Chapter Text
It was the 85 days 18 hours from the fall of Sherlock Holmes – the Fall as if Sherlock was banished from the Garden of Eden by God and left John Watson alone, when John found the demonology book in the trunk of Sherlock’s possession that his solicitor thrust to John. The hearing of will was infuriating to the point John wanted to throw tantrum like Sherlock did when that curly haired detective did not get the lead of a locked murder on Sunday because the witness was on holiday, it was humiliating. Mycroft said that this is what Sherlock wants but again Mycroft was the one who sold information about Sherlock to the snake Moriarty and if Mycroft stumbled of the solicitor’s hallway with a broken nose, it was not John’s fault because that was what he wanted, ha. The will gives a right of everything to John with the amount of money and assets that he does not know what to do with them all, and the trunk – clothes and books of the detective, was opened late because apparently depression from loss, making him tired all the time and bed was his own best friend now.
Initially, Harry helped him by dragging him from the bed and throwing him into the storage room to deal with the problem at hand, well the problem of Opening Sherlock’s Trunk to Face the Reality so-called Dead Detective, and John wants to cry if it is not more devastating than what already is. So, this is where the scene of Demonology book on John’s lap that opens on Montu page, a falcon-headed man that depicted as God of War in Egyptian belief. His finger traces the falcon shaped like the head on the page with his heart is tugged in the description of this God. John asks himself why God can be put on Demonology book, but apparently, it is possible when one’s God creates so much destruction that He wills to pass the power of damnation to those who seek. Then, as if lightning streaks on the bells all over John’s nervous systems, he remembers clearly the sermon he received when he was a little blonde boy in Aberdeen, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Besides, anything, anything at all is worth to be tried in getting Sherlock back from the dead than dealing with all these deafening silences Ella likes to call as Grief with capital G and grey neon.
People can say that Sherlock is the fake genius now, but it does not deter the fact gained by people who witness the bright mind, iconic mind of a generation, of Sherlock Holmes. It was amazing, extraordinary, and mind-boggling that sometimes John could not help to throw every crazy adjective, good ones, on the feet of Sherlock here and there whenever the detective could think faster than everyone and think something, things that people would miss. Maybe that is why you are attracted to Montu because Montu likes the Sun and Sherlock is your sun, his mind supplies creatively. John shakes his head to clear his mind in pursuing many researches and facts about Montu and all the requirements to revive Sherlock while awaking Montu as well. If someone one year ago told him that John was a believer of deities slash demons, John would laugh with the full force of sassiness and throw dagger stare to the unfortunate talker. But now everything changes, Sherlock is dead, and John is dying inside, it might as well he lay on the bed of dark knowledge and try one time to bring Sherlock back. It has been a week for John goes back and forth between Harry’s flat and local library, while Harry smiles over the positive appearance that John finally out of the house, he can sense that Harry is worried and the upcoming talk will be soon.
The Revival, that is what John keeps saying in his head, requires many weird kinds of stuff that lucky for him or not, the money Sherlock left for him comes in handy. Who in the right mind will kill falcon and bull just to get their feather and fur? It was not John but now it is John who buys it in the black market. This is where John’s visual intelligence as well as years of being discipline doctor and reliable military man make a crazy combination of yes he can do this and he knows he can make it. Sherlock always teased him in his mocking tone whenever he blurted out that he was thinking, but now he thinks hard, his head spins like crazy noted all the requirements, finding the suppliers or just people who can run errand to find weird stuff, and finding the portal of underworld in London, yet no mocking tone riles him up as the desired companion at the moment. It makes him sad and lonely so whenever there is a lump on his throat like avocado stone tries to choke him off and smother him at the moment, he tries to focus that he will bring Sherlock back, no matter what.
In the day of 100 after Sherlock’s fall, the requirements from people who did errand from John are collected, John tries to tell Harry why he needs to go away for a moment. The duffel bag that seen better days in Afghanistan is stuffed full with everything he needs including Sherlock’s Belstaff swishy coat and an empty jar for the grave soil, of course, Sherlock’s grave in Essex. Harry waits for him in the living room and when their eyes meet, John reaches Harry and hugs her tight. They have never been tactile siblings who like to show affection through touch, more often they like shouting to each other with words that hurt more than swords. ‘This might be the last time I see her’ John thinks. Harry with her shoulder length blonde hair, corn blue eyes and paler skin than him is recovering from alcohol addiction that makes John aches in leaving her alone. “I told Mycroft to find a convenient AA therapy and rehab house, a better one, I trust you but I do not trust myself leaving you alone in suburban’s flat like this Harry,” he tells her while wiping Harry’s tears. “What are you doing, Johnny?” Harry holds his left wrist tight with her eyes searching his face. “I need to, I need to find a way, a peace for myself in this, Harry, he is important for me” he knows that he lies to Harry, but at least it is not a full lie. “You love him, don’t you John?” Harry asks with her breaking voice and hugs him tight. It is not a question that John likes to dwell by himself, he is sure by himself that he is straight, but a straight person might not do what John going to do in few days so he just hugs Harry back tighter and promises to himself that he will come back with Sherlock.
