Hello, all.

I posted this 1st chapter some time ago, then took it off as I didn't know where to take it anymore. Now I do, however, and it's going to be some ride - well at least I think it will. Judge yourself!

My deepest thanks to emma de los nardos for betaing and helping me, and eyebrows2 for some good points offered.

Hope you like, any comments and remarks are very highly appreciated!

Usual disclaimers apply, of course.

ML

The funeral was small.

The family Holmes had wanted it to be so, even if the events surrounding the unexpected death of their youngest had caused an upheaval of sorts among the press. This attention and the somewhat superficial public sorrow that often follows the tabloid headlines would have easily allowed for a funeral of more massive a scale, had the family chosen to make it public. What made the death of Sherlock Holmes so salacious to the public was the sheer drama that was written all over it. First, only now had he been publicly recognized after the numerous triumphs concerning seemingly unsolvable mysteries - for all this time he had managed to stay more or less out of sight as sort of a mysterious, almost super-human figure, known only to few selected individuals. Secondly, the events leading to his demise had been straight out from a movie - a battle between a criminal mastermind and a private detective genius – the struggle between good and evil, everything you could want from a B-rated thriller. And finally, Sherlock's death in an epic duel which had ended in a massive, flaming explosion that had ripped through the Reichenbach warehouse, leaving no survivors in its wake.

But despite the public clamour for a public funeral, the Holmes family - mainly Mrs. Holmes, being the undisputed head of it - had kept the service as small as was possible without offending Sherlock's memory.

It was held at 11 a.m. on a December Saturday. Beautiful day, cold and crisp and bright; the sharp rays of the winter sun cut in from the windows, the specs of dust dancing in the air like small ghosts from another world. There was no coffin because there wouldn't have been a body to put it in; the only thing that had remained of Sherlock was a single piece of jawbone and few teeth clinging to it, by which he had been identified. The rest of him had been consumed by the flames that had raged the whole night through, until the exhausted firemen finally put out the last of the fire at the dawn of the day. By then, of course, it had been much too late for Sherlock.

The church was quiet; the final chords of a musical piece performed by Sherlock's cousin, a tall, thin man in his forties, had just faded out. The atmosphere was heavy and didn't correspond with the beauty of the day outside; inside the church, grief clouded whatever sun may have been shining. For some silence can provide comfort, and for John Watson, sitting in the second row behind Sherlock's family, it often did. Now, however, as he knew it was his turn to walk to the front and say some words about the man he had loved and lost, forever, the silence felt unbearable.

How could he go there, in front of all these people who all thought they had known Sherlock? Sure, they had known his brilliance, his eccentricity, his goodness and his faults - and yet they hadn't a clue, they couldn't know him in the same way as John who had shared his heart and soul with him. How could he go in front of them and try to express the magnitude of his loss? To convey how, when he had heard about his death, a part of him had turned cold, died with him, and he had wished he would have died as well, at times he still did -

But he had to go and do what needed to be done, now and tomorrow and the day after, because that was what Sherlock had wanted. His final letter , the scribble written on the backside of a Chinese restaurant take-away menu and stuffed in the pocket of John's favorite jacket, had made it clear that John must carry on.

His last message to him, a text received only some half an hour before the fire had broken out, had asked for his forgiveness. John wasn't able to grant him that. Not yet.

He stood up – slowly, like a man who is in great pain but just manages to bear it, and walked to the front of the church. The distance between where he had been sitting and where he was heading wasn't long, only some tens of feet, but it felt like the longest journey he had ever taken in his life. He felt the eyes of the fellow mourners on him as he slowly walked towards the altar - as small a number as it may have been, the presence of each and every one of them was intense to the point of being overwhelming.

He stopped as he reached the table where Sherlock's picture was placed, alongside some flowers. John stood there for a while, his back towards the patient and silent audience, and looked at the photograph. It wasn't very old, taken perhaps a few months ago; Sherlock looked very much like himself. Intense eyes, pale skin, sharp features softened by the wild hair; John had to stop himself from touching the glass with his fingertips.

