Disclaimer: I own nothing, profit from nothing etc etc.
Here be spoilers, you have been warned!
Title is taken from the poem 'Funeral Blues (Stop All The Clocks)' by W. H. Auden, which I reccomend you read, if you feel like it.
Beta'd by the incomparable slythrn-barnbum, without whom this probably would not have been completed.
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After, John doesn't know what to do. He doesn't go back to the flat, he can't. He goes to Harry's instead and sleeps on the couch. He sleeps on the couch for weeks and he doesn't go to the funeral. Harry is worried but she doesn't press the issue.
Lestrade comes by. He went to the funeral. Mrs Hudson was there, he tells John. Mycroft wasn't. John's expression darkens but he keeps his eyes fixed on the floor and his mouth shut, the same as when the D.I. tried to question him when it happened. Lestrade sighs and asks John to call him when he decides he wants to talk. He doesn't come by again and in the six weeks he spends sleeping on his sisters couch, John Watson never speaks a word to anyone.
...
The first time John sets foot back in 221b Baker Street it feels like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs. It looks just like it did the last time they were here together. All Sherlock's instruments are still set up in the kitchen, his second best dressing gown is draped over the arm of the couch. Peculiarly, no dust has settled. John sinks slowly into a chair and is suddenly unbearably tired. He wants to sleep. He wants to sleep in his own bed.
He takes his shoes and socks off and then finds he is unable to get up from his chair, that his limbs are leaden and unwilling to obey his commands and so he just sits there. He sits still and lets the silence wrap around him like a blanket. He still feels like he can't get air in his lungs.
As he stares at the armchair where Sherlock used to sit his whole body starts to hurt. Suddenly all the pain and confusion and anger that have been hovering around him like a cloud ever since, making him numb, keeping anything from reaching him but never quite reaching him themselves are upon him. He feels them now, all at once, all over, jagged pieces that stab and tear. He pulls each shard into himself and lodges them carefully under his ribcage, close to his heart, piece by piece until his chest is tight with his grief and then he sits in his chair and stares and tries to understand why Sherlock isn't sitting opposite him.
The morning slips away and around noon Mrs Hudson enters brandishing a feather duster and gets the fright of her life when she sees him sitting there.
When John does not even acknowledge her she sits beside him and holds his hand and cries.
...
They go together to the cemetary, to the grave. John hasn't even seen it yet. He's not sure he wants to.
It's simple, just a name on a polished black rock. No inscription, no dates. John realises with a jolt that he never even knew when Sherlock's birthday was. A dull stab of anger hits him but vanishes as quick as it came. When Mrs Hudson leaves him alone he finds himself pleading senslessly with a headstone, begging a corpse that no longer contains whatever made Sherlock Sherlock to please not be dead. Please be alive. Please stop the pain that is now threatening to drown him, please save him.
He cries for the first time since Sherlock died.
...
He still doesn't go back to the flat. That one time is enough to convince him he isn't ready yet. He takes a room in a cheap B&B instead. He asks Mrs Hudson not to touch anything in the flat yet and she doesn't. She never presses about the rent but John pays it anyway.
...
When Lestrade and his team arrived on the scene they found John still standing in the street outside St Barts, staring at the blood staining the pavement. John has only the vaguest recollection of being asked endless questions and being unable to answer a single one of them.
...
John goes over and over that day in his head, replaying everything in slow motion. Stop. Rewind. Watch that bit again. Fast forward - what happened there? He replays the phone conversation he had with Sherlock endlessly, analyzing each word. He imagines different scenarios in his head, what he could have done differently. How he could have been better, faster, smarter, anything other than what he was. He could have, should have, should have stopped him, rather than stammering on the other end of the line in confusion and shock.
...
The official report is completed, Lestrade calls John.
They found blood on the roof, not Sherlock's but they don't know whose. CCTV cameras were disabled. No signs of a struggle.
John agrees to go to Scotland Yard and talk with Lestrade.
...
Sherlock told him to tell Lestrade he was a fraud, to tell everyone he met, anyone who would listen. John knows he will never speak these words to another human being as long as he lives.
He only knows a few things for sure anymore. He is John Hamish Watson. He is a doctor. Sherlock Holmes was his friend.
...
He goes to the Yard and tells Lestrade the whole story, from the first time they met Moriarty to the last. How he pretended to be an actor. Falsified records to back it up. Lestrade asks if he has proof and John has to admit he doesn't, not one bit. But that's the truth whether anyone believes it or not.
"I do believe you John, but there's nothing I can do."
