AN: I listened to the song 'Heavy Hours' by Crooked Fingers (which was recommended by a friend) a lot while writing this fic, it makes me cry and I think it's very fitting for The Reichenbach Fall.

He's gone. Gone.

There will be no miracle. No way he could ever come back.

I have to make myself believe it. I have to. I know in the totally logical part of my brain that he's…I can't bring myself to say it.

This isn't right, I have to admit it or I'll never get over it. Admitting it is the first step.

She made me do it before, my therapist, but it wasn't something I meant. It had all been a lie to make me feel a little better, hoping that if I heard it out loud-form my own mouth, I would be able to believe the words I said, to convince her that I was sane. To convince myself- it didn't work. I just wanted her to believe me for once, for someone to believe as I do. I didn't believe what I said at all. But I needed to do it. This time, I will believe it, I will say those words with conviction.

Why can't I do this? Okay, I can do it. I was a solider, for God's sake. Why am I so scared to do it? It's only words. I have to. I can't go on lying to myself.

My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead.

Do I believe it, really?

But he isn't-wasn't, John ,wasn't- just my best friend. I'm in love with him. Even if he is…gone-I'm just going to stick with 'gone'; it doesn't sound as permanent (so it sounds a lot better in my brain), but it's fitting- he is gone, totally and completely gone. Maybe I'll never get over him, maybe I'll always go on with this numbness, with this arrogant, lanky, high-cheekboned hole in my life.

But I can go on. I know I can. I lived before I met him, right? Being alone isn't that bad.

Is it?

Totally alone, for the rest of my life. I can do that, I have friends, there's Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Molly-but they're all Sherlock people. All my old friends are either overseas- still fighting, or he insulted then enough that they refuse to talk to me even if he is- I force the word out, it isn't healthy to just say 'gone' as if he'll come back-dead.

But is he, really? Is he by some miracle-and he was bloody good at miracles- still alive? No. I can't let myself think that. Think of this logically. He's dead. You felt his pulse. He didn't have one. He's dead, of course he is. But could he have-. For God's sake no, I have to block all these thoughts. The ones saying that he could have survived where no one else would have, he's Sherlock, he could do anything.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't do this. I can't let myself think that he went off and just left me.

It's better, a thousand times better, than him being dead, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't just leave everything like this, he'd have told me. How could he have done it? Just gone? Left me here- as alone as I was the day we met? He's left forever now.

I owe him everything. I owe him my sanity; even though he's currently the source of the opposite, I owe him my defence; whenever anyone questions him. He gave me so much, the friendship: I had never had a friend like that before. Someone that made me laugh so much, someone that would always be there to talk to- whatever he pretended, I know that he always listened, someone that relied on me. I know it's ridiculous, but I liked that he seemed to need me, that he wouldn't sleep, eat without force, that even on cases, where he was at his best, and he shot down everything anyone said to him, he'd listen to what I had to say, and often, it would help him in some way. I liked being needed like that, having a purpose, I hadn't had that after I got injured, and it was something I craved. I owe him a lot of the new friends I'd made too, I hadn't seen anyone at all from before until I met up with Stamford, they were all on tours or in some big flash hospital. I had barely talked to anyone, and I just sat in the little flat all day, alone. Very much as I'm doing now; but that's out of choice, I guess, I refuse to talk to people though a lot of them have visited. I had no one then, absolutely no one, and he filled that, He fixed it, fixed me. Now he's gone, he's left me more broken and even more alone that I even thought possible.

It's been almost 2 weeks since it happened, and I've hardly slept or eaten at all.

The surgery called- probably to get me to come in, or just offer me compassionate leave- but I didn't answer. I should have gone in really, but it's not like I needed the money.

That first week when I'd gone down to pay Mrs Hudson, looked at me strangely, and said, "Oh, dear, you must have forgotten , what with…anyway, you and Sherlock paid up until the end of the year, you don't need to pay the rent" I was really confused, I even double checked my bank statement, after all Sherlock knew my pin from watching in a restaurant once, was likely to have my credit card number memorised, and could forge my signature, but no money had gone out. Very strange, he must have paid it all himself for some reason, and it gave me some inkling that he's planned this whole thing, and had given me the money as some sort of payment, some sort of gift to ease my pain. Fucking bastard, as if I cared about money if I knew that he might need to pay up something to make my life 'cushy' when he killed himself. How dare he even think that he would help me, that he would think that he could somehow make me feel better with money of he threw himself off a building. He must think that I'm disgusting if he expected me to be mollycoddled with something like this.

I just lay in bed. Most of the time, whenever I am able sleep I have nightmares. Not the old ones, about the war, these ones, if possible, are even more surreal.

Every time, I'm a second too late. Sometimes I get there, my arms are out, I could have caught him but just I'm too far away, at times even missing him by centimetres. Sometimes, I'll be there, on the roof with him, trying to coax him down but he never listens. His face is the same, statue like, a mask. He doesn't listen to me at all. And I watch him, again and again, fly towards the ground. It's as if it's being played on a constant loop in my mind, and I can't escape.

