I sit in the back of the ambulance, lurid orange blanket around my shoulders. It brutally reminds me of the night I saved Sherlock's life and we became flatmates.

Why couldn't I do that today?

Why couldn't I save him?

The paramedics keep fussing over me.

I keep pushing them away.

I rub the fingers of my right hand with my thumb, still able to feel Sherlock's skin under the groves of my fingerprints even though I touched him over half an hour ago.

I feel sick to my very stomach and the only way I can counteract it is to stare at the ground in silence. But that silence is broken by the soft sound of Greg Lestrade's voice. He crouches to talk to me so he can look into my eyes. He asks me something. I don't comprehend what he says. I'm lost. My lips part to answer him but nothing comes out.

"Sorry."

It's a simple word, but as Greg speaks it my heart sinks like a stone crashing right through me. I keel forward, landing hard on my hands and knees. I don't feel it right now, but the bruises will last a good week. I sob hard, my hands fists.

Strong hands lift me, sliding under the crooks of my arms. Lifting me back into the ambulance. I sob harder, my limbs weak. Greg doesn't know what to do so he just keeps a hold of me so I won't fall again. He sniffs himself and I see a few drops fall onto the lapel of his coat through my own clouded vision.

It truly hits me that Sherlock is dead.

Does emotional pain leave a scar like a blade might? A scar under the flesh maybe? How can anyone bare to carry these scars around with them when they hurt so very much, sorrow and hurt bleeding through them?

I am drowning in it.

Mycroft is normally abrasive and hard to be around, the urge to punch him rising within the first half an hour of his arrival. But at the moment he is oddly kind, making me tea like we are children again and offering me soft words.

I take neither from him.

I do not need sympathy and I definitely do not need him. The only person I need is across London right now mourning my death on his own. I should not think these poisonous thoughts. They hurt far too much.

I sit in the wing backed chair by the fire, my fingers steepled as they normally are. For a moment I want to beg to all the deities that I do not believe in past, present and future that this has all been one horrible dream. That I will wake up and go into the lounge to find John reading his newspaper, grumbling at what the government has done to piss him off today while I sit at my microscope and ignore him.

But I do not ignore him. I listen to his every sound. I catalogue it. Store it away as if its tiny little nuggets of gold.

I have been doing it for weeks.

Just in case.

Now I cannot open that file.

I cannot bare to think of him.

It hurts too much and tears rise in my eyes once more as I remember that little annoyed sigh of his. I wonder how many of those he will produce today. And I will not be there to hear any of them.

Mycroft sees them.

Sighs.

Makes that annoying sucking sound with his tongue over his teeth that he has made 39 times in the last hour.

I try to pass off the moisture building in the corner of my eyes as just as them watering from the heat of the fire. He does not believe me. He has every right not to.

"You love him."

The words feel like ice, slipping down my spine and chilling my very core making me shiver violently. All heat from the room is purged and I am this freezing cold thing. This nothing. Nothing without John.

"Yes."

The word seems alien coming from my mouth. It is the first thing I have said since I said goodbye to John. It echoes round us, hanging heavy in the silence of the room.

Mycroft's eyebrows rise in shock. He stares at me and I stare back, unblinkingly. Slowly he closes his eyes and sighs. Then he moves forward and presses his lips against my forehead like he used to do when I was small, like I had fallen over.

Then he is gone, leaving me to my heartbreak and misery.