Hope you enjoy everyone, and sorry this took so long, I've been preoccupied with other writings

For a long time, I'd remained hopeful.

I'd thought that maybe, just maybe, we'd find him quickly. It might take a few weeks of hard detective work and sleepless nights roaming the seedy streets of London searching, but I really thought we would've found him by now. I'd hoped that it would be like the first time Lestrade had dealt with this.

So I'd worked myself to the bone, searching, trying to find him. I'd regrettably ignored Mary, spending my nights with Lestrade instead of celebrating our newfound parenthood. She hadn't deserved that, but it'd happened anyway. She'd never blamed me though, she'd understood for a while.

I'd honestly thought that he'd be alright if we found him fast enough. I'd thought that we might get there in time to stop him from doing something stupid, from overdosing or starving or getting himself shot.

But days turned to weeks, and weeks to months.

The possibility of finding him seems less likely now.

The effort is losing steam.

The police can't help much anymore. They've done all the can and more, with Lestrade at the helm. The investigation is still ongoing, and they still have bulletins posted, but it isn't working.

Lestrade can't spend as many nights out with me searching through damp, dirty crack houses for the damaged consulting detective. I know that he wishes he could be there, but he has a life, he has work and apparently he's "trying again" with his ex-wife. Sherlock cannot consume his whole being once more. He has other things to worry about.

Mycroft has pulled his men off the streets. They aren't searching anymore. He still has people monitoring hospital records and CCTV recording, but I don't feel like it's working.

I feel like they don't care anymore. They think that Sherlock will just show up when he feels like it, dead or alive.

But I can't bury him again. I can't go back to talking to the sleek black headstone instead of my best friend.

Those two years without him had been the worst of my life, everything that had once been so colorful washed with grays. I'd lived after he'd gone, but just barely, going about my day to day life with crippling monotony I hadn't experienced since coming home from the war. I'd tried to stay at Baker Street, not wishing to leave those final remnants of my friend behind, but found myself unable to deal with the memories and the phantom violin music that tortured me through my sleepless nights. I'd moved on though, found a steady job and miraculously met Mary, the best thing that could have possibly happened to me. She'd brought back my smile, she'd brought the color back to my gray life. I'd been reluctant, at first, to really move on and stop grasping at the straws of my old life, but I'd found that she enjoyed my stories of Sherlock. She'd gotten me to talk about him with a smile on my face, remembering all the good times and almost forgetting the man's final days. She'd been perfect.

Well, I suppose she's still perfect now. She's the same women I met and fell in love with. But things...they just seem so strained now. It's supposed to be perfect.

But I can tell she's getting fed up with me, with my behavior. We scarcely got any time to spend together, alone and happily married. We don't have time now.

Now, I want to spend every night out, but I know that I can't and she's not afraid of reminding me.

I know that I should be there for her. She's been dealing with her pregnancy practically alone, horrible morning sickness and all. I know that I need to stop looking and let it go, for her sake and for the sake of our baby. He'll show up eventually, I keep telling myself. The police'll find him, maybe Mycroft. I try to convince myself that he'll be okay.

But every single night that I think I've found peace, that I think I can let go and let fate take over, the nightmares come back.

I dream of him dead nine times out of ten.

Some are worse than other though.

On the better nights, I only dream that I'm at work, idly pushing through patient after patient in a monotonous cycle when I get the call that he's gone. In some dreams, I find myself rushing to the hospital, racing against time and London traffic to get there in time after my best friend is rushed there, OD'd or worse. I never make it in time, ever. Those nights I just end up waking with a start, breathing heavy with Mary sleeping soundly next to me. But it could be, and often is, worse.

There are bad nights, when I dream of finding him dead, so like those visions in front of his bedroom door. I dream of him, stiff and cold on a piss stained mattress surrounded by skeletal forms to intoxicated to realize my presence. I dream of being just too late, finding rusty needles sticking out of bruised arms.

Those nights are always worse. I wake up practically shouting his name.

But on that rare, tenth time, I dream that we find him alive. But only technically alive. Not truly.

He's dead on the inside, rotted from the inside out. His mind fragile and broken like shattered glass, his body too weak to fight. He's not Sherlock Holmes anymore, in those dreams. He's no longer the manic, insane man whom I'd come to call my friend. He's not the man I'd hoped to introduce my children too, the man they'd call Uncle Sherlock. He's a vegetable, a zombie, strapped to a bed and force fed medications through a tube down his throat, kept alive by tubes and machines and tangles of wire. Never to recover, never to speak or acknowledge visitors. Dead and gone, but not really.

I honestly don't know what reality is worse.

Since this story is coming to a close soon, I thought I'd ask y'all what you'd like to see next:

a) sick!fic of the more brutal variety, not like the adorable fluffy flu ones

b) another drug story, this time exploring Sherlock and his relationship with his father in a way more aligned with the new canon