Chapter 1
"Remember Irene? You should. She was the only woman that ever outsmarted you. Not that you complained much", John smirked while scrolling down the blog post where he described her case.
"And the cabbie? Our first adventure together. It is very special to me", he added, rereading the "A Study in Pink" post.
"But my personal favourite is the one with Henry Knight. Our case away from London. Two friends having the time of their lives in the countryside, solving mysteries. I had never felt happier", said John dreamily, turning his head to the armchair next to him. The empty armchair. Where his friend will never sit ever again…
John covered his face with his palms and tried to suffocate the growing pain. He closed the laptop and stood up, shivering, his shoulders twitching from the waves of grief. Once again, for the hundredth time over the past month, he started wandering around the empty apartment, every corner of which kept memories of his happy life with him. Here he is in the kitchen, once full of test-tubes, syringes, highly toxic chemicals, human organs in the fridge… He smiled fondly at these dear pictures from the past. John still lived that life. He was expecting any second Sherlock to come in, covered with blood, with a severed head under his arm and order him with a bored voice "Pluck the eyes out and store them in the microwave, will you? I want to examine the irises after dinner. And put the head in the fridge. Or no, I's rather have it in my room. Let's see how long it will take for the hair to stop growing…" John felt he would offer himself for experiments if only Sherlock would come back.
But there is no coming back and he knew it. Not for him, or his friend, or their mutual friends, or anyone else. Sherlock was dead and buried. For John since the funeral the time had frozen. People carried on with their lives but how could he? Before Sherlock, he barely existed. When he met him, he felt his life had purpose – to be the closes person in his life. Sherlock made him feel alive.
He took a deep breath and looked around. Every item in the room had his name on it. Even in the quietest moments when Sherlock wouldn't speak for hour, hell, for days, John could hear the restlessness of his thoughts, the anxiety in his blood. Without doing a thing, he could bring so much energy about simply by his presence. And that now isn't even absence. It was void. John noticed the specs of dust dancing in the light. It was just like them running when on a case, walking around confused searching for answers.
John had to leave before he could lose his mind. He made an effort to get up and took his cane. He had started limping again but he didn't worry about it. He could support the weakness of the body but not the one of the heart.
He was walking slowly with a head down, lost in his thought. He heard the rolling of wheels, then the brisk pacing of a person in a hurry, a man, and then he brushed swiftly by him. John looked up. In front of him a toll man with a curly black hair was walking, having a small pink suitcase in tow.