"It's my note."
No.
"Goodbye, John."
"NO, DON'T!"
Sherlock flings himself from the impossibly tall building, falling at a fatally fast speed, yet he doesn't seem to be getting any closer to the ground. I plunge forward, desperate to reach him before he hits the pavement; but the more I run, the further away the hospital seems to get. A giant bicycle comes towards me, attempting to blunder my efforts to save my best friend.
I'm nearly there. I can save him. I have to save him.
The bicycle hits me in the leg, causing me to crash to the ground just as Sherlock's already lifeless body smacks the concrete. I've failed him. With loss in my heart, I begin to get up, the need to get to Sherlock still as strong as ever.
But as I look up, I come face to face with the cyclist who knocked me over. It's Moriarty...
With a yelp, John woke up. "It was just a dream, a nightmare," he whispered out loud, desperate to shake the image of Sherlock's dead body from his mind. It had been almost a year since his death yet John could never erase the memory from his mind.
The phone call, the jump, the fall, the death, the loss – they never left John alone.
John looked over at his alarm clock. It was ten to five in the morning. It was going to be a long day.
Ignoring the sharp pain in his leg, John got up and went into the kitchen of his small, one bedroom flat to make tea. He stood there, staring out of the window at the bleak, foggy sky, completely silent. There was not a sound in the flat, and it still felt unusual. There was no random gunfire, no fighting, and no repeats of the word "bored."
John looked down at the tea he'd been making. Two mugs of steaming hot liquid were laid in front of him. He'd never gotten out of the habit of making tea for Sherlock as well...
On the first anniversary of Sherlock's death, John got drunk. It wasn't that he'd never been drunk before, he'd just never gotten drunk because he was unhappy until that day – not even during the lonely months after retiring from the army. He quite simply missed his friend, and the reminders of the date as he flicked through TV channels and read the paper just made it that much more unbearable.
He began his first bottle of cider at about three in the afternoon. He slumped on the couch, clutching the bottle tight in his hands as he tried in vain to hold back the tears in his eyes.
By five, John's thoughts and feelings had become a soothing blur. He laid on his side on the couch, letting the jumbled memories of Sherlock lull him to sleep...
I walk over to Sherlock, my cheeks flushed, with butterflies swarming my stomach restlessly. He smiles down at me - a true smile that reaches his striking light green eyes.
"Hello, John," he murmurs, his thin fingers reaching for mine.
I look up at him as I fold my hand around his, smiling back. "I've missed you, Sherlock Holmes."
"Just as I have missed you, John Watson."
Then he brings his face down to mine as I raise my hand up to one of his sharp and glorious cheekbones.
His lips grow closer; our eyes close simultaneously, breath against breath...
"John!"
John jumped out of his slumber, startled and bewildered, to find himself face to face with the one and only Sherlock Holmes.