A/N: I'm rather, scratch that, very disappointed and unsatisfied with this chapter. Any suggestions on how to lengthen or even change it? Please leave a review or PM me. (This is a total fail in my book.)
Some people claim that at this stage, they feel as though time has stood still for them while the rest of the world carries on.
But John doesn't feel it.
He doesn't see it in the way he still has to shave every few days or so. (No matter what, John is not going to neglect his personal hygiene.) Doesn't see it in the fact that his rent, or rather, his share of it (one would think that he would bear the full brunt of the payment now that he is the sole occupant of the flat, but Mrs Hudson always seems to have problems with her hearing just when the matter is brought up) has even reduced as to it staying the same or even increasing (London is a city after all, and cities aren't getting any cheaper); not by much, just tiny chunks each month which Mrs Hudson says was accidentally claimed in last month's bill. But how can that be when each payment John offers is less than the last?
If anything, John would say that time has moved backwards for him. And this is seen in the way that his colleagues give him those insufferable looks of pity when they think he's not noticing (exactly the same as those looks when he was only a sod with an empty flat and a limp, just more pronounced because now he's the sod with an empty flat, a limp and an ex-flatmate-revealed-psycopath).
It's seen in the fact that no one, not Mycroft or hell, even Lestrade seems to cross paths with him anymore. After all, no one wants to spend time with the same old boring ex-solider- just a little more of him chipped off, a little more of him frayed at the edges.
It's even seen (though John wishes the most that he didn't see this though) in the way not a few weeks after that, John's psychosomatic limp acts up with a vengeance, as if taunting him with its again-constant presence and daring him to try and lose it again. (He doesn't. It is rather hard to ignore a limp that's a mild twinge one moment and has you fumbling in the cabinets in the dark for your cane the next.)
The tendrils of regression latch themselves onto him, wrapping around his ankles, chaining his wrists and attaching to his leg and shoulder, and drag him back from a place filled with people, colours and sounds towards that godforsaken greyness where he can only watch from afar and wonder what the fuck happened that got him here.
Slowly, slowly, John Watson morphs into what he once was, once upon a time before this brilliant man named Sherlock bloody (brilliant) Holmes came into his lacklustre life.
But he's too tired to go kicking and screaming anymore. He just plants his feet in the ground in a feeble attempt to delay the inevitable.