John took to the streets at night.

They went in shifts, the loyal ones, cans of paint in tow. London's buildings proclaimed I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES and MORIARTY WAS REALpassionately and in violent strokes of color. No matter what volunteer crews scrubbed, no matter which "Richard Brook" supporter scrawled their blasphemy in the margins, the next night BROOK WAS THE CROOK and SHERLOCK WAS A GOOD MAN reigned over the city. Some mornings John would retire from the streets and turn up to the surgery early; no one ever said anything if his hands were stained yellow. Indeed, he'd find anonymous invoices that read Sherlock was not a liar or I'll fight your war, John Watson, and some patients would cast him knowing glances over their paperwork and ask, casually, "So what do you think of all this Sherlock Holmes business?"

Spray-painting buildings was hardly a life, but that was okay. Able to keep a job and a flat but not a girlfriend, John knew his only real purpose was to make sure that the efforts of a great man had not been in vain. If it meant lurching awake with nightmares on the edge of his mind with no one's arms to seek comfort in, so be it. He would return to his lonely flat as he'd done before Sherlock, but now at least he would know he'd done something worthwhile. The excitement would never heal the hurt, he knew, yet somehow the pseudo-vigilante acts made him feel as if he was doing something— something real. He could do nothing for the unsolved cases or the distressed clients who thought they'd been conned, but a part of him swelled with pride for Sherlock when he brushed shoulders with Henry Knight or Andrew West's fiancée or the bomb vest survivors and they nodded in salute.

One morning, when the hours were small and the city was dead, something compelled John to return there, to return home. He kept his eyes earthward, unsure if he'd be able to look the building in its facade, but as he climbed the steps a screech of yellow caught his eye and he looked up. His heart faltered. There, scrawled loudly on 221B's door was an entirely new message.

I BELIEVE IN JOHN WATSON –SH

Hope hit him like a tsunami. A hand pressed itself to his mouth, holding in the laughter and the yelling and the sobbing that all fought for dominance of his vocal cords. The door caught him when he fell forward on his outstretched arm, laughing into his hand, because after a year and a half of John Watson believing in Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes believed in John Watson. He was hopeful, so blindly hopeful that he could hardly get a breath in edgewise through the giggling— giggling, how long had it been?— and even though common sense pandered in stern tones that it was stupid to hope in a dead man, John would not stop smiling. He knew, knew for very certain that a man who now lived in the ground could not rise just to leave him a graffitied note, but he didn't care. Someone, be it Sherlock or God or a vandal who thought themselves a comedian, had given him this, this light breaking over the horizon. Maybe it was just insanity, but John felt an awful lot like he was happy.

The moment his legs would carry him he was throwing open the door, running upstairs, peeling back the curtains in the empty flat. Dust rose in lazy plumes, spinning in the streaks of streetlamp light. Eloquent, Sherlock had called it. He could almost hear it saying, "John, why haven't you been home? He's still here, even though he's gone." The flat smelled like him, like the tea they used to drink, like one too many exploded experiments. John laughed, bordering on hysterics, and looked upon London with a challenge in his heart.

"Just try to kill Sherlock Holmes," he whispered. "You can't. Heroes never die."