Sherlock Holmes sat on John's left side, his entire body shifted on his chair so as to accommodate the best view. His mood hadn't improved since their private conversation, and as Victor settled himself next to the old Professor he had to imagine the talks had not yielded his intended result. Whether it was small talk or the demand of a love confession, either way Sherlock Holmes was not satisfied, though the look in his eyes seemed reflective of his determination to get what he wanted in the end. Victor could hardly stand to look at him by now, he was filled with such shame for bringing him, such regret for putting this poor couple in this situation, and such embarrassment for whatever words were surely going to fly out of that old man's mouth. He would make a fool of himself before the day was over, that much Victor knew for sure.
"Here we have it then, the lovely aroma's even lovelier source!" Mary presented the ham on a silver platter, one she carried proudly to the middle of the dining room table. Sherlock still wasn't paying her any attention, indeed his eyes might have flicked once to the woman without a second thought. Victor's mouth soured, though for the sake of the effort he gave a small round of applause. It truly was a beautiful ham, though nothing would be satisfactory to a stomach tied in a knot.
John looked stone faced at the head of the table, his eyes following each piece of ham that was served with shining serving utensils. He didn't seem to be following the food, nor even following his wife, instead he seemed lost in his own mind, attempting to engage with the room by letting his head bobble impulsively around. He looked as if all parts of his mind were disengaged, save for that which tracks motion.
"Shall we say a prayer?" Mary suggested as she took her place at the table, folding her hands like the good Christian she was. John still wasn't alert, and Sherlock Holmes certainly wasn't going to acknowledge she had said anything at all. Thus, as it always seemed to be, it was Victor's job to nod and encourage the woman to continue on.
"Dear God," Mary began, dropping her head to a respectful angle. Victor mimicked her, though there was still hardly any motion from the men at the table. "Thank you for reuniting these old friends, and for allowing us to reopen doors of comradery and friendship. Please do your best to heal Mr. Holmes, so he may be with us long enough that all our stories are shared. Amen."
"Amen," Victor repeated, though he felt so against every word in the prayer he half hoped God wasn't listening.
John seemed engaged enough to eat, and as the meal began certain small talk was traded this way and that. Victor talked of the campus life, of his own (admittedly pitiful) backstory, and of his struggles in calculus. Mary told stories of their grandchildren, while John detailed his life as a doctor once peace had finally settled. Sherlock Holmes, predictably, remained silent. He still seemed content with ruining the meal, hardly eating a bite and making a pitiful face whenever some of Mary's cooking sat upon his tongue. He seemed willing to spit it out, if only to make a show of things, though Victor was speaking enough in hopes there never was a silent time for which to do so. At the moment this was all Victor's fault, this was his fault for bringing these two clashing parities together, and if he could just damage control until it was socially acceptable to make their departure then he could at least salvage his own pride. Oh but it would be difficult, certainly Sherlock Holmes would be unwilling to leave save at gunpoint. Victor worried for the moment, through while his brow creased his talking speed quickened, determined not to let his fear show.
"Sherlock, have you kept in touch with any of your other friends from the war?" Mary questioned, after Victor's speech had ended about his roommate's basketball career. Victor had been grasping at straws, anything to keep the conversation as far away from, well, this...as possible. For a moment he understood Sherlock's hate of the woman, for a moment he hated her too.
"I haven't got any other friends," Sherlock admitted, his eyes fixed upon John Watson, who now kept his head bowed and his fork stagnant. It seemed both men were having trouble eating, though Victor could sense such drastic differences in the reasoning. While John couldn't eat for fear of being sick, Sherlock wouldn't dare distract himself enough for nourishment. One was hyper focused on the moment, while the other would rather be anywhere in the world.
"Certainly men in your company?" Mary wondered.
"No," Sherlock grumbled.
"Well, then John must have been special," the woman smiled. Sherlock's head nodded minutely, and Victor clutched his silverware tighter by the second. The silver may very well melt in the heat of his palm, it may be morphing to the shape of his fingers.
"I just saved his life, Mary. And when you put that into the context of things...I was special to many men." John's words were ill chosen, and Victor even closed his eyes to avoid watching Sherlock's glare intensify, his teeth clench, and his body writhe. He could feel the energy shifting, though he did not like the direction it was going.
