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John leaves on a Friday, goodbyes and pleas to stay falling on deaf ears. You will visit, won’t you, Mrs Hudson says, and though it’s less a request than an order, because she’s never been afraid of bossing him around, they both know he won’t. His therapist tells him this is a terrible idea, that right now he needs his friends around him, but he ignores her too. His friends are gone now, distant, or maybe it’s him who has withdrawn; either way it doesn’t matter. They’re none of them him, and therefore of no help to John at all.
He hires a car and the wheel feels strange under his hands. He’s grown too used to taxis, in the time before – well, before. The road is open and wide before him and he drives to anywhere, not to anywhere but away, always in the hope he’ll reach somewhere that will offer him peace.
Two weeks later he gives up the car and buys a bike with the money he’d saved up for some future rainy day. It’s his one concession to living dangerously now, an attempt to drum up some of the old thrill that used to sing in his blood when they were on a case. It’s a poor substitute, but then, everything is. John thinks of track marks and nicotine patches on pale arms and swears to himself, never. A week after that he throws his mobile away, missed calls: 7 still flashing on the screen. Lestrade, Molly, Mrs Hudson, and Mycroft. Possibly even his sister. He doesn’t care. The ringing had been getting on his nerves, anyway.
His life is split in two – before, after – and he wonders if he drives long enough he’ll see that dividing line disappear in his rear view mirrors and eventually vanish below the horizon.
He sees many cities, none of them London, but in all of them he finds shadows, sees figures flashing in the corner of his eye that aren’t there when he turns, or become someone else when he does catch them. A scarf around the neck of a businessman, a long coat flapping in the wind, dark curly hair over a different face – all these dredge up memories, and confronted with those, John runs.
Still, sometimes, in the dead of night when there’s no sound but the small night noises of whatever new place he’s found himself in, he dares to hope. Maybe, he thinks, maybe, maybe, maybe. He’s found his way out of bad situations before. Still, that thought, clutched close to his heart and never spoken aloud, is not enough to stop his desperate run.
If Sherlock’s alive, the thinking goes, then he’ll find John no matter where he is, and London will welcome him back with, if not open arms, at least a warm cup of tea that Mrs Hudson will make despite her repeated protests that she’s not your housekeeper, just for the joy of seeing them back.
If he’s not alive – and John finds it harder and harder every day to hold on to this, even his great faith hard-pressed not to waver in the face of time – then London holds nothing for him anyway.
Eventually he finds he can’t run any more, three years gone by, the dust of the road stained under his fingernails and exhaustion stripping the colour from his face. The tiny town needs a doctor since their last one passed, and John fills the place as easily as he’d fill any other. The cases are simple enough, and if his life is a little dull, well, maybe that’s what he needs right now. And maybe if he believes that often enough, and with enough conviction, it’ll eventually be true.
He doesn’t see ghosts so often any more, jumps less at shadows, so when he sees a dark coat like wings at the edge of his vision he thinks it’s nothing, probably just some tourist lost on their way to somewhere else. It can’t be, he thinks, sure in his conviction, but when long fingers grasp his arms and a long-unheard but not forgotten voice says, a motorbike, John, really it’s all he can do not to faint. Strong hands hold him steady until he can steady himself, can say, well I had to find some way to occupy myself. Three years is a long time – surely you didn’t expect me to just wait around?
Sherlock just looks at him, because of course he had, of course, and that more than anything else makes him believe it’s real, real, real, he’s really back, and now, miles away from 221B and anywhere he’s lived before and all his friends (because they are friends, and always have been, and he owes a lot of apologies) except this one man, peace washes over John and he feels like he’s finally home.