After having a major freak out over my English exam, I ended up with a 92...and a perfect score on my essay...yeah, I'm actually shocked.

So as promised since it's Friday and my exams are over, here is your update!

I'll uh...let you get on with it since I know plenty of you were waiting for it.

And also, thank you so much to all the people who have followed, favorited, and especially reviewed this little story. Honestly guys, this was just supposed to be an experiment in first person writing :) I never exactly intended it to go this far and I never thought anyone would actually read it

Warning- gore, suicide references, drug references

I opened my eyes, peering into the dark room ahead of me, all light blocked by the drawn curtains.

There was a dark form on the bed, that much I could see.

A very Sherlock-shaped lump.

It was the only thing I could see.

I forced my feet to move. Forced my legs to work even if they didn't want to.

Something crunched under my feet. It sounded like broken glass.

I looked down.

Broken needles littered the floor, leading a trail to the bed.

Stepping on broken glass was the only sound in the room now. No breathing. Not even mine.

I was holding my breath. Partially to keep out the smell.

It only got stronger as I approached, invading my nostrils and staying there, even through the fabric of my shirt. I could taste it on my tongue.

I suppose I already knew what I was about to see.

I'd smelled this smell enough times to know what it meant.

I knelt down and looked at the form curled on the bed.

It was a body. The body of my best friend. I was sure of it.

I forced my hands to fumble for the bedside lamp, trying to turn on the light.

When I managed to flick the switch, it felt like I was seeing everything at once.

I would never be able to wipe the image from my mind. It was burned there forever.

His body. Sherlock's body.

Bloated. Twisted. Distorted. Features indistinguishable and shrouded by his tangled, too long dark hair.

Skin tinged black and green with patches of decay.

Dead for days, judging by the smell.

No. No. This wasn't happening. This couldn't possibly be real.

Sherlock couldn't be dead. He just couldn't.

I closed my eye, holding them shut tight. I held my breath. Willing the image in front of me to disappear and for Sherlock to walk into the room behind me, perfectly healthy and very much alive.

It didn't.

When I opened my eyes, Sherlock was still there. Still dead and decomposing.

I reached out, hands trembling wildly now, swallowing down waves of bile.

My fingertips touched the once silky fabric of his favorite dressing gown, trailing down and accidentally brushing against the discolored skin. I felt it slide under my hand, sloughing off my best friend's body, already to the point where it was blistering and peeling.

Oh God. I pulled my hand back, trembling violently and unable to stop the tremors wracking ym body.

No.

Oh God no.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

Sherlock wasn't supposed to die like this. He wasn't supposed to be dead at all.

And he surely wasn't supposed to end up like one of the bodies we'd always investigated. He wasn't supposed to be just another black and green corpse surrounded by a bed of dirty needles, obviously having overdosed. Had it not been for the rot, I'm sure I would have been able to see ugly bruises and angry red track marks from the constant injections. Heroin, maybe cocaine, maybe both combined.

This wasn't how it was supposed to end between us.

There was so much I'd never gotten to say. So much I didn't know if he understood.

Sherlock was supposed to stay. He was supposed to solve brilliant crimes and catch killers. He was supposed to be my friend. He was supposed to be stronger than this.

He would have been my baby's godfather. He was...he was supposed to teach them all sorts of inappropriate things and show them pictures of dead bodies and I was supposed to get fake mad at him even though I was secretly glad that Sherlock would be around to raise my son or daughter with me.

"Oh God...no," I found myself mumbling.

I'd caused this. This was my fault.

I hadn't been there for him.

He'd needed me and I'd been to busy to notice he wasn't well, that he was sick. That he was using drugs again.

I'd been too stupid to notice. Too stupid.

Too stupid.

I was a horrible friend. I was horrible. Oh God, no. I'd killed him. Sherlock Holmes was gone and it was all my fault.

I was a monster.

I couldn't keep the tears back any longer.

They started flowing freely, growing into heavy, choking sobs as my chest tightened and breathing became a chore.

So I sat there, not knowing what to do. Not knowing how to respond to this. Just kneeling there, sobbing in front of the body of my once best friend as errant flies buzzed at my ears and landed on his exposed skin. This man, this man who had once been so alive, who's last vow had been to protect me and my wife and our unborn child he would never get the chance to meet, was dead, and it was entirely my fault.