"More...more potato salad, Mary?" Victor suggested, his eyes opening wildly as he came up with something, anything, to divert the tension away. He felt as if the walls of the dining room were collapsing, the china cabinets shaking with the rest of the twelve piece set, the cat clock on the wall ticking its tail faster and faster while the living cats ran to hiss underneath the farthest mattress. There was a sense of urgency radiating from Sherlock Holmes, a sense of madness Victor had never understood before, and the house itself was rejecting it. The house itself was moving to rid itself of him, he the wrecking ball that would destroy the beauty and the love it had housed all these years. One word out of his mouth and the pictures might shatter, one word out of his mouth and the woman might faint...one word out of his mouth and this illusion, this happy family, well it might be ruined.
Mary looked towards John, who stared down at his plate with his mouth still full of his last bite, that which had been taken some two minutes before. His face looked green, and he seemed more likely to open his mouth and let the food spill back out than swallow it naturally. Victor looked towards Mary, he reached for the potato salad, he wanted to force it upon her, he wanted to fling the bowl all over the table cloth, he wanted to knock over the candles, he wanted to light the croqueted pot holders aflame. Anything...anything. But Sherlock looked at John, and Sherlock took a deep breath. And then, for the first time since he arrived, at least the first time on his own will...he looked at Mary.
"John was special to me because I was in love with him," Sherlock said at last, speaking the words with his entire body, thrusting his chest forward and holding his head high, those syllables which had been flung from his heart yet the deepest, most vile caverns of the thing. They weren't meant with the softness of a lover's confession, but the brutality of a man who wanted his own way. A man who wanted to cleave this house in two, so he might get the rubble for the rest of his short days.
"I was, and I am," Sherlock finished, as if the confession had not gone long enough.
"I...well, I think it's time we're, we're going. Unless we have desert but certainly..." Victor rose to his feet so abruptly that his knees hit the table, his glass of lemon water clattering and shattering its contents across the white table cloth. Still he pushed the chair backwards, his legs so wobbly that he might take down the rest of the table as he fumbled with himself, with his limbs, so foreign.
"Sherlock you hold your bloody tongue if you want to keep it!" John snarled, slamming his fist on the table and rattling what dishes remained upright. Mary had paled to the shade of milk, now indistinguishable from the napkin she had been dabbing at the corner of her lips.
"It's ridiculous to be keeping such secrets, John! From me, from yourself...from your wife!" Sherlock's voice had escalated now, his fists clenched and grabbing for big swaths of the table cloth.
"I have no secrets from her," John demanded. "I am a guiltless man, and you know it!"
"I know nothing except the sound of your confession, and the taste of your lips," Sherlock growled, to which Mary gasped, her wrinkled hands clutching to her lips as if to manually withhold the most immediate comments.
Victor slunk back towards the wall, his hands grasping at the peeling corners of the fruit patterned wall papers, stunned enough to omit himself, stunned enough to realize when his comments were not necessary.
"He loved me, Mrs. Watson, he loved me and he said so."
"I made my confession to a dying man, Sherlock, on what I thought was your last request! How could I have known you would live fifty six miserable more years?"
"I was never close to death, you made sure of that!"
"I made sure you had enough opium to think you never were! I made sure you never felt pain, as an obligation, as a medical doctor!"
"I wouldn't have died. You sewed me up, you..."
"I sewed you up," John growled, now rising to his feet with the help of the dining room table, grasping for the hardwood to support his shaking weight. "Because you were a lost cause to any other surgeon! No one else would touch you, for fear of your bleeding out as soon as their needle was threaded!"
"Lies!" Sherlock snarled, unable to rise but humiliated to have to look up upon his aggressor.
"You were shipped to the war hospital for emergency surgery, for life saving procedures we couldn't do in a tent. Though, had I known you would have been this bloody persistent perhaps I would have tried those myself as well. Perhaps I should have botched it, and let you bleed until even your ridiculous heart stopped beating."
"Don't you call me ridiculous," Sherlock Holmes challenged, his eyes so fiery Victor expected to see smoke rising from the cavities in his ears. "You, you who would recant your own confession when guilt weighed you down?"
