Author's Note: I've been toying with this theme, this idea, for a while now, but have only recently gotten the courage and motivation to put it down in writing. I do believe I was very much inspired by the writings of one StillWaters1, whose richly emotional stories never cease to amaze me. I must also thank Em Paradise, author of one of the most poignant pieces from John's perspective that I've read on this site. The quote below is drawn from it.

Four Seconds

"He had taken the hand he had been offered and together they had run and run and for one giddy moment John had thought they were invincible."

- Em Paradise, "Awake My Soul"

John Watson awakens to a hoarse cry – a cry he knows is only in his head, though his lips are parted and he thinks he can still hear the echoes fading from the room, illusionary sounds that chase each other frantically through the darkness before dissolving into silence. His eyes dart back and forth, up and down, until the noises are gone, and then he waits, breathless and expectant. He is half-sitting, his upper body pushed forward by the unconscious momentum of his wrists. A thin sheen of sweat covers his face, glimmering in the faint slit of light peeking from the edge of the far window, but he barely notices it as he sits there – waiting.

Nothing stirs. The room is still and dim, locked in a calm that is so jarring as to be utterly unreal. Noiselessness fills his ears with a odd, high-pitched ringing, and he knows he's only imagining it. He is trapped in a place he can't define – a muffled, dark, and silent moment in the wake of that long-dead shout. A fearful and familiar paralysis grips him, holds him, binds him, as hard as his own fingers that he has clutched around the sheets on either side of his body in a desperate bid to propel himself back to reality.

So far, it doesn't seem to be working.

In the space of two thudding heartbeats, his brain rewinds and then immediately fast-forwards again; a film-strip of grey and blue and red flashes against his eyes like some high-speed kaleidoscope, whirling and flickering and falling, and in those two heartbeats he nearly feels his heart stop altogether again –

The moment releases him. He falls back, breathing harshly as his head hits the pillow.

Calm, John tells himself. Calm down. Calm down, you're OK – and he keeps repeating it, over and over and over again until he almost believes it, but it only works until he stops.

You're OK, you're OK, you're OK…

No, it's definitely not working. He can feel his control slipping even as he fights to maintain it, like so many particles of sand trickling hopelessly through his fingers. Breathing isn't enough. He needs more than that.

He closes his eyes, and counts to four.

One, two, three, four…

Four seconds and one softly exhaled breath. Four steps away from emotion and memory and thought. Four moments, and amidst the quiet of the room, John falls quiet, too.

It works, as he hoped it would. He's come to find over the past few years that, against all expectations, the counting helps. It's his way of re-establishing control, of assuring himself that he needs only to step back and take a few moments, and he can cope.

There is structure in counting – a slow progression, always constant, never unexpected. He knows exactly where to start – one – and he will always end up at the exact same place – four. Even, not odd, numbers that can be divided neatly down the middle, walled off one way or the other, symmetrical on both sides no matter which way he looks at them.

For the military man, it's the fallback, the sturdy refuge he can swing around to and duck behind when the rest of his life is under fire. For the doctor, it's the steady, insistent beating of his own heart, and the drawing in of one breath or maybe two, with the sure knowledge that he is, in fact, alright. At least, he tells himself that, because the alternative is to acknowledge that he's not, and in that stubborn way of his, he refuses to admit that moving on is quite possibly the hardest thing he's ever done.

He opens his eyes wider, staring hard at the wall opposite in an effort to distract himself. It doesn't help, though, because he hates this room, with its warm, lightly-striped wallpaper and its thick blinds and its shabby carpet that may once have had a distinguishable pattern but has long since lost that kind of identity. Both bed and dresser are plain and unadorned, simple frames that suit a need but make no effort to absorb a personality or project an aura of comfort. It's not their fault, of course, but John finds himself hating them anyway.

He hates the whole flat, actually, but he stays because his only other option is the one he hates even more, with a dull, throbbing, guilty hatred borne of love and loss and a terrible, irresistible impulse to run.

He wavers, counts to four, and he runs.

Because he has come to realise that four seconds is enough. Sometimes, four seconds is too much. Four seconds can change everything.

