Content warning: grief, strange imagery, vague suicidal ideation (sort of).
One year After, John walks, his jacket pulled around his ears, hands shoved in his pockets, cane clicking on the pavement. He has called off from the surgery, turned off his mobile, declined offers from Mrs. Hudson, Sarah, Lestrade to spend the day with him. This day is for (him) alone.
John limps through the city, past the lorries and buses, the ubiquitous black cabs they had taken so many times together; past their Chinese takeaway and Angelo's, past the National and through Trafalgar Square and over the Millennium Bridge and back; wandering all day until he finds himself back at his old flat.
He stares up at the small windows, a vacancy sign in the corner, the glass still covered in the faded curtains that he had seen from the other side, trapped in a bland nothingness that had cut his whole life in two. The cool wind slips through his jacket and he shivers, drawing it tighter around him. The thin shadow of his former self peers out from behind the curtains and settles silently beneath his skin, looking out from his broken eyes.
He tastes the echo of cheap tea in his mouth, a single apple for breakfast, the thin mattress under his back. He feels the chill from the old radiator; the cracked linoleum under his feet. He breathes the dry, flat air that coalesced around his nightmares in this sea of beige, the days filled with a muffled, warbling agony that pressed in on him from all sides. This place of desperate wishes, where he sealed himself shut to everything but the pain of living.
He fingers the vial of (his) bones in his pocket, the glass slowly worn down with age, the rubber stopper brittle and cracking.
His body is a single, raw nerve unsheathed. The bottom of his bones ache, his skin prickling from the emptiness at his side. He tastes the faint residue of danger on his lips, shining like sugar.
His cane clicks in a constant drumming, his hands twitching, yearning to clutch at (his) hand, or at Moriarty's dead throat. His scar thrums, shudders, tries to unknot itself into healed flesh.
He hungers to slip back through time, to the days when he never saw (his) dying eyes staring back at him, when he never ran through the sweet London night, when he never knew (his) name.
Everything itches inside John when he returns to Baker Street, his leg throbbing, the pain of it yoked to his body. He lies down on the sofa, fitting his body into the space where (he) once breathed and slept and sulked and smiled.
(His) things, as they always had, surround him: the microscope that cradled the soft pools of (his) eyes; the dressing gown that swirled around (his) body; the violin that sung the dark parts of (his) soul. Even after John had moved into the flat so long ago, it was always (his) things, (his) cases, (his) energy filling it to the brim. Now all of it sits discarded, strewn about the flat like wreckage, each object aching from days of sitting, waiting to be picked up by a set of slender fingers, made into something useful and beautiful.
He longs to feel (his) voice on his skin, calming his trembling, wounded limbs, breathing life back into him, moulding him back from this broken mess into fineness, like clay shaped into a strong vessel. But no one cries out for him, beckons him into the night with the promise of danger. No one needs his steady, solid hands, or the touch of his words on (his) heart.
The pieces of (his) life close in on John, the hundreds of days of grief like tiny bullets tearing into him. Spiraling tight around him, the memories choke John in their grip, clamping against his bones until they burn. The flash of (his) eyes swamps his vision, the smell of (his) blood fills his nostrils, the rumbling of (his) voice floods his ears.
He trembles on the sofa, the searing pain freezing him in place. The molecules of (his) skin swirl around John, the dust of (him) lodging like shards of gravel in his lungs. All the periphery of (his) life feels like alcohol on his parched throat, only worsening his thirst for (him). Every thing he sees, from (his) skull on the mantel to (his) Union Jack cushion, reminds John that his heart is still splattered on the pavement in front of Bart's, his soul burned to ash with (his) bones, his breath snatched in the wind along with (his).
The room echoes in a bright, fierce cacophony, the world around him screaming a sound like a broken violin, like a body ripped apart, like a dog howling for its master, and the same sound comes from John's throat, a single, pure note of hollow need, ringing terrible and fine in his chest.
