John remembers.
He remembers before, the laughter and the cases and I don't have friends; he remembers the insults and the bullets in the walls and severed heads and no more milk.
He clings to before because it is important, because he was happy then with his best friend by his side, always Sherlock-and-John, investigating and deducing and saving the day again because that's what they do; the only thing that matters, after all, is The Work.
He likes those memories and he wishes he could have those days back.
Because after them there is a wall, hard and unmoving, cold and surrounded by the demons of his nightmares, and all he remembers is blood and Moriarty and Sherlock falling and screaming his name and he's my friend. The wall is a cold, black slab of granite with Sherlock's name on it and don't be dead.
After the wall, Sherlock is alive.
He should be happy, he knows; he should be sobbing with relief and furious with Sherlock for lying and scaring him and then everything should be back to the way it was, but the world is too cruel to make it that easy.
Instead, there is silence and awkwardness, pain and hostility and anger. Why, Sherlock? Why the lies, the pain of three years of not knowing, the pretense that you were dead?
John knows the answers to these questions. I was under cover, John. They were going to kill you, John. I had to, John. I'm sorry, John.
He knows the answers, but he cannot feel them. There is a disconnect between understanding and accepting, and nothing Sherlock does can fix it. He can only watch Sherlock trying to love him again, desperately trying to remain his friend, trying to bring back the old John. He watches and cannot return the favour because he cannot forgive him, not really, not yet. Maybe not ever.
The old John, the John Sherlock wants, the John Sherlock needs, would forgive Sherlock in a heartbeat and love Sherlock back. But the new John has been broken irreparably, and he feels he has forgotten how to how to forgive and let go and love again, even when his heart has been shattered. He has forgotten, he thinks, how to rebuild.
One day, maybe it will be better. One day, maybe the old John will return.
But the old John is dead, killed by the Fall, and lies buried in the grave of Sherlock Holmes.
A/N: So this slightly AU, I guess… It's based on the relationship between Sherlock and John in a Sherlock roleplay I do with two of my amazing friends, Thalia and Annie. Basically, in the roleplay John cannot get past the lies and the years of heartache Sherlock caused him by pretending to die in the Reichenbach Fall and then suddenly returning (differently from the way he does in series 3, because we started before it came out) without warning as if nothing had happened. Several months later, they still can't get past it, and as I'm an OC in the RP and not currently with either of them, I've been observing for a while and this came to mind.