, right? But John never asked the questions he wanted answers to.

Things like, why doesn't it bother you? And, did you love her?

Distantly, bells toll and seconds drip into sand glasses and life continues to turn the earth in circles.

John wonders if the earth ever gets tired of it, of spinning.

Of following the sun, eternally, loyally, but at a distance. Not close enough to burn and not far enough to freeze but hovering somewhere in the middle. He wonders if the sun would notice if the earth just stopped, if it just had enough of gravity and helplessness and mourning for something that's there but always out of reach.

Yeah, okay, so.

Maybe he doesn't understand the solar system either.

It's cold again, another winter. When he breathes out, his words are white and solid, giving them weight.

"Are you coming back, soon?"

He hates the way his voice cracks, like glass when it's stepped on.

There's no answer. Of course, not.

It's just a stone.

John jolts awake, in an unfamiliar bed.

"Sherlock!"

The figure perched at the bed twitches, stands up to leave and John's hand shoots forward and grabs on before he can be left behind again.

"Ouch!" Molly says, wincing at his tight grip.

John blinks in confusion, the world focusing in around him. He's in his own bed, tucked under the covers, a warm cup of coffee steaming on his bedside table. Molly is looking down at him nervously.

He sags into his pillows, swallowing bitterness and the sharp edges of hope.

"How did I get here?" John asks dully.

Molly tries to smile and fails; she won't meet his eyes and he wonders why she looks so damn guilty. Maybe it's just her way of grieving.

God only knows it's part of his.

"I found you," she say, "Asleep, in the—"

She swallows down the word'cemetery' and it hangs uncomfortably between them, a lifeline, a mutual understanding. John wonders if she feels as lonely as he does, sleeping in an empty house without violins and red threads and hope.

Maybe, he muses, she is moving on easier.

"Thank you," he says and he means I'm sorry.

Because there are deep bruises under her eyes and maybe she doesn't wear a tie full of ketchup stains but he doesn't have to be a consulting detective to know that she hasn't been sleeping lately either.

Lately.

(It's been exactly three years.)

(Ask him, he knows how many seconds that is.)

She flinches, "Please, don't say that."

"I'm sorry," he says instead and what he really means is thank you.

Funny how they go in circles like that.

Molly shakes her head, something sparking inside of her and now she leans forward to grip him, too tightly with her unpainted fingernails digging into his wrists. Maybe it's the dizziness of going in circles that makes it seem funny.

Really, he's just nauseous.

"No," she says, "I'm sorry."

He must really look bad. John tries to smile reassuringly; fails.

"It's okay, Molly. There's nothing you can do about it."

It's the wrong thing to say.

Her lower lip trembles. John blinks and when he opens his eyes, Molly's face is pressed against his chest, soaking his shirt with tears. He traces patterns into her back because circles are only fun if you don't mind going nowhere.

And they are not in a good place right now.

"Shh," he says, "It's okay."

The words are empty and she doesn't stop crying for a long time.

She still won't look at him when she leaves.

(She looks guilty.)

(Something itches in the back of his mind.)

The door shuts behind her and John reaches for the coffee. It's cold to the touch but he drinks it anyway.

It's disgusting and black, like he used to drink it. And just like that-he gets it.

He looks at Sherlock's face and, absurdly, his first thought is—oh.

His second thought is beautiful and his third is older.

He doesn't have time to think after that because he is moving forward, through molasses and through sand, backtracking and hurtling forward at alarming speeds, dizzying speeds. It's a confused mess and later he won't remember if he punches Sherlock or kisses him.

John's lip is split and bleeding the next morning but that could be from smiling. It hurts; he's not sure he's doing it right.

Molly sits terrified at the dinner table in the background.

"Sherlock," John says, because that just about sums it up, "Sherlock Holmes."

"John Hamish Watson," Sherlock says.

He doesn't ask how Sherlock knows his middle name because it's Sherlock and, well, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Except.

"Why?" John asks, because that might be his sixth thought after thank you, god.

Sherlock opens his mouth but Molly answers. John tries to look at her but can't force himself away from the new shadows under familiar brown eyes. They don't look away from his either, so he feels better.

"It's not his fault," Molly says, "There were gunmen."

"You've lost weight," Sherlock says, inconsequentially.

John's hands are twisted in the material of the man's shirt; he can feel the rise and fall of Sherlock's chest when he sighs. The relief he feels verges on hysterical. His hands twist tighter, needing proof and simply needing.

"Gunmen," John repeats, to Molly.

"Three of them," she says and her voice loses it's defending edge.

Later, when he thinks about it, his heart breaks for her a little. There are three targets and Sherlock, so sweetly alive and still so out of reach, sleeps in her bed that night because she is not one of them.

"John," Sherlock says, in that tone of voice when he doesn't want to answer.

"Later," John begs and twists and breathes.

"Later," Sherlock promises.

One of them leans forward and neither of them will ever know exactly how. One of them is shaking and one of them whispers, please. Both of them are breaking, endlessly and artfully and wonderfully, finding the exact places for their shattered pieces.

There are 94,608,000 seconds in three years but this is the one that counts.

THE END

The song is Anna Begins by Counting Crows. Hope you enjoyed.

Love to know what you thought of the ending. Too abrupt?