It's Not Over Yet : SHERLOCK Season 5

A Second Meeting

Flashes of Sherlock were shooting through his mind.

It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note.

Him on top of Barts.

Holmes kills Holmes.

Him with the gun pressed against his own chin.

And then his own voice.

Sherlock, I need to get over it, over what has happened, let me go.

It was precisely one week ago.

John, stay here.

He needed to do it.

Sherlock! I can't take this, not right now. You need to let me go for a while!

He needed to leave 221B Baker Street.

Let him do what he wants.

His face in the favorite room.

Punch me in the face!

Yes, he did, more than once.

Goodbye, John.

His bloody body on the ground.

Mrs. Hudson, I don't know when I'll be back...

The last thing he said before he left.

Suddenly his eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling while he bathed in his own sweat. Another one of those nightmares, he's been having them since he got home from Sherrinford. John absolutely hated it, sleeping. He had the urge to just stop doing it at all, to avoid the mental pain that came with the nightmares. And the paranoia, always hearing the tick tock tick tock tick tock. Always seeing the image of Sherlock pointing the gun at Mycroft, and then suddenly placing it under his own chin.

John hated knowing that his therapist, was Eurus, that the girl that made him cheat on Mary, was Eurus. Even though she was dead now, her death didn't take away the thought of knowing that he got played, fell into her trap.

He knew that he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep anymore. There was no need to lay in bed any longer, so he got up, sitting a while before taking a standing position. He looked at his phone on the bedside table, and at exactly that time it lit up. He picked it up, wondering what the notification was about.

Dinner at Angelo's. 7 PM.
- IA

At first John didn't know who IA was, but he did know they were someone's initials. In his mind he made a list of the people Sherlock knew, and once he made the full list, he got it. Irene Adler.

He already met her once, as in him and her only, in private. During that meeting she was saying pure nonsense, saying that he was jealous.

He knew that Irene tried to contact Sherlock, but that he never responded to her messages. And John was smart enough to know that Sherlock never would. Then why would she contact him, John Watson? If there was something wrong with Sherlock, Mycroft would call. But he wasn't the type to ignore a message like this, he couldn't let people down, never. If anyone, someone he knew, asked him to come to a specific place, he would. That's how he worked. So he had to go.

——

He walked into the restaurant, the one he ate with Sherlock on the day they met.

"Ah, perfectly on time, John Watson." A female voice called.

He looked at the place from which the voice came, and he found Irene sitting in the exact spot Sherlock sat. He blinked, memories from Sherlock and him racing through his mind again. He shook his head, determined to stop thinking about him, in case the bad memories would start to flash by.