Sorry about the delayed chapter, and I feel I must apologise once again for the fact that this story is a little slow at the moment. I wanted to make it realistic so there haven't been many extremely eventful things happening, which I suppose explains why reviews have been a little low recently, there hasn't been much to say so far! But hopefully that will change very soon...

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, it contains John's sister, Harry, but I'm afraid I don't know that much about her, please correct me if I get something wrong about her.

Reviews much loved, as always! :D

Nail in the Coffin

I've run out of things to live for. I know that sounds horrible, but it's true. Even I know I have become an empty shell, and this is not what living is for, there is no point on me being on this earth any more, in fact it would probably be more productive if I was rotting in the ground. Sometimes I feel like I'm already dead.

What a horrible thing to think, since when has my mind started thinking like that?

But I have not quite reached the end of the hope yet, there is something, something that is keeping me alive, or rather someone.

If I die, Harry will have no family. It's just me and her now, and she has enough issues with her own, still struggling with relationships and keeping off the alcohol, I couldn't kill myself, it seems too selfish, as I hate to think what such an act would do to her.

Oh no, Harry.

I hadn't spoken to her in months, she must have been trying to contact me, I've been abandoning her for so long, she hates it when I don't contact her.

More feelings of guilt tumbles down onto my shoulders as I begin desperately looking for my mobile phone. I have a feeling I must have dropped it down the side of the bed or the sofa, I hadn't looked at it in ages, I was fed up of it buzzing so I threw it somewhere where it would be silent.

Finally I found it, knocked under the cupboard in my room. I had 39 missed calls and 213 unread messages.

Oh boy, that's not good.

I sat on my bed as I scrolled through the messages, not bothering to read them, but just seeing who had sent them. There were a fair few from Mycroft, which made me angry, and some from Lestrade, which surprised me, and a couple from Molly. The others were from unknown numbers or from the mobile phone company, but over a hundred of them were from Harry, and so were most of the missed calls.

The feeling of guilt just got heavier.

I didn't want to ring Harry, because then I would have to talk to her and she would be able to hear that there was something wrong with me, and then I might have to tell her all that was going on in my mind, and I didn't want to burden her with that. Besides, I was feeling guilty already, her voice would just make me feel worse.

Thank goodness she wasn't the sort of person to visit people's homes, I hate to think what her older brother must look like.

In the end, knowing it was a cowardice way out, I sent her a text:

Sorry I didn't reply to any of your messages, my phone's been broken x

It was only a couple of minutes before I got the reply. My heart lifted a little with the joy of being able to talk to my sister, I didn't realise how much I had missed her, but then I read the message, and my heart sunk like a stone:

I can tell when you're lying, even over text.

Oh no, she was not happy at all with my recent silence. I sat there, trying to think about how to reply, when my found buzzed again:

I heard about your friend, I'm sorry, why didn't you talk to me? x

Well, at least she was sounding a little more forgiving, butI really didn't know what to reply to that. Everything might come spilling out that I was hoping to avoid:

I've been busy x

After less than a minute, my phone buzzed again:

He was the only thing keeping you busy in your life. You're lying to me again. Why haven't you been talking to me?

Maybe she wasn't feeling so forgiving,this conversation was going downhill before it had even started:

Look I'm sorry I haven't been able been able to contact you, there have been other things on my mind. I tried to tell her, knowing that it probably wouldn't work, but at least I wasn't lying this time.

My phone buzzed again:

You always seem to be doing that, I thought being your sister I may be of some importance in your life, but even after Sherlock's gone you seem to find better things to do than talk to your sister. Did you not think about what was on MY mind after you had left me with so many weeks of silence? Does family not matter to you anymore?

This is getting worse and every word she said stabbed at my already battered and bleeding heart. Perhaps I shouldn't have contacted her after all. I couldn't think of anything to put that would try and solve the problem.

In the end, I simply put: I'm sorry, but you wouldn't understand.

A foolish thing to say at the best of times, I know, but what else could I say? And did anyone truly know what was going through my mind right now?

I felt like turning my phone off so I wouldn't be able to see Harry's response, because I knew it wasn't going to be full of forgiveness for what I had just said. Unfortunately I didn't have time to make the decision to turn my phone off before I got another message:

How would you know? I wouldn't understand because you never tell me anything, you just block me out of your life, I try my best to try and fix our problems but you just don't want to know. I hardly see you, you hardly speak to me, you have no idea what you put me through sometimes when I hear these stories on the news about bombs and murderers, yet you don't give me a second thought. I thought you were meant to be my brother?

But I wasn't, because I was a terrible, awful, dreadful brother. That's what she was trying to say to me, that's what I saw she meant, and I knew what she said was right. I had let my sister down, the only family I had left, and I had let her down.

And then, like the final nail in my own coffin, Harry sent me another text:

All right then, maybe I got this whole sibling thing wrong, maybe we're not meant to care about each other, because sometimes I feel like I don't have any family at all, my brother is just a stranger. That's all you've become to me.

Harry Watson was the one person who was keeping me alive, and I had pushed her away from me. Through my own selfishness I have destroyed the only thing I had left in the world - family. I sank from the bed onto the hard floor, my mobile phone falling from my limp hands and clattering to the ground. My vision started to blur and blacken as I felt I was being sucked into a whirlpool of emptiness.

My sister has no idea of the damage she has just caused, because I don't think I have any more reasons to keep on living through this hell.