Greg
By the beginning of the second year, John managed to get his adult chemistry set off the kitchen table and into boxes, but couldn't bring himself to donate it. Mrs. Hudson let him keep it in the empty single-room apartment in the basement, and that room eventually came to function as his storage space, the files and papers and clothes and books protected from the damp in plastic tubs, labelled and stacked neatly along the walls. John kept some things out: the dressing gown, which he would not wash, no matter how Mrs. Hudson begged; the bedding, though he finally did consent to washing it once it had turned a mottled grey; the computer, because he could hear his voice in the detailed notes he kept on every subject worth not deleting; the skull, to chat with. And he did chat with it, daily. "Tea?" he'd say, and hear that voice, the one persistently fading from his memory, "White, one sugar." As if he didn't know. As if he hadn't known since the first days they took up residence at 221B.
He began to meet Greg for pints at the corner pub on Thursday afternoons, since neither of them had to work early on Friday and John had a tendency to tip one too many-though only that one night of the week, on Thursdays. He never drank at home, found, through unpleasant trial and error (experimentation) that though a few whiskeys might relax him a bit, even put him to sleep, the drink also made his dreams achingly vivid, dreams of being trapped on the ground, his feet stuck in the macadam of the road, reaching desperately toward the man in the back coat on the roof opposite, who reached out toward him before leaping, that great black coat spreading out around him like wings as he fell and fell and struck and John would jerk upright in his bed-"No!" his face wet with tears, the pillow soaked with sweat. He stopped drinking at home.
Pints with Greg were easier. John was not alone with his thoughts, and Greg was patient with his endless talk of him, his confusion and frustration, and his desperate loneliness. "Greg," he said, one night, three pints in, "the world's wrong without him. It's a stupid, bloody world. Gray. Everything's gray. He gave it color-you know what I mean? Am I making any sense? How the hell can the fucking world keep turning? Without him? What's the bloody point?"
Greg nodded, and patted his arm. "I know, mate." He signaled to the waitress for another round. "I know." Greg had been to the flat and had removed John's gun while he was traveling-John had railed and raged, but Greg was firm. "Just for now, John," he said. "Just for the time being. I'll give it back, but not right now." Two years on, and Greg was still not quite willing to give it back.
"He'd be so angry at me, being such a sad little prat with my stupid little feelings. 'Pull yourself together!' That's what he'd say, but I just can't. I go back to the flat and he's everywhere there, in the couch, in the chairs, in the bed, in the damn teakettle and I just don't see the point in another day." John laid his hot forehead on the cool table, tears springing into his eyes unnoticed, running down his cheeks, over his lips, dripping down his chin unchecked.
"I need another beer."
"On its way, mate." Greg tried to remain impassive, knowing from past nights that efforts at comfort would just enrage the grieving man: "It's going to get easier? It is never going to get easier!" He took John out, nonetheless, every Thursday, to get him out of the flat, to get him talking, to be able to tell Mycroft that John was still breathing. Mycroft had come to his office, shortly after his fatal leap, and asked if he would just keep a bit of an eye on the ex-soldier. "I don't think he has any idea what he's feeling, and certainly he has no idea why he's feeling it. He lost people in the war, Greg, but he's never grieved like he's grieving now. Just watch him. My people will be watching too, but just talk to him, let him talk to you." He paused, in his chair on the other side of Greg's desk at Scotland Yard, tapping the bottom of his shoe with his umbrella. "He would never forgive me, even from beyond the grave, if anything happened to John. He would never forgive any of us."
So Greg did, even though every Thursday left him feeling like a wrung-out rag. He kept the gun. And he listened.