After farewelling Sherlock's grave, John returned with Mrs Hudson to Baker Street in a police car that Lestrade had provided, for their reception was unlikely to be a quiet one. At first John had thought that he wouldn't be able to go back to the flat for a while, but, upon reflection, found that he was unable not to return. He knew he needed time away from continual reminders of Sherlock, but he also knew he would never completely let go of his best friend, no matter how long he spent away from the flat.
Ever since losing sight of Sherlock as he was wheeled away, his head and pale face covered in startlingly bright blood, John had been a distraught mixture of extreme emotions that churned and washed through him in powerful crushing waves, and which regularly brought him out of the fitful nightmare-plagued semi-consciousness that had replaced his sleep, sweating and panting, and often choking on throaty sobs.
The funeral had only been attended by Mycroft, Molly and Lestrade, apart from himself and Mrs Hudson, and as it was, John had found it hard not to spit poison at Lestrade, for all the sincerity of his condolences. Molly had been solemn and curiously as dry eyed as Mycroft – not that John registered this, for he was too immersed in his own mourning for his friend. John could not bring himself to speak, let alone look at Mycroft, although the one time he had he had seen a dark shadow of ashamed culpability blanketing his expression. Of the party only John was aware of Mycroft's instrumental role in Sherlock's downfall; a matter for which John could never forgive him. Mycroft had been civil enough to speak with Lestrade and Molly, and even condole Mrs Hudson, but he left John to his thoughts, as he so evidently desired, aware of the simmering resentment that was pouring out from his brother's only true friend.
In the car on the way back John had felt like he was drowning, suffocating without the vitality and air that Sherlock seemed to emanate. The funeral had been the end. Before then John had been able to believe, to con himself, that Sherlock had just played a clever trick, that he would walk through the door demanding tea as he took off his coat, or that his phone would beep with a text from the consulting detective summoning him to the other side of the country. Now that Sherlock's body was entombed in the ground it felt like the final farewell; the one action there was no coming back from. He had been the most alive person John had ever known, and yet now, he was dead, and there were so many things that had been left unsaid between them.
John felt as if his soul was drenched in misery and grief. Disconnected scraps of him felt that Sherlock was alive; he had to be alive; he wasn't allowed to be dead. But he had listened to his last devastating words, had seen him fall with his own eyes, felt the cold wrist for a pulse that was unforthcoming, seen the bloodied face of his friend. There was no possibility that Sherlock could have survived…but it was Sherlock; he always had a clever solution, he was always one step ahead…and yet, it seemed that, at long last, Sherlock had been outsmarted, outmanoeuvred; beaten at his own game. All the evidence indicated it. For all this, however, John knew that the large part of him that was attached to Sherlock, which had died with Sherlock, was not completely extinguished. The tiny flare of hope was his only comfort, and he clung to it with a fierce determination, unwilling to let go of hope or his friend, as if, by holding on to it he could bring Sherlock back. Until that was gone, he would not – could not – utterly believe that Sherlock was gone forever. His frail hope waged fierce and unrelenting war with his common sense, which was larger and stronger, aided and armed by his in depth medical knowledge, but unable and unwilling to let go. This alternating hope and desolation was balanced by the boiling cauldron of hate that he felt for Donovan and Anderson and Moriarty. John, usually very mild in his emotions, was not able to temper the anger and resentment he felt for Donovan and Anderson, both of whom he was sure without a shadow of a doubt, were in some way responsible for the lack of support and belief in Sherlock in the ruling powers. Moriarty, he knew, had to be involved, instrumental, in Sherlock's murder – for he was sure that it was murder, and certainly not suicide. Thinking about Moriarty made him feel irrational, coupled with a rush of unsated blood lust and a desire for revenge, worsened only by the fact that Moriarty was dead. Logic-impaired as he was in his state of whirlpooling emotions, John knew that if Sherlock had killed Moriarty himself, he would never have felt the need to jump, and therefore drew the conclusion that Moriarty had committed suicide for some reason of his own.
The ricocheting of his emotions left him feeling drained, for his mind was barely left any time to dwell on one particular train of thought, for the memories were inextricably interlinked, and would pull him mercilessly from one to another, so that he might feel a thundering surge of anger and adrenaline one minute and crippling grief the next.
Having been hustled through the jostling crowd of insensitive reporters by several burly policemen, exposed beneath the harsh light of the flashing cameras, and let themselves in, Mrs Hudson was tactful enough to invite John into her rooms for a cup of tea, helping him to put off the moment when he would have to walk into their – his – the rooms, and know that Sherlock was not there; that, for once, he would not be coming back. She didn't offer to come up with him, seemingly aware that it would feel like an invasion the space that he and Sherlock had shared, and that would always belong solely to Sherlock, an invasion that would disturb the objects and memories Sherlock had left behind.
