AN: Not only is this my first post-Reichenbach fic, I just realized that it is the first thing I've ever written in first-person. It's not my preferred method, but in this case it was appropriate.
Prepare to feel feelings.
It's always the same dream.
Most nights I don't dream at all, I just close my eyes and everything goes dark for a while. I can feel the time passing and the world turning around me, but there's nothing, just the dark and the long, empty silence.
But some nights I dream, and when I do, it's always the same.
I'm back in Afghanistan, near Kandahar, and an IED has just gone off. I never see or hear it in the dream, but I remember. I remember when it happened. The air is thick with dust and the sound of voices, shouting. We've taken cover in a ditch by the side of the road and we're being fired upon, but I don't know where from. Two men – I can't even remember their names – were killed in that explosion, and there are…bits of them in the road, just…fabric and pieces of mangled flesh.
It's hard to see, hard to hear even, my ears are still ringing from the explosion. It's hard to make sense of anything, but someone is calling out for me, calling my name, and that sound cuts through everything. It's strange, because no one in my battalion calls me by my first name. It's always "Watson" or "Doctor," but someone is calling "John," and it's clear as day.
I'm hurting all over – maybe from the shockwave, I don't know – but I follow the sound, crawling through the dry clay and the clawing scrub, away from where the rest of them are crouched, tight to the ground, and finally I see a dark shape – a body – just a few feet ahead of me. There's dirt and sweat in my eyes, my head is reeling, I'm disoriented. I stretch out my arm and get a handful of cloth; I know then that I should back off, just leave it, because it's not camo. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't belong here.
I've had this dream so many times, you would think that I would be prepared, that I would know what was coming, but I don't. It doesn't work like that. Every time it happens I'm just as lost, just as confused, just as afraid. Every time it happens, my stomach turns to ice and my heart pushes up into my throat and I shake so hard that it wakes me up in a cold sweat.
Because it's you.
It's you, with blood streaming down your face, pooling in the corners of your eyes, soaking your hair where your head was smashed on the pavement, but you're there with me in the sand near Kandahar as bullets split the air above me.
As I turn you over I reach out and grasp your hand, and your eyes are wide open, empty and clear and piercing. They go straight through me, every inch of me, and I feel as cold as the wrist against my fingertips. Blood trickles from the corner of your mouth and even through the gunshots I can hear you whisper "I'm sorry, John. I'm so sorry."
I wake up crying, most of the time. Sometimes I just lie there in the dark and shake and shake until I'm so exhausted I can hardly breathe. The first time, four days after you fell, I was sick.
I want it to stop. I'm afraid to close my eyes, and it's worse because I never know when it will happen. Most nights are empty, and that's fine. Nothingness is fine, it's the best I can hope for, but then it will happen again. Always when I'm least expecting it, always when I'm at my weakest.
This can't go on forever, can it?
It's been two months, and I know you're gone, I do, but it's not getting any better. I refused to let myself believe it for so long, but I just can't do it anymore. Hope is double-edged. Every day some small part of me remained convinced that you would burst through the door with some brilliant story of your daring scheme, but each day ended and I was still alone, and it was like feeling you die all over again.
I thought maybe, if I just let you go, that it would stop, and that I could move on with my life, but I was wrong. I don't think I'll ever be able to let you go, not really.
It's been two months, Sherlock, and I still dream of you.