(A/N: This story is dedicated to my dearest friend and confidante: Raxi. Here, in my hands, I hold your heart. You don't need that, right? Right.)
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
Sweat, salty-sweet and none-too-foreign, adorns his upper-lip as he is jolted awake by Sherlock's sudden presence in his room. The consulting detective's face is impassive to all but his closest of confidantes, who can read the worry pulling at the corners of his lips and the edges of his eyes. Silence passes the time, broken only by the repetitious ticking of the clock which magnifies its weight and multiplies its meaning.
The doctor takes quick note of how, though no direct nor lingering physical contact is being made, Sherlock's middle finger methodically brushes his thigh through his pyjama bottoms in a soothing manner. Sherlock holds his gaze quietly, eyebrows pinched in a way that would seem stern to the general populace. It was his way of comforting John. Unconventional, but his nonetheless.
"What—" barely escapes John's cracked throat before Sherlock dives in, knowing what he is going to ask before he asks it.
"You were making a lot of noise," blunt and to the point. Sherlock is not a man of poetry; when he says something it is said directly, without the frivolous language that makes poems so precious to the commonwealth. "It was a nightmare." Not a question, no. He already knows. He sees him in this state every night; he needn't ask that.
John's shakes his head and his lips purse to form the 'm' sound when Sherlock jumps in again, "a memory then? One particularly traumatising...Afghanistan perhaps? No. You're long over that."
John gets up and heads to the kitchen to make himself a midnight cuppa. He doesn't normally do this, but a Hot Toddy sounds good right now. With automaton precision, he coats the bottom of his tea cup with honey and sets the kettle on to boil.
Sherlock paces in the background, long legs carrying him from one furniture piece to the next as he recollects all the memories that would result in John's reaction being that severe. "The Study in Pink...wouldn't be that because that was tame in comparison to other cases we've done together. Perhaps the Baskerville case? No...not that..." In the kitchen, the kettles whistles.
Brandy already in his cup along with a fresh lemon slice devoid of seeds, John pours the scalding water over his bag of Assam and lets it steep. His fingers stray for the cabinet to the left of the stove, and he retrieves a small medicinal bottle off of the shelf.
Sherlock perches on the recliner, knees tucked in to his chest, with his fingers bunched together and pressing against his lips. "It could very well be Moriarty. In fact, I'm positive that it is Moriarty. Correct?"
John swallows his steaming Hot Toddy in a single go along with the pill he had pulled from the cabinet. With a sad smile he puts the bottle back, label facing out so the prescription is visible.
Watson, John H.
Clozapril 200mg
Twice daily
"Reichenbach Falls," he says as he walks right through the apparition.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
—Edgar Allan Poe