John was sitting in his chair. He looked troubled, but Sherlock was too busy with his own worries to figure out why the doctor seemed down. Too soon, Sherlock thought. Far too soon.
A cloud rolled over the sun. The natural light in the room dulled, casting a dreary feeling over the two men. It was dull. It was boring. But for once, Sherlock did not care.
It was warm in the room, hot even, and as Sherlock paced back and forth, lost in thought and anxious, his hair clung stickily to his forehead. His coat snapped behind him with each about-face, still on his shoulders since the cooler morning. He ran a hand through his damp hair harshly, gritting his teeth in a frustrated snarl.
He say down rather abruptly, on the floor in the middle of the living room.
"What are you doing, Sherlock?" John asked, sounding worn, but not confused, as though he was only asking to humor Sherlock. And perhaps he was.
Sherlock swung his head around to look at John, meeting his eyes and looking once more to the floor.
"This is just something that I needed to do," he answered, and when he said it, he knew it was true. He felt somehow better, and also worse, but more at ease.
Sherlock rolled onto his side, long limbs sprawled in all directions. John sighed, a strange mix of sadness and relief.
Sherlock continued to think lazily. He knew he had to do something, but he didn't know what, and at the moment, he wasn't trying as hard as he knew he should be. His head rested on his bent arm, staring a single ant crawling along mightily, near his shoed right foot. He felt like the ant. Alone, and forced to be brave for the sake of his colony. A little colony he had, but it was good.
The ant crawled her way up his shoe, and he sat upright. John stood up and walked out of the room. Sherlock watched the ant. She looked around, twitching her antennas as if in search of something. She climbed higher, slipping on the polish. She traveled over his laces, and still Sherlock watched, aware that he was wasting time. But what could he do? Other than just be still and accept what must happen.
The ant was now almost at the hem of his trouser leg. He reached down, shifting to a cross legged position, and flicked the ant. She landed a few inches away, angry and confused, rushing back to conquer her shoe mountain. Sherlock let her get close to his shoe, and when she was almost upon it, he moved his foot, bringing his knees to his chin. The ant tried again, frustrated and desperate, and this time he let her touch it, enough to give her hope, to little for her to grab hold. He lifted his foot up and stepped on the ant.
Yes. Sherlock felt like the ant. Exactly like the ant.
He rolled onto his stomach, tracing circles in the thin layer of floor dust.
John walked back in. He stopped. He stood for a moment, before taking a seat in Sherlock's chair.
"Still on the floor?" John asked, slightly curious.
Sherlock hummed. Indeed. He was still on the floor. It was cooler down there, he noticed, although the air was thicker, and dusty.
"Any particular reason?" John pressed.
"No," Sherlock lied, rolling onto his back. He watched John with the corner of his eye.
"Alright then," John said, giving up.
Sherlock stared at the ceiling, watching bits of dust float around. Rain, beginning to fall, rattled on the window, and Sherlock felt like the rain. Little drops slid down the glass, slowly, and then quickly, lost forever in a puddle or sucked up into a thirsty blade of grass.
Sherlock stood up in one swift movement, sending up a shower of dust. John coughed and glared at Sherlock, and Sherlock frowned. He hated dirt. And he was now covered in it. He brushed as much as he could off of his coat, filling the air with more tiny particles.
Sherlock didn't know what to do. But he knew what he was going to do right now.
He walked to the bathroom, shedding his now-dirty clothes as he went.
He stood in front of the mirror, looking at himself. His eyes caught sight of something, and he looked down at a black eyeliner pencil. He remembered using it for a case, once, but right now he didn't need it.
Sherlock picked it up, running his thumb over the smooth black tip. A line formed, thick and sharp over his pale skin. He studied it, rubbing his forefinger against the dark mark, smearing it. His fingers turned a smokey grey, and he dragged them over the side of his face. A smudgey black shape formed, and an idea popped into Sherlock's strange mind.
He took the pencil, breaking of the tip and rubbing it between his hands. He spat in his hands, to make it thinner, and covered his hands in the stuff.
He pressed his thumb onto the mirror, dragging and twisting it, and began writing. He rotated between fingers, rubbing his hands together when needed. The writing was grimy and slick, but it was legible, and obviously Sherlock's scrawl, and he knew John would see it eventually. He hoped he would understand.
-.-.-.-.-
John's face was sticky and moist and unpleasant. He did not care. His vision blurred. His eyes stung of salt. He did not care. His knees where raw and bleeding his hands were scrapped. He did not care. He didn't care about anything.
John angrily wiped a tear away with the back of his hand. He was angry at the tear for being there. He was angry at himself. Not for crying, though. He was angry at the world, and he was angry at everyone and everything. But more than anything, he was hurt.
Just hours ago he had been talking to Sherlock, his best friend. He had made a joke about the ant that he had seen crawling around in the living room, saying that Mrs Hudson would go mad if there was an infestation. Sherlock had even cracked a smile, and everything had been... right.