"My confession meant NOTHING!" John Watson screamed, again banging his hands against the table and wobbling from the effort of holding himself upon his own two feet. "I NEVER LOVED YOU!"
"You can't fake those..."
"YES YOU CAN!" John screamed, his voice rising to such a pitch that Victor's very skull rattled. He could hardly hear, he hardly wanted to hear, he hardly wanted to see. He was witnessing the culmination of fifty years of miscommunication, the frustration that could amount from a man getting a letter every week, a letter he never wanted. He was watching the meltdown of persistent stubbornness versus hopeless refusal; he was watching an unstoppable force collide with an immovable object. Oh what a mistake, what a mistake!
"I have received every one of your god damn letters, be thankful I never shredded the things! How can a man muster up his own pride to write such obscenities to a careless audience? How many hours a day did you practice your calligraphy, just to send me these...these perverted imaginaries?"
"You...you left me your address. You left me your photograph!"
"That, I admit...was sentiment. Sentiment for a dying man, a hysterical man...a confused man. I pitied you, Sherlock, for in those days you may have passed as charming. I pitied what you had done to your heart, and expected that picture to help you heal."
"You weave such convincing tales in moments of weakness, don't you, John? Why don't we continue this without your wife, and see how your answers change?" Sherlock's voice was still hostile, though he had reduced his pitch to at least a shout. He seemed to be losing firepower, as if even the insatiable hole of longing was finally beginning to close. Was he finally realizing the truth, or was it his very life force beginning to drain?
"I have no words for you, Sherlock none in private. I have spent all these years telling the lies I felt would satisfy you, the lies I thought would help to heal you. If I would have known you'd have...you'd have completely lost your mind...then perhaps I would have written at once with the truth. Though I pitied you, and that's a fool's mistake."
"No, no...there was no mistake. You kissed me, you told me you loved me...I know the words, they're in my head, they're playing in my head constantly!" Sherlock Holmes finally began to rise, he pushed his hand upon the table and anchored himself as best he could. Using his scrawny legs, those which hardly filled half of his once well fit trousers, he began to rise. The man's temples flared, his veins showing on the surface of his paper-like skin. His eyes were maddened, his hair seemed to be falling out with every ounce of effort...he was falling apart, and yet he was rising. He was dying, and yet he was standing up. As one might fall into a grave, instead Sherlock Holmes was ascending into his.
"Sherlock...I never loved you. Perhaps the truth is better spoken plain. Perhaps you ought to repeat that in your head for the rest of your days!"
Sherlock Holmes held himself upon the table, his knees finally locked, his head bowed down at his lunch, hardly touched, at the fancy china Mary Watson had brought out for the occasion of a reunion.
"You loved me when you saved my life. I saw it in your eyes, in your braving the gunfire for me. In throwing yourself on top of me, in pushing your hand against my wound, in keeping my life's blood inside. You were a good doctor, John Watson, a good doctor with a favorite." Sherlock pursed his lips, he inhaled his breath sharply. "Perhaps you can't love a man who is fully healed. Perhaps you can't...you can't remember the lives of others without seeing the evidence of their beating heart. Perhaps you are as broken as I, taking up the art of fixing others if just to hide from your hypocrisy."
"Perhaps I do, Sherlock. And for the rest of my life I will regret continuing this game...if I had known I was creating a...a monster..."
"I've loved your stitches, John Watson," Sherlock whispered. "I've loved your handiwork. You've been a part of me. Your craftsmanship. I loved you when you sewed me back together...I loved you when you healed me."
"And I am sorry, Sherlock. Sorry to have...to have kept the truth."
"Have you gotten better at sewing, at stitching?" Sherlock wondered, finally raising his eyes to meet John's, finally mustering the courage to allow their gazes to meet.
"I never practiced as a surgeon, Sherlock," John assured. Sherlock nodded, he sniffed, his old body so tiny in his clothes he seemed a man shrunk, as if he was reducing in size with every moment passed, his love and his will to live deflating what substance there used to be underneath his already baggy suit.
"I hope you've gotten better," Sherlock announced, his eyes staring into John's now as if with the goal of seeing out the other side of his head. "Because I've never felt as alive as when I was close to death. Close to death...with your hand upon my hip. Let us practice again, John Watson. Let us...let us end where we began."
