221B no longer smells of chemicals and tea. Violin music doesn't fill the flat at every ungodly hour imaginable. The half-completed experiments sit in the microwave and the ice box, on the countertops and tables, as forgotten and abandoned as the ghost that haunts the rooms.
That is what John Watson has become – a ghost. He leaves food untouched, tea cold, books opened and unread, blog unattended, and clothing rumpled. He cannot function without the other soul that used to live here with him, and every day, without fail, there will be a moment when he believes that other soul has returned. A knock on the door – just an ex-girlfriend come to comfort him. Footsteps on the stairs – Lestrade asking after him. A muffled voice downstairs – Mrs. Hudson pouring out her heartbreak to a friend. A creak in the floor boards outside his bedroom door – this John imagines completely. Nothing is ever there.
Each morning, John is shocked to hear the sounds of life outside, surprised to see people still walking about when he pushes away the curtains. How many times did he watch his best friend walk down that street from this very window? Too many to count. Too many to remember, but too many to forget.
Everything he experiences transforms into cascading waterfalls full of memories that threaten to drown him. When he picks a book from the shelves, John sees boxes of them littered around the flat and him pouring over the hundreds of titles, memorizing each one. Touching any of the chemistry equipment in the kitchen causes John to see his best friend hunched over the microscope, examining something John doesn't quite understand.
It has been two months. Everyone – Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Sarah, Mycroft, even Sargent Donovan – has offered to come by and help John clean out the stuff left behind by his best friend. But John can't do it. He just can't. He has come to accept that his friend is not coming home, but he still can't stand the thought of disturbing his half of everything. Lestrade shouted at him once, told him that the flat's messier than a homicide scene and he can't just let himself go like this. But John calmly saw the inspector to the door, went back to his armchair, and spent the evening staring at the chair opposite.
Many times – oh, so many times – John has considered leaving 221B Baker Street, finding a new place free of happy memories that end with a roof, a phone call, and a sidewalk. But then he realizes that it would be even worse if he left. His memories may be painful, may be ripping him apart, but the bits of his best friend's presence that remain here are the only things holding him together now.
John can deal with the daylight. It hurts, but he pulls through. It is the night that he dreads.
Because when he closes his eyes, he faces a terror that breaks him so completely, so repeatedly, no sunrise is any easier than the one before it. Each night, he wonders if he'll finally snap and collapse under the weight of what he sees behind his eyelids.
He used to dream of the war.
Now he experiences something worse, something so traumatizing that he only wishes he could see the war again.
It always starts the same way: St. Bart's Hospital looming above him and his phone ringing. He always answers, recognizes the voice immediately. "Sherlock," he says, looking up and finding his best friend.
Sherlock Holmes always stands on the roof of the hospital, holding his phone to his ear. He shimmers faintly, flickering occasionally like a mirage.
Each time, John notices something different: a bird flying overhead, a horn he didn't hear the first time, voices around him that he ignores. Tonight, he catches the defeated and beaten slump of Sherlock's shoulders, even over the great distance between them.
And then Sherlock's voice is there, in his ear, disconnected, clear, halting, filled with emotion John wasn't sure he had until this moment. He says everything he said the first time, but also things John has forgotten until now. Things that don't belong in this last conversation. The words jump around, hopelessly out of order and forming only broken sentences.
Keep your eyes fixed on–
Please–
Do this for me–
John–
Take my hand–
Look at me–
I'm afraid, John–
Don't have friends–
John–
I've just got one–
My note–
What people do, don't they–
A fake–
Just a magic trick–
It's okay now–
Goodbye, John–
Sherlock drops the phone and steps into open air.
And John's voice screams one word, the only word he can scream, the most important word to have ever passed his lips: his best friend's name.
"SHERLOCK!"
He wakes screaming still, drowning in his bed sheets, the name heavy and foreign in his mouth. Curling in on himself, he lets the sobs that come after ripple through him, fast and violent. Without fail, his mind goes to a conversation with a headstone and a final plea.
"Oh, please, there's just one more thing, right? One more thing. One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be… dead… Would you, just for me, just stop it… Stop this…"
The breaking words of a broken man. The first and only thing he ever asked for himself. The only plea that Sherlock can't answer, the one thing he can't do. Not even for John.
Cold stone with his name and dates engraved on its face. Shaking fingertips on top as if on his shoulder. Limping steps away, far away, like the legs cannot support all the weight – all the pain – anymore. Sagging body feeling so much older than it should, heavy with all the things that were never said. Things that are now falling from John's lips with only the headstone to listen. Understanding that, finally, after all this time, Sherlock has gone somewhere John cannot follow.
Meeting Sherlock brought John out of a nightmare, showed him the beauty and foulness of the world, the good, the bad, betrayal, and true friendship. It woke him up.
Losing him sends John spiraling into another nightmare, one he knows he can never escape from.
So in the dreams, Sherlock is not the only one who falls. The two friends – the consulting detective and the army doctor – fall together. One to the pavement. The other to the waiting arms of his worst nightmare.