Wholock - In need of a Doctor
John ran towards the waters, but knew from instinct that he was already too late. Sherlock and Moriarty were locked in combat, either one of them were sure to kill the other at any moment. The drop itself was enough to spread their bodies like strawberry jam. As skilled a marksman as John was, he didn't dare risk it from the distance he was from the two of them. There was no telling who would receive the bullet once he pulled the trigger. He just stood before the water, waiting in unendurable agony to see which way fate would turn. For what seemed to only be a tiny moment, John suddenly realised how lost he would be if he were to loose Sherlock. They'd both left lasting impacts on each other's lives, and neither had ever considered the notion of ever leaving each other. It was in this moment that John braced himself for the worst. The two figures in the distance were brawling and wrestling on the side of a rock, just by the edge of the mighty drop. For the moment, it seemed that Sherlock was overpowering Moriarty, and all was going to go down rather well, but for just a brief moment, it looked as though Sherlock noticed something that Moriarty either didn't notice too, or didn't care for, John never knew. It was in this concise interval from combat that Moriarty used to his advantage. He pushed Sherlock over the edge, but Sherlock seemed ready for this, as he grabbed the jacket of his mortal enemy as he fell, and together they both plummeted to their doom. All that was audible as a tiny, unnoticeable tear poured neatly down John's cheek was the sound of Moriarty's final wicked shriek as John watched in horror as the two bodies fell down the Reichenbach fall. The disturbance on the water's surface lasted until dark.
Summer ended and John still felt no merriment. Wether it was worse that Mycroft felt unperturbed by the news or that Molly was still convinced that "Jim" was a perfectly innocent man, John could not tell. John began to notice his difficulty with walking again, and his memories of the war began to lurk his dreams again each night, it was like being around Sherlock had been a cure for his pains. When someone close to him had perished in the past, people found comforting and relating to him easy, but with Sherlock, no one could understand the way they clicked, or how Sherlock could even have emotions. Over the weeks that followed the events in Reichenbach, several of Sherlock's work colleagues and accomplices came to pay their respects to the world's first and last consulting detective. Many of them like Lestrade were very respectful and comforting, others were as mixed as a bag of nuts. John had never faced a more cumbersome, awkward experience in whole his life than having to hear Anderson and Donovan's 'kind' regards to Sherlock. In fact, John was so uncomfortable during the experience that he had to excuse himself halfway through, pretending to be emotionally overwhelmed by the loss of Sherlock (which in fairness, he kind of was) but in actuality he just couldn't stand the sound of their voices and the tones they used when using Sherlock's name. He took this opportunity to take a stroll around the suburbs surrounding Baker Street. As he wandered, he could feel the faintest trace of the lifeblood of the thrills he shared with Sherlock on their many adventures.
For reasons unclear to John, he felt the need to revisit the locations of the many cases he solved with the great detective. Mainly out of sentimentality, he chose to relive the 'taxi driver case' A Study in Pink.He took a short visit to his tiny flat he was supplied by the military after his services in Afghanistan. Having little to no memories of this short period in his life, John proceeded to St Bart's hospital where he first encountered Mr Holmes, where he life was changed forever.
It was upon entering the morgue that he received a phone call from D.I Lestrade, asking for John to come to the station as soon as it would be convenient for him. Seeing as his nostalgic trip wasn't doing him much good, he reluctantly journeyed to the police office.
Lestrade was waiting for John, and he was holding Sherlock's laptop with a pair of fresh-looking white gloves. Behind him was an entire tabletop full of Sherlock's personal devices and belongings.
"We searched Sherlock's personal belongings, because well…" Lestrade's voice trailed off for a moment "We really wanted to know why he welcomed death so openly… and really, just wanted to understand him at last..." John just stood there awkwardly.
"But what we thought you should know is…" John prepared himself to what he was expecting to be Sherlock's version of a suicide note, but instead he was flooded with the greatest mixture of contrasting emotions.
"We hired some computer experts to find his password so we could get in, and we thought you should know what is was..." John just stood there quietly, knowing what simple word would follow.
"Tell me." he said simply and quietly.
"John." It was just those four letters. Lestrade could see the hurt in John's eyes, and respectfully decided to leave him alone in the room.
John kept his head up, he was used to holding in tears. Military training seemed to be paying off. Yet the harder he tried to hold it in, the harder it became to do so. As soon as he was sure that Lestrade wasn't coming back into the room, he felt his whole word shatter into nothingness. He didn't care if anyone saw him, it didn't matter. Sherlock, the most important man in his life, was gone.
Over the next few days John made it part of his daily routine to continue his nostalgia trips. Although he would only visit one place each day, it was always what made them worthwhile. It was on one of these short trips that he remembered his first encounter with Sherlock's only known living relative, Mycroft Homes. He quite easily remembered the exact location of the phone booth in which Mycroft called him. Much to John's surprise, when he revisited the street in which the event occurred roughly two years prior, he found that the red glass panelled booth was replaced by a rather chunky, yet fresh looking blue wooden box, with the words "Police Public Call Box" written upon the top.