AN: I forgot how to do plot and just threw Reichenbach-feelings at the screen until they stuck

so if you don't know what happens at/after Reichenbach, don't read

Sherlock Holmes lies awake in a small grubby apartment, somewhere urban in Switzerland. He doesn't know where. Although he had managed to acquire the aforementioned apartment, the events that led him here are hazy, at least after he crawled out of that wretched cesspit of a lake, splurting and coughing in an all-too-human way. That was two weeks ago. He has nothing but a lot of cash and the rumpled clothes that are draped over the flimsy table. They still smell disgusting.

In fact, the room is full of human debris. Mostly food cartons, probably growing mold, because he can't bring himself to care about them beyond what they previously held. He should have died at Reichenbach. He wanted to die at Reichenbach. And so how is it that when he didn't, he continues to keep himself from dying? Moriarty is dead. That means Sherlock's life work is over, doesn't it?

So why is Sherlock's heart still beating?

It makes very little sense. It's useless. He's useless. His mind jumps from topic to topic, for no real reason at all, and it all centers around how he wishes he was somewhere else. There's a darkness to the world now, so all-encompassing that it cannot be new. And yet, what was keeping it at bay before?

He hears something shift in the room, so he turns to see what it is. But it's not an assassin, it's a newspaper, flung across the room when it made mention of someone named John. He didn't even manage to find any interest in the sensational crimes it reported.

His bed is hard and rough and almost too short. It is ridiculously cold here. He wants to sleep but he can't.

In his dreams, he is not alone. I never told you, he thinks, mouthing the words out loud and trying to put some sort of tangibility to his emotions. Something that can be heard, felt, tasted. He says the words, hoping that will end what he's feeling (expel the poison), but it doesn't.

"I loved you. I love you still. I wish I was with you now."

There is something distastefully showy about speaking out loud to someone who isn't there. Or there is now that Sherlock knows there's no one there, no John who might or might not happen to hear his voice. It makes Sherlock self-conscious, and he covers his mouth with his hand. As if that can take the words back. As the first human voice he's heard in days speaking English, the words echo around in his mind, in his own voice. It sounds odd. I wish I was with you now.

If he was with John.

If he went back.

And suddenly a future unfolds before him, one where he goes back, in a few years' time, and John is there... no, John's not there, John's married, but he's sad. He's not miserable though, not the way Sherlock is, because you aren't that important to him, you just enabled his adrenaline addiction, and John loves his wife or he's pretty sure he does but Sherlock's not being too cocky when he thinks that John has a little bit of doubt. And when Sherlock comes back, it can be just like the old days, and-

Or he doesn't have any doubt. Or he never felt the way Sherlock does about him. Or-

His phone rings in the darkness, louder than Sherlock telling the walls that he loves John. It's Mycroft. He wouldn't pick it up except he wants to hear someone call him Sherlock because maybe then he'll remember how it was when John said it.

"Mycroft."

"Are you busy at the moment?"

"Hardly."

"I have work for you," Mycroft says. "Make sure you disguise yourself..."

Sherlock listens. Mycroft does not say his name.

"So will you do it?" Mycroft asks.

"Yes."

There's a long, long, long pause.

"I had not expected to find you so pliant," says Mycroft, and Sherlock would have briefly smiled at that in another lifetime. Subverting Mycroft's expectations was in fact, a particular perverse joy of his. "Although I suppose I always said you'd rather die than work with me, and that you certainly have done."

"Don't try to understand what I'm going through," says Sherlock, dredging up enough strength for this last condescension. "I'll do what you ask, and nothing more. I won't even try to ruin it."

"You think Moriarty was the end," says Mycroft softly. "But he was just the beginning. As there are others like you or me, there are others like him. And you can topple them, too."

Sherlock hangs up.

He crawls back under his covers, cradling the phone against him, wishing for a warmth he never had: John's arms. John, he thinks again,and there's a feeling building up in the back of his throat and it escapes through his mouth in a terrible choking gasping noise, loud as thunder, loud as the crashing of a centuries-old oak tree under the force of a lightning strike. He touches his hand to his face, and it's wet.

Well, one age-old question is answered, he says to the darkness in the room. If a tree falls in the forest, and John is not around to hear it, it does not make a sound.