Based on the song by Lady Antebellum
If the genius of Conan Doyle's creations actually belonged to me, do you really think I would still be here, writing this –sans profit– online? I rest my case.
For SpookyZaragoza; as requested. Here's hoping you approve...
John sat, motionless, in the armchair that had become his home these past weeks. Its cushions, a near-perfect cast of his languishing form, bore testament to his perpetual lethargy.
I kept waiting on a reason, and a call never came...
Every morning he rose a few minutes earlier, often beating the morning post to the front door. He would sit on the bottom step, staring intently at the painted brass letterbox. Dust motes settled on his glazed-over eyes, but he dared not blink to clear them. Any day now, John knew, there would be some sign or sound from him. Something – anything – to reassure his waiting friend, to simply...
John groaned as the deteriorating state of his joints made itself known, levering himself up from the cold step. Of course there had been nothing. It had been months, now. Months since he had watched, in abject horror, his friend's wiry frame tumbling down... down... into the white abyss from which he had never emerged, alive or... otherwise. John could not bring himself even to think of the alternative to Sherlock's survival; how could he go on, without him? It was the only way to retain even the lingering shreds of his sanity that still clung to the straggling remnants of his desperate mind.
He simply must have survived, somehow. There was no room anything else in John's heart but this certainty. He was alive... alive...
No, I never saw it coming...
But just as the inexorable tread of Time's weary soles had drawn the weeks into months, so too did those months become one year, and all too soon, two. John waned; there was no other word for it. His bright, azure eyes became sunken, their resemblance closer to a pair of uncut sapphires in the heather-grey coal seam than the dazzling gems that had danced upon his cheeks when Sherlock stood by his side. His rapier-sharp wit, once flashing and glancing off the highest of intellects, grew blunt in its neglect. Even John's faith in his absentee friend was running out, trickling away like the final grains in the organic, beating hourglass of his heart.
Could it be, that Sherlock was really... gone? John did not want to believe it, but the proof lay before his eyes as his gaze came to rest, as always, on the empty leather armchair where his friend had curled, like a bird of prey, ensconced in a haze of tobacco smoke and wild ideas, upon so many an evening just like this one. But... Sherlock had never... never... never let him down before. A single grain of hope teetered on the edge of the glass, oscillating on the brink of irreparable despair and desperate longing.
Something in you must have changed...
No, Sherlock had never let him down, before now. But now... Sherlock was gone. It tore at him inside to admit it, but the truth became more evident with every passing day that John passed alone. A recluse, a madman, a beggar in his own dreams...
Weeping and grasping for the insubstantial as he slept, curled in his sagging chair, John's soul breathed the sigh of a man defeated. Tears crawled in agonising tandem down his drawn countenance, finally falling to rest, unheeded by the sleeping shadow of a man as they stained his faded waistcoat with their saline trace... The final link in a two-year chain of suffering.
Alright... Here's the first verse for you. What do you think? Feedback, as always, would be greatly appreciated. For those of you following 'Rules of Engagement' – fear not! All will be revealed in good time! Consider this a Victorian interlude in the 23rd century drama, hm? Hope this meets with your approval, and look out for the next instalment – up soon!