John remained silent as Mrs Hudson gestured him to a chair in her small kitchen, murmuring words he didn't register as she bustled about arranging and preparing the tea things. He couldn't bring himself to say anything; the sound of the spoon clinking against the mug and the kettle boiling up to a thunderous volume were all too reminiscent of the countless times he had prepared tea for himself and Sherlock, mainly for Sherlock. The thought pierced him with renewed sorrow and he fought hard to hold back a fresh barrage of tears. Almost every time he had made tea for Sherlock he had made it with irritated annoyance at his friend's laziness, but had still done it for him. John pursed his lips, blinking hard as he tamped down the burgeoning regret that there had not been enough times when he had not felt that resentment, that the moments when he had made the drink for Sherlock "just because" had been too few, and yet now it seemed he would never make him tea any more.
After the tea (John's cup remaining largely untouched due to a thick lump of knotted emotions in his throat) John went silently back upstairs, barely managing to croak out a thank you for Mrs Hudson, who watched his bowed retreating form with anxious eyes. He went up the stairs slowly, his feet heavy, the stairs creaking, his hand on the railing, his leg twinging him painfully in a way that it hadn't since he had met Sherlock. On the landing outside their – the door, he paused, pulling himself upright through sheer force of will, before going in.
Downstairs, Mrs Hudson listened for the sound of the door closing, her face creased with worry as she poured away John's tea.
John simply stood in the middle of the lounge. Sherlock's possessions and remnants of his habits littered the rooms, some of them already packed into boxes by Mrs Hudson. Various papers from Scotland Yard (not all of them acquired legitimately) and sealed plastic evidence bags, both their laptops left open on the desk in the midst of a mess of papers, half-finished experiments with flasks and beakers filled with unnamed liquids suspended from retorts or left carelessly on the kitchen counter, a slide still attached to the microscope, the pipette beside it still half full, an abandoned chess game with some of the pieces knocked over and gathering dust, the skull, Sherlock's chair – the grey leather still wrinkled from the last time he had sat in it. John turned slowly on the spot, taking in the objects from where he stood. It was not until he saw the shot up wall and yellow smiley face, and Sherlock's blue dressing gown draped carelessly over the sofa below that his resolve and barriers crumbled, releasing the tide of unruly emotions they had kept at bay in a choking volley of dry sobs and tears that brought him to his knees.
From an outsider's perspective John appeared to be dealing with the loss of his closest friend and flatmate well, although his mood remained subdued and melancholic. The flat was tidier than it had ever been, but the ocean of order lapped at the shores of small islands of disarray that John had left as Sherlock had left them; small monuments and edifices in tribute to Sherlock's habits. John continued work at the surgery, for Sarah had been kind and pitied him for the loss of his friend, aware of how close they had been. But his limp had returned, and refused to go away. He went to the shops, just as he had done when Sherlock was alive, but no longer argued with the chip and pin machines, he just stared at them. He still bought enough food for two, and occasionally would leave slices of toast on plates when he left the house, just as he had done when Sherlock was unoccupied with a case, as a way of stealthily feeding him; but when he returned the toast would still be there, untouched, hard and shrivelled, and another part of his heart would wilt as it was drenched in the acid rain of his sorrow. He had inordinate amounts of spare time, and not a week went by when he did not return to Sherlock's gravestone, either to simply be there with his friend, or to talk to it. He would occasionally frequent the pub, but always alone, and he eventually gave up on that after the third incident in which people had recognised him from the papers and openly mocked Sherlock, which had ended in a fight and several fractured bones on the antagonists side. Lestrade had managed to hush up the matter, rescuing John from court proceedings and a stint in prison for assault and grievous bodily harm, not that John cared – he almost would have been glad to go to prison in Sherlock's defence, even if it was only of his name, and not himself.
In the first few months Lestrade had visited him a few times, but John's stony silences were eloquent enough to demonstrate his feelings regarding the Detective Inspector, his superiors, and particularly his subordinates, and that he squarely laid blame for Sherlock's apparent suicide upon them. Greg could not deny John's anger of being anything other than justified. He himself had been sure that Moriarty was the criminal that Sherlock had said he was, not some idiot actor called Richard Brook. His conscience constantly needled him about Sherlock's death, telling him that some part of the whole affair was his fault; that Sherlock's suicide rested clearly on his shoulders because he had listened to Donovan and Anderson's doubts, and mistrusted his own judgement and the genius and intelligence he had seen displayed by Sherlock every time they had met. Such a profound level of insight could never be fabricated for any case, and there had been moments when he had seen Sherlock genuinely concerned for the welfare of people involved – most often, John.
