Oblivion
part fiveJohn's pallor washed to white as he stood with his hands secured to the back of his chair at the cusp of the den and kitchen walkway. He was a remarkably beige man in general--beige skin, beige hair, even at times a beige jumper as though he were still trying to blend into the desert sands with wrinkles like the cracks in the earth. A white face made the silver show in his short, swept bangs and highlighted the wide whites of his eyes. Even his lips were little more than a thin, white line above his chin as he stared with furrowed brow at Sherlock's continually flapping jaw.
"The Sherlock you described was important and important things are always well protected. Power failure, some sort of cyber attack, whatever you want to believe is responsible for it all, if the people in charge were going to ensure someone was kept alive and well, why would it be you and not him?" Sherlock didn't take much satisfaction--some, but not much--in John's obvious discomfort. Belief and conviction were always hard things to have rattled but Sherlock was willing to give him some credit in the bonus of having his fictional existence now put into question.
John was a soldier, though. He followed gut feelings as much as his senses. "I watched him die," he said again, fighting back against Sherlock's counter-attack of reason and probability with his own brand of observational fact. "That's too much of a coincidence when it happens just before everything goes to shit."
"Right. He died and so that story ended. Tends to happen when the main character is gone. You're looking at it from the wrong perspective again. If the computer was trying to make sense of you losing Sherlock, then why did it end where he did? Your story would go on past that. But if the computer was trying to make sense of the loss of something else? You have to agree it makes a lot more sense. The real John Watson dies, the computer tries to work it in, somehow that includes circumstances in which the dream Sherlock dies, and it's time to reboot with a new dream since it's a little hard to rationalize resurrection into the narrative. Except it doesn't lose the character of John Watson. The memory of him still exists even if physically he's gone. But that's all it is: memory. It's not creative, it can't integrate with the dreams, it only remembers the person it once was while Sherlock, alive and well, continues to dream peacefully."
It was interesting to watch the sway of hope and horror play out across the older man's face. Happy to have a reason to believe his friend was alive; devastated with the idea that accepting that fact meant being open to his own theoretical demise and nonexistence. Sherlock had never really seen the price of bliss so elegantly portrayed before. What was happiness if it couldn't be treasured? What was fear if the things one feared were gone and done and irrevocable? He wondered if John had a similar reaction to being told there was no Father Christmas. Dashed dreams and lost hopes were part of growing up. It was time John gave up on a world of fantasy and miracles and accept boring, predictable reality like everyone else.
"I'm not a memory," he said, swallowing hard before clenching his jaw once more, the muscles flexing under his rounded cheeks.
Sherlock shrugged, throwing his arms up behind his head as he reclined against the leather sofa. "You can't prove that any more than you can prove your own theory."
John laughed at that, shaking his head, looking around the room in close to a panic as his eyes darted and leaped from place to place. "I think I'd know if I was dead. If I was just.. part of a machine."
"I think I'd know if my life was a dream."
John laughed again but the sound bordered on a sob. He clasped his hand over his mouth even as his chest seemed to expand quicker with breath. Panic attack? Interesting reaction. Why was it so difficult to see that he was alive and therefore everything he believed in was obviously false? There was no dream world, no computer overlord, no electronic version of anyone living or dead. There was something funny going on, there was no mistake about that, but why was it so much easier to hold on to the impossible when it included such contradictory statements as one's own death and the possibility of life after?
John pursed his lips and breathed in deep through his nose, a queer smile in the corners of his mouth. ".... I know how to prove it," he said at last, nodding slowly, gaining vigor as he stepped away from his chair and into the room. "I can prove to you that you're wrong."
Sherlock quirked a brow with interest. "Can you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I can." He stood in front of him, hands flexing at his sides as he stared down with far less anger than Sherlock expected this far into the game. He seemed strangely resolute despite the way his body fell to tremors. "Even if you are right, there's still one thing we agree on, even if you didn't think of it. If I'm right, Sherlock died in the real world and that made him die in the dream. If you're right, I died in the real world--but Sherlock was still the one who died in here. Know that that tells me? It says Sherlock Holmes doesn't want to live in a world where he loses John Watson," he said, nostrils flaring as he took several deep breaths. "So have fun weaving this into your narrative."
Sherlock jumped as specs of blood from the gaping wound in John's face splattered against his own, watching with eyes blown wide as the body crumpled to the floor, revolver hitting the wood and skipping away much the same as his mobile had done. His ears rang with the concussion of sound from the gunshot while smells of gunpowder, blood and shattered flesh made his stomach twist and sour.
He sat very still. He should have grabbed his phone and called for the police but his body felt frozen to the spot. It wouldn't make a difference anyway. Sherlock could see streaks of brain matter on the floor, sticking to the upholstery of John's chair, clinging to the wallpaper. That was certainly one way to prove definitively if one was alive or not. Sherlock hadn't meant for him to... Crazy didn't usually mean suicidal. Usually pushing buttons and instigating annoyed and angered people, but no one had ever--why on earth would anyone think to--no one had ever killed themselves in front of him in protest. That wasn't what was supposed to happen.
Sherlock moved to lean over the coffee table, some irrational part of him needing to see and know that John was really dead. His blue eyes were open, the left one bulging slightly from its socket as the pressure from the gunshot forced it loose, restrained only by flesh. He'd bitten his tongue. John was always licking his lips and really should have known better. He'd have choked on the blood if he weren't already dead. Silly soldier. Stupid John. It wasn't any fun to argue with him if he was just going to go and kill himself.
He stood up and ran to the kitchen sink, the toilet too far away as his mouth filled with the taste of bile. His knees felt weak and he all but fell against the counter as he heaved and scrambled with his heart racing in his throat. He wasn't usually squeamish. In general he had an iron stomach that could handle the look or smell of anything. Even the sound of someone else vomiting did not induce the compulsion in him. But this wasn't just a body. It had been a man not minutes before, one that looked at him as he raised his gun and did not break that stare even as his own finger pulled the trigger. Sherlock rationalized that the tears on his own cheeks were from the force of his heaving and not some emotional response linked to sentiment or guilt. He'd just killed a man by talking to him. Murder by disbelief. Antagonized suicide. He wiped his mouth off on his sleeve, breathing through parted lips and he tried to calm the irrational part of him that was terrified despite the fact that there was no danger posed to him at all. He was shaking. He was crying. Why was he doing that? Why did it matter so much that someone he barely knew had just killed himself in front of him?
Why didn't his leg hurt?
Sherlock gazed down at his feet, seeing only two pristine legs that knew neither bruising nor swelling. He turned his head to look back at the floor in front of the coffee table where John's body had fallen in a heap. It was gone. The pool of blood where his head had come to rest was nothing but a stain on the rug above which sat a teddy bear with its black, soulless eyes. Sherlock starred, frozen, unable to move at all. This wasn't his university flat; this was Baker Street. This was his home. Their home. Two arms encircle him from behind and a chin came to rest on his shoulder. 'Stay,' it whispered in a voice he knew, pleading with as much strength as the arms could hold him to.
Something was wrong; something that couldn't be rationalized or swept away as though nothing had ever happened. And with one final surge of adrenalin fueled by the terror of things unknown, Sherlock opened his eyes and was awake at last in the Ark, in the dark, all alone.