The first day that Sherlock was gone, John Watson woke up scared. He woke up alone and afraid, and for the first time since meeting Sherlock Holmes he saw his hand trembling. The tremor had returned.
The room was too quiet. There wasn't a man across the hall shouting at his skull or shooting the wall or harpooning dead pigs or plucking his violin or scrambling about for his secret stash of cigarettes.
John had not gone back to Baker Street that night, after witnessing his best friend-his only friend-smear his own brains against the pavement, after announcing that everything he had ever said was a lie-that he was a fraud; he had booked a hotel the other side of London. He didn't know if he could go back.
Mrs. Hudson had stayed in the same hotel, too, hoping to find little comfort in familiarity and family, John being the closest thing to family she now had; and only familiarity they had left in such a hopeless situation. Mrs. Hudson refused to believe Sherlock was gone until she saw the blood left on the concrete and got the call from Lestrade. It was his job to inform the next of kin, and all that. Sherlock had once said that if Mrs. Hudson ever left Baker Street, England would fall.
John didn't see how it could ever fall further.
The rain washed the blood away that night. John almost wished it had stayed. One last physical impression of the greatest man he had ever known. The blood had made him real.
He didn't believe the claims that Sherlock had made, though, about being a fake. He had seen too many extraordinary things with Sherlock and nothing would convince him otherwise.
He had slept awfully. Each time he drifted off, he would see Sherlock's eyes, empty, his brow covered in blood, hair matted across his forehead.
The next day John Watson and Mrs. Hudson went back to Baker Street. John had apologized profusely, but insisted that he could not stay at 221B. Not yet. They had packed up many of Sherlock's old belongings. John could imagine, vividly, Sherlock shouting at them for touching his things. All his microscopes and scientific equipment went in one box. Mrs. Hudson hoped it could maybe go to a school.
John packed up notebooks and old journals of Sherlock's, of cases long since solved. He would flip through the pages, examining the flourishes on the ends of Sherlock's ecstatic scrawl.
John knew he had no place or reason to keep these journals, beyond sentiment, but he kept them all the same. Sherlock left him.
John packed up Sherlock's clothes next. This was perhaps the hardest part; sifting through button-up after button-up, black trousers and suit jackets, all covered in Sherlock's scent. Sherlock was wearing his long, mysterious coat, when he died, so his most distinguishable article of clothing was now in Lestrade's custody, spattered with blood. The smell of Sherlock lingered in his clothes and John could not bear to imagine that one day that scent will have faded.
He takes one of Sherlock's purple shirts, just to remember his scent a little longer. Everything else goes in the box.
John sees Sherlock's deerstalker hat on the table. He remembers how much Sherlock hated it. It makes him laugh, remembering how Sherlock detested it, and then John feels sick for allowing himself to feel, if only for a second, something more than misery. He suddenly grabs a box of matches that Sherlock had left around and sets fire to the hat right in the middle of Baker Street, and is reminded suddenly of all the stupid things Sherlock used to do, all in the name of science. He smiles again when the fire catches his fingers for a second. This one, he allows himself.
He puts the hat out before Mrs. Hudson comes in or the smoke detectors go off. She might think she'd seen a ghost.
A few months later and John still could not bring himself to say it aloud; Sherlock Holmes is dead. It's a whisper in his head, and though as he drags himself through his current life he fully appreciates the weight of those four words, he refuses to give them volume. He needs a chance.
He seeks counseling so he returns to his therapist.
It's tedious, really, to sit in that unfeeling room. It's open-too open. The rain is pouring down outside and all John can think of is the rain on the night that he died, and he has to choke back his thoughts again because he doesn't want his therapist to think he's worse than he is. Or rather, as bad as he actually is.
She tells him to say it. He tells her she already knows why he's here.
It's not good enough, apparently. He has to say it; "Sherlock-" he chokes, "My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead."
He realizes he can't speak about Sherlock in past tense. He still is his best friend, even if he's dead.
She asks him to tell her what he wanted to say to him, what he had left to say to him.
John assures her they he can't. Those words, though he doesn't tell her, are meant for Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes alone.
He figures the conversation might be a little one-sided. But then again they often were.
