A/N: Hiatus again.
Break
Per definitionem, it was but a break. As a man of words, Watson would surely have been able to tell him. Maybe he would just look it up: hiatus, disambiguations. Mycroft had come up with the word, his mocking tone evident even in telegram form.
Somehow, 'hiatus' had just gotten a very different level of meaning to him. Surely somewhere, below that harmless exterior, lay the notion of sadness, solitude that had become loneliness, of pain and regret, of unwanted change that had come too quickly, and the loss of everything one had secretly cherished, and all one held dear.