iii
In his stay with Sherlock at 221b, John spent a lot of time wondering if he was gay. He could never quite put his finger on it though. He didn't want to have sex with men, he didn't particularly want to kiss men or even hold hands with them. But he and Sherlock functioned so like a couple and were so commonly mistaken for one that, in the end, John ended up thinking of them as one too. A couple who had never needed to ask the other on a date or tell them they loved them or taken them to bed. It had just happen on it's own without announcement and there was no sin in that. Only confusion.
After Sherlock died, John mourned like he'd lost a lover. He supposed he had. So after seemingly endless and useless therapy sessions and hours of scouring the net for ways to get over the death of a friend, John had begun to search for ways to get over the death of a lover.
Now he was sitting as far back as possible in a group therapy session for Recovering From the Death of your Partner. Capital 'd' for death. When John saw the word in his mind's eye, every letter was upper case. DEATH. DEAD. SHERLOCK'S DEAD.
"Suicides. Suicides are what I'd like to talk about next," the woman speaking said from the plastic chair she was perched on at the front of the hall. John sat up a little at her words, though he still felt incredibly idiotic just being here. "Has anyone here had their partner commit suicide?"
People exchanged glances and looked around them, waiting for someone to speak up. No one did. Eventually, realising he would not get the answers otherwise, John slowly raised his hand. A one on one in front of everyone else was not what he had expected from this ridiculously intimate session. It felt like an invasion of his mind by strangers, they were climbing in and picking and poking at the puddles of sadness the grey matter was soaked in.
The woman's eyes focused on him from across the hall.
"What you must understand, is that it was in no way your fault. Suicides are never anyone's fault, no human being could be responsible for the fathoms of depression and sadness."
"Well of course it's not my fault," John laughed, to the other attendees' surprise. "It was Moriarty's fault."
The woman paused, and looked down at her clipboard. Clearly the NHS didn't mention James Moriarty in their medical notes on depression.
"Moriarty?" she echoed.
"The consulting criminal mastermind," John said.
The therapist remained in an expression of flummoxed panic. Oh look at you lot. You're all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? Of course the world had forgotten already. Forgotten the evil and the good and the tragedy of it all. The tragedy they never even began to feel. Only John had.
"We'll actually be covering delusions caused by the shock of a loved one's death... a little later," the woman said, tapping her pen on her clipboard. "But now we'll have a coffee break, there's a machine in the corner-"
People began to get up and mill around but John stayed slumped in his seat, watching the woman get up and run a hand through her hair. Several times, thinking he wasn't looking, she cast John a dubious look. He waved jovially back at her and she quickly turned away, rushing over and talking urgently to a nurse who was smoking in the corner.
John watched her go. He remembered a game he and Sherlock used to play, in between cases when things weren't so mad. John would point to random people in the crowd, or strangers who caused him even the tiniest annoyance, and say 'what about him?' 'what about her, then?'. Sherlock would grin and list off every compromising fact or offence he could garner from the stranger's skin and clothing, making John chuckle like they were two kids in the playground taking the piss out of a third party. It was a win-win activity, he'd always though. Sherlock got to show off and John got the satisfaction of a quiet revenge.
John watched the woman go and knew nothing more about her.