I own nothing of the BBC or of Sherlock. This is purely a work of fanfiction.
Every night it's the same.
I open the refrigerator for some jam. My heart aches for some appalling severed body part to be swimming at the bottom of the drawer, but only normal things reside. It's strange – I never thought I'd be missing those things.
I eat at the counter. It's been completely cleared off now. No microorganisms, no bacterial colonies, no microscope. Just me and my jam.
I eat my nightly snack with apathy. The gelatinous treat never seems to satisfy me, and it used to fill me up. Jam had always been a thing of beauty on my tongue – I would let it rest and take in the savory sensation. Now it's a routine. A routine to get my mind off things. If I just have some jam, I'll feel better, I think. But I never do. I don't know why I kid myself, really.
I put the jam-covered spoon in the sink and I stand in the kitchen for a moment. Or, rather, many moments. I long for sound, for skittering, for fast-paced vigor. I want the sneering remarks. I want the scoffs. I want the breezy predictions and quick-witted quips.
Only now, if I'm lucky, I'll just hear myself talking aloud.
"You were a naughty boy, John," the voice says. "You ate half of that jam now, didn't you? Oooh, you're tummy's going to hate you in the morning."
At this point it usually is morning – very early morning at least. Eating jam takes a long time. Well, really it's more like hours of thinking with jam. But it isn't as long as the other hours.
The hours at work. The hours traveling the city. The hours making meals, doing chores, getting ready to wake up or go to bed. These hours are like thick mud, and I'm just barely sloshing though it. There are moments I find myself just sitting, not doing anything. It's gotten bad. I'll be in the middle of talking with a patient and I find myself not being able to function. I'm not a doctor, I'm just a wall they talk to.
The hours with my jam, though, are mine. They're my hours when I can remember the past but not feel hurt. I can choose what to savor. I'll think of that game of Cluedo or the intrigued remarks about my blog. The hours when I'm awake and doing things, however, are the most painful. Because a memory will pop up and I won't be ready for it. I'll be in a cab and look out the window and see a woman with a pink suitcase. Graffiti on the brick walls. A Vermeer exhibition.
After I put the jam away, I get ready for bed, and I sit. Just as I did when I came back from Afghanistan. I sit. Everything and nothing is in my mind at the same time.
I truly dread these moments. I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I can't. All I can do is sit in my bed, stolid, and wait for a sound. Wait for a voice in the night. Wait for my name to be called. It's really late when I finally do lie down.
Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling.
Recently, though, maybe for about a week, I've been looking forward to sleep. Because that's when I see him.
I see him in my dream.
And every night it's the same.
"John."
"Sherlock, come down now," I say on my phone. "We'll talk this out. Or I'll come up there."
"John, I can't –"
"I don't care, Sherlock." My heart is beating outside of my chest. I can't stand to see his teetering body near the edge. I can't let him do this. I can't let him jump. He can't go. He's my best friend. He wouldn't do that. I can save him; I've done it before, and I'll do it now.
"John, please listen to me-"
"Sherlock, I'm coming up!"
I am in rushing inside of the hospital now. I have no idea what is going on, but I think Moriarty is putting him up to it. Sherlock would never lie to me, never betray me by killing himself. He knows what that would do to me. He knows I wouldn't be able to live with it.
I avoid the tediousness of the elevator as I hoist myself up seemingly endless flights of stairs. My own will power is stronger than technology.
Finally, I get to the roof. Sherlock turns around, a look of panic painted on his face.
"John, no-"
A cataclysmic sensation rips through my flesh. It's familiar. This time though, it isn't my leg.
It's my chest.
I'm wheezing, on the ground, and the world is a blur. I can only taste, hear, smell, feel the bullet that has blasted through my body. Through my addled disarray, I manage to see Moriarty standing over me.
"Oh, Sherlock, look what the cat dragged in!"
But Moriarty isn't standing over me for long. Sherlock is in a terrorized rage as he throws Moriarty off the roof. His face has never been so flushed, his eyes have never seemed so luminous with hate.
Quickly, he turns to me and is now by my side. His eyes soften and dampen.
"John," he breathes.
"Sh-sherlock."
"John, Moriarty was blackmailing me to say I was a fake. If I hadn't, then he would've found you and killed you."
"But why did he want you to fall, Sherlock?" I'm a candle that is about to burn out; I feel cold yet warm and there's an intolerable sensation of a void that is filling my head.
"I needed to fall. I needed to fall to save you, but now you're dying!" Sherlock says through sobs. He is crying, unmitigated.
"But I saved you Sherlock," I say with a dying laugh, "I saved you and this is how it is supposed to be."
I smile and the world trickles away from me, but not – and thank God – from Sherlock.
In the morning, I feel refreshed. I've cheated the universe by doing the impossible. I've saved him. I was his martyr. But then the sunlight settles in around the room and the sheets across my body feel all too real. Everything is all too real.
The hours start again, and I go on without Sherlock.
But only barely.
Every night, I wait outside of John Watson's window. When he falls asleep, I climb into his room, and whisper the same thing into his ear every night.
"John, Moriarty was blackmailing me to say I was a fake. If I hadn't, then he would've found you and killed you."
The science of sleep tells me that my words enter his subconscious. I just hope that one day, after he wakes up, the subconscious becomes conscious knowledge. That he knows the truth. Because even though that I know he believes in me, I want him to know, concretely.
So he can live again.