A/N:This is my "John coping with Reichenbach" oneshot. It has a minor mention of one of my OCs from another longer work, but it's in passing and you needn't have read that to read this. This work is also posted on archive of our own. Reviews would be most welcome. :D
"Sanity is a cozy lie."
-Susan Sontag
When Sherlock died, something inside John broke. Something fundamental and irrevocable. Something that nothing could ever fix, no matter what. Even a miracle couldn't take him back to where he'd been. He had changed, and nothing and no one could do anything about it. He was back to how he was before, before he came back to life, before he loved, before he saved his pain-in-the-arse genius only to watch him die.
The brokenness, though, wasn't the worst part. The part that was the worst was that some days, he pretended he was ok. He would pretend that his heart wasn't a physically aching hole in his chest. He would pretend that Sherlock was just off somewhere, spending a few days on a case in Belarus or Bulgaria. Those days? Those were the worst part. For Sarah and Lestrade, they resonated like a bad joke in a room full of strangers. For Astrid, they were worse than the days where he did nothing, when he'd not move from his bed, or his chair, or whatever spot he'd chosen, and she'd call in sick for him (Sarah always understood) and she'd leave and go about her life because she couldn't bear to stay. The days where he would pretend were much worse. It seemed like if he could admit he was hurting, maybe it could get better, but you don't heal a broken arm by ignoring it. John wondered how you heal a broken heart. "Say all the things you never said," Ella had instructed him. Well he couldn't. Not now, maybe not ever. Maybe it was because it didn't matter what he hadn't said before. Maybe it was because the part that mattered was what he wanted to tell Sherlock now, but he couldn't, because talking to the dead doesn't mean that they hear you, and he desperately needed Sherlock to hear the things he needed to say.
"I wake up, every morning, and for just a second, life is right. It's post-Pool but before Irene and everything is easy and happy. But then I re-live everything: watching that woman try to seduce you, seeing your fear on the moor that night, our fight, the break-ins, the court case, all the way up to the moment my whole world became you, standing on a ledge, and I knew that no matter what I did, it wouldn't end well, but I had to try. I had to try and all the time I knew, deep down, what was coming. I had to stand there and watch you, watch my whole world jump off the roof of the place that brought me to you. It's a little poetic. Or is it ironic? I'll ask Astrid, she's always been good at that stuff. She misses you, our baby girl does. She has to be strong for me, sometimes, Sherlock. Sometimes I fall and I falter and she's always there, catching me, and damnit if it doesn't remind me so much of you that my heart nearly bursts then and there. You saved me, and your daughter keeps saving me. She's your daughter when she saves me. Your daughter, but not you, and I hate myself for it, but I wish I had you instead. I love our girl but you were my other half, the part of me I didn't know I was missing until I found it and lost it again. You made me human, brought me back to the world of the living, instead of a world filled with the ghosts of dead soldiers. You saved me from myself."
But of course, John is a strong military man, so he never says any of this. Who would he say it to? The only person it is meant to be known by is Sherlock, and he's gone, so these thoughts stay locked away, and when he walks, it's with a limp, because he's not quite strong enough to carry all the things he isn't saying.