Written for ecrustedsunshine of Tumblr as part of the Sherlock Secret Santa exchange. Based on a video she made (Post Reichenbach Therapy, by AspiringAviation on Youtube), with references to other things as well :)

Merry Christmas!

Sherlock eyed the email his brother had sent him suspiciously. It looked a lot like spam, a link to a website that claimed to be a blog of some kind, but he knew full well that Mycroft's server was unhackable. But the email sat ominously in his inbox, no introduction, no smug comments, no casually biting questions regarding how he was getting on, not even a signature at the end, just a link.

He sighed and weighed up his options. If Mycroft had sent him something intentionally and he didn't investigate, Mycroft would accuse him of being surly and sulky and become even more unbearable than he already was. On the other hand, if it was a virus, he would have to deal with the inconvenience of having a virus, but would be able to tease his brother for weeks about the lapse in security, and maybe even use it as an excuse to go off radar every now and again, claiming that he felt unsafe under the mediocre-at-best protection he had been provided with.

Virus on his laptop it was.

He was almost disappointed to discover that the link wasn't spam at all, and actually led to the website that it claimed it did. A video blog. More specifically, the video blog of John Watson. There was only one video there, posted the day before at 4:05pm, under a short bio explaining who he was and a list of his qualifications, and the same profile picture that had appeared on his other blog, the one Sherlock had come to consider as their blog due to the fact that John posted almost exclusively about their shared adventures. There had only been one post on that blog since Sherlock had jumped from St Bart's Hospital rooftop, a testimony to Sherlock. Indicating John felt the same. They weren't a duo any more so the blog posts from their blog on their adventures and their cases and their life together had stopped.

A video blog then. Sherlock hoped this didn't mean John was visiting his old therapist again; the woman had already misdiagnosed him once. Same tactic but different format so that John wouldn't be reminded of his old blog and therefore of Sherlock, even though the blog was obviously going to be a way for John to express his feelings over Sherlock's apparent suicide in a healthy way that didn't involve his gun.

His stomach twisted painfully as he hovered the mouse over the 'play' button. He wasn't sure if he wanted to see this. He understood why Mycroft hadn't written anything in the email; there were no words to adequately describe the webpage, and he knew that had Mycroft posted any warnings of any sort then he probably wouldn't be able to bring himself to watch it. He wondered if Mycroft had watched it. He must have, surely. Otherwise he wouldn't know whether it was worth sending. It was only 37 seconds long, but for the Holmes brothers 37 seconds was enough time to observe someone's entire life, and as this was someone they had met and knew well, it would tell them everything.

He knew the video was going to make him feel guilty, even guiltier than he already felt. He kept telling himself that it was necessary. John got so caught up in what people thought that he wouldn't be able to act convincingly. He would be scared of overdoing it or underdoing it. There would be something subconscious that would give him away and put him in danger. He would worry, want to communicate with Sherlock and they would get caught. He would have a pint too many at the pub and say something a bit too loud in the toilets and be overheard and kidnapped and tortured for information. But knowing all of this, knowing that it was for the best didn't make Sherlock feel any better about it. His friend was in pain and it was his fault.

The need for information finally got the better of him; he clicked play.

John appeared on the screen, fussing about with something on the side of the camera. Sherlock could see in an instant that he hadn't been sleeping, probably plagued by nightmares, like he had after Afganistan. It made sense; John needed the excitement of the battlefield to tire him out so he could sleep at night. He wore the shirt that Sherlock had bought him for his birthday (Mrs Hudson had chosen it and although John seemed unsure of it when he first unwrapped it, he seemed to admire the sentiment and wore it often enough to show appreciation) and one of his favourite shapeless woolly jumpers. His hair was longer than last time Sherlock had seen him and his face was haggard, but he seemed well enough.

"Is that on, I don't- alright…" Sherlock gasped upon hearing his friend's voice and was glad that nobody was there to see his reaction. He wondered who John was talking to, who he spent his days with. He backed away from the camera and looked into the lens, crossing his arms. Sherlock realised he didn't recognise the room in the background. John wasn't in 221B anymore. His therapist's office? No, not with that wallpaper, and the lighting was wrong. John had moved into his own flat. Sherlock remembered that they had once discussed that the Baker Street flat would be too big for just one person, but he never imagined that John might actually move out. He tried not to remember that day, the fluttery feeling in his abdomen as they lied on the living room floor. Memories like that were too painful.

"Erm… Hello. Names John Watson. I, erm." John relaxed a bit, shifting his weight to his uninjured leg, making Sherlock wonder if the psychosomatic limp was back." For my therapy they recommended that I start… some form of a video journal…" He had been right then. John was back seeing the therapist who got it wrong. Surely Mycroft could have suggested one who knew what they were talking about? Likely he had but John had declined. Trust issues he reminded himself.

