(NOTE: Usual disclaimer-I own nothing but my own plot. I just like to play in the BBC/Sherlock universe.)

John sat in the dark, head on his knees.

He tried to force himself to think, to keep his brain active. It was the only defense he had against the all-encompassing blackness, yet the longer he was here, the less he could bring himself to care.

Not that he knew where he was, just that it was a cell. Four walls, a floor, a ceiling of some kind. No windows. No door. No light of any kind. For all he knew, it had been built around him. In his first days here, he had explored with his hands, but never found anything resembling a crack to define an entry point of any kind. His guess (hope?) was that there was a trap door in the ceiling, well above his reach.

There was nothing to reach with, either. His cell was neither cold nor hot, but those remained its only amenities. There was a pallet or mattress of some kind in the corner, but no blankets. He'd been stripped of most of his clothes before being locked here but was never cold—one small blessing. The corner opposite the mattress was his water feature—a continuous trickle of water down the wall, pooling in a basin built into the wall and then running down to a hole in the floor that also served as his toilet. He had worried at first that the water was just being pumped through on a continuous loop, but had that been the case, he would have been sick by now. So, the incoming water was fresh—another (very small) blessing. Though he'd almost welcome the variety of an interesting illness at this point. Anything to alleviate the monotony.

A third corner was the larder. When he'd arrived, it had been stacked with some kind of energy bars, but the pile was dwindling. One of the things he was trying not to think about was how few bars were left, and what he was going to do when they ran out.

He had no idea how long he'd been here. There was nothing to keep track with—no handy stick to scratch lines into the walls, even if he could have seen them. All he had were power bar wrappers—132 of them, and counting—but how that converted into days, he had no idea.

He couldn't decide if it was a relief or a curse that he'd been left completely, absolutely alone. He didn't exactly regret the complete lack of torture, but that would at least have given him something to fight. You couldn't fight darkness with your fists, and no matter how strong your will-power, it could be beaten down by the constant monotony of nothingness.

At first, he had tried to keep his spirits up. He had tried jogging in place, doing sit-ups, push-ups, anything to keep in shape, but as the days ran into one another, he'd found himself just lying on his pallet, too listless to do anything. Even thinking became too hard, as if focusing on a thought was as impossible as focusing his eyes. It was all just … nothing.

Think, John! He tried to rally his thoughts. How did you get here? The last thing he remembered was sitting at 221B, alone. Always alone these days. The ultimate irony was that this empty, black cell was barely any worse than his own flat had been since Sherlock … fell. That silence had been no less deafening. The only real difference was that the black emptiness had been behind his eyes.

And there had been tea. He licked his lips, remembering. He missed tea. Right now, he would give almost anything to have Mrs. Hudson bustle in, insisting he eat something, take care of himself.

If he hadn't been so discouraged, he would have chuckled. All his friends had been so worried about him being suicidal with Sherlock gone. For all he knew, they thought he'd gone someplace and killed himself. For all he knew, they weren't looking for him at all. And why should they? What good was he to anyone? Nobody needed John Watson any more. Not since that brilliant tornado of energy had plummeted from the Barts roof and brought any sense of purpose John might have had to an end.

He had tried to go through the motions. Tried going to work to help the sick. Tried to pull together a semblance of a life—something that looked like one at any rate. He'd taken what little solace he could in that he was at least superficially helped people (even if only with things like chest infections or broken arms). He might even have been succeeding. He couldn't honestly remember.

So, what had happened? He remembered sitting in the flat, remembered making a cup of tea, and then … nothing. Had the tea been drugged? How had he been taken from the building without Mycroft seeing? John was sure Mycroft still had him under surveillance, even with Sherlock gone. He had told him as much on their brief meeting after the funeral, when Mycroft had told him he was Sherlock's sole beneficiary.

And a lot of good that did him, he thought.

No, he definitely did not remember leaving Baker Street. Just drifting off to sleep in his chair, and then waking here. Wherever here was.

He had wondered, early on, if this was all Mycroft's doing. He wouldn't put it past him. With his history of kidnappings, if he had thought John was likely to do anything rash, it would be completely believable for Mycroft to have locked him away somewhere to keep him safe. Except, he didn't think a bare, dark cell would be Mycroft's style. A long-term abduction of an acquaintance (colleague? friend? co-conspirator?) would be somewhere more comfortable, John was sure. A real bed, for example, and a proper toilet would definitely be included. Gourmet meals, even if all the doors and windows were locked and sharp objects kept at a distance.

It couldn't be Moriarty. For one, Mycroft had assured him that Moriarty was dead, found on the Barts roof shortly after Sherlock's jump. John couldn't believe that any of Moriarty's men would care enough about him to lock him away indefinitely. Not without torture being involved—and not just this fuzzy, psychological, sensory-deprivation kind. He was quite sure that Moriarty's people were well-versed in the bloody, painful, disfiguring kinds of torture. But what possible kind of revenge would kidnapping him be?

But, who did that leave? And why? He was no good to anybody. Nobody needed him. Even the surgery would have found a replacement for him easily enough. There were plenty of GPs out there looking for work. Mrs. Hudson would no doubt miss him, and Lestrade would worry. He knew that. But neither of them needed him. Nobody did. Any more.

He leaned his head back against the wall and tried to remember light. He knew he had a life before this room, but it was getting harder to remember it. The idea of fresh air, of having room to walk, to run, seemed like a dream—unreal, just something your subconscious made up one day, but with no more reality than being able to fly. He'd gotten past the point where the dark made his eyes ache. At first he'd imagined glimmers of light as his eyes strained to see anything, anything at all, but they'd given up on that days ago. (Weeks?)

Now, the only light was what he could pull from his memory. He imagined sun filtering through the maple trees from his childhood home. He remembered the glaring light in Afghanistan. He pulled up the cozy light from 221B and hugged it to himself as if it could still warm him. But mostly, he remembered the light that seemed to surround Sherlock. His brilliance, his energy, that spark that illuminated his face when he was enthralled by a deduction. John thought most of his memories of Sherlock were drenched in brightness.

Hard though he found it to concentrate, one thing he had managed to do while here was to build his own mind palace. He understood the concept—to plot a 3-dimensional map of rooms or streets in his mind and stick his memories along the route, lodging them where they could be easily found. He'd never had the focus to build one before, but now? His mind meandered back and forth from a complete daze of internal distractions, but the complete lack of external distractions helped. He found himself sorting through his memories, storing them in vivid detail in his mind palace (which had a distinct resemblance to 221B Baker Street). At least his mind could roam while he was locked away.

But mostly, he slept. He had raged at the blank walls often enough at the beginning, but now … he endured. Or tried to. Really, it wasn't like it was that much emptier here than it had been back at the flat. Without Sherlock, nothing mattered, anyway. As much as he longed for a cup of tea, well, it didn't make a difference, did it? And if his pile of energy bars disappeared and he starved? It wasn't like anybody would notice, would they? Nobody needed John Watson any more. He could dwindle away here in the dark as well as in the flat, anyway. Because really, what difference did it make?

There was nobody to miss him.

Not even him.

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