He was beautiful.

With the way he smiled, and the way he painted sunshine into the dark bleak emptiness Sherlock held in his stomach.

He was beautiful, three times over, three times under oppression and steel toe police boots and German Shepherds biting and clawing and scratching at that disturbance inside him, the unnaturalness inside his chest.

He was beautiful, and the Christians and the politicians and the townspeople all knew it; they stole his paintings and vandalized his words and threw away his heart without notifying his body, and John was still so beautiful.

And when the time came; when he needed to lay to rest in the comfort of the only arms gentle enough to hold him - he was torn away from his beauty and in his wake was left the absence of shadow and light. Just a void.

He was beautiful. Sherlock remembered this very clearly. Like - like color. He remembered when the world was vibrant, and lucid, and light shone through the darkness. He swore that he did.

But then again, Sherlock remembered everything.

Maybe that's what made it worse.