John was alone.

The sky was bruised nearly as much as the body had been. It had been quite a far fall, after all.

His chest tightened. A thin gust of wind ruffled his hair.

London stretched before him. It was a jumbled maze of scribbles and lines, of commonplace lives and steady hands hailing cabs. He felt as if he was hovering on the edge of existence, as if the city had long since abandoned him and forgotten his name. That was okay. He was just a watercolor silhouette bound to be washed away the next time it rained. When was the last time he had been a person? He couldn't quite remember. Then again, he couldn't quite remember a lot of things. The world had become one long, endless parade of marching faces with blank stares and reused names.

Frankly, he was done with being the shadow of John Watson.

He shivered in his black jacket and stepped silently onto the ledge.

If he imagined hard enough Sherlock was beside him, breathing and living and talking, his eyes flashing sharply and his hands gesticulating wildly. John grasped onto the image of him wrapped up in that old trench-coat that still smelled of raw cigarette smoke, the way his smile fell slowly across his features, but the breeze blew away the last few fragments of him.

John looked around himself. It was a lovely view, stuck up here in the clouds. But perhaps what made it lovely was knowing that this had been his last snapshot of the earth, that Sherlock's leather dress shoes had been exactly where his scratched oxfords now stood. He squeezed his eyes shut for a bare second to desperately latch onto his presence. But like the wind had washed away his scent, the rain had surely gotten rid of the shadow of him.

John heard his name cut through the air as a desperate shout, a bitter splatter. He ignored it.

The ledge was just wide enough for one, he noticed. How terribly convenient. He wished it was a little bigger, because then he could have joined Sherlock.

John heard his name again, that awkward, hateful, detached sound. He shifted on the ledge. He didn't acknowledge it. He didn't care to. His heart was nonexistent. He had left it on the pavement where the body had lain like a broken marionette.

John closed his eyes and steeled himself for what was coming. As a last will and testament, he reached out haphazardly in his mind for Sherlock's face, but it was fading, disappearing, falling into shadow year after year. A pang struck his heart. The world seemed to spin before him like a sick merry-go-round. He was going mad, separated from Sherlock by death, a boundary that could not be invaded. This was no war in Afghanistan.

John grasped onto that maddening smirk, the only shard that had survived the fall. He let it pierce him as he heard his name again. It shot through the thin air vividly, like a black jot of ink on white stationery. He realized he couldn't even remember the sound of Sherlock's voice.

Oh, God, no. He was slipping through his fingers.

The fall came tumbling back into his mind, like glasses clattering off the top shelf. John had promised himself he would never let Sherlock down. He had always said he would keep him safe. But by a strange twist of fate, he had stumbled and tripped when Sherlock had needed him most. He should have been able to save him-he was a damn soldier, after all-but how clearly he remembered standing there listlessly on the front line.

The ledge started to swirl before John's eyes as he passed his hand over his face. Fresh pain began flooding in through the broken pieces of himself, electrifying his mind, illuminating every corner of his shattered heart. He was a doctor, a useless doctor. Scars began to reopen. Every square inch of his body was alight with tragedy. His breathing came in short, ragged gasps.

Flashbacks plagued his mind. The blood was like a red burst of pain on canvas and he could do nothing to stop the flow. The blood-God, there was so much blood. John felt weak. What a wicked ending to a fairytale, the life drained from those brilliant eyes.

Grief poured into the empty hollow in his chest and he vehemently wished he was numb. Sherlock's blood was everywhere. He wanted the painless monotone, he wanted to forget, he wished he could dissolve into nothingness. He wanted to leave. But he couldn't get rid of the sight of the scarlet liquid dripping from his fingers.

John cast London one last glance, the wind rushing around him in a thin, cold hug. A shadowy shape was looking up at him from the street-was that Lestrade? Probably, he guessed, because no one else would bother calling his name. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

He let in a sharp intake of breath and grasped onto a floating memory of Sherlock. Not the Sherlock striped in blood, lying broken on the ground, but John's warm, breathing Sherlock. For the first time he could see his face vibrantly, every blemish, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled rarely, the curve of his jaw.

The blood jarred back into his memory. Another victim of another war.

And how sick John Watson was of battle.

He jumped.