Author's Note: Here's the Prologue of my newest story. This is much shorter than the actual chapters will be, and I plan to update often. Reviews are always appreciated :)
Prologue: The Man at the Grave
It had been a long time since that particular grave had gotten any visitors. After the first month or so since the death, no one had stopped by to pay their respects to the dearly departed, as it was with most graves in the world. Those who are left behind simply move on, trying not to think about their departed friend, family member, or lover. So it was strange to see that this particular grave, which had had exceptionally poor attendance, had a visitor.
He stood, stoic in his grief, at the foot of the grave. His head was bent, out of a reverent respect for his departed friend. In his hands, he held a simple bouquet of white carnations, lilacs, and forget-me-nots. His hands, rough and calloused, shook as he set the flowers at the headstone, right over the place where the departed's head would be resting. Silent tears slipped down his cheeks, betraying his mask of composed sorrow. He removed the dead flowers left over from the funeral five months previous, sweeping them away so they could decompose into the earth. With that, he had no more busy work to keep himself distracted from what he had set out to do. He rested his right hand on the headstone and kissed the stone slab, about to whisper farewell one last time.
His resolve failed him in that moment, and he finally crumbled to the earth, his tears no longer silent. He was a man utterly broken by his grief, unable to keep up the facade of healing and recovery that he had perfected in the months since his very best friend had taken his own life. He still saw him falling every night when he closed his eyes. The man falling through the air in front of him and the sounds of his body shattering as it hit the pavement still haunted his sleep. The dark circles under his eyes made that all too obvious to those who knew him. He hadn't eaten much recently. He'd lost weight, anyone who knew him before the grief would have noticed that. His cheeks were gaunt to the point where his cheekbones were reminiscent of the sharp ones belonging to his deceased friend. He had reverted back to his painful psychosomatic limp from the days after he returned from the war, to the alarm of his therapist and friends.
They had been concerned about him, his friends, but he'd gotten rather good at hiding the sadness. If he appeared sad, they swarmed about him like ants around a scrap of food and suffocated him with their worrying and pitying. He hated being pitied. It made him feel weak. The soldier in him hated feeling weak.
Eventually, the man's crying quieted. He lifted his head, wiping away the remaining tears. He pushed himself up from the ground, brushing the dirt off his trousers to give himself time to completely stop his tears. Finally, he straightened up, snapped off a military salute, and turned to limp away. But he stopped after about two feet, his shoulders sinking again. He hadn't finished his task. Sure, he didn't want to do it, really. But his therapist was right, this wasn't healthy. The broken man turned back to the grave.
The man's words were soft and sad, almost inaudible. They had a finality to them, as if he'd never say them again.
"Goodbye Sherlock"
As he turned away and set out on his way out of the cemetery, he didn't notice the man in the distance. The man who had seen everything that had just happened, intending to visit the grave himself until he noticed that the grave already had a visitor arriving. He had thought that he would just wait out the other man, considering that their last few interactions hadn't gone very well. However, what he had seen had startled him. He didn't expect the show of grief that he saw, the pure depression that radiated from the gravesite. The silent observer filed the interaction away in his brain, knowing that what he had feared was beginning to become a reality.
John Watson was a man broken, perhaps beyond repair.