John still had nightmares from that day.
All that blood. It was almost embarrassing. I mean, Christ, he had been an army doctor. He had seen people get blown in half. And yet, he still awoke in a cold sweat more nights than not.
The unnatural flapping of his dark coat.
The blood. God the blood.
The man he so much admired up on top of St. Barts, and then, lying in a pool of his own blood.
Sherlock was rushed away before John could even realize what had happened.
The medics rushed him inside, but it did no good. Sherlock was gone. John could do nothing, except get along with his life, which was surprisingly difficult to do.
Sherlock was an incredibly horrid person to live with, but even worse to live without.
On an almost daily basis, John would consider leaving, and moving out of 221B Baker Street, but life was just far too exhilarating living with Sherlock. He saw people in a whole new light, and saw things that he had never seen before.
But that was all over now.
Sherlock was—well…
John had not moved out of the flat. He could never do that to Mrs. Hudson. She was in as much pain as John.
In the six months after the fall, John and Mrs. Hudson both dealt with Sherlock's passing in their own manors. John, sulking around the flat, not showering for days, wearing the same clothes, if he even got dressed, not eating. Mrs. Hudson, cooking, cleaning, and doting over John, desperate to be needed in her time of mourning. It created a strange sort of equilibrium. They would come and go as they pleased, speaking silent words to each other, encouraging the other to keep going.
John eventually returned to his job at the surgery, walking around like a zombie most days.
He would occasionally get texts from Lestrade. "How are you?" "Fancy a pint?" John generally ignored them.
Mycroft popped by sporadically, but could never look John in the eyes. He would only stay for a few minutes, almost as if fulfilling a duty to make sure John was still in one piece, which he usually was.
John would sometimes talk to Sherlock, knowing he was not there, and knowing he looked bloody bonkers, but it got him through the day when he had a bad day at the hospital, or was just feeling down. When he usually saw him he was sitting in his chair, and John would be going about his business around the flat. Occasionally he would talk back, and that's when John knew he had absolutely lost it. Sometimes Sherlock would act like his old, annoying self, and sometimes John could just see the familiar ends of a coat in the corner of his vision. Sometimes they were vivid, sometimes a blur, just a fuzzy figure in the corner.