Chapter Text
“No please, there’s just one more thing mate. One more thing: one more miracle, Sherlock for me. Don’t be dead. Would you do that? Just for me. Just stop it. Stop this.”
John looked down at the grave one last time and nodded jerkily before marching off. It felt like he was leaving the last of the life he had build for himself from the ruins of his military career behind him, buried deep in the ground. In a very real sense his life was over again and he wasn't sure he had the strength to start over yet again.
The cab ride back from the graveyard with Mrs Hudson might have been awkward but John was too lost in his own thoughts to do more than nod politely through her incessant chatter. He suspected that she had taken one of her herbal soothers before coming out with him. He didn't blame her for it, it had been a hard trip and a difficult goodbye for both of them to make.
When they reached home he declined her invitation in for a cup of tea as politely as he could, his capacity for shared grief used up for the day. Instead he trudged up the stairs to the empty flat, already dreading the empty silence he knew he would find.
A single look around the cozy, cluttered sitting room, so full of half finished projects and memories and John knew that he had to move or he would never try to rebuild his life, he would wallow in this dead happiness until he died himself. He wasn't sure yet if that was what he wanted. For now it would be enough to just continue up to his room where the ghost of Sherlock would be less apparent. First though he detoured to the kitchen to grab the bottle of whisky he knew was in the back of one of the cupboards, praying that it had not fallen prey to one of Sherlock’s experiments.
He almost missed the little blue post-it note stuck to the refrigerator, it just catching at the edge of his awareness as he was about to leave the kitchen. He almost wrote it off as nothing more than a note from Mrs Hudson, likely about some food she had put in there for him but a thread of curiosity wound though the dark haze of his thoughts and pulled he back into the room towards the note.
The kitchen was dimly lit, making the words on the paper hard to read but the handwriting, a sharp angular scrawl, was achingly familiar. He had to give himself a shake before he could process the words themselves.
Miracles take time
There was the sound of a bottle of whisky hitting hard tiles and shattering but John barely heard it. He could only stare at the note as hope fulled him and it felt like his heart began to beat once more.