Perfect
Falling a thousand feet per second
You still take me by surprise
I just know we can't be over
I can see it in your eyes
Sherlock Holmes spread his arms wide, feeling the breeze tickle his face and ruffle his dark mess of curls. He had never really appreciated the true beauty of London, he thought, looking out across the tops of the buildings. He had never really appreciated the true beauty of anything.
Least of all Doctor John Watson.
Making every kind of silence
Takes a lot to realize
It's worse to finish than to start all over
And never let it lie
Of course, all these thoughts happened in a split second. To an onlooker, it seemed as if the tall, thin man spread his arms and jumped. But to Sherlock, with thoughts and plans and theories and statistics rushing through his clever mind, it could have been years. It was remarkable he'd even found time to philosophise.
It could have been years to John Watson, too, only his stubborn mind was working the opposite of Sherlock's. His mind was slow, quiet, like a scene from a silent movie. A scene that was stuck, playing out in front of John, and he couldn't do anything but watch in the deathly silence while his sluggish mind screamed no.
And as long as I can feel you holding on
I won't fall
Even if you said I was wrong
Goodbye, John.
And it was over, like that. Simple. A rush of adrenaline, Sherlock's mind running a million miles an hour, his body not his own anymore but totally controlled by the elements, wind and height and gravity.
And the eyes.
As Sherlock's head snapped up at the last second, his eyes locked onto those of John's. Piercing, sharp blue eyes, clouded with pain and hurt and utterly confused. Sherlock tried to speak, in that last split second of his life, speak with his eyes, speak to John.
I'm so, so sorry.
Then there was the thump of human weight meeting pavement, the sharp crack of human skull on grey concrete, the steady flow of blood like dark red rubies across the colourless ground.
And that was it. Over.
I'm not perfect
But I keep trying
Cause that's what I said
I would do from the start
Johns sluggish mind took a couple of seconds to process what was going on.
Get up, Sherlock, you utter prat.
But he didn't.
Staggering and unbalanced, falling and getting right back up again, mixed thoughts muddled through John's head, mixing themselves out of order and confusing the hell out of him.
Wasn't it just yesterday I stepped into 221B Baker St for the first time? And you had your bloody violin, and that skull, and the mess and the experiments, and I just sighed and kept trying, kept trying to deal with it because that was just a part of you, wasn't that just yesterday?
And then you nearly took that pill and died, and I saved you, and we were partners, and I promised myself that I wouldn't let you die? Wasn't that just yesterday?
That's not your body on the ground. It can't be.
Racing thoughts, racing mind, racing heart. And silent Sherlock.
I'm not alive if I'm lonely
So please don't leave
Was it something I said
Or just my personality
John pushed his way through the group of anxious, excited people. A suicide was like a car crash, you don't want to look but you can't look away, you're fascinated, it's human nature.
"I'm a doctor, he's my friend, let me through!"
Gripping Sherlock's ice cold thin wrist, the place where no pulse beat its steady rhythm anymore, John questioned everything, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mycroft, life, God, bloody Sherlock and, mostly, himself.
Where did I go wrong? Was it something I said? Could I have helped him? Did he know just how much I believed in him?
Sherlock's prone, broken body was lifted onto a gurney and carted away, away from John Watson, away from the only person Sherlock truly cared about. John's last ever image of Sherlock Holmes would be forever burned in his memory- A white hand hanging of the side of a white stretcher with the white shirtsleeve and everything around stained with blood, long thin violinists fingers swaying softly in the icy breeze that had just whipped up.
Making every kind of silence
It takes a lot to realize
It's worse to finish than to start all over
And never let it lie
The silence was the worst thing, John decided, a few days after Sherlock's 'accident.' No violin, no pistol, no stupid comments about being bored, no cases, no excitement, no stories, no comforting voice, no Sherlock, so therefore no anything.
John was sitting in his chair, the British pillow Sherlock so often commented on pushed to one side. Sherlock's seat was untouched, along with just about everything else. Mrs Hudson had attempted to clear away a morbid experiment taking pride of place on the kitchen table, Sherlock's latest plaything.
"John, dear, these body parts really are just, well, rotting away here, maybe we could just, I don't know, move them on?"
The look on John's face, the look of total pain and hurt and loss, however had just caused her to sigh and leave him an extra cup of tea. John, whenever he had thought about his future, had imagined meeting a pretty girl one day. Maybe they'd have children, or maybe not. Anyway, he'd never envisioned a deep and special friendship with a man who was everything John couldn't stand and more. And once he'd found that friendship, he'd never seen it ending, really. Not like this.
And as long as I can feel you holding on
I won't fall
Even if you said I was wrong
John was desperate, some days. Some days were sunny and bright and Lestrade came over and he could pretend, just pretend for a few hours, that Sherlock was out and was coming back, coming back home. And then there were the days that blended together in endless shades of black and grey, days where John was left the whole day enduring his thoughts. Sometimes, on days like that, he had trouble even telling what was reality and what wasn't.
On days like that, John would often find himself in his bedroom, without even knowing how he got there, running his fingers over the smooth cold metal of his gun. The same gun that had saved Sherlock could now, ultimately, end John.
And he'd stand there, for who knows how long, desperately trying to pull the last strands of courage hidden away in him together, ready to pull the trigger. He'd come close, a couple of times. Once he had the gun pressed to the roof of his mouth, his steady soldiers hands shaking for the very first time, the fall replaying in his mind. If suicide was good enough for Sherlock, it was certainly good enough for John.
But something stopped him. A memory, of Sherlock, walking after John, speaking about what a good man, he, John Hamish Watson was. And that was enough to make John awfully ashamed, to put the gun away, and go and try to endure the hole in his heart.
The horrible, Sherlock shaped hole.