Short drabble I cooked up in about fifteen, twenty minutes tops, based on the movie The Young Sherlock Holmes. Seriously, I'm shocked there were no fics for this incredible film. You guys don't know what you're missing!
Loneliness.
It was the last thing in the world he wanted, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he deserved it. He remembered the conversation like it was yesterday, even if it felt like a lifetime ago.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
And he'd replied in a voice almost too soft for anyone but himself to hear, "I don't want to be alone."
Ah, but he deserved every agonizing second of this feeling; it was like a cold fog that slowly crept through the layers of his coat and his jacket right into his bones.
He could smell loneliness in his small room in the rented building, like a whiff of decay when he wasn't paying attention. And when he did notice it, his heart ached.
He could hear it in the way the rain splattered against the window panes on those gray days, and in the way everything he played on the violin somehow ended up mournful and empty.
Everything around him, no matter the brightest day, had faded into shades of gray. His mind was quick to keep up; how very appropriate for the boy who no one loved at all to be trapped in a world of his own making, where colors were nonexistent and the people he cared about were just shadows behind glass.
He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, hunching his shoulders against the bitter winter wind that had kicked up.
Strange how he could be surrounded by a world of people and still be so alone.