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Sherlock still hasn't figured it out.

Five days after John is taken from him, ripped away so god damned unfairly, Sherlock sits on the curb under a flickering streetlamp, nursing a swollen lip with part of his blood-soaked sleeve. His weariness overcomes him in a way that is much too much to bear. Mixed with his frustration at hitting yet another dead end (gangsters aren't the friendliest bunch), his patience with himself is wearing thin.

He doesn't understand. Desperation grows inside of him, more and more with each passing day, hour, second. Why this is so hard, why he can't straighten it out in his head; it's so much more than pain. Pain he's never felt before. Pain he didn't realize he could feel.

"You're a bloody train wreck, you know that?"

Sherlock cringes. "Not now, John," he mumbles through the swelling. "I don't need a lecture."

John sits beside him, lightly brushing his fingers over the bloody gash in Sherlock's arm through his now ripped coat. "You obviously do. What the hell were you thinking?"

"Maybe I wasn't," Sherlock answers with a groan.

"Liar," John huffs. "That brain of yours is always on." A pause, then, "Sherlock, what are you doing?"

"Finding your killer."

"Sherlock-"

"I HAVE TO, JOHN!" Sherlock yells, looking up to stare at nothing. The street is dead. He is alone.

The air shifts, wind picking up and suddenly Sherlock can feel the cold as his adrenaline wears off. Deep breaths, in and out, he stands and starts to walk quietly back to Baker Street. He is careful not to think of anything along the way because his thoughts tend to take on a life of their own when he doesn't have someone (John) to take his mind off of them. He is unwilling to admit it aloud, but the word fear creeps slowly out of the dark corners of his brain.

"Not afraid, not afraid, not afraid," he repeats over and over, the couple before him moving quickly to the other side of the street. Sherlock throws his head back and yells, "Why must I even say this!" A few uneasy stares follow him as he picks up speed, almost tripping over a bag that a young woman has placed in his path. She tries to mumble an apology but Sherlock ignores her, ignores everyone, until he finds himself home.

Slamming the door, running up the stairs, slamming another door, Sherlock stands in the middle of his (and John's) flat. Only he still feels lost.

"Why can't I THINK!" he cries, pulling at his hair, eyes wild and possibly terrified. Breathing began to hurt.

"You're probably scaring the hell out of the neighbors."

Sherlock whirls around towards John's smug (Concerned, Sherlock, not smug) face and shakes his head. "Damn the neighbors, John, they don't matter!"

"Then what does?" John asks, voice raised. Exasperated? Irritated. He wants to help, but Sherlock won't let him.

"My concentration matters. Figuring this out matters!" He's pacing the length of the sitting room with hard, purposeful steps. Every rise and fall of his feet means something.

John watches, biting his lower lip. "You're not figuring anything out."

Sherlock doesn't stop his pacing. "Fabulous deduction, doctor, but you don't know what's inside my head," he snaps.

"I know you're not solving anything in this state. Come," John says softly, holding out his hands. Sherlock stalls in the middle of pacing and looks at them as if they were on fire. "Come on, then, let me help."

Slowly, Sherlock walks to him, eyes never leaving John's hands. Fingers motion him to come closer, his hands steady, unlike Sherlock's own, the fists he's clenched them into trembling violently. He stops short of John's open arms and Sherlock lifts his head, locking eyes with his. Such sorrow in them, he thinks. Disappointment. Resentful? It's deeper than his memories of it, different than before.

"You know what's in my pocket." Sherlock doesn't ask because he knows.

John sighs. "I do. But you don't need it, Sherlock."

"How do you know what I need? This runs a little deeper than a three patch problem, calls for something stronger, don't you agree?"

"No, I don't."

"Course you don't," Sherlock grumbles, fingers now in his pocket, rubbing along the small plastic bag within.

"You don't need that, you just need to focus."

"I can't focus, John, don't you see?" Sherlock hisses, running fingers through his hair. He pulls the packet out, stares at it, longs for it.

"Leave it be, Sherlock. Come, I mean it. Let me help." John's hands are still out, waiting. Sherlock replaces the small bag into his coat pocket and, with a deep breath, takes the last few steps toward his friend. John's fingers gently rest on either side of Sherlock's head and he closes his eyes as the breath seems to have been knocked out of his body.

"How can you be warm when you're dead?" Sherlock whispers, a tremor rising up along his spine.

"Focus, you bloke. Not on me here, focus on the scene." John's voice is low; it slithers into Sherlock's ears and wraps around his brain.

Focus.

With his eyes still closed, Sherlock thinks. The position of the body, it's familiar, as is the wound, but he's gone through this already. An old case? A recent cold case, four men stabbed. He worked on it, an unsolved case, the only one since John. John, of course, John!

John's blog.

Sherlock's eyes snap open to John's smiling face.

"See there? That was less than a minute."

Their grins match, John's hands still twisted into Sherlock's hair and Sherlock's hands no longer interested in the small plastic bag inside his coat pocket.

-x-

Sleep eludes Sherlock, stinging his eyes as he stares at the website on John's computer. Brilliant, faithful John, who wrote of the cases they solved (and the one they hadn't). Sherlock remembers it even more clearly after reading John's blog and a small twitch of his lips into a slightly twisted smile gains a fond huff from behind his head.

"You think you're quite clever now, don't you?"

Sherlock turns to stare, taking in the kind eyes and the slumped shoulders of his very dead flatmate. "I needed you."

John shakes his head with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "You didn't, that's just what you needed to think."

Large, dry rocks seem to have invaded Sherlock's throat so that he can't swallow properly. He clears his throat and looks down at his mobile, sending a text to Lestrade for the folder he needs.

Serial killer earlier this year. Unsolved. You remember which one. Bring the file to Baker street. SH.

They wait together, in companionable silence, exactly the way it should be.