Violin music drifts through the dawn lit confines of 221b. It strokes, settling and leaping through the framework of the old, thick walls. The notes shimmer off the floor, scratching claws of B minor carving intricate pathways in in worn wood. The detective stands, by the window. The dawn chorus evading his ears, he is intensely concentrated on maintaining the pattern of this craft of his mind. His fingers conjuring notes and emotions that he could never bring to light in spoken word, spiralling pits of despair contrasted with high notes of salvation. His long pale fingers work intently, tracing patterns forged anew from the quicksilver furnace of Sherlock's locked, hidden emotional mind. No-one was there to hear this cry, these last few flutters of genius trapped by the malevolence of boredom. It was 4AM, John was asleep. Sherlock was alone, his music his oldest companion.
Silver upon silver the notes rang from his long, pale fingers. A cut on his index finger unfelt as he continued to try and create something, anything that showed, that kept the emotional bit of his mind in check. Sherlock Holmes did have emotions, no matter how much he pretended he didn't. The music gave him away, the swell and the rise of the air pushed by the gleaming, trembling lights sent off from the ebony fret-board that had so long held the text of a logician's soul.
His playing although at a medium pace had an underlying hint of violence. He needed someone there, some mind to hear these curtained cries of unnerving minor strings. The once barren piece of wood when placed into its master's hands begins to reflect his actual emotions and Sherlock sounded trapped. A screeching wail sounded from the chamber clasped between his neck and shoulder, the bowing rough, violent and animalistic. It sounded like something that had been kicked, beaten and battered down so many times that all it can now do is fight, scowl and systemise. Nothing else held in that brass heart of Sherlock's, that is what he wanted to portray.
That is not what came forth;
In a torrent his violin pulled up everything Sherlock had ever had done to him. Every abuse, rejection, alienation, degradation and flung it with immense violence into the opposite wall. With more force than the past bullet based abuses. The wailing notes screaming that Holmes' heart was flesh and blood like everyone else, and that he needed someone to come and make him feel something again. Tears were in the detective's eyes, making his vision swim. He poured memories forward without thought; all the nights spent alone, the fear of getting close to someone because he'd just be hurt again. That pain blossomed in blood red flashes, bursts of death screaming across the room bouncing off the opposite wall and being counter by these high, trembling notes of an unfathomable sadness. Blood from Sherlock's cut fingers rolls down his alabaster wrist, turning in on itself until it disappears into the sleeve of his blue dressing gown.
On one long, slow high C minor the pace changed to an almost funeral tone. The emotion now somehow worse because every incident of pain that sliced the empty hair held within it a drop of resignation, the hope from all earlier forays had been abandoned. This drop grew until it rivalled the dawn light pooling around the room for volume. There was no dignity in this sadness; it was raw and bleeding like an open wound. Sherlock was losing the battle with his boredom. He found it hard to breathe for the neurotransmitters swamping his tired still firing synapses. The black hole, the ultimate, the quivering, writhing dead star of intellectual damnation lay before Sherlock like hell, beckoning him with its gaping open jaws, he was so close to resignation.
The paled man shaking now as his fingers picked out the weary cries decreeing his fate. The silence behind the notes was resounding, and made all the worse for the birds singing in way of the dawn chorus. Sherlock set his eyes to the heavens, twin blue orbs which seemed to encapsulate all fear, loss, death, love, war. The music slowed … High notes that once promised salvation now turned to dust and cinders, screaming fire and ice, and time flung irrational, shivering, bested into the depths of the hell Sherlock had created for himself. A slow descent, but one last high shivering note, one last example. That crying, shuddering crystal of human condition that diamond of blinkered light and sense, that one example of what not to do, of who not to become, the clarity of depression that moment of silence that comes before any foray into darkness. Held up for all the world to see, every generation to come, the tear of an automaton made pure by years of retribution, the closest thing Sherlock Holmes had to a soul was this conglomeration of pain. One last shuddering cry, a quiet, teasing scream that seemed to swirl around the room darkening the very dawn.
As this last note came to its blank, broken conclusion Sherlock opened his eyes again. Automatically the detective dropped his bow to his side, eyes fixated on the heavens above London. His violin held loosely in his left hand. The last vestiges of the dying night clung to his dressing gown, and the violin roisen on his hands was for that moment star dust. Sherlock was noble in defeat, and in the face of hell he was composed.
'Soon' was all his shattered mind promised him. 'Soon'.