A.N: Angsty fic, post-Reichenbach.

Eventually, John Watson began to talk aloud to a man who was not only absent from the room, but absent from this world entirely.

This strange reversal of roles crept up on the doctor slowly, but he knew where it began; it began with the doors.

After Sherlock's fall—physical and metaphorical—John became obsessed with the possibility that his best friend was still alive. Somewhere deep inside himself, the doctor knew that he was being absurd, or worse, insane, but the little flower of hope would not be trampled even by the memory of Sherlock's lifeless eyes, bloody face, pulse-less wrist. He had seen the man do so many amazing and impossible things—what was coming back from the dead to him when he could solve a crime with a glance?

Days passed and John became more certain that his flatmate would turn up as if nothing odd had happened. Sherlock would be sitting on the couch, bored and shooting at the wall, or sipping tea and tackling some hundred-year-old problem at the kitchen table. Every evening after work, John hurried home to 221B Baker Street and practically ran into the living room, eyes desperately flicking around, searching.

Every door was a disappointment, but he just thought to himself, tomorrow. Tomorrow Sherlock will come back.

The tabloids forgot about the consulting detective quickly, headlines changing from "Richard Brooke's Disappearance: Was Sherlock Holmes Involved?" to "Superstars Who Abuse Animals: Find Out Which Stars Are Mistreating Their Pets." When people stopped talking about Sherlock, John began to expect the man's return even more. Surely by now he'd found enough evidence to clear his name and prove Moriarty was real.

Doors became terrible, bittersweet things; John's hand started to hesitate on the knob, and he stepped through thresholds with closed eyes and stilled breath. He began to make up excuses to stay out late, and sometimes he entertained ideas of moving.

In the end, John Watson couldn't leave Baker Street; if he did, how would Sherlock find him when he finally decided to stop being dead? But with every opened door, the hope in his heart wilted. He was dying by inches.

One day he said something to Sherlock—irrelevant and unremembered, probably about a boiling kettle or whether or not there was any milk—and he didn't realize his mistake for several minutes. Those little slips happened more and more as the first anniversary of the man's death approached.

John Watson began to let his hope die, and it was replaced with a disregard for reality that concerned only Sherlock Holmes. In all other areas of his life, John was the same grounded, rational man he'd always been. But when he was at the flat alone—which he still thought of as their flat, not just his—he sometimes talked to his absent friend.

"Met Lestrade for drinks earlier. Says he's doing well, but I can tell they're still giving him hell about—well, you know."

"Molly has a boyfriend! I've met him, and he's probably not a psychopath like the last one."

"Government's rubbish. You should see what a mess they've made of everything."

"Freezing out there, and they're calling for a foot of snow. I believe it."

"Oh, the kettle, I forgot. I'll get it."

He also talked about his work or the odd mystery that cropped up in the papers. Voicing problems to Sherlock always helped him figure them out, and when the solution was unreachable, he chalked it up to his friend's lack of response.

John Watson knew he was losing his mind with every word, and he was certain Mrs. Hudson had heard him talking to a dead man on more than one occasion, but she never spoke of it.

He let himself fall.

"Sherlock," he said one day, more than a year after he'd watched his best friend leave mortality behind, "I wish you'd stop it. I'm beginning to—" Cracked voice, eyes stinging, "—to think you aren't—that you won't ever—"

But saying it would make it real, so he changed the subject, forcing a smile that failed to reach his eyes.

"Found that jumper I lost last month. Remember it? The one I was wearing on the first case we worked together? You'll never guess where it was. Alright, you would, probably knew all along and didn't bother telling me."