Title taken from Cat Steven's 'Lady D'arbanville'.
Warnings: Major character deaths, blood, suicide. No spoilers for Series 2. 221B drabble style.
Wake You Tomorrow.
John sees Mrs Hudson die.
It's completely by accident, actually. The whole thing is just one big, horrific accident.
That doesn't make it any better.
She's walking down the stairs with a bundle of washing and talking nonstop, as she always does. John's leaning in the doorway, talking back when he can get a word in edgeways and thinking about how Sherlock should be back within an hour.
It's a tiny inequality in the surface she's standing on, a combination of ill-fitting shoes and terrible, terrible luck, and then gravity does the rest. For him there's no slow motion, no moment where he leans forwards to try and reach her in time, nothing.
One moment she's there and the next she isn't.
It's absurdly fast, and he calls down anxiously, worried she will have put her hip out, but not reaching that stage where his heart rises in his throat much faster than it should and tumbles him into panic.
He's expecting minor cuts and bruises, but when she doesn't answer he hurries down the stairs. They don't betray him, they only tripped her, only her, and it's like a joke laughing at him.
He thinks it would be something much less than this; something he, a doctor, could reverse. Nothing could have prepared him for a broken neck and back.
Sherlock sees John die.
They're laughing, giggling, only not at a crime scene. Together. On the street, together, with no case. He's not unhappy about that – nowadays he can get by without them, so long as John's there.
The fact he isn't working lulls him into a false sense of security. He thinks it's safe in daylight, with the rest of the world so far away; just like a child.
John stops laughing, but Sherlock thinks nothing of it – they'd been reaching a natural stop anyway. He's still standing, slightly hunched with laughter, and Sherlock stands facing him, the grin still on his face.
Suddenly he spots something on John's lip, a fleck of blood.
"You've cut your lip," he says, leaning forwards to wipe it away. John leans forwards too, at first the right amount, and then further until he topples past and away from Sherlock's outstretched hands and crumples onto the street like a dropped rag.
Part of his brain has time to wonder just how a sniper managed the shot before his whole mind shuts down in a scream of disbelief and pain that has him falling to his knees. People are shouting, but he's not, not registering the red that's spattered in a fine mist across his shirt and is still falling from John's back like blossoms.
Mycroft sees Sherlock die.
He's been seeing it for months, screaming towards him like a train he's ignored because he can't quite bear to watch. After John it had always been inevitable.
He tries, of course. He sets up watch, supports his brother, does everything possible, but it isn't enough.
The worst thing is that he had never expected it to be.
Suicide has been impossible for his brother, at least in a way; Mycroft's been too close, has too many people on the job, including one in the flat – the rows and screaming matches still echo in his head. So Sherlock goes, as always, to extreme lengths. He hacks everything, communications, cameras; even landlines fail.
It has taken him months of work just to be able to kill himself.
The CCTV Mycroft's watching clicks back on, the person in the flat given his delayed instructions, just as Sherlock jumps. From the roof, no less. He falls lightly, a blurred image that Mycroft can't bring himself to look away from that shatters like glass on the pavement. After it's over he buries his face in his hands and cries. The realisation hits him that soon he will be waiting in a hospital, just as he always had when Sherlock did stupid things.
Only this time he'll waiting to collect a body.
Anthea sees Mycroft die.
She's always known she might – they have dangerous jobs, after all – but after Sherlock the man throws himself into his work so hard she's convinced it's going to kill him one day. Some people lose heart when someone dies, and some carry on. Mycroft somehow manages to do both.
Her name actually is Anthea – call that time with the doctor a double bluff – and Mycroft shouts it this day.
"Anthea! I need those files."
He doesn't usually speak so harshly, but she ignores it, hurrying to bring the required material. A lot is at stake, as always, and everyone's rushed.
"Here you are, sir," she says. He nods and takes them, waving a hand to dismiss her, but this time she doesn't go right away. He looks…strange. There's a fine sheen of bright sweat across his brow and upper lip, and every now and then his arm twitches and he winces irritably, almost subconsciously.
"Are you alright, sir?" she says, holding back.
