A/N : Hello! Thank you so much for reading my story! This is my first Fanfic so I hope you like it. Please R & R because without motivation I have a hard time writing… well, anything, really. Just so you know, because this is my first fic, I have no Beta. Any and all mistakes are products of my own stupidity. Also I'm Australian so I'm sorry if it doesn't sound British enough… Have fun!

Disclaimer : I do not own Sherlock or any of the characters, I just like playing with their lives. ; )

The Truth Beneath The Surface

Chapter 1 : The Problem

Two years. It was two years that day since he'd lost his best friend. Two years since John Watson became John Crazy. He stood at the foot of the grave, his eyes on the patch of green that shielded the great detective from the horrors that assailed the living. The last time he'd stood there, that site had been dirt, the grave fresh as the wound on his soul still was. A part of him lay in that ground, a part he'd lost when the world forgot the name that decorated its headstone. John's glazed eyes travelled over the lush grass, too rich with life for a cemetery, and came to rest on the engraved marker that signalled another candle snuffed from the world. He read the simple inscription:

Sherlock Holmes

1978 – 2011

Consulting Detective

John made sure that was all that was carved into the humble piece of granite. That was all Sherlock would want. Because those two simple words were all that was needed to describe the man. That was what he was and that is what he always will be. John needed people to remember him as the man who solved hundreds of Scotland Yard's most difficult cases singlehandedly even before they'd met. Not the man accused of stealing jewels, robbing banks and murder. Not the one everyone saw jump off a building to end his humiliation. The one that jumped off a building to save his friends and the people he called family. That was who Sherlock Holmes really was. That was who he'll be remembered as.

A long world-weary sigh escaped John's chapped lips, dry of dehydration. He ran his furry tongue over them to ease the sting, pulling his eyes from the grave to the glass bottle wrapped in brown paper he held weakly in his hand. John raised the bottle to his lips and took a long draught, spluttering slightly at its end. Whisky; it was harsh and bitter and burned its way down his throat but it got the job done faster than beer. After Sherlock had… John couldn't even bring himself to think of that day again. He'd fought too hard to keep the memory buried. The bottle was John's new best friend. It comforted him. Warmed him, helped him to forget the pain that racked his every dream and tortured his every sober moment. It was… better, he told himself. Without it, he would probably be in a room with padded walls by now.

He had his job in the clinic to feed his need, showing up to work only half sober and being as antisocial as he could manage without ruining any chance he had of keeping his job. He enjoyed working at the clinic. It was nice, quiet, calming. It kept him from following Sherlock. But he didn't even have that anymore. After one particularly bad morning, he came to work slightly more smashed than usually. He'd lost his temper at a lady who kept asking him to retest her for things he knew she didn't have and when the tests supported his diagnosis, she had insisted he was wrong and asked for a second opinion. Normally he would have just given her a referral to the bigger hospital a few kilometres away, but not that day. He screamed and called her names and even went so far as to throw a pair of scissors at her. That had been the last straw for Sarah.

Three months ago he lost his job. Two weeks ago he spent the last of his money. Yesterday he cried himself to sleep because, today, it is two years since Sherlock has been home.

John absently let his mind drift to Mrs Hudson. She truly was an amazing woman. Through all of John's problems, she never once complained. She just made them both a cup of tea and sat quietly while John either vented or brooded. He didn't understand. He'd missed three rent payments counting today and she still hadn't evicted him.

Why?

She could have a tenant that paid and didn't come barging through the door at four in the morning smelling of alcohol or, on more than one occasion, not come home at all. But still she kept him. He loved Mrs Hudson. She reminded him of the mother he once had. She had killed herself when John was twelve.

John took another mouthful of whisky, not choking this time, preferring to relish the burn.

Everything he'd ever loved had left him. His mother, his job, girlfriend after girlfriend… This thought brought him back to the reason he was here; the man in the ground without a daisy to his grave. John realised sadly that there were no flowers surrounding the headstone and, by the looks of it, hadn't been since the day of the funeral.

"You know something, Sherlock?" John slurred, his voice heavy with intoxication and exhaustion. "If you only taught me one thing, it was to look beyond the surface. You told me everything is never as it seems." He drank, almost two thirds through the bottle. "So that's what I did. I looked beyond the businesses and the happy kids and the police and you know what I saw?" John clumsily sat down, almost spilling the whisky. "I saw the truth. The world is rotten and I'm still living in it; in the filth and in the-the corruption but you!" He waved a finger accusingly at the grave. "You get to stay down there where it's safe! The filth doesn't touch you, Sherlock! But look at me! I'm covered in it! It's suffocating!" John's shoulders started to shake as unbidden tears streak down his cheeks. He knew he was just as rotten as everyone else. It burned like a fire in the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn't good enough. That was the problem. "I can't do it anymore…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of painkillers. "Sorry, Sherlock... I'm not as strong as you." John opened the bottle and upended a large portion of the tablets into his mouth, washing it down with whisky. He breathed in the fresh morning air but it tasted like blackened dirt. Everything he fought for with Sherlock, it meant nothing. No one cared whether two psychopaths that got off on playing detective ended up in the ground and, frankly, neither did John anymore.

The air in John's lungs felt stale. The vice around his chest grew tighter with every passing second. The world began to spin. John fell to the side, pills spilling over the grass and amber liquid drizzling from the neck of the fallen bottle. The colours, the lights and sounds, they all began to bleed into one.

But one sound broke through the volley of noises; a voice that he was so accustom to hearing but sounded so alien to him. It cried his name but John couldn't place its direction. His mind was so foggy, he couldn't string together a thought, couldn't connect the dots. He felt a warm hand on his flushed cheek, soft but calloused. Someone stepped into his field of vision but he couldn't make them out. So strange, they looked so familiar and yet… Black curls framed a blurry face. He heard them say his name again. A single word slipped John's lips as he drifted off into what he hoped would be a never ending rest; a word so small but said everything that needed to be said.

"Sherlock…"

A/N : I probably should have started with a oneshot, huh? But this idea wouldn't leave me alone so now you have to put up with it =P. Any criticism welcome but please try to be constructive. It makes my life easier. I'll upload the next chapter in around, oh, I don't know! Depending on feedback, it could be up before the end of the day or it could never go up at all. Hey, look! More incentive for you to write to me!

Please? I get lonely…

Oh, P.S. If anyone finds the Easter egg in this story, you win… hell, I don't think you'll want to give requests to a novice but, yeah, that. I need the practice! Look for that Easter egg!