A/N Angst was needed, yes?

Thanks to johnsarmylady, 265, and Guest

Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters, events, etc.

XXXVII. Eyes

The worst part of seeing Sherlock's broken body on the pavement is, undoubtedly, the emptiness of his eyes.

It's all horrid, of course—enough so to paralyze John's lungs, to overturn his very world and leave him clambering desperately for something to hold onto. The pale face, the scarlet blood creeping down the pale face in spidery, crack-like streams, the pool of crimson spreading out from his rain-soaked hair, the limpness of his dark coat splayed out around him.

But his eyes.

His eyes are paler than they were even in life, a light, crystalline grey-green tinged with tiny hints of frosty blue, and torturously empty, blank. Staring, but not at John, not at anyone, because there's no one in there, no one looking out of them, and John wants nothing more than to grab him by the shoulders and scream, shake him until the life pours back into him—Jesus Christ, he can't be gone, it's impossible that he's gone, it only just happened, so surely he can be retrieved, brought back by some means, whether they be physical or spiritual, mental or godly—there's nothing in John's mind save a burning red fog, a wordless screaming that he needs Sherlock back, needs him back so that he can think again, breathe again.

It would be so much easier if only his eyes were closed, because then he could be unconscious, knocked out from the fall, but this is infinitely worse, because they're open and there's nothing in them, that cunning, intelligent light is gone, can never in a thousand—a million—any number of years be dragged back. It's proof, leaving John with nowhere to run, nowhere else to dash to, a pulse to feel or breath to check. He tries for the former anyways, clinging desperately to the hope that maybe he's wrong, maybe all his years of medical experience have still managed to not cover everything, maybe there's a possibility that he's still alive…

"Jesus, no… oh, God, no."

There are hands pulling him away, and he hardly feels it, he's so consumed by buzzing numbness. Sherlock's arm is still warm, horribly warm, carrying with it traces of life, and John wants desperately for there to be a way for him to scrape them together, those little fragments, to create some semblance of a whole…

Sherlock, no, please don't do this to me. Please. You wouldn't… I know you wouldn't do this, this is even beyond you, don't leave me, you can't leave me.

But he has left him, he already has, he did it willingly, he threw himself off that damned roof perfectly aware of where that was going to land him—right here, in front of John, his life shattered, collapsed into invisible, glassy fragments that can never be pieced back together.

It's too late. There's no way out.

Sherlock's eyes are empty. They'll never see John again.

He's alone.