A Blossoming of Color - A Johnlock Teenlock AU

Chapter Seven: Gone

Break ends, school starts again. Everyone is acting like they usually do, and it's so strange. For John to have everything changed, to have nobody beside him, an empty feeling constantly within him, but everyone is the same...

Sure, you could say that he had done it many times pre- Sherlock, but that was barely surviving. It wasn't living.

Sherlock made him live. He knew they had so many more years of life left, but he knew that he was the one. The one that everyone searched for, the one that everyone loved hearing stories about. And they could be high school sweethearts. Well, could have.

Mr. Freeman doesn't say anything about his absence, so John closes his eyes the entire period. John can hear their snickers, but it doesn't matter anymore, because he's not here to hear them. Selfishly, he also doesn't want to taste anything. He'll die if he tastes one more home cooked, stupidly comforting meal.

At lunch, he leaves his food out instead of trying to force feeding it to him. John wonders if he had just been sick the days he hadn't been to visit him. That would be a silly ending to so much trauma, though he somehow knew that it wasn't so.

Their murmurs haunt him as he walks home. Where the sidewalk was once a place for somewhat pleasant recollecting, it is now a place of deep, dark thoughts that he doesn't want.

Everyone at home avoids him, not wanting to trip and stumble into John's pool of darkness.

When a taste floats into his mind, he dismisses it with a flutter of eyelids. He doesn't need any more reminders on how irregular he is now. He's already got it.

Before bed, he looks out onto the porch and sees a discarded phone book, torn from rain and muddied. John pulls it inside, and doesn't feel the drops of water and mud that land on his clothes.

He flips to the H directory. Eyes blankly scan the pages, turn the page... Holmer, Holmers, Holmgren, Holmlund, Holmon...

A variety of flavors, but no trace of his lost heart.

The next day, after a strangely comforting night of dreams sprinkled with glimpses, but never interaction, John heads to the school office to ask about his missing heart.

The secretary glances up at him as he walks in. He's twisting his hands around nervously. If he's not here... it defines everything. It breaks everything.

"Excuse me... but could you search for... Holmes? Sherlock Holmes. If he's in this school."

She nods, clicking, typing on her computer, and then shakes her head no. How could she be.. saying no?

John drifts through the day until he gets home. He realizes that he had never been to Sherlock's house. If Sherlock even had a house. What if he had only... imagined Sherlock?

It would make sense, as Sherlock was perfect. Him with his perfect curls, always tousled carefully in the wind, his all angled face, soft skin. Him laying on John's bench, sitting like he owned the world. He owned John's world.

Homework abandoned, John spends the rest of the day curled up in his bed, dreaming up fantasies for him and a boy.

Actually, it had never occurred to John that he was dating a boy. Not a girl, never a girl. Maybe he was gay?

Probably not, as Sherlock was fantasy. He was fantasy, had to be fantasy.

Of course, those lips... only he could have dreamed them up. And those eyes...

A horrible night of sleep accomplished, he steps out of his house to see a man leaning on an umbrella standing in front of a dark car. The same man as the one Sherlock had shown Jim... except he hadn't. Because he wasn't real. But how did John recognize him?

When John reaches the man, he raises an eyebrow. "John Watson?" he says.

John nods mutely while jam springs up from the depths of his cheeks.

"I am Mycroft Holmes."

Dark, dark cacao chocolate cake is slid between his lips and down his throat.

He swallows down the flavor, though it's already traveled down his throat and is resting in his stomach, and he can feel a faint phantom weight.

"You may recognize me as Sherlock's brother."

John nods again, remains of cake stuck in his throat. So Sherlock is real.

Mycroft opens the door, a clear invitation written all over the fresh leather cleanly layering the surface of the car.

"H- how do I know if you're lying? Or not?" John splutters out, throat not ready to speak.

"Oh, trust me."

John moves towards the car and slides into the innermost seat, farthest away from Mycroft.

"I know about your relationship with my brother." Mycroft slides into the car, the door swinging closed behind him.

John avoids Mycroft's eyes, though he can feel them. "Have you sent him away?" he asks, voice breaking at the end. Damn it.

"Sherlock is... unstable. He would be better off by himself."

A burst of anger and burnt toast jumps up his throat. He can feel the oncoming of angry tears pushing at his eyelids, chlorine sprinkled on the toast. "You... you can't do that. Sherlock s- shouldn't be controlled by you," he sneers, though he tries so hard to keep his voice level.

Mycroft sighs, hands tightening on the wooden handle of his umbrella. "Sherlock doesn't know what's best for him. And you, John Watson, think you do?"

"I lo..." John doesn't want to say it. Not in the presence of someone he currently hates, someone he wants to hurt because he took Sherlock away from him. He closes his eyes to rid of the jam lumped in his mouth.

"Think about it, John. I've known him for sixteen years. You've known him for three months."

Mycroft draws in a breath, looking straight forward. The door next to John clicks open, and Mycroft's driver extends a hand. John grabs his bag and rushes into school. He doesn't want anything to do with Mycroft.

Not if he's the one who took his only treasure, the only thing he loved away.