John realises for the first time that Lestrade looks absolutely shattered by this.
...
In his darkest moments, John blames himself for ever leaving Sherlock's side. He should have realised something wasn't right the minute Sherlock failed to show any concern over Mrs Hudson. He should have known something was going on. If he had, maybe Sherlock would still be alive.
...
The day he properly returns to Baker Street, Mycroft's car comes for him. John refuses to get in it, storms upstairs and broods in Sherlock's armchair until Mrs Hudson comes and makes him tea.
The next day, Mycroft himself comes to the flat. John loses his temper. Shouts at him to get out, leave him be, he never wants anything to do with the elder Holmes again.
He will never forgive him for giving Moriarty the tools with which to destroy Sherlock, just as he will never forgive himself for his own failures.
If Mycroft looks vaguely broken as he leaves, John just tells himself that he deserves it.
...
He clears away Sherlock's laboratory equipment. Packs it carefully in boxes and puts it all in the basement.
He tells himself he will throw it out another day. Baby steps.
...
John Watson, M.D., goes back to being a doctor. He takes a job in Accident and Emergency at West Middlesex Hospital. He takes the night shift, long hours, hard work. It distracts him, keeps him busy and has him falling into bed exhausted at the end of every shift. He volunteers for every weekend and public holiday. Mrs Hudson frets about his 'working himself to death'.
...
John doesn't consider getting another flatmate. He's cleared Sherlock's things from the kitchen and tidied some of the clutter but Sherlock's violin is still propped in the corner, the skull still on the mantle. His bedroom is exactly as he left it and John keeps the door shut.
Mrs Hudson brings up reducing the rent one day, seeing as it is just him on his own now. It's a kind offer but John won't hear of it, won't have her being out of pocket. He takes on even more hours at the hospital to ensure he can pay the same amount that he and Sherlock paid together.
At least that's the excuse he makes to himself.
...
It turns out he needn't have bothered. Sherlock's will is read. He left everything to John. All his possesions and a small fortune. Family money, John assumes, as Sherlock rarely charged a fee for his services and it was hard to imagine him ever having had a part-time job to bring in extra cash. Regardless, it takes care of the flat situation.
John doesn't reduce his hours at work.
...
He goes out of his way to avoid St Barts.
...
One night in the small hours, a woman is brought to A&E after being involved in a traffic accident. Her injuries are minor, she was in the back of a taxi when it collided with another vehicle. Bit of whiplash, cuts from broken glass, bit shaken up. We're understaffed, would you mind terribly, Doctor Watson?
The woman turns out to be Molly Hooper. She's wearing a party dress and John can smell the alcohol on her breath. She is sitting on the side of the hospital bed with a wad of gauze pressed to her forehead, swaying slightly and John isn't sure if this is because of the drink or the head injury. Molly goes white as a sheet when she sees him and doesn't make eye contact. But she can't keep it up and when he's halfway through suturing the cut on her brow she bursts into tears and, sobbing, admits that it was she who called him that day, electronically disguising her voice, posing as a paramedic, lying to him that Mrs Hudson was at deaths door and luring him away from his friend. John is too shocked to speak and Molly presses on. She tells him Sherlock asked her to do it, she didn't know why, never asked, or she would never have done it and she is so sorry sorry sorry...
She sits and sobs this one word over and over before visibly making an effort to be quiet, pressing her lips together and putting her hand over her mouth. She sobs through her fingers and before he quite knows what he is doing, John is sitting beside her on the hospital bed and putting his arm around her.
It was Sherlock who had him lured away, and not some nefarious force. John thinks about the blood on the roof and knows it was Sherlock's attempt at protecting him. The tightness that has been in his chest for nearly a year loosens just a little.
...
On the one year anniversary, John calls in sick to work. In the dark, he stands outside Barts and looks at the building. It is here that Sherlock came into his life and here that he lost him. John stands there for a long time, studiously avoiding looking at a particular spot on the pavement, before walking away.
It is still relatively early and he goes to a pub and picks up a woman. Goes home with her so he doesn't have to be alone in the flat tonight. Her name is Melanie and she's a hairdresser. She makes him coffee in the morning. She's nice.
Sherlock would have hated her.
...
Eighteen months after The Accident - he has taken to calling it The Accident in his head - John starts to feel the world around him again. Just a moment, walking home at the end of a shift. The sun is coming up and London is coming alive all around him. Just for a moment, John allows himself to feel alive too and it's the first time in eighteen agonizing months that he forgets - just for a moment - that his best friend hurled himself off the roof of a building.
It's small. But it's something.
...
