A/N: One of those 'five times something happened' fics, inspired by the many sunrises I've witnessed but never really taken notice of. Review are always nice!
It was the first time he'd stayed up all night. He didn't feel like sleeping. Not now. Not ever again. Why did he have the right to sleep and wake up when his father couldn't? His father could never wake up again. Never walk through the grand front doors that were still just a few feet taller than him, drop his briefcase by the small table in the entrance hall and kneel down to sweep Sherlock into his arms as he ran at him full speed and crashed into his chest, rambling on about today's finding and how his latest experiments have revealed that girls are in fact not made of sugar and spice and everything nice.
All because of one stupid drunk driver. One stupid little man who decided he was fit to drive after drinking the number of units you should consume in a week in the space of three hours. And the worst part is that he survived and Sherlock's father didn't. The intoxicated bastard walked away with just a few cracked ribs and a mild concussion. Sherlock's father suffered a mind shattering blow to the head as he was flung from his moving vehicle and met the pavement with an almighty thud. At least that was the image that played through Sherlock's mind over and over. The police officer said he was killed instantly but he didn't believe that. How could anyone know? How could they possibly know whether the light left his eyes instantly or whether he lay there for a few agonizing minutes that felt like an eternity, hoping for somebody to help him. Wishing that he was at home. Regretting that he decided to go to that damned conference in Vienna and miss Sherlock as Bottom in the school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And Sherlock has been a damn good Bottom too - in a review of the play, someone had written that 'Sherlock Holmes' Bottom would be well remembered,' which had made Mycroft laugh hysterically but Sherlock thought it was a rather nice thing to have said about himself. Anyway it was impossible to know just how long it took his father to die. Which may have been a blessing in disguise as Sherlock didn't really want to know.
Though his bedroom was on the opposite side of the house to the master bedroom, the silent empty corridors carried the hushed, heaving sobs of his mother underneath his door and filled the room with her grief. Sherlock couldn't deal with his own grief enough to sleep, let alone the overwhelming sadness emanating from his mother and the stony, stoic silence Mycroft had lapsed into ever since the police car pulled up to the front gates late last night. So he was awake at 4:30 in the morning, eyes red and swollen from being rubbed at to stop the tears from falling. He only realised what the time could be when he first noticed the end of his bed had a pale golden tint to it. He looked out of the window to see the first rays of sunlight creeping out from the horizon and was slightly shocked. The world was still turning. It hadn't stopped. It should have – the world had lost a loving husband, a caring father and in Sherlock's eyes, the greatest man. But a new dawn had risen and with it a new day had begun. Like what his father used to say, Time and tide waits for no man, Sherlock. Remember that. Sherlock finally closed his eyes, comforted by the fact that it wasn't the end of the world, and just like the Earth, he can keep on turning and travelling along his path around the Sun or whatever it was we went around. Not like it made a difference.