John thought he might be a little bit broken.
In truth, John had shattered like so much glass, falling to the ground in sharp, glittering pieces, and the only man who could have put him back together, despite the efforts of all the kings men and all the kings horses, namely Lestrade and Molly and Mike and Harry, Sherlock Holmes was the only person who could pick up the pieces of John without cutting himself on his sharp, freshly jagged edges.
But Sherlock Holmes was dead, and without him, so was John.
John was very broken, he had been cracked open and left to fester.
And he couldn't so much as think the name Sherlock Holmes without flinching.
He couldn't look at violins without thoughts of slender fingers drawing from them the most rapturous and tortured of sounds, making them sing and croon and scream with a twitch of his bow.
He couldn't listen to their music, when he did he dreamt of skeletons with unruly mops of dark curls and expensive suits dancing and falling and leaving him all over again.
Oh yes, Sherlock Holmes and done what even the war could not, Sherlock Holmes had left John Watson a dead man walking, and his only solace was in that one day, most likely quite soon, he would follow him once more into the fray.
John Watson was tired, so very tired. His hand shook worse than ever and his leg burnt as he moved and his every bone ached. Because Sherlock Holmes was dead, and the world was all the darker for it.
Sometimes John dreamt of other things, like consulting detectives sitting on his bed, alive and breathing and warm in a way that death would not allow.
Sometimes he punched the detective.
Sometimes he fell at his feet and begged for forgiveness.
Sometimes he shot himself with his illegal gun and made the detective watch his best friend bleed out.
And once he kissed the detective. And the detective cradled his head with slender violin playing fingers and kissed him back, whispering his name like the prayer of a child.
"John" he said "John"
And John choked sobs into his mad, brilliant throat and held him to his chest.
And the detective whose name had not been spoken in hundreds of months and weeks and days pulled him impossibly closer and breathed into him.
"I love you I love you I love you" a mantra repeated, a breath shared between two dying men.
Tears pooled in a way reminiscent of blood, haloing around two intertwined bodies.
And John felt himself break in a thousand different ways. Only this time, Sherlock Holmes was there to pick up the pieces.