AN: I saw a prompt on tumblr the other day jokingly stating that Sherlock is probably bringing the Hound from Baskerville back and that's all John has left of Sherlock after his potential death. I didn't exactly go along those lines, but I'm so anxious about this new episode, I don't even care.
General disclaimer: nothing is mine.
The darkness eats the flat alive. It starts with the light bulbs. It's been ages since he's flipped any of the switches. The first week after—the first week after black suits and black dresses and black everything, his shins and toes collect an array of bruises because he refuses to turn on the lights.
Too bright, he tells Mrs. Hudson. Hurts his eyes. More privately, he thinks the pain is worth not seeing the hollow flat's contours. Besides, that pain is so very, very put in prospective. A gentle poke compared to the flaming, twisting shards of something-everything-nothing twisting in his chest.
It starts with the lights and ends with the curtains. He orders thick wool things that are a meter too long, spilling onto the floor. They blot out stars and London lights and anything resembling the sun so thickly he can barely make out the ground right before his feet.
After a while he learns his flat inside out, shadows and all, and he rarely leaves his chair. Sleeps in the thing, stares into the bleak-empty-hollow nothing in that chair. Remembers things and thoughts and words that will never be again, pictures a world so full of color and vibrancy.
When he does move about the place—food is a necessity, he's reminded ten days into his silence—Gladstone shadows his every movement. John can hear him sniffing behind his heels, like the canine, a once vicious and violent creature, is desperate for John's simple presence.
What's worse is when the dog keens low in its throat, always by the door, occasionally nails clicking at the wooden flooring. Pawing and gently desperate, like Gladstone understands that the heart of their little world has long since been burned from their hollow home but still longs for what will never come home.
But John knows that the outside world is much too bright for his eyes now, so he wraps himself in wool curtains when the cold rattles his bones and listens as the seconds churn by and lets his memories sing him to sleep.