The drive home was silent and John was so tense that his face and jaw ached from the sorrow that tightened every muscle in his body. Once they were home the Mom put the car in park and ran inside, up the stairs to her room, and as John and Mycroft stood in the entryway they could hear her sobbing uncontrollably. Like automatons they moved up the stairs one step at a time until they reached their room, it was strangely empty without Sherlock and as John sat down with a heavy thumb on the edge of the bed he wondered how he would survive the grief of losing Sherlock yet again.
“Mycroft, how are we going to do this?” John asked as he leaned forward in an effort to control the nausea that was brewing in his stomach.
“How are we going to do what?” Mycroft asked flatly.
“This,” John gestured around the empty room. “This…This losing Sherlock, for we will lose him someday, Mycroft, we will.”
Mycroft sighed and pulled a cigarette out of his purse, not caring if he was in the house or not, he lit the round cylinder of comfort and took a deep drag. “John, we all are lost and alone in the end.”
John wrinkled his brow in anger as he raised his voice in reply, “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you ever think before you speak? You’re just like him, just like…Sherlock.”
Mycroft didn’t reply he just calmly kept puffing on his cigarette until John leaned over and made a grab for Mycroft’s purse, “If all you’re going to do is smoke then I want one too.” John snapped as he rifled through the small handbag’s contents. After a few moments he found what he was looking for, however his hands were shaking so bad that he couldn’t even control the small lighter.
Mycroft quietly walked over and took the lighter from John’s hand, “Here John let me before you catch yourself on fire.”
After a few awkward movements Mycroft lit John’s cigarette, after the initial lighting John started to cough until tears ran down his face. “Jesus, how can you two stand these things?” John coughed and spluttered a few more times and then lay back against the bed. “You know it’s not just the fact that I am afraid of losing Sherlock, it’s everything about the future. Pain, sickness, death, grief, the loss of loved ones are all part of being human and I above all should be able to accept that as a Doctor, but Mycroft I’m scared. Sometimes I just want to hide for I feel that as each day goes by and I am unscathed that I have evaded the gods of fate for yet another day, but my luck will run out one day and Sherlock will be….gone and I…” John sniffed and then continued on, “I will be left alone to deal with everything. Mycroft, I’m not strong enough I can’t take it.”
Mycroft rolled over on his side and looked into John’s tearful eyes, “Yet you continue on every day. John you are strong enough, for you are a soldier, a healer and the person that Sherlock loves most in this world or any other, for those that love are always the vulnerable ones and those that love are the true heroes, for they go where angels fear to tread.”
After finishing his cigarette John rolled over and despite his frantic worrying over Sherlock’s welfare he fell asleep and then around midnight the phone rang. Its shrill sound shrieking through the house like a fire alarm and even before the Mom answered the phone John dreaded the moment she picked up the receiver, for when the receiver was held to her ear and the words on the other end spoken aloud there would be no taking the message back. “Maybe it’s a prank call,” John thought hopefully and then a sound as shrill as the ringing phone ripped through the house making the hairs on the back of John’s neck stand up on end. He and Mycroft got up and ran downstairs to where the Mom sat sobbing on the floor.
John knew he should ask, but he just couldn’t, he just couldn’t ask anything, eventually John regained his courage and his voice echoed back at him as if he were in a tunnel, “Is Sherlock---I mean Sheryl is she….”
The Mom held out both of her hands to Mycroft and John, “Girls, Sheryl has taken a turn for the worse, she can’t breathe and they’ve had to put her on an iron lung. Oh dear God what are we going to do? They won’t even let us see her because of the quarantine. Oh my poor baby,” the Mom wailed as Mycroft smoothed her hair down, he turned around to look for John but John was gone rushing to Sherlock’ side, a place where angels feared to tread.
