Dead. Sherlock was dead. For weeks (or was it months? Maybe even years) the thought never properly sank in-there was always a glimmer of irrational hope in John's heart. But for some reason, today, it did. His best friend was never going to come back. Gone forever.
John had been in a pit of despair before he met Sherlock, feeling useless, like his country'd abandoned him once they'd chucked him out of the war. Then he met Sherlock, he'd had that magnificent evening of chasing cabs and fighting criminals and touching toe with the most brilliant man he'd ever met. He'd felt alive again, whole again.
But gravity stole that, stole Sherlock, stole everything he needed. John realized how purposeless he really was, now that Sherlock Holmes was just two words on a slab of dark stone. That's why he was here, at the cemetery, a small leather satchel in his hand.
"I'm sorry, Sherlock," he said to the gravestone. "I can't do this any more." He sat down and took out the syringe and loaded it with a cocktail both toxic and pleasant. He sat down, leaning against the stone. "Nice day to go, though," he said as he shut his eyes, ready for death, the needle sliding under his skin and the plunger depressing.
John took the breaths he knew would be his last, and shut his eyes for the final time. The last thing he heard in his mortal life was Sherlock's voice, begging, pleading even. "Too late," John Watson gurgled, the final bit of air leaving the soldier's lungs.
Sherlock had run over as soon as he'd realized what John was doing. Now he frantically grabbed John's lapels, imploring him not to do this, telling him to live, demanding to know why John did this. "Too late," John had said, the dying words like a knife to Sherlock's heart.
Sherlock hadn't considered this. John was strong. John could fight the sadness, the depression, the loneliness. John wouldn't give up. Sherlock's breaths shook as he realized he'd driven his friend-the one person who cared about him and whom he cared for-to suicide. He'd faked his death to prevent John's, not to cause it.
Panic/guilt/pain/anguish began to set in, but his eyes fell on the syringe still sticking out of John's arm. "Who cares if it's sterile?" he mused. "Not like I need to worry about infection." He sat down beside John. "I'm...I'm sorry." He took the poisonous liquid, that hateful brew, from John's little bag and decided it was time. He put his hand inside John's, a gesture he never would have dared make if this hadn't been his last moment, and pushed down on the plunger, filling himself with that fatal toxin.
The last words to go through the mind of Sherlock Holmes as he lay on his own grave, hand-in-hand with John Watson, a needle in his arm and poison in his veins, were both apt and tragic.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.