Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock and if I did, we'd all have seen season 3 by now.

And I'm not a native speaker of English, so please forgive any mistakes

A.F – After the Fall

John Watson was numb. He had been numb for almost three weeks now, ever since he had been forced to watch his best friend plummet to his death.

Well, that wasn't quite true. The first thing he had felt was a sharp pain that ripped right through his body and pierced his heart with a force that had sent him reeling. After that, his mind had started to form a near-impenetrable shell around itself to protect what was left of the man John Watson had been B.F. – Before the Fall.

That man was still there somewhere and sometimes, if you looked really hard and caught him at the right moment, you could see a glimpse of his old spirit shining through. But after less than a second, he would remember and the mask would fall into place again.

Mrs Hudson, Molly and Lestrade had tried to get him to socialize again and even Mycroft had paid him a visit to "check up on him". All he had received from John had been an icy glare and an equally frosty "Get out". Maybe one day John would be able to forgive Mycroft the role he had played in his brother's death, but that was going to take a long time.

The other three, even Lestrade, in spite of his own involvement in the events leading up to Sherlock's death, had been treated more gently, but no less firmly. John just didn't see the point.

He had been so alone when he had come to London after being invalided home from Afghanistan and hadn't thought he might never recover from his limp, even though he knew perfectly well that it was psychosomatic.

Mere weeks later he had met Sherlock and the day after that, the limp had gone. Mycroft had been right. John hadn't been haunted by the war, he missed it. Sherlock gave him that excitement and adventure he yearned for. Occasionally John had even been awarded a glimpse into the detective's heart as well as his great mind. All of this was more than enough for John and made everything he put up with from Sherlock, be it the body parts in the fridge, the violin playing at three in the morning or just the man's own irascibility and impatience with people he considered intellectually below him. Which was more than 99% of the population.

In spite of all his failings – and John would be the first to admit that there were many – Sherlock was still the best and the wisest man he had ever known or ever would know.

Because, no matter what the papers said, no matter what Sherlock himself had said during his last phone call, John would never believe it.

He had been there when Sherlock had solved the cases Rich Brook a.k.a. Moriarty had claimed Sherlock had organized himself. He knew that Sherlock's genius had been real. Mycroft was living proof that such genius ran in the family and both brothers had had it in spades.

But, unlike Mycroft, Sherlock had been driven by his need to escape the mundane. Yes, he may well have had the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, but both practices were too theoretical. Sherlock had been the kind of person who needed the results of his work to be seen, if not by the public, then by the people closest to him. That's the frailty of genius, it needs an audience. When Sherlock had said this, he and John hadn't known each other for much more than a day and he had been talking about the serial killer who had been giving him so much joy at the time, but even then John had been quick to agree, having a perfect example to support the statement in front of him.

But the point of organized crime was to make sure that ideally, no one would acknowledge your work, or, failing that, to make sure that it couldn't be traced back to you. If John had needed any convincing regarding Sherlock's innocence, the man's need to be admired and for his genius to be seen would have been more than enough.

So, what hurt John almost as much as Sherlock's death was the fact that he hadn't trusted john enough to tell him the truth. Why had he really jumped off that bloody roof?

John sighed.

Well, he'd never find out now, would he? But, God, did it hurt! If there was anything that could penetrate his shell like a hot knife through butter, it was the thought of Sherlock not having trusted him with his last secret.

Of course Sherlock had always been very private and had never really opened up about what was going on, let alone his own feelings on a particular matter, but John had always believed himself to be at least a bit of an exception to the rule.

After all, hadn't Sherlock freely admitted to being scared after he had "seen" the hound at Baskerville? Hadn't he said that John was his only friend? Their relationship had been difficult to describe at best, but he had thought that they were close enough for Sherlock to be able to trust him enough to know that John would never believe that it had all been a lie and not to betray his secret.

Now, however, any certainty John had had concerning his place in Sherlock's life had been taken away from him, leaving nothing but the pain of Sherlock's death and his last mystery in its wake.

And, of course, the absolute certainty that Sherlock was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. Oh yes, John Watson believed in Sherlock Holmes and he knew he always would.