Chapter 1: The Five Stages

"I thought it was going to be over by now," John admitted to his therapist, looking down at the floor.

"What makes you say that?"

"You did. You said that. After depression comes acceptance, you said. You said that."

John leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. Twice a week for soon three years, and he was now beginning to be able to talk freely about Sherlock's death.

"John, the Küber-Ross model is a theory, not a schedule. The stages don't need to come in chronological order; it's not a defined sequence. It's just a way for you to be able to be somewhat prepared for what emotions you are going to feel."

John didn't say anything. While he knew himself to have actually reached the acceptance stage for maybe a year ago, he was still taken aback when he one day found himself in denial of the whole thing happening. It felt like a regression he just couldn't emotionally afford. A week later, it could be anger or bargaining. These stages lasted only for a few hours, but were enough to throw his whole day off track.

"I woke up this morning, so sure that he was just waiting for me to do… something, and then he'd come back, if only I figured it out. And I mean, I'd do anything…"

"What stage does that sound like?"

"Bargaining," John muttered under his breath.

"What did Olivia say about it?"

John immediately felt guilty. "I didn't say anything to her."

"Why not?"

For a second, he actually considered telling the truth. He had been honest with everything else in therapy, and when he'd made that decision he realised that it actually helped. He had actually managed to rebuild a decent life. But for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to admit that he hadn't told Olivia about Sherlock. It had begun as a lie through omission, but now that they were living together, the lie seemed to have snowballed to the point where he felt that he should at least tell the truth to his therapist.

"She's a worrier," John said instead, deciding to keep the lie going. "And she had a big presentation at work, I didn't want her to worry about me when she needed to focus on other things."

"Do you think you are protecting her by not telling her about your feelings?"

"Yes."

No, it wasn't that. He didn't think he needed to protect her from anything. But he wanted so badly to be normal, to adjust back to a normal life, a life without war – any war. And if Olivia thought him to be normal then the goal seemed so much closer.

"We've talked about this, haven't we, John?"

"Yes."

"Trust issues don't go away overnight. You have to work on it. You trusted Sherlock, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"Well, then try to trust Olivia the same way. Just try to."

John didn't really feel that the comparison of Sherlock and Olivia was a very apt one, but nodded in agreement nonetheless. It just wasn't the same; you couldn't just compare two people like that, not when the only common denominator was that he happened to have shared a flat with both of them.

"Same time on Thursday?"

John looked up at the clock. Was it five already?

"Sure," he agreed and shook the hand she had reached out in the same way as always.

The bargaining was the worst part of it all. It was the most difficult feeling to shake. At five separate occasions John had seen Sherlock fake his own death, or at least fake to be dying, and it always ended when John did something to tie the ends of the case together, to set the stage for Sherlock to make his victorious return. It had taken a lot of time and therapy to get him to abandon the idea that this was one of those times.

He had left Baker Street in an effort to rid himself of that feeling that everything was just a puzzle, waiting for him to figure it out. It also felt like it was Sherlock's place more than it had ever been his, so he often found himself sitting in the dark, waiting for Sherlock to return. Therapy really had helped him a lot, he decided when he thought back on those darker days when he couldn't really function.

It did still feel weird though, when the cab turned south instead of north, heading to Brixton instead of Baker Street, even though he had now lived in Brixton longer than he had lived in Baker Street.

I researched you.

Sherlock's voice rang through his head as the cab rode over the Themes. It did that sometimes. He tried to block it out and leave it on the other side of the river, but it haunted him all the way home to Lambert Road.