It was the darkness that took him in the end, I think. He had wrapped that damn blue scarf of his unusually tight around his coat on that night. I could tell something was amiss, but I could not grasp exactly what, at the time. He had paced back and forth many times before we had left, as if he had forgotten something, and couldn't quite recall what. I asked him what it was that he'd forgotten, and he began to stutter, trying to speak words that just weren't there. I figured his brain was a bit frantic due to the incident in Baskerville. I brushed off the thought at the time, and gave Sherlock a pat on the back.
Just before we could step out of the door, however, he stopped.
"I have to check something." He had said, staring down at me with his bright blue eyes. He turned on his heels and walked away into the living room. I heard the telly switch off.
Sherlock ran back into the room like a little dog, happily greeting its owner upon their arrival home.
"I knew I had forgotten something!" He smiled. I let out a sigh of relief and smiled as well.
"Well, we'd best be off, then!" I exclaimed, shifting my balance. In a moment, i lost my balance and found myself reaching for my cane, which wasn't there. Just as I was about to fall, however, Sherlock handed the cursed thing to me. Somehow, I managed to regain my balance.
Little to my surprise, Sherlock took no notice of my clumsiness, or if he did, he made no sign of it. I set down my cane, muttering curses at my leg under my breath. We walked out of the building without another word. Sherlock was the one to flag the cab down this time, which surprised me. He doesn't usually do that.
"You all right, Sherlock?" I asked as we stepped into the cab.
"Bored." He replied.
"How exactly are you bored? We're going some place exciting!" I chuckled.
"A festival? Exciting?" Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "Those two words should never be used in the same sentence, especially not in relevance to each other."
I frown. "You—you've never been to a festival before?"
Sherlock laughed. "My dear John, do you ever think I would be caught dead at something so dull as a festival?"
"I suppose not." I said, smiling.
The cab ride to the festival was nothing short of silent. Sherlock spent the majority of the trip looking through old texts on his phone. I didn't know which ones he was looking at, but his interest was most likely geared toward that Irene woman. Damn her. Damn her and her 'scandals'.
"Sherlock." I murmured under my breath.
His eye wandered into my general direction, but quickly returned to his phone. He was pretty immersed in whatever he was doing.
"I'm not looking through her texts, I know you're wondering." He suddenly muttered, surprising me.
I stammered. "H—how could you tell?" I thought giving Sherlock a chance to show off would improve his mood.
Sherlock smiled. "You already know how I can tell John, honestly. It's clearly written all over your face."
I managed half of a smile. That was Sherlock's way of saying; 'leave me alone, I'm not in the mood to talk right now'.
The silence that followed was almost painful. It was broken by the Cabbie, and only then did Sherlock look up from his phone entirely. We paid, and then left. How we would get home, I didn't know. I was all out of cash, and as far as I knew, so was Sherlock.
"Where to?" Sherlock asked, as of he had forgotten where we were going entirely.
I laughed. "Have you forgotten?"
"Forgotten?" Sherlock looked at me, puzzled. I froze. Did he truly not remember?
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked, feeling Sherlock's forehead.
"Quite." I couldn't tell if he was lying, for once. His face void of all emotion, Sherlock was a closed book.
Wanting to do something to avoid another silence that I could sense approaching, my body moved on its own. I took hold of Sherlock's hand and led him across the street, toward the festival lights on the other side of the square. I could feel my face turn red as my feet moved of their own accord, one after the other, at the slowest pace possible.
When we finally reached the festival itself, Sherlock ran off toward the ferris wheel, yanking me behind him.
"Can we go on?" Sherlock smiled for the first time that night.
"If you want to…" I raised an eyebrow.
Before I could say anything else, he yanked me into a seat, and just like that, we were moving.
Sherlock looked like a child on Christmas Eve. His face lit up in a smile. I'd never seen him so amused. "Have you ever ridden one before? A ferris wheel?" I asked.
He shook his head and looked out of the window. And there he had been, acting like a festival was the most boring thing in the world. Honestly, could he ever make up his mind about anything? But alas, this was Sherlock, and he had never been so sure about anything in his life, and I didn't think he ever would be.
Ever since the case with Moriarty he'd been different. He hadn't been acting any different, but when he spoke, there was something to the way he chose his words that was just…off. Like he had wanted to say something but couldn't. Yes, I'm sure it bothered him that Moriarty had just disappeared, but even so, something was amiss and I could tell. 'People don't just up and disappear," I had told Sherlock. "We'll find him. It's only a matter of time."
