Title: The Letter
Summary:
On the advice of his therapist, John writes a letter to Sherlock.


The Letter


Dear Sherlock,

I don't know why I'm doing this. Therapist said it might help to write things down instead of saying them out loud. You'd tell me it's a waste of perfectly good ink and paper. After all, you can't exactly read it. And you'd be right, just like you always bloody were. Insufferable bastard. Christ, I miss you. I miss the snarky remarks, the bullet holes in the wall, the damned violin. I even miss you reminding me that I'm an idiot. I miss you dragging me halfway across London to hunt down some potential murderer, I miss the way you always forgot the milk, I miss everything, Sherlock. I remember one time, you told me that you'd be lost without your blogger. Well, I'm lost without my absolute arse of a consulting detective.

You saved my life. I'm not sure if you ever picked up on that, but you saved me from my demons. You showed me so much. I owe you so much. It's lonely without you, but it hurts to remember. Everywhere I turn, it's almost like you're standing right there but I can't touch you. London just screams your name, every back street rubbish bin and every shady little cafe. I just want to understand why. Why didn't you talk to me? I knew you better than anyone. I picked up on every dangerous night, every facial expression, every little quirk. Why didn't I fucking know that you were going to do the most stupid, reckless thing? I can't get that image out of my head. You. Pavement. I've seen so many injuries, but nothing like that. I never realised how much blood could come out of a person. Makes me feel sick every damn time I get anywhere near where you fell. I'm angry at the world for washing away part of you. And I'll never forget pressing my fingers to your wrist. You were so warm. I thought that maybe, just by some miracle, you'd survive. You were the most human person I've ever met, but so subhuman at the same time. I saw you, up on the roof, reaching your hand out like you wanted to grab me, grab something. Why couldn't I grab you? Why did the universe deem it fair that you could save my life, but I couldn't return the favour?

I fell in love with you, just a little bit. After a while, I stopped correcting people when they assumed we were together. I don't know if it was because I wanted that, somewhere deep down, or because I was tired of putting them straight. It was hard not to fall in love with you. You made me feel like a person again and not just some army-programmed robot. You stopped the nightmares and the flashbacks, you even stopped me from bloody limping within twenty-four hours of meeting me. Nobody really saw you. They saw correct assumptions and arrogance and a total psychopath. Sorry, sociopath. I saw the inappropriate laughter and that childish little spark you got in your eyes when we forgot to act like adults. I saw you turn up at Buckingham Palace in a sheet and find it hilarious. I saw you giggle like a little kid. At a crime scene. I saw you eat entire meals (Mycroft still doesn't believe me) and I saw you yell at crap daytime TV to cure your boredom. I still can't watch Jeremy Kyle without thinking of you. It was me that you chose to fall asleep on when the all-night case solving caught up with you. It was me that you clung to that time you got the flu. I can't picture you letting anybody else doing that. Sounds a bit daft and you'd probably scoff, but I feel like it was fate that Mike brought us together that day. And even if he didn't, something would of. We were unavoidable. You know how people go on about soul mates? I believe in that stuff. Especially now. We balanced each other out so well. You made my life hell sometimes, with the violin at four in the morning and the eyeballs in the microwave, but if I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn't hesitate. You can play a whole orchestra set and keep an entire morgue in the bread bin, just please, Sherlock. You can't be dead. Your name doesn't belong in the same sentence as that word. I refuse to believe that something as fickle as death can stop you from living.

You were my best friend and I'll never meet anyone like you. When you told me that you were the world's only consulting detective, you weren't wrong. You were also the only man in the world with eyes that could tell a thousand stories about so many people. You were the only real thinker, the only human that could take a dead man and make him live again. So what I really want to say is thank you. Thank you for being irritating, arrogant, a nightmare to live with and the most insane, wonderful, beautiful person that I've ever met. And I don't believe for a second that you told me a single lie. I know Moriarty was real. I know you were the furthest thing from a fraud that a person could ever be. You really were that clever.

I'll leave the kettle on for when you decide that death is boring.

Yours,
John Watson

PS: Anderson is still a tosser, just in case you were wondering.