Hi guys. This is a short little Post-Reichenbach drabble I had. It's a bit horribly depressing but I found myself suddenly with muse.
John Watson was numb. It was the only way anyone looking in could describe the man's actions. Everything he did was mechanical as if on autopilot. He got up, got dressed, went to work, and went home where he slept. It never deviated. If he had no work, he had a therapy session, and if he had neither it varied.
More often than not John wouldn't get out of bed, those were the good days. Sometimes he went to the grave stone of Sherlck Holmes and sobbed and babbled for hours, before going back home and going to sleep waiting for the next day. Then there were the days that all of them dreaded. Everyone hated them. Harry, Mycroft, Molly, Greg, Sally, even bloody Anderson knew to be on watch for those days.
They were days John insisted that Sherlock Holmes wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead because he saw him. At the shop, or in the streets, or sitting on a tree branch, whatever the case it always ended up in screaming, sobbing, and back to stage one in wherever he had gotten in his therapy.
Out of them all, Molly seemed to be the most torn up about those days. She would berate and belittle herself throughout them, and for days afterward.
John came home from work one evening, a box outside the door with his name on it. He sighed heavily and picked up the package and climbed the stairs of 221B Baker Street like a zombie. Mrs. Hudson greeted him as usual, but as usual he just looked over at her with a blank expression and gave her a wave.
He set the package on the coffee table. The return address was nothing to go by, do he just stared at it warily for a while. When he finally brought himself to open the package, he instantly regretted it. The coat and scarf worn by Sherlock Holmes the day he made his fateful plunge.
There was a note with it, but John didn't read it. He just wrapped himself in the thing and sobbed. It wasn't until after the greatest man he ever knew died that h realized that he and Sherlock Holmes were more than just friends and flat mates. John loved him with every fiber of his being.
John cried himself to sleep that night.
He didn't wake up until noon the next day. He didn't have work, and he didn't move from his place from the couch he fell asleep on. When he blinked himself awake, Lestrade, Mycroft, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Sarah and his therapist were standing around the flat. He said nothing, but pulled the coat tighter around his body and tried to shut the world out.
"John. We know you're hurting right now." His therapist began. "Your friends, and colleagues and I have been worried about you for quite some time" She added, her voice was supposed to be soothing and sympathetic, and John hated it. The woman was dull and stupid and she didn't know what she was talking about. She didn't know him; she didn't understand Sherlock, or what he was to John.
"I don't need and intervention. Go away," John said. His voice was scratchy and raw from the crying the night before.
"This isn't an intervention John. These people are worried about you. They hope to understand better what has been going on. These reactions you have to your friend dying are very extreme. We don't generally get them in patients who haven't lost a sibling or a significant other." The therapist explained.
John realized they weren't going away so he sat up. He steeled himself like he did before he went into some of the more gruesome situations war had offered him. "I'm not ok. I won't be ok. You can't fix me, the parts required have been ripped away from me. Sherlock Holmes was more to me than a friend, or a sibling or a lover could have been. Before I met him I was a broken soldier back from Afghanistan. No friends, no family, nothing. I was paying you to help me get better but it wasn't working. It wouldn't have worked, just like it's not working now. It won't work now." John said, and the people in the room shifted uncomfortably at his words.
"I told you something, when you first told me that writing a blog about the things happening to me would help. Nothing happens to me. Then I met him, and things started happening again. The danger, the thrill, the battlefield was back. It's all I needed. We solved cases, and fought all the time, and went out for dinners, and drinks. He sabotaged a few of my dates, and I ruined a few of his experiments. We played board games, and argued. We ran. A lot. Always the running," he said sighing.
"It was brilliant and beautiful and no one will ever tell me that he was a fake. I can still see the battlefield, running all throughout London. It's still there, the war is still happening but we all know that our side has lost without him. So you lot still point your weapons and go through your days. And some days maybe come out successful. But I won't, because I can't. I did try. Twice, when the therapy was beginning to work, and I would go there to a crime scene and deduce what I could from the body, or the evidence given, and then I would pause. I would pause to wait for Sherlock to tell me what he was observing, to confirm my thoughts and to add more, because I almost always miss everything important. I could protect him, though. From the people who wanted him dead, and his own stupid ego, and then I couldn't. And now he is gone, so there's nothing left to do. No one else for me to bandage up, or shoot for." John said, looking up hollowly at the people around him. "Now would you please get out of the flat?"
They talked, all saying their piece, and giving their story. All telling John he was going to be O.K. Liars. All of them said that they missed him too. John knew that, but none of them like he did. They all apologized for bothering him, but John wasn't listening. He noticed only when they shuffled out of the door one by one, but Molly paused, and stepped back into 221B,
"Don't give up John. Whatever you do, just keep fighting." She said firmly before letting herself out. John bent down, picking up the piece of paper that fell out of the package the night before.
Keep it for now; don't need it for where I am. I'll want it back. See you soon. –SH
John could only hope it wasn't some sick joke done by someone down at the Yard that had some sort of a grudge against Sherlock and himself. He waited patiently for the return of Sherlock Holmes.