Her gray eyes squint at him yet again.
And Sherlock ignores it yet again.
He knows his music has turned more choppy, more erratic today. Frustration. He corrects himself, knowing exactly what emotion this is.
Of course she notices. She is the one whose observation skills are era defining. Luminous.
Abruptly he drops his violin to his side, mid draw of the bow. The harsh screech left echoing in the room. Sherlock bites his lower lip almost painfully and rolls it between his teeth. He can't raise his eyes from their stare of the floor. She will see it in them.
Turns out, she didn't even need to see those blue gray orbs.
A long melancholy note sounds loudly in the quiet room. Sherlock's head jerks to the side as if he had been slapped. Eyes close immediately, keeping in the sting of tears.
Pain.
That was a new one.
He is actually glad that Euros continues the long draws on her violin's strings. He needs to catalog this new emotion.
Notes, long and sad. High and faint, turning low and loud. Immediately he registered every variable that went into this new feeling.
Outside: head- slight throbbing, eyes- sting, chest- heavy, body- tense
Inside: lungs- burning, heart- constricted, stomach- nauseous
His eyes flew open in sudden desperation. I have to feel it.
Just as quickly as his bow had been lowered, it raised and poised itself on those abused strings once again.
Timidly his eyes rose to meet his sister's. She gave a small smile in encouragement and a with a tilt of her head, they were playing together.
The somber notes resonated in his finger tips. Their vibrations traveled to his chin and into his veins.
It was an odd mixture of a handful of the emotions he had already discovered: frustration, resentment, fear, regret, anger, sadness. Yet, it was completely different in its intensity.
Pain.
It was by far one of the more vicious feelings he had yet experienced.
He closed his eyes around the feeling and as his fingers instinctually sought and found their proper places on his precious violin, he walked into his mind palace. It was time to attach this new emotion with a moment, a memory.
When had he felt like this? For what events had these symptoms met and culminated together?
A picture of Bart's rooftop popped to the forefront of his mind. That moment when the decision had been irrevocably made that would end in him leaving John. Those moments between Moriarty's suicide and stepping up on the ledge. Seeing John pull up in that cab, having no idea how the situation had turned, not having any idea what was about to happen. His stomach had felt the same nausea he felt now. His lungs had burned for air then. His eyes stung just as painfully.
Pictures of an overpriced restaurant and a stupid disguise came to take center stage now. The return to London, the night he had been rejected. His head had felt this same slight throb. And he knew now that it had not been the result of that forceful shove to the floor. His heart had felt this same vice gripping it as strongly then as it began to now. When he saw John with her.
"You chose her"
Hot tears trickled from his eyes of their own will. His transport finitely betraying him and reacting to the flood of chemicals in his brain.
John had chosen her.
And not him.
This was the emotion he had felt in those moments. He had discovered it. Sherlock knew it's name now.
Pain.
And he understood.