He only knew him for a year and a half.

People seem to think that should make it easier on him, but it doesn't. It's harder. Because far less than that was needed to make him part of a unit, part of John-and-Sherlock, and he's never going to be that again. Never. He's never going to get that back, no matter how long he waits, and now he has to make a year and a half's worth of memories last the rest of his life, like rationing out food for a long isolation.

He doesn't go back to Baker Street, of course. It's ridiculous to even think of when a broken kerb or a half-eaten curry can make him think of Sherlock. He's not about to try his luck with Sherlock's furniture and Sherlock's clutter and Sherlock's home all around him. So when he finally has his first breakdown, about a week after the funeral, it is in a small unfurnished flat with nothing to break, and there's nothing to do but put his fist through the wall. He cries, and he's ashamed of crying, even though there's nobody to see him.

Sherlock wouldn't know what to do with him in such a state.

Sherlock doesn't know anything because he's dead.

He keeps getting hung up on surprise thoughts like that, little realities, that steal his breath like a punch in the chest or itch at him like a tight new scar asking to be scratched at.

Last week it came out of nowhere as a thought about Sherlock's hands. Sherlock's hands were long and white and callused at the fingertips and so obviously musician's hands as to be ridiculous, as to mock deduction of him the way he deduced others. "What next," John could imagine Sherlock saying, "I'm thin so I must not eat a lot?"

Sherlock's hands were long and white and used to be musician's hands, but they aren't musician's hands now. The musician is gone, he doesn't own them anymore. Sherlock's hands won't gesture or clench, the tendons and blue veins won't shift under his skin again, his spindly fingers won't close around the neck of his violin or the bones of John's wrist again, Sherlock's long white musician's hands are not Sherlock's and they're never going to move again they're folded stiff and waxy with preservatives deep underground

because

he's dead.

When John breaks himself out of that one he goes to the bathroom and climbs in the shower still clothed. He sits under the scalding hot water for half an hour until he's breathing normally again.

It's absurd to think that he's going to be without Sherlock from now on, that Sherlock occupied a year and a half of his life and no more. It's a bad joke.

One day he makes tea for one. He focuses very hard on making tea for one. He tells himself at least ten times during the process of putting on the kettle and getting out the mug and tea that he is only making tea for one.

At the end of it he is standing at his kitchenette counter with only one mug of tea steaming in front of him, and he stares at it with his hands flat to either side on the counter and says out loud "I can't."

He doesn't know what it is he can't do. But whatever it is he resigns from it officially. He's done. "I'm done," he says to the mug of tea.

Slowly the tea stops steaming and John's shoulders shake, but he doesn't cry.

The funny thing is that when the tea is finally cold and John hasn't moved, when he dumps it out in the sink, when he goes to bed and dreams about Sherlock standing on top of a tall building in the middle of the desert and get down you idiot you're standing there in the open you don't have any cover and then there's a gunshot from a place he can't pinpoint and he falls and oh he knows even as he watches Sherlock fall that he's not a good enough doctor to stitch him back after this, he can't push the blood and brains back into his head

the funny thing is when he wakes up at three in the morning gulping air, and when the sun finally comes up and he hasn't so much as closed his eyes since, he's still there. The funny thing is that resigning hasn't done anything.

It's been five months. And it's fine to say that he can't, but he's not sure how to opt out other than the unconsidered obvious. The world, it seems, doesn't stop just because you want to get off.

He's been telling himself endlessly to soldier on, but now he realizes it's as simple as continuing to be present behind his eyes when he wakes up and continuing to exist until he goes to bed. And he doesn't eat as regularly as he should, and he doesn't always make it to work on time, and sometimes he forgets how to breathe.

But existing, that he can do.

Yes, he is back at work. He asked Sarah about two months after if he could pick up some extra work at the surgery, and she offered him his old job at whatever hours he needed. He started off at part time, but now he's almost up to full. Sarah only questioned him on it once.

"I just want to make sure you're not working yourself to death," she said.

"No, I like it," he said, and then, because she looked unconvinced, translated it into friends-of-the-grieving: "It helps."

That's not necessarily true the way she probably heard it. It doesn't make him feel better, spending time at the surgery. It doesn't take his mind off Sherlock or help him forget—John still thinks of him every other moment, still loses his balance to the worst thoughts of him. But work is made of decisions and process and simple tasks that he can perform one by one. It takes up the room in his mind that would have otherwise been spent staring at his fingernails and firmly reminding himself not to talk to empty rooms.

It's not comforting, but it's a comfort.

One day, coming up on December, over lunch, Stamford tells a joke, and John laughs.

