So I just stayed awake all night to finish this chapter, even though I'm ill and have Uni in, oh, 2 hours. The things fanfiction makes me do... I act like I don't love them, but I do. YES I DO.

The rating went up due to the substantial cursing going on in this chapter. John just wouldn't stop with all the "damn", "hell" and so on, sassy BAMF that he is. This monologue of John in the flat became longer than intended, but don't worry, the silly detective will make his grande entrée very soon.

Please take the time to review if you enjoy, it would make my day!

- Chapter 2 -

"The stuff that you wanted to say... but didn't say it? ...Say it now!"

No. ...sorry, I can't.

"There's all this stuff... the science equipment. I figured I could donate it, give it to a school maybe.. Maybe if you could -"

No, sorry, I can't, I can't go back there just now...

John remembered hearing himself say these words to his therapist and his old landlady as though he was listening to the main character in a particularly depressing movie, detached and void of emotion. His life was one big tragically depressing movie, anyway, John mused while he moved around in the kitchen, running his hand over the flat surface of the kitchen table, obscenely devoid of elaborate glass tubes and forgotten tea cups. A movie about duty and loneliness and fear, and finally the trauma inducing combination of those three, suddenly laying out big and small joys for the protagonist to discover around every corner, only to rip them away from him before he could even fully believe that he had them, that these amazing things were happening in his story. And always all at once, too, here one second and gone the next.

Mrs Hudson, the good soul, still convinced he was grieving not only for a friend, but a lover, would sometimes pat his shoulder and say that she understood, how he must miss his silly detective, how he should try and stay chipper, as he might just find someone new one day. "Maybe they're just waiting to bump into you around the corner, dearest."

Some vicious shard of him resented her for even thinking that, making him think about it too. Making him wonder about things, a lost future that held no relevance in this damnable, empty room and thusly shouldn't be wondered about in the first place. As it was, he still would wonder, just the tiniest fragments of thoughts – about how some of those things (small actions, words or their absence) might have turned into actual, tangible things if given time. But time was exactly what Sherlock had taken away the second his head hit the concrete, leaving John nothing but his blood on the pavement.

Not even an actual darn note. Although Sherlock, so used to accurately storing up a library's worth of words in his head with a glance, might actually say that since he narrated his note to him, it was the same as writing it down, and it must be so nice to have the time to get caught up in sentimental values of the medium when all that mattered was the message. Never been one for McLuhan's theories, John, don't be daft.

And now he was angry, and angry was good, and so John tore open the cupboard, blindly grabbing for the last row of cups and glasses and they came tumbling out with one sweeping motion of his arm and the sound of them shattering was the first noise he heard in this goddamned morgue that didn't even display body parts anymore. But the silence that followed the crash of innocent crockery was even worse, making his ears ring with its wideness. Making him think about how silence used to be extremely rare in these rooms, making him miss some things, like gunshots and violin serenades and the sound of a pen, jotting down notes to a new melody, and most of all, making him miss a dark tenor that used to nag or scold or amaze him with the words it formed. Hell, he even missed the sound of the telly, ever present during take-away dinners when Sherlock pretended to eat up and John would raise a stern eyebrow and sometimes Sherlock would actually eat up then, only to hand him the empty dish like an Earl's gentle gift to a peasant, all while some bloke on the evening program would talk about how he lost eight stones and felt so much more confident in his new body, and then they'd both suggest changing the channel at the same time.

John didn't know how long he'd been standing in front of the disheveled cupboard, but he noticed that his shoes had somehow shifted closer to the sharp shards of china and glass on the floor, stomping on them in a disturbingly systematic way, and so he moved away quickly before one could actually force its way through the soles of his canvas loafers. The time for bloodshed in these rooms, be it scientific in nature or otherwise, was long gone. He wondered briefly if he should, hell, could go into Sherlock's room and almost immediately decided against it, instead stepping out of the kitchen to walk in front of the mantelpiece. Breathing deeply to calm himself since he was half convinced another panic attack had been in wonderful progression while he'd been stomping on the sharp mess on the kitchen floor, John stopped there, gazing at all of the tidbits that clattered every available surface. Of course, all of them were - had been - Sherlock's, safe for the pack of cigarettes that John had planted under the skull one day in case the brilliant but reluctantly clean idiot required the smaller evil of his addictions to escape the worst one. Not that it'd helped any, John mused as he idly lifted the skull, a little surprised to find that Sherlock left the pack in there.

On a whim, he took both the skull and the pack and carried both to the armchair, settling in the familiar piece of furniture (never mind a light cloud of dust rising as he sat down). He opened the pack – one cigarette was missing (huh.), a slim lighter was violently stuffed in the narrow space. John turned in his seat, making sure not to look at the empty leather chair across the narrow space but only at the skull, now sitting in front of him on the coffee table, and spoke the first words in this room that had been his definition for the term "home" since he deserted it.

"Sorry I couldn't be arsed to come here for such a long time, mate. Must've been a real drag, even for you. Cheers", and like the mad person he'd become, he lifted a cigarette in the general direction of the skull in a mock toast, put it between his lips and lit it.

The first couple of drags almost made him cough like a schoolboy, but the rest of the cigarette went down his windpipe easy enough, and John, surrounded by the deadly fumes, found he suddenly had no trouble breathing at all. In fact, as he threw the still rather long stub on the coffee table where it hit the skull in the left eye socket ("Apologies, mate"), he felt as though a weight had lifted off his chest, not all of it mind you, but enough to feel calm instead of agony wash over him as he just inhaled the lingering scent of smoke, watching the afternoon sun rays slowly flicker out of existence from behind his eyelids. Only the skull, the glint of the spent cigarette stub long gone from its eye socket, kept him company as John fell asleep.

-TBC soon-

Dear Atlin Merrick, I kept the skull genderless especially for you although I really wanted to make it a "him". Can't have a particular Lady skull throwing a fit...

Thanks NinfaRoma41 for the fav!

Special Thanks to Arjula, I know you're there sweetheart!