Not A Thing You Get To Choose

Sherlock nodded, walking into the entry way for the third time and yet feeling an entirely different air. The first night had been silent, the second had been exciting, and this one was just...calm. It was almost happy. There was music playing faintly from somewhere, on a record for it kept scratching, and it smelled something like cinnamon. There was no one else in the entry way, thankfully, and yet Molly started immediately up the stairs, leading them both down a hallway that Sherlock had not been able to wander in before. At the end of the hall there was an oak door, carved with some sort of elaborate scene of animals or something, and it was on this door that she knocked quietly.
"Come in." said a scratchy, unrecognizable voice from the other side of the door.
"You two can just wait here, please." Molly murmured, and with that she opened the door and stepped inside, blocking the view from the inside. However Sherlock could see just over her head, he could see that it was some sort of drawing room, with desks set up into something of a classroom design, globes and bookshelves littering the walls, a large open window billowing white curtains with the softest of breezes. Three people sat inside, one was a fat old man with flaming red hair that Sherlock had never seen before, presumably the tutor, while a young woman who must be John's sister sat beside the boy himself. He looked paler than before, about the same shade as he had been when Sherlock had first found him lying still in his death bed, and yet there was a certain life to him that certainly couldn't be ignored. He was holding an eagle feathered quill in his hands, bent over a piece of parchment while his tutor was flipping carelessly through pages of a book that sat before him. Harry was quiet, and her quill seemed to be absent.
"Master Watson sir, some gentlemen here to see you." Moly announced with a smile.
"Oh can't this wait until after their exam? It's integrals, a very vital part of everyone young person's calculus curriculum." The tutor defended, and yet as soon as Molly's sentence had ended John sprang to his feet.
"Who?" he wondered.
"A um...a mister..." Molly looked behind her, faltering in her words as she wondered whether or not she should announce Sherlock's name. "Mr. Greg Lestrade and...guest." She finished finally.
"Guest." John muttered, his voice so soft and yet it was almost as if his words were aimed directly at Sherlock's ear, for he heard every syllable clearly...
"Mr. Watson you must finish your exam!" the tutor called, and yet it was very obviously too late, for John had already appeared at the door.
"I will finish it later; I have business to attend to." John snapped, his eyes finally finding Sherlock's as he pushed Molly out of the way, obviously not noticing anyone but Sherlock, not caring...
"Mr. Watson!" the tutor called, and yet Greg had already aided in throwing the door shut, giving them privacy just in time for John to pull Sherlock's head down to his own, kissing him shamelessly, even in the presence of these witnesses...
"Woah!" Greg exclaimed, however Molly just gasped and looked politely away while Greg watched, as if wondering how two boys kissing each other even went about. John pulled away breathlessly, reluctantly, and it was all Sherlock could do but blink in surprise.
"What was that for?" Sherlock asked suddenly, feeling as though he had done nothing to deserve such a kiss.
"For everything, God Sherlock, for everything!" John insisted breathlessly.
"I killed you." Sherlock reminded him blankly.
"You saved me." John pointed out. Sherlock sighed heavily, nodding because he obviously couldn't argue about that one. "It's been five days, Sherlock I didn't keep my promise."
"I don't care John, you're here now, that's really all that..." his sentence was cut off when John kissed him again, this time a bit more agressivley, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's neck in something of a choke hold, kissing him like no one was watching, all while Greg whistled.
"Alright you two, break it up here, this is way too much public affection." Greg insisted with a snap, brave enough now to pull John from the shoulder, easing him off of Sherlock and detangling his arms from his neck. Sherlock just stumbled back, blushing furiously, and yet now that he had the taste of John's lips back on his own he felt like it wasn't enough, not yet.
"I think we should um...escort them? Somewhere more private?" Molly suggested in the smallest of voices.
"Oh stop it, stop it I know the way." John snapped, taking Sherlock by the hand and dragging him off down the hallway.
"Thanks for helping!" Sherlock called back, to which Molly and Greg just nodded, looking quite astonished as they stood silently, awkwardly.
"What are you doing, what about, well you know?" Sherlock whispered, although he certainly wasn't complaining, he definitely wasn't.
"I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I was doing, Sherlock I was so blind, so ignorant, to think that I thought I could spend my second life without you! I should've known that a life's worth of sinning with you is worth eternity spent suffering...Hell is nothing if I have to be on earth alone." John breathed, leading Sherlock down the more familiar hallway, the one leading to his bedroom.
"Thank God, John I thought you had left me." Sherlock admitted.
"Don't remind me, oh don't remind me." John begged, finally pulling open the door and pushing Sherlock rather agressivley into the room. He shut the door behind him and finally pulled Sherlock into his arms, pressing their lips together before Sherlock could ask any more questions. But of course he had questions, he had so many questions, and yet he really didn't have time to ask them. He didn't have time to ask what had changed, he didn't have time to ask what the afterlife was like for them, he didn't want to know how much they were damning themselves right now. He didn't even have the breath to comment on the large purple and blue scar that stretched around the length of John's waist, just visible enough when he pulled off his shirt, the remnants of the life that Sherlock had taken from him. And yet his breath now was evidence of the life that Sherlock gave him, the very fact that he was here, that they were able to be together, that was all his doing. And it was worth it, God it was worth it... Whatever happened was short lived, it was now and then it was over, and just as Sherlock was starting to realize that he was in the midst of a whirlwind it suddenly subsided, and it was all he could do but lay on the disrupted bedsheets, it was all he could do but try to gasp for his breath and feel for the boy who lay beside him, laying lengthwise across the pillows and clutched at the headboard, his fingernails digging into the wood while a smile was evident on his face...his breaths came in the form of laughter.
