February, 2012.

"Put me somewhere I'm not supposed to be,"

I opened my eyes.

My therapist's office. It was the first place that came to mind, but I deeply regretted taking Sherlock there from the first second I realised that's where we were. This was a private memory . . . I couldn't afford to let him see it – but that type of thought was out of the window now. This was a desperate time, and it's not even as if he was real Sherlock, anyway. Just a memory, who lived, and breathed, and talked back, if only inside my head.

I sat in my usual chair, facing Sherlock, who sat exactly as Ella did: same pose, same clipboard, same annoying tendency to fiddle with her pen. He even had a suit in the same awful light brown colour she usually wore, thankfully without the skirt. Small mercies.

"Where are we?" He asked, looking around the office with raised eyebrows. "I suppose we've deviated from reverse chronological order of your memories," That sounded more like the Sherlock I knew.
"Ella's office,"
"Oh. And who am I?" He asked, looking down at how he was sitting, and sneering at the colour he was dressed in.
". . . Ella," I said, wondering if Sherlock would have been able to deduce this fact in real life.
"I see," He looked down at my notes, and gave a low, amused whistle. "You should have sacked her way back. She couldn't have been more wrong,"

I snatched the notes from him.

"Yeah, alright – why did you want me to bring you here anyway? I don't understand what you said before,"
"Are you sure?" He snapped back, his face completely still aside from his lips; his expression frozen.
"What?" I frowned.
"Are you sure you don't understand . . . ?"
". . . Um, yes, Sherlock, I'm sure,"
"Then you haven't changed much since I've been away. As always, you see, but you do not observe – or perhaps in this situation, you heard what I said, but you didn't listen,"
"Enlighten me then – and quickly," The lights, I could see down the corridor, were going out, one by one.

"I meant it, when I said it wasn't forever,"
"What isn't forever?" I asked, leaning forward in my chair. Unfortunately, as this was a memory from directly after Sherlock had died, my leg ached, but I tried to pay no attention to it.
"My absence – oh, come on, John, you must have suspected. No one can truly fake their death completely accurately in our day and age. Well, perhaps Irene managed to, but then she made the fatal mistake of coming to see you afterwards. A mistake I have here repeated,"
"What the fuck are you talking about? – what you're saying you faked your death?"

Sherlock smirked, and clapped slowly and sarcastically. With every clap, another light went out. He watched them go out, and sighed.
"I suppose this memory bought us time, but nothing could put the erasure off forever,"
"No – no, there must be a way," I stood up, and went to the large window by the side of my seat. I put my hands on it, and they balled up into fists. Sherlock joined me, swooping in theatrically and standing at my side. I looked down at my feet, and gritted my teeth.

I felt his arm creep around my shoulder in comfort. The Sherlock that had been acting so like himself before was now acting in a way that wasn't himself – unless . . .
. . . Unless he'd always wanted to act like this, but couldn't. Not in real life, where he was first and foremost a sociopath, a freak, an infallible, unpredictable, unlovable consulting detective . . .

But when I looked up and into his eyes once more, just as they started to fade away like they always did at the end of a memory, I knew that it was a facade. Just a facade. He never wanted to get hurt – well, he'd failed. He'd killed himself – no, he'd faked his death, if what he was telling me now was true.

It was too much to take in. I was sure I was just in denial, still trying to prove to myself that he wasn't dead. He can't be dead. Please, God no

"I don't want this anymore!" I screamed, gripping the sides of my head. "I don't want this! I don't want to forget him! I don't want him to go! I want to keep him, please! Stop it, cancel it, stop what you're doing and let him stay!"

As my screams became more and more loud and incoherent, the emphasis scattered; even the yelling couldn't match the power of the gentle hand on my shoulder, pulling me close to his chest, where my cries became muffled, and eventually, faded away altogether. . .


March, 2015.

I didn't call Holmes out on the fact that he'd known about my leg. I didn't enjoy confronting that man, because he just seemed to know everything I was thinking, and what's more, he knew it before I did. He scared me; he knew far too much. I was beginning to think I'd managed to get a stalker.

Why were these things happening? Things I couldn't really explain. How had he known about my leg? Right, he'd probably deduced it, okay, fine. But it was just a coincidence that I hadn't even noticed his referring to it: I realised I'd just assumed I'd already told him, and we'd slipped into our usual routine of walking alongside each other, just like normal.

