A/N: Just thought I should let you all know that this story hasn't been beta read, and so I apologize for any typos that might appear/have appeared. I didn't really look over this section that well because I was just too excited to post today so... here you go!

Also, for those of you wondering, I am not going to address how Sherlock survived the Fall, instead choosing to leave it sort of ambiguous like Moftiss did. I know. Annoying.

And one last thing: from here on out, the events in this fic aren't going to be canon compliant. Just so you know.

Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews! Keep 'em coming!

Two months after the Fall

John

Someday, we'll all be standingaround a body. And Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.

I hear Donovan's words from that first day over and over in my mind. A grotesque mantra. I hate them because they're true.

I am Dr. John Hamish Watson, retired army doctor and former Captain of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, a man with a facade of steel and a psychosomatic limp and a penchant for danger and assholes in long coats, and I'm sitting in an empty room. Alone.

The walls are painted a pale colour that's neither grey nor tan nor cream. There's no furniture (no table overflowing with equipment and body parts, no bookshelf that's literally busting at the seams, no chairs that face each other, indents in the cushions from overuse, and certainly no tall man, outrageously expensive dressing gown hanging from his slim shoulders, violin resting beneath his chin) except a bed (unmade) and a desk (empty).

It looks like before. Before I met him. (It isn't the same flat, isn't even in the same area, but that doesn't matter at all.) I even have that same gun tucked there in the top right desk drawer, just waiting for me. (Waiting for me to what? To stick it in the waist of my trousers and go jogging off after a terrorist? To aim it through two windows and blow the bloody arms off of someone? To put the cold steel of it against my temple─)

I'm sitting on the bed now, staring into the bland, colourless space around me. My feet are planted firmly on the ground, side by side in their bland, colourless socks. My hands are are laying flat on my thighs. Fingers straight. Thumbs splayed out. My spine is straight and long, and runs right up to meet the back of my neck, keeping my head held high. I haven't moved for half an hour.

It's hard to move at all now.

I don't live at Baker Street anymore. I thought I could do it, and I tried for about three weeks, but the rooms were too empty, too peaceful, and they smelled too nice. So I packed up just enough of my stuff to live off of and moved to the cheapest place I could find. It's out in the suburbs somewhere. I have about a thirty minute drive to work, which would be a problem if I still actually went to work. (They gave me a few months off. Said they understood. Said I needed time. But my time's coming to an end now and I still don't feel any better and I still think of him every single goddamn day, those eyes and that brain and the blood on the pavement and god─)

I asked them all to stay away. Lestrade, and Molly, even Mrs. Hudson─I didn't say anything to Mycroft and he didn't say anything to me, nothing except a thin slip of paper that I found on my pillow the morning after the fall with some shite about his shared grief that I trashed before I could even finish reading it. I just don't think I can see them without thinking about She─

My chest hitches. Sternum: pulled in tightly, compressing down on my lungs and making it impossible to breathe. I've been doing so well today. Just sitting here on my bed for the past (countless) hours and breathing shallowly and slowly and not thinking about... hell, about anything. My mind a blank slate. My mind a buzz of white noise. My mind empty. Like always.

But now. Not now. Something triggered it, flipped a switch that looses a stream of images through my mind so quickly that I can't concentrate of any one of them and have to collapse forward, my head between my knees and my fingers laced tightly over the back of my neck. Sherlock in the lab at Bart's, staring at me like I'm a wonderful puzzle worth solving; Sherlock, giving me a look of pure horror as I ask him if he has a boyfriend; Sherlock, leaving a crime scene by my side and giggling like a kid at Christmas; Sherlock, shooting the wall with scary precision; Sherlock, sawing at his violin and making a noise that should have put me off but instead calmed me to sleep, Sherlock poisoning my tea, Sherlock being a dick to every body he ever met and at the same time charming them so damn much that they (I) would follow him into hell, Sherlock wrapped in a sheet in the middle of Buckingham palace, Sherlock handing me a carton of milk with wide, vulnerable eyes, Sherlock giving me that smile that let me know I wasn't particularly clever but he made an exception for me anyhow─

And, because I'm a disgrace to myself, I get up and stumble across the room. I'm still not breathing (problem; that's a problem) but I'm not crying, either. And that's good, I remind myself. I reach my desk and wrench open the drawer with my gun in it─it sticks─I pull harder─it gives with a squeak that I barely hear. Hand: in the drawer, knocking my gun into the wooden side, closing around a pad of paper and a pen. I turn mechanically (my chest is moving again. Why do I still hurt so deeply?) and slide to the floor, my back against the hard wooden desk.

