Chapter Text
On nights like these John walks.
He leaves work late, finally up to date with all the boring bits he’s been avoiding for weeks. Jacket on, he switches out the lights in his office and says his goodnights to the colleagues he passes on his way out. On the street outside the hospital he hesitates for a moment, then turns right instead of left - the opposite direction to the tube station that would have taken him back to his flat. He avoids the street that he always avoids and takes the back streets, past St Paul’s and down to the river. Already the sky is dimming through indigo to what passes for darkness in a city this size, and the myriad lights dance merrily on the Thames. Deep, silent and cold, this is not a river to gaze at for too long when feeling fragile so John crosses the Blade of Light quickly and shakes off the shadows that crowd him suddenly, trying to drag him down.
Passing the Globe and the Golden Hind, he then veers away from the river and through Borough Market. The streets begin to quiet, rush hour long since done. His feet start to ache but it’s easy to ignore that distraction when in his mind he is reliving other times, revisiting the places they’d stood, the businesses they’d visited, the dirty, back alley shortcuts and greasy spoon cafes, the crime scenes, the details they’d found and their frustrations and successes, and the way they had laughed and argued and lived as if they were untouchable.
He walks the landmarks only he knows and tries to smooth the edges of memories that still steal his breath away sometimes, even now. He walks to blunt the past, or at least to appease it - to put it back where it belongs, back where it keeps bubbling up from. He walks to forget. But he remembers.
Last night he dreamed of a grey sky, a voice choked with bitter tears, a falling bird, and dark hair matted with blood.
And on nights like these, John walks.
~~~o~~~
The first weeks are still a blur. He recalls only isolated moments, dissociated snapshots. One particularly perfect flower on the coffin. The diagonal sweep as the daylight moved across the dusty sitting room rug, and still being able to smell his posh hair product every time the cushions on the sofa were disturbed. The chipped teacup in Mrs Hudson’s best china as they drank endless tea for want of anything else to do, trying to make sense of something that plainly didn’t. She’d aged a decade overnight, John recalls and he suspects that he had too.
He remembers the day the headstone had been placed. The morning he’d passed out because he’d forgotten to eat for days. The sound of the doorbell at 221B ringing every ten minutes for days after he… after. The night he’d been convinced the whole thing was a set up and that he was going to come back, a cocky grin on his face and a new story to tell. He’d stayed up for three nights, having convinced himself that several of the obituaries in the Times were actually a code and that he'd have to be ready when the time came for Sherlock to stalk back in, wink at him and drag him back into the whirlwind that was their life together.
In desperation he’d gone back to his therapist but had found no answers there. He remembers watching her pen top describe circles and waves as she’d written and wondering that she’d had so much to record when he’d said so little.
After four months John had moved out of Baker Street. He’d found a little flat in Whitechapel which was about as unlike 221B as it could be - all pine furniture, tasteful pale walls and colourful fabrics. Hateful.
After six months he’d quit the locum work and taken a part time teaching job back at Barts. Now he shows the next generation of doctors how to be trauma specialists, drawing on his years of combat casualty care. He might not be a surgeon himself anymore, but he has skills and experience to pass on. It’s absorbing and demanding so that by the time his working day is done, he’s tired enough to sleep at night. Sometimes. He’s been there for fifteen months. Mike Stamford stops by his office quite frequently, as does Molly who now lives with a bloke called Rob who works in radiology. They seem happy. Mike and his wife have just celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary and are still like a couple of teenagers in the throes of first love. It’s ridiculous and delightful in equal measure, but what does John know? He’s thought about dating once or twice but he feels like he has forgotten how to be that man anymore. He’s vague and evasive if people show too much interest in him, or worse, when they try to set him up with people.
John has learned how to function - ‘live’ would be too optimistic a term. All he has to do is balance. There is a chasm beneath him and it is filled to the brim with grief. It would be all too easy to misstep and fall into that and allow it to consume him. But it is a familiar threat and is made more comfortable by that familiarity. John can see it, taste it, even touch it whenever he wants to, but as long as he keeps that balance, that perch above the void, then he can go on.
It’s not quite a life but it’s better than he was.
~~~o~~~
It’s late by the time John starts to think about turning for home. He glances up at a nearby road name and is surprised by how far he has come tonight. He hesitates and considers other routes but then rounds the corner to face the familiar sight of Angelo’s, a rectangle of welcoming, golden light tonight. It’s busy and obviously doing very well to judge by the groups who arrive while he is standing there. John recalls awkward conversation and the smell of oregano, the candle on the table, and then they were running and laughing and feeling guilty because there was a murderer they were out to catch but he’d never felt so alive or hopeful or grateful before.
John buttons his jacket, realising for the first time tonight how cool it has become. His hands fumble for his pockets and he glances up as the first lights go out further along Northumberland Road, casting darkness over a row of smart terraced houses. He thinks it’s coincidence or a glitch at first, but then, one by one the streetlights flicker out and as the wave speeds up and spreads, shop windows, signage and vehicle headlights die away leaving crazy after images on his retinae. People begin to murmur in alarm and John gets out his mobile to call the police. He turns to look at Angelo’s, but that too falls into darkness, and the scale of what’s happening becomes apparent as even the glow over the city fades to starlight. Stepping into the road, John cranes his neck to check for any spark at all but there is none. The alarmed voices are a chorus now, getting louder and more panicked, and someone screams. There’s a sound of brakes applied too late and a car careers out of nowhere giving John no chance to avoid it. He doesn’t feel the impact straightaway, only the way he is thrown into the air before he hits the ground, rolling a few times before he joins everything else in the world by slipping abruptly into darkness himself.
His last thought is of him and what he’d think about the irony of the location and manner of his demise