And now we go back to the series I started before Occupying distracted me :) Hope you enjoy, and don't forget to review!

Numb.

That was a good way to put it. He was numb.

The flames crackled, pushing heat against his face, but he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything. He was numb, and it didn't matter. Had it ever mattered?

Yes, it had at one point. It was hard to remember right then, but he knew there had been a time Before. Before he had gone numb, before they had left. How long had it been, since it had mattered?

Did that even matter?

He tried to think of what day it was, but he struggled with that, too. He had no patients, no reason to leave when Holmes was between cases, as he was now. He got up, went about his routine, put up a front to hide that he was slowly falling inside, slowly losing himself to the building fog.

What had started it? That mattered, at least a little, and he thought back. It was rare for him to fall into a pit such as this, rare for him to go numb, so it mattered what had tossed him into it.

A face came to mind, and the memory slowly followed of a young girl, so like how he usually pictured their daughter, staring up at him when he had gone to the shop the previous week.

Another stab of pain shot through him at the memory, and he shoved it aside. He would rather be numb.

But the thought returned. How would their child have looked? If a girl, would she have gotten his dark hair, or Mary's fair hair? Would a boy have gotten Mary's curls?

Mary. How he missed her. His mind conjured the memory of her scent, and he enjoyed it for the briefest moment before nudging the memory away. It threatened his numbness.

He knew what would happen if he stayed numb for too long, but he also knew what would happen if he dropped the numbness too quickly. He was relatively certain Holmes had entered the room at some point. He had no wish to display that.

It had been months since he had thought of them so acutely, and he had thought the gaping wound had healed, at least to some degree. He knew now that that had been a whimsical hope. How could he even begin to think such a wound would heal? It throbbed in him, radiating a deeply seated pain that declared it was here to stay. It may wax and wane, but it would never disappear. When something made it flare, he could only survive it by going numb.

He had grown skilled at this, first long ago, but more recently after Holmes had gone in Switzerland, then more so after Mary had followed. He knew what it meant when he woke up somehow heavy, knew what to say and how to act to hide that something had broken, knew that it would usually pass in a few days. It would pass in a few days, and he would find himself again. He would remember what it was like to not be lost in a fog of memory and possibility. He would remember where he had left that figurative rope that would bring him back to the real world.

He vaguely remembered that he used to have one thing that always worked, that always dispelled the fog and led him back, but he pushed that aside. He hadn't had that in years. He had lost that when—or was it just before?—he had lost his brother.

Just before, he thought. He remembered the first time he lost his brother, but he had lost that method by the second—final—time. The memories of the days after that loss were themselves lost in the first thick fog, a fog which had not become fully opaque until after he lost the ability to dispel the fog at will.

The fog was here to stay, and he knew it. He may as well accept it, embrace it, use it. Until it passed on its own, he was content to stay here, gazing into the depths of the fire he couldn't feel, watching memories he couldn't see, hearing voices that spoke no more.

A voice reached his ears, and he pondered it. Whose voice was that? Silence answered his inquiry, and he returned to the memory of Mary he had been reliving. The blue dress she wore occasionally had always been his favorite after he began tying it to the memory of their trip to Sussex.

"Watson?"

Something in him recognized his name, though his thoughts were far away, and he forced a sound of acknowledgment. He could acknowledge the real world, even if he could not yet remember how to live there.

"Watson, are you with me?"

The question worked further into his thoughts, prodding him for an answer, and he withdrew from the memory of a quiet night spent by a different fire, in a house on the other side of the city.

"Hmm?" The words registered in his distracted mind. "Oh, I'm fine, Holmes."

He tried to sink back into that quiet memory, but Holmes spoke again.

"What's on your mind?"

He sighed. It was too much work to hold himself in the present when his thoughts continually returned to the past, but he knew Holmes well enough to force himself to answer.

"Nothing, Holmes. Don't worry about it."

He sank back into memory again, easily falling through time. He was already in a pit, why not back in time, as well? The past welcomed him, using the numbness to enhance its power. The past was rarely so vivid as after he had gone numb. It was almost as if the numbness created a road on which for the past to travel in its journey forward to live in the present. The past could come forward; he could go back. Why fight to remain in the present when the past was so easy to revisit? He could feel neither past nor present.

Holmes fidgeted, and the sound broke through his detachment. There was no need to glance over, or even break himself out of the memory, to know that Holmes was staring at him.

He forced a front, infusing his voice with a facsimile of irritation in the hopes that the emotion was for what Holmes had been searching. The sooner he could return the outside world to silence, the sooner he could return to exploring the numbness that permeated him.

"Deduce it, if it matters that much to you. You always said I was easy to read."

Holmes' rebuttal reached his ears barely a moment later. "You have not displayed anything in hours. What is wrong? Usually you would be reading on a night like this."

Reading? He thought about that for a moment, unconsciously glancing over at the bookshelf. Oh, reading. The act of viewing someone else's thoughts on paper in an effort to escape or add to your own. Yes, he remembered doing that, but why would he do that now? The bound pages had lost their allure days before. How could he focus on someone else's thoughts when his own consumed his awareness?

