Work Text:
(Year one)
Everyone else goes to the cemetery, except John. They all leave flowers, say a few words, shed a few tears. Except John. He can’t bear to go back and see the cold black monument. Gravestones are finite. They define a life within the immutable brackets of birth and death.
Instead John goes and stands beneath St. Bart’s. He looks up and lets the sun blind him so that for a split second he can see it all over again: the fall, the terrible stop at the end. The blood on the pavement (still there if you know where to look.) This is his memorial to his best friend. Memories aren’t carved in stone and for a few brief seconds he is undefined by loss.
It’s not enough, not by half. But it is his and his alone. And it will have to do.
(Year two)
There are only a few people at the grave site this year. (The grave site, damnit. Not his.) Mycroft (hiding love under the veneer of obligation), Mrs. Hudson (showing love by fussing over the flowers, placed just so), and Lestrade (stoic and silent and inscrutable). The rest have drifted off and forgotten already. John hates them, just a little, and wonders if they hate him for his absence. He doesn’t care.
The stain on the concrete has long since been erased by time and rain, but that doesn’t matter. He still stands, still stares, still sees. He is paralyzed by the rush of memory and prays it will never fade. The rest of them can reduce Sherlock to “born” and “died”. John can’t. Won’t. Not now, not ever.
The hurt will never fade completely and he knows it. But this year he walks away a little sooner, breathes a little easier.
(Year three)
It’s just Mycroft this year, with flowers from their mother. John’s hatred has subsided to a dull ache and he can’t even rage against them anymore. He can’t really remember if he hated them for going or for not going. Why bother? Grief is still his constant companion, but closure isn’t an option. So he carefully avoids the cemetery and without really thinking about it finds himself there.
He completes his private homage to the man he can’t let die, and this year he does something different afterwards: leaves the familiar behind and goes somewhere unburdened by memories. Takes a few hours for just himself for the first time in almost five years.
He is halfway through a glass of wine (rare indulgence) when footsteps at the front of the restaurant make him pause for a moment, then shrug and dismiss the new presence until a shadow falls over his table. He looks up. And the whole world stops.
“Hello, John.”