Sentiment. A Sherlock Fanfic. Standard Disclaimers Apply.
...
There are times when words fail him.
They are very, VERY few and far in between, but they do exist.
He holds the cool, metallic device in his hand, scrolling through each message, until he finds the last one.
The very last.
(Goodbye, Mr Holmes)
His gaze lingers, as the melody of her and what she represents, what she is to him slowly swells, replacing the words that utterly fall short in the telling of it.
He remembers her, kneeling in the dirt, typing the letters, knowing this would be the last.
Her last.
It blurs away and into that evening by the fireplace, his finger resting on the inside of her wrist, noting the rate of her heartbeat at the back of his mind, but wondering at his own (not unpleasant) reaction to her closeness...that led to Mycroft's office. The end of the charade, and his declining of her invitation to 'dinner'.
In truth, some part of him had expected things to play out exactly as they had. Knowing how she felt about him, her decision to try to burn him anyway, was really quite impressive. To choose Ambition over Emotion was rarely an easy thing for most people to do.
In many ways, she was The First.
The first woman who wasn't in contemplation of silly things or make idle conversation. A woman who wasn't so easy to figure out, so boringly simple, someone whose actions were calculated and deliberate. Who gave as good as she got and was able to get the better of him more than twice.
He opens a drawer and puts the phone in, but then he stops, hand hovering over the device as he slowly, carefully...
...reverently picks it back up.
He remembers his idle deduction about John's phone the day they met.
"If she left him, he would have kept the phone due to sentiment, but no. He gave it away. HE left her."
He wonders if it had occurred to John, when he asked to have the phone (her phone) from the Ministry Of Defense file packet.
He turns his thoughts back to what would have been her last moments, and how becomingly her eyes, her smile, her face lit up in hope, as the suggestive personalized text alert announced the identity of her would-be executioner.
The music is all around him now, this melody, this tribute he has made for her, that leaves a bittersweet taste in his tongue and his heart as tries and fails to say her name, because really, her name was superfluous and didn't quite describe who and what she was.
To him.
"The Woman," He finally makes out, quietly.
"THE woman." He corrects, the resonance within him unmistakable, as he smiles a little.
He places the phone back into the drawer, as he does the same to the memories of her in his mind palace, and closes it firmly.
Sentiment was always found in the losing side...and the game wasn't over just yet.