Neither Donovan nor Anderson had any scruples on that score; as far as they were concerned Sherlock Holmes had been a liar, and had no more truly been a prodigy of genius as the world's only consulting detective, than he had been their friend. He had only been "the Freak", and now, disgraced in death after his own suicide, he was nothing more than "the Liar". They had openly referred to him as such until Lestrade had threatened to reallocate them to a different division, if not demote them.
Privately Lestrade could not help but question Sherlock's suicide. He had never appeared to be the sort to choose such a weak way out; to simply give up because life had become too hard. Lestrade knew, for all the discredit and rumours that the papers were circulating, that Sherlock Holmes was tenacious, and would never take such an option. Hell, he had only taken the cases that he deemed challenging enough, and Lestrade found he could never entirely believe that he could have been so completely deceived in Sherlock's character, and moreover, that John had been deceived. It was nigh on impossible that Sherlock had orchestrated and paid for the crimes that he had helped to solve. Those who knew him, and were willing to see past his arrogant prickly exterior had to know that. If he had, then for what end?
On Lestrade's last visit to John – which had gone as all the previous ones had, with him standing and speaking awkwardly by the door, while John sat silent and brooding in his armchair – he had been about to leave, unable to maintain such a one sided connection any longer, especially when it was so clear that John despised him regardless of what amends he had tried to make, when he recalled what he had said early in their acquaintance. He hovered for a moment by the door, frowning.
"Look, John. I know you don't want to see me, and I know you lay blame on me for Sherlock," John twitched at the name, his hands tightening on the armrests of his chair, his eyes fixed on Sherlock's empty one opposite, "I don't deny that I had some responsibility for what happened. So I will leave until you ever feel, if you ever feel, like speaking to me again; you won't have to see me any more. But I will say this: shortly after we met, I told you that I thought Sherlock Holmes was a great man, and that one day, if we were very very lucky, he might even be a good one." Lestrade paused. "And I stand by what I said that day; I believe every word of it as much as you do; and I know that he is – was – a good man; a very good one. I don't know how, but I do know it." Lestrade gazed at the back and side of John's head for a moment, not that he expected any reply, then sighed and turned to leave.
"Greg." John's voice was soft and dry, and so unexpected Lestrade almost jumped. He stopped and turned around. John was still sitting as he had been before, his eyes fixed on Sherlock's chair. John's head nodded jerkily, his chin bowed until it touched his chest. "Thank you. He always was, and he still is." Lestrade nodded, although the gesture was more for himself than for John, then turned and left, wondering over the doctor's last sentence.
Lestrade's words had comforted John, and he clung to them, holding close the warm knowledge that beyond himself and Mrs Hudson and Molly there were people who still believed in Sherlock Holmes; the one and only consulting detective.
A month after Lestrade gave up visiting, however, John's condition declined. Graffiti in yellow paint had begun appearing on walls everywhere in London, bearing the legends; "Sherlock Holmes was a fake" and "Richard Brook was real". John's leg would tingle painfully whenever he saw them, and eventually the graffiti appeared on the door and windows of 221B, with flyers stuck through the letter box and under the door, and dozens of reporters approached him on the street and in the surgery asking for the inside story of "Sherlock Holmes; the Liar and Madman". John stoically weathered the endless barrage, but when the graffiti extended to desecrating Sherlock's grave stone, the gold scraped out of the carved lettering, and litter covering the ground, John first cleaned the headstone and surrounding area then refused to exit the flat.
He became gaunt, his eyes alternating between dull disinterest in life, and burning anger at the sound of the shouting reporters below the windows. His cheeks hollowed alarmingly, and his frame shrunk. His clothes hung off him as they would from a coat hanger, and he shuffled painfully about the flat. His lack of appearance at the surgery led to Sarah visiting him, only to be horrified at the change in his appearance. Mycroft, of course, discovered the situation through the various channels he commanded, and arranged for the rent to be paid, and for regular amounts of money for John's keep to be given to Mrs Hudson that he might be fed. Mrs Hudson and Molly, concerned for John's welfare, took it in turns to do the shopping, and would sit or stand over him as he picked at the meals they prepared for him. Often they found him standing in Sherlock's room at the foot of his bed, simply staring vacantly at it, his limbs locked and trembling from the effort of remaining in the same position all through the night. Other times he would sit on the sofa, staring at the blank television, not noticing or caring that it was not on. He rarely spoke to them, although Mrs Hudson said that sometimes she could hear him talking, although to whom she was not sure.
Mycroft, having taken the precaution of having the flat bugged in case John decided to take his own life, was the first to discover that John's conversations were between him and a hallucination that he was having of Sherlock.
After the desecration of Sherlock's grave, John turned to his memories of his friend. He became more and more inward looking until he began to hear and see Sherlock about the flat. John would talk to him, hearing the great detective's replies in his mind. He almost became himself as he had been before Sherlock's death, his limp disappeared, and he would write up the cases that Sherlock solved on his blog, unaware that Mycroft had had it hacked, and prevented the entries from being posted in the public domain. When Molly or Mrs Hudson appeared, however, John would return to his state of vacancy, unspeaking and unwilling to eat more than a few mouthfuls of whatever they put before him.
