4: Nevermore
Moriarty.
That was all it took for John's world to come crashing down around his ears. To cause Sherlock to leap from the roof of St. Bart's.
"He doesn't know the truth about you, does he?" John had asked after their poolside encounter with the master criminal.
"No, I don't think so." Sherlock had said distractedly as he paced back and forth, hands steeples under his chin. He stopped and looked seriously at John. "That doesn't make him any less dangerous."
How right he had been.
John felt empty, hollow. Now that Sherlock was gone he truly realised how much he had needed him, how much he had relied on him. Whenever he heard a crow's call walking down the street he turned, heart thudding, only to bitterly discover that it was only an ordinary rook or jackdaw. He didn't even do that as much anymore, he told himself that if (even saying "if" seemed ridiculous, yet he couldn't completely stop doing that either) he heard Sherlock's caw again he would recognise it at once.
He had been angry initially, with himself, with Sherlock, with the world at large. Mycroft had borne the brunt of it when he had visited in the early days after Sherlock's death.
"HE COULD HEAL HIMSELF!" John had shouted when Mycroft entered, it had felt so good to get those particular thoughts out in the open. "WHY DIDN'T HE?"
"John…"
"AND YOU!" John had roared, rounding on Mycroft, who looked like he was seriously regretting his decision to come. "YOU LET MORIARTY GO! GAVE HIM INFORMATION THAT HE USED AGAINST HIM! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM!" Spent and trembling, John all but collapsed into his chair.
"I cannot express how sorry I am," Mycroft had said, keeping his distance in case John decided to physically attack him next. "But even if I had been there, I couldn't have saved him, he died on impact. I don't have the power to bring back the dead."
John, shuddering at the abruptness of Sherlock's passing, said in a small voice, "He was immortal, how could he have died?" It was a stupid question, he thought, but one he couldn't ask anyone else.
"We may live for eons, but we are not invulnerable." Mycroft said quietly before turning to go. "Let me know if I can be of any assistance. I truly am sorry." He left, leaving John in his too quiet, too Sherlock-free flat.
Morgrim still turned up occasionally, and would sit either next to John or on his knee. Never on his shoulder. John would talk to her and though he couldn't understand her, it was still some comfort just to sit in her company and stroke her feathers without really seeing them.
At the funeral, John had seen a flock of crows, mostly rooks but with a few ravens, magpies, jackdaws and hooded crows scattered among them, perched in the trees surrounding the grave, They had been calling to one another, but all had fallen silent when the coffin made its slow way towards them and remained so until the end of the service when they had taken flight as one. Some would have thought it grim, macabre, but John thought it fitting. A murder of crows paying their final respects, he thought Sherlock would have liked that.
But the recurrent nightmares were by far the worst. They had changed too. Instead of Afghanistan, John relived Sherlock's final moments over and over again, his coat billowing around him like the wings he possessed but hadn't used as he plummeted to the ground. Sometimes he transformed just before or midway through his fall, but the result was always the same.
As John woke, gasping, from his latest night terror, an unwelcome line of poetry arose unbidden: "And quoth the raven, nevermore." It had been a private joke between them, one that had caused him to smile once. Now he rolled over with a strangled sob, clutching the hammer amulet that he couldn't bear to remove from around his neck.
Nevermore would he tell Sherlock off for keeping his experiments in the fridge.
Nevermore would he accompany Sherlock on a case or be soothed to sleep by the sound of his violin.
Nevermore would Sherlock take his place on John's shoulder and watch him update his blog (occasionally pointing out errors, grammatical or otherwise) or read or watch telly with him.
Legend has it that if the ravens ever left the Tower of London England would fall. For John, only one raven had to leave for that to happen.
Have some Reichenbach emotional trauma, this time with mythical undertones.
The quote is from "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe.