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Sherlock didn't sleep well since Constantinople. This was a fact James knew. He was also pretty sure he knew what caused it. A single shot had hit its goal. In the moment it had been a matter of life and death, a decision made in the fraction of a second. James was ridiculously grateful Sherlock had made that decision and he couldn't deny it bothered him that now he seemed to regret it so.
Taking a life was, allegedly, a big deal. The more days passed since James had killed that man in Paris, the more he stopped believing this to be true. The alternative was, it was simply true for everyone but him. Xiao Wei's words had, instead of reassuring him, just put him at unease. She was so good at killing, he couldn't understand how she did not enjoy it. He never saw her cry about it, never saw her doubt herself. But then, the men she had killed had deserved it, there was no doubt about it in James' mind. And still she disliked doing it. It seemed to be human nature, to want to keep other humans alive. James did not like feeling like there was something missing from him. It was another fact he should have probably known. He had spent his whole life being less than others. When he had first laid eyes on Sherlock, it had started to bother him. There was finally someone who rose up high enough to match James, and just like that seemed to overtake him. As if it was nothing, not even on purpose. James might have been the sun and Sherlock the moon, but this also meant people only shielded their eyes from one of them.
They had both shot a man and the man had died, but only one of them was losing sleep over it. James was, primarily, losing sleep over Sherlock. It was hard to get good rest when only a few feet apart someone was tossing and turning, waking up with startled screams, mumbling desperately in their sleep when they managed to sleep at all. This had become a nightly occurrence. Sometimes he was sure Sherlock didn't even have to be asleep to be plagued by the bad dreams. He had often suspected there to be something in the empty spaces that seemed to catch the young man's vision every now and again. The occasions seemed to be growing more frequent, too. The lack of sleep surely wasn't helping. Even then, they didn't really talk when Sherlock was awake. They usually just lay there. Both staring at the ceiling or the wall or simply the darkness. When the moon wasn't full and bright in the sky, it was as good as pitch black anywhere in the Holmes estate. For James, the darkness was all there was. For Sherlock, there was something more hiding in it, he was certain.
"How do you do it?" Sherlock asked, his voice quiet. If there had been any other noise in the air between them, James might have not heard him at all. But it was completely silent, so he did.
"Do what?" he replied, even though he knew exactly what Sherlock meant. It was his duty to coax the words from him, to not allow him to keep them quiet, hidden, where they could develop a life of their own. It was always better to name things as they were, if now they started naming things at all.
"Sleep at night with all those... with all the dreams."
"The nightmares," he corrected. Sherlock hummed in quiet agreement. He gave in quite easily, knowing James was right in calling them what they were. No one was losing sleep over nice dreams.
"I don't have any," James said truthfully. He heard the rustling of Sherlock's blanket as he turned to his side, most definitely peering at James through the darkness. He could imagine his face without problems, having familiarised himself with it quite well by now. He saw his grey eyes so clearly in his mind, curiosity and disbelief both visible in equal parts.
"What do you mean? That you don't sleep at all?"
"No," James replied. He was staring at the ceiling, unwilling to turn to Sherlock and look at him in return. He would be giving him truthful answers, which should count as more than enough. "I don't have nightmares. But I also don't have dreams, if that makes it better."
Sherlock didn't answer for a while. Just as James suspected exhaustion had forced him to sleep, he spoke.
"What do you mean?" His voice sounded inquisitive. It was an admirable trait the other man had. Despite everything, he was still endlessly curious. No matter who tried to make him stop, who tried to extinguish his flame, he would not let them. His brother in particular was always keeping an eye on him. Keeping the peace. Inventing a peace that didn't really exist in the first place.
"I mean just what I said. I don't dream."
"Just... blackness, then? Every night?"
James shrugged, even though he knew Sherlock couldn't see him.
"Would that be so hard to believe?"
"It would be actually, yes. I don't remember a night I haven't had at least one dream. They rarely make any sense, but still... they were always there. I wouldn't like it if they just stopped altogether."
