AN: Hi guys! So this is the last chapter. I hope you like the ending :) Thank you for reading this story! I hope you enjoyed it!

Chapter 6

The day had to come someday...
He paces the room, pulls out his phone and dials her number. "Where are you, Eleanor?" he asks, impatiently, "We've got a case!"
"I'm coming, Sherlock," she replies, "I'm one block away."
"Well hurry up! I want to go to the crime scene!"
"You sound like a child on Christmas day!" She scolds, but he can hear the smile in her voice.
He chuckles down the phone and then hears a crack. "Eleanor?" He questions, "What was that?"
No answer.
He tenses. "Eleanor?" He repeats, panic rising inside him. Down the phone he hears a scream, a shout, a struggle. "ELEANOR!" he yells, desperately.
He pockets his phone, grabs his coat and runs, calculating where she would have been while talking to him. He skids to a halt on the pavement. The empty pavement. Spins round, searching, hoping. He finds her mobile by the side of the road, picks it up, holds it tight. He finds her bag in a bush by the road, looks through it, anything to show where she might be. He finds tyre tracks on the road, large van tires. He calls Lestrade, barks orders down the phone. Greg tells him to wait. He doesn't. He runs, following the tracks, panic powering him onwards.
He doesn't know how long he runs for. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. Time means nothing to him anymore. He finally stops when he comes to yet another dead end. His knees buckle under him, his body shaking from fatigue and exhaustion. It doesn't take long for the police to catch up.
Lestrade kneels in front of him, places a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Come on," he says. "We can look for her tomorrow." He offers a hand, helps him to his feet. They expect him to cry. He doesn't. There's no tears left to cry with, just the numbness, the emptiness. A great hole where she should be. He won't accept that he's lost her. He won't. He turns toward the wall and vows out loud, "I'll find you, Eleanor. Whatever the cost."

That night the nightmares start. He sees Eleanor, bound and gagged. He sees her being assaulted on the street. He sees her struggle, fight, but be overpowered. He sees them force her into the back of a van. He sees them drive off into oblivion. He sees them torturing her, her imagined screams digging into him and ripping him apart. He sees her die. The light in her eyes flickering out, leaving darkness, emptiness and coldness behind. Hollow. He doesn't sleep much that night and they continue to haunt him for months afterwards.

Hours of searching turn into days. Days into weeks. Weeks into months. A new clue, a new lead, a new chase, a dead end. The same cycle over and over again. Sherlock struggles on. Barely sleeps. Barely eats. They don't mean anything now, not without her there with him. The bed's cold, the table's empty. They are just for transport now. He finds a new way to survive. He has to keep going, pushing himself to his limits, again and again. He finds a new way to keep himself concentrating. Solution in a bottle, a needle pierces a vein, a drug - a stimulant- enters his body. Enough to get him through the night. He takes more the next morning and again the day after that. Slowly relying on the drug more and more.
He doesn't let his true emotions show. Doesn't show the rawness in his chest, like his heart has shattered into a million tiny fragments. He doesn't let people know he wakes up screaming every time he does sleep. He allows the ice to creep in. It freezes over the pain. Caring is not an advantage, after all. It makes it harder to understand others, they're just stupid anyway, and he doesn't have her there to help explain emotions. He becomes weak, ill, dead. Like a body moving with no life force in it. Mechanical. A machine.
One day he nearly dies. A year after her disappearance. A year after she left. No clue as to where she was or if she was alive or dead. Too much in the needle, apparently, the doctors told him. Lestrade found him unconscious- had to restart his heart. No one, not even himself, knows if it was deliberate or not. He is separate from everyone.
Lestrade's next to his bed, looking at him with eyes full of concern. He speaks. The words cut deep. "Accept that she's gone, Sherlock. She's not coming back. I'll make you a deal, you give up the drugs and I'll give you cases to solve. How does that sound? She wouldn't have wanted you to become like this." That's the first time he sheds a tear. The chase is over, the game lost. He has failed, lost the most important thing to him, forever. He looks at himself in the mirror, pale, skin and bone, lank greasy hair and realises he needs to come back to life, if not for himself, then for her.
He gives up the drugs. It hurts so much without them and he's ill for a while, unable to move or care. Soon he starts to eat again, proper meals, 3 times a day. Mrs Hudson helps. He doesn't tell her he often throws the food away, it's only for transport. She lets him keep the flat even though he can't pay all of the rent. She pities him, feels sorry for him. He doesn't need her pity. He starts to go to cases, walking into crime scenes, seeing the bodies. The first time, he says a deduction, but stops halfway through, waiting for someone to finish the sentence. She never does. He learns to say it all himself and feels her absence like a dagger in the side.
He sees her a lot. She stands over the body, pale, not really there. Or sits in her armchair as he reels off deductions to her. She doesn't speak, doesn't touch. Sometimes there's the ghost of words or laughter, a chilly breeze that raises goose bumps on his arms feels like her stroking him. She watches him closely, but fades away too quickly. He talks to her, letting out all his pain and problems. She listens, can't comment, and slowly he heals.

He never goes back to the way he was before her. His cheeks remain pale, cheekbones prominent. His eyes get brighter from the hollow holes they had become. But, they're only calculating, the old glimmer doesn't return. He doesn't get as close to anyone. He avoids relationships – they only cause pain, after all. He doesn't understand people, can't read their emotions. He insults them and more people turn away from him. He smiles less, lips barely turning up at the corners anymore. But, still, he's recovering.

A man walks into Bart's hospital labs. He has a friendly, round face, an alcoholic sister, a made-up limp and a bullet wound in his shoulder. They talk and laugh, the first person he's ever truly laughed with after her. He moves in. There's less room for her now. She gets pushed from her armchair. He only catches fleeting glances now, a flash of gold hair, or pale skin, or the glitter of an eye in the darkness. But, it doesn't hurt like he thinks it should. In fact, he feels good.

He opens his eyes now he's recounted their story. He looks towards the chair she sits in, but she isn't there. Instead there's a man not a girl, with blue eyes not brown and short hair, not long. He looks at him with sadness and understanding in his eyes, and he stares back.
A soft touch causes shivers along his arm and a puff of breath warms his ear. He hears a voice. Her voice.
"You don't need me anymore," it tells him. "You've got him to care for." A ghost of a kiss against his lips. "Keep him safe."
"I will, Eleanor." He says out loud, agreeing with the thing he had failed to do for her, "I promise."