{A/N: Beware, this is only a drabble, but if you guys have enjoyed it then I'd be more than willing to write a much longer story. This fanfic in particular is set in series two, after episodes one and two (A Scandal in Belgravia and The Hounds of Baskerville). So basically just before The Reichenbach Fall. I recently bought the soundtracks to both seasons of Sherlock, and the song 'The Woman' inspired me to write this. Enjoy!)
The Woman sits in absolute silence, heart fractured, eyes glassy, hands trembling, mind hazy. The room is bleak, her face is grey, and her spirits despondent. She holds a phone in her hand.
Forget fighting to the bitter end. She knows she has not the grit to do so. But The Woman will love until the bitter end, and she can sense its approach. She shudders, willing herself to press those numbers. The numbers that bored themselves deep into her brain as soon as he'd given them to her. Oh, how many times she had dialled those numbers.
The Woman's slender hands pass gracefully over the buttons as she presses them, sure at first, but the last she pushes hesitantly.
Adrenaline pumps through her veins, and dread flows through her body, black and thick and slick, as soon as she hears his deep, sonorous voice resonate through the phone line. For this will inevitably be the last time she hears that sweet voice.
"Hm? What is it? You know I don't like to talk over the phone. Text me if you need me."
"Sherlock, I-"
"Is this important? I'm busy. There's been another sighting of the hound in Baskerville again. Perhaps Moriarty has decided to make another ugly appearance. I know he had something to do with the hound the last time. The clues are so blindingly obvious. Ha! The pieces of this puzzle are finally coming together. I'm travelling there again tomorrow an-
"Sherlock, please." The Woman utters, exasperated.
Sherlock Holmes, the man of genius and tainted intelligence, sounded as he usually did. Contempt, unfeeling, callous, bored. There was no love in his voice, but then again there never was. But every time The Woman called on him, she hoped that maybe, dreamed that maybe, prayed that maybe, this time, it would be different. That maybe he would care. Maybe he could love.
The Woman reminds herself again, as she always does; Sherlock Holmes is a sociopath, psychopath and a virgin, all in one. He doesn't love. He doesn't care. He doesn't feel. He only thinks. He can't do anything else, and even the very existence of the idea that perhaps he can is insanely ludicrous.
The Woman doesn't know that this is the closest thing to love Sherlock Holmes has ever felt.
"He knows," is all she can whisper, but then Sherlock knows too.
"I can protect you. From Moriarty. From anyone. I can keep you safe." The sudden pain in his deep voice is palpable, which bewilders The Woman. "I will keep you safe."
The Woman says nothing.
"At least let me try."
"I love you," she breathes softly.
Sherlock Holmes says nothing, and The Woman knows.
"Goodbye, Sherlock."
"Goodbye, Irene," his voice is cut, hollow. "I love you."
Her voice catches, her breathing slows, her heart stops. The Woman hangs up the phone, devoid of emotion. An icy tear trickles down her pale cheek and her eyes flicker towards the door, body eager to escape. An expression of torment dances across her face.
And then The Woman is gone. Vanishing as quickly and as swiftly as she had appeared. The Woman becomes absent from Sherlock's life as silently as she had entered it. Gone like a divine, soft breeze, or an exquisite snowflake, melted unmercifully into the large mass of snow, and becoming nothing more than a flash of a memory. The mark she left though, was like a roaring fire, spreading rapidly, blazing with light and intense heat.
"Goodbye, Irene Adler," he murmurs into the phone to nobody left listening on the other end.
Sherlock Holmes hangs up the phone. The sociopath left with an empty feeling of something unexplainable. Something The Woman left behind.
{Since this is the first fanfiction I've ever written, please let me know what you think! Also, if you have any prompts I would love to hear them!}