"Ah… the reason I need to do this… er… my best friend… uh…" John brought his hand up to his mouth and swallowed. Sherlock could see how hard this was for him, could see the pain of loss etched into every line on his friend's face. His stomach felt like it was tying itself in knots. "No. No, I'm not going to do this." John turned off the camera and the screen went black. It had ended as suddenly as it had started. Apparently John couldn't even bring himself to say Sherlock's name. He replayed the video, and then once more, to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He refreshed the page, hoping to see another video pop up, but none did. Just the one, 37 seconds long. Sherlock wondered why John had posted it. He watched it once more. "My best friend… uh…"

But it was necessary, he reminded himself. It was keeping John safe. John would get over Sherlock, he was tough, he would bounce back, he never stayed down for long. John would recover.

He would recover.

He would.

Wouldn't he?

A few months later Sherlock woke up to another email from his brother, identical to the first. He didn't even hesitate this time, just clicked it and hit play. John's face appeared on the screen and Sherlock was shocked by just how much he missed him. But there was nothing to suggest that John was suffering any serious psychological issues. He was wearing the shirt again, the one Sherlock had given him, without a jumper on top this time due to the seasonal increase in temperature since the previous video had been posted. John wasn't emotionally attached to the shirt, and based on the rotation pattern John normally wore his shirts in it was likely just a coincidence. John probably hadn't even noticed that he had worn it in the previous video as well.

There was no introduction in this one; John just started talking in the middle of a thought train. Sherlock wanted to be indignant; John had told him off for doing the same thing on several occasions.

"Things are a lot different without him around, um, we don't have to buy nearly as much, nearly as much food…." Sherlock almost smiled at this; John had complained daily that Sherlock didn't eat enough, but in his absence had noticed just how much Sherlock removed from the fridge without his friend's notice. John was highly unobservant at the best of times. But the happy thought was marred by John's use of the plural. There was no 'we' any more. It was just John. It could have been a slip of the tongue, but John hadn't corrected himself, indicating that he did not yet think of himself as a single person as opposed to one half of a pair, and so had not yet established in his mind that Sherlock was gone. The single use of the wrong tense indicated that John was not moving on as readily as he ought.

John stared off into the distance, remembering, reflecting, before turning back to the camera. "The flat is, it's definitely a lot cleaner!" Sherlock wanted to object; his idea of clean and John's idea of clean were just different. Sherlock had a perfectly ordered system of organisation that John had never fully understood and so, like everything John didn't understand, he pretended it did not exist. Although Sherlock did admit that John's initiative of putting experiments in sealed containers before refrigerating them was more convenient. Sherlock looked at John's eyes, and saw that, although the words were positive, the mood was negative. Whatever John had once said about the mess, he missed it, because it was an extension of Sherlock. The constant cleanliness was a constant reminder to him of Sherlock's absence.

"It's kinda hard actually… uh… eating alone…" Sherlock thought about it and realised that even though Sherlock and John hadn't eaten at the same time, John had never eaten while Sherlock wasn't present. John had never lived alone before, and as eating was a typically social convention, he habitually sought company. It was another difference to John's life that Sherlock hadn't even considered. But this was the right thing to do. He reminded himself of that fact at least ten times a day. John was safer like this until Moriarty's web was dismantled. John was in temporary pain but he was alive.

"Uh… I don't know what to do with most of his stuff because it's just so damn weird. But yeah, I, er….I miss him, sure. Cos you know he's, he's not, he's not there any more." The first piece of analysis that came into Sherlock's mind was that John kept talking as though Sherlock had mindfully left rather than died; but then he realised that was the truth- Sherlock WASN'T dead, he HAD just left. He had walked out of John's life and abandoned him, leaving him to deal with the fallout, incapable of telling him that it was all right. Because it wasn't all right, not really. John was in pain, Sherlock was in pain. But John was safe. That was what mattered.

"I miss you too, John" he told his computer, and pretended, just for a moment, that John could hear him.

After the second video, checking John's new blog became part of Sherlock's morning ritual. He got up, booted up the laptop, put the kettle on, checked the blog, then went to take a shower.

Mycroft told him off for it, pointing out that John might spot the pattern from the hit counter. Sherlock pointed out that the elder Holmes had emailed him a link to the blog within ten minutes of each video being posted, indicating that he too was monitoring the blog, and much more closely than Sherlock. Mycroft didn't deny it, just sighed and told his brother to be careful. They didn't discuss the content of the videos, but glossed over how John would react if he knew Sherlock was one of the more assiduous fans of the new website.