"I think John, that we just descended into another level." Sherlock muttered with a little laugh, looking over to where John lay and grinning at him.
"Oh what does it matter anymore Sherlock?" John sighed. Sherlock nodded, suddenly remembering all that he was going to ask, he could still see the scar out of the corner of his eye, the wound that he had inflicted.
"I thought you were dead...John." Sherlock whispered, staring up at the ceiling for he couldn't bear to look John in the eyes at this very moment.
"So did everyone else. I suppose they underestimated you then." John said with a smile.
"I was going to leave you, I didn't know... It was Greg's idea. I was too distraught to think straight, I killed you John, I was...I was covered in your blood..." Sherlock breathed, beginning to tremble as he remembered the very boy who lay next to him, sprawled and twitching on the table before him, spewing blood out of the very lips that had been so quick to kiss him. Could it really be the same boy, the same boy who was now full of life, the one that had died before his eyes?
"You never think straight." John teased, however Sherlock couldn't bring himself to smile. In fact all the tears that he didn't shed then were now appearing again, all the tears that never fell were now pushing against his eyelids...
"How can you laugh at that, how can you kiss me when I..."
"Because I love you Sherlock, simple as that. Love is more powerful than anything." John insisted with a shrug.
"Not more powerful than death. It's a human's natural state...death. That's why it's so easy to slip through the veil, Death is calling us one by one, reminding us that life is so short lived, and taken for granted." Sherlock whispered. John was quiet for a moment, trying to think of something to respond with.
"And love is what drives it off, I imagine, for no one is more alive than when tangled in someone else's arms." John assured.
"That's poetic." Sherlock decided with a little chuckle. For a moment they were quiet.
"It was horrible down there, Sherlock. That's why when I woke up I couldn't believe it, I couldn't think of anything other than never going back... And now I'm here, I'm going through my life, and I realize that you're missing. It was in some ways worse." John admitted in a breath.
"I felt the same." Sherlock agreed quietly.
"It was cold...and I could hear screaming. I was alone, on a tundra with frozen sand, no one for miles and yet the screams were so close, almost as if they were coming from below me. As if I was destined to sink, and to join them." John whispered.
"Was it much like the inferno?" Sherlock wondered, looking over at him carefully and seeing the horrorstricken expression on John's face, terrified, remembering things that were what nightmares were constructed of.
"What, Dante's? I suppose so, but it was more real you know? More real than literature." John whispered.
"I don't like to think of that." Sherlock admitted quietly.
"No, me neither." John agreed, and a collective shiver ran down their spines.
"I've given up magic, I don't want to...well I thought that maybe it would help my case. If I give up magic then maybe we could at least suffer together." Sherlock teased.
"You gave it up? But that's your job Sherlock, your career?" John pointed out, looking over once more with an expression of sorrow.
"Well yes, but I'll find another. Besides, after my last trick went so horribly wrong..." Sherlock whispered, rolling over onto his side so that he could see John once more, so that he could very timidly run his fingertips over the lumpy scar, the remnants of the two halves put so haphazardly back together.
"Sherlock...do you know how alive I am?" John wondered nervously, reaching over and pushing the bangs from Sherlock's forehead ever so softly.
"What a curious question to ask." Sherlock mumbled, and yet that very question had been on Sherlock's mind as well.
"I don't feel whole, I don't think...well I imagine my heart is beating. And yet there's something wrong, I know there is." John admitted quietly.
"You haven't got much life in you John, but I think you're fully functioning. It's Merlin's soul, inside of you. In fact I was kind of worried that when you woke up you'd be chirping." Sherlock giggled, to which John just laughed, rolling his eyes before returning to seriousness.
"I'm not chirping. And yet I'm wondering. I can't imagine that whatever this is it's very legal." John mumbled.
"Legal how?" Sherlock wondered curiously.
"I mean I was dead, I was supposed to be dead, you must have used dark magic Sherlock, darker magic than I'm worth." John pointed out grimly.
"You're worth anything John, anything at all." Sherlock breathed in assurance, smiling as John's fingers brushed up against his chin lovingly.
"As are you. Hell is worth you." John agreed with a soft breath. Suddenly there was a knock on the door, a horrible, disrupting knock, and both of their smiles immediately faded.
"Master Watson sir, your tutor is getting very impatient. In fact he's warned if I don't get you now, he'll get you himself." Molly warned, to which John just groaned, evidently not liking the idea of his tutor finding him here, in this state, with Sherlock Holmes.
"I guess that's it then." Sherlock mumbled, getting to his feet and quietly pulling on his clothes, trying to make it seem as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened while they were behind these doors.
"For now." John agreed with a soft smile, buttoning up his shirt and pressing a quick kiss to Sherlock's lips once more before starting for the door with a skip in his step, looking so alive that Sherlock almost forgot that the last time they had both been in this room together only one of them was alive.