Mycroft ordered a Harley Street specialist to look into the recordings of John's one-sided conversations with his imaginary Sherlock, and to read the confidential files of the imaginary cases. The psychologist could only draw the obvious conclusions that Mycroft had already made; that John's psyche had sunk him into a private semi-created dream world, in which Sherlock existed. The pain of existing in the real world was too much for him to handle. There was little they could do – 'little' being used as a synonym for 'nothing'. Talking to John had already been proved ineffectual countless times, and telling him that he was beginning to act like he was insane was not likely to improve the relations that had frozen over between him and Mycroft.
Mrs Hudson and Molly were less willing to let the matter go. They would stand together in concerned and pitying silence at the foot of the stairs, gazing up towards the ceiling through which they could make out the faint sound of John's voice, and his footsteps on the carpet. There were times when they came in with his food that they would find cups of tea and plates of toast that they hadn't made left untouched, always on the same surfaces – on Sherlock's side of the desk, beside his untouched laptop where it lay gathering dust, and in a particular clear space by the kettle. The first time either of them had attempted to remove any of the items, they had been frightened enough to scream at the sudden volume and violence of John's reaction – shocked by the unexpected life and fire that had leapt into his eyes.
John's withdrawal had gone on for the better part of the year, before Molly and Mrs Hudson decided that something had to be done. Mrs Hudson wasn't exactly sure what Molly could do, but there was a steely determination in the pathologist that she had never seen before, and that she trusted. For her part, Molly was sure that it was well past the time when John should have been told. Ever since the papers became tired of the matter, she had felt that it was time to bring Sherlock back into the world of the living, and in so doing, John as well.
It was with her purpose in mind, therefore, that Molly entered the flat on a day when weak autumn sunlight was trying to make its way in through the curtains. She did not give any reasons for what she was doing, and nor did John ask for them, although she could see the faint surprise and objection in his eyes as she opened the curtains wide with a flourish that sent pillars of dust up into the sun that could now enter.
"I'm going to do something special for you, John," she announced, "it will make you feel better!" Molly reflected on how odd it was that until she had been forced into this position of caring for Sherlock's flatmate, she had never really addressed him by his first name. John, of course, did not reply, and she did not get any response from him until the flannel she had wet and wrung out touched his face.
Molly was not overly gentle; she wanted to shock John out of his stupor. He spluttered and waved his hands as she dragged the wet cloth over his face, and eventually was rewarded with his anger. John wrenched himself out of his chair.
"I don't want anything from you! I don't want something special! I don't want to feel better; I just want you to leave me alone!" He was shouting, and managing to stand without his walking stick. Molly stood her ground.
"I'll be back with some things later, all right?" She smiled warmly at him, her eyes compassionate through the cheery façade. John frowned, and limped back to his chair, turning his back on her and sitting down.
John spent some time reflecting on what Molly had said to him. He did not want her help or her pity. He did not want to feel better. The pain helped him to remember Sherlock; he refused to forget like everyone else did. He would hold on.
That day, he spoke to Sherlock. There was a great deal that had always been left unsaid between the two of them, expressed in other ways, but never really acknowledged for what it was.
"They want me to forget you, Sherlock," John said. It was afternoon now, and he was still in his chair, facing Sherlock's. "But I won't. You were my hero, Sherlock. You saved me from a fate worse than death. You brought life back into mine. I would have been some sort of dysfunctional automaton without you and your madness." John smiled faintly, then froze at the sound of a creak and a footstep on the landing outside. The openness in his expression faded at once, the cloud drawing over him once more. He did not turn around as the door opened.
Sherlock was standing in the doorway, his eyes flying over the flat, taking in all the details, making the appropriate deductions, drawing conclusions. He had gone out of the country, driven to the airport by Molly after Barts had closed and the body bag had been unzipped. He had been a step ahead of Moriarty the entire time. And now he had returned to his suffering friend.
Carefully, Sherlock moved into the kitchen, placing the shopping bags on the counter. There was a clink of glass as the jars of jam and honey that he had bought knocked against each other and a rustle of the plastic bags.
John, who had been listening to the sounds, eventually turned around, his patience broken. "Molly! I don't want anyth–" John froze, his eyes wide, his face pale.
Sherlock gave a tentative and apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, John…" He lifted up a hand, "I brought milk."
Sherlock did not say that Molly had told him everything – the emotionless silences, the reluctance to eat, the talking – or that she had begged him to come back. He allowed John his privacy and to keep his dignity intact. Not that he couldn't have deduced it all, but holding his tongue was something that Sherlock did for few people.