Grey clouds billow mercilessly overhead, and he must stand, paralysed because he promised – he promised – and he watches the world crumble to an irretrievable ruin of ashes all around them. He reaches out to touch the untouchable, and for the space of a moment they are connected by one single shivering thread of I'm sorry and don't do this and please, I don't – you have to – understand.

It takes Sherlock Holmes four seconds to fall.

John knows because he counts, without meaning to, as though by counting he may somehow delay the inevitable impact of his best friend's body against the pavement. As though four heart-stopping seconds might somehow, impossibly, turn into five, and then six, and he can turn the corner and find that it's all a dream and Sherlock is really there, smiling that all-knowing smile of his and inquiring with the most interested of tones how on earth John managed to fall asleep on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon.

But it's not six seconds, nor is it five. It's four, four seconds of John mentally screaming and pleading to God and anyone else who might be listening that he isn't watching Sherlock Holmes trapped in a free-fall past three stories of hospital windows.

One, two, three, four –

The clock has stopped.

When it finally resumes, it is with the revelation of a John Watson who is damaged at best and who still feels the rain on his face long after the clouds have passed. He's silent and tight-lipped during the endless cab ride, ignoring with as much tact as possible the soft, anxious glances that Mrs Hudson shoots in his direction when she thinks he isn't looking. He notices, every single time, but pretends otherwise in order to forestall, at least for a while, her fumbling attempts to comfort him. There is a wall between them, a wall that he has put up quickly and quietly and deliberately, and he knows with a terrible certainty that it will be months, if not years, before he finds in himself the raw courage to begin breaking it down again. Because the thing that brought them together is now the person they both refuse to mention by name, and with one incomprehensible choice he has forced them apart again.

It's a relief, then, when she leaves. She understands that much, at least, and for that John is grateful even if he never tells her so. He doesn't have to pretend anymore, not when it's just him and that hatefully solid gravestone with its gleaming black surface and pristine white letters, as though it's trying to convince everyone who passes that death has some sort of dignity.

All the same, he keeps pretending, just a little, because it's lying to act strong and untrembling and in-control when his thoughts are a broken jumble of unsaid emotions and unasked questions.

He doesn't know why he's pretending for a dead man. Some part of him thinks that maybe, just maybe, Sherlock can hear him, and even if that's not true, John needs to keep this illusion – not because he's afraid of falling to pieces, but because he knows, even as he stands there and faces the grave, that he will be living this illusion for a long time to come and he'd better get used to it already. The thought nearly breaks through his walls, but in a surge of will he shoves it back again and turns the key.

A deep breath, and then he speaks, and he can get the words out if he doesn't think about them too much. Meaningless, a part of him says. He forces himself not to agree.

And when he's done, and his fingers have brushed against the headstone with one last entreaty longing for contact, and his breath has left him in a low sigh, and his shoulders have tightened, and his jaw has set in feigned composure – then, he turns away.

Four steps with his back to the grave.

One, two, three, four.

Four seconds, and he realises it can't end there.

And so he whirls around again, suddenly, before he has time to think about it, and in that moment he lets one tiny section of the wall crumble – not for Mrs Hudson, but for Sherlock. For his best friend, the man he never thanked for saving him from his dark post-war isolation because he never thought he'd have to. He never realised, somehow, that this might all come to a sudden, jolting end, and now as he stands there, his voice breaking as he begs his flatmate and his best friend to fool him just one more time, he finds himself faced with the reality that this wound will never heal completely. It is there, and it is his, and like the scar on his left shoulder, he will carry it with him, always.

One.

He lets his head fall, releasing this one moment of honesty in a rush of sobs.

Two.

A hand comes up, massaging around his eyes, pulling the emotion from his face into his fingertips where it can no longer be seen.

Three.

Despite this, John Watson is strong. His eyes are dry when he looks up and squares his shoulders against the coming years.

Four.

John's last wish is a prayer.

I know you can't, but please – come back to me.

Thank you so very kindly for reading! I would love to know what your thoughts are about this piece. Please leave them! :)