Chapter Text
SHERLOCK'S POV
Life had become. . .monotonous. We fell into a strange sort of pattern, like we had always done, except it seem endlessly staler, like some kind of dark gradient had been painted over our previous lives. I should think it was Mary's death that sealed this, though, I suppose nothing had been quite the same since I returned. I knew the slowness, the stiff 'good mornings' and the tossing back and forth at night was my doing. Everything, all of John's pain, was my doing. I made no outright attempt to repair it, either. Instead, I carried on as if it were four years ago, before I jumped from St. Bart's and ruined what had once been effortless.
I filled my days with cases and cigarettes and music, composing melody after melody and listening to story after story, each more outlandish and fantastic. But they didn't seem to do for me what they once did.
I tossed almost everyone aside with a wave of my hand, or solved them without leaving the flat.
That is, before Mr. Gregson entered the scene.
JOHN'S POV
The nightmare's had come back.
That's the first thing I remember from that month.
It wasn't just the war, either. It was Mary, cold and lifeless in my arms. It was Eurus, dead eyed controlling. It was Moriarty, torturing the city years after he had died. But mostly, it was Sherlock.
I'd be lying to myself if I said Sherlock wasn't a big part of my life. Sherlock was a huge part of my life, maybe too big a part. It was as if he had some sort of power over me. . . .manifesting not only in dangerous situations and people, but in himself.
I don't know exactly what it was. Other people liked Sherlock Holmes for his cleverness, his genius ability to see through everything and everyone. I think Sherlock Holmes trapped me with something completely different: his humble, entirely raw humanity.
I don't think people looked at it enough, exactly how human Sherlock is. Completely driven by reckless emotions. As he'd say, love is a vicious motivator.
I don't know if it was truly the monotony of existence that drove him, or something else.
I just knew the image of Sherlock lying in a pool of blood on the pavement had returned, and I didn't like it.