Disclaimer: I own no part of Sherlock or its characters.
Characters/Pairings: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes. Some John/Sherlock.
Genre: Tragedy, angst, grief/mourning, hurt/comfort (of a sort). Multiple (minor) AUs and crossovers.
Rating: PG-13/T. (Graphic imagery.)
Word Count: 827.
Summary: Reichenbach fic. "At the moment they believe their Holmes is dead at Reichenbach, all Watson in every universe connect, just for a split second, through their shock and grief. Because some things transcend all universe barriers."
Notes: One more kinkmeme fill. A little graphic, a lot strange. I may or may not have a thing for the concept of a multiverse.

Later on, John will ascribe it—all of it, the entire experience—to shock. Emotional trauma. A minor concussion. Anything.

Because it is not merely improbable, it is impossible, it is... unfathomable. It's his brain going into overload, trying to compensate for having just watched his colleague, his flatmate, his partner, his friend, his best friend in the entire fucking world, step off the roof of a four storey building. Watched him jump, fall, plummet down down down down down. Witnessed it from too far away to do a single goddamn thing.

It doesn't happen immediately after the fall, of course; everything in his head goes blank first. At some point he gets run over by a bicyclist, and that's when the concussion happens. He pulls himself up, somehow, and runs to Sherlock, fighting his way though the crowd of spectators and medical professionals. He can hear himself saying I'm his friend, let me through, I'm— and then he's on his knees by Sherlock's side and—

And there is blood. Too much. Vivid, lurid red splashed across stark white, curving over familiar, striking features (ridiculous cheekbones, something hysterical in him says) but that doesn't mean it's over, it doesn't, so John's fingers scrabble over Sherlock's wrist, looking for a pulse, a beat, just one, just something faint, anything, anything, except there's nothing, and that's when he does it, when he looks down into Sherlock's empty eyes, so pale a grey they're nearly white, and that's the moment when he realises that Sherlock is gone. Just. Gone.

And that is when it happens.

When the grief explodes inside his chest, when the shock flips every switch in his brain, when he loses all sense of who he is because he is all of them.

They are doctors and soldiers and men and women and trans and others and neithers and human and alien and myth and magic and they are all John Watson, whether they go by that name or not, and they have all just understood what it means that their best friend has fallen and they all feel this moment—this one tiny moment—together. They witness it through their hundred-thousand pairs of eyes and they feel the compounded grief.

They watch the middle-aged gentleman as he stands at the edge of a waterfall, clutching the note penned to him by his dearest friend, looking blindly at the footprints in the mud as he comes to his own heart-breaking conclusions.

They watch the finely-dressed young newlywed as he stares at the space where his best friend just tumbled from, his thoughts circling from you can't do this to me again, you bastard to we were just dancing to I was the last thing you saw and back around.

They watch the healer with the plain, unspectacular wings as he kneels beside the pool of blood on the cobblestones, his fingers trembling as they hover over the handful of unmistakable grey feathers, once so beautiful and warm but now crazily bent and caked with scarlet.

They watch the overworked fleet medic as he beats at the emergency hatch, his eyes riveted on the body floating so far away, slowly being swallowed up by the blackness of space.

They watch the gold-skinned soldier as he sinks into the dunes beside the sandwyrms' pit.

They watch the screaming child who is terrified for the only friend he has left.

They watch the shell-shocked young doctor with the belly heavy with child.

They watch the man who loses a husband and the man who loses a wife and the woman who loses a husband and the woman who loses a wife.

They watch the sportsman and the actor and the musician and the spy and the privateer and the mutant and the knight and the wizard and the wolf and the dragon and the Archangel.

They watch the mildly-concussed blogger who feels his entire world dying.

They watch and they feel and they connect. Every John Watson in every time in every universe feels the moment when their Sherlock Holmes dies—together. It doesn't matter what Sherlock was to them: colleague, flatmate, friend, lover, husband, wife, brother, patient; they all feel it.

Because no matter who or where or what he is, in some form or other, John Watson loves Sherlock Holmes, and the fact that he is dead hurts. Hurts worse than anything any of them has ever felt.

But for one moment—just one tiny instant, before they are jerked back into themselves with a lung-wrenching gasp—they are not alone in their grief.

Later on, John Hamish Watson, the doctor who spent twelve years in the RAMC, who made it to captain before his shoulder got shot to hell and back, who became Sherlock Holmes' blogger and his only friend, ascribes it—all of it, the entire experience—to shock, to emotional trauma, to his minor concussion.

But that doesn't mean the memory of it doesn't comfort him.

Notes: This was one of my favourite things to write. Thanks for reading!