A/N:
1) Sincere thanks for reviews and encouragement goes to: Random Google, and mg333. As usual, I'll respond via PM to anyone I can.
Also, thanks to anyone who faved or followed, it is most encouraging.
3) In case I'm not back to update for a couple weeks (which I probably won't be), Happy Holidays to all!
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By the fourth night, when the doctors leave, she knows the detective will likely not live through the fifth. It shows in their defeated and pitying looks, though they still somehow remain more detached than she can, for all that the situation should be reversed ….. and again, though by now trying to safeguard his mind when his body is dying is the epitome of futility, she continues her nightly vigil.
This time when he awakens from his fitful sleep – something he does less and less often as his life ebbs away - she stays. With the detective so far gone, and without the perfume that she'd worn the times they had met or any significant light to see with, she supposes he will not recognize her anyway, as long as he cannot see her clearly, so instead of leaving, she climbs up and kneels behind him, cradling his broken body against her chest - at least this way he seems to be breathing a little easier.
Something within her breaks when the morphine wears off entirely, burned away by the raging fever, and he starts to writhe in pain again, by now too weak to even utter a groan, though the ragged gasps are only too telling of his physical torment…. and she fights the urge…. the need… to try and speak soothing words to him, condemned to silence by her own actions.
Spent and broken, breathing shallower than ever before, Holmes slips again into a restless sleep which holds him in its deadly embrace for the rest of the night…. and though all is still now, Alexandra finds no solace in the heavy accusing silence. Instead she remains where she has perched herself, holding him close as if her hold – her touch which has brought him to this terrible state – could shield him from death itself, even as beneath her fingertips where she is holding his right hand to brace his arm, she can feel his thready ever-weakening pulse counting down to a certain death.
His sweat-soaked dark locks brush her lips as she dips her head slightly to look at him, eyes fixed on his features which show remnants of his pain even now, while in the faint traces of moonlight that filter through the window his pale flesh, glistening with a sickly sheen of sweat and marred with cuts and bluish bruises, resembles nothing more than a broken marble effigy to one already doomed….. and in the silence she finds herself asking why that idea… hurts so much.
It would be remotely acceptable if the thought of that outcome simply disappointed her, vexed her even, but the truth is….. it hurts….. deep down inside where she'd felt nothing for practically an eternity…. it aches and she is powerless to stop feeling this consuming pain that fills the place inside her which had once been a ravenous void.
She does not know if this is regret…..
Probably not; she doubts she is capable of it.
She does not know how to begin understanding why ….. why she is kneeling here and cradling the detective's dying body in her arms instead of celebrating that the only opponent that could ever ruin her will no longer be a problem… why reality has become so hard to bear. She only knows that she'd do anything…. anything at all to take away from the detective all this pain and horror….. anything to dispel the dark clouds of mortality that gather on the horizon and inexorably draw closer.
Kneeling there, she doesn't pray – cannot pray to a concept she finds no reason in – and she still does not need to blame the will of some all-powerful entity for this….. nightmare. But she also cannot blame the detective anymore. The human condition aside, it's always been his world as much as hers. He had every right to try and stop her.
No. This … this is her responsibility, hers alone.
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