TITLE: Close Your Eyes

RATING: T (why not)

A/N: Just literally a little something that just popped right into my head when this song was stuck in there.

Please read and review, many thanks.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Sherlock.

"But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?"

These days, John Watson often lived life with eyes wide shut.

He would wake up, sit up and stretch, all without lifting a lid.

He would blindly shuffle out of his bedroom and down the stairs.

He didn't need to open his eyes to navigate his way through to the kitchen and was even quite capable of preparing a fair cup of tea without looking.

His next darkened steps would take him to his chair where he would sink down in it, sipping his tea and swimming in the black silence.

It was here that he could pretend.

Because, if he closed his eyes, and kept them that way, it could almost feel like nothing had changed at all.

Sometimes his memory would pick up the faint strings and stirrings of a violin. Of shared laughter between friends. Of experimental explosions.

But even the silence was part of the memories. Even the quiet, was comfort.

For just as often as 221B had been filled with chaos and gunshots and chemical compounds and criminal fistfights, it had also been a caterer to peace and reading and studying and wordless conversations. The man had been honest. He truly could go days without speaking. Sometimes he slipped away into his mind palace for a case, other times just to do a bit of spring cleaning, John supposed. The two of them would sit in their respective chairs, him devouring Shakespeare or a book on some obscure branch of science, John casually reading the paper or fiction. Sometimes even the detective's experiments had been noiseless. He would bury his face in his microscope for hours on end, not speaking, barely moving. John often wondered if he remembered to breathe.

So it was here, in the silence, in the stillness, with his eyes drawn shut, that John could forget it all.

Moriarty. Richard Brook. Bart's. The funeral. All of it.

Because when he closed his eyes, it was as if nothing had been altered. None of that had happened.

It was his morning and evening routine. He tried to keep his lids lowered at almost all times while in the flat. Even at work he could feign ignorance, especially after people stopped offering him platitudes and sad smiles. He had worked - before.

So he lived his life with eyes wide shut. Keeping them closed to the harsh and bright and unwanted reality. And the man from his memories became his mind palace. And his mind palace became his home.

Because home, was where he was.

And when John Watson closed his eyes, nothing had changed.

When John Watson closed his eyes, Sherlock Holmes, was still alive.