Work Text:
The world is grey, and the cliché drives John Watson mad.
Walking through London when Sherlock is dead is like looking at old photographs and trying to realize that color really did exist in the past. Everywhere John looks, the color has been leeched out, except for brief shocks of red buses and green trees, the bright pinks and purples and yellows of the flowers in Regent’s Park.
But even when the sun shines, the sky is white, and the water is grey, and when John looks in the mirror, his eyes are an indistinct, unfamiliar mottled color that doesn’t deserve a name.
John doesn’t think anyone else notices how the world has lost a color. He doesn’t say anything, because they’ll think he’s lost his mind. John would agree.
John walks through London, an absence in space next to him, and doesn’t know why he can’t mourn. He wants to mourn; he wants to scream and shout and kick something, but when he tries, there’s a wall there, something stopping him from really truly grieving.
There’s something missing in him, he thinks, not just Sherlock, but something greater, something that keeps the sky white. As long as the sky remains white, John cannot mourn. And John wants to mourn for Sherlock, and without knowing it, wishes for the color blue.