there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and

we will wait
and
wait

in that space."

― Charles Bukowski

Sherlock Holmes has been shot.

Sherlock Holmes. Shot.

Sherlock. Shot.

Sherlock.

"Sherlock!"

Blood stained his hands, the crimson glistening against his pale skin. Not my blood, he thought. Not... mine? No. It's—oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, fucking—

He fumbled around, trying to grasp something, anything, really, but found his fingers stiff and clumsy. Suddenly every breath of his became a task. He was on his knees – how did I end up here? – and something was blurring his vision. Every color blended into one another and it burned.

Something coarse and rough brushed his fingers. He clutched it and felt fabric. Dark blue fabric. It was on a person, and it was wet. Wet with— no. Fucking hell, bloody fucking hell—

Somewhere, he found his voice. "Somebody call an ambulance!" he managed to shout, or at least, he thought he did. All he heard was the rush of blood in his ears, and that sound, that goddamned sound. The click and bang. The sound of a body hitting pavement. Laughter, terrible, terrible laughter.

Minutes felt like hours. There were sirens. Hands pulled at him, and he had to let go. No, no, he's my—no, don't, he needs me, I'm a doctor—I'm... he needs me. Sherlock, he—

He was on his feet now, and there were arms around him. Faintly, he heard someone whisper that it was okay, he was going to be okay, calm down, calm down. Up ahead, there were lights: bright, pulsating, and alive. Through the fog he could see red on grey, white, yellow, and a mop of black. Someone was calling his name. A gust of cold wind hit him.

There was a scream, guttural and utterly broken, and for the faintest of moments, he thought it had come from himself.

The first hours were the worst. The desolate and cavernous halls of the hospital burned into his eyes, and his hands were red from being wrung so often. People came and went, offering everything from words to drinks to a blanket to a goddamn book. (He ignored the words, rejected the drinks, took the blanket, and threw the book only to retrieve it and hold it until his fingers started aching).

In the end, he sat, hands in his hair, waiting for nothing and everything.

It wasn't this bad with Mary. That had been much quicker; one moment her heaving pregnant form was rushed into the OR, and the next came a nurse with bloody scrubs, her voice soft and sympathetic. He remembered her words as clear as day. "We're sorry, Doctor Watson. We did what we could."

". . . and the baby?"

The funny thing about doctors was how much they tried to convince you they were human. They tilted their head, lowered their voice, and said words as gently as they could. Their eyes held the truth, though. They held the fatigue and utter emptiness they felt. John knew that. He had to look at them every morning.

But nothing could've compared to this. Not the death of his wife and child, not even the first time Sherlock had died. This was worse. This time he saw it, he saw his breath leave him, he saw him thrown back, he saw Sherlock Holmes fall. No bicycles, no fainting, no theatricality. Merely a click and a bang.

They wouldn't let him in. "Immediate family only," they had told him in that apologetic tone of theirs. I am his family, he wanted to say. I'm his doctor, his best friend, I'm—he's my best man, he's Sherlock fucking Holmes, and he's my best man.

And so he sat there in silence, the doors left unopened, with the occasional nurse in blood-spattered scrubs walking in and out. He felt like a ghost, only a shred of who he was before the click and bang. The silence cocooned him, and it was the smallest of solaces.

Not again, you bloody bastard. Nobody could be that clever. Not again, don't do this to me. Goodbye, John.

When the doctors finally came, he looked through them, their words ringing hollow. Only five words registered: "We did what we could."

In that moment, all the breath left his lungs. He could feel the cool of the blade against his throat, sawing back and forth; the hot blood running down him, staining his crumpled clothes. No sound came from him, and truth be told, no sound could've. Bile rose. The skin on his arms felt foreign.

"—a coma. He has lost a lot of blood but is currently stable. We will be monitoring him heavily for the next few days, but we expect him to wake up soo— Dr. Watson? Doctor, are you . . . sir? Sir?"

All he remembered was the rush of air as he crumpled, and the blindingly bright pallid lights on the ceiling.

Plastic snakes covered his body. Someone had covered his torso with a rather out-of-place looking blanket. He could've laughed: Sherlock Holmes covered in floral, it was something out of a dream. Then again, the entire situation didn't feel any real either.

John sat by him. The only sounds in the room were the gentle drip-drop of the IV and the occasional beep of one of the machines. The consulting detective's chest rose and fell, and every breath of his sounded like metal scraping metal. Nonetheless, he was alive. Barely, but a living, breathing human (or whatever that bastard is, he thought to himself).

There were so many people. Nurses: prodding at him, making notes, drawing blood, making more notes; doctors: looking over those notes, prodding him some more, saying numbers and words as though they should mean something; visitors: crying, wishing him well, wishing Sherlock well, giving him things and telling him that it was going to be alright. He knew the drill. He knew it too fucking well.

At times, Sherlock would move. That only made it worse. It was like the universe was mocking him. Whether it was the slightest twitch of a finger, or the spike of a heartbeat, or even a sharp intake of breath, John would know and John would be there within the blink of an eye. Not even the doctors could beat him.

Molly visited on the third day. She hugged him (he pretended not to notice how much she smelt like medicine) and told him that it was going to be okay, and that Sherlock—her voice had cracked at the second syllable— would make it. Of course, he would.

