A/N: Well, this is un-beta'd. I have no beta. I am not against taking one on if there is an interested party. Anyway, enjoy!

It feels like shock for days. He can't get warm and his stomach feels like it's clenched so tightly that he isn't sure he'll ever be able to eat again. In the end, he does eat only because Mrs. Hudson's eyes are so very sad when she looks at him. He makes sure to force down some soup or tea and toast often enough to keep her from fussing. He's not sure he can take the fussing for no reason other than it reminds him of how he used to fuss at Sherlock to eat and sleep. Sleeping isn't a problem for John, especially not in the early days after Sherlock... well. Sleep is an escape even when the flickering images of sun and sand and soldier and blood invade. At least that's familiar. When he is asleep, his mind is strangely free from any memories of that day when Sherlock... More than likely this is because every minute of his waking hours his mind replays those moments over and over and over again.

John finds that in time the shock fades and turns over into heavy numbness, like a blanket over his senses. If feelings were a thing for him right now, he'd enjoy the numbness, except of course he can't because feelings are not a thing right now. But the numbness allows him to go back to work, which is fine, just fine, and he is fine, just fine. He has bills to pay, after all. Strangely fewer bills since budgeting for groceries is easier now and he certainly uses much less electricity on his own. Mrs. Hudson has also told him not to worry about the rent, that it's been taken care of. He suspects Mycroft is involved in that but the numbness smothers the anger like a fire blanket before it can be much more than a tiny, flashing spark. This is so much worse than when he came back from Afghanistan but caring is a feeling so he doesn't do that either.

Lestrade comes around every week or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. The first time John had just looked him, trying to muster up the energy to throw him out but then Lestrade had said very quietly, "I'm sorry, John." and that had strangely been enough. John knows he will never forgive Donavan or Anderson and that is ok for Lestrade. Sometimes they drink and share Sherlock stories or sit in silence. Sometimes there are tears but Lestrade is a cop and John is still enough of a soldier that they don't talk about. One time they get completely and utterly piss drunk and wake up the next morning tangled around each in what must have been a drunken attempt at cuddling. They are both still fully clothed and personally, John doesn't want to force his pounding head to remember the night before so he just shrugs and closes his eyes again until Lestrade pushes himself off the couch, gives him an awkward look and flees. Lestrade doesn't come back for over a week but when he does it is with a shrug and a smile. John nods and they don't speak of it again. Friendship is, after all, a precious commodity and they both realize that.

One time, enough months after Sherlock has... passed... that a heatwave is scorching London, Molly comes around to visit him. She fumblingly attempts to give condolences and to apologize for not being around sooner but it sounds so false to him that anger finally comes boiling up and threatening to burn the whole world to ash. He manages to hold it in check with a clenched fist and a tight smile and even tighter words until she leaves and he lets it come rushing out channeled into punching the wall until his fist hurts and then resorts to adding more holes to that stupid smiley face painted on the wall in obnoxious yellow. That had ended when his phone buzzed in his pocket because of course someone had made a report of shots fired and of course Lestrade would know it was him.
Alright? GL
He shakes his head with a minuscule smile and types back Angry. Wall had it coming. JW
The reply is quick and makes his smile broader.
Leave off the wall. I'll try and sneak you into the range soon. The targets there are so much more smug and deserving. GL

Weekly drinking/commiserating is occasionally changed to shoot the fuck out of some paper targets and as time is passing, John is beginning to feel more and more real again. He had only gone to his therapist the once about this whole grieving thing. She was better at helping with the PTSD.

Occasionally, when he is reminded of how good a shot John is, Lestrade makes noises about John joining the police force but John just smiles and shakes his head and says he's too old for such a dramatic career change. John does leave off locum work at the clinic to go work in an A&E, but he tells Sarah that she is free to call him if she is hard up and he'll still come work the occasional shift.

