Author's Note: written in a fit of angst, to join all the other tragic stories following the events of the Reichenbach Fall.
Trigger Warning for: character death, suicide, cutting, severe angst and graphic descriptions of violence. Also, there is no happy ending here, and you can't unread things, so decide very carefully whether you want to read this.
The cuts bite deep into his skin, and the blood follows seconds later, red droplets welling to the surface before flooding out across his red flesh.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
He wants to stop and admire them, so similar to tally-marks on his wrist, but he doesn't dare take the time. There's so much blood; so, so much. If he pauses, he's not sure he'll be able to go on.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
His head is beginning to spin, and he knows the end is closing in on him. He must persevere; he will not stop until all thirty strokes have been delivered.
This ordeal would have been over much quicker if he'd decided to take a pill or an injection; he was a doctor after all, and it wouldn't take much to get a hold of the drugs that could finish this quickly. But this is more symbolic.
Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
The pain is setting in, now that the initial rush of adrenaline is dying. Almost worse than the pain is the itching; the urge to scratch at the mutilated flesh. He ignores it.
The skin beneath the smeared red liquid is barely visible now. John smiles.
Twenty-four. Twenty-four.
Five cuts to go now, and then he can stop. One cut for each month that Sherlock has been gone. An accusation, perhaps, to his dead flatmate, stating for how long he'd had left John, who'd waited, heartbroken, in the small hope that Sherlock really was alive.
Or maybe the cuts were proof of his endurance, an announcement to the world that he'd lasted a whole two and a half years before he lost both his hope and his will to live.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.
His head feels so light, John realised. The blood is no longer the only thing that is obstructing his vision of his forearm; black spots are appearing in front of his eyes, and won't disappear no matter how much he blinks.
Twenty-eight.
His hand is trembling uncontrollably now, and the knife went off-target at the end of the last stroke, veering to the side and creating a single wonky slash amongst the long row of professional incisions.
Slowly, carefully, his hand draws the knife along his wrist again, making the twenty-ninth cut. John feels it acutely; if he didn't he wouldn't be able to tell whether it is actually there or not. His vision is blackened, blurry and spinning now, and his ears are ringing loudly. His nose is filled with the smell of blood, leaving touch and sensation as his only senses.
When John no longer has the strength to hold it, the knife slips from his hand, falling silently onto the sheets stained scarlet. He tries to reach for it, but his weak body refuses to obey him.
One more. Just one more.
But he's falling sideways, now; slowly, so very slowly. The darkness is wrapping its warm tendrils arounf him, making him forget why he is struggling to live in the first place. After all, he made the cuts, didn't he? This was what he wanted.
One more cut.
His last thought is a face; a pale face with high, sharp cheekbones, dark hair, and a haughty look.
Sherlock.
"Twenty-nine," Sherlock murmurs as he reads the police report that his brother had handed him moments before. "He was off by one. Did he miscount?"
"The irony," Mycroft murmurs, his voice subdued but lacking the emotion it should have held. "He didn't manage to make enough cuts, and it turns out he didn't have to make any at all. I told you that you should have told him you were alive."
"That's not irony, Mycroft," Sherlock snaps.
It's guilt, he thinks. I did this.