Keeping the Strength to Fight

Chapter 1- John

Milk.

Why was there never any milk?

John didn't remember drinking a lot of milk.

So where did it all go?

He always blamed Sherlock and his experiments.

But he couldn't blame him anymore.

He couldn't blame Sherlock for anything anymore.

So here he was,

Down the shops again, buying milk and wondering why.

Why the milk always vanishes.

Why the self service checkout rejected his card, again.

And why his best friend had to bloody well throw himself off the goddam roof of Bart's Hospital.

Over time, John came to realise that Sherlock must have done what he did for a reason, he was too vain to commit suicide willingly.

But surely there was another way! Another solution to whatever mess he got himself into instead of jumping.

Watching him fall... was the worst kind of torture. Knowing that there was no way he could survive, and mourning his loss even before Sherlock hit the ground.

Yet he still clung to the tiny shred of hope that his only friend in the world had lived, that he had pulled a magnificent stunt, and was alive. Waiting for him to run over, just to see him leaning against the wall and say, "Really John? You have that little faith in me?" With a hint of a smirk at John's befuddled expression, and then take off at a brisk walk down the road like the day had gone exactly as he had planned.

But that shred of hope was shattered into a thousand tiny pieces when he belted over to the base of the wall, only to see Sherlock's crumpled and unmoving body lying face down on the cold floor. His thick, crimson blood coating the pavement, and proving his humanity in the most grotesque way.

He remembered checking Sherlock's pulse. And forgetting how to breathe when he realised there wasn't one.

He remembered looking at his face, and noticing that even in death he looked displeased and annoyed.

And bored.

John chuckled as he stepped into the hallway, nodding to Mrs Hudson as he headed towards the stairs, trust Sherlock to pass onto the other world and still be as bored as ever.

It had been 2 years since the fall. John hadn't mourned for long, Sherlock wouldn't have wanted him too. Not because of the usual crap like 'he wouldn't want to see you upset' or 'he's in a better place', but because mourning was taking up necessary space in his head which he knew Sherlock would have scolded him for.

"You don't need your mind taken up with trivial things like caring! So what, someone's dead! Is mourning them going to bring them back? Unless you're into some kind of voodoo magic I really don't think it will. So quit it and focus on the task in hand!" he could imagine Sherlock saying as he escalated the first flight of stairs. So that's what he did, he focused on finding out what happened on that roof, and finding his killer, for he was certain there was one, why else would he have jumped? It must have been blackmail.

But as hard as he tried, he wasn't a genious like Sherlock, he couldn't read the signs and deduce everything from the positioning of a piece of rock next to the body, or whatever. And as much as he annoyed the police, they wouldn't investigate (not that they'd be able to do much, being as clueless as they were, but it would have been better to have more people helping) in the end Lestrade had said to him, "John! Listen! Just...listen. Sherlock was a fake. He played us all... he played you! He killed himself cos he was going to get caught, and he would rather have died than be interrogated and sent to jail. Just accept that will you?"

But John never believed it. It didn't add up! But there was no way of proving it as all the evidence could easily be turned against him.

John shook his head, placing the bags on the floor and removing his keys to unlock his door. He hadn't given up, but put it to the back of his mind as he knew nothing would change the predicament at hand.

He missed his friend though, he missed solving crimes and watching him yell at the screen at some crap tv show. He missed how annoying he was when he was bored. Or busy. Or lazy. Or... always. He missed his expression when he worked out a particularly important piece of information. He even missed seeing miscellaneous body parts in the fridge, if that was even possible.

He mentally facepalmed for that one as he stepped into 221b, picking his bags up and forcing himself to forget his heavy thoughts for now, as he headed to the kitchen to put the shopping in the fridge.

"Great." He said bluntly,

"I forgot the milk."