The rain poured down, drenching the world in its tears. John found it ironic. It was a lovely way to say goodbye, he supposed. As he glared out the gloomy window of 221B, he wondered if the world knew. Was the world aware of its inevitable end? Is that why it was storming so badly outside, with the great roars of thunder and shrieks of lightening? Maybe the world was fighting. It wouldn't give up until the last seconds were over. Or maybe it was mourning. The rain was the tears it would cry over the loss of its life.
The clock read 12:56. Four more minutes.
This is the end
Hold your breath,
and count to ten.
Feel the earth move
and then,
Feel my heart burst to flame.
John looked up, over at the man that stood not two feet away from him. Tears stung his eyes as they moved up from the man's tight purple dress shirt, to his painstakingly-carved cheekbones, to his slightly unkempt black curls, to his brooding, multicolored eyes.
John didn't say anything. He merely stared, taking it all in. More than just taking it in. Drinking it in. Remembering every last detail exactly as it was. Storing it all away to comfort him in the end.
Everything seemed so real and John Watson wondered if in just four minutes it could really be all over?
The red numbers on the clock shifted. 12:57. Three minutes then.
In just three minutes could all this fade away? The colors and the smells and the sounds and the feelings?
John thought about all his human emotions. The thrill John felt when he was on a case. The heart-choking loneliness he had felt before he had met Sherlock. The soul-enlarging warmness and goodness he felt when they were together. The chills when their skin touched and the leap of his heart when they were in the same room and the chills that ran up his arms when he heard that baritone voice . . . . And finally, the way the pit of his stomach had opened up and everything had fallen out of it when he learned that Moriarty had found a way to make the world end.
This was it then. It was going to stop. Everything was going to stop. Living, breathing, moving—it would just cease. Just like that. Like it was nothing more than blowing out a candle or switching off a light. The beauty of the world, the pain of life. Everything was about to end. Forever.
The tears began to fall down John's cheeks and as if he could hear them land on the smooth skin of John's face, the other man turned around to face his flatmate.
His flatmate, his blogger, his companion, his best friend. John Watson.
Even Sherlock was breaking inside. Three minutes left. He had spent so long hating this world, so long being repulsed by life and nature and humans and their wants, and longing for the day it would all end. But now that that day had come, he wasn't ready. He was breaking inside. Every ounce of his being begged for the opportunity to start over. If he could just be given the chance, not only would he learn to love this world called Earth, he would also learn how to love the people within it. Or perhaps I should say, he would learn to let himself love the people in it, for he already knew how to love. In fact, there was someone in this world he loved. The only person he could truly say he had fallen in love with.
12:58.
Two minutes.
He stared into John's eyes, letting the green break his heart. John's eyes reminded him of the canopy of trees that grew above and reached into the heavens. John's eyes made him think of English countryside or the stems supporting frail, precious flowers. Maybe John's eyes were the stem that supported Sherlock's fragile soul. Sometimes it seemed that John was the only one holding him together… Most of all though, John's eyes made Sherlock think about how deeply he cared for him.
And how much he was going to miss him.
Tears formed in Sherlock's soul and slowly ran up to his eyes where they spilled over his high cheekbones. Could this all really just….end? Would it really just all be over? What would happen to him? What would happen to John? Would they just stop living? Would all this feeling and caring and being stop and become nothing? Had all this—had living—been an illusion?
One more change of the clock. The last time the clock would ever change. 12:59.
Sixty seconds. Sixty precious, timeless, seconds before his questions would be answered.
Sherlock moved closer to John. How much he should have told him. How much he should have done. How much they should have done, together. And they could have, if only Sherlock had confessed to John sooner how much he cared for him.
The last few seconds were ticking out. They could feel it. Something changed in the air around them. John remembered the gaping feeling he had experienced when he first found out, and that's what this felt like. It felt like the belly of the Earth had opened up, revealing all its secrets, and pulling everything in with it, trapping it there forever. John and Sherlock could both feel their spirits being pulled into the belly of the Earth to be sealed away for eternity.
Simultaneously, they reached out to each other. They needed this. They needed to touch each other, to silently express how they felt. One last time. Before it all ended.
Sherlock's long fingers grasped John's. Their eyes bored in to each other, screaming out silent words, before John rushed forward suddenly.
He pulled Sherlock into him, pressing their bodies together, wrapping his arms firmly around the world's only consulting detective. The world's first consulting detective….and the last.
"Sherlock," he said raspilly.
"John," Sherlock replied, pulling John closer, holding him tighter, trying to ensure that even Death wouldn't take John away from him.
"John, there's something I should tell you". Sherlock was beginning to panic. The world was ending. He could feel it. He could feel his spirit being pulled away already. He had had so many opportunities to tell John that he had loved him. But he had been a coward. And now it was too late. Time was running out.
"John," this was it. He would say it now. "John I'm in—"
But it was too late.
The purple clouds outside the window, the armchairs in the flat, John safe in his arms, it all faded away. Everything ended.
It just stopped.
It ended.
And all that remained was darkness.
But in that time of darkness, when people stopped breathing, and the earth stopped moving, and thoughts stopped thinking, one thing continued: the world scrambled to find one last thing to cling on to. It needed to be the one last thing the world would be remembered by. The one thing that expressed both the beauty and pain of being alive, and everything it meant to be human.
The world ripped through millenniums of memories, but nothing was worth keeping.
Until finally, the world found Sherlock and John hugging.
Their love for each other poured out of their souls and enveloped them, creating a little safe haven that protected them as destruction and chaos took over the world and ended it.
That was the last image the world took with it as it ended.
The world decided that love—true, pure love that didn't even need to be confessed in order to be felt—was the one thing that could sum up the beauty of all that had been.
And with that, the world gave in, peacefully coming to terms with its end. The world slowly went down into sleep, dreaming of pure love and remembering nothing else but that precious concept.
The End.