The Good, The Bad and The Woman

The Show Must Go On

11. The Show Must Go On

John barged into 221 B as he discarded his long, blue scarf and gazed about for his friend. The curly-haired man sat silently in his armchair by the open fireplace, like a figurine in a doll house. The comforting sound of the crackling fire added a texture of warmth the man seemed to lack at this hour.

Slowly and with very meticulous hands, Sherlock was cleaning his violin bow as the dark of night settled outside the window behind him.

"Hey, what's wrong?" the blond man breathed as he stepped further into the room. His worried gaze scanned his friend's calm exterior as he came closer. "I got your text."

"She's gone."

John did a double take and his jaw slowly dropped. "… Oh."

The detective's face remained void of emotions as he finished cleaning and leered up at his friend. There was a cautionary calm to his voice that could well mean nothing, or hide a bottomless pit from the world. "It was a mutual understanding. She packed her belongings and left Baker Street about an hour ago. I wanted you to hear it from me first."

The other man sank into the second armchair as his baffled gaze looked for cracks in his friend's flawless façade. "But-"

"It was the right decision, John. Accept it." The man exhaled tediously and rose from his seat in a fluid motion that seemed to suggest nothing was out of place with the world turning on its head. As if his heart had not just been ripped out and stomped on to a bleeding pulp.

The doctor blinked and eyed his friend wearily. "… That's it? No tantrums or dramatic inclinations to turn towards your drugs? You're just… calm with it?"

"Sorry to disappoint," the man muttered as he put away the bow in its case.

"Yeah…" the blond sighed and shifted in his seat as his confusion was substituted with patient irritation. "For once, you actually kind of are, Sherlock."

"You only need a head and a heart, John. I've got you, so I'm covered. I don't need The woman."

The doctor rolled his eyes and felt anger rise in his chest like a herd of stampeding animals across a plain. He closed his eyes and blurted, "You arsehole."

"What?"

John turned to glare up at his friend as he bluntly said, "Can I at least ask why?"

"You know already."

That answer only made this whole ordeal all the more unsatisfying. He knew Sherlock Holmes better than anyone, but still John's heart kept on hoping that the detective had evolved and stopped treating others in this cold fashion. The blond man stared up at his friend as if the latter was some kind of alien entity. "You broke up with her because she miscarried?"

"She withheld the information and distracted me from seeing the truth! I bought her this to make a point and prove to her how irrelevant love was to me," Sherlock threw the small ring box to his friend and shrugged his shoulders as he concluded in genuine bewilderment, "… what else could I do?"

"Bugger…" John eyes basically bulged from his skull as he opened the box and the diamond ring sparkled up at him from its cushion of rejection. With great restraint, he tried to get through to the man opposite him, "You learn she's suffered a miscarriage and you buy her this engagement ring - not to propose! – but to break up with her not even a week after her best friend is shot in the head?"

Sherlock's gaze wandered upwards as he pondered the words. "Yep."

"She was in pain… and you thought adding to that was the right course of action?"