James didn't remember what the last dream he had had been. It had most likely been something entirely trivial, not worth remembering and not worth grieving the lost memory either. He remembered a few dreams from his early life, but they, like Sherlock said, rarely made any sense. Neither then nor now. He had dreamed very often of the first time he had seen death. One year in spring, His father had spent all the money they had on a goat. Throughout the summer they had milked and fed it. In the autumn, James had often gone to it to pet its rough fur and to look into its big brown eyes, the pupils horizontal and full of awareness. This goat had known who James was. It had always come to him and laid its head in his lap, nibbling on the border of his dress and the tips of his little fingers. It had never been painful. James had loved that goat. In the winter, they hadn't had enough to feed the family, and even less so the goat. It had started to grow thin, just like James and his siblings. His father had wanted to keep her for the next year, maybe get a kid out of her, keep using her for milk. Sometimes James had thought his father had loved that goat too. But he had to kill her to feed his children, his wife and himself. James had watched him shoot her and he had cried bitterly, the gruesomeness of it too much for a little child to bear. His father had shooed him away, back into the house. He had taken the goat apart and did everything to make the meat last the winter. He had had a terrible expression on his face the whole day, his mouth a straight, thin line and his eyes so tightly squeezed shut James wondered how he could see anything at all. Later in the night, when James hadn't been able to sleep because the memory of the life being ripped from the scared animal had kept replaying in his mind, he had wandered their small house, he had seen his father sitting at their kitchen table, weeping into his hands.
James had learned something that day, and it wasn't just how to kill a goat. He learned that death was sometimes a necessity and that even a necessary death could be grieved. He thought about telling the story to Sherlock, but the obvious poverty clinging to every word of it made him decide against it. How was Sherlock meant to understand, when the only death he had known so far had been the death of his sister, who had not really been dead at all? The man he had killed in Constantinople would not have the fortune of rising from his grave. The finality of it was what bothered Sherlock, that much was clear.
"I never wanted for them to stop," James said. He hadn't had any say in it. It must have been his mother's death. She had taken everything to the grave with her. James tried to see her death as a necessity. If she hadn't died, James would have never been set free. He wondered what would have happened to him then. What kind of life he would have lived, if his family hadn't been taken one after the other. Succumbed to sickness, starvation, whiskey. Maybe he would have married, though he doubted his father could have paid the dowry. Maybe James would have simply worked himself to death on the farm, sowing and reaping barren fields until he dropped. Maybe James would have put a bullet in his brain before that happened. A death could also be a kind of release. And, in case of his father's death, who had drunk himself to unconsciousness after his wife had passed, a death could get rid of something that had stopped having any worth anyway.
James thought they were all the same. The goat, his mother, his father, his siblings, the version of himself that he had killed, the soldier in Paris, the man in Constantinople. Silas, tumbling over the edge of a cliff, a frightened son slipping through his fingers. Another necessity, another release, another wasted life. Suddenly, James realised something. The man Sherlock saw in his dreams, in the dark corners of his mind and of this room, had never been the man he had shot in the market square. It was Silas Holmes, risen from the dead. Just like the daughter he had made in his image. As a raised catholic, he could more than appreciate the allegory. But why Sherlock was so afraid of a second coming, as a boy raised by science and common sense, he didn't understand.
"You have no reason to feel guilty, you know?" James tried. Sherlock made a little sound.
"Yes, I do. I killed him."
He was more sure than ever they were talking about the same man.
"No, you didn't. You didn't want him to die."
"That hardly makes a difference when he still ends up dead in the end, don't you think?"
"I don't think," he replied. He barely managed to hide a little laugh. Sherlock needed to be handled with care, his fragility so easily exploited. If the wrong person got to him now, they could force him into a world of guilt he might never be able to escape. It was better if James took care of it, if he helped him out before he was gone too deep.
"I don't believe you," Sherlock said. This time, James laughed.
"You don't believe me? Believe what, exactly?"
"That you don't regret anything. That you don't feel bad about it. You killed someone. You can't just pretend you didn't."
"I'm not pretending I didn't," James disputed him immediately. "I'll be the first to admit I've done it. But the other parts are true. I'm not lying."
