2nd July

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It would seem that my life is a constant repeat of love and loss as though the universe has to counteract my happiness with equal measures of sadness. Or maybe it's the other way round, though it hardly seems it. Harry tells me that 'you wouldn't understand happiness without sadness'. Maybe that's true, I don't know. All I do know is that you didn't have to die for me to appreciate the life you gave me. You didn't have to die for me to love you. You did not have to die at all. Living with you brought me a happiness that I didn't need the sadness to understand, thank you very much.

I was all caught up in lonely tangles when you found me, affected by the echoes of war. No family to speak of apart from a sister as broken as me, just in a very different way. I did miss the cruel reality of fighting for my country and fixing those who fell, it's true that I missed the splashes of colour it painted on my life, so sharp in their hue and so bold in their tone, and the pride that stems from fighting in war. But it was taken away from me in one sharp snatch and suddenly I was dropped into an everyday life of nothing and I didn't know what to do with myself or how to live or how to sleep throughout the night. It was a slow and steady march of greys and murky browns just whirring by, slipping time away from me.

Until you. You with your stupid cheekbones and piercing eyes and graceful stature; with your belstaff coat and straining shirts and blue scarf. Not to mention the cutting remarks and the showing off and the body parts in the kitchen. You introduced me to a battle of a different nature: living with Sherlock Holmes and not pulling your hair out. Or his.

We worked unexpectedly well together, we were golden, and you brought out my smiles and discovered my laugh and fixed my leg and taught me worth and how to observe and what it is to be appreciated and you gave me the world in your limited time. You filled in my hollowed out life.

And then you left me to live like I did before you, just with added scars and the memories of your face to keep me up at night. You left me because no one could save you, because I couldn't save you, and I hate that you thought that because I would have saved you, I would have done anything for you. I don't know where you are anymore or what happened to that gigantic spirit of yours that was so like a beacon to everyone else's candle or why I'm still tethered here, so very far away.

In the early days I used to sleep in your bed at night instead of my own, curling beneath the sheets that you curled under, because the room held your memory like a cupped breath that it couldn't release. It held you in your clutter, your inability to organise anything but clothes and thoughts. You were there in your violin with its rosewood sheen, your case files stuck through with a knife, your laptop precariously balanced on the desk, and your framed picture of the periodic table. I could close my eyes and picture you there amongst it all, your slim fingers weaving your spirit and personality into everything throughout the best years of my life and maybe the best years of yours. And then you would tell me, in your very Sherlock way, to get out of my room, John, I need to go to my mind palace and I can't be occupied with the distraction you pose and I would smile until I opened my eyes to an empty room and a cold mattress beneath my desperate fingertips and I realised all over again. And with my heart wrung of tears, they kept spilling from my eyes.

My life had shattered into a thousand shards, the damage splintering beneath my skin like glass cutting through my veins, and all I knew was the loss I suffered and my hatred for what you did. The strength of it passed eventually, taking everything that made me John with it until I was just an empty shell, barely there. I felt so alone in this hollowed out life of mine.

But I lived.

I used to think you were out there still, that you would come back. One more miracle, Sherlock. For me. Don't be… dead. But three years is a long time to think and to wait for the best friend who wasn't coming home and so I learnt that hope was futile and foolish because you were brilliant but dead and being dead is so very final.

And, although this is the worst the universe could throw at me, I'm still living and I have the occasional good day, nothing sparkling but nothing crushing either. I can even manage more than three hours sleep at night now and if there is one thing this whole ugly experience has taught me, it's that I can survive through the worst even if I never will be completely whole again. And that I love you. Not in any physical sense but with your mind and expressions and mannerisms. I think I have always loved you, Sherlock, and that you have always been a significant part of me, I just never realised before because it was something I so readily accepted, like the fact that I'm 5"7 or that I have blue eyes. I wasn't shocked to realise, I just… realised.

John gave up with the new blog entry knowing he would never post it, especially with that last part attached, despite everyone suspecting that his relationship with Sherlock Holmes went deeper than 'just friends' anyway. The strung together sentences in front of him held all of his inner thoughts and feelings like a map of his mind that could only fall on Sherlock's ears. But Sherlock wasn't here and John needed to pour out his thought processes, so after failing miserably at talking to the skull of Sherlock's supposed friend, this entry was formed only to be deleted.

The work day was going slow, something he hated because it allowed him too much time to think about things he did not want to think about. His therapist had suggested blogging again to overcome these moments but what was the point if all he could write about was what he wanted to forget? Sighing, he laid his head in his hands, willing the pain away, when his phone dinged beside him, signifying a text.

Are you at work?

SH

John stared at the text for a good ten minutes. It was cruel, a selfish prank to play, and he swallowed down the lump in his throat as the amount of times that Sherlock had sent a text like that flicked through his mind. He hated whoever this was for dredging up the memory that cut through his body like a knife through paper.

Who is this?

JW

It's only 2:30, you must be. I'm at home, I will see you later.

SH

Pain bit through John's veins at the thought that someone would attempt to hurt or humiliate him like this and he immediately made to frame an angry response when another text came through.

And I hope you haven't messed with my sock index again.

SH

This isn't funny. Who are you?

JW

Really John, your powers of deduction are astoundingly low.

SH

You have messed with my sock index!

SH

We are out of milk too. Pick some up on your way home.

SH

It couldn't be. It could not be. John had seen Sherlock jump and fall, he had seen his broken body lying dead on the ground. He had grieved and grieved and grieved and if Sherlock were still alive he would have known it. But these were texts only Sherlock would send and few people really knew Sherlock's character enough to replicate it…

'Sarah!' John shouted, jumping out of his chair. He was going home.