#parttwooftwo

John Watson’s fists clench, most certainly from the impulse to punch Sherlock in the face again. “And have you told Claire you’re back from the dead?”

Sherlock lets out a long suffering sigh and gives John a disdainful look to mask the sharp prick of guilt. “John, I’ve only been in London a few hours.”

John’s already pink face turns a more deeper red under the light cast by the restaurant they stand outside of and Sherlock deduces that John is (obviously) not happy with his answer. Then Mary takes a step forward and lays a calming hand on Watson’s arm. John’s shoulders loosen a bit, his hands unclench, and his face goes back to a mostly normal color. The expression, however, doesn’t change much.

“Well then,” Mary says with a sweet and conspiratorial smile. “I’ll just take John home and you can go say hello.”

Sherlock looks at Mary, his eyes narrowing imperceptibly.

Guardian                      Shortsighted                        Catlover                 Clever

Romantic                     Linguist                                  Nurse    

Filing deductions and conclusions away to be taken out and looked at later, Sherlock merely nods and finds his eyes drifting back over to John.

Watson, body language closed off and still irritated, takes a step closer to Sherlock. “I hope you’ve thought up a really good apology for her, Sherlock.”

He hadn’t. As a matter of fact, for what feels like the first time in his life, Sherlock Holmes has no idea what he’s going to say. But he doesn’t admit that of course.

“Obviously.”

John stares him down, unimpressed. “If I don’t hear that you’ve gone and seen her by tomorrow night…”

“Yes, yes, you don’t have to threaten me,” Sherlock says as he gestures with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Off you pop.”

John turns with one last warning look and hails a cab.

“You’re worried,” Mary says as John jogs down the street to open the cab door. Sherlock’s gaze cuts sharply over to Mary, any answer becoming lodged in his throat. She merely smiles that smile of hers. “And I would be, too.”

With that, she turns and gets into the cab with John.

Sherlock stands there on the sidewalk for a long time, his mind racing.

                                                          ***

Walking back up to 221B after two years of being away awakens feelings in Sherlock’s chest, feelings he’d rather not deal with, thank you very much. He can almost hear Mycroft’s insufferable voice “Sentiment-.”

“- is not a disadvantage, Sherlock.” He can hear the tones of her voice, catch the smell of her shampoo; Lavender. A calming scent. “It just means you care.”

Sherlock opens the door, still half caught up in his mind, and Mrs. Hudson’s ear piercing shriek as he steps over the threshold reminds him of where he is. It takes a while to calm her down and even longer for the scolding to end. By the time she’s done, Mrs. Hudson is in tears again and pulling Sherlock into a hug. His back bends awkwardly as he gingerly pats her shoulder, but he can’t deny that it feels-

“It’s okay to feel, you know.” There she is again, speaking softly to him from the back of his mind, just as she always has.

Mrs. Hudson insists on accompanying him upstairs and helping clean up.

“Just this once,” she says as leads him into the apartment. “I’m your landlady, not your housekeeper.”

The joy in Mrs. Hudson’s voice betrays her true feelings on the subject.

Sherlock stands in the middle of the room and takes it in and Mrs. Hudson bustles

around opening drapes and moving partially packed boxes. Other than a few minor things, 221B is practically the same, if not dustier. Only…

As he steps further in the room and his landlady puts on some tea, he notices things are missing. John’s coat, usually throw across the couch, the doctor’s well used mug, normally on the coffee table and-

Sherlock tries to force his train of thought in that direction to stop when it drifts over to Claire. How her books, normally scattered around the apartment or stacked in small piles next to the couch and Sherlock’s chair aren’t there. He can’t help but notice how her favorite blanket isn’t left in a pile in his chair either. He can almost see her curled up there, wrapped in the blanket with a book in her hand, the only one he doesn’t mind sitting there.

What on earth is he going to say to her?

The hours pass as he ponders this, moving from the spot to spot in the apartment, pacing, picking up his violin and immediately setting it down again. Mrs. Hudson left long ago, having cleaned up quite a bit and leaving Sherlock with a fresh pot of tea. He hardly noticed when she left, too caught up in his mind to hear her leave. He’d sit down in his chair, only to grow instantly restless and shoot right back to his feet. He tried standing by the window and deducing things about passersby, but he’d only see someone with a coat like Claire’s, or a hairstyle that reminds him of her. He’d try starting an experiment, only to lose interest almost the moment he picked up a beaker. Sherlock plopped down on the couch and tried to enter his mind palace, but she’d made herself right at home in there as she has everywhere else.

Claire stands over him when his eyes flick open. He merely stares at her from his spot on the couch, at a loss for words. She smiles at him, such a soft smile, and leans down, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, her lips centimeters from his ear.

“You can’t do this forever, Sherlock.” Her voice is silken and familiar and it stirs that feeling, that tightening in his chest. “You can’t run forever. From me, or your emotions.” She shifts her weight back enough to look him in the eye. “You know me and you know my feelings haven’t changed.”

Sherlock stares up at her, itching to do something, to say something. But what?

She smiles at him again and runs a hand through his curls. His eyes flutter for a moment, before he lets the impulse take him, Sherlock reaches up and draws Claire closer.

“I love you.” Someone says.

He doesn’t realize he was the one who spoke until-

Sherlock jerks back into the real 221B, the shock yanking him from his mind palace. He sits up and looks around, immediately noticing that night has fallen again.

