Talking When You're Not There- Revisited

Set after the Fall, John revisits a conversation he had with Sherlock about why he talked to John when he wasn't there. No Slash, just sadness.

I remember once asking you how often you talked to me when I wasn't in the room or even in the flat. I was pretty annoyed by the fact that you seemed to hold me responsible for knowing something that you had only discussed with me in the confines of your own head, as opposed to doing the courtesy of actually talking to me. I was also pissed off (took it personally?) that you didn't seem to even register whether I was actually physically present.

Maybe that's because I was always so aware of your presence. Even when you were lying comatose on the sofa or locked away in your mind palace contemplating some aspect of a case, I never lost track of where you were. You might be off on a case, at a crime scene or just driving your brother up the wall by evading his surveillance while out for a walk, but your love of texting kept me up to date. Like the wildly elliptical orbit of a comet (Oh, will you please stop going on about the solar system, John!), you swooped into my gravitational field on a regular enough basis that I never really thought you were gone.

Until now.

Now I find that I do talk to you when you're not there. Inside the confines of my own head, I can still hear you reply. (Really, John, that's just sentiment).

Yeah, I know, but it's true. I finally understand what you told me that afternoon when you explained why you did it. You said then, and I am paraphrasing here because I don't have the eidetic memory that you have (We can't all be gifted, John), that you talked as if I was still with you, because you wished that I was. You said when you didn't have the real me to talk to, you had an imaginary John, because thinking through what you thought I would say was helpful. Well, Sherlock, I get it now. I really do. (At last, took you long enough! Your powers of deduction are really quite poor, John) Talking to you this way is a whole lot better than talking to the skull. And I find that talking with you this way beats trying to talk to others- Mrs Hudson, Molly, Lestrade, even your bloody brother- with all their sad eyes looking at me.

I'd rather talk to you. It's the way I keep you alive in my head, because the thought of losing you is too much for me to take right now. Yeah, I know- that's sentiment, but I realise now that in your own weird Sherlockian way, the feeling was mutual. (It was, John. It still is)