He screws his eyes shut, presses his hands to his ears, the noise growing louder. The sound stretches before him in a line of solid pain, not of emptiness or of loneliness, but the pain of too much, of everywhere, never stopping, growing stronger and stronger until his heart explodes inside him, his body breaking into white like a frozen bottle shattering apart.
When he snaps open his eyes, a perfect almost-silence surrounds him. He floats in an endless, all-encompassing emptiness, like the plains of the Afghan desert, the shroud of London fog, the bleakness of the Moors, the bare expanse of (his) bones.
He holds out his hands, clutching the withered husk of his life in his fingers, his tears spilling into the empty space. Slowly, his spirit dissolves, alone, into this place beyond pain, the blank void at the bottom side of his soul where nothing lives, only waits.
Behind his eyes, the last, faint glimmer of light flashes for one moment, then dies.
Thirteen months After, John stands before the mantel, holding (his) urn, hands cupped around the marble teardrop. The black surface glints in the last remnants of evening light that slip through the windows. John closes his eyes, presses his forehead to the carved letters of (his) name, his thoughts flowing from warm skin to cold stone:
I'm sorry. I wish I could stay. It hurts too much to stay. I wish I could remember how to be brave. I know I've survived more than this. I know I've fought so hard before. But I'm tired of fighting. I can't save myself anymore.
All I want to do is be with you. I can't keep pretending that I know where I'm going when all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die. I don't know how to live anymore without you. I'm not sure I want to.
I miss you more than anyone in the world. I miss you more than my own life. I wish I knew how to delete things, like you did. I wish I knew how to stop this pain.
I never thought I'd run away from you. From us. But this is the only way. Maybe I'll have some peace now. Maybe if I can forget you, I can forget that I loved you.
I did love you, you know. I still do. I know I never said it, but I hope you felt it. I know you never thought you deserved love, but you did. You were my hero. I know you never believed in them, but I did.
I always believed in you.
You're my best friend. You're my only friend. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I failed you. I'm sorry I didn't protect you. I'm sorry I didn't save you.
Please forgive me.
John opens his eyes, staring at the black marble. It is the blackness of the inside of coffins, the blackness of burning bones, the blackness in a needle's hollow tip. It is the blackness of black holes and the spaces between galaxies. It is the blackness of (his) hair, the blackness of (his) suit, the blackness of (his) pupils blown wide and still.
He picks up the urn, a solid, cold weight in his hands as he cradles (his) ashes in his arms. He sets the urn on the sitting room table, draped in white sheets like the rest of the furniture. Carefully, he slips it into its cardboard box, nestling it in the soft packing material, then seals the lid shut.
He looks around the room one more time at the remnants of what once was his home, all the relics of (his) life covered in blankness. He catches his face in the mirror as he turns, his eyes hard, flat stones, set in a thousand-yard stare.
Slowly, the edges of his skin turn transparent, fading into shadow, his breath shriveling to a whisper. The thin tendrils of his body, shimmering like spun silver, trail and wither into the empty flat. The last atoms of his heart, frozen and shivering, break like crystal in his hands.
Picking (him) up in one hand, gripping his cane with the other, John limps down the seventeen stairs, out the door of Baker Street to the taxi below, waiting to take him back to his old flat.
AN: My thanks to the brilliant and talented Mirith Griffin, Kathrina (Behind Tinted Glass), and Leigh Ann (I'd Rather Be Reading) for their assistance on this difficult chapter. Also, thanks to Frederick in Flux (on Tumblr) for the "sea of beige" metaphor in the first section.
The title references the Rumi poem of the same name. In the world of planimeters, the zero circle is a term meant to describe a wheel that spins, but isn't rolling forward or backward-all spin, no progress.
The "taste of sugar" phrase in the second section is taken from the Indigo Girls song "Mystery."
The "breaking into white" image is from the Jan Beatty poem, "How I Fell in Love in Pittsburgh."