“Oh, bollocks.” Sherlock shoots from the couch and paces with feverish intensity back and forth, his phone a leaden thing in his pocket. John will have called Claire by now, as a matter of fact, she may well-

He freezes when he hears the creak of the floor board just outside the door. Soft footsteps, footsteps he’d recognize anywhere, begin to retreat. Sherlock bounds across the flat and yanks the door open and calls out without thinking.

“Claire.”

She halts and Sherlock drinks in the sight of her.

She’s wearing her favorite coat with the fraying hems and the missing button, third one from the top. Her hair is down, longer than it was when he last saw her; It reaches the bottoms of her shoulder blades in soft waves. He wants to run his fingers through it.

Sherlock takes a few steps closer to her, noticing the stiffness in her shoulders and the way her hands clench at her sides, knuckles white. He wants to smooth away the tension and feel her hand in his.

He stops a little ways from her and says her name again.

Slowly, she turns and they look at each other for the first time in two years.

There are dark bags under her eyes-

Not sleeping        Nightmares  

and there’s that furrow in her brows when-

Stressed            Working too hard

she’s upset. Her jacket isn’t buttoned and it’s slightly askew-

Hurried Over     John called

like she didn’t care enough to straighten it. The shirt underneath is wrinkled-

Slept in it           No clean laundry

and Sherlock notices it’s her favorite one.

Needed comfort.

His eyes drift back up to meet hers again. They’re wide and beginning to water and Sherlock can see the disbelief, in her eyes, and in the way her jaw has dropped a bit as she takes him in. Slowly, she reaches out, her hand shaking almost imperceptibly. Sherlock remains completely still as her hand flattens on his chest, just over his heart. She must be able to feel how it races, she must be able to see in his face the emotions, too many and too chaotic for Sherlock himself to discern, that are boiling over in him.

Claire draws her fingers back, a sharp exhale leaving her. “You are real.”

Then she throws her arms around him.

He remains frozen for several moments, then he catches up with his mind. Sherlock wraps his arms around Claire and squeezes a little. Her face is pressed to his shoulder and he can feel her shake with silent sobs. His heart wrenches as he holds her and a small voice, perhaps his conscious, tells him he’s the cause of this.

You hurt her.

Claire’s grip on his jacket tightens spasmodically, sending another pang through Sherlock. All he can do is hold her tighter and hope he hasn’t destroyed his relationship with one of his very few friends. Although, his feelings go deeper than that, much deeper and that scares him, but-

It’s also exhilarating, allowing himself to feel just a little more.

Because of Claire.

They stand there in the hall together like that for a while, Sherlock doesn’t know how long; he doesn’t care enough to notice the time.

Finally, Claire slowly peels herself away from him, wiping at her eyes. Sherlock resists the impulse to pull her back against him again and instead shoves his hands in his pockets and he looks at her. Claire dries her hands on her coat, avoiding eye contact for several more moments as she sniffles. She’s embarrassed, Sherlock deduces. He can’t recall a time she’s cried in front of him, perhaps that’s where her embarrassment stems from. There’s no reason she should feel self conscious of letting him see her like that.

Sherlock has just opened his mouth to tell her as much, but Claire looking back at him and lightly touching his face silences him. “John must have been angry with you,” she says as her fingers lightly trace the bruising on his face.

He represses a shiver. “Are you?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.

She searches his face for several long moments. “I was, for a while.” Her hand retracts from his face and instead rests on his shoulder. “But you don’t do things, especially something like that-,” Sherlock doesn’t miss the way her face tightens. “-for no reason. Where have you been all this time?”

Sherlock’s hands come out of his pockets and he takes the hand resting on his shoulder between both of his. “Dismantling Moriarty’s web.” He traces the shape of her fingers. “You must understand why you had to think I was dead.” Sherlock struggles to keep the desperate edge out of his voice. “Any involvement from your or John would put you both in more danger than you’ve ever dreamed of.” He squeezes her hand, searching her face and, to his great relief, he finds understanding there. She gives him that small, soft smile, the smile that always manages to disarm him so completely. “I missed you.”

Her expression softens even more and her other hand covers his. “I missed you too, Sherlock-.” Her thumb runs over his knuckles, warm and soothing. “-more than even you can realize.”

Her face is glowing, Sherlock notices, glowing with warmth and something Sherlock couldn’t recognize before he met Claire. Something Sherlock feels coiling in his chest and warming his soul.

Love.

He remembers the graveyard and the words he heard Claire speak, remembers how he longed to go to her then. He didn’t know what that feeling in him was then, but he does now.

Love.

The words, those three simple words, pulse in his mind, louder and more insistent. They long to be spoken, he can feel them boiling over in his throat, showing on his face and in his eyes. And he doesn’t care, there’s no Mycroft mocking him in the back of his mind, only Claire and her kindness and warmth and understanding.

Sherlock Holmes, wielder of stone cold logic, opens his mouth and speaks the most sentimental and emotional words he ever has in his life.

“I love you.”

The biggest and brightest smile of all appears on Claire’s face and she reaches up and takes Sherlock’s face between her hands. “Sherlock….” He leans down, inexplicably magnetized to her. She rests her forehead against his, their breaths mingling between them . “I love you too, always.”

A new door opens before Sherlock in his mind’s eye, leading to a new future filled with love and friends. Claire waits on the other side with John and Mrs. Hudson and even Mycroft behind her. Sherlock walks through that door without hesitation.