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A/N: Prompt: Bleeding. Spoilers for "The Reichenbach Fall."

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING!

DARK THEMES: Severe depression and implications of cutting and attempted suicide.


Blood. There was so much blood everywhere, spreading over the cold pavement, reaching out to him. And then there were the dead eyes, staring out at nothing, completely devoid of any spark of their former genius. Empty.

John gasped awake, his hands trembling slightly as he reached up to wipe the remnants of tears from his face. He had the same dream every night. The same nightmare of Sherlock Holmes falling to his death.

To the outside world, John Watson was fine and he was perfectly content to let everyone feel that way. It was almost laughably easy to fool them, to play the part of the friend who had recovered from his grief. It had been almost three years. There was no reason they shouldn't believe the act.

But it was simply that. An act. John Watson was not fine, he was not fine at all. The doctor in him recognized that, but he tried not to think about it much. He refused to give himself a diagnosis and ignored the whispers that floated through his mind.

Severe depression. Disassociation. Potentially suicidal.

What did it matter if he felt completely and utterly numb as if his insides were made of ice? Why should anyone care if he needed to feel a blade against his skin and watch red rivulets run down pale flesh to make it through the day?

The only person who had caught a glimpse of the real John Watson was Mrs. Hudson, and even that was a mistake. That day…he hadn't meant to cut so deep. Or had he? Either way, it was purely happenstance that Mrs. Hudson had wandered into the flat and found him unconscious. She kept a closer eye on him after that, but he strengthened his act around her and slowly she backed off.

Sherlock would have seen right through it. He always saw everything.

But Sherlock was gone, the only reminders of him a cold slab of marble and holes in the wall of the flat that he refused to plaster over.

John thought sometimes about Moriarty's threat to "burn the heart" out of Sherlock. He wondered if burning would be any better than freezing.

He tested the theory sometimes when he was feeling particularly curious. He would hold his hand to a candle and watch the flame flicker over his skin. Yet, the burning was never enough to melt the ice.

He had stopped going to therapy a while back. He couldn't see the point in being told what he needed to do to make things better. There was only one person who could make him feel again, and he was dead.

"I was so alone, and I owe you so much."

And now he was alone again as everything came full circle. Doctor John Watson, former captain in the British Army, left alone with his memories and his dreams of falling and deep red blood. Always and forever, numb.


A/N: Review?