A/N: I love you guys so much, you are all my muses. This series would not exist if it weren't for the incredibly helpful feedback I've received, so thank you thank you thank you!

Enjoy!

Christ, Sherlock, I don't even know where to start.

These past few years I

Sometimes I thought

Never did I

Just now I crumpled this paper up and threw it on the ground. For a moment I considered stopping altogether, but then I picked it back up and smoothed out the wrinkles because I know I need to say these things one way or another. I'm sitting in your chair right now, drumming my fingers on the armrest. I can't think. The clock on the mantle won't stop ticking.

I suppose I'll start here: two days ago I read your letter.

Just when I thought I was done saying goodbye to you, just when I had started to get some semblance of order back into my life, your brother had to show up with an envelope and a black suit and tell me you died. Again. That's twice now, Sherlock.

You bastard. You ruddy fool.

If you haven't been able to tell, I'm angry—actually, angry doesn't begin to cover it. I'm pissed. Livid. Enraged.

Heartbroken.

When I read your letter, I heard your voice for the first time in nearly two years. From the very first bloody sentence, your tone jumped out from the page. Gripped me like a hand fisting my collar, refusing to let go. It was both a shock and a comfort.

But later, when I reread it again (and again, and again) I couldn't quite grasp the subtle rises and falls of your voice; the low timbre and rich baritone that spilled from each word like dark chocolate. I read the letter until each phrase was branded on the backs of my eyelids yet I still could not recapture that initial essence of you.

It was like losing you all over again.

I panicked at first. I bit my lips bloody trying to remember the exact way you sounded, but it was as useless as grabbing at the empty air, and eventually I gave up, with my head in my hands and my heart thudding behind my ribs.

But see, that's when I reread it again. And I suppose the twentieth time around must've touched some unknown boiling point because suddenly I was furious. I threw furniture around, punched new holes in the plaster, kicked chairs, yelled, shouted, roared; I tossed your box of carefully documented owl feathers out the bloody window and screamed good riddance. In your room I ripped the sheets out of their carefully creased corners and pulled the alphabetized books off your shelves and broke the neat rows of empty glass vials sitting on your desk. I felt as if I had lightning crackling through my veins and fire boiling in my blood.

You lied to me, Sherlock. You bloody told me you were a fake and threw yourself off the top of a goddamn building before I could so much as blink and if you think for one damn second that you were the only one that died that day then you are completely, irrevocably WRONG.

You lied to me. You lied.

But the anger eventually waned, as anger is wont to do, and I found myself curled against the bookcase, holding one of your stupid, posh shirts against my cheek, murmuring useless things around the tears and snot and general mess. I fell asleep there, against your dusty collection of encyclopedias, and, having found no pressing reason not to, spent the rest of the day there, idly staring at nothing.

The next morning, sanity returned and I folded the letter into sharp fourths and placed it on the mantle—right next to your skull and that laminated diagram of optic nerves—and set about my day like a normal bloke would: went to work, half-flirted with a pretty woman on the way there, ate lunch, partook in Smalltalk, diagnosed colds, and played a scintillating game of solitaire at my desk. But the whole time, there was this terrible ache in my chest. A physical, tangible pain that only I was aware of, and it weighed me down as if there were an anchor tied to my heart.

Like I said, it was like losing you all over again.

But none of that matters; what matters is that I forgive you, Sherlock. And I don't just mean for the faked suicide and the lies, I mean for everything. Any conceivable speck of guilt you took to the grave with you—whether it was from the time you used me as a lab rat in Baskerville or the time when you forgot to get the milk—I forgive you. You had your reasons for doing what you did, because, as ever, your brilliant mind was miles ahead of everyone else's.

It's been years now, but I still miss you so much; the longing claws at my insides like a starving rat and keeps me awake at night, staring at the ceiling, imagining all the could-have-been's and what-could-be's. That letter only served to reopen my slowly healing wounds; it tore them open and shredded the weak stitches that had begun to mend them; it sent me careening two years back in time, to the exact moment I watched you die and my entire world came crashing around me.

