A/N: Thank you all for reading, and the story alerts, reviews, everything! Every time someone reads, you make this fangirl ridiculously happy.
It was like he was nine and bedridden with pneumonia again. Just like that, actually, except much more was wrong with him this time, and he was much, much older, now.
Mrs. Hudson made a better caretaker than Harry ever had, bringing him hot tea and soup every few hours. "Don't worry about a thing, dear," she would tut, and remind him that Mike Stamford, such a nice fellow, had told him specifically to stay in bed.
Not that he'd be able to get up if he wanted to. His leg had started up again the minute he had returned to the flat, worse than before. The throbbing ache pounded away as he lay still, making it clear he would not be able to walk without his cane for a while.
The drugs Mike had prescribed him couldn't touch that pain, they were just to treat the sickness and the concussion that bicyclist had left him. Most medicines couldn't cure ailments of the mind.
Two pills sat next to the bowl of chicken noodle Mrs. Hudson had brought up hours before. John wasn't sure he wanted to take them. Now that the worst of the fever had passed, the hellish hallucinations of too red blood creeping through the cracks in the sidewalk, of burning hands ripping him away from the chalky one he wanted so desperately to hold on to, he didn't want to suffocate under the drugs' heavy haze.
Besides, he could hear someone coming in the front door downstairs. Halfheartedly, John attempted to figure out who it might be, trying to piece together a person from the soft responses replying to Mrs. Hudson's greetings and the weight of the footsteps on the stairs. But he wasn't the man at 221B who had a mind for deduction, so he gave up and waited.
He certainly hadn't expected to see Mycroft Holmes enter the bedroom. His surprise must have shown, because Mrs. Hudson brightened at his affect and backed out of the room, saying, "I'll just leave you two alone, shall I."
John didn't want to notice the shadows smudging beneath Mycroft's eyes, so he looked away.
"John." Mycroft stepped forward. "I was sorry to hear that you had taken ill. You're feeling better now, I presume."
"The fever's broken, if that's what you mean."
"Indeed."
The silence couldn't have gone on for the hours that it hung suspended between them, John knew. He uncomfortably tried to find some comment or joke about London's weather to fill in the hole, but nothing fit.
"Your sickness came at a rather," Mycroft paused. "Unfortunate time."
"Yes, well, I'm sorry," John stammered, caught off guard as the usually elusory man came straight to the point.
"We've had to bury Sherlock."
John's breath hitched painfully, his lungs still weak from infection. His mind flew. Why on earth would you do that to – oh yes, that was why – the bloody trenches flowing in the pavement – but what did that have to do with – oh yes, that was right – he could see that black figure against the sky, standing tall one moment, but the next –
"Already?" was all he said.
"It seemed best." Mycroft's voice was bare without the layers of sarcasm and superiority that typically coated his words. "With all the press so excited. Not a funeral, really. I wasn't even there."
It was maybe intended to make John feel better for not being there himself, but he could only see a lonely coffin being lowered into a grave. Dirt being shoveled onto his friend's blood streaked face, flecking his staring blue eyes. Alone.
He pressed his own eyes firmly closed.
"There's just one more thing. My brother's phone. It was found in St. Bart's, afterwards. Miss Hooper seems to think you should have it. She said he would have wanted you to keep it."
Mycroft extended the mobile, his features warring between wry amusement and a tired, bitter sadness under his normally schooled countenance. "She's probably right."
Wordlessly, John accepted the phone. The weight of the thing was different than his own, but familiar.
"Goodbye, John."
John meant to say something, a goodbye or a thank you, sympathize with comforting, meaningless phrases, but the elder Holmes was gone.
His breaths were too fast and too shallow, but each quick shiver sent a stabbing pain through his weak chest. Lightheaded, he was shuddering, shaking uncontrollably.
It wasn't until he lowered his head into trembling hands that he realized his face was finally wet.