Thanks for all of the reviews, I'm sorry for the delay, I've been a bit busy. This bit's a tad odd so I hope you'll forgive me :-P
16th March 1860, St. Giles Church, Devonshire
The spring sun was weak, the sky sickly and pale. Sheltered by the grey stone facade of the medieval church not even the breeze could filter through to the service and the stillness was as oppressive as the expressions on the faces of the leaden saints in the stained-glass panes. Inside the church stone reliefs and grotesques outnumbered the sole mourner at a ratio of exactly one hundred to one, and each of the multitudinous eerie carvings and paintings seemed to take on the sanguine appearance of a man made conspicuous by his absence.
At the front of the church lay a simple coffin, its limited length a poignant reminder of potential left forever unfulfilled. The dark crimson interior of the casket provided an austere contrast with the bloodless form within. A soulless corpse lay prone and pale, peaceful features creating an appearance of restfulness; to look upon that angelic face, unlined by pain one would have thought that the spirit had passed on under the power of a final sleep. The illusion was maintained by clothes that concealed so many truths; a form with a nightmare existence would forever more hold the countenance of a dream.
The service was mercifully short; what could the priest have said for the benefit of one about a life too short and a death too unjustified? As ashes met ashes and dust met dust, a single tear rolled down as single cheek and a single rose was offered into the earth before Mycroft Holmes straightened his shoulders and made his way home to the man who had murdered his only brother.
---------------------------------
The night time visions of the previous night remained fixed in Sherlock Holmes' mind as he watched the proceedings of his protector's funeral. His emotions were so confused that he could not have cried even if his father would have been permitted tears. Upset about the loss of one he had loved so dearly, frightened of what the future held for him, angry... oh yes, angry. Angry at his father, angry at the world, angry and Matilda... She had left him, just as his mother had left him. She had abandoned him to his father and now, in the absence of her educational coaching, even his brother would be forced to leave him and go to a school far away.
These maternal figures... these women... these fiends had contributed to so much pain in his existence. He could not remember his mother but he had heard whispers of a time before her death, a time when his father had not been the monster he now was; her death, it seemed, like the opening of Pandora's Box, had unleashed all the terrors of the earth upon her child. Matilda too had become a demon in the boy's eyes... an Eve... responsible for his fall into his father's hand. Alone, unguarded.
Who knew now when his nightmare of an un-repented and painful passing would become a reality... surely it would be soon, and he knew who would be to blame. Women.