So, I saw the latest episode of Sherlock and was inspired to write this. This is my first Sherlock fic, so please be gentle with me.

Anyway, this is Post-Reichenbach so please if you have not yet seen it don't read due to spoilers.

One final warning. Yes, this fic is M. Yes, it will most likely be graphic in later chapters. Yes, this is slash. Yes, this is Johnlock. If any of these things offend you I suggest you do not read on.

Please, enjoy!

~P.S. On a side note, no I do not own anything to do with Sherlock. This is purely a coping mechanism to distract me from the long wait that is before us.

…And after the Fall

It seemed to me,

I had lost it all...

"John?" Jerking back into reality the room seemed a bit dimmer than it had before. How long had I been sitting here? My therapist was looking at me, expectantly. How long had she been calling my name?

"John?"

"Yes? Sorry, we were…" What had we been talking about? I was surprised Ella hadn't walked out. Surely it wasn't much fun to just watch me sit here.

"I was asking where you've been living." No, that wasn't what she'd asked me but whatever she had asked was probably the reason I had wasted half our session staring at a wall.

"Spent some time at an old colleague's house while I was moving. Just some bloke I met when I was in Afghanistan. He offered me the couch. After that I found a flat not too far from here. I've been there for about a week now."

"And your leg John?" I hated how she always said my name, over and over like I had forgotten it or something.

"What about it?"

"It's started hurting again, hasn't it?" It had. While moving my things I had found the old cane and discovered that I needed it. My leg had only gotten worse since. Ella was staring at me again.

I never liked to look at her straight in the eyes; they always seemed to be searching me in a way I felt was disconcerting and vaguely familiar, so I always fixed my eyes on a spot behind her head, on a piece of wall that had been chipped by something, probably from her moving…

"John." I wrenched my eyes away from the wall and settled them on her chin, pretending to pay attention, "Why did you move out of your old flat? Was there something wrong with it?"

Wrong? Oh, yes it had been so very wrong. All of the clutter was gone, the experiments cleared away as if they had never been there. The quiet was almost too much to bear. But that wasn't the hard part. No, it was the fact it wasn't empty.

The small scratch on the table, the smiling face on the wall, the gouged wood around the window fame where the glass had impacted from the explosion, all of it was still there; like little reminders, as if I could forget.

All of it remained, even that infuriating skull sitting on the mantle, that I couldn't bear to move. It stared down with that boney face that, in the late hours I sat awake on the couch unable to sleep, somehow managed to grow flesh and form until it was His face on that mantle staring down at me, covered in blood.

Oh, right I was still in Ella's office with her staring at me with those eyes, waiting patiently for me to answer.

"I couldn't go back. Not after…"

"Not after what John?" 'His face, his fall, his grave, not after those' I wanted to say but the words wouldn't come.

How does one begin to accurately describe their own fall into darkness knowing that no fall could ever compare to his.

"I think that's enough for today John."

"How is he?"

"Worse, if that's even possible. Mr. Holmes I don't see…"

"Please, don't suggest that. I've made perfectly clear that it cannot be done."

"Had you not contacted me he would have been institutionalized weeks ago. John Watson is a broken man, Mr. Holmes and it goes against my every instinct to let him continue on this way. The death of your brother has destroyed him. He needs more help than I can give him."

"Ms. Thompson, need I remind you of who I am? Rest assured I have John's best interests at heart. However, have no doubt I will protect John Watson in any way I can. Any way. Good day Ms. Thompson."

Mycroft Holmes was neither a sentimental man nor an emotional one but he did care for his brother. In fact, Mycroft mused, Sherlock had perhaps been the only person he had ever truly felt any kinship. Not just because they were brothers, blood ties mattered very little to him, no it was because even in their own worlds and lives they had understood each other perfectly.

Not to say Mycroft knew everything about Sherlock, for surely no one could boast that knowledge, but that he understood enough. Enough to know that his brother had protected John Watson with his life and that if he, Mycroft Holmes, wanted to honour his late sibling in any way, he would take the burden on himself. He would guard, with all of his power, the last remnant of the man who used to be John Watson, the only person who had ever truly made Sherlock Holmes smile.