On the train ride to Essex, John reminisces the time when he met Sherlock with his temple leans on the window. The mind which bulldozers any riddles in less than one kilometre in lightning speed thinking that creates wonder in plebeian mind that’s what Sherlock would say, keeps haunting him day and night that he ever had the opportunity to meet an amazing man and now he lost him. That man is infuriating when demands things from others as well as throwing tantrum when boredom is too great to tackle or basically when John tried to have a life outside the nutshell of John and Sherlock. Not only once he thought that it would only be John who’d be lost if Sherlock is kicked out from the equation of John’s life – although the present will support the argument, yet when Greg or basically the entire team of Scotland Yard breathed in relief when he came back in investigating from his practice that finally someone will put a leash on Sherlock, brandished or stamped “Only John”. It made him happy and treasured, although in strange fascination because of course, this is Sherlock what he talked about, the mess as storm the demanding as lord of war, but then when John was put next to Sherlock, he was able to smooth the raw and sharp edges of the detective. And he wants to cry so bad in train ride like a weak female character in the cheap novel when he thinks of everytime people assumed they were a couple with John’s firm denial yet Sherlock always ignored it like a silence of affirmation that yes we are a couple, yes we are a package. That if he opened his eyes sooner, he saw that they were in fact as good as the couple would be, Sherlock would not need to go down alone. No need to go down in the first place.
He arrives in Essex Cemetery Park at the late of the evening that the mist follows him like his own shadow and the near winter seems so fast approaching in the fog he exhales. The backpack he shouldered feels heavy for like every time he comes to Sherlock’s rest place. The ambience is changed abruptly, the shifting looks alike the deity turns the shower knob making the water runs much and heavy just as like the grief pours down on John like a century misery tailor-made for John Watson only. He walks the path to the tombstone that even on blindfold he still can reach him. His best friend, his leader, his infuriating flatmate, his almost something. If it is not from his military years of practice, John is already weeping at this point, but he refuses to do so and just kneeling in front of the tombstone, plain black marble without angle on top or pleasantries of “son, brother, best friend” that Sherlock deserves.
Just like every time he comes, the first thing he will do is always tracing Sherlock’s name on the marble while praying that maybe God listens to him and will bestow him a miracle, but the thing John knows from his life, the miracle is earned and he intends to do so. He lets out the empty jar and small shovel to take the soil of his best friend’s grave. Likely, people who see him will think either he is occultist or mad widower, and strangely he finds comfort in the latter. After the jar is full and secured in his backpack, John sits legs – crossed with his side leans on the tombstone. The tears which he tries so hard to hold finally starts prickling. The sadness he’s been locking for months breaks like a tsunami in the comfortable night. So sudden like Sherlock’s fall.
“Sherlock. I buried you here and I am so sorry to take a part of your resting home for my crazy plan, a madman who lost his best friend is who I am now Sherlock. I wish there is a thing called moving forward, but you cut the heal once you died, you infuriating man. I wish I can say more of the things you deserve to hear when you were alive, but even now I still cannot do it. I refuse to let you go, Sherlock, I refuse to give up on you. A bloke cannot sustain alone with too much misery. I promise I will bring you back”. John keeps wiping Sherlock’s tombstone while crying, and if breeze answers his plea he will think it is just the autumn wind.
Funny how is the portal of underworld recedes in the Battersea Power Station, place where Irene Adler showed up and announced herself pretty much not dead, and look at us both. Sometimes John thinks perhaps Sherlock will turn up not dead as well but then he remembers it was himself who examined Sherlock’s pulse and it was himself who closed the coffin and buried him. He was not crazy when he still could identify Sherlock’s battered head and that curls, wherever he sees it he will know it by heart. In this place where the revelation showed, maybe John will find his own discovery as well, either go home like a loser and stamped himself as clinically a madman or go big finding demon is real and sacrifice anything to get Sherlock back.
His friends have assured him that surveillances around Battersea are hacked and tricked, to keep himself from Mycroft’s meddling nose of course, and his equipment are placed near the sewage planting, a big square empty room that smells like the rusty and humid place. He draws a pentagram with serpent’s blood that makes John cringing and curling his toes, but when the draw is complete, he feels the room’s temperature drops significantly which absolutely does not make sense. After he makes sure that yes no one else is in the room or God forbid in the area of summoning, he pours pure salt around the pentagram and lit perhaps a half of dozen jasmine candle from Tesco. The Belstaff coat is opened on the pentagram floor as the base of a wooden bowl filled up by Sherlock’s grave soil, feather of falcon, and fur of bull, well basically every other things that smell weird or shape so out of John’s normalcy but he tries to not put so much thought on that. The last is the blade which he bought in middle eastern somewhere through his colleague weeks ago.
In succession of summoning preparation, John finds himself kneeling inside the pentagram with a tome opened in the summoning call section where the Latin, English, and Hebrew languages mix into one hellish call number. This is not the first time John wishes to have the intelligence of Sherlock Holmes for he is afraid calling the wrong demon that costing his own life instead – but then it would be a sufficient ending, he might find Sherlock on the other world, John thinks. Finishing the summoning call by pricking his right palm with the blade into the grave soil bowl, the blood creates the imagery of a sperm that bestows upon the grail to create a new life. It is sizzling which John knows that it should not be that, it does not make sense at all, then the candles flickering in circle emotion while in far away he tries to identify what sound is that, crow? Eagles? seagulls?
As John turns his body to find the entity that disturbs his summoning ritual, all the candles are blown and the room is drowning in darkness. “Hello, is anyone here?” John calls out into the room with his voice croaks at the end. He does not afraid of the dark but he can swear that there is something, someone, that watching him now, that he is not alone. A breeze passes him on his side and what he finds when he turns around sending a terror through all his body. A dark shadow that illuminating by moonlight through the window has a bird shaped – head and claws on his hands crawling into the pentagram slowly. Feet from him, the shadow grumbles with the voices of many people with crows’ sound in every hitch, then with a stare of deep black eyes and a smirk plastered on dark shadow’s face, John Watson cries.
“Oh, soldier..”