I was snapped out of my daze as Sherlock's phone buzzed. It wasn't Irene, that was for sure, so then who was it? It couldn't have been Mycroft. Sherlock reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. He scrolled through the text, and the light shone onto his face, casting strange shadows here and there.
"Who is it? At this hour?" I asked, hoping Sherlock was enlightened enough to give me an honest answer.
Sherlock smiled and looked up at me. "Nobody important."
I sighed, slightly hurt by his secrecy. Damn him. "Very well."
The ferris wheel stopped, and almost immediately, Sherlock stood up and began to walk out. His eyes were fixated on something, or someone in the crowd, and I could not see who.
"Sherlock!" I shouted, running after him. But he was faster. I lost him within the minute.
"Wait!" I shouted, trying to relocate Sherlock in the crowd, but to no avail.
In that split second, my phone buzzed.
I'll be right back down. Don't move.
-SH
I looked up. Don't move? Why wasn't I supposed to move? Where had Sherlock run off to? Down from where? My head spun, but my feet remained planted to the ground. I wanted to run off, to find Sherlock and ask him what in the bloody hell he was playing at. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. Something, deep, down in the pit of my stomach told me to move. It told me to run, to find him as fast as I possibly could. But it was as if my feet had been nailed to the ground. My phone buzzed once more.
I can see you
-SH
How could he see me? I looked around the crowd. Sherlock was nowhere to be found.
Look up
-SH
I looked up. The sky was littered with stars. But something was not right. I gazed over to the nearest building, and there he stood, on the roof. I texted him back, nearly breaking the buttons on my phone in the process.
What are you doing?
-JW
Within a few seconds, he texted back. But it wasn't the answer that I had wanted.
I'M SORRY.
-SH
In that moment, my heart stopped. Completely stopped. I knew exactly what he was doing on the roof. He had joked about it before; that he was so bored and frustrated that he would take his own life. It had never occurred to me that he wasn't kidding.
Please don't.
-JW
I sent the text without thinking twice. But then I looked up.
Sherlock had one foot over the edge, and was leaning forward. My stomach lurched, and I wanted so badly to scream, but I couldn't. I couldn't call out to him. My best friend, flatmate, and the man I had come to care for so much, possibly even love, was about to throw himself off a bloody building, and I couldn't find it in myself to call out to him. And then he fell.
The world spun around me. My feet found it in themselves to release their grip on the earth, and I bolted forward through the crowd.
"SHERLOCK!" I had screamed, struggling to find my way to the building. Tears welled up in my eyes, further impairing my vision. People cursed at me as I pushed my way past, but I didn't care. All that mattered in that moment was Sherlock. I finally broke out of the crowd, and ran two blocks before I found him.
He lay on the ground, motionless. His face was twisted in pain, and a dark crimson glistened on the stone where his head had hit the ground.
"Sherlock, no…" I cried, choking back tears. I reached out for his hand, but my fingers found something else first. His cellphone. I knew I shouldn't have messed with the phone, but I did. His most recent texts were to me, but there was one new text.
Good Job.
-M
M? Who the hell was M? I knew for sure it couldn't have been Mycroft, he always signed using his full name, not just an M.
There was only one other person I knew with an M at the beginning of their name.
Moriarty.
I scrolled through the text history as more tears rolled down my cheeks.
It's tonight.
-M
I'm aware.
-SH
It's you or John, your pick.
-M
You already know the answer.
-SH
Don't forget the time.
-M
I hope you're happy.
Good night.
-SH
—
Good job.
-M
I snapped the phone shut and looked up. There he stood before me, covered in what seemed to be a giant system of bombs.
"Not that I care or anything, but he died to save you. It would be a shame if you died now." Moriarty chuckled. "Leave. Carry on his legacy or whatever it is you're supposed to do."
"Damn you." I spat. "How long have you been planing this?"
"Quite a while, in fact. Since we had first met. I was so terribly bored." He sighed. "If you don't want to die, you should go." I stood up, turning on my heels to leave. I felt more tears welling up in my eyes. "Farewell, John Watson. And a good life to you." I turned and ran, just as the bomb went off.
I don't remember much after that. My ears rang for a while, and then I sort of forgot what happened next. But I remember looking down into my arms, and there, wrapped around my left arm, was something blue.
It was Sherlock's scarf.