WARNING: Major character death.
Sherlock walks slowly into the flat, pausing when he reaches the doorframe. I look up from my paper. His lips are set in a slight frown, brows furrowed, looking quite uncomfortable.
"Everything alright?" I venture to ask. He turns his head slightly to acknowledge me, opening his mouth as if to say something, but just as the words are on the tip of his tongue, he closes it again.
"Sherlock?" My voice is wary, worried. Sherlock blinks, and in a split second, he'd flown off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I rise to my feet, prepared to follow him, wanting to ask him what the bloody hell is wrong.
But he seemed like he wanted his privacy, and so I settle back down in my chair, reopening the newspaper. Still, though, I couldn't shake an uneasy feeling that had settled over me.
That was day one.
Three days had passed until I saw my flatmate again. He'd been shut up in his bedroom, not leaving to get food or water. I'd tried to tempt him out, buying his favorite sweets and bringing home blood samples from the practice. Nothing worked. The only thing that assured me that he was, in fact, still alive, was the occasional, haunting tune of the violin.
The notes were played with such a deep passion; I could almost hear his thoughts in them. Every crescendo and diminuendo, every change in tempo and every pause; It was almost like a diary of his deepest, most personal secrets. However, that diary was written in a language I could not understand.
When Sherlock finally decided to show his face, I shocked at his new demeanor.
In the last seventy-two hours, his cheeks had sunken in. His eyes were bloodshot with dark circles beneath. His naturally pale skin was, if possible, paler than ever before.
Something was wrong.
I set my teacup aside and approached him, studying him carefully. He seemed to shrink under my steady gaze.
"Sherlock," I said, as calmly as I possibly could manage. "You need to tell me what is going on."
"No," he whispered in a cracked, hoarse voice.
I ignored him. "Sit," I ordered. "I'm going to put the kettle on, and then you're going to tell me everything."
He glowered at me weakly, but eventually obeyed my command and perched in his chair.
As quickly as I could, I set about making tea. While the kettle boiled, I filled a plate with various biscuits and snacks, hoping that he would take an interest in at least one of them. I pulled his favorite mug from the cupboard and extracted his favorite tea bag from the tin on the counter.
I poured the steaming water over the bag, watching as the first blush of dark color began to spread from the source before thickening and filling the entire cup. Stacking everything on a tray, I returned to where I'd left Sherlock.
He hadn't moved from his position, thankfully. I set the tray on the table before him and watched as he selected a fruit tart and nibbled on the edges. Well, at least he was eating.
"Sherlock," I began, noticing the flinch he gave as I said his name. "Tell me what's wrong."
He hesitated, which was unusual for him. Usually, the detective always had a smart, witty response to anything directed at him. He slowly but steadily crushed the edges of the tart between his calloused fingers, watching the crumbs spill down to the floor.
"John, do you know what life is comparable to?"
I turned the corners of my lips down. "Um, a box of chocolates?"
"No." He half smiled. "A birthday candle."
I waited for him to continue.
"We all start out as flickering flames at the beginning of our lives," he explained. "As the wax melts and pools around the base, we start to show who we really are. For most of us, the wax continues to melt until, alas, only the burnt wick remains. That is when we die."
I nodded, still unsure why he was telling me this.
"But not every candle reaches this point. Sometimes, an accidental, or perhaps purposeful, gust of wind blows the flame out. Occasionally, it can be re-lit."
And that was the fourth day.
On the fifth day, Sherlock shoveled nearly every morsel of food in our flat into his mouth. Not all at once, of course, but throughout the day. It was the most I'd ever seen him eat. I warned him several times that if he continued to do that, he'd eat himself sick, but he never listened to me. Of course he didn't. He never did.
Amongst piles of discarded food packaging and wrappers, he fell asleep in his chair. He'd been brooding there all day, only standing to get more food in his never ending buffet.
He looked so soft and innocent and small in that chair of his; I could not bring myself to wake him up and send him to his bed. I grabbed a blanket from the closet and settled in the chair before him, my chair, and fell asleep as well.
When the sun had risen on the morning of the sixth day, I was awoken by terrible retching sounds coming from the bathroom. I tore the blankets from where they'd tangled near my feet and stumbled in a sleepy daze towards the source of the noise.
Sherlock was curled on the tile floor, clutching his stomach in his hands, eyes screwed shut. I knelt beside him, tenderly brushing the sweaty curls away from his sticky forehead. He tried to shoo me off his a half-hearted wave of his hand, but I remained by his side, only leaving to refill a glass of water for him.
We remained like that until the sun went down. Then, without a word, he escaped to his bedroom.
On the seventh day, he emerged again, looking worse than ever. His health had once again deteriorated overnight. His face was an ashen gray, covered in a thin sheet of sweat. He was wrapped in a dressing gown and pajamas, feet bare.
He flopped down on the couch, blatantly ignoring my questions. At long last, I finally cried in exasperation, "This is it, Sherlock! I'm going to get the shopping. When I come back, you will go to the doctors and you won't complain."
