John would say he was in charge of himself, that anything he did, he did of his own volition. Moving in with Sherlock, running with him, laughing with him, bandaging his cuts when a knife got too close.
He'd never felt more alive, racing along in Sherlock's wake. Until he wasn't anymore. Sherlock was alive, and then he wasn't, and even though John had been an army doctor, had been on the battlefield and seen men die every day for three years, he'd never grown used to the way life just... left a body when it died.
He felt like his strings had been cut, and wandered, aimless, through the city, until the cold set in and a black car rolled to a stop beside him. He climbed in, numb, and didn't move until he realised that the car was turning onto Baker Street. No.
"Turn around!" he called, panicked. He couldn't, he couldn't go back there, not there, where he would see the spaces where Sherlock should have been, the empty chairs, the bare couch. Not now, not yet.
Mercifully, the driver complied, and when, three hours later, John sat down on the edge of a bed in his old bedsit, he closed his eyes and let the tears fall.
Was this what Pinocchio felt like, he wondered, when he lost his strings for the first time?
A/N: Based on this post from tumblr: post/58137990543
