Warnings: Major character deaths, suicidal themes. Could be seen as Sherlock/John if you like.


They strung Sherlock Holmes up on the hanging tree for killing three men.

He told them he was innocent, and that he had discovered the bodies and tried to catch the killer. No-one believed him of course; Strange Sherlock was always there when there was destruction and carnage. He didn't talk to anyone except John Watson. The families called for revenge, and they didn't care much about whether it was fair revenge. Life has a tendency to be unfair, and stepping on the path marked unlucky is never a good idea.

They draped his rope like a string of dull pearl around his throat and lifted him into the boughs, whilst the curious crowd gathered round with bright eyes and faces that spoke of the satisfaction people gain when they think they're punishing the evil. Three people said they were wrong. One of them was Sherlock Holmes. One of them was his brother. And one of them was John Watson.

Of those three only Sherlock and John attended the hanging; Mycroft never had had a strong enough stomach to bear watching his brother jerk on the end of a rope.

When the cord began to cut into his neck and rub a red band upon the skin Sherlock called out that John shouldn't watch, just before the knot tightened that little more and choked the speech out of him.

John tended not to listen to Sherlock's demands, and he stayed as Sherlock's lips turned blue and his eyes glazed and his fingers loosened at the rope around his neck and he slipped away so quietly it was like the sounds the birds in the tree were making held more significance. Sherlock didn't submit himself to such a petty thing as gasping for air, trying to postpone the inevitable; he merely stopped breathing.

John went home as they cut the body down, and sat upon the chair he'd grown so familiar with, and now hated because there was no Sherlock perched in the one opposite. He sat until the morning turned to afternoon and the afternoon grew and died and slid into twilight which, in turn, melted softly to nightfall and the moon came out and seemed to light the chair opposite him with a dull glow.

And then John Watson prepared his own rope, took it to the tree and stood for a long time underneath, just looking. They'd left Sherlock's ties there, and he lashed his own next to them, standing on the chair he'd brought with him from the empty house. He didn't jump; he edged very gently off the side, took it by degrees until his toes slipped off the wood and he was left swinging back and forth, back and forth.

He was dead before the swaying halted.

The people came the next day and said what an odd occurrence it was for someone to do such a thing over Strange Sherlock, the killer. They took the body down and gossiped for weeks, until more interesting things came along and took their thoughts away from the hanging tree. Molly Hooper, the girl from the next street, cried. Jim Moriarty, the man whose knife had stabbed the three men, laughed.

And Mycroft Holmes, in a desperate attempt to suppress the grief he wouldn't have admitted to feeling, merely wrote a song.


...yeah, I don't know why I wrote this either. I'm just going to say I'm sorry now.

Thanks for reading! Reviews welcome.