Chapter Text
Betrayal hurts, John thought as he scrubbed his hands over his face to try and wipe the tears away. I wasn't enough, of course I wasn't. I could never compare to someone like Sherlock. He was bound to grow bored with me eventually. It was inevitable, really.
John's thoughts grew more and more self-deprecating as the minutes passed. A spasm in his leg brought him back to the present and caused the newspaper clippings in his lap to fall to the floor. Agony tore through John like a white-hot knife as he leaned down to gently pick up a picture of Sherlock in his deer-stalker hat.
Was I really so insignificant to you? John wondered as he softly traced a finger over Sherlock's face. Abruptly, John's hand balled into a fist, crushing the newspaper clipping as anger momentarily overwhelmed him. What a heartless machine you are, you bastard! You deserve each other!
He was so angry; at Sherlock, at Moriarty, but especially at himself, because even with everything that he knew, everything that he'd been subjected to, he was glad. He was glad that Sherlock was still alive, even though he knew that countless others would suffer because of it.
Love is its own special brand of madness, John thought bitterly. What else would skew my morals so completely that I could be okay with this.....be okay with Sherlock faking his own death and leaving with Moriarty to play their games.
In his head, thousands of hazy faces stared at him accusingly, silently blaming him for not doing anything to save them. But then his thoughts flashed to a bleeding, broken body lying on the concrete, his own fingers desperately searching for a pulse but finding none. He shuddered. Anything but that, he told himself. I could deal with anything but that.
The countless people who would soon have their lives destroyed due to the games of two bored psychopaths would not be his fault. After all, people die. That's what people do.
.................................
John stared down at the small USB drive in his hand, flipping it over and fidgeting with it as his thoughts spun. It was astounding, really, how the most innocuous looking things could have such a monumental effect on one's life.
One too many times of Sherlock expecting John to know something and then mouthing off about how it wasn't his fault that John wasn't in the flat to hear him tell him, had left John pissed off enough to do something about it. Sarah hadn't even asked any questions when he'd showed up and asked to borrow her computer, nor did she have any problems with John having a package delivered to her house.
Yes, the innocent looking USB drive that laid in his hands was a recording device capable of recording and storing hours upon hours of audio. That Sherlock never noticed it was a testament to just how distracted and out-of-sorts he was the last few weeks before the.....before.
In his grief it had taken John two full days before he remembered the USB and when he did he quickly grabbed it from its hiding spot (taped to the underside of the couch, which John thought was quite clever of him) and plugged it into his laptop. The conversations he had heard between Sherlock and Moriarty had turned his world upside down.....and that was before he forced himself to endure the sounds of their...fucking.
The things he had learned had left John a changed man. The plans that they had made, the games they spoke of playing, the experiments on live human subjects....it was absolutely repulsive. And it had bloody hurt that Sherlock had meticulously planned his own suicide....planned to make John watch him fall.
At least he hadn't went through with the elaborate Richard Brooks plan that they had been considering. John didn't think he could deal with all the press and publicity that would have caused. No, there was actually very little drama surrounding the actual event. Sherlock had called John and pleaded with him to understand, told him that he just couldn't take the strain of it anymore...told him that he didn't want to end up crazy like Moriarty so he had decided to end his own life before that could happen. Ironic, really, now that John knew the truth.
It had been two weeks since the fall, two weeks that John had spent holed up inside 221B trying to come to terms with everything. Mycroft, Greg, and a few others had been by, but he had refused to see anyone besides Mrs. Hudson, and even then only to offer her vague reassurances through the door.
He needed to get away, to just leave everything and everyone ever associated with Sherlock bloody Holmes behind him and never look back. It was the only way he had any hopes of keeping his sanity. It was time to get in touch with one of his oldest friends. He was one of the very few secrets that John had managed to keep from his former best friend and roommate.
John slowly got to his feet and retrieved his laptop before sinking back into his chair again. He opened the screen and typed in his password when prompted. In a few clicks, he had his blog brought up and was changing the settings from "public post" to "private post". He chucked at that. Nothing could ever be kept private from the people he was about to contact.
John slowly typed out a single word, only 7 letters, that he knew would change his entire life. He took a few minutes to make sure that this was what he wanted, that he was truly prepared to drop everything and leave the life that he had spent the last year building. In the end, it was an easy decision. After all, what did he really have left that wasn't tainted by Sherlock's memory?
Not a single damn thing, he thought and then he pressed ENTER.
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Thousands of miles away, a phone trilled out a low note. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed man reached into his suit's pocket and pulled out a sleek little phone as he slipped into the back of a taxi.
"Where to?" the driver asked gruffly. The man opened his mouth to respond, but froze as his eyes darted over the screen of his phone.
"The airport. Make it fast," he replied, a hint of urgency in his tone. As the car departed, the man slipped a hand into another pocket and then brought his fingers up to insert a small device into his ear.
"There's been a change of plans," he spoke softly. "I need a flight back to London."
"Don't tell me you've already managed to blow something up. You've only been in the country two days," a voice answered dryly. The blonde man chucked ruefully before sobering.
"Dr. John Watson added a post to his private blog a few minutes ago."
"Did he now? Hmm. Let me see." The clacking of fingers on a keyboard could be heard clearly for a few moments and then "Oh. OH."
"Yes," the blonde replied as he stared down at the single word that was flashing across the screen of his phone. "I need on the next flight back to London."
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Back in London another phone beeped sharply, causing the man behind the desk to cringe slightly as he wondered just what the hell else could possibly be going wrong now. He opened his phone to see that John Watson had posted a private blog entry.
"Skyfall," Mycroft Holmes whispered thoughtfully, his sharp mind assessing and dismissing possible meanings of the word. Anthea walked into his office carrying a thick folder full of papers.
"Sir, there's been another threat against the Queen. I need to know how you want to proceed with this one."
"When isn't there a bloody threat against the Queen?" Mycroft murmured, all thoughts of skyfall starting to fall away from his mind. He had already calculated that the most probable explanation was that John felt as if his world had collapsed after Sherlock's "suicide". He made a mental note to try going by the flat again next week. Sherlock always did have a habit of breaking his toys, and it had always fallen to Mycroft to put the pieces back together.