A/N: so... I've been struggling over here with some pretty serious writer's block. Apparently all it takes is that one rather harsh comment to completely throw me off my game. I know I'm not a great author, that much is a given, but heartless belittling of my stories means that area of my brain completely shuts down. I'm sorry I haven't updated any of my other fics, or posted the sequel to A Light in the Darkness. I don't know whether the sequel will ever come, not now that I've read that review. It seems that story was pretty terrible. So I'm starting afresh, and hopefully any response I get to this will help me overcome my fear of posting stories up. It's the flames, they hurt. So please enjoy what I hope will be a less awful story, much more angsty and completely canon. Amelie x
It had been three years since his best friend had died. Three years since his world had been torn apart and anything he held dear destroyed. John had gone back to their flat two weeks after the visit to Sherlock's grave with Mrs Hudson, stopping her from donating Sherlock's belongings. The doctor had put the scientific equipment back onto the table, redistributed the papers in the sitting room. The skull was placed back on the mantle and the knife once again firmly embedded into the wood. The only change to his - their – flat was the black face next to their smiley, with a bulleted frown. Mrs Hudson had said nothing.
Each year on the anniversary of Sherlock's sacrifice - because it was a sacrifice, not suicide – John visited the rooftop of Barts, the only time he went near the godforsaken hospital. He would take a single glass of malt whiskey and his blue scarf. There was nothing else for him to do on that day, nothing he could do, and the third year was no different.
It had become too much after three years. There was too much of Sherlock around him, surrounding him. John didn't work because he was too deep in the depression that had settled in as he watched the closed casket lowered into the earth. The bank balance never wavered, which he expected was Mycroft's doing, as penance for his betrayal. Mycroft had become a shell, too. Lestrade visited occasionally but it was clear that he felt too guilty to remain for long in the flat that the wonderful, amazing, brilliant man had lived, the man he didn't believe, the man that fell. John didn't buy milk anymore. The cupboards were bare and he avoided the Chinese on the corner of the street. Every inch of London was filled with memories of the detective, so alive with the rush of the city, so astounding with lightening deductions. No one could ever make John believe that Sherlock Holmes was anything but a genius. It was impossible.
There he stood, on the third anniversary of Sherlock's death, upon the ledge. He didn't want to live through this anymore. He was tired, unable to sleep for fear that he would wake up, screaming, watching him fall all over again. He was empty. Hollow. There was nothing left for him but bitter reminders of the life that he had loved to live. The number he typed into his phone was familiar and regularly used, the voicemail at the end of the line one he heard every night.
"I'm coming back to you, Sherlock. When you took yourself away from me, you took the magic of our world with you and now I'm coming for it. I'm tired of this half-life. I'll see you soon." John threw his phone down in mimicry of Sherlock's actions all those years ago, and took a deep breath, closing his eyes to the tears that fell. He prepared not to fall, but to fly, fly back to his best friend, whose side at which he belonged.
"John."