"Goodbye, John."
His voice plagues his dreams. It's always his voice. Come morning light it's all that he wants to hear. When he awakens he can hear the morning clatters of Mrs Hudson making breakfast. Sometimes he'll lay there and imagine its Sherlock. He's doing an experiment again. It's on something ridiculous. Wasn't it always? And it's going swimmingly. He can see it with so much clarity he can almost believe it's real; Sherlock bent over a disarray of equipment, the flame of a Bunsen burner flickering away as he tests the reaction of some strange object when it is heated. Mixing elements, forming compounds. He smiles that genuine smile (others rarely get to see) when he's done it right, and he'll shout John's name excitedly, and John will begrudgingly heave himself out of bed to see what he wants. Just you wait, any minute now…
But then a loud bang ensues, and Mrs Hudson curses for being so clumsy, and suddenly it isn't Sherlock anymore. How can it be?
Sherlock is dead.
After that the grief kicks in, and John hates himself for pretending. He has to accept it; it's the only way life can go on… But what life? John's life pretty much revolved around Sherlock—well, not exactly revolved. They were interconnected; like the compounds Sherlock loved to create. Two elements mixed together to create a pure chemical substance. They were one; a team that was irrevocably linked no matter what came their way. John and Sherlock. They were not easily broken; only in death.
He doesn't know how to go back to John. Just John. John and-
Sometimes, he wakes from the nightmares infuriated. With the image of Sherlock's skull bleeding out on the pavement still stuck in his mind he'll sit there, wishing he knew how he felt. He feels so sorry for himself, he feels so hateful to Moriarty, he feels so angry at this horrible, vile, disgusting turn of events.
"Why?"
That's when he asks it. Tears form, pooling in his eyes and spilling over his lids as he sits there, sobbing pathetically because he's a grown man but fuck it because the death of his best friend makes him feel like a vulnerable child, and he just wants to know why this was ok and what force beyond his control deemed this necessary. How is this fair? Sherlock wasn't very old. He had his life still ahead of him; crimes to solve, people to save, laughs to be had, experiments to do. There's still a list of them in the kitchen; a list of pending hypotheses' that will never find their results.
Every time he sees that list a lump clogs his throat.
But he can't bear to take it down. Can't bear to throw out Sherlock's clothes; refuses to get rid of that damned skull and wouldn't dream of taking that knife out of the cluedo board on the wall. He won't get rid of that wallpaper with the smiley face, won't move the last mug of coffee Sherlock had…
It's wrong. He knows it. John understand it's unhealthy – he doesn't need that ridiculous councillor to tell him that. But they help, in a dreadfully bittersweet way. He rolls his eyes whilst admiring the bullet holes in their wall. He chuckles when he catches a glimpse of the Cluedo board, remembering how Sherlock had stabbed it against the wall in frustration after arguing about it.
"Of course it was the victim!" He had cried, "There was no other way in to that room, John! I've deduced every possible entrance and exit and there wasn't any. It was suicide, the end."
He was a stubborn git sometimes. John almost laughs, at that. Sometimes. More like all the bloody time. Like all those times he'd get John to pluck his phone from his pocket because 'it's boring' or all the days he had John spend without sleep. He'd rarely get a wink of it during a case; to this day he still doesn't understand why they'd spent money renting a hotel room in Baskerville. He never got to sleep in the bloody bed anyway and it cost a fortune!
God, he wishes he understood why this had happened. Sherlock was one of the only things that made life worthwhile after his time in the war. If there's a God, like people say, then how could they do something like this? He had stopped having faith during the war, of course, but every single time the image of his only real friend springs to mind he can't help but ask why? And who better to give him an answer than the man upstairs himself?
But he never replies.
And the not knowing is killing him…
He could scream why all day, but the only response will be his own echo; because God may not even be real, and if he were then why – out of everyone on this Earth – would he choose to speak to a lonely, broken man?
Sherlock's death is just one of the mysteries John Watson will never solve.
Dedicated to a boy in my year at school that died in his sleep; the emotions I felt inspired this little fic. I hope you liked it.
RIP to the only boy at my 13th birthday party,
05/01/1995 – 20/06/2013