Chapter Text
The day you died was completely uneventful.
This is a terrible start for any kind of memoir or secret document, and yet—it’s the truth.
There were no omens, no prophetic dreams, no signs. It was a normal, dull October day: we woke up late, for no reason except that we could.
We made love. We had breakfast. We did what we used to do every day.
You left your mug in the sink. You were reading a book you never finished. We were trying to decide where to eat when we came back.
As I said: normal. Uneventful.
We had been married exactly five hundred days. Our wedding rings—plain gold bands—were still new, though they’d already gathered a few scratches.
I had never taken mine off.
Neither had you.
I have gone over that day again and again—obsessively—and you know I’m not exaggerating.
And still, I can’t find a single moment, not one, where it felt like it might be the day you would die. Not even close.
The call from Lestrade came while I was in the shower.
You answered it.
I heard your voice through the water, heard you tell me about the case while I brushed my teeth. I remember smiling.
I was happy.
You were happy.
And alive.
It shouldn’t be so hard to write about what happened. Not after everything that came after.
And truthfully, I shouldn’t be writing this memoir at all. Technically, I’m allowed to—as long as no one reads it.
No one can ever know.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’ll be time for that later.
Time. Past, present, future—
It’s all a blur now. But that day? That day I remember.
I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to.
Not that I would be allowed. That was one of the conditions, when I met him.
(Sorry. Another tangent. You’re used to those.)
You always were.
You were the writer between us. The one who knew how to make a story coherent.
The case had looked interesting. A solid seven on the completely useless scale I invented long ago.
Locked-room murder. You knew how much I loved those.
Used to.
It’s hard to separate who I am now from who I used to be.
It’s harder still to put into words what happened that day.
I keep repeating myself—tedious, I know—but neither of us had a single instinct that something was wrong.
No gut feeling.
No flicker of dread.
I’ve read about those since—prophetic dreams, signs, strange behaviour before death.
None of it applied to us.
And what’s unforgivable is that I wasn’t even careless.
You made me promise, six months before the wedding, to stop risking my life.
To stop being, in your words, “a bloody idiot.”
You said you couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t watch me do it again.
You made me deduce why, remember?
Told me to observe, like that first day we met.
I did. Because of course I did.
And I saw it. Properly. Maybe for the first time.
I saw how much you loved me.
That was the moment.
That hospital room. That vow.
You said, “I can’t lose you again, Sherlock. I can’t.”
And I promised.
I wasn’t careless that night. I didn’t leave you out of my reasoning—(first mistake)
I didn’t leave you behind to chase a lead—(second)
I didn’t see the gun. But you did. (third. Final.)
Neither of us wanted to be heroes that night.
We wanted to go home.
You still had to finish your book.
I spent an unreasonable amount of time afterward with your glasses in my hands, refusing to accept the truth.
Refusing logic.
You had died.
We had left the flat together—laughing.
I came back alone.
Everything I did after that—all of it—was a response to chaos.
To the impossibility of what had happened.
Or, if you prefer, it was sentiment.
I have your wedding ring. There’s a word engraved inside it.
Something utterly romantic.
I rolled my eyes when you chose it, but I couldn’t argue.
It was true. Still is.
Forever.
It was never “until death do us part” for us.
Breathe.
In. Out.
In. Out.
There was supposed to be a point in breathing.
He couldn’t find one.
The skin of his hands itched. There was blood on them. John’s blood.
He knew. He was aware.
He supposed someone would make him wash eventually.
Later.
Or never.
What was the point?
Was this what John felt, that time he thought Sherlock had died?
Except—there was no faking this time.
No trick.
No final act.
I am my own worst enemy.
So Mycroft told me, after you died.
I couldn’t delete a single second of what happened.
Not even to protect myself.
It’s all still there, burned into memory—magnified, merciless.
I’ve never seen anything more clearly in my life.
Nothing has ever hurt so much.
And I couldn’t stop it.
I hated myself for wanting to forget.
I hated myself more for failing.
I hated you—for leaving me.
The flat was exactly how we left it.
He was ground zero. But the room hadn’t noticed.
John’s laptop was still open on the table.
The newspaper was folded on the couch.
The mug was still in the sink.
The kettle, still on the stove.
A half-eaten sandwich beside the fridge.
The grocery list, in John’s handwriting, pinned by a magnet.
He wanted to destroy all of it. Smash every trace of that quiet domestic life—make the flat reflect what was inside him now.
But his hands were clean.
At some point—Mycroft, Molly, someone—had washed him.
He didn’t remember.
He was holding a transparent evidence bag. Inside: their clothes.
John’s wallet. His watch. His phone.
His wedding ring.
Mrs Hudson had wanted to stay.
“You can’t be alone right now, dear.”
He said nothing.
He was alone.
John was gone.
And her presence wouldn’t change that.