But now it was was wrong. All wrong. Now he was alone. Now it was him, and only him, against the world. And he would never see his best friend again. Ever. No more late nights of violin music. No more early morning case-solving. No more experiments and bloody heads in the refrigerator, no more emergency milk shopping trips. No more boredom fits or insults to John's intellect. No more danger. No more. Not any longer.
It was funny, really fucking funny, the things you miss most about people. The things you wish they never did are often the things you learn to love in a person. But all too soon, the clock will strike midnight (because happiness can never last for some) and your world will come crashing down as the thing you care about is ripped from your heart and thrown on the pavement of agony and regret, guilt and not enough time. There's never enough time, yet now, at this moment, John thought his utter misery would never end, that time would stretch to infinity and consume him until all he knew was the throbbing of his broken heart which still beats within his chest, until he was surrounded with the pain that flowed through his blood like sharpe knives, until he drowned in the regrets and the what-ifs that haunted his nightmares in the day and his dreams in the night, until he was filled to the brim and over with self-loathing and an empty future. Until he was so far gone, he wouldn't recognize his own face in the mirror, until all he would see when he gazed into the bleak eyes of his reflection was the hopelessness of loss and the life that should have been.
Not his own life. The life of a great man, no hero to the world, but a hero to John. To the truest friend anyone could have, to the one man John could trust with his own life. To the most irritating man John had ever known, and to the man that had grown to be John's very best friend. To the one and only Sherlock Holmes.
And so he wept. He wept bitterly. Not for the loss of the worlds greatest hero but for the loss of the hero he needed. And he allowed himself that much. He allowed himself to cry, because although Sherlock viewed sentiment as a weakness, John saw it as the greatest form of strength.
John was back at the flat. He hesitated. If he went inside, he would only be reminded of what he had lost. He trembled at the thought, biting his lip because it was something he could feel when all else had faded to an aching numbness. He closed his eyes. He had to do this. He would be strong. He lifted his hand to the doorknob.
He couldn't. He wanted to, but he couldn't. He did it anyway. He looked at all the things scattered around the room. He had always wanted it to be neat and tidy, but now he couldn't bear it if it was not a royal mess. He was only just barely holding himself together now.
The room was still dusty, although there was a big, Sherlock-sized spot of clean floor, right by the ant.
The ant, John thought bitterly. Was dead. The ant that had as much right to life as him, or Sherlock, was dead and John broke. He broke into a million tiny pieces, so small they no longer hurt. He threw himself on the floor, sobbing for himself, for Sherlock, and for the ant. He stood up and punched the damn smiley face on the wall. Why did the ant have to be dead?
John stopped. He wasn't okay. He knew he wasn't okay, and that was alright. But he couldn't carry on like this. He would grieve, he would certainly grieve, but as he felt his hand bleed, he knew he had to calm down for this one moment.
He went to the bathroom. He needed cold water on his face.
He turned the faucet on all the way, freezing water gushing out like the bitterness of John's freezing heart. He cupped some in his hands, feeling them go pleasantly numb.
He ducked his face in, without hesitating, and waited as long as he could stand. He let the water drip from his face, tap still running, and looked up to meet the dead eyes of the man who had once been himself but was now a stranger in the mirror that was wearing his clothes.
He didn't expect to find thick black letters, Sherlock's letters, written on the mirror. He clenched his teeth and growled ferally as he read them.
I am not afraid to keep on living.
What the fuck did that even mean? How could Sherlock do this to him? He was going through hell and this is what he gets. Was Sherlock just trying to rub salt in the wound? Well it wasn't fucking funny, not this time. Not this time.
John leaned his head against the wall, breathing heavily. He was a mess. He was utterly lost and he had no one to tell him exactly what was on his mind. He had never felt so useless. He shook with tears and voiceless cries, wrapping his arms around him self in some semblance of comfort. He was loosing his damn mind from all of this, and he felt dizzy and sick.
He fell asleep, there in the bathroom, on the cold floor, and he had never slept so well.
When he woke, his eyes were grainy, like they were filled with sand, and his head hurt. He looked at the ceiling, wondering why he was on the floor. Then the reality hit him like a lightning bolt, and he looked again to the writing on the mirror.
But he read it differently this time.
Sherlock never did anything without a reason, and if this was some sick joke, then surely Sherlock would stick around long enough to laugh at it. Sherlock was trying to tell him something.
John's first thought was that Sherlock was still alive, and this was his way of saying I'm still around, just not here, not yet. But John pushed that away. He had seen Sherlock's body. He was dead, and nothing could change that.
John stared at the words and he felt better. This was Sherlock telling John to stay strong, to keep on, even if Sherlock could not. It was a message of hope, it have John a future. Sherlock wanted him to move on with his life, and not be stuck in a hole of his own misery. Sherlock wanted John to be happy.
And John smiled.