A/N: I really, really struggled with the title for this. I have no idea why, but nothing seemed to work without giving away the story. Heck, my last title wasn't exactly special, either. Ug, not a good start. Hopefully the story itself won't prove so disappointing.
Guest: Thank you very much for that review on "Flatmates to Friends"! If you're still reading, I wanted to let you know that I went ahead and tossed this one up as a result of the motivation that inspired. Thank you!
Okay, here's one that is post-Provocation, that does in some ways tie in with that, while maintaining something of the canon timeline. It is a bit darker, and possibly more graphic. But I tend to try to keep things from getting out of hand in those aspects.
Hopefully my posting speed will remain about the same as before and this will be completed shortly.
Prologue
What is reality? Holmes wondered vaguely.
Somewhere in the darkness that clouded his mind he knew he was lost. The black cloud of bleakness he had experienced in years past could not begin to compare to this momentary swirl of emptiness that consumed him now. From this distant, cold perspective, he knew he was damned to this. No amount of cocaine, morphine, or other artificial and chemical mixtures could even begin to stave off this.
Minutes...hours...years...
It doesn't matter anymore. None of this matters.
He could hear his own voice in his head. But the words would not escape his lips. Somewhere far away in a place filled with light and activity he could see...things. There were other voices. Voices that called to him or cursed him. He couldn't tell anymore. And they were too far away to touch him now.
Light had become a concept, and nothing more. Maybe it was a memory. Yes, that seemed right somehow. Light was a memory of something...else. Perhaps it was someone else entirely. Holmes wondered if these were someone else's memories. He could feel others. But, like everything save for the darkness that now consumed his heart, mind, and soul, they were distant and beyond his reach.
Beyond comprehension.
He considered for a moment that they had once been him, as he had been them. Was there really a difference? Weren't all humans just a mass of flesh that would die and rot eventually anyway? How could anything so fragile and meaningless possess any form of realistic substance?
But what is reality?
For Holmes, this darkness was reality. There was no physical. The physical existence had no place is this silent, empty hell.
Hell...
Oh yes, this was hell. This was the hell he had earned. He created, he flirted with it, he denied it. He had welcomed it with open arms in his younger years. But nothing he had experienced then could have prepared him for this taste of such delicious mental agony. There was nothing here. Nothing of himself. Nothing of the others. Nothing of his world or his life that mattered.
For a few, brief minutes, he was allowed to see just how insignificant his life really was in this massive darkness that consumed the universe.
So vast...empty...
And then the screaming began. There in the darkness, there was not even a barrier from which his screams could echo and reverberate. The darkness consumed and smothered those screams as it did the light. The life he once knew was gone. It was somewhere beyond the darkness along with all the other concepts that he thought were real, but had only tricked him. Here was reality.
This was his life.
This is real.
"Blast it, Holmes! Will you please watch where you're going?" Lestrade ground out through teeth clenched in frustration.
Holmes blinked in confusion as he stumbled. Beside him Watson had a gentle grip on his arm as if guiding him somewhere. For a moment Holmes struggled to keep his heart from pounding its way out of his chest. Only now did he realize where he was. Obviously he was on his way to Lestrade's office when he'd bumped into the man. What had him barely concealing true terror was the fact that his last, clear memory was of that morning and breakfast.
How much time had he lost?
What had he done?
Why couldn't he remember?
What was it about Watson's presence that made him shudder so?
When had he realized that Watson was no longer his anchor to the light?
Why wouldn't that darkness just take him and be done with it?
How much longer could this go on before Watson found out?
So many questions raced through his mind in the seconds it took him to catch up to where he was and why, that even Lestrade and Watson were now gazing at him in concern. Shaking off these things to focus on the case once more, Holmes pulled himself up putting on yet another one of his masterful performances. Smirking slightly, he tossed some comment about their smaller minds not being able to keep up with him anyway before he turned to enter Lestrade's office. He did not miss Watson's dubious frown, but was glad his friend let the matter drop. This was no place or time to address these issues.
Besides, how does one explain to another person that they, and their entire life as they know it are not even real?
