Ok, my very first Sherlock fanfiction. I just hope I've done it justice.

Enjoy

Tarnished Reputations

Suicide. Suicide. The word seemed to racing around his mind, expanding as it circled, until he felt it was the only word he knew. Yet, it still didn't sink in. Suicide was something for ordinary people, boring people. He had even contemplated it at one point, after his dismissal from the army following his injury. But Sherlock? No. He thought he was God's gift to the World, the only worthwhile human that had ever existed. Suicide was not in his vocabulary. But that's all he saw, wherever he went:

'Suicide of fake genius'.

Fake? Fake? No, he refused to believe that. He had known fake people in his time, people who were there and gone in a matter of seconds, enough to flash the Hollywood smile and cry the crocodile's tears. Not Sherlock. Sherlock, who was neither good nor evil, so intelligent but so ignorant. No, Sherlock was no fake. He was the most real person John had ever known.

He still expected him to burst into the flat at any moment, covered in blood and carrying a harpoon as he'd done before. Sometimes he stood by the door, just to wait for the detective's arrival. For Sherlock couldn't really be gone, not when his junk still lay scattered around the rooms. Desiccated fingers lying in the freezer. His clothes flung over the floor of both his and John's room, though how they got there, John would never know. His skull on the fireplace. Sometimes, John would stand and stare at the bone and wonder who Sherlock had preferred. Had he filled in for the skull well enough? Is that all he'd been, a fill-in? Just something for Sherlock to voice his theories to? John let out a hollow laugh as he lowered himself into his chair. Sherlock had known how to talk; he could have challenged every politician in Westminster to a speaking contest, and beaten them all. Yet John had tried so hard to silence him, he'd shouted, he'd threatened, he'd even attacked him once. Nothing had worked. He'd never kissed him though, an action he'd never thought of contemplating until now. Would it have worked? Silenced the great consulting detective? John didn't even know why he was asking. After all, who would hear him now? He was truly alone in the World. People he'd thought were friends: Molly, Lestrade, Hell, even Mycroft, were all gone now.

He had Mrs. Hudson, but he could hardly say that would last forever. John could never afford the flat on his own and, although she'd promised it to him for as long as he wanted it, there was already interest. The flat of pseudo-genius, Sherlock Holmes? The buyers were bound to flock like rats to a rubbish tip. And when he was thrown out, where could he go? He no longer knew who he was; he certainly wasn't John, not anymore. In fact, who was he? He wasn't a shadow, for he could see himself still, and nothing like a ghost, for every time he tripped over another one of Sherlock's belongings, it still hurt. But he'd lost himself. He was a tiny person, trapped in a city that was haunted by Sherlock's legacy. For he could no longer walk the streets without being hit by waves of emotion, slowly eroding him until his foundations collapsed and he really was left with nothing but these painful memories. The times he and Sherlock had chased taxis, fought mobs, saved lives all over London. To be left with...well, with what? Tarnished reputations and yellowing newspaper cuttings. Is that all? No. John felt himself shaking his head, as if being moved by some unconscious force within him. There was more. There were tarnished reputations, yellowing newspaper cuttings and a thousand words that John had left unsaid. Words that had been too irrelevant for Sherlock, but words now too powerful for John. Words he could never force himself to articulate before, or even consider, but words that seemed to be choking him now. But, sat in the empty flat, trapped in his own mind, surrounded by Sherlock's mess and somehow clutching the detective's purple shirt in his clenched hand, what was stopping him from speaking?

'I love you, Sherlock Holmes.'

And from behind him, as he sat slumped almost lifeless in his chair, he could swear he heard another voice. A low, smooth noise, usually speaking at rapid time yet slowed down just this once.

'I know, John. I know.'