The table
The table is set for two.
It's dark outside and the only light shining upon the plates filled with his favourite food comes from a single candle. It is already half burnt down, wax dropping onto the tablecloth. The dried dots become a white surface that expands with every inch the candle is losing. With every hour she sits at the table.
It's fancy and yet it isn't. This table doesn't belong in an expensive restaurant or the like, it is simply the table at her home that they always eat on, her father, Conan and she herself. And yet, she has given it her utmost to make arrangement look good, sophisticated. To make it so perfect that he wouldn't have even the slightest chance to complain about anything.
There is meat lying on one of the plates. She likes meat. He would always tease her about it, asking if she has gotten fatter again. She starts cutting her portion up in eatable sizes until all she sees on the plate is a puzzle of small triangles and squares of meat and vegetables. Puzzles. Mysteries. He loved mysteries, he still loves them. Sometimes she asks herself if he loves his adored mysteries more than her. He told her he loved her, back in London. He never told her how much.
She doesn't attempt to start a conversation and the other end of the table also maintains the silence that is filling the room. She doesn't attempt to smile either. It would be a lie and he hates lies, even though he wouldn't be able to figure out hers. She is also a mystery to him, like a new species of humankind he has yet to observe, like one of the cases he hangs onto like his lifeline. It's often that she asks herself if that is why he fell in love with her in the first place. His very own mystery.
And yet, she knows that no answer in the world would change her feelings about him. The mix of love, sorrow, missing and tears she has come to hate and accept. She knows she would do anything for him if he were to ask her. And even if not. She would fight for him. She would die for him. And she would kill for him. For him, she would willingly become one of the dark monsters in human guise that he so despises.
The only sounds are the table creaking, teeth chewing food that she has worked so hard on for hours and the occasional sips of red wine. It's an expensive one this time, she wanted to impress him. The colour reminds her of blood and she almost laughs outright. His cases, her father's cases, Conan's cases, they all seemed to have taken such a great effect on her that they are the first thing she will think of, even in a situation like this. They have become normalcy to her and that is yet another thing she hates and can't help but accept.
The food slowly diminishes, the candle loses its life with a last drop of wax on the ugly picture it has created. Somewhere far away, the clock strikes two in the morning and she wants to cry.
The table is set for two.
And yet, today too, he didn't come.