He surprises himself with the laugh, because he means it, it's genuine and spontaneous, not laughing because that seems like something he ought to do to keep the conversation moving. But this is not the strangest thing, this is not the thing that gives him the most pause. It's that it reminds him of a story about Sherlock, and before he can stop himself he is telling it.

Stamford seems a little thrown by the mention of Sherlock, but accepts it quickly and listens to the story. It's a good story, about Mycroft and a prank involving a human ear, the kind of ridiculousness only Sherlock could pull. And it's the kind of story he always secretly loved telling, because although he groaned and rolled his eyes longsufferingly, at the time he had giggled as much as Sherlock. And because he knew that the people hearing it didn't envy him his life, and because he knew that they should.

Stamford has not heard the story before, and is already laughing halfway through. His laughter makes John laugh, harder and harder until he can hardly get the end of the story out. And suddenly he can remember (he didn't realize he'd forgotten, the thought of forgetting is terrible) Sherlock's laugh, rare and wonderful. It chokes him at the same time as it makes him happy, and it's like being ripped in two between the joy of the memory and the pain of the remembering.

But he is still chuckling, still smiling, still existing.

He thinks maybe he's going to be okay.

He tells his therapist that he thinks he's going to be okay.

She smiles but it doesn't reach her eyes.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," she says.

He hears the 'but' without her saying it. "I am feeling better," he says. He tries not to sound defensive.

"It's only been nine months. There will be good days and bad days."

"And I'm having good days." He is failing at not sounding defensive.

"Just don't count the good days as less of a victory for the presence of the bad days."

"I only knew him for a year and a half," says John.

Two days later he goes digging in his drawer for a pen that's not out of ink, and he finds one of Sherlock's. He is on the ground and he's not sure how he got there and he's holding the pen so hard his hand hurts and his breath is coming in thin thready wheezes and his face is wet. He's crying again he hasn't cried in months he'd rather break something but he can't get up off the ground he can't find it in him, there is nothing he wants to break. He thinks about breaking the pen, watching the ink run over his hands. But in the next second he is horrified by the thought, he is terrified of breaking it without meaning to, he would drop it but he doesn't want to let it go.

He wonders if Sherlock left any fingerprints on it.

He has probably smudged them off already.

There are a finite number of Sherlock's fingerprints in the world now, he will never make any more, and the ones on this pen are gone.

The ones on this pen are gone.

Sherlock is gone.

It is nearly the New Year, a new year that Sherlock never touched, a calendar wiped clean like Sherlock's pen, and Sherlock is gone.

There are good days and bad days.

He tells stories about Sherlock. He laughs about the stories. He cries, but not very often. He breaks things occasionally. He makes one cup of tea at a time. The anniversary of the day comes. He does not read any papers. He does not turn on any televisions, or step outside, or talk to anyone except Mrs. Hudson, who comes over for dinner. They tell stories. They laugh about the stories. They cry. He doesn't visit the cemetery. He works at the surgery. He gets a library card. He reads the books he faked reports for in High School.

He goes out to dinner with Mrs. Hudson, with Mike, with Sarah, with Molly.

He goes out to dinner with a woman named Mary. She doesn't mind when he spends their entire second date telling her about Sherlock.

The anniversary of the day didn't matter. What matters is the day he realizes it's been a year and a half and one week that Sherlock has been gone.

Sherlock has been gone longer than John knew him.

When he has nightmares now it's less usually about gunfire and deserts and more usually about standing on the street outside St. Bart's, or even worse, standing on the roof of St. Bart's, watching it all from there, Sherlock looking him in the eye and speaking with his phone up to his ear and then turning around and falling and John running to the edge of the roof and watching him fall. It happened so fast in real life, but it's so slow in the dreams, it takes forever and sometimes he doesn't manage to hit the ground before John wakes up.

When John has nightmares sometimes they aren't nightmares, just him and Sherlock laughing or reading or quarrelling in 221B.

When John has nightmares sometimes they have no Sherlock in them, sometimes he stands with his phone to his ear speaking to nobody on the street below him and then steps from the St. Bart's roof himself.

But John has nightmares less often.

When Christmastime starts to come around, he goes to visit Mrs. Hudson at 221. Before he goes home he gets her permission to go upstairs ("Of course, love. Do you still have your key? It still works, I haven't changed the lock.") and he sits in his old chair for a little while.

Mrs. Hudson has kept it dusted and clean, so it doesn't smell musty. It smells like it always has. A little faded with time, but still like cigarettes and strange chemicals and old furniture and old books. He closes his eyes and smells and he cries some but he doesn't want to break anything.

When he leaves he locks the door back behind him with his key.