Everyone dies. You laugh.
Of course you know that, you're a soldier, you're a doctor. You've seen it countless times. Death by bullet, by needle, by glass shard. Heart attacks and seizures dance in your eyes when you close them, noting the last breaths, the monitors and picturing straining tendons and pulsating arteries just out of sight.
Bloody deaths are the easiest for you to deal with. You can see life exiting the body, contained in thick liquid bursts propelled by aching muscle fibres. Pushing the life out, leaving the cage willingly. You can't pretend that water mixed with blood isn't beautiful, even when it's him.
Staring at the red streaks across his eyes, one drop clinging to his lashes over pale blue orbs you know that it is a beautiful death. Exsanguination makes for pale skin, pale even for him, and it makes the entire world look so sharp and dark compared to this nebulous body, the being seeping, seeping away.
A dream wakes you before you realize that it is a dream at all. You are dead, gone, less than nothing. When you open your eyes, it is still dark and you panic that it's true before you hear your thoughts heavy in the void. A sliver of light from the hallway makes its way under your door. From that night on, you sleep with the lamp on.
As you sit in the armchair and look at his it takes effort, real effort, to maintain your numb existence. Something is calling to you… something, a vague thought you refuse to entertain. Not again. Your eyes get lost in the folds of dark seat cushion.
Change. Change, because when enough of the world burns you can make note of the fire. Change, because when the slate is wiped clean you know the difference between Before and After. What now? Do you rebuild whatever you had, whatever you were? Or do you make something, someone, completely new? Does it set you back or set you free?
Despite this fugue state, your ears instantly prick up upon hearing footsteps on the stairs. Then… no. Mrs. Hudson. She brings you tea and biscuits much as you expect. She looks at you worriedly. No, you won't move. No, you haven't gone to work. No, you don't need to talk.
What do you need? Silence. Complete and utter silence. There's only one way to get it. To give into that one simple request of your mind, to simply slip into someone else, like a snake working its way into another skin. You are so tired already, so tired… When did he die? Blue is such an unexpected color to find in the body. Must have been days ago by now. You shift in your seat, feeling the tightness of your stomach as you do so. Clearly days, not yet weeks.
Your eyes close, just for a second, and all the John Watson seeps out of you like the blood from his head.