John could feel the darkness starting to lift, feel his consciousness slowly seeping back up through the depths of... something.
He could also feel the floor against his cheek, and something cold and damp...
He opened his eyes slowly, blinking in the sudden fluorescent glare.
Red.
Everywhere.
An excess of scarlet.
The clean linoleum was bathed in a flood of cold, vivid blood. It had spread out across the floor and touched him with crimson fingers that soaked into his pant legs and jumper and clung to his eyelashes.
His breath caught in his throat, and his voice stuck.
No...
He raised his eyes, and found them locked on a pair of lifeless, grey-blue ones that stared back at him from across the floor without seeing him.
No, no, no...
John tried to push himself up, at once wanting to puke and sob and kill someone, but only succeeding in slipping a bit on the slick of blood.
How could there be so much...?
No, no, no, no—
The rest of the kitchen seemed a distant, blurred expanse, and he could only focus on two things: the excess of red, and, in the centre of it all, Sherlock.
Silent, still, empty Sherlock.
Pale Sherlock.
Cold Sherlock.
Dead...?
Couldn't be happening.
Not possible.
Couldn't.
Not.
But.
No.
John got up to his knees and moved toward him, trying vainly to control the trembling of his hands and the spinning of his head.
He didn't even question the fact that he'd woken up on the kitchen floor. It didn't matter.
But he was aware of the cuts.
He knew there were long, deep slices along Sherlock's arms, but for some reason he couldn't see them.
He knew without even looking that there was a large kitchen knife somewhere on the floor, in all this blood, and that it would have Sherlock's fingerprints all over it.
"Oh dear god..." He choked. "Please no..."
He couldn't look away from Sherlock's eyes.
They were open but the fire was out, leaving them vacant, with a fixed, glassy stare that made John's skin prickle.
Not possible.
'Help me.'
He couldn't.
John could not help him.
He never could.
He had failed him.
And now this…
He reached out and lifted Sherlock's arm by the wrist from where it lay in the scarlet pool, ignoring the cold drips that trickled down his fingers, and searched desperately for a pulse.
Any tiny beat would do.
Anything would be enough.
Just not nothing.
Not gone.
"Sherlock, please… Don't do this to me…" His eyes stung, but everything felt numb. He couldn't hear anything.
The silence was so real that it pressed in on all sides like a physical being.
John shut his eyes tightly.
He couldn't handle seeing his best friend slumped on the floor like so many of the murder cases they had worked on before, even giggling as they did it.
But this was no murder.
And John wasn't laughing.
He couldn't accept what he was looking at.
It wasn't real.
But…
When he opened his eyes again Sherlock still hadn't moved.
There, with his fixed eyes and unnaturally pale skin, shadowy cheekbones, slightly parted lips, and the dark, disheveled curls that tumbled down over his brow…
John brushed them back with shaking fingers, unable to stop the cascade of incoherent mumbling and pleading that had started under his breath.
A noisy, intermittent snapping sound had begun coming from… somewhere.
Perhaps everywhere.
Snap.
But John couldn't focus on it.
Snap.
Snap.
John's eyes flew open.
His chest felt tight, and his breath was short.
And…
"What are you looking at?" Sherlock glanced up apathetically from the couch, continuing to snap the rubber band against his wrist.
Snap.
"You… You're not…? So… It was just a…" John took a huge breath and leaned back in the armchair, suddenly very weak. "Oh Jesus…"
"Hmm? Did something happen?" The detective tilted his head, half interested.
"I just… Dream. No, nightmare, actually."
"About?"
"…Nothing." John steadied himself and got to his feet, knees still jelly. "But… One thing. Can I check your pulse?"
Sherlock looked up at him dubiously, pausing with the rubber band still pulled back.
"Please."
Still looking suspicious, Sherlock grudgingly offered up his wrist, which was now covered in little raised red lines from the rubber band.
John laid two fingers across it and kept them there for a minute, counting the steady beats.
Sherlock's life signature.
Still there.
It hadn't been real. Any of it.
All too soon the detective pulled away, clearly uncomfortable. But now, even the irritated glint in his eye was reassuring. Even the slight scowl was heartening.
Because it meant there was still hope.
John could still help.