𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 | 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐟 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟 | 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞

"Just do as I ask. Please-"

"An apology-"

"I'm a fake-"

"Nobody could be that clever-"

"It's my note-"

"Goodbye, Y/n-"

My eyes flashed open to the darkness and I snapped up, my breath rapid and strained. Choking and heaving, I threw my head in my hands, desperately trying to fight the images. And that was a fight I always lost.

I closed my eyes, he was there. I opened my eyes, he was there. In my dreams, he was there. He would never leave.

After gaining some breath back, I dragged myself to the bathroom, turned on the shower and faced the mirror. The ever-increasing sleepless nights were taking their toll; I had permanent, purple bruises underneath my dull eyes, my skin was pale and blotched pink with the blood that rushed to my skin, my hair was an unruly careless mess. I desperately searched for the girl I used to know, the one I used to see in the mirror, with glowing skin and a joyous smile. But she was gone, replaced with the numb, dead monster who stared back at me.

Some days I begged to feel some kind of emotion, the days where everything was numb and cold. Like the world had become a monochromatic canvas of pictures and paintings that I was no longer a part of. It felt as if the pain had been so constant, that I couldn't feel it anymore.

But then there were the days where the pain would smash into me, knocking me to the floor in a broken heap, clutching my chest as the sobs racked my ribs and tore at my lungs. I would scream and cry and hit the floor and curse and detach myself from the world.

And that's how I felt. Detached from the world. Because the only person I wanted to talk to about Sherlock Holmes' death, was Sherlock Holmes.

To say that I was dealing with grief appropriately would be a lie.

Denial.

Anger.

Bargaining.

Depression.

Acceptance.

The five stages of grief. According to the psychologists and the therapists, when experiencing loss, one will experience the five stages of grief. Well, that's bullshit, because I haven't felt anything other than pain. Maybe I'm stuck on the first step, desperately reaching for the next stage, wanting to feel something other than pain. But the tsunami of agony and fear crashes back over me, dragging and pulling me down, into the depths of an ocean. All I want, is for me to drown, for the ocean to take me under and just end it all. But for some reason, my lungs refuse to just let go.

And so here I am.

17, 520 hours without Sherlock. Without my best friend, my soul mate, my other half- whatever they call it. It's like I'm living to breath, not breathing to live. In losing the one person I was sure I loved, I lost myself and all the things I had. And now, I'm staring at a stranger in the mirror.

Swallowing the bile that rose, I stepped into the scalding heat and steam of the shower. I didn't care that it was too hot and that it burned my feet. I stood lifelessly under the steady stream, allowing the water to drip through my tangled hair and down my pale skin. And of course, because it's obligatory, as I reached down, the shower gel bottle fell of the rack and tumbled to the floor with a crash.

I was on the floor before I realised, curled up, with my bare knees pressed into my chest. Everything reminded me of him, everything sounded like him. The bottle falling to the floor was his chest, crashing to the sofa after I pushed him in the fight over the sweets. The loud crash was his deep, bursting laugh when he put whipped cream on my nose. 

Sometimes I felt like the only one in the world who missed him this much. I felt as if I was the only one still holding on to him. 

Mrs Hudson had moved on. Lestrade had moved on. John had moved on. Yet, here I still was, two years after, but stuck in the same place, reliving the same life, day after day. Here I was, curled up in the shower, crying like it hadn't been twenty four months, like it hadn't been 1, 051, 200 minutes. Here I was, breathing but not living, while John prepared to propose and Lestrade made a difference in the world of law and Mrs Hudson danced and sung and smiled. 

Sighing, I clambered up and turned off the water, disgust and self-loathing weaving through my mind. 

After dressing in my old grey jogging bottoms, t-shirt and cardigan, with my hair damp and cold, I curled up on our bed. Ah, and there it was. The first stage of grief- using the inclusive pronoun 'our' rather than 'my.' 

There wasn't much to do until later this evening, when Mary and John would burst in through the door, Mary flashing her new engagement ring and John burning red with pride. An evening full of joy and love that I had become so secluded from. 

John had desperately tried to send me to his therapist, to have someone to talk to, so that I didn't have to be alone. But I wasn't alone and I had someone to talk to. 

I stayed in 221B Baker Street because it meant I could stay with him. He was always there, in the chair opposite me every morning, telling me about dust and skin cells. He was there next to me on the sofa, complaining about how factually incorrect a film was. He was there at night, curled up in the sheets on the mattress. He was there so often, that I often forgot he wasn't. 

So when I heard an echo from the lounge, trudged across the hard floor, through the doorway and saw the tall, slim man with his brown curls standing in the middle of the room, clasping a small box, it wasn't much of a shock. 

His eyes gazed over me as his face broke out into a smile. He shuffled closer, clearly anxious but still aglow with excitement. But I just watched him, my face numb and dull, unchanged, frustrated with myself. 

"You can't be here in anymore," my voice was a broken croak, aching and piercing my throat, "you can't. I need...I need to accept that you're gone, and by continuing to see you and act like you're here...I'm not going to get anywhere. You're just in my mind, you're a ghost of a figment of the past that I can't let go of. But I need to let go. I have to." 

I heard him laugh as I turned back to the bedroom, intent on busying myself with a book. 

That's when he reached out and grasped my hand. 

And ghosts can't do that.