John sat straight up in his bed, a thin sheen of sweat covered his skin. John squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. John bit his lip to quiet the screams that were dying in his throat. He looked over at the time, it was barley 2am. It was always the same nightmare. It had plagued him every night for the last six months. It always started with him looking up at Sherlock on the roof at Bart's, and it always ended with him jolting awake with his friends name dying in his throat. The tears began to flow down John's cheeks. He bit his lip so hard it drew blood in a fruitless attempt to silence the chocked sobs coming from his mouth. John got up shakily and made his way to his bedroom door grabbing his dressing gown on his way out. As he made his way to the kitchen his eyes fell upon Sherlock's violin, that lay on window sill exactly where Sherlock had left it. Suddenly the fragile glue that had been barely holding John together broke. All the sadness, and the painful ache in Johns chest exploded. It was all too much, he couldn't hold on any longer. A part of him always believed that Sherlock was still alive. But that small whispering hope was now drowned out by the screaming emptiness and truth that now seemed as obvious as the violin on the couch. Sherlock was gone, and he wasn't coming back. John grabbed the nearest writing utensil, and ripped two pages out of his medical notebook. Wiping the tears from his face he sat down and began to write.
John folded one slip of paper and addressed it with a name. The other piece of paper he left unfolded and placed the two pieces of paper side by side. John walked into the bathroom and fumbled with the faucets on the bath, turning the water on as hot as he could stand. While the bath filled up, John went back to the kitchen and opened the knife drawer. John's hand hovered over each of the handles before selecting the sharpest and thickest of them all. He gripped the handle and limped back to the bathroom, tears beginning to spill I over and his vision blurred. John shut the bathroom door, feeling the steamy heat from the bath as it filled the small space. John stripped off his clothes folding them and placing them neatly in a pile on the floor next to the toilet. He placed the kitchen knife on a soap holder in the bathtub, and lowered himself into the water. He leaned his head back against the tile and took a shaky breath. He glanced over at the knife that was laying within arm's reach. Moisture began gathering on John's face and soon he couldn't tell if his face was wet because of the steam or because of his tears. He had thought about doing this once before, but that was pre-Sherlock. The day before they met. John had felt so useless and empty after being sent home from the war. But Sherlock had saved him from himself, kept him going. As much as he had complained about it when it was happening, he missed it, the excitement, the running around London, shooting the wall early in the morning, the experiments in the fridge. It kept him alive, gave him a reason to live. This time, though, Sherlock wasn't there to save him, no one could. John grabbed the knife with a now steady hand, he turned it over a couple times in his hands. John looked at his reflection in the blade, nodded at himself once, then proceeded. He positioned the tip at the blade at the top of his wrist, and with a deep breath dug the knife in and dragged it all the way to his elbow. He gasped in pain, and stifled a scream as this arm turned bright red as the blood dripped out. Taking the knife in his now bleeding arm he duplicated the action on the other arm digging in even harder. John grunted in pain, and he threw the knife out of the tub onto the bathroom floor. Droplets of booed scattered where it landed and the originally white bathroom floor was now polka dotted with splashes of blood. John lowered his arms into the steaming water, gritting his teeth against the new sting of pain that rushed through him. The clear water that surrounded him quickly turned murky and red. John leaned his head back against the wall and panted. Even under the water he could feel with every heart beat the blood gushing out. After a few minutes John began to get dizzy, the bathtub in front of him went in and out of focus. John sighed as he felt his body beginning to go limp and his breaths becoming more shallow. When his vision began to get dark around the edges, he closed his eyes and took a strangled deep breath preparing to slip into unconsciousness. All of sudden he heard the bathroom door fly open and a terrified gasp followed.