His therapist sometimes asks if he misses Sherlock. John's answer is always the same. "Every single day".
...
John takes Mrs Hudson to lunch every Thursday. They go to the same place. It has an excellent wine selection and as Thursday is John's night off, they always indulge in a little afternoon tipple. She tells him all the gossip with the neighbours and John tells her the hospital gossip. He knows who is sleeping with whom, who has a drinking problem, who slept in the office last night. Sherlock taught him to look for the signs and now he does it without thinking.
Mrs Hudson tells him he's a good boy. John still feels so guilty for leaving her alone right after it happened.
...
John has a date with Christina from radiology. He takes her to a matinee performance of a new play showing in the West End because they both work nights. Sherlock probably wouldn't have hated Christina because he probably wouldn't have even registered her existence. But John likes her.
...
Mrs Hudson always leaves dinner out in the flat for when he comes home from work. Something light, so he doesn't get indegestion when he goes to bed. Sometimes it's hot, like she got up early to make it for him. Sometimes she joins him and eats her breakfast while he eats dinner. It becomes a routine.
...
It doesn't work out with Christina. She ends things because he never brings her back to the flat and never tells her why. She thinks he has intimacy issues.
For about a week there is a rumour going around the hospital that he is married or living with someone. He doesn't bother to correct them and they soon find something else to talk about. They're not entirely wrong anyway. John sometimes feels as though he is living with a ghost.
He makes up his mind not to date people from the hospital anymore.
...
He runs into Lestrade sometimes at work, usually if he treats something like a stab wound and has to report it. John's colleagues note the familiarity. At the hospital he's not unfriendly but he is distant, not on a first name basis with anyone, always 'Doctor Watson'.
The D.I. always calls him 'John'.
...
He goes to Sherlock's grave every other weekend. Washes the headstone, pulls up weeds, trims the grass. He bought gardening equipment for the sole purpose. There are always fresh flowers there, bright colours. Mrs Hudson. She must come at least once a week.
It is the sort of activity Sherlock would regard as pointless, a product of useless sentiment. After all, the deceased do not care about the state of their graves. The deceased no longer care about anything. He wouldn't have understood it is an action to comfort the living.
Sherlock's grave is the neatest in the cemetary, the most cared for, the most loved. The idea that this would annoy Sherlock is one that John finds immensly satisfying.
...
John starts to live again for real, a bit at a time. He goes on more dates. Sometimes he goes out for drinks with people from the hospital. He is on a first name basis with some of his colleagues. He goes to the wedding of an old army buddy. He exists in the world again.
...
He repaints the kitchen and buys a new couch. Gets a new tv, plasma screen. New curtains. He doesn't repair the bullet holes in the wall. Sherlock's room remains untouched, door firmly closed.
...
He sees other people at the grave sometimes. Mrs Hudson replacing the flowers. Molly on occasion. Even Lestrade, once. John always keeps his distance, lurks out of sight until they have gone. The private time he spends with Sherlock is important to him.
...
He has a copy of the casefile on Sherlock's death. When he can't sleep he pulls it out and flips through, although he knows every word by heart. Sherlock's suicide haunts him, even two years later, and John suspects that will never change. He goes through the pages like a bad habit. The blood on the roof nags at him. Not Sherlock's. DNA indicates male, but not anyone in any known database. B positive. That's it. He doesn't know how to figure out any more about it, wouldn't know where to start.
John is a very intelligent man but he is not Sherlock Holmes.
...
John switches off night shift and onto evenings. Starts at five, gets off at two.
He sees daylight again.
...
On a grey drizzly afternoon as John walks through the cemetary, watering can in hand, he comes up short. Mycroft is standing before the grave, head bowed, shoulders slightly hunched. John hesitates for a second and then walks up to stand beside him.
They stand there together for a few minutes without speaking before Mycroft turns and walks away. John knows that the anger between them has been put to rest. Something inside him loosens a little further.
...
Mrs Hudson's brother dies after a long illness and John accompanies her to the funeral. They travel to Kent by train and as the green fields roll by John can hear Sherlock's voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to him. 'The lowest and vilest alleys in London don't present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside'.
He is glad when they get back home.
...
One evening near the start of his shift they bring in a girl. She jumped from the top of a high rise. Bringing her to the hospital is an arbitrary matter. John pronounces her dead on arrival and then goes to the bathroom and throws up.
...
On what will turn out to be the last day he ever visits his therapist, John quite literally bumps into a woman in the park. It is a bright Monday morning and the woman has blonde hair that catches the sunlight. Her name is Mary Morstan. She is a teacher. John askes her for coffee and she accepts.