To address a specific line: I'm sorry you were having trouble sleeping, Sherlock. I am too, if it counts for anything.

I can't stand the thought that you died thinking I didn't feel the same about you. Though it doesn't count for much now, I want you to know that I love you. I have since the first bloody time I saw those dramatic cheekbones and upturned collar. When I came back from Afghanistan, I was dying; most people couldn't see it (hell, even I didn't realize) but you saw it in me—the broken shattered pieces that needed fixing—and for some reason you decided to jump into my life and patch me up. You brought me back to life, Sherlock. You saved me.

I love you.

Did you know that? Did you know that I loved you, you blasted, bloody fool?

I suppose this makes us both idiots, then, doesn't it? We both felt the same about each other but neither of us voiced it and now look what's happened—you're gone and I'm half-dead with regret.

Regret: such a prickly, terrible sensation. It's an inch you can't quite scratch, an indiscernible ache, an indelible bruise pulsing beneath your skin.

I still can't believe you're dead.

Mycroft wouldn't give me the details, said it would only make things worse. What I don't understand is how he thinks finding out you died in a ditch or in a bloody scenic forest would make any sort of difference to me; none of that matters, you're still gone.

I don't know what to say to you, Sherlock, I don't know how to tell you how much I miss your disgusting experiments and stroppy moods and dramatic pouts and loud complaining and rude deductions and brilliant discoveries and small smiles and absolutely beautiful blue-grey eyes that reminded me of the sea glass Harry and I used to find on the beach when we went on holiday to Eastbourne

I don't bloody know.

Words aren't enough. They'll never be enough, and that's ironic for me to say because I'm a writer and supposedly words are the best way for me to communicate, but in reality there is no way to properly express the way I feel about you, short of going back in time and telling you to your beautiful, brilliant face.

The thing is, there will never be closure with you, Sherlock. You could die a thousand times and I'd still go through this same cycle of Not Quite Letting Go and Pining Like a Sod and Putting My Life on Hold, and I'd end up right where I am currently: sitting in your chair, surrounded by your smell, memories, and things, trying and failing to pen out a farewell.

Don't you see I can't do it? There will never be finality with you.

I don't want to think of this as a love letter or a tragic last goodbye, because it's neither. You know what this is, Sherlock? This is just one of the many pieces of tangible evidence that prove I will never be rid of you. Even in death your ghost clouds my vision, my thoughts, my rest; you've taken permanent residence inside my head and I don't mind in the slightest.

You'll never be gone, not to me anyway.

-JW

The moment Sherlock gains consciousness, he becomes uncomfortably aware of the ache coursing throughout his body. It hurts to breath and his abdomen is wet with blood—bullet wound, broken ribs—but despite the terrible pain, it occurs to Sherlock that he is incredibly, unbelievably lucky; by all means, he should not be alive right now. Lightning-fast images of guns, assassins, and scarcely off-target bullets jump across the backs of his eyelids like a slideshow, and his head throbs with each half-recalled memory.

A low voice, quickly recognized as his brother, saves him the trouble of puzzling out his location. "You're safe, Sherlock. We are awaiting my team of doctors to tend to your wounds, but I assure you, you are in no immediate danger of dying."

"I…" he begins, but then trails off, at loss for words.

Mycroft swiftly drinks in the hundreds of unvoiced questions written across Sherlock's face and proceeds to silence them all by reaching into his pocket and producing an envelope with his name scrawled across the top corner.

Sherlock does not need his brother to identify the sender, because the only answer he needs lies in that achingly familiar handwriting. Sherlock's heart gives a faint shudder, whether from relief or fear he isn't sure.

With a knowing look, Mycroft crouches down and hands him the letter. "I believe, Sherlock, it is time to return."

A/N: The final portion of this lovely little trilogy should be up soon-ish, but make sure to subscribe/follow to make sure you catch the next update!

I love you all to the moon and back, thank you so much for reading and inspiring me :)

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