"Leave me alone." His voice his high and breathy, he's obviously in discomfort, so she waits. He sighs. "I'm just so tired…"
It begins to dawn on her in the form of panic just as he jerks and falls over the desk, choking; cardiac arrest. Such a standard case it's like it's from a book.
Lestrade sees Anthea die.
He doesn't know her name at the time; he's called to the scene of a shooting that looks like assassination and he doesn't have time for seemingly unimportant details. His car, by chance, is the first to get there, and the officers with him start to disperse the crowd.
Her hair's spread over the pavement, blood dripping through her mouth and her eyes staring straight upwards. He shudders, moves forwards reluctantly.
She looks young – no more than thirty-five – and he thinks that, perhaps, he's getting too old for this. He misses Sherlock and John; everything seems harder without them. Like this, for instance – he doesn't hold out much hope of ever catching the culprit. There will be no evidence anyone he knows will be able to pick up.
He bends down to take a closer look at the body, and as he leans forwards he sees her face twitch. The horror steels over him that she's still alive, still breathing with three gaping holes in her chest.
He takes a deep breath to call for an ambulance, to call for a doctor, anyone who can help her, but already it's too late, and she's gone.
He won't find out until later just how important she was; government. For now she's just another frightened person strewn with bullets.
Sally sees Lestrade die.
The last years have been hard on him, and she's glad he's retiring, finally. Too many deaths, too many torn people. She's not yet feeling it herself, apart from around the edges of her mind when she can't sleep at night.
She laughs and talks with the rest of them; half of Scotland Yard has turned out to wish him goodbye, and even if it's missing the odd face she still enjoys herself. They drink too much, eat nibbles and reminisce about times of hilarity, times probably embellished beyond repair, but that pretty much goes with the criteria of 'anecdote'.
Slowly everyone trickles away, twos and threes, until it's just her, Anderson and four young lads still drinking in the corner. Anderson hugs Lestrade and wishes him luck, then goes to help pack everything up. Lestrade says he wants to go now, and she follows him outside.
"I guess this is goodbye."
He smiles – he looks so much older and younger than she remembers, the two perspectives flitting in her mind – and claps her on the back.
He checks the traffic before crossing the road; he always does, and he isn't drunk. She waves at him from the pavement.
No-one could know a car would run a red light at that moment and leave them both broken.
Molly sees Sally die.
They meet at John's funeral and never really lose contact. It turns out they have a couple of mutual colleagues, and the friendship doesn't end, even when those groups grow apart. For over ten years they get closer, more open with each other.
Molly once rings Sally in the middle of the night because she's been burgled – it's like calling the police and a friend at the same time – and to be fair, the sergeant comes as soon as she can.
Molly's there when Sally had gets married, and when her parents die and her husband divorces her. Sally does the same, goes to Molly's baby shower, her subsequent wedding – they do things in the wrong order – and even helps pick out a good school for her son.
Sally's gone through a lot, but Molly gets used to thinking she can survive pretty much anything. That's why the diagnosis comes as such a shock.
There'd been headaches, random spells of dizziness, nothing anyone would have suspected. Then a chance test shows up something and then the whole world spirals downwards, leaving her feeling two steps behind everyone else.
It's so fast – a month, two, and then she's sitting by Sally's bedside, holding her hand, and waiting for death. When it comes all she can feel is blank.
Anderson sees Molly die.
He knows she was a good friend of Sally's; they track him down when she gets ill. She has something fast moving and fatal apparently, only hours left, but she's surprisingly perky. They get him to contact her son, but he's in America and won't get back in time. She talks to him on the phone for a little, but eventually has to hang up.
It seems the decent thing to do; sit and talk for a few hours. He has too much time on his hands anyway, and it's hard moving around with his dodgy knee nowadays.
Molly is bright, he finds; he wishes Sally had introduced them. She doesn't have many regrets either, less than he will have when he goes.
She trails off around the topic of flowers, a topic he wasn't entirely sure how they'd got onto. A nurse comes in and asks him if he wants to leave but, he's acting on the wishes of her son so they let him stay.
She goes without him even realising, and then he sits back and lets the world flow around him, thinking that maybe he will be the only one to die alone. It seems likely – but he vows that from now on, when it comes to living, he will do his best.
Written in my post-Reichenbach angst haze. I'm sorry.
Reviews welcome, thanks for reading.