Victor couldn't move enough, in fact he could hardly move at all. His legs were cemented to the floor, a statement of his own immobility rather than Sherlock Holmes's sudden swiftness. He was still hardly able to stand, hardly able to move, his arms weren't moving any faster...in fact they were in slow motion. Slow motion...and getting slower still. Yet no one adjusted to the man's speed, and before Victor could even launch himself forward already the old Professor had taken the carving knife in his hands, the wicked silver blade used to serve them ham for their lunch. His old hands, withered and weak, the hands which gestured with a pointing stick, and which corrected with a fierce red marker...the same that penned beautiful letters of love and passion, and which had embraced his terrified student in the privacy of their office, the first encounter which had made Victor truly indebted to the happiness of who he thought was a tortured romantic...an impossible lover with a dream too lofty to salvage. With those same hands he plunged the carving knife into his hip. With those hands he carved through the stitches he was so proud of, and reopened the wound which had taken all these years to heal.
The man hit the floor with a powerful thud, his body displacing the chair he had once sat in, his head smacking hard against the china cabinet and his blood pooling throughout the cracks in the hardwood floors. The knife had clattered to the floor, the audience had stepped back in horror...Victor was immobilized, useless but to watch his Professor scream upon the floor, scream, scream the pains that he had inflicted upon himself.
"Won't you save me, John?" Sherlock was wailing, his fingers matted in his own blood, his suit soaked through already. He had thrust his hand upon the wound, pushing with what little strength he had, pushing to contain the blood he had spilled himself. "Save me like on the riverbanks! Save me like in the war! Save me...John...help me."
John Watson stayed where he was.

It was two o'clock in the morning when Victor pulled open the door to the dormitory, his head hanging low and his limbs weary. His back ached from the driver's seat, his eyes stung with the effort of concentration, and yet he still lumbered forward, pushing himself across the table floors like a man possessed. He could hardly see where he was going, yet he had the advantage of having been here before. His body remembered the pathway, even if his brain was too tired to help. There were still flakes of blood upon his shoes where they slipped through the kitchen, flakes of blood on his pants where Sherlock Holmes had grabbed them. The smell of ham was fresh in his hair and upon his breath, and his head was ringing with the sound of the sirens. The sounds of the screams.
He hastened forward. Victor felt as if he would be sick from the effort of moving, of walking, of thinking...he was nearer to death's door than even the Professor, though he knew he had to stay alive for fear of meeting the old man in the waiting que for Hell. Neither one of them was dead yet, as far as he knew...though he must at least make it through the night. He must outlast that pitiful old man, that horrible old man. Victor did not intend to see him again, unless the Devil had other plans some years down the road.
Victor remembered the path, and he remembered where to stop. He remembered the room number, the symbols and the shapes, if even his eyes could not contemplate what they meant. He knew the door which he had lived behind, and the door behind which Reggie now slept. He knew where to return, now with nowhere left to go. He knew where to return, now that he wished he had never left at all. He lifted his arm to the door; he knocked even though the key still swung at his side. He knocked, the only sound for miles...he knocked because he wanted to be invited back in.
"Who the hell is it?" asked a gruff voice on the other side of the door, a groggy voice that may have been sleeping, may have been reading. It depended on what assignments were due the next day. Victor could hardly remember what day it was...he could hardly remember what year.
"Reggie, can I come in?" Victor whispered. "I'm so tired."
"Victor?" the voice asked in disbelief.
"Yes," the boy agreed. "What remains of me, at least."
"My god..." his words were halted with the sound of a lock, the quickening of fingers against the metal, the urgency of a boy long forgotten. The door swung open, Reginald standing in the dark, the moonlight silhouetting him from behind where it managed to shine through the dorm window.
"I thought you were gone," Reginald admitted, his grey hair jostled and his glasses perched crookedly upon his nose. He looked beautiful, more beautiful than Victor had ever seen...the boy might have cried, had he any moisture to spare. His tongue was dry and his skin withered, he felt as if he had risen from the dead but not quite permanently.
"I thought you had gone, too," Victor admitted.
"Where the hell were you?"
"With Professor Holmes," Victor whispered, his teeth clenching and his eyes narrowing.
