It's like watching a candle flicker out, then burn. Or the last ashes flicked from a cigarette. The very last decibel of a violin's note, ebbing away as it hums its last note.
Lestrade gets there fast. Not as fast as he would have liked, though; he figures that had been the point. Though surely the should have known the whispers, the looks, the pursing of lips and the furrowing of brows… He's still here because he's good at his job. Every little added wrinkle of worry, or line of a frown, means something.
But damn it all to hell. He never thought, not for a moment, that they would ever mean that Sherlock Holmes was dead.
By the time that he does get there, leaping out of the automobile and jogging over cobblestone road, the body is already neatly packaged in black plastic. Later, of course, he'll force them to open it. He'll need to see for himself, and not for a second before then will Lestrade believe it. Not one bit. This focus wavers slightly, naturally, when he sees that dying note and fading candle sitting on the sidewalk. There's a scratchy gray blanket draped over his shoulders. His knuckles are white, and smeared with a bit of red – he must've gotten close then, at some point. Very close. As he nears him, his own heard pounding, all the others bustling about peeling away like a sea that he is separating. And when he reaches the deflated frame, he calls to him, "John."
The fire snuffed out. The cigarette is cold. The air is silent.
John Watson looks up and it's like Medusa's curse takes a hold of his gut, turning it to stone. Oh, he's seen these boys in their up times, their down times. He's never seen this look in either's eyes. Never wanted to. With his job, he's obviously seen it before. Accompanied with a mother's sobs, or a brother's despair, or a best friend's shouts of anger. A father's curse. He's faced it personally, as he begins a variety of speeches with, "I'm so sorry…"
Loss is such an ugly thing. So is the stretcher that gets wheeled past him, bearing a long, still body in a long, cold plastic.
Those two images, of broken eyes and unmoving frame, will be with him when he goes home that night. It will be late at night, because he will spend most of his time directly after that moment in the precinct, and in labs. He will be with John Watson while he can, and then Molly Hooper. But when at home finally, with liquor and a cigarette, he will be alone with those two images. He'll get a call from his ex-wife and he will ignore it, hurl the phone away from him onto the other chair in fact. He doesn't want to think of her, and bear those sour, bitter thoughts as well. He lets the drink try to burn the feelings that simmer away, lets the smoke try to crowd them out.
He closes his eyes and he sees white porcelain flesh and blackened, congealed blood. The taste in his mouth goes revolting as he imagines it.
He doesn't close his eyes for very long that night. In fact, somewhere around 3am, an empty bottle will smash against the wall. Quite a mess it'll make; quite a sound is the noise that escapes a choked throat, in harmony to the shattering glass. He never wanted to see it. Not on either of their faces, that look. He's seen it probably over a hundred times, but not on them. Good God Almighty, just not on them. Was that too much to ask?
A silver-haired detective inspector sinks to the floor on a shaggy old rug, and his forehead will rest in his palm. The other hand is still holding a smoldering little paper killer, tendrils of lung pollution still rising from its orange end. John Watson's face, and former-Sherlock Holmes very dead one, will pick at his mind for a few more hours. He'll see it again, the loss on John's face, a few times, a bit more faded; see it once more in all its full force when the parade of black umbrellas, coats, and suits show up at a hole in the ground to pay their respects. He wonders who will show up, to the memorial of William Sherlock Holmes…
Dawn seems a very bloody long way away. And he's tired.
Too much to ask?
Apparently so.
A/N: Written for the Convergence's Creation Week 2017, Day 2: Loss. The Convergence is a multifandom role playing forum on this site.