...
He is in a pub one night with some colleagues to celebrate someones promotion. When it's his round, John goes to the bar and finds himself standing next to Sally Donovan. It is the first time they have encountered each other since The Accident and she looks surprised to see him.
She stops herself from looking over her shoulder but John catches the slight movement and flicks his eyes to the corner where Anderson is trying to look inconspicuous, and snorts softly. Sally opens her mouth, "John-"
"Doctor Watson," John corrects sharply. He pays for his round and carries the drinks back to his table. Sally is left staring after him, brows drawn tightly together.
...
John takes Mary to the most exclusive resturaunt in London. He uses an old contact of Sherlock's to secure the table. It costs him the earth but he doesn't mind. He wants to impress Mary.
...
Lestrade finally breaks things off with his wife for good and when he phones, he is already half cut. John meets him in a pub near the Yard. At one point Lestrade puts his head in his hands and says "How did it go so wrong?" and John knows he isn't talking about his marriage.
John slaps him on the back and buys them both another pint.
...
He and Mary have been together for just over three months when she finally asks why he never invites her back to his flat. She asks bluntly if there is someone else, the question that has ended every fling he's had ever since The Accident. Mary is special. John thinks he could love her. He knows that if he doesn't want to lose her, he has to tell her the truth.
So slowly, agonizingly, he tells her the story of Sherlock, the story of their friendship, the story of how he died. He tells her how sure he is that there is more to Sherlock's death than meets the eye but how he will never know, never understand.
It is the first time he has ever spoken of Sherlock to someone who did not already know him, or know of him. He cries for the second time since Sherlock died. This time, Mary cries with him.
...
It hurts less to think about Sherlock.
...
John brings Mary back to the flat.
As they are coming in the front door, Mrs Hudson is going out. John introduces them. Mrs Hudson doesn't say anything but she beams at them both, her eyes sparkling.
As Mary steps inside the flat for the first time, John feels inexplicably anxious, his heart is pounding and his stomach twists. But Mary just looks around quietly. Her eyes land on Sherlock's chair and his violin and the bullet holes in the wall, taking it in, lining up what she is seeing with what she has been told. And then she takes John's hand and holds it tight.
...
Occasionally, John experiences moments of extraordinary de-ja-vu. He will walk past a place they went together, or smell Sherlock's brand of aftershave on someone walking past and suddenly a rush of memories will hit him. It doesn't hurt like it used to but it still hurts.
...
The first time Mary asks to come to the grave with him, John reacts badly. They have their first fight. Mary tells him that he needs to let Sherlock go and John knows she is right but the words that come out of his mouth are "I can't".
...
John goes to the grave and does not tend it but instead sits on the grass in front of it for a long time. He talks to Sherlock, not out loud but inside his head, and Sherlock talks back. But he offers no solution because he is just a voice in John's head and John cannot for the life of him think what his friend would have to say about all this.
...
John and Mary do not speak for a week. Mrs Hudson fusses and frets and makes a lot of tea. She tells him that Sherlock would not want him to be unhappy.
...
John apologises to Mary on a Friday. He asks if she'll go with him to the grave that weekend. She accepts.
When he leads her through the cemetary to the grave, she does not speak but watches in respectful silence as John goes about his well practised routine. The day is clear and beautiful and the atmosphere in the cemetary is peaceful and as they leave John feels as though Sherlock may have approved.
...
John never knows, but Mary returns to the cemetary without him, just once. She goes and stands before the polished black stone, prepared to have a frank talk with this man she never met but who has become an intimate part of her life. What she says is this: "I didn't know you, Sherlock Holmes, but you must have been an extraordinary man to make John love you so much. And I don't know why you left the way you did, but I think you must have had a good reason. So I don't want you to worry about him. I'm taking care of him now."
...
John is long used to living without Sherlock but sometimes he forgets. He'll be doing the Sunday crossword and will look up to ask Sherlock for the answer to a clue he doesn't know. He still boils the kettle and automatically makes a cup of tea for Sherlock, just the way he likes it, before remembering that there's no one to give it to.
...
On the third anniversary, John doesn't go to Barts. Instead, he spends it having dinner with Mary's parents. Mary is aware of the date and she asks if he wants to cancel, but John says no. It ends up being a pleasant evening. Mary's parents like him. John wonders if Sherlock would have liked Mary.
...
When a particularly sensational crime pops up on the news, John thinks of Sherlock. Thinks of how he would love it. Then he changes the channel.
...
