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John Watson dreamed every night, and every night it ended in falling. He'd awake to find himself bolt upright in the darkness, heart pounding against the inside of his throat, then feel the wetness on his cheeks and in his gasps.
Never was he the one falling.
No, instead John was standing paralyzed on a sidewalk, clutching a phone like a drowning man to a lifeline, a line barely connecting him to a man whose name he could no longer say. A line that had since been severed to never connect again.
The only one in the world. Gone.
Gone but hardly vanished, which was plainly evident in the nightmares, the screaming thrashing pain that dulled to a leaden ache in his chest every morning. All John's life had been reduced to waiting. For that one miracle.
No, he couldn't be gone. No. No. Not before—
But maybe John had lost his chance. Maybe his only one in the world had well and truly died, without deducing that one all-important fact, before guessing at the reason John had been such a hurry to run up to the lab in Bart's that he'd only just stormed out of.
Everyone had been right after all.
He loved the man. The sociopath, the sheet-clad, cheekboned, childish, stupid, brilliant consulting detective. And, sod it, he hadn't realized until it was damn well too late. When Mrs. Hudson had greeted him completely unharmed, it hadn't taken a great brain to reach the conclusion. A realization that came with another: that this pure terror, worse than the war, worse than the kidnapping, worse than the bomb jacket, was because it wasn't his own life lost this time, it was one that had become so much more important.
He had been the man's only friend. But he wasn't just John's friend.
But all that was gone, all those signs he had missed in himself and those stupid words he had shouted were gone, left on the pavement where he could still see blood in the cracks. How red it had been, how shocking, how wrong against the white cheek and black hair and ice blue eyes.
Ice blue but completely blank.
John's own eyes closed, and he forced himself back to the present. Back to one year that felt like eternity yet only the start of a bleak forever, back to the guest room next to the one he couldn't enter, back to sheets rumpled from his tossing, back to a locked door to which the other key was as gone as its owner. This wasn't even existence. This was a miserable excuse, and he knew from Mrs. Hudson's fluttery sighs, from Molly's and Lestrade's occasional pity-look visits, from Harry's increasingly desperate phone calls, that he couldn't go on like this. But what else did he have? John sighed heavily, breath and pulse nearly back to normal.
The lock clicked.
John snapped to full alert, swinging off the bed, snatching his gun from the nightstand. He turned on the lamp, glancing down as a glimmer caught his eye.
A key. His key. But how....
That quiet creak of the door whose hinges protested so loudly when he shoved it open. Those long-lost footsteps in the corridor. That infinite pause right at his door.
That pale, long-fingered hand pushing it open.
Those eyes. That mouth. Those curls. That coat that scarf that shirt that furrowed brow those eyes. Ice blue.
Not blank.