I look at what I'm holding. A plain yellow pad of paper. Bottom right corner of the first five pages torn through. Lines faded. Bought it years ago, tossed it in the bottom of a box that I've never unpacked until this move, and here we are. I feel an obscure sense of guilt when I look at it, even though I know that I've done nothing wrong. (But what if I have? What if the whole reason he's gone is because of me? If I'd just stayed there in the lab with him for a few minutes more, just asked him what was wrong, maybe he wouldn't be─maybe he'd still be─)

My eyes glance over the first few notes that I've written here, and my brain registers only a few words out of what's written. They're mostly angry notes so far, things that were products of nightmares worse than any since my first month after being discharged, but all of the anger is just hiding my complete and total sorrow buried deep inside my core. I flip the pages a few times until I find a clean one and set the pen down.

Begin to write.

Sherlock.

I should be over you by now. Everyone says so. Ella's the only one who says it out loud, though. (Ella's my therapist. I know you don't remember because you don't consider it important, so I'm just going to save you the trouble of asking and tell you.) But they don't understand, do they? How the hell am I supposed to get over someone who saved my life in so many ways? I haven't told Ella that I might not be here anymore if it weren't for you. And I sure as hell haven't told her that I continue to write to a dead man every day as I sit here in my dark flat with a loaded gun above my head. That would certainly delay progress.

I asked you not to be dead back there at your grave. I asked even though I didn't really believe that you were. (Because how could you, the great Sherlock Holmes, my best friend, ever die? It's impossible. It's like saying the sun's gone out forever, or the queen has gone and resigned. Impossible.) So I'm going to ask something different now, Sherlock, and you are going to listen to me this time, whether you are dead or not.

Sherlock Holmes. Come back home to me.

John.

Sherlock

Fact: This is not as fun as I had thought it would be.

Moriarty's network is a complicated web of lies and murder and devoted lackeys. It is tangled and convoluted. It spans the world, from England (where I want to be) to Scandinavia (incredibly boring. Only took me two days to take down everyone there) to Africa (that was fun, actually. That was very fun) to Pakistan (where I am now) and beyond.

I lean against a (stone) wall. Let my legs buckle and slide slowly down until I hit the dirty alley, my head tipped back. I stare up at the dark sky above me. A street light flickers at the end of the alley and then dies. I am plunged into total black.

"That was stupid," John says, sitting next to me. His legs are sprawled out in front of him and his (left) hand is touching my (right) knee. Just brushing it. He probably doesn't even notice. Through pants he says, "You shouldn't have shot at him, Sherlock. You're being reckless."

"I know," I say. I whisper it. Unlike John's phantom voice, people can actually hear mine. I try to hush my ragged breaths so that the man that I've just finished running from (I can still hear him blundering about in the dark out there) doesn't decide to come investigate. "I know."

"He isn't even a part of Moriarty's network," says John. Voice: beginning to sound amused. Amused, and also worried. "You're just being reckless."

"I know, John." I want to look at him, but know that when I do he'll just disappear. I put my pull my knees up to my chest. Cross my arms on top of them. Set my forehead on top of the whole thing. My head hurts.

"Come back home to me, Sherlock," he says softly. Against my will, I raise my head. His voice: soft, warm, gentle. John. "Come back home."

I look at him, finally, that place behind my eyes aching with fatigue and sorrow and he immediately disappears. (Fact: I knew that he would.) (Fact: That doesn't make it hurt any less.)

"I want to," I whisper to the empty concrete beside me. There is nothing but dirt and weeds and broken glass where he was. (John.) "I want to come home."

It's true. I do. There must be something wrong with me (something else wrong with me) because I've realized that I just don't want to do this without him. I don't want to run without him and his shorter legs, hustling to keep up with me. I don't want to say clever things without his exclamations cheering me on. ("Amazing!" "Brilliant!" "Fantastic!" And, more recently, "Staggering!" I like staggering best.) I don't even want to drink my tea if he hasn't made it. (Not that I've had much chance for tea lately. Too little time spent in one place for a cuppa.)

Not good.

I unfold my long legs. Stand. One hand splayed against the (rough, dirty) wall. Around me: fading sounds of the man that I shot at ("I only shot at his foot, John," I say out loud, even though John is gone. "I only shot at his foot and I didn't even hit him. Don't be dramatic.") the noise of his shuffling steps growing fainter and fainter the longer I wait. Fact: there wasn't anyone with him when I fired my gun, and fact: no one cares who gets shot at in the part of the city that I'm mucking about in. (As soon as he's gone, I am free to go.)

I put my (right) hand in the deep pocket of my coat and begin to walk down the alley. I hang my head low. Walk as quietly as I possibly can (very quiet) barring the occasional crunch of glass underfoot.

I am going back to where I'm currently staying.

But I'm not coming home. Not for a long time.