On May 16th, he went through his ritual, checking John's website out of habit more than anything. It was now his equivalent of wishing John a good morning, telling him to have a good day, checking the previous day had been a good one. Mycroft didn't bother to tell him off any more. It was as though the elder Holmes had finally accepted that Sherlock needed at least a trace of John in his life in order to face each day.

Sherlock didn't expect to see any new uploads on the website. It had been so long now since Sherlock's 'death' that John must have moved on. Met somebody new. Started afresh. So it was a shock to see that three new videos had been posted overnight. Three.

Already Sherlock knew that something was wrong about this. His chest felt tight and his skin formed goose bumps even though the temperature in the room was slightly above average. He looked at the time stamps of the three videos and felt his stomach constrict. John must have been up all night. He clicked play on the first one, uploaded at 2:54 am. Nine seconds long.

It took Sherlock almost all of those nine seconds to register what he was seeing, and when he did he felt sick. John was crying. He was trying to control himself, trying to pull himself together long enough to say something, but wasn't quite managing it, sobs escaping him despite his attempts to stop them. He wore a black shirt that Sherlock recognised as his own, and calculated how much weight John must have had to lose to be able to button it to the top like that. Too much, far too much. John was in pain. John was hurting. Sherlock had caused John pain. He ought to be over him by now. You're not over John, why would you expect John to be over you? a mean little voice in the back of his mind asked him. But that was different. John understood feelings and the like. John had friends. John was capable of forming attachments to people who weren't Sherlock. He shouldn't be crying over him in the middle of the night. He shouldn't be like this.

The next video was much the same, uploaded at 4:32am, seven seconds long. John was no longer crying, but it was somehow worse. There was nothing, no feeling, no anger, just cold emptiness. John stared into the camera lens, and Sherlock saw nothing there. Everything that had made him John, everything that Sherlock loved and valued had somehow evaporated.

John looked terrible. His face was haggard and gaunt, he hadn't shaved, and the shadows under his eyes betrayed the fact that this wasn't John's first sleepless night. He wasn't taking care of himself. Sherlock didn't know what to do. John had taken care of Sherlock for as long as they had known each other, and now John needed Sherlock to return the favour and he couldn't. He was lost. It occurred to Sherlock that if he didn't go back to John soon then there might not be anything to go back to.

Why had John even uploaded these videos? The rational part of Sherlock's brain told him that it had probably been accidental, that John had unintentionally posted them and had as of yet been unable to work out how to take them down. The other part of his brain, the side that would forever be haunted by the look in John's eyes, told him that it was John's way of punishing him, showing him just how hurt and damaged he was. The silent treatment.

The third video was over a minute and a half long, uploaded around half an hour ago. Sherlock took a deep breath, trying to pull himself together before he watched it. He took a sip of his tea (John always claimed that tea helped in situations like this, and although he had never agreed before, now seemed as good a time as any to subscribe to the outlandish theory), and hit play.

"In a way I almost want to be angry with him. How?!" Sherlock could hear so many questions asked by that single word. How could he leave me. How could he jump. How could he make me watch that. How could he plan that without telling me. Mycroft had asked him all of these things, and at the time Sherlock had been too secure in his knowledge that John was safer like this, that John would get on with his life, as he had always done before. Now he wasn't so sure. John was falling apart at the seams. It wasn't meant to be like this.

"I thought that I… I thought that I was his friend-" Of course, even in this state, John wouldn't declare across the internet just what he and Sherlock had been to each other. They had never discussed it, never vocally examined just how far past the line of friendship their relationship had gone. "-that he could, that he could-he could trust me."

"I do trust you!" Sherlock found himself shouting at his laptop. He trusted John more than anyone. He had spent so long proving that, but it had all been destroyed in an instant. It wasn't lack of trust that led to the decision to leave John in the dark, nor was it lack of faith. It was a way of protecting John. How could John not see that?

"and he is, giving me no answers, no…" Sherlock could practically hear the mean little voices inside John's head pointing out that Sherlock was giving no answers because Sherlock wasn't around to give answers to anybody. Pointing out that Sherlock was dead and gone and was never coming back. "Leave me alone!" The demand was directed at the camera, but Sherlock saw that John was addressing the voices inside his head. He was losing it. He needed help. He needed Sherlock, even more than Sherlock needed him. The emptiness was still there in his eyes, and his expression would haunt Sherlock for the rest of his life. John looked away, staring out of the window behind the camera and suppressed another bout of sobs.

"To be perfectly honest I'm God damned lonely! I haven't slept. Haven't slept in a really long time." Sherlock had been right, but he didn't bother to be smug with himself. He wished he had been wrong. "I just don't know what he was expecting of me."

"I expected you to cope." Sherlock mumbled. "I expected you to cope better without me than I would without you."

