John tried for a whole month. He really, honestly tried. This was the first time in so long that he could truly see himself being with someone … for more than a month. He could feel them edging closer to each other, except there was always a thin, transparent wall in front of him. He could easily forget about and ignore it, but if he went to reach out he caught himself unable to complete the motion. He hated it it more than anything, as he desperately wanted to move on. But his heart told him a firm no.

The wall had a name, just like the emptiness in his heart. It was unmistakable. The name was a bridge that had burnt long before he had ever seen it; back when he first knelt on the pavement outside St. Bart's. He had let a man seize control of his heart and he let him continue to constrict it long after he had gone, which seemed so backwards to everything he had thought and known about himself. The worst part of this – the absolute worst part – was Molly. Molly was the one he had to let down and let go, to demote their status to "friends", because it wasn't fair to her that he couldn't really connect and that Sherlock never left the back of his mind.

Alarm at 7:00 am, get out of bed, and get dressed for work. Make the coffee and toast the bread or bagel; drink and eat them. Leave Baker Street by 7:35 so that arrival is approximately 8 minutes before the clinic officially opens and the first patient comes in; 10 minutes if it's fast walking. Lunch is from 11:30 to 12:00. Last patient of the day comes in around 4:53, and hopefully time of departure is 5:10. Arrive home around 5:35, and either make supper or go out to eat at the restaurant a block away. Fill time with things; meaningless things that vary from day to day but somehow manage to pass the time. 8:00, possibly make preparations for lunch and/or supper the next day. 9:00 pm, go to bed. Consistently, John's days passed like this, with minute deviations here and there. However flat and boring his life had evolved into, he still tried to enjoy moments here and there. His patients seemed to like him, as he chose not to be cold but instead friendly and sometimes joking. On the weekends he visited family and still had coffee with Molly on Sunday mornings, and he also found himself roaming through all the shops of London, taking time to see what it had to offer besides its monuments and hustle and bustle. But regardless, there was always loneliness and dissatisfaction eating away at him in the moments in between preoccupation.

Months which could have been decades wore on, and John fought on. He was determined – stubborn, even – to make a good life for himself. Each day he reaffirmed to himself that Sherlock was a spark in my life, and now I've got to make the fire. He cringed at the sentence the first time he created it; it was dripping with "cliché" and sounded like something he might have written in an e-mail to one of his ex-girlfriends years ago. However cliché, it was a good metaphor to try and convince himself he was doing right. He would not allow the newfound monotony of his life to get the best of what he could still be.

In the past 3 years, John had not gone more than a month without thinking he saw Sherlock. It had always been the same type of man he had mistaken Sherlock for: tall, fair, and dark haired. But in the past week or so, there was a man who had caught his eye who hadn't been like the others. Thrice, he had seen a tall man wearing a long dark blue trench coat who had hair just like Sherlock had – except it was strawberry blonde. The man had only ever been walking away from John, so he had never even got a partial profile of his face. John thought this man was a bit more curious than all the others he had seen – seeing as this was the first one who reminded him of Sherlock without coffee bean-coloured hair. Still, John didn't think much of it; he had only been intrigued for a second.

Saturday afternoon, John had gone out into downtown to buy some tea. He had narrowed it down to two shops he had recently found, and couldn't decide which one to buy the tea from, seeing as they were both expensive shops. He almost had an internal row with the teas on his way to the first shop, but in the end, decided on one tea from each. Even though he felt a bit weighted down by the small bags in his hand, John enjoyed one of the rare sunny days of London as he sauntered back home. He noticed the old buildings, smiling, and thought about how the good weather somehow made him feel at peace and complete, if only for today. Almost resentful to have to go inside, John unlocked his door and bounced up his stairs. He got out his keys to unlock the door to the flat, only to find that he locked his door instead. Hm, he mused, must have forgotten to lock it. Thinking nothing of it, he burst through the unlocked door, froze, and dropped his bags.

What was obviously an apparition sat in the chair facing the door; Sherlock's chair. An apparition with its fingertips lightly pressed together, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, and an expression of expectancy upon its face. John stood gaping, dumbfounded, and unable to speak a word.

"Hello, John," the imposter spoke in the same deep and suave voice that Sherlock had. "You didn't think I'd leave you forever, did you?"

John looked straight into the tantalizing oceanic eyes that went from blue to green. There was a truth and vitality within them that said yes, indeed, Sherlock had come back from the dead. His entire body went to mush, starting at his head, then his throat, to his heart, his knees, and finally ending at his feet, where he was unable to stand anymore and fainted to the floor with a thud so alarming that even Sherlock was mildly concerned John may be hurt.