Tiny drabble that I wrote a few months ago after seeing A Game of Shadows.
She's gone. She's gone and it's YOUR fault. You could have done more, you could have saved her or warned her but NO - I thought - you didn't, all in the name of your GAME!
You let The Woman die.
You allowed the Professor to kill her while you ate dinner.
My eyes snapped open; unseeing, staring at the rushing waters below, the land in the distance. A soft fabric was felt in my hands, being twisted and moulded into something resembling the feeling in my gut.
This mustn't register on an emotional level.
But it does.
An eerie expression akin to a grimace appeared on my face, a slight twitch of my hand and the fabric bearing her initials - her blood - found a breeze and continued to twist into unnatural positions until finally it drifted too low and was engulfed by the murky, impenetrable waters below.
Gone.
Just like her - like Miss Adler.
Turning, I walked back to Watson, avoiding eye contact, to slump down onto the bench facing the shoreline. The past, if I were to be poetic, was being left behind, but I was incapable of turning away; stuck in a continuous rift of what ifs and I could haves... I should haves.
Anger, deep and stinging, rose up from somewhere deep inside; strangling me, making my heart to stop. I was literally dead for a split second and I found myself wishing it had lasted longer. The anger, born - I now realize - from sadness and, dare I say it - heartbreak, made me see red and go still. I needed to go - go and fight something. Go to the Punchbowl just to feel something other than - other than this damn, oppressive cloud of resentment and despair and shame that surrounded me. Broken bones were preferable. Death - I decided - was preferable when willingly given in the hope of saving a friend.
A loved one.
The anger twisted and turned in time with the fabric underwater - it turned into hatred which turned into a plan. Into revenge.
Revenge for the fallen Miss Adler - for Irene.
A mere pawn, it would seem, sacrificed in a vain attempt to save the Queen.
My sight regained focus, a deep determination allowed me to blink away the land left behind as my thoughts turned toward the immediate future - idly wondering how far across enemy lines I would see before beaten down in the name of the game.
The game that took Irene.