Sherlock was quiet for a long time again, thinking his words through, turning them around in his mind. James did the same, wondering if he had already gone too far. Xiao Wei had understood him, or at least been able to tolerate his feelings on the matter. She was a killer, even if she was an unhappy one. Sherlock was not.
"Then I just don't understand." He sounded terribly frustrated about this. He had been excited to uncover a lie, to make himself the detective again and to bring the truth to the light. But instead James had only given him a greater mystery. He almost felt bad for it.
"Do you want me to explain?" he asked. Sherlock shifted again in his bed. An image came to James of him perched on the edge of it, waiting desperately for answers to all of life's hardest questions.
"Yes."
"Then answer me this, Sherlock. What are you most afraid of in this world?"
It was a question he asked himself every time he looked at another person. What were they scared of, what were they willing to do to avoid confronting this fear? For Silas, it had been lack of control. For James own father, it had been himself. For Mycroft, it was his father. For Sherlock, it was death. He knew his answer before he had even said anything.
"I don't know, James."
"What was the first thing that came to mind? It's usually a pretty good indicator."
Sherlock kept the answer for another moment. His voice shook slightly as he spoke.
"Dying, I think." James smiled into the darkness. "When I had been shot, I thought I wouldn't make it. That scared me. To leave the whole... situation unsolved."
"It is a scary thought," James agreed. He was not afraid of dying in the slightest. "But death is much more than that."
He gave Sherlock a moment to perhaps figure it out himself, but when no answer came, he kept speaking. It was a shame he had to explain it without telling him about the goat. He himself had never understood more clearly than in that moment.
"Your father chose to die. He wanted to avoid the consequences of what he had done and leave you to deal with it. He trapped you with it and you let him."
It sounded more accusatory than he had meant it. He had met Silas Holmes and he had met his children. Escaping a prison built by a man both brilliant and cruel was not easy. For some of them it seemed impossible.
"He was still my father. I didn't want him to–"
"Say it," James demanded, hoping he wasn't pushing Sherlock too far. He could hear his teeth grinding, his breath growing more laboured.
"To die." It was so quiet, Sherlock's voice sounding like that of a child. If James could, he would pity him.
"Fathers die all the time," he said instead. "It's always been that way. They have to do it, so that sons can live."
"How did your father die?" Sherlock asked. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of hope they could share in something. James scoffed quietly.
"Miserable and alone."
"I'm sorry."
James shook his head.
"He had to."
Sherlock flinched so hard, James could hear the creaking of his bed. Now he would finally understand that James meant it. All of it. And, if all went well, he would even learn something from it.
"So that's it? I just accept it?"
"Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?" He said it in a joking manner, even though neither one of them felt much like laughing. Sherlock hummed, disagreeing.
"I don't know if I can."
"The world won't care if you can or not. It will expect you to do it."
"I don't think that is how the world works, James."
"And I don't think you know a lot about the world, Sherlock."
The silence grew longer, deeper, as Sherlock either took these words to heart or decided to discard them.
"I used to think I did. But maybe you're right."
"But I'll help you."
He just had to make himself indispensable. To make sure Sherlock wouldn't turn to anyone but him. He thought he had pretty good chances, even if Sherlock didn't answer him anymore. Eventually he heard his breathing deepen, long, undisturbed inhales and sighing exhales that betrayed the fact that Sherlock had fallen asleep. He seemed to not be plagued by nightmares, at least for now. Maybe James' help was enough. He didn't much care what would happen anymore tonight. It was only important that he had planted the seed in Sherlock's mind. He had shown him the way out. Soon enough he would come to him and ask him to take his hand, to guide him there because he couldn't do it alone. James would make sure Sherlock did not succumb to his guilt. He would make sure he didn't die of it. Sherlock's death was not a necessity, would not free anyone and would be a waste of something so terribly useful still. No, death did not belong to Sherlock Holmes. Not now, not yet. He had been right, it would have been a shame for him to die and leave the riddles of the world unsolved. Until he had solved them all, James would ensure he would live.