We were on fire
Now we're frozen
There's no desire
Nothing spoken
You're just playing
I keep waiting for your heart
John hated everyone.
He hated Lestrade for not believing. He hated Mycroft for his idiotic behaviour, his betrayal. He hated Molly because she felt sorry for him.
And, quite fairly, Sally and Anderson for being twats.
He … didn't think he could ever hate Mrs Hudson. But he hadn't contacted her in three years, and that probably said something, right?
He hated Ella and Harry, both for the same reason - because their presence caused him to remember, which was counter-productive to his objective.
He hated Sarah and all his previous girlfriends and his one-night-stands-that-weren't-quite because being with them felt wrong - both because it felt like he was trying to live a life he didn't have anymore, and because it wasn't fair to them. They deserved someone who could love them back. John knew full well that he couldn't love anyone completely right now, and he wouldn't for a long while, if ever again.
It sounded so tragic and theatrical but it was what he felt, deep in his being.
But by God, most of all he hated him.
He hated him for crashing into his life like a ruddy derailed train. His cold and arrogant personality, his stupid deductions, his 'massive intellect'. The way he had never seemed to look like a man who hardly slept, hardly ate, but was - how had he done that anyway? He hated the way he seemed so apathetic, so callous, with no care for the emotions of others. The way he would act in front of others - yell at or cry in front of suspects or witnesses just to get information, the way he would show-off, had no sense of boundaries. And while he was on the topic of faces, he hated his face too. Damn his cheekbones. And his hair. God he hated his stupid, black, unruly hair. He just hated him.
But most of all, John hated that he had done nothing to stop him, that he'd seen it happen.
That the bastard had left him with no real reason why; just some crap about how it was all lie. And John knew it wasn't a lie, and no one would ever convince him otherwise.
What he really hated, though, was the fact that he didn't. He didn't hate the stupid git at all, and he never had. But he wished he did because it would make everything so much easier. He had left John. How could he be so selfish?
When John was in the army, he'd lost a few friends to the war. Being in the heat of the moment, with the atmosphere of the battle in the air regardless of whether he was at basecamp or on the battlefield, it had always been a matter of bottling up those gut-wrenching emotions and leaving them behind to go to his dark place. It had come as somewhat of a shock that losing him had ended up being a worse occurrence than anything before, worse than anything imaginable, worse than his time in service.
But John supposed he hadn't had a bond with any of those soldiers anything like the one he had with Sherlock.
He'd never discussed the deaths of his fellow soldiers with Ella, so his coping mechanism had never come up before. Come to think of it, he hadn't really opened up much to Ella at all. They had talked about how he was holding up, how his leg was, everything basic, but they'd hardly scratched the surface of the iceberg that was John's inner turmoil. John had simply not let Ella in – didn't trust her enough to let her in. This was why John decided to read up on it himself – dealing with the death of someone close to you. So here he was, alone in his bedsit looking up the Five Stages of Grief at one in the morning on the third anniversary of the day his heart crumbled to dust.
Wonderful resource, the internet. Much easier than dealing with actual people. According to Wikipedia, the stages of death were, chronologically: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Looking at it objectively, John figured he had surpassed Denial relatively quickly. It would have been hard not to, considering. Anger on the other hand had proved to be quite a difficult stage to get through; it had definitely occupied the majority of these three years. A blind, ugly rage at everything and everyone that all but threatened to consume him like nothing else… The only thing that had seemed to be keeping John together was his anger. He knew on some subliminal level that his sanity was quite literally hanging by a thread and if he did away with this anger, something terrible would happen. Something not good.
The problem in all of this was these were not normal circumstances, this was not just the death of his very best friend.
For starters, this was Sherlock. Unfeeling, unemotional Sherlock, who had jumped to his death off that detested building all those years ago. He was practically in tears when he had committed suicide… God, it just didn't make any sense for him to commit as a result of everyone thinking he was a fraud. John knew he'd been through worse, what with the coke and the name-calling and the obviously lonely childhood. But being called a fraud had sent him over the edge? And telling John that he should believe it too?
John knew he wasn't. So what... Was that not enough for him?
Secondly, the git was not allowed to just leave him like this. A couple of days, fine. But permanently? No, just… No. Why would he anyway, why would he leave the one person who would put up with him day in and day out?
And so the problem remained - why had the bastard jumped? Why had he told him those lies on the phone before taking the fall? The Sherlock John had known would have defeated Moriarty. He would have found some way to catch him out at the very least, kill him at most, for everything he had put them both through. Instead here John was, all alone, confused because Sherlock had gone and done this instead of being the hero John had known him to be, instead of saving everyone, most of all himself. And so in the early days, John had come to the conclusion that no, this most definitely was not right, Sherlock wouldn't just kill himself, he'd done it with some ulterior motive. Had to be a trick. Just a magic trick, designed to take him off the radar of the whole of Britain and beyond and John for some reason John hadn't come up with yet.
This small strand of hope had nestled deep in his chest, enveloped in his anger and determination to forget, nurtured, reassured by the promise of Sherlock turning up at his door in all his glory one day, declaring in that grandiose manner he had that he was back in business now, that Moriarty was dead, and it was time for them both to go home to Baker Street.
The days had trickled by.
John had most definitely tried bargaining. He had prayed and prayed and prayed to God to change it, just go back and take his life instead of Sherlock's. The world misses it's only consulting detective, prowling the streets of London, protecting the innocent and retaining the guilty, even if it doesn't know it. I'm nothing but a simple doctor; I heal, I don't prevent. What good am I? What is my worth when compared with that of a genius such as him? London isn't the same, isn't as safe, without him.
Nothing had made any difference, no matter how he worded the request. And so, with each passing day, this small tendril of hope seemed to diminish in luminosity. Time was the catalyst and eventually, perhaps when seeing a blue scarf through a shop window in passing on that third anniversary, the crumbled remains of the pain in his chest all but gave out. All that was left was a black, swirling muck of devastation and grief. The fourth stage. Depression, John mused offhandedly, now in his chair with laptop open on that sodding page. The sodding page that told him by ways of subtext that this was normal.
John hated normal. This wasn't, not for him.
They say it gets better with time, but how wrong they were. The memories John tried so hard to forget would resurface at the slightest trigger – yellow flowers, a pink hat, even the bloody green trees in Regent's Park resonated with images of lost treasure…
It was ridiculous. How could he live in a world where everything caused him to remember the one life he wanted to forget?
If you can't fight 'em, join 'em.
It can't be said that John didn't try, because he did. He tried every day for thirty-six fucking months and he'd had enough.
John hated everyone. But now, stuck in this hell, John was starting not to feel anything at all.
A/N: Absence of reviews is a paralytic. Reviews are, on the other hand, an excellent motivator.