Author's Note: This is a little story I wrote for fun after watching a Sherlock Holmes movie. It is from the point of view of a young woman named Lily Butler, an actress hired to assist Sherlock and Watson in solving crimes. Please note that Lily does not exist in the real Sherlock Holmes books. She is my own creation. Also, Watson's story of how Sherlock disappeared is taken directly from the story in which it happens. I don't mean to break any copyright laws, and if I do, I apologize. Oh, and if you like this story, let me know, and perhaps I will change it from a one-shot to a full length story. And (this is the last note, I promise!) if you have any other characters you think need love interests, PM me and I might write a one-shot like this for them! I'm thinking my next will be Captain Hook.

~ Misschosaku


"Where is Mr. Holmes?" I asked, fear tightening around my heart as I looked upon Dr. Watson's solemn countenance. "Why is he not with you?"

Watson closed his eyes, as though suppressing a painful memory. "When we left you this morning, Miss Butler," he said, avoiding my eyes as he spoke, "we were headed in the direction of the falls, as you know. As we looked out over them, we heard a shout, and a Swiss lad came running along it with a letter in his hand. It bore the mark of the hotel which we had just left and was addressed to me by the landlord. It appeared that within a very few minutes of our leaving, an English lady had arrived who was in the last stage of consumption. She had wintered at Davos Platz and was journeying now to join her friends at Lucerne, when a sudden hemorrhage had overtaken her. It was thought that she could hardly live a few hours, but it would be a great consolation to her to see an English doctor, and, if I would only return, etc. The good Steiler assured me in a postscript that he would himself look upon my compliance as a very great favour, since the lady absolutely refused to see a Swiss physician, and he could not but feel that he was incurring a great responsibility.

The appeal was one which could not be ignored. It was impossible to refuse the request of a fellow-countrywoman dying in a strange land. Yet I had my scruples about leaving Holmes. It was finally agreed, however, that he should retain the young Swiss messenger with him as guide and companion while I returned to Meiringen. My friend would stay some little time at the fall, he said, and would then walk slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, where I was to rejoin him in the evening. As I turned away I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.

When I was near the bottom of the descent I looked back. It was impossible, from that position, to see the fall, but I could see the curving path which winds over the shoulder of the hills and leads to it. Along this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.

I could see his black figure clearly outlined against the green behind him. I noted him, and the energy with which he walked, but he passed from my mind again as I hurried on upon my errand.

It may have been a little over an hour before I reached Meiringen. Old Steiler was standing at the porch of his hotel.

"Well," said I, as I came hurrying up, I trust that she is no worse?"

A look of surprise passed over his face, and at the first quiver of his eyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast.

"You did not write this?" I said, pulling the letter from my pocket. "There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?"

"Certainly not!" he cried. But it has the hotel mark upon it! Ha, it must have been written by that tall Englishman who came in after you had gone. He said -- "

But I waited for none of the landlord's explanation. In a tingle of fear I was already running down the village street, and making for the path which I had so lately descended. It had taken me an hour to come down. For all my efforts two more had passed before I found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. There was Holmes's Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which I had left him. But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted. My only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.

It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick. He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained on that three-foot path, with sheer wall on one side and sheer drop on the other, until his enemy had overtaken him. The young Swiss had gone too. He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty and had left the two men together. And then what had happened? Who was to tell us what had happened then?

I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with the horror of the thing. Then I began to think of Holmes's own methods and to try to practise them in reading this tragedy. It was, alas, only too easy to do. During our conversation we had not gone to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where we had stood. The blackish soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it. Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning. A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the brambles and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled. I lay upon my face and peered over with the spray spouting up all around me. It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water. I shouted; but only that same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my ears." He stopped, noting the stricken look my face now bore.

I had heard nothing after 'It was the last I was destined to see of him in this world'. I had gone numb. Without knowing what I was doing, I began running wildly in the direction of the hills. "Sherlock!" I cried. Tears had begun falling down my face, and I made no move to stop them. "Sherlock!"

Dimly, I heard footsteps behind me, as though through a curtain of water. Hands found my arms, grabbed me, pulling me back. Watson's anxious voice soothed me, while he attempted to lead me back towards the inn, finally dragging me upstairs to the small room I occupied. Numbly, I followed him, still crying "No!" I kept repeating the word, as though by repeating it I could somehow change the reality, alter the past. "No," I sobbed, collapsing on the floor. "No." I would not believe it. He could not me gone.

I lifted a tearstained face to Watson. "I could have prevented this," I whispered brokenly. "I ought to have insisted on accompanying you this morning. He would still be alive, but for me."

"No, Miss Butler," Watson hastened to assure me. "No, not at all. The fault is mine, and mine alone. Had I not left him alone, had I but listened to my feelings of foreboding, the great detective would be alive still."

I smiled weakly at him, grateful for his kindness. "Go," I said softly. "I will be fine."

With one backwards glance at me, Watson obeyed, shutting the ancient wooden door behind him.

I went through the next days quietly, unfeelingly. I was aware only of the acute pain I carried within my heart, but could unburden myself to no one. At last, at the urgings of the landlady that some air would do me good, I consented to go and read in the front garden.

I sat there, alone under the gray skies, and pretended to read. I was not really reading, of course. I could not. Every line held a painful memory, and I absorbed nothing from the countless pages I so mechanically turned. I closed my eyes. In the still, damp air, a dog barked.

"Quiet, Lance!" I scolded. The old sheepdog subsided, whimpering slightly at the reprimand, and I began flipping pages again, blankly staring at the words that no longer held any meaning for me. More barking split the air.

"Lance!" I snapped, losing my patience. I looked up so as to find him and drag him inside, and my gaze fell upon a lone man in a gray coat and hat making his way up the road. Unreasonably, I resented this unknown man's careless stroll. It seemed to my grieving mind a mockery of my pain.

And then I recognized the hat. I knew of only one man in all of England who persisted in wearing such an odd creation.

I was on my feet at once, the book dropped, forgotten, on the ground, and then I was running. Running as though my very life depended upon it. The man looked up, no doubt hearing the sounds of my mad dash, and our eyes met. It was him, without a doubt. I closed the distance between us in an instant, and then my arms were around him, holding him tightly to me. His arms tightened around me, and I pressed my face to his shoulder, crying tears of pure joy.

He released me after a moment, keeping his hands on my arms, and stepped back to look at me with that cool, assessing gaze I had seen so often. With a hand, he tilted my chin up, catching a tear on his glove.

"Well, my dear," he said, his eyebrow rising in that familiar manner, "can I take it that you do care for me, after all?"

"Care for you?" I sputtered, staring at him. "You idiot, I've never loved anyone so much in my entire life!"

His dark eyes searched mine intently. "That is a very good thing, then," he said softly, without even a trace of his usual barbed mockery, "for I intend to see to it that you never do."

And there, under the cold gray skies of the countryside, Sherlock drew me to him and kissed me.