He finds he actually likes working in A&E. He likes the battlefield that it becomes when a trauma patient comes in and finds it difficult to get bored even with the walk-in patients because people really do the most ridiculous things that end up in injury. Occasionally, when something truly obnoxious happens, like when a girl comes into trauma with a plunger lodged up her rectum because she missed sitting on the toilet while drunk, he wants to tell Sherlock about it to see if he can tease a smile out of Sherlock and then his heart wrenches in the worst way because of course he can't tell Sherlock and he has to take a moment. Sometimes he'll text Greg a simple Breakfast? JW and they'll meet after he gets off work before Greg goes in for the day or he'll just send Greg a picture of that stupid smiley face on the wall at Baker Street that he keeps on his phone and Greg will text back with a random comment or a stupid picture meant to make him laugh. It usually does.

On more difficult days he goes to the cemetery and sits cross-legged on top of the grave with his forehead pressed against the cool black stone and whispers to the over-bright gold letters. Sometimes it's nonsense about his day and sometimes it's "I love you, you stupid prick. Just come back to me." over and over and over again until his voice goes hoarse and he has to go home and sip at lemon and honey in hot water for the rest of his night off and then pretend like he has simply been yelling at the television too loudly during a football or rugby match the next night at work. It's a good enough excuse for his co-workers and they don't really know about Sherlock anyway, or at least not his association with the late great consulting detective. There are usually more important things to talk about anyway, like how they were going to possibly cope with all the incoming trauma patients from a bad multi-car accident.

One morning, exactly one year and six months after Sherlock fell, when John comes home from work, exhausted from dealing with the results of a bunch of stupid fucking kids going after each other with knives, he finds a rather tall man with dark and rather insanely curly hair standing in his sitting room near the window, peering out at the street below. John thinks he's hallucinating so he just sits down on the sofa and scrubs at his face except he realizes if he was hallucinating then he'd never imagine Sherlock in jeans and definitely not in an old faded t-shirt. There is a rather battered looking dufflebag in the armchair that Sherlock had always used before. And John realizes that somehow, impossibly, Sherlock is alive. He's still on the couch when he huffs out "Jesus... you're a bastard, you know?" in Sherlock's general direction. He wonders if he should be making a scene, maybe punching Sherlock in the jaw, but he really is too tired to think let alone move right now. So he says, "I'm too fucking tired for this right now." Sherlock gives a tiny nod in answer which John doesn't see because he is already in the bathroom washing his face and brushing his teeth before he goes upstairs and falls into bed.

He manages to sleep until 3 in the afternoon, which is good enough, he supposes and he has the night off so it won't matter that much. Sherlock is still by the window when he comes downstairs and shuffles about making tea. He doesn't offer any to Sherlock only because he is still half convinced that there is a ghost standing in his sitting room. He drinks his tea while staring down at the worn wood of the table. When he finishes it, he takes the time to wash the mug and set it in the draining rack. Finally, he goes back out to the sitting room and stands there with his arms folded across his chest. Sherlock turns and comes to stand in front of him. John is tense for a moment and then he decides to go with his original instinct of hitting and hauls off and slaps Sherlock right across one of those ridiculous cheekbones. He's pretty sure Sherlock could have stopped him, but he doesn't. Then, because John is probably still more than a little tired or that is what he tells himself, John steps into Sherlock and wraps his arms very tightly around the other man's waist and presses his face into Sherlock's collarbone and the curve of his neck. Sherlock's arms come up after a moment and are wrapped just as tight around John's shoulders. John has no idea what to say so he just hugs a little bit tighter. Sherlock is much thinner than he was and given that he didn't have much to him in the first place, it's a bit like hugging a skeleton. But he doesn't care because Sherlock is here. John doesn't even care right now if he's gone insane. It feels too nice right here wrapped up in his best friend. And then, because he is really, actually completely and utterly insane, he shifts his face and presses his lips to the pulse point in that very pale neck and when Sherlock goes to try to look down at him, John moves again and stretches just a bit so he can press his lips against Sherlock's. It's chaste really, just another point of contact between them, and they stay like that, touching from their lips down to where the inside of Sherlock's ankles are against the outside of John's. Neither of them know what to say because really what can be said that isn't being said by the way they're crushed together which is "I missed you so much" and "Don't you fucking dare leave me again". Talking will come later. Right now, right here is just too good to give up yet and John feels really, truly happy for the first time in 18 long months.