He nodded, obviously not hearing a word I said. As I turned to leave, he suddenly flew to his feet.
"Wait, John," he said, lurching over to me on unsteady feet.
Without warning, he lightly pressed his lips my forehead.
I was shocked. Here was a man who had practically sworn off all romantic attachments, kissing his best friend. I blamed it on the fever, fleeing down the seventeen steps and out the front door.
I took my time in the shop, carefully selecting everything needed to replace what Sherlock had eaten in our flat. At the end, the total rang up to nearly five-hundred pounds. I sighed, but paid for it anyways. Of course I did.
I walked the longest route possible upon returning to 221B. I wasn't sure what to say to Sherlock anymore.
Unfortunately, all routes end at Baker Street for me. It is my home. Grudgingly, I unlocked the front door and trudged back up the steps.
The sight that greeted me would forever haunt my nightmares.
Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, was lying motionless in a puddle of vomit on the carpet.
My fingers went numb. I vaguely registered the shopping bags slipping from my hands and breaking open on contact with the floor. Cans and boxes and cartons of milk broke and splattered and rolled away. But I didn't care about that.
Because nothing, nothing, was more important to me than getting to Sherlock in that moment.
I dropped to my knees, not noticing that I was crouching in the pool of sick. My expertly trained hands fluttered to his pulse points, pleading with God that his heart would still be beating steadily.
Nothing.
"Damn, Sherlock," I growled, throwing his limp hand away from me. Then, as quickly as I could, I dialed 999 and put the phone on speaker.
"999, what is your emergency?" the cool voice said from the other side.
"I came home from the grocery store," I explained, trying to my voice from trembling. "I found my flatmate on the ground in a puddle of vomit. He doesn't have a pulse."
"Do you know CPR?" she asked calmly. How could she be calm when Sherlock Holmes wasn't breathing?
"Yes, I'm a doctor," I told her. "The address is 221B, Baker Street; please hurry."
"We'll be over right away." There was a click from the other end.
I rolled Sherlock over so he was lying on his back and fashioned my hands in the correct position to administer CPR.
I could feel tears build up and spill over, blurring my vision as I tried as hard as I could to bring life back into my best friend. Even though my arms grew tired, I didn't stop for a second. I couldn't stop. I couldn't.
As promised, help did arrive in the form of an ambulance. I somewhat remember being pulled away from my lifeless friend by two EMTs. My senses were dull. They loaded Sherlock into the back of the vehicle and were gone.
Two hours later, a sleek, black car arrived to collect me and take me to the hospital. Mycroft.
His assistant whose name I didn't care to remember was as silent as ever, but I hardly cared. I didn't want to talk either. What was the point of talking without Sherlock there to correct everything I said?
Everything was a blur. It seemed to have taken only seconds to reach St. Bart's. I was escorted into the building by someone. That someone could even have been Mycroft himself. It wasn't important.
My entire form was shivering, despite the warm, muggy weather. I sat down in an uncomfortable, plastic chair in the waiting room. A hot, Styrofoam cup of tea was shoved into my hands. It steadily went cold as I ignored its presence.
A doctor soon came out to inform me of the situation. He stood straight and tall, face contorted in a fake expression of pain, but I could see right through his act. He didn't care. They never did.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Watson," he said, voice low and soft. "We couldn't save your friend."
And that was when my world crashed down around me.
The funeral was quiet and private. Only Sherlock's few surviving relatives and a small group of close friends were invited. Lestrade was there, as well as Molly and Mrs. Hudson. Even Sally and Anderson had wormed their way into the building to say their goodbyes. Mr. Angelo, Stamford, Jacob Sowersby, Sarah, and DI Dimmock eventually showed up as well.
Sherlock's mother gave me a warm, kind hug when she saw me. She had me sit next to her and held my hand as the funeral progressed. It was short. Afterwards, the skinny coffin was carried out by several men in black suits.
There was no eulogy. Too sentimental.
Later, everything was explained to me. That first night when Sherlock came home, he'd been attacked in an alley. He'd easily taken out his assaulters, but not before they could administer to him through a syringe a slow acting poison.
This poison was something unheard of. After entering the bloodstream, it would stew for days, gradually sucking life out of the person until they eventually died nearly a week later. There was no cure, as it was a poison only recently discovered. Sherlock was the first documented case.
Those three days he spent playing the violin in his room was the short time when he worked his way to finding his own cure. Obviously, nothing worked.
I never even had the chance to say goodbye.
Sherlock really was dead, and he wasn't coming back. Not this time. Not anytime.
My best friend's flame had been extinguished.
It couldn't be re-lit.
"See, I have not, I have not grown cold.
I have stole from the men who have stole from those.
With their arms so thin and their skin so old,
But you are young, you are young, you are young.
Names get carved in the red-oak tree,
Of the ones who stay and the ones who leave.
I will wait for you there with these cindered bones,
So follow me, follow me down."
-James Vincent McMorrow, "Follow you down to the red-oak tree"