He'd gotten it all wrong, everything.
It wasn't even that difficult, especially not for him, but now he was feeling the effects and slowly slipping out of control, away from reality, away from life.
But really, that had happened a long time ago, and then he met John and everything ended up alright. In fact, better than alright. He had found not only a friend but someone to look after him and make sure he was safe, but also put him in danger as well.
It was really a rare friendship they had but then John met Mary and they got married, and so Sherlock Holmes was alone again, and despite John's visits every so often, he couldn't help feeling like he had been replaced. But he never showed that, he couldn't.
But now he was never going to see them again and it was all his fault, all because he was being stupid and he screwed everything up.
He had become wedged in between a state of constant depression that he didn't like to think he could actually achieve as Sherlock Holmes, and a bouncy, 'I'm absolutely fine that you left me' lie, and somehow, he wasn't himself anymore. He felt old and tired, his forehead was starting to look like he was constantly frowning just slightly, and less reserved, but maybe that was just the drugs toying with his mind as he sat with his back propped against the wall in his place of rest, or maybe not.
He told himself to breathe even though he knew it would make no difference.
He swore not to ever do anything like that again, as if John himself were in the room at the time, shouting and screaming, tearing the walls of their- his flat down with his tremendously large vocal range, saying something like "God Sherlock! Promise me you will never do anything like this next time!" and even though he wasn't in front of him and he knew there wouldn't be a next time, he still promised his best friend.
"I wish I'd just die now and get it over with." he said to himself, but his body was fighting a war, quite alike to John's, only Sherlock wasn't anywhere near as brave.
After all, it was so boring on the floor, stuck there, reminiscing, hoping for an ambulance to hurtle down the street and stop outside 221b. He thought about the doctors rushing in and putting him onto a stretcher then driving him away to the nearest hospital to have his stomach pumped, but then he thought of John and he didn't want that anymore, because this was what was best.
Then, the door flew open and for half a second he was relieved, but then he noticed who it was.
"Thank god for busses. I mean seriously, I would have had to walk all the way back here at this time if it wasn't for that secret money compartment in my bag. Do you want a coffee?" she asked, her back to him as she kicked her high shoes off, then her bag, then she peeled her coat away from her body and threw them all down in a pile on the floor. Totally oblivious.
Sherlock stared at the way her curly ginger brown hair settled in a tangled mess between her barely noticeable shoulder blades. She strode across the floor towards the kitchen and still hadn't noticed him.
The kettle was on, two mugs set out, coffee dumped in the both of them, two spoonfuls of sugar, the only difference was that she splashed either a fair amount of Whiskey in hers, she always did it, family recipe she said.
"It's absolutely freezing. Tell you what, do you want some in yours as well? It fights against the cold and after all, mammy always said there's no lonely party without some coffee mixed in with your whiskey." and that was when she turned around, and that was when she noticed his partially dead body, and that was when she started to cry.
"FOR THE LOVE OF-"
"Keep it down."
"How long?"
"About ten minutes."
"Shouldn't you be..."
"I know. I was tempted to drag my body across the floor and just toss myself out of the window." she walked up to him and ran her hand through her hair, which was a completely failed mission due to the lack of treatment it had had within the past two days. She stuck her hand into her pocket and got her phone out.
"Sherlock," she said his name slowly, not like it had just rolled off her tongue like she usually did, but as if she was also having trouble breathing. "I'm going to phone for help-"
"Don't, John will hate me." the look on his face tore her apart. Because she knew he was scared, and in the three months of knowing him, he had never been as petrified as he was then.
"He'll hate you more if you die." and so Sherlock beckoned her to sit next to him, and she did, slowly. But that was when he grabbed her phone, she let out a sharp yelp and he winced slightly.
"It's too late anyway."
"No it can't be, no, I'm phoning them and they'll take us both away to the hospital-"
"It's too late, you know it is, my pulse is slowing down, I can barely move without feeling like my body is shutting off completely."
"Then wake it up!"
"I can't do that." he hissed.
"I need some gin."
"God." he hissed again, she snapped towards him, unsure of what to say, so she crossed her legs over, and gently pulled him down so his head was against her chest, neither of them spoke for a second, just so Sherlock could hear the sound of her heart rattling in it's cage, in her body.
She remembered when they met and how they saved each other. But most of all, the only thing that inhabited her mind was the fact that he didn't care for her very much at all. They hardly spoke, he didn't remember much about her whether it was where she worked, her name or what she looked like, but he was important to her, for her own selfish infinity, and that was all that mattered.
But here they were, on the floor, a few months after hers had just begun, his was ending.
It felt like the end of an era.
"Did you know?" she started, and for once he wasn't dreading the next sentence to come out of her mouth, because they all usually amounted to what you'd scrape off the bottom of your shoe after walking around a park, not that he did much of that. But this time it felt relaxing. It was a distraction.
"Did you know that I'm afraid to keep on living and walk this world alone and I've only known you for a little while. Is that strange?"
"Stop trying to make me feel guilty."
She gripped onto his clammy hand and looked at him.
"I don't want you to die, Sherlock. Not like this. Never like this."
"I told you to stay away from me, the day we met."
Their conversations were always like this. One talking about one thing, the other speaking of another. It very rarely made any sense, but they accepted it as a way of life.
She'd never tried to thread them together because it would have been a waste of time.
"But I couldn't of just walked away. It would have ruined everything."
They were silent, he didn't like psychical contact of his head on her chest and their hands joined together, but it somehow comforted him a bit in his final moments.
"You do know that everyone still cares about you, right? John, Mary, Mrs. Hudson, your parents, Molly, Greg, god, even Mycroft. Especially Mycroft for f-"
"Whose Greg?" he asked her idly, she let a sigh slip her lips.
"Lestrade, you know, the p-"
"Oh, don't you mean Gabriel?" at first she had thought he was joking, but then she realised he was as oblivious as a child.
"No, Sherlock, his name is Greg."
Sherlock made a sound that resembled an 'oh' and then buried his head deeper into her chest, which did hurt, but the pain she felt probably wasn't worse than his. But then again, she was watching a friend die, thinking of what to say to all of the people. She realised that she would have to be questioned seeing as she was the only witness, she'd go through a lot for good old Sherly.
"What am I gonna do?" she asked quietly, a vacant expression filling her face with dread.
"Tell them I died."
"It's not that easy," she whimpered. "What am I going to do when you're gone and how am I going to-"
"You are going to live a terribly boring normal life, then you'll meet someone and you'll get married and have children, and then you'll forget about me." he said, staring at the ground.
"Your stomach could of been pumped in this time! Please let me phone an ambulance Sherlock, please. You lied. You freaking lied to me, you could be more alive now you-"
"Lindsay please stop!" her name wasn't Lindsay, it was nothing like it.
"Sherlock I'm not called-"
"Does it really matter?"
"I suppose not. I don't matter, never mind."
It took ten more minutes of agonizingly painful waiting and crying, on her part at least.
Ten whole minutes of nothing other than words and sharp intakes of breath and trembling hands and tired eyes slipping away and then the breathing was gone, the eyes, the words, they only came from one person.
It took ten minutes for her to be alone in the world all over again.
For her voice to trail off as she noticed the lack of movement in his body, the regretful tears and sobbing noises that were choking her.
"No please!" she screamed as she stupidly tried to resuscitate him, but it didn't work, and she didn't know how to do it anyway so she ended up lying with his dead body, her arms wrapped around her own limp shell as she slept, never wanting to wake up. She just wanted to be with Sherlock again, but that would have been impossible.