for my beloved @melanie75851150

New PODFIC on the block! Petrichor & Parchment, by MrsNoggin—hot off the presses!

The Losing Side: Prologue

Rating: T

TW: Suicidal ideation, attempts, reference to injuries from torture

Chapters: 19/19

Pairing: Sherlock/John

Timeframe: Immediately Post-Reichenbach

Chapter 1 | Prologue

The height is dizzying as he looks down at the darkened streets of London. All the time spent here, at this hospital, in his life before and after meeting Sherlock, and he had never once actually come up here. Never stood on the roof of St Barts.

A shudder of panic and vertigo runs through him and he backs up one step, away from the edge, to catch his breath.

Had it been like this for him, too? Did he feel fear, or just hopelessness at that moment? Or, like John does now, both?

It's been almost two years since Sherlock jumped, and the pain hasn't dulled. The nightmares are just as vivid. The grief just as paralyzing. Images of flailing arms and that long coat fluttering. The sickening thud of a body hitting pavement. The smell of rain and iron. The blood. So much blood. Blood had never fazed him much; why would it? For a man who had seen people bleed out in his own hands, blood shouldn’t bother him. Nor death, really. He was a soldier and a doctor. He had seen his share of both. Until the day that blood surrounded dark curls and blank verdigris eyes. Until the death of the best friend he had ever known had sucked all the colour from John's world, and the will to live from his soul.

Every morbid detail committed to memory. The sights. The sounds. The smells. His own personal mind palace-type hell.

His own choked words echo in his mind.

“Let me through, please. He's my friend.”

A still-warm wrist with no pulse. Hands pulling him back. The buzzing sound of shock settling in his head.

It comes rushing back, mocking him, and he sinks to his knees in the moonlight just as he had on the pavement two long years ago. This time under the stars, just inches from the last place Sherlock Holmes had ever stood.

“Let me through, he's my friend,” cycles on repeat in his head. Friend. His friend. The best and wisest man he had ever known. His bestfriend.

“We both know that's not quite true,” a sing-song voice of another dead man in his head taunts him.

And it's right. He was so much more than just a friend. He was nights spent out of breath from running, he was sarcasm and wit, he was takeaway and crap telly. He was severed heads in the freezer and eyeballs in the microwave. He was laughter and companionship. Sherlock was the one person who, with all his being, he had ever truly loved. Due to his own cowardice, the words had gone unspoken.

He shakes his head and that last thought away. Hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Sherlock was the only person whose loss had ever brought Captain John Watson to his knees... quite literally.

He looks up to the sky, to the constellations, small faraway things that were ordinary and deletable to the man whom he now knows he cannot live without.

Here, alone, he would finally do it. That niggling desire he had been fighting. Now. Tonight. It would end. There would be no note. Who would need one? No pills or alcohol or guns. No easy out.

No. It has to be here - alone.

It has to be here so people will know why.

Let them talk, they do little else.

In the same place, in the same way. With only the night sky as witness.

With a choked voice he weakly calls out to the flickering black canopy above.

“I defy you stars!” A poetic quote issued into the nothingness of night.

“You went where I thought I couldn't follow, but I would, and will, follow you anywhere… like I always did… even in this,” he whispers through a choked sob as he drags himself to his feet and steps up, his left foot touching the edge of the rooftop.

Read the complete work on AO3

The Losing Side

Read on AO3

@echosilverwolf