"I shouldn't have expected anything at all, the bastard!" Sherlock was stunned by this sudden burst of anger from John. But anger was better than the terrible nothingness that Sherlock was beginning to fear. "I hate him, fuck I hate him!" The words were barely more than a growl, but they hurt like a dagger through Sherlock's chest. The worst part was that they were justified. Everything that he was seeing, every bit of John's pain was Sherlock's fault. And John knew it and hated him for it.

"I hate Sherlock Holmes." This time the words were directed at the camera, at the viewer, the public in general. Sherlock's breath caught in his throat, and he watched John's do the same. The pain that saying the words seemed to cause him showed that John didn't really mean what he said, but that didn't stop the pain they caused. John hated him. Sherlock hated himself. How could he have done this? "We're done here" John announced, and turned off the camera, blackness filling the screen. Sherlock pretended to himself that the stinging in his eyes was caused by the change in the light.

After the Night of the Three Videos, Sherlock became a little manic. His projected time-frame for the demolition of Moriarty's web halved. He had to make the world safe again, so that he could go to John and make John better. He had to save John. He had to save John. Nothing else mattered. Just John. The emptiness in his eyes haunted Sherlock, stopping him from sleeping, stopping him from doing anything but moving to dismantle the web.

He no longer checked John's blog every morning; he checked it constantly. He had a tab open on any computer he went on, and refreshed the page every few minutes. John's well-being was a constant distraction to him. He had to know John was ok. He even went as far as to ask Mycroft for updates. Mycroft wasn't even smug about it, and offered hollow statements of false reassurance. He read through the comments on the blog, but there was nothing really useful. A spammer trying to talk about religion. Some idiot asking to bear John's children. Someone from the Met (who Mycroft was going to have fired) trying to pretend to be Sherlock by slipping in a reference about nicotine patches. And one asking what John would tell Sherlock if he could see him one last time, to which John had replied saying he had not stopped believing in Sherlock for a single second. There were also some that Sherlock traced to one of Moriarty's accomplices, implying that Sherlock's death was John's fault. Thankfully John didn't seem to take the message to heart, but Sherlock still took immense pleasure from bringing that particular assailant down.

But at least the experience had reiterated the motivations Sherlock had for his actions. Moriarty's men were dangerous; Sherlock had the scars to prove it, and he would not allow John to gain similar injuries.

A month later to the day, John posted another video, at 1:29am. Sherlock was up and at his computer when it appeared, and he had already hit play when Mycroft's email came through.

John looked terrible. His face looked almost skeletal, the shadows under his eyes looked like bruises, he was unshaven, his hair unwashed, and the lines around his eyes and on his forehead were more prominent than ever. His shirt was un-ironed and hung open, the collar poking up at odd angles. Sherlock brushed his fingers over the pixels of John's cheek, almost as though attempting to coax away some of the sadness that radiated from the doctor's every pore.

"I dreamt about him last night." John's voice was strained, and as void of emotion as his eyes. "Was there. In the café across the street. He took my hand and told me 'John, John, I'm alive!'" Sherlock might have smiled if his face would have allowed it. He had spent days wishing he could go to John and do just that.

"I've believed that, I really have. No matter what I've said, no matter what people want me to say, I've believed that." Despite everything, Sherlock felt elated. John knew; that was why he was holding on so tightly. He wasn't mourning Sherlock's death, he was waiting for him to return.

" But." That one word deflated Sherlock like a balloon. He wanted to tell John not to give up, that it wouldn't be long now, he would be able to see him again. "I don't know if I can do it any more." Sherlock wanted to shout at the screen, but all that came out of his mouth was a strangled whimper.

"It's been a year" John said, like he knew Sherlock would need him to justify his statement. "I don't know how long I'm supposed to wait- if I'm supposed to be waiting. People say you need to move on, you need to continue… I don't know if I can." Sherlock wanted to disagree, but knew that he couldn't. He had seen for himself through the medium of the blog that John couldn't go on like this. He was making himself seriously ill.

John looked around the room, and flashed a glance at the camera lens, letting out a small sigh. He had made up his mind and settled on a course of action. Perhaps he had recognised the danger signs in himself of an imminent mental breakdown (he was a medical doctor after all) and had decided upon a solution. "Going to… try and get some sleep… maybe forget about this… Forget, forget this ever happened… Forget, forget Sherlock Holmes." John looked out of the screen at Sherlock and gave him a little nod, a silent farewell, and turned off the camera, turning the screen black. Sherlock sucked in a breath and clicked on the comment button, but his fingers hovered motionless above the keyboard. He didn't know what to say. What was there for him to say? John needed to forget about him. He needed to let John forget.

Brushing the wetness from his cheeks, Sherlock closed the computer and said a silent goodbye to the greatest man he had ever known.