It was over.
Sherlock Holmes was dead, and it was over.
John Watson sat in his homely little chair, staring blankly ahead as he felt heart beating slowly in his chest. How he ached. How his heart felt like it was going to rip, to break, into tiny pieces that would never find their way home. His chest felt hollow. His soul felt hollow. He felt as if his entire being had been ripped away and there was no way to find himself again.
His best friend was dead.
John could feel the smallest trickle of a tear run down his cheek as he sat in that chair, in that apartment, on that street, in that city. The city of London which even now was rebelling against the very idea that Sherlock Holmes had been anything but a crazed psychopath with delusions of the highest order. Yet no matter what people told him, John refused to doubt Sherlock – though doubt would perhaps be the easiest place to take refuge amongst the storm that spiralled around him.
He had been to see the therapist. Oh yes, the therapist. Only a few days ago, on a rainy London afternoon.
It was funny, the idea of time passing. When one loses someone so dear, so very close to the heart, it is almost as if you expect time to simply stop. After all, what use is time when the essence of life has vanished? What use is the spinning of the world when your world has fallen from beneath you? Yet pass it did, and spin it did, and so it came to pass that on Thursday afternoon John sat in that office once more.
"Why today?" she asked.
She needn't have. John could see every one of her emotions written on her face, every unasked question. The story of her troubled youth, her secret addiction. Her secret lover. He almost smiled to himself, knowing how proud Sherlock would be.
Sherlock.
Thunder rolled gently in the background as the rain fell. His heart beat, fractionally faster than it had before.
Oh, Sherlock.
"Do you want to hear me say it?"
"It's been eighteen months since our last appointment."
John stalled, trying to escape the inevitable. Hoping against hope that she wouldn't make him utter the words out loud.
"Do you read the papers?"
She nodded. "Sometimes."
"And you watch the telly." He started to tremble. Ever so slightly. He looked down, no longer wanting to look her in the eye. No longer wanting to see what he read in her every movement. He paused a moment, catching himself, before continuing. "Then you know why I'm here. I'm here because – "
Sherlock. Oh god. Sherlock.
His heart was racing now, pumping adrenalin into his veins even as he tried to steady himself. Why was she making him say it? Why was she breaking him again? Even as she leant forward to ask the question, he knew that she was one of them.
"What happened, John?"
One of them. She didn't believe him – thought he'd been sucked in just like everyone else. Perhaps she thought that in breaking him, she could fracture his belief in Sherlock Holmes. But of course, she didn't realise that it was already fractured beyond belief.
He didn't know what he was doing in that damn office.
Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply.
Oh, Sherlock.
As he opened his eyes, a tiny moan escaped his lips, and he struggled to mask it with a cough. And still the rain poured.
She was looking at him. Staring at him. Nodding and smiling and pressing him onwards.
"Sherl – "
I can't do this. I can't – I can't do this.
He breathed deep again and cleared his throat quickly. Closing his eyes, shutting out the world, he tried once more.
"My best friend. Sherlock Holmes – " His voice cracked, but he forced himself to finish." – is dead."
And the army doctor, with nerves of steel and a heart which had been burnt from the inside out, finally broke.