I've contemplated for a while whether to post this because it isn't a normal silent witness one-shot. May I warn you it is on the realms of 'different' and is also very sad.
Enjoy :)
You had been sitting there for what seemed to be hours. Seconds hurling into minutes and hours coming and going as rapidly as the sun's rise in South Africa. Because, after all, that was your home. Full of happy, terrible and tragic souvenirs of grief.
Your eyes flew open as if you were reborn. A new person with a different label given each time you awake to a new day. You realise for the first time that the floor is cold. A harsh, bitter temperature tearing through your aching limbs threatening to freeze your very soul.
Although, medically that was not strictly true. Let's have a brief analysis. Woman in her late 30s, skin slightly paler than what would be considered entirely healthy, cold to touch: we may surmise that this lady, petite and blonde (this is reaching the outer realms of what is considered relevant in these terms), is suffering from mild hypothermia. The referral to a psychologist will be a swift booking as it is very likely that this woman has some form of depression and to top it all, a lost, troubled childhood is responsible too.
Feeling satisfied with your more than thorough self-diagnosis, you affirm to yourself that as a doctor there is no medicine to instantaneously cure you. Not unless it involves a certain tall, dark, handsome stranger (well, he will be a stranger by now). Snapping abruptly out of your trance of webbed thought, you are aware that you are still cold. No matter what you do, there will always be the same intense chill passing through your empty vessel of a body. A locked door with the added cruelty of no obvious key to your emotions.
That is until someone else decides to stir the dark waters of your conscious, unlocking deep feelings that have not surfaced since the last time you saw his face: a sad, pitiful goodbye ripping away your ability to indulge the world in your laugh or prove your unwavering passion for justice in cases which are deserving of your wisdom.
The sight that breaks your reverie is your soul mate, true love and Friday night movie partner. Harry. There, you almost managed to say his name. He bends down and whispers your name, his voice caressing your senses and the sight of him makes this climactic moment all the more overwhelming. However amongst his adoration for you, gazing into his eyes you realise you cannot see what colour they are. Blue, brown, perhaps a dark misty black? No. Everything is too hazy to differentiate features let alone colours. His warm smile fades, the corners of his mouth crinkling into a slight frown. You try to move, desperate for him to speak and say anything to guarantee this is real.
But Harry fades into a mere vision, barely a hologram of his former self. You try to blink and clear your mind but it is rushing at a hundred miles per hour, knocking out any coherent thought process. Looking down at the floor, you finally understand why you are cold. The harsh, marble tiles have been your bed for the night, housing your fading body, so you are clinging on to life with your mere fingertips.
Talking of fingers, you glance at your hands and see them soaked in blood. Rivers of scarlet and shreds of once white skin bleached red are all that remain. And you finally understood. Harry was a vision, a final hallucination before death. You had suffered emotional pain 'ante mortem' although the pathologist doing your autopsy would probably not be able to tell.
You grow delirious and tired as random song lyrics swim in the crowded sea of your mind.
"I know I'm no angel, but I'm alive." You almost laugh at the irony of a particular Dido song.
Sinking further into what is now a coma, all processes of thought are eliminated; all sense of feeling gone. And you drift away, not quite peacefully, into the cold, dark shadows.
The next morning, an anxious Leo will find you. Still, frozen like ice. A postcard from Harry lying discarded on the floor next to you. He is loving New York. And the name of your one and only love will be duly noted, written in your blood. Like a teenager's wistful doodle in the back of an exercise book - the names of Harry Cunningham and Nikki Alexander will be forever etched in the ground.
I felt very conscious of posting a fic on a sensitive topic but this came from nowhere and I really want to know what everyone thinks. Also, I know this is not the usual happy ending but reviews are always loved :)