Hello all! This is my first crack at writing Sherlock fanfiction, though it is certainly not my first go at writing. My goal is to be both an interesting and palatable author, as well as a painstakingly accurate one. If you, dear reader, believe any of the following is taking place in Archetype: Alone, please feel free to mention in which chapter the slight has occurred in your review: the interpretations of the characters are not true to the BBC's Sherlock; the events or presented scientific facts are too dramatic, impossible, or untrue; plot is confusing, uninteresting, or undesirable in any way. Thank-you, and have a pleasant read!

I. GRAVESIDE VISIT

THREE MONTHS PREVIOUS

It was cold.

I reached out, expecting to feel his hand, pallid skin ablaze and pulse erratic as it was when he received a particularly odd case – or the smooth texture of a sleeve belonging to one of his dress shirts – or, in the very least, the thick fabric of his Belstaff coat, the way it seemed to both comfort and chafe when you touched it. Like he did.

I reached out, expecting to feel him, meet him somehow, but my fingers grazed stone instead of flesh.

I pulled my hand away as soon as it touched the marker, so plain and black and hateful. His name was engraved in capital letters overlain with gold; just his name, and nothing else. Nothing except Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

I could see my reflection in the slab.

That John appeared drawn and worn. Damaged, even. He looked how I felt, though I had never seen my face like that before. Only the faces of others.

There have been occasions where I have had to inform a patient's family of their passing. Many only look shocked, at first, but when their disbelief fades, it's replaced by a host of different emotions altogether: blinding agony, unshakeable wrath, even self-pity, which is understandable, I guess. God knows I've thrown myself many a pity-party over the years.

Anyway, these people sport a very evident grief, a sort of blowout, like when a fuse goes in a flat. Now and again there is a noise, a short tone right as the room loses power and becomes dark. Similarly, they often cry or wail, or cling to one another. It has always been difficult for me to watch another person endure so much pain when I know there is nothing I or anyone else can do to help them.

But these are not the hardest people to watch.

The most difficult are those who, after they grasp what has happened, simply look tired and feeble and… beaten. Their shoulders drop and their head falls back just a bit, their knees lock and you can tell just by the way they're standing that they feel as if their legs are made of granite. They can't move anywhere to get away from the pain, the way it fractures every bit of who they are so that they feel like they're going to crumble to dust, and they almost wish they would. No, they can't move at all, but that doesn't quite matter now because they are standing at the very edge of the world and they are alone and I can see them breaking apart. They don't cry, they don't wail, and they reach for nothing but the wall because the only person that would ever be enough to make something this god damn awful okay is–

Dead. Sherlock Holmes is dead.

Sherlock Holmes is dead, and you, John Watson, need to get a damn hold of yourself. Yes, he was your best friend, and a good man - despite everything he did to try to convince you otherwise - but it has been two. bloody. years.

I always tell myself that when the thought of him becomes too much.

It never works.

Today it only makes the pain more acute, if anything. I had a bit of a row with Mary. It was my fault. She tried to surprise me after my shift at the clinic, wanted the two of us to go to dinner. She didn't know what today was, that today, January 6, was Sherlock's birthday. And how could I tell her? I'm not usually so sentimental; usually, I can tell Mary anything. But not today.

He always hated it when I arranged something for his birthday, but I think he was secretly pleased that I remembered. I made a point of it each year, inviting the few people Sherlock labelled "tolerable" to the flat: Greg Lestrade, Molly Hooper, and Mrs. Hudson. They would pop by in the evening, and we would chat together and drink a bit and nearly drive Sherlock up a wall with our incessant, inane twaddle and the "it's-completely-ludicrous-john" giving of gifts. Mrs. Hudson would be the last to leave, near midnight, giving Sherlock a matronly pat to the cheek before shuffling downstairs to 221A. He would close the door almost vehemently then, give me a bit of a perturbed look as he muttered something along the lines of "how onerous," and proceed to collapse on the couch and fiddle with whatever interesting scientific trinket the others had got him. Despite his dramatics, though, it was always then, right when he thought I wouldn't be looking, that I would catch him smiling, genuinely, and just a bit.

It was that smile that made celebrating his birthday worthwhile.

And it was that smile that I missed today.

I couldn't bear to tell Mary the reason why I so desperately had to be alone. I could barely bring myself to admit that it felt very wrong spending time with her instead of Sherlock on the day he should be turning thirty-six when he is, in fact, six feet below the ground, and the only thing left of him for me to grab onto when I need him is this bloody gravestone, so frigid and simple and fixed, and nothing like the man I knew, the man I swear I will always know.

I can feel myself kneeling now, right in front of his damn marker.

I was going to speak to him, I think.

But what else is there to say, really? I have said it all before, in thousands of ways thousands of times. There is nothing left to be said. To be honest, he only listened to what I had to tell him thirty-seven percent of the time; he gave me that calculation himself. Sherlock thought sentiment boring, emotion dull, and any physical or verbal out-pour of the two highly repulsive.

And yet, I still come to his grave for every birthday, every anniversary of his death, every day that the grief threatens to consume me, and I always speak to him. Even if he seldom listened, and now never can, I will not abandon him to a lonely hypogeum in some godforsaken boneyard to weather frozen nights and drenched London days alone; while he never seemed apt to notice whether a day was dismal or particularly lovely himself, I was always present to hate or enjoy it for us both. I see no reason why that should change now.

I will not forget Sherlock Holmes.

I will not leave him to bear "alone" in death the same way he bore it in life.