He shrugged. "Nothing sounded interesting," he said in understatement.

"Are you alright?"

The answer to that would always be the same, no matter what. "Of course."

"Can I help?"

Why could Holmes not simply drop it? Words were too much effort, required too much feeling. He was numb, and he wanted to stay numb until it was safe to feel again. Maybe he should go to his room?

No, he decided. Not yet. Holmes was perceptive enough to realize he didn't want to talk, and he was comfortable here. He refused to risk dragging Holmes into the numbness with him, but the numbness was easier to bear with Holmes nearby.

"I'm fine, Holmes," was all he said, his gaze captured by the fire again. He faintly registered Holmes sit back in his chair across the fire, and the presence relaxed him minutely as he fell back into memory, back to when he sat near a different fire with someone else, on the other side of the city.

How he missed her!

The image came to his mind again, slightly nebulous from the years' distortion: he in his armchair with a novel, Mary on the settee with her sewing, both enjoying a quiet evening in. His patient load had been light that day, and Holmes had been out of London on some case. There was no chance of interruption, and it had been a perfect evening silently enjoying the other's presence. Occasionally, he had read an amusing line from his novel, and they would discuss it for a minute, but silence soon fell again.

Another image pushed into his thoughts, of another night by the same fire. He had noticed she was sewing something new and seated himself next to her on the settee. She had purposely spread out the cloth, showing off the gender-neutral frock on her lap.

The joy of that memory fled with a stab of pain, and he pushed it away, pushed away the memory of his child. He was too close to shattering to handle that memory. He turned to a different memory, remembering a reversed proposal that had only made him love her more.

He sank into the memory, reliving every breath, every moment, in an effort to see the memory through and thereby release it, but that rarely worked. Release required more than just reliving. It needed audible creation. It needed to resonate in the air. It needed to be heard, whether just by himself or by someone else as well. There was no release in thinking, only numbness or pain. Sometimes numbness, then pain. He never liked when it migrated past pain. When numb, he could only ride out the numbness, waiting for it to pass while trying to prevent it from turning into pain.

There was no way to release these thoughts, these memories, because that required words, and there were no words where numbness resided.

Numbness pushed the words away, denying them meaning. Words pushed the numbness away, sharpening the pain. Better to be numb.

He did remember another way, one he had had long ago, a long ago he could not define without losing his numbness. But he had lost that, somehow. It had been taken from him, and now he had nothing except his thoughts. He would work through it the long way, and wait for it to dissipate on its own. Another memory tried to push its way to the fore, and he examined it, trying to decide if he would let it play out. At least he still had that bit of control.

A sound reached his ears, pushing the memory aside as it forced its way into his awareness in a way words could not, and he tensed. Yes, that was what he had lost long ago, the ability to give his thoughts voice without meaningless words.

The sound continued, amplifying his emotions when all he wanted to do was stay numb. The sounds that would release his thoughts when coming from his own fingers strengthened his thoughts when coming from another's, and the pain of loss appeared out of the fog, pounding on the walls of his numbness and demanding entrance.

No. He knew what would happen when the wall eventually crumbled, and he would not subject Holmes to that, no matter his reassurances so many months before.

The only thing worse than being stuck in the fog of his own thoughts was dragging someone else down to suffer with him.

He got up to leave the room, seeking the privacy of his bed for the wave of grief looming.

The sound fell silent as he gained his feet, but his walls were already too close to breaking, and he continued to his room, firmly holding his walls in place as he sought privacy. It was always better to face such a thing alone than risk dragging another into it. His walls began crumbing even before he sank onto the mattress, and his last bit of control disintegrated. Memories and possibilities shoved their way to the forefront of his thoughts, demanding he pay attention to them. He was unable to turn them away.

Mary, at the train station, waving goodbye as he left on a short holiday with Holmes.

A young girl, looking just like Mary but with dark hair, staring up at him from the other side of a shop.

Mary, wearing a lovely blue dress in the kitchen of the cottage they had rented on a Sussex seaside.

A baby boy, sitting at his mother's feet and playing with a stethoscope, examining it with wide eyes.

Mary, sitting on the settee during a quiet evening, meeting him at the door after a long day, surprising him in his consulting room with a meal.

Mary, Mary, Mary.

His numbness shattered, and the wave of pain took over, drowning him in memories, possibilities, longing. He was drowning in a tsunami of his own making, and suddenly everything mattered. It mattered that he could feel. It mattered that he had left Holmes when Holmes needed him most. It mattered that he couldn't save his wife and child. It mattered that it had been so many months. It mattered that he had been alone. It mattered that he still felt alone, for he could not bring himself to burden Holmes with such a thing, not when that was exactly the kind of conversation that had always made Holmes so uncomfortable. It all mattered, and the wave overwhelmed him, pushing itself out until he was forced to rein it in to maintain the silence. He reined it in, constraining it just enough to prevent its sound from escaping his room, no matter that doing such a thing made the wave last longer, because the only thing worse that drowning was bringing someone else down too. He would not burden Holmes.

He was left hollow when it finally spent itself, and he buried his face in the pillow. He was done for the day.

Maybe tomorrow would be better.