When he and Mary have been together for just over a year, John buys a ring. He takes the night off work and takes Mary to dinner at her favourite resteraunt. It is a fairly warm evening and they take a walk along the river afterward.
He goes the whole nine yards, gives the little speech, goes down on one knee.
Mary says yes.
...
Mrs Hudson is over the moon. She weeps and clings to him. John clings back.
...
They have a party at a resteraunt near Baker Street. Mrs Hudson organizes it.
John's colleagues from the hospital, and his army and medical school friends come. Harry comes and stays sober. It is the first time Mary and his sister have met and they get on like a house on fire. Mary's friends, some of whom he knows and some he doesn't, all congratulate them. Mary's parents are there and her father tells anyone who will listen how much he approves of his little girl marrying a doctor. Lestrade shows up and gives John a good natured ribbing about the perils of married life, flirts shamelessly with Mary.
Later in the evening, when everyone is merry-drunk and laughing, John sits back and takes it all in, all these people gathered to wish them well. He misses Sherlock in this moment but for the first time it doesn't take away from his happiness.
...
The problem comes of where to live. Mary, who has been a miracle of patience and understanding, helped him enjoy his life again and above all else has always been honest and straightforward with him, tells him she does not want to begin married life in 221b Baker Street. John knows she is right.
So he gathers up all his strength and asks Mrs Hudson to advertise for new tennants. Tears glitter in her eyes but she tells him she is proud of him.
...
There is a legitimate break-in at Baker Street. Nobody was home but the place is ransacked. As John walks through inspecting the damage he sees that the door of Sherlock's room is ajar and feels sick. Inside, he discovers a number of things missing or broken. It feels like a violation.
Lestrade comes with a team and they do all the usual things. When he comes to Sherlock's bedroom, the Detective Inspector goes slightly pale and just stands quietly for a moment, still brought up short by Sherlock Holmes after all this time.
It seems like a routine burglary, the TV and stereo are missing as well as some other things. Lestrade promises to look into it but John well knows he has better things to do. He says thank you. Lestrade puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes hard as he leaves.
...
Mary and Mrs Hudson help to sort through Sherlock's room. They fold his clothes and put them in boxes marked for charity. They decide to leave his bed for the new tennants, it was hardly used anyway. They box up all his papers and notes and John sets them aside to put in storage, unable to throw away the evidence of his friends genius.
John finds a tarnished pocket watch at the back of a drawer. He thinks it must be a family heirloom, it's obviously very old. He thinks he should probably give it to Mycroft but he's not sure how to get in touch with him these days, short of going to the Diogenes Club - an experience he hopes never to repeat. He decides that if Mycroft wanted it he would have come for it long ago and so he keeps it. This, and Sherlock's beautiful violin, will be the only mementos he keeps of his friend in his new life.
...
They find a flat halfway between the hospital and Mary's school. Mrs Hudson is happy for them but wonders what she will do without him. John assures her that there's no way her new tennants can possibly be as stressful as he and Sherlock were. He tells her he is only a phonecall away should she need anything. Promises they will still have their lunch date every week.
Mrs Hudson has become an important part of his life. He realises he will miss her.
...
When John arrives home from work one night a week before he is due to move out of 221b, he knows as soon as he steps through the front door that something isn't right. There is no sign of forced entry, nothing is out of place but a soldiers instincts kick in and the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He proceeds slowly and silently up the steps, counting them as he goes, seventeen in total. He grips his umbrella, ready to use it as a weapon.
When he steps into the flat and sees Sherlock sitting in his chair, he thinks he has lost his mind.
His throat constricts, his chest fills packed, all he can hear is his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He feels like he did as he watched Sherlock plummet from the roof of Barts, a scene that replays torturously in his memory now.
In the first days after it happened he had seen Sherlock many times, as though he were standing right before him or sitting next to him on the couch. As he stares now at the apparition he hasn't seen in so long, John wonders to himself if this is what going mad feels like.
The apparition is standing now, its mouth is moving, talking, but John can't hear the words. He feels cold. Distantly he recognises the first signs of shock. He reaches out a hand toward the hallucination and it's as though it is someone elses hand reaching out, detatched from him.
When the apparition reaches out a hand and grips the tips of John's fingers it is solid and warm and real and John yanks his hand away as he feels a jolt that hits him like an electric shock, all the way from his fingertips to his toes, short circuiting everything. As though from a great distance he can hear Sherlock's voice saying his name and his last sensation is of strong hands gripping his arms tightly as his knees give out, of slumping into a solid body and arms that hold his weight as he slowly sinks to the ground and the world goes black.