"Where is he now?"
"He could be dead," Victor admitted. "I don't know...and I don't care to know."
"Dead?"
"He stabbed himself. He stabbed himself in...in John Watson's dining room. He's mad."
"You were with John?"
"Can I come in?" Victor whispered, his entire body trembling with the effort of reliving the ghastly tale. "Can I please?"
"Victor...what are you going on about?" Reggie wondered, his grey eyes filled with concern. His fingers were clenched upon the door, yet still he didn't seem eager to open it any wider.
"Professor Holmes is crazy. John Watson never loved him, and we found that out today. I brought him there...I was a fool. I shouldn't have trusted him...and I shouldn't have left you."
"No...no you shouldn't have," Reggie agreed. His voice was tense, but it was lightening. He continually looked his roommate up and down, as if trying to ensure it was the same Victor who had left, not a reincarnated fabrication.
"I'm sorry," Victor admitted with a tremble, feeling his eyes well up with tears as he managed the words. As he approached his own impossible love story, and realized not everyone was destined for a happy ending. "I'm sorry for who I am, and for who I trusted, and for what...what I've done."
"You don't have to apologize to me, you bloody fool," Reggie insisted, finally opening the door wider, wide enough to let his roommate back inside. "We all do something stupid at one time or another, something stupid to distract ourselves."
Reginald stepped backwards into the dark, cloaking himself for some minute in shadow while allowing Victor space enough to step through the door. Tears ran down his cheeks as he entered again, hardly remembering this dorm room when it was his own, hardly remembering what it was like to feel safe here. So long had passed since he had left, days had turned to years, his trip with Professor Holmes having weighed upon his life like geologic time.
Victor stepped inside, but it was Reginald who closed the door behind him. It was Reginald who locked it.
"Can I stay here tonight?" Victor wondered, dabbing his tears away with his coat sleeve in an attempt to hide the emotions that were compressing upon his skull. "I...I promise I won't be a burden."
"Victor, you're as mad as Professor Holmes," Reggie decided, pulling his glasses off of his face and throwing them carelessly upon his desk. "Mad if you think that answer will be no."
"Don't compare me with him, please...don't ever bring his name up..."
"But you have something in common don't you? Tell me it's not the madness. Not the calculus, either." Reggie titled his head playfully.
"It's neither," Victor admitted heavily. "I...well, I'm..."
"You're just like me, Victor," Reggie insisted, lunging forward like a cat that finally had its prey within its reach. Lunging forward, grabbing Victor's face in his hands, and proving that in some circumstances fairytales could end happily. Proving that some things were worth waiting for, even when all hope seemed lost. Proving that, in the end, even stubborn fools can be happy half of the time.  

A/N: Well, here you have it folks! I do feel quite happy that I sat down to write this book, it had been in my head for so long, and even after I switched to my own characters it was always knocking around as something that felt right for the cast of Sherlock Holmes. I'm sorry I've ended my fanfiction career on an anti-love story, though after 50 or so happy endings it's always fun to throw some variety into the mix. I feel this story takes my usual brand of madness and elevates it to something even more disturbing, beyond losing your head but also losing your heart. And what's more, I don't see this version of Sherlock Holmes so far off from the version in the original stories. He seems the sort to feel one thing and hold onto it until the bitter end, and never resolve an emotional issue until it's far too late. I'm quite happy how his character in this story turned out. 
All the same, my brief return from retirement is probably at its end. I have found my own characters who I feel comfortable with, and I'm in the process of finishing up the first book of a three part series about a dystopian version of climate change. Of course it's not too hard to connect my 'new' characters to Sherlock, John, Victor, and Reginald, though for now I have my hands full of working their stories from my head onto paper. And so, while it was indeed fun to come back to Wattpad, I do believe my time is officially over. 

If anyone is interested in the future to be a beta reader of my original works, please let me know. I'll be finishing that book probably by the end of the summer and then editing it (my first time editing anything!!) throughout the fall. Perhaps by winter I'll have a copy I'm ready to put to the test. Just let me know!

Thanks all for a fun nine years on here. I'll still be checking notifications, and I'll be around if anyone needs recommendations or anything! Though my writing will probably be focused entirely on trying to get into the published world from now on.