Author's Note: Written before I watched episode 3, so some elements are AU. Sherlock is not pronounced dead at the site but instead rushed to a hospital for surgery.

Thread

John turns the knob, stands numbly in the doorway for a minute. He feels like he's the one who's falling, only he never hits the ground. Too bad it doesn't work that way for others.

It's hard to walk, not for the reason you'd think, but because the floor is almost invisible beneath a mass of, well, everything. John's hardly ever been in this room. He only goes there to find Sherlock's stash, and lately he's been clean. That's what John thought, but he hadn't really understood until now that his friend had just found another drug. It was the game, the puzzle, the chase.

The only recognizable thing left in the room is the periodic table hanging on the wall. He can hardly see it through the dark; most of the light bulbs have burned out. This room used to be nearly empty. Now everything is hidden under newspaper clippings, scraps of paper with unlegible handwriting (John would never have guessed the author if he didn't know better). There are boxes upon boxes of nicotine patches, all of them empty. John had known about the patches, at least a few. Not the pharmacy's supply he sees here. Books are piled on the foot of the bed, the floor, on top of the alarm clock. None of the titles seem to have even a remote connection to the case.

John picks his way over some doctor's scrubs (not his own), a pair of spurs, Persian slippers, and the striped jersey of a football referee. He wishes he was a surgeon instead of an army doctor and that he could somehow convince the hospital that he had to do it. How could he know that someone else wouldn't screw it up? But he makes himself look at his hands. If his wish came true, he wouldn't be doing anyone any favors, they're shaking so hard he can barely hold his mobile.

He has to keep his mobile there in his hand because the hospital has his number. His own hands are too shaky to staunch bleeding, set bone, stitch everything back together, but he can hold on to this bit of plastic and wait for the call. Because there's one hope left: someone else is keeping their wits and keeping Sherlock alive. He checks that the volume's up as high as it will go before shoving it in his pocket. There's one more thing his hands can do.

He's looking for something to bring to the hospital for when the surgery's over. Not the pictures and articles on the case. That doesn't matter now. What does his friend use? What might he need? What can he, John, do so that he's not totally useless? Sherlock's almost always bent over a microscope. Ridiculous. And it's broken anyway. Shards of glass from the lens are resting on the stage and on top of the slide. And then John knows he's being an idiot, because there's no one around to tell him he's being an idiot. Sherlock's not in any of his things. He hasn't left a part of himself in his magnifying glass or tied his sentiments up in a favorite mug. There's just him.

John hurries out of the dark room and nearly breaks an ankle. He's tripped, he can see the thing that did it tangled around his feet.

They had been on a case. Sherlock had warned Lestrade that he was making a mistake, but all the evidence pointed the other way, they were going to go after the woman who bore the victim so much ill will, and who was gearing up her Ferrari at that very moment. As soon as the police disappeared after her the real murderer appeared, just as Sherlock had said he would. He saw the detective and ran. It would take him only a moment to dispose of the weapon for good. Sherlock ran after him and John after Sherlock.

They caught him, of course. It was one of the most bizarre cases the city had ever seen. All the papers were running articles on it, asking for interviews. The hit counter on John's blog went haywire. And the two of them had laughed and laughed when Mrs. Hudson saw the state of them after the chase. They hung up stained, sooty coats, wiped something green off their faces and hair (Sherlock said he was going to examine a sample of it under his microscope. John held the microscope captive until Sherlock promised not to tell him what the stuff was when he found out). But John had stopped laughing when Sherlock had pulled off a torn and muddied strip of blue fabric.

"Your scarf," John said.

"Yes. Quite done for, I think," said Sherlock. He threw it aside without another thought. The next morning it was gone, probably in the bin.

That was John's first lesson. Sherlock had that scarf with him for every case, and John had started to think that maybe, although he never said it, there were some things Sherlock just couldn't do without. Maybe there were some things he wouldn't toss away, even if they didn't serve a purpose. He'd been an idiot. In a few days the scarf was replaced as if nothing had happened. It was more practical, of course. Warmer. It was striped, which John didn't think suited Sherlock at all, but that didn't matter. If you wanted to know what Sherlock was, who he was, what mattered to him, you had to look at the man himself. When he was gone, he wouldn't be leaving anything behind. He wasn't in any of the objects strewn around 221B.

But John was wrong again. He tugged at the thing that had tripped him, held it in his hand as he pulled himself to his feet. It was a length of muddy, torn blue fabric. The old scarf. Useless and ruined. But Sherlock had kept it anyway. Why would he—

John's mobile rang.

"Mr. Watson? Mr. John Watson? This is Dr. Langly. I was told to call this number if conditions changed with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I'm sorry to say—"

A shaky hand snapped the phone shut, and held on to a bit of blue.