I WILL TRY (TO FIX YOU)
'Tears stream down your face … When you lose something you cannot replace …' - Coldplay (Fix You)
John's hands were shaking as he turned the screws.
His eyes were blurry. He wiped the tears away in frustration. He needed to focus. Push down this feeling. This despair.
His hands were furiously working to put the pieces back together.
To put all the pieces in their right place …
Did he even have all the pieces?
He couldn't say for sure …
He had collected everything he could pick up and find from the pavement outside of Bart's. Searching diligently before the crowd had even begun to form. His heart had shattered as he watched Sherlock dive from the roof. A moment where it seemed like he might float and then, John closed his eyes.
He had raced to the spot. Fighting with the adrenaline surging through his veins to push everyone back, to collect everything shattered. Hoping that nothing would get kicked away, or swiped for spare parts by a petty harvester. Panic. Primal. Fear … Praying to all of the gods that he hadn't missed a screw! Or lost everything to a shattered hard drive … he couldn't even think about that yet! One of the homeless network had handed him a piece. And then another.
By the time he had made it home to 221b he was a wreck. Two more had shown up to bear him what they swore was the last part of the puzzle!
If only it was all here …
If only it was all still workable … ?
When pieced lovingly back into its right orientation …
But the thing he was dreading most … was the possibility that Moriarty had done something to wipe out the circuitry? A complete Electromagnetic Pulse to clear the system of its magnificent programming and memory … just before Sherlock had … ?
He couldn’t think about that possibility. He had to hope!
His mind’s eye pictured the way Sherlock had fallen … ? Jumped? Jumped. Yes, he had jumped. It had not been a blast that knocked him off the roof. It had not been a terrified running away from the inevitable … no. He would still be in there …
The form before him was slowly taking shape. Beginning to look once again … like the beautiful genius he had come to know and love … over the past two years spent together.
John was a modified human as well. Many clockwork parts had been used to repair his destroyed shoulder. And his gammy leg. But Sherlock …
Sherlock had uploaded the whole of himself into an artificial body two years ago …
His mind yet young … even when his body - a remnant of ages past - had failed him. So he had built a new form … and kept himself alive inside of it.
And that was how John had met him.
(continued under the cut)