Every time John wakes up, he feels as though he's been trapped in a horrid nightmare, only to open his eyes and discover that it isn't during sleep that nightmares claim him. The nightmare is all around him. As he listlessly moves through his flat, setting water to boil, preparing a cup of coffee, he notices the cold absence of snarky commentary on his recent dates (of which there have been few to none recently,) of heads or fingers concealed by a cake box in the freezer, of his best friend, the consulting detective, lazily commandeering his laptop or mobile phone to contact some psychopath because his was just too far a walk across the room.

Every morning he waits for Sherlock to burst in and harpoon the wall, or leap into his armchair, squirm, tap his fingers spasmodically, and profess loudly how bored he is, how dull everyday life tends to be, and how he's managed, overnight, to alienate the whole of Scotland Yard by making each one of them realize their own shortcomings with various bold yet spot-on deductions made by a brilliant unfiltered mind.

He sits down with his coffee and hisses at a shooting pain in his leg. Even though he knows it to be at least partially psychosomatic, that does not dull the ache one bit as he rubs his palm up and down the leg of his trousers, hoping the friction will relax the muscle as he straightens it out.

When he decided to move back to 221B, it was a hopeful, desperate action that ended in nothing but disappointment, in heartbreak, in abject loneliness. After the first few months immediately following Sherlock's… (he couldn't bring himself to admit it past the Ella's office, just the once,) well, following it, he'd been in such a terrible depression that he stayed in bed for nearly a week. He didn't come to work, didn't answer his phone, didn't update his blog, and had Lestrade nearly convinced he'd offed himself the day the detective inspector visited to ensure that this was not the case.

He'd even had Mycroft worried, apparently, as it was the elder Holmes who'd called the Yard to check up on him. Heaven knows he wouldn't do so himself. He'd alienated John in the way he'd done his younger brother. He'd lost both their trust, and John, who could hold a much more fiery grudge than Sherlock, felt such a stabbing hatred for Mycroft that he'd had Mrs. Hudson hide his supply of bullets in anticipation that if he had a way he might have tried to go after him.

Of course this didn't stop him from imagining other methods. Once he was at this point, however- this point of no return, of imagining torturing Mycroft- he had to reel himself back with the icily accepted notion that though Mycroft was a conniving, evil sellout in his mind, somewhere deep inside he had genuinely tried to right the atrocities he'd committed against his brother by enlisting John as Sherlock's keeper. Perhaps living on with the guilt- if he could feel guilt- of having caused his brother's final disgrace would be a much better torture than anything the former military man could ever hope to inflict upon him.

John delicately placed his porcelain cup on the coffee table and bowed over his knees. His fingers rose to his temples and massaged the sides of his head as he let out a long sigh. Yes, he had to admit to himself that there came a time after his grieving where he actually had convinced himself that it was all a trick of Sherlock's . A cruel, heartless trick, surely, but a trick nonetheless. He'd waited for Sherlock's return for nearly a year, and perhaps he was still waiting, but he'd lost hope now. He stayed at 221B for no other reason than he couldn't be arsed to move everything out and start fresh, not when he barely had the energy or will to live and breathe and continue to exist.

"Mm," he hums unpleasantly into his hands, which are now covering his eyes, as a scene replays on the insides of his eyelids- Sherlock, standing on the roof of St Bart's, Sherlock, saying somewhat uncertainly "It's what people do, isn't it?" as if he weren't human, yet in his final moments, he was trying to be.

"Goodbye, John," Sherlock says, and then he falls, and his coat streams above him like a torn parachute, and John hears the dull crunching thud and he's hit by a bicyclist, and they won't let him touch him, he's my friend, he's my friend, let me-!

"No!" John shouts, shoving his hands into his short hair and loosing just once raw sob as he shakes his head. "Sod this," he breathes, pushing himself from the couch where Sherlock used to stretch out his long body for hours without speaking, his hands steepled thoughtfully beneath his chin.

It has been two years, eleven months, and twenty nine days exactly. Tomorrow will mark the three-year anniversary of John's solitary confinement to which he subjects himself every day, not physically but in his own mind- a much worse prison, to be sure.

John pushes a stack of papers from the coffee table and lets them litter the floor as he gropes for his mobile phone. He unlocks it and scrolls through his messages- there's several from Lestrade:

You should come down to the Yard. Got something interesting today. Help us for old times' sake?

We're going out for drinks. Come and celebrate with us. Molly's here.

If you don't answer once in a while I'm coming to check up on you weekly.

You're not the only one who still believes.

From Anthea:

Date? Me and you? No Mycroft, and I'll let you kidnap me for once.

Oh come on and answer me. I know you fancied me. Let's have a little fun tonight ;) I want to go dancing.

I give up.

From Molly:

I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

From Harry:

Come on, John, come and visit me. You can stay here a while. You need out of that place. xx

Please come see me. I miss you. xx

I'm coming to your place as soon as I can. Once I get a bit of quid, I'll help you move out. Promise xx

He deletes these. They don't matter. The ones that do are the ones in his sent folder:

Three months. Don't you think it's enough now?

Sod this, Sherlock, just let me know you're alive!

I won't tell them. I won't. So you'd better come back and discredit yourself all on your own because I won't do it.

I know you're not a fake.

Lestrade probably wants to send me to the bin now. Your brother sent them over to see if I was dead.

I'm going to throw away all of your equipment.

Two years, Sherlock? Two years?

There had been a whole string more after that. Never responses, but John kept trying. He'd never gone up to the roof to fetch the phone he was so desperately texting. That would ruin the illusion that Sherlock was seeing these messages, that there was someone on the other end of this one-sided conversation.

He opened up a new message. Even typing in Sher- in the address field brought on a strangely painful beat in his chest.

Alright, you prick, he began, since you insist on staying dead…

He couldn't finish it. What was he going to say? My life is so dull and monotonous it nearly isn't worth living anymore. Just like it was before I met you. Getting up in the morning is dreadful, and going to sleep- if I sleep- is a blessing. I'm just staying alive, just barely. But what's the point of just "staying?"

He hit send on his truncated message and sat back down on the couch until the steam rolling from his coffee dissipated and the cup grew cold, and then he went back to bed.