Lestrade called him a resilient bastard when he made his visit on the sixth. Anderson didn't speak (day eleven), choosing to merely stare at his bedridden form, fingers twitching. Mycroft had requested to be left alone and when he came out, his eyes were red (that was day fourteen). All of them sans him left flowers.

They stared at him, those flowers. The petunias Molly brought had begun to wilt, their purple slowly bleeding into a dull russet. Lestrade had left a rather haphazard combination of what seemed like every flower he could find; they lay sad and limp in a corner, the dead and living harmonious with one another. Anderson's daisies had been hand-picked and half-dead, but they still managed to hold onto the slightest shred of life.

Every day he expected them to wilt and turn in brown paper so he could throw the wretched things away. Yet he found himself returning those the most often, watering them; ensuring they were angled towards the sun. He wasn't even sure why.

Day nineteen. "Sherlock," John told the silent room. "You..." you what? You bloody fool. You brilliant son of a bitch. You great man. You lunatic. You complete and utter arsehole. You can't leave me again.

His sentence hung in the air, unfinished. That night John walked over to the daisies and chucked them into the trash.

"John. John." There was a voice. Shrill, female, tired, yet commanding. "John, wake up. Wake up." I know you. "Hey, John—"

"I'm up," he grumbled through his sandpaper mouth. "Morning." His limbs felt ancient, and when he stretched, he swore he could hear every bone snapping and groaning, like aged cogs coming back to life.

"Evening, actually," Molly corrected him. "You fell asleep in the chair. Again."

"Huh." He surveyed himself, all crumpled week-old flannel. "Shame." He turned to look at the clock, and then the bed. Seven twenty-seven; still comatose; head was on fire. Nothing new.

"I . . ." she trailed off, her confidence faltering almost immediately. "I . . .think you should go out for a bit." Each word carefully constructed than the one preceding it, as if she were testing the waters. Such waters were murky and tumultuous; a dichotomy of the sea's rage and its serenity. Had John's jaw not been in ache, he would've laughed.

Instead, he responded in the only way he could. "No thanks," he muttered, running a hand through his coarse hair – Jesus, I need a shower – "I'm quite alright here."

Molly visibly winced, as if what he had said had cut her. In a more lucid state, he'd have apologized to her; she had been his sole constant companion throughout this ordeal; both ordeals in fact. He had witnessed her facade go from comfort to pity. Now he figured it to be at resignation. Void of feeling, of hope. A doll, hollow and mechanic. She had bags under her green eyes. There was a weathered plaster on the ring finger of her left hand. Married to medicine. Suddenly, her presence became suffocating. Too here.

"You know – " John could feel his own voice shaking, just as his legs were – "a walk does sound like a good idea. Could use a . . . change of scenery."

A weight came off her shoulders; her appearance went back a decade in seconds. Relief. "Oh, that's . . . that's good. Very good. I'll be here, okay? With . . . with him."

With who? he wanted to ask her as he hastily shuffled by her, deliberately ignoring her attempt to hug him. There's no one else in the room. You call that shell of a man human? That is an insult to him. That is an insult to brilliance he radiated. That is an insult to who he once was, who he should be. That's not my Sherlock. Not anymore.

Staying true to his own vacant words, John walked. He drank in the air of the city like an emaciated dog fervidly crawling back to its owner. The noise and stench of gridlock consumed him, it filled the pores in his skin and the holes in his lungs. It had been too long since he had been among crowds that weren't offering him condolences. The notion was odd, but refreshing.

A dull throb filled his head as he weaved in and out of clusters of tourists and businessmen. It started off as a gentle buzz but then consumed him bit by bit, until his vision came to him overly saturated and voices began to sound like tuneless music. In a way, he was grateful for it. It made reality just the slightest bit more bearable.

It only made sense that the phone call came when he was seated at a bar with dim fluorescent lighting and flavored smoke looming underneath low ceilings. His mouth was well alive with bitter, and he had abandoned his grip on his fifth shot of something or the other of the night (he had stopped caring after the second) to press the bright green receive icon on his phone. Vaguely, he registered the first letter of the caller ID. M.

Later that night, somewhere after the eleventh or twelfth shot, John Watson found himself with his back on the damp, chilled asphalt of an empty road, the warmth of alcohol in his stomach, the ring in his ears. All he felt was fire in him, threatening to come out of the bleeding wounds on his forehead and knuckles. Glass, wasn't it? Or maybe that was later. After he pushed me. The bloke was skinny but packed enough of a punch. Looks never mean shit. Never. Especially if they're in goddamn suits and scarves and, and a bloody deerstalker –

The man lay in wait, letting the pain blossoming in the right side of his skull eat away at whatever was left of his consciousness, stars behind his eyelids.

Somewhere in the next twenty minutes, three passersby would notice his passed out form in the middle of the road. When they would call for an ambulance, and when they'd jumpstart the broken remains of who was once a doctor that would tend to soldiers, they would not find him; they would not find a a man who once woke up and told himself he would no longer let his past define his present; a man who believed in moving on, in the firm actuality of things. They'd find instead a set of bones and flesh and an aching heart; one with a voice that screamed until it lost its will to. Until it dissolved into sobs that were uncontrollable, sobs that were visceral and rugged, as if someone had taken a jagged knife to his throat.

"I do not want to be here!" the man once named John Watson would wail while paramedics held down his spasming form. "Please. I do not - oh, Jesus – I do not want to be in a world without them. Without him . . . please— I do not want to be in a world without Sherlock Holmes."

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