A/N. This chapter has no Sherlock and John. Basically, it's a 'bare mythology' piece, which represents something of a parallel dimension - philosophical background for the story if you wish. I primarily intended the analogy of ideas, not the characters, but it can be viewed as both.
It wasn't yet the time to wake up, but it felt too stuffy to get lost in the next dream. There was half-dreaming of course, but it never seemed like that much of a fun.
The Moon opened one eye and, after a long, shamelessly satisfying stretch, opened another. It was quiet around. So quiet you could make a whisper your only reality, could shape it in any way you liked as if you were building a castle from the long gone toy bricks. Were they ever gone, though? In some realities, they were. Some were so co-dependent that you couldn't form a thought without going back in time and remembering. So the quiet was okay.
The Moon sighed and tried to whisper herself a friend. It never happened before, no matter how hard she tried, but the effort alone was still oddly comforting. The first letter reached the air and bounced back. The Moon frowned and tried the letter out, this time with more force to it. It bounced harder and landed somewhere she couldn't reach. It neither melted, nor dissipated – it just wasn't there. The quiet seemed to take a new turn.
"It's not just quiet, is it?"
The Moon' s eyes widened and fell on the voice.
"Don't be silly. You can't see me."
The voice wasn't just filling the air, it was coming directly from the air. The air was… speaking? Could that even be possible?
The low chuckle was the only answer, at least a visible one. The Moon suspected there were more answers, but none of them seemed even remotely plausible.
"Just don't tell me you're my long gone friend, I wouldn't believe it anyway."
The voice sounded hushed now.
"You don't have friends, dear. None of us do."
The Moon lifted its heavy head and smiled into nothing.
"You wouldn't be here if you weren't. I don't have enemies, you see,"
The voice sounded even more hushed now.
"And what about others?"
The Moon let a chuckle of her own. It was a funny conversation they were having here. But wouldn't that be even funnier if she could trap that insolent creature? Trap and locked inside. Then they could be friends forever. And she missed forever so much. Things were so disgustingly short these days.
"There are no others, dear. I'm absolutely alone."
"Are you? Friends or others – you'd be amazed how blurred the line can be."
"It's not just quiet," the voice said again, as if dismissing a small attempt at levity. And it wasn't the whisper this time. Whispers were long gone.
The Moon shook her head and leaned forward.
"It's not. It's deadly quiet."
The voice let out a mocking whistle and cracked.
"There is no death here. You know that better than anyone."
Indeed, there wasn't. Something as passionate as death would've been a relief, but eternity didn't allow that much of a leeway. It was possessive to a fault.
Sometimes rare flickers of life shot through her mind and left her breathless. She saw lives. Short, miserable lives. She saw endless running, enveloped into one undeniable truth. The truth about endings.
"Just a figure of speech."
Her reply didn't even have enough strength to touch the air. It was just hanging there, waiting mutinously for any reaction, and getting none.
"Please don't do that."
This time the air was clearly cut. It groaned in pain and almost stumbled. Another taunting whisper caught her breath turning it into hot, melting liquid and gluing her tongue, "Let me go."
"You came by your own will." she whispered, enjoying the last remnants of familiar, deliciously flexible words which still possessed those endearing faults she came to enjoy. Cracks, shifts, nervous changes of the pitch – each of those little pieces was carved deep within. Sometimes this depth scared her, but she couldn't feel fear, so it just translated into the painful tightening of the air. It was a good friend. It could talk to her and be silent at the same time. It drank her expressions – drank them like poison and sprayed them everywhere, right into the hollow, unfeeling void. Then it guarded her while he slept, and slept while she was awake. Everything was right.
The voice cracked once again, and stumbled. She almost felt pity.
"If the agony of a dying creature could be called 'a will'…"
The chuckle escaped her lips before she could stop it.
"I can't be that frightening."
"You're not. Not to me at least. Just poisonous."
This time, the crack hit too close to her memories and stabbed them. Pity turned into remorse and stabbed back, creating a small pool in her mind. A pool of fresh blood.
"Yes. That's how you do it. You release your other side – dangerous and murderous, with a clear intent to kill. But it disappears before it gets the chance. It always does – your servants are incredibly rigid in following orders. But now… now they're nothing but rebels, and their rebellion is just as poisonous."
Rebels. The last crumbs of soft dust escaped her convulsively extended hand and fell to the ground where she could no more see them.
Mere rebels. Well, she was a queen after all. The pieces of puzzle clicked together making their hesitant way towards her sour, untangled memories.
"Are they my enemies? Are you one of them?" she whispered, and her words shifted into the boiling air.
"No." The voice grew in strength, expanded and roared, until it reached every corner in her mind and enveloped it into the thick fog.
"You know the deal, my dear. The tragedy never stops, for it is your meal and drink. That's a golden rule – a riddle, if you wish. Care to figure it out?"
The silence has never been so desirable, and it was even more so when the voice subdued to the gentle, strikingly familiar murmur which she started to recognize so inevitably. It rang through her, poked at her tortured memories and ran away before she could fully grasp it.
"Remembering is hard, isn't it?"
"Go away." The harshness in her voice was no match for the relentless compassion of that stranger who threatened to strip her of the last bits of power.
"That's a wrong answer."
The memories were ticking like a badly repaired clock.
"And you know why?"
The clock quickened up, the lopsided hands quickly turning and switching, as if they were having a seizure.
"Because …"
The hands turned into burnt-out wires, thin and dim even in the brightest light.
"Because you are…"
Her heart wasn't beating steadily anymore, it was running – escaping the foreboding gates of admission and failing all the way through.
Her world shrank to one small moment and stopped, trapping the cold, unfeeling eternity inside.
"Because you're my friend."
She didn't hear explosion, and she didn't hear the answer.
The only thing she heard was a soft, murmured whisper, muffled by her taunting, poison-filled words.
The tragedy never stops – and neither does remembrance.