Others it's a reflection, always with a few details changed, of how he really die . I stand there, helpless, in the middle of the road watching him fall, fall. Plummeting towards the earth, his body going limp, his legs and arms flailing in the air, ever so graceful. Then it's over. I hear the sickening crunch of his skull hitting the pavement, see his body hit the ground. In the dream, the building doesn't obstruct my view, I get to see the whole thing. His whole body bouncing slightly as he hits the cold concrete slabs, the blood dark, dark red blood pooling around his head. I get to him, and sometimes he actually has a pulse- a very weak pulse, but still, a pulse- and I just have to get over him to keep it going. But they don't let me, I scream, I fight but they don't let me near him. The people milling around the body push me away, and I'm left knowing that only I could have saved him. Or, sometimes, there's no one there, and I'm left, doing chest compressions to no avail. I pump and pump away, breathing into his mouth, trying to shock his heart and lungs into working. But nothing ever happens, I try and try to force him back into life, but it never works. At some point in this dream, I'll call an ambulance, or for a doctor in the hospital, but because I can't move, and in the dream the street is totally deserted, no one ever comes. He just lies there, getting colder and colder, and I can't do it. I can't bring him back to life.

There are others that are a lot more illogical than these, those that blend with my old nightmares. he's with me in Afghanistan, he's been shot and I need to dig the bullet out with my bear fingers. I almost have it in my grasp but I lose it again and again, plunging it deeper and deeper into his body. My fingers are delving into the flesh, past severed arteries, sometimes tendons or muscles. This always ends with him dying, gasping my name, pleading for the pain to end, apologising for what's happened, in my arms. In others, he's about to walk into a mine and I am about to shout to stop him, but he walks over it and I am showered with his body parts. I'll stand there, covered in his blood tiny parts of his boy end up hitting me, his severed leg poring blood, the bone cut clean off. I'll drop it and run, still partially covered in guts and blood and if I'm lucky I'll wake up then, and not have to see the same thing go again, only more and more violent. That one always ends with me screaming, crying and curled in the foetal position. Actually all of the nightmares end in me waking up shaking, sweating and sobbing to different degrees, depending on whichever I've had .

The rest of the time, the situation goes exactly as it actually did, he has no pulse at all. His heart has stopped. And I know, that if I had just been a little faster, if I hadn't answered that fake call, I would have been able to save him. If only I had acted just a little differently, I know that there is no way anyone else could have done anything- he wouldn't listen for one thing, even less than the amount he listened to me, could have known that it wasn't real. I could have got there in time.

I should have known when he didn't go with me. It was Mrs Hudson, the only person in the world he's ever shown affection towards (though, at times, I think that his actions towards me could be interpreted as affection, but I'm not even going to go there), the only person that he loves. He knew straight away that she was fine ,I should have waited and asked why he wouldn't go, forced him to say, rather than just calling him a machine. I hate that the last time I ever talked to him in person we had argued. I had actually told him- to some degree- that I would protect him, and I had completely and utterly failed at that. I had failed as his friend too. He had everything planned so that I wouldn't be there to stop him, he knew that he was going to jump, I'm sure of it. I call myself his best friend yet I didn't even guess at that. But of course who could ever understand what goes on in that giant brain of his?

I have to get up. I need something to eat. I haven't had anything in…I'm not sure. I think it's been at least 15 hours but I don't feel hungry.

Though I do need something. So I haul myself out of bed and go to the kitchen. I glide past the table, I haven't used it all he left some experiment laid out there,-there are seven petri dishes with teeth in various states of decay-and I can't bring myself to move them. I barely even look them, even, they remind me too much of him, and it hurts.

The other things we would do together;those that are still possible, even the smallest things like drinking tea, carry pain now and I try to avoid them as best I can. I can't do these things, not alone, but I do like to think about them, remember the good times, through the pain, it does make me feel pretty good. That I can think of him, hold those images in my mind, and that's something I need to do, however much it costs.

I take out a Shepard's Pie Mrs Hudson made (she's been making all my meals lately, she cooks when she's upset), I guess it's her way of comforting me, and warm it in the microwave.

That microwave. I had scrubbed and scrubbed at it but eventually we had to but a new one. Pig's blood is extremely hard to get rid of, and I wasn't sure I had wanted to use it after that anyway. Sherlock didn't even seem that sorry about ruining it. So it surprised me greatly when a new one had turned up that door, ordered under the name of Sherlock Holmes a few weeks before he left.

He had actually cared enough about what I would need, he had thought about me. He never thinks about anyone (unless it would change a part of his case)

This apartment. Everything reminds me of him. Of the fact that he'll never come back here. I should get out, move away (I would just be able to cover the rent alone if I took extra shifts), but I can't. I need to stay, to do everything I can to keep him ever-present in my mind. I don't want to lose anything.

I sit in my chair and eat the meal from my knee and watch some mindless TV programme. At one point, a character climbs to the roof of a building to hide and I have to turn it off. I couldn't take it, I don't think I'd paid much attention anyway, I had lost the care I used to have for these fictional people on the screen, and the news was still sensationalising Sherlock's suicide, so that was out too.

I couldn't eat anymore, not that I had had much anyway.

I should do something. Dr Thompson said that I should try writing my blog again, so I pick up my laptop. I log in and just sit there, the curser blinking at me, taunting me. Showing me that I have nothing, that I am nothing, without Sherlock.