His therapist comments that his limp had returned. He hadn't even noticed, but when he leaves he can't imagine how he could have missed it. He feels heavy. Every inch of him aches.
His limp's really bad again but refuses to use is cane. He's lost his real crutch, anyway.
He sits in Baker Street again. He just sits. There's nothing more he can do. No reason to pick up milk, no one to feed. Not himself. He sits and stares at Sherlock's chair, hoping a ghost will sit down and join him. Apart from some of the stuff being gone, it almost is as it was. The skull on the mantelpiece. The dagger sat next to it. The books strewn about everywhere. He would take it, any of it, all of it-ninja assassins breaking in; Europe's most wanted living next door; Mycroft abducting him at odd intervals for some trivial reason. All of it, if Sherlock could just be alive. He breathes in and can still smell something lingering, something Sherlock. He still can't stay.
He figures it's time, now, to visit the graveyard. It's been long enough that Mycroft must already have bought a headstone. He asks Mrs. Hudson if she wants to come with him. She does, but first she needs to pick up some flowers. They meet outside of Baker Street and get a cab.
On the way, the cabby tries to take them past Bart's, past the street where he died. John shouts as he begs the cabby to amend the usual route, "No! Not this way! Turn left here, not right. Please. Just go around this bit. Please."
The cabby is startled and grumbles but complies. Mrs. Hudson puts her hand on John's knee and rests her head on John's shoulder. John can feel her tears and is so glad that Mrs. Hudson feels at least something akin to his pain, until he is sickened at the fact he had wished this misery on her. No one deserves it. Not even Anderson.
When they get to the graveyard, it all feels more real. In case seeing Sherlock's body splayed at the foot of his fall hadn't been real enough.
The gravestone is cold and sleek, much like Sherlock himself. He's glad it doesn't have a bible verse or something like that on it. Sherlock would hate it. Hell, he'd pull himself out of his own grave to complain about it.
Maybe it should have had a bible verse on it.
Mrs. Hudson talks for a while. She's angry, and she has every reason to be, but John can see that despite how royally Sherlock may have pissed her off, she wants nothing more than to be able to go back home and listen to him playing violin, or taking severed body parts from the fridge, or shouting at him for blowing more holes in her walls.
John is angry, but not that angry. He doesn't have energy for angry, because everything hurts and anger just takes strength and he's really too weak right now.
Mrs. Hudson gives him a moment with Sherlock and there are so many things he wants to say, but he feels like everything he rehearsed in his head is gone and he's almost at a loss for words. He stares into the polished headstone and thinks, for one second, he saw Sherlock reflected behind him. He doesn't turn to look, though. He doesn't want to be that desperate.
He wants to be eloquent and concise. If, by any chance there is a higher power and if, by any chance, Sherlock can hear him, John doesn't want to bore him. He needs to keep it simple.
He takes a breath and it feels like he's trying to breathe underwater; each breath chokes him. He inhales again, though, and then exhales, and he knows he needs to say it. For Sherlock and for himself.
"Erm," he starts. Eloquent, John, he thinks. "Y- You. You told me once that you weren't a hero. Uhm." Inhale "There were times I didn't even think you were human, but, let me tell you this; you were..." he inhaled, "The best man, and..." Inhale. "And the most human," Pause. "Human being that I have ever known..." Breathe. "And no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie. And so... There." He finishes with a point.
He needs to say more, but he can't remember what he had planned to say. He looks around for a moment before walking up to the headstone and touching it. That little contact. He was trying to contact the dead.
He knows what to say. "I was so alone. And I owe you so much."
He tries to leave but he can't. Not before he begs for a miracle.
"No, please. There's just one more thing, one more thing," It could all be OK. "One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't..." It could be, he realised, but it won't. "Be..." He misses him so terribly. "Dead."
"Would you do that? Just for me? Just stop it. Stop this."
And then he was crying. Sherlock had to be dead. Unless there was a really good reason, even Sherlock Holmes, heart of stone, would not be this cruel.
He couldn't be.
John Watson nods, remembering his military training. He could stay composed. He turns on his heel and leaves the resting place of his best friend, carrying his own wounds with him as he limps forward.
He'll carry on. He has to carry on.
Please R&R! Thanks!