The third prompt from a list of writing prompts I'm working my way through.

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Ends

Everything and everyone must come to an end.

John Watson knew that. He knew it more than most people did, most people with their 9 to 5 jobs and hairdresser's appointments and cheerfully striped umbrellas. He'd seen ends. He'd seen plenty of them, bloody, mangled ends under hot glaring Afghanistani sun, sand sticking to red stains on khaki; he'd seen the ends of many ill-fated individuals in damp, drizzly London with a tall dark-haired long-coated figure hopping around them like some sort of hyperactive kangaroo and telling John their life story.

But for some reason, he'd never really thought about the end of Sherlock.

Or if he had, he hadn't taken the thoughts seriously, just dismissed them and went back to his cup of tea or his newspaper or his patient or Sherlock's excited deductions.

Yeah, everyone had to die, and Sherlock had come closer to it on a daily basis than most people who weren't actually in the middle of official warfare (Mycroft would beg to differ and claim that the streets of London were as much a war as anything John had seen overseas, but that was a sidetrack that he didn't need to go down right now, so he let it fall away with the roaring water of Reichenbach Falls).

But Sherlock had been…well…constant. He just…he didn't die. That was something John had realised pretty soon. He'd always known some way to get out of trouble, some way to save himself and drag John after him. His brain had always made that fizzling lightning-quick connection at exactly the right moment and he'd always grinned obnoxiously and said something smart to whatever the trouble was (he'd say it to the air molecules if they were the only ones there to listen) and when they were back in 221B panting and both probably bleeding from somewhere he'd always responded to John's frantic swearwrod-filled rant with confusion and slight resentment, as if didn't you trust me, John?

John pulled up a flower, some foreign flower he didn't know the name of – Sherlock would know, or would he? He'd never thought the solar system was important, would he feel it necessary to know the names of the flowers that grew near Reichenbach Falls? – and purposefully didn't look at the gouge in the soil where two people had struggled and fallen and thought yes, Sherlock. I trusted you.

But as Sherlock would have been so ready to point out, trust didn't really get you anywhere. No matter what they pretended to be, no matter what their IQ was, humans were humans and they would do human things, like cheat while playing poker and kiss people when they knew they shouldn't and wrestle with their arch-enemy right near the edge of a waterfall, for christ's sake.

There could have been other ends, though. There could have been. It hurt to think it, but Sherlock could have gone grey and John could have gone even more grey and they could have still been together.

Ridiculous thought. Stupid, stupid idea.

John had already shouted Sherlock's name many times, desperate shouts that teared through his lungs, shouts that still hovered unanswered in the shimmering spray of water.

Now was the time to say it quietly, over and over, to nothing but a flower, and John realised how theatrical and silly this must look because he'd seen so many ends, why would this matter, but oh, it mattered.

It was the end of Sherlock Holmes, only consulting detective in the world (he'd made the job up himself), the best and wisest man that Doctor John Watson had ever known and of course it bloody mattered.