But that was the point. I'd never gone outside with Sherlock; never walked alongside him, in all my memory. And yet it felt so right, so familiar. I don't know if you've ever heard of the uncanny – I googled it, because I remembered it from a module I'd done at Uni on Psychology. It's part of all that Freud bullshit – the subconscious, the unconscious, blah blah blah. But the uncanny . . . It's when something is simultaneously incredibly familiar, and yet completely strange.

That's what Sherlock was, to me. Uncanny.

So I found myself looking at my reflection late into the day, as the dark crept in, and I should have turned the lights on in 221b. I looked, because I wondered what about my appearance could have possibly have given it away. Not my clothes: the wear I used to get on one shoe compared to the other, due to my limp, was a thing of the past; as was the rubbing on the inner leg of my trousers. I'd replaced all the clothes I'd worn since my therapist had gotten me through my PTSD three or so years ago. I didn't like to think about that time, but now it was necessary. I felt like I was, for lack of better words to describe it, losing it.

I dove into the back of my cupboard, under all the hanging clothes, through the two or three pairs of shoes, and grabbed the shoebox with my war photos in it. The sensation of material all around me made me feel like I was six again, and hiding, and making a fort out of spare sheets and clothes pegs. The only thing to bring me back to reality was that shoebox. It reminding me that I was all grown up now, and a soldier, and wounded and unexplainably . . . Sad.

The photos calmed me, though. I felt less like I was completely batshit crazy when they were in my hands: solid, real, confirmed. Not some half-remembered notion, or something familiar and/or unfamiliar. Just photograph paper, curling at the corners.

As I scrambled out of the cupboard, the old cane I used to use fell out: a stark reminder of my past; my dependence on others; how much of a burden was.

But to who? I couldn't remember anyone I'd been specifically a burden on. Harry and Clara had their own mound of troubles without me interfering and adding to it; Mrs. Hudson was just my landlady; mum and dad were gone. Who, then? My therapist? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

All that was left was a feeling, that something I used to rely on was gone, though I couldn't put a face to that something, or someone.

. . . It was getting late. I was hungry. And thirsty. These things helped distract me from my own personal elephant in the room.

So, I made my way downstairs as I usually did, to Mrs. Hudson's flat, to see if she wanted any tea.

I must have been sitting and staring for much longer than I thought, because her lights were all off when I descended; even the hall light was dimmed to its lowest setting, leaving a subdued atmosphere to the whole area. I was disappointed not to see her: she was just so comforting to be around, and I was hoping she'd remedy my crazy existential crisis. It was a long shot, but now that I knew she wouldn't be around until morning, I despaired.

That left only one more door to turn to.

Cautiously, I turned to the left, my head rotating slowly, as if I was afraid of what I would see when I looked at the door of 221c. It just felt so wrong. Everything was wrong, inexplicable, and just . . . Just. . . Fucking insane.

Maybe I was insane. It was just a passing comment. About a leg that sometimes played up when I was stressed. No big deal.

But I found myself pushing Holmes' door open, slowly persisting forward, determined to call him out on it, even though I shouldn't have been in his flat without permission that late. He'd most likely hear me coming; there was no way he'd be asleep. I don't think he ever slept.

But when I approached the front door of the gloomy pit that he lived it, I found the key in the lock, almost as if he had been expecting me, and inviting me in. It was locked, but with a turn of the inviting key, and a substantial clunk, it creaked slowly open like a cliché from a bad horror film.

Holmes was nowhere to be found. His fireplace had a small bar lamp in it where the fire should have been, and I smirked at how fitting that was for him. It seemed almost clinical. Or prison-like.

I didn't turn the main light on, for the fear that he was asleep in the next room; I looked through the bedroom door, and saw no sleeping private investigator. I still neglected to find the switch that would make the entire place unnaturally and unbearably bright.

What did catch my eye, however, was something that was draped carefully on the back of the one armchair.

My heart felt as if it stopped when I saw the jumper. My queasy sensation of simultaneous familiarity and unfamiliarity peaked, and I found that my breath caught; my throat seemed to stick to itself, as if I'd been running for miles and miles and miles in the Afghani heat.

The sleeves were folded carefully underneath it, and it was ironed. I touched the material, dumbstruck and confused; though I felt like I could almost understand how the jumper was there. It was horizontally striped, and in the dim light, the stripes appeared off-white and blue-black.

All I knew is that I hadn't seen it for many years. And it was mine.

"John," – A voice from behind me, undoubtedly that of Sherlock Holmes – "You and I need to have a difficult conversation. . ."