And that was one of the many possible scenarios that played in front of my eyes as I stood in the doorway, eyes still shut tight and unwilling to open.

I saw so many others too, flashing behind my closed eyelids.

Hanging from the ceiling fan or the bar in his closet, rope around his neck.

Curled in bed, arms crusted with dried blood from self-inflicted wounds.

Surrounded by empty pill bottles.

Surrounded by needles and powders and vials of unidentifiable liquids.

Drenched in blood from a wound sustained on a case, one I hadn't been there to stitch up.

Even dropped dead of starvation, a skeleton , bones grotesquely protruding because I hadn't been there to force him eat.

I saw everything, ever possibility.

And they were all my fault in one way or another.

He'd needed me, always needed me whether it was to remind him to eat or patch him up when he was hurt or just keep him grounded

I'd left him alone for a month, and I would have left him longer if it hadn't been for Lestrade. Sherlock had been nervous enough already, though he'd refused to admit it. I'd pretended like everything was fine, that I would see him again shortly after my honeymoon.

I'd promised him things wouldn't change, and I'd broken that promise.

It was like I knew he was already dead before I opened my eyes. What else could it be?

But I still prayed, silently, that I wouldn't have to find him. That I wouldn't have to see my best friend, the man that had saved my life, like that, like I'd imagined.

I prayed that we would still have time together. I'd spent two years without him. Two long, hellish years marked with depression only alleviated by Mary, and even then not fully. I couldn't do that again, I couldn't do survive it. It wasn't fair. I'd just gotten him back, he wasn't supposed to be gone already. I still needed him.

I prayed that I would still have a chance to save him.

So I finally opened my eyes, still not entirely prepared to face what was very likely the rotting body of my best friend.

There was nothing.

I blinked, looking around the room.

It still smelled horrible, but I wasn't seeing any of the things I though I would.

Sherlock wasn't hanging from ceiling or in the bed or curled on the floor. In fact, the bed was tightly made and didn't look like it'd been slept in for a long time.

There didn't seem to be anything in the room, not a single living creature.

I couldn't tell if that was better or worse.

Steeling myself, I fumbled around the room for a moment and flicked on the lights, immediately zoning in on the source of the smell.

Sherlock's desk, shoved against the wall opposite his habitually unused bed, was covered in unkempt experiments.

I walked over to take a closer look, almost gagging at the stench radiating from it. There were several petri dishes growing mold and something covered in a sheet, soaked through with old blood and covered in a thickening blanket of flies. I took the corner of the cloth between my two fingers, pulling it up to reveal an assortment of what were probably animal organs in varying states of decomposition.

Probably a normal experiment to Sherlock Holmes.

I sighed relievedly. So he wasn't dead, just in the middle of some pretty grotesque experiments.

But as my singular focus faded, other things came into view.

Scattered around the desk were leafs and leafs of hand-written notes written in Sherlock's messy scrawl, some crumpled and stained. My brow furrowed. While his area was usually a bit messy, it was never like this during the middle of an experiment. There had always been an organization to his chaos. Usually, he cleaned up his mess when he was done with work for the day, neatly leaving his cultures or whatever he was working on the kitchen table and a stack of fresh notes on his desk in the sitting room. Point being that it was unlike him to be this messy and it was unlike him to leave an experiment like this. Had he left in a hurry?

I also began to notice the myriad of teacups and mugs littering the room, some spilled and cracked on the floor, having fallen off the desk. The ones still containing liquid were growing a fuzzy layer of green mold.

Sherlock almost never made tea, and he always drank it if he did.

Something was wrong. Perhaps I'd been too quick to think that everything was okay just because I hadn't found Sherlock.

I turned my attention to his notes, managing to decipher the black ink. None of it seemed to mention decomposition at all. Had...had he not been measuring it? If the experiment wasn't dealing with rotten organs, did that mean this wasn't the goal? Had he left in the middle of an experiment and never came back, leaving the organs to go unchecked for days? That seemed the most likely case...

So if Sherlock wasn't in the flat and hadn't been there for days, where in God's name was he?

Did I have you going there for a minute? Sorry 'bout that but I couldn't resist XD

Well...we're not out of the woods yet. What has Sherlock gotten himself into this time?

Please let me know what you think and stick around, I hope to be back soon with more!