He'd accepted it now. Sherlock wasn't coming back. He would never hear the violin waking him up at some god forsaken time. The kitchen was so bland now. He got used to opening the fridge up and seeing a head but now all he saw was milk. Lestrade checked in on him often and they started meeting up for a pint but it wasn't working. He missed the days of the cases. The strange names he would put on his blog. The danger.

"Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much."

"Wanna see some more?"

"Oh god yes."

He sighed, standing up and wincing as a spike of pain went through his leg. All of it was packed up. Brown boxes full of Sherlock's life. There wasn't many. All his 'research' had been packed up and moved away to St Bart's by a very hesitant Molly. That had been a month ago. He thinks. Time wasn't important in this world anymore. The box he had just packed up, the last box, contained the items John held dear, in hope that Sherlock would reappear and want them back. The skull stared up at him. That damn skull that Sherlock seemed to view as another human. Or just someone like him. There was one thing left to put in the box; Sherlock's scarf. He had grabbed it before they could throw it out. He washed it and yet it still had the faint smell of Sherlock. Of cigarettes and danger. With one silent goodbye, he dropped it in the box. The deerstalker was in there too. He still remembered Sherlock's complaints and how he had been complaining about the newspapers at the same time.

"Why is it always the hat photograph?"

"Bachelor John Watson."

"What kind of hat is it anyway?"

"'Bachelor'. What the hell are they implying?"

"Is it a cap? Why has it got two fronts?"

"It's a deerstalker. 'Frequently seen in the company of bachelor John Watson'."

"How do you stalk a deer with a hat? What are you going to do, throw it?"

"Confirmed bachelor John Watson."

Sherlock's grave. He had found himself their every day. Laying a single flower. Red, because Sherlock enjoyed water-tight alibis and he remembered the one with the murder today, after reading Sherlock's blog. 'The Green Ladder'. He knelt down and traced out the letters of Sherlock's name. It reminded him of the graffiti that littered London. "I believe in Sherlock Holmes" He believed to. He remembered the phone call. Sherlock had said he was a fake, but he didn't believe it. No-one could fake that. Sherlock is brilliant. Was brilliant.

"If you were dying, if you'd been murdered. In your very last few seconds, what would you say?"

"Goodbye, John."

Mrs Hudson didn't want him to leave but knew it was for the best. 221B reminded him of Sherlock too much. The bullet holes in the wall, Sherlock's chair, everything. He was looking at boxes again. But this time they were his own.