Water in kettle. Kettle on the stove. Light stove. Mug from the cabinet. No, not that one that one was cut off his own thought abruptly This was how his days went: moment by moment, trying not to think, not to dwell on his loss on his absence.
But damn it was difficult when Sherlock's presence was everywhere: the papers strewn across the floor; the experiments, unfinished, sitting on the kitchen table; the severed toes that rested, untouched, next to the milk in the refrigerator. There were, of course, other reminders. The lingering scent of Sherlock: gunpowder, ink, chemicals, expensive cologne, and something that was uniquely him. The skull also served as a constant reminder staring at John with vacant eyes from the mantel, a macabre tableau that did nothing to dispel the funereal aspect that had settled over the flat. A single blue scarf remained draped across the chair in the corner as if Sherlock had discarded it only moments ago (John couldn't bring himself to move it). An ironic smiley face in graffiti seemed to mock John's grief, leering down at him from the wall.
Perhaps, John thought, Sherlock's presence was most tangible in his absence. When Sherlock was here, John was caught up in a cyclone of activity: physical, mental, emotional, psychological. Now…well, now, it was quiet. So fucking quiet. No violin concerto at three in the morning, no gunshots fired in the middle of the afternoon, no cries of boredom, no jubilation over kidnappings and serial killers graced the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.
Worst of all though was that John expected these things, still, after months. He waited, almost with baited breath, for Sherlock to walk into the flat (walk, John, really? Have you forgotten so quickly the way he was?) burst into the flat, scarf flying, trench coat billowing in his wake, adventure all about him, danger and excitement surrounding him like an aura.
Just thinking of him was like a hand squeezing John's heart, applying pressure. He couldn't breathe for a moment. He couldn't think of Sherlock, couldn't picture him, without also seeing him on that final day. His dark hark matted; his beautiful grey eyes unfocused, unseeing; his pale skin covered in blood…He was gone, and John had never, he didn't-
"Don't think on it John, just don't." He had acquired a habit of speaking to himself, just to fill the silences when he could be bothered to speak at all. "Make tea, one thing at a time. Right."
That was what his therapist had advised; to take each moment as it came. Focus on simple tasks, manageable ones. She thought that he should establish routines, find some normalcy. He had laughed at that. His definition of "normal" had come to include severed heads in the freezer, dashes across the London rooftops at night, disguises, adventure, all of this wrapped up in the person of his beautiful brilliant flatmate, his best friend.
How the hell was he to recapture that normalcy? There had been a time before Sherlock, before Baker Street. He knew that he had lived a life where he wasn't regularly whisked off the street to meet with "the British government" or kidnapped by psychopaths in the dead of night. A world where his happiness had not been inextricably tied to the mercurial man who had once called him his only friend…
That life before Sherlock had been so empty. He had been so alone, so adrift. Sherlock had changed all of that. He had somehow irrevocably become the center of John Watson's world and without him, how bleak that world had become.
In the days right after Sherlock jumpe—died, John had spent most of his time just sitting in the flat, staring, not seeing, not really aware of anything. He forgot to eat, he couldn't sleep, he felt too much and yet nothing. Inside he was screaming, outside he stared, unseeing. He was a doctor, he had served in the army, he understood shock, he knew trauma, they were old friends, and yet, somehow, this grief, this all-encompassing pain, was worse than any physical or psychological injury he had ever experienced.
The day of the funeral had been wretched. It had been the first time that he had left the flat in days. Mrs. Hudson had wheedled him into a suit and bemoaned his situation. Lystrade had clapped him on the shoulder and offered his condolences. Mycroft had hovered on the periphery, face inscrutable as ever. And John? John had worn a soldier's mask. Presented a stoic front to the world, though he wished, god how he had wished, that it were his funeral, too. It might as well have been.
He went to the grave with frequency after that first time. He had asked for a miracle, hoped for one, but it still hadn't come, and he didn't know what else to do while he waited.
His therapist had asked him once, during their first session after…well, after, what he would have liked to have said. It took him three months to work up the courage to say it. Somehow the words were always stuck behind a sort of burning in his throat and eyes. Even in death, he somehow feared Sherlock's reaction.
"Right," he had begun look at the shining black gravemarker, a simple name engraved upon it. A light was falling from the sky and he could hear the faint call of birds in the distance and the scrape of a rake from a caretaker near the gates. "I don't know if you can hear me…though, if anyone would have figured out a way to hear things from beyond the grave, it would have been you…" He cleared his throat, trying to alleviate that damned burning sensation, he wiped at his eyes briskly, cleared his throat again.
"I miss you. The flat, hm, it's not the same without you, you know? My life, Sherlock, it isn't…it…without you here," John took a deep breath, "well…it's empty. Turns out, Sherlock…well, it turns out that you were my life.
"My bloody therapist, she thinks, well she thinks I ought to say what I never told you when you were ali—here, when you were here," He laughed wetly, "Mycroft thinks I ought to get a new therapist, and you'd probably enumerate in exacting detail the reasons why."
"The thing is though, Sherlock, god…" John swallowed and continued staring fixedly at the name on the stone, "The thing is, I love you. And whether you can hear me or not, you should know that. God, I love you. And I miss you."
John wiped his eyes furiously on the sleeve of his jumper and when he spoke next his voice was little more than a whisper, "Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me before I could tell you?"
He reached out a hand toward the headstone and rested his fingers there for the moment, his mind returning briefly to that last chase and the warmth of Sherlock's living hand in his. The cold marble slab was a poor substitute, but it was all he had.
"Right, then, I'll be back soon." He turned away as if steeling himself against a sort of blow to the heart. He couldn't bear to ask for another miracle.
John was roused from his musings by the shrill whistle of the kettle. So much for accomplishing simple tasks and trying to not dwell on memories. He couldn't even make a simple cuppa without getting lost in his own damned thoughts.
It would be a year in two weeks. It had been the most difficult year of his life, and John couldn't quite allow himself to think of all the Sherlock-empty years that stretched before him.
As he added milk to his tea, John heard the door open.
"Mrs. Hudson," he called, "you needn't keep checking up on me. You left enough food here the day before last to feed a small army, let alone a small army captain." The truth of the matter was that despite her near constant refrain of "not your housekeeper," Mrs. Hudson had taken John's grief as a personal project of sorts (perhaps to distract her from her own?) and replied to every uneaten meal with ten more in its stead, as if, by sheer force of will, she could alleviate his depression, his mourning, and his lack of appetite. Honestly, John was not in the mood to deal with the negotiations on these subjects that her visits so often brought.
"Mrs. Hudson? I told you, I'm fi—" but the rest of his phrase caught in his throat. The tea cup in John's hands fell to the floor and shattered spraying his trousers with hot tea and shards of china. He was rather sure that his mind had finally broken as well. For, when he turned around to address his land lady, tea in hand, he did not see at a petite elderly woman. No, he was facing a tall, thin man with a shock of dark curls over a fair brow and piercing eyes, the likes of which he had seen only once before.