Gone. Forever.

Sherlock's eyes looked at him from the image.

John had to close his own. They felt hot and dry.

He turned around, and looking at no one in particular in the audience, cleared his throat to speak. His voice was steady and clear, even if more quiet than usual. "I'm not a man of words, never have been." He held a little pause. "And at a moment like this I find it even more difficult to put into words the loss we all face today. So instead, I will read a poem by W.H Auden."

He adjusted his position slightly and started. His voice cut the silence as sharply as the stab of pain inside his chest.

.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good."

.

John's voice didn't break; his heart was already in pieces.

x

x

x

x

He knew he was awake but he sure as hell didn't feel like it. Everything was heavy; his legs, arms, chest, head, even his mind felt like it had been injected with liquid lead. Not to speak of his eyelids - they were practically glued over his eyes, impossible to lift. The sleep from which he had woken up from was still very close by, he could easily fall back into it, it was luring him - but he couldn't allow it, it felt like something was amiss, that he absolutely needed to wake up.

Using every piece of strength he had he forced his eyes open, only to be blinded by the brightness of the room he was in. It was white, everywhere, the kind of cold overpowering shine you get when the midday sun shines into a room with walls as blank as newly fallen snow. It was completely quiet; the only sound he heard was his own breathing which sounded loud and difficult in the total silence surrounding him. He knew that the inhales and exhales he took and the ones he heard were one and the same, but he still found it difficult to believe that they came from the same source.

Narrowing his eyes to protect his aching head, he tried to lift his right hand, only to realize he wasn't able to do so. That notion set off the first alarm in his head; the second was launched a second later as the fact that he didn't know his location reached his still sluggish mind. Turning his head towards his unmovable hand he saw the reason why it was so - it was strapped into the metal bed frame with what seemed to be a very sturdy limb restraint. Testing its strength once more, even if knowing it to be useless, he yanked his arm, this time with more strength. But just as he had assumed, to no avail; the leather strap hugging his wrist looked like it would be able to endure the attempts of a person possessing physical strength far beyond his own.

He tried to get his mind in order, to gather his straying thoughts and awake the reason which seemed to still be sleeping. He needed to analyze the situation, to get facts straight and make a plan of action - but his head felt so off, so blunt and useless. It was this slowness of his mind that made the panic raise its ugly head a bit, not the fact that he was lying strapped in a bed somewhere he didn't know.

Focus, focus, focus-

How did I get here?

To his shock he realised he didn't have a clue. There were no memories.

The door opened, interrupting him. A woman walked in, in her early thirties perhaps - dark hair, dark eyes, dressed in plain white clothes, pushing a small metal cart in front of her. There were some IV-bags on it, and some syringes. She parked the trolley next to the bed, seemingly not paying any attention to him and walked back to close the door; he wasn't able to see what was behind it.

"Where am I?" His voice was raspy and sounded almost offensively loud in the quietness of the room.

The woman looked at him, as if only now realizing that he was in the room. Then, recovering quickly, she shook her head ever so slightly and smiled a bit. Her eyes were soft and deep, and the expression on her face sympathetic. "One of those days again, Tim?" She took one of the syringes and tapped it with her fingers, examining the contents against the light coming from the window.

He stared at her, blank expression on his face. "Tim?" There was genuine surprise in his voice.

The woman put the syringe back to the trolley and turned her full attention to him. "Yes, Tim, that is your name." Her voice was very patient.

He was only able to stare at her. "No, it's not." Why was his mind so slow? Was he drugged?

The answer came in the next moment as she put some disinfectant on a cotton pad and the wiped his left arm with it. To his increasing distress he saw that there were several small punctures in the area she was now cleaning.

When she spoke her voice was still very soft, very kind - as if she had gone through the same conversation before. "You aren't Tim? What is your name, then?"

He opened his mouth to reply but realized in an instant that he didn't know the answer.

He had no idea.

The woman smiled a small, knowing smile, took the syringe from the trolley and quickly injected the contents into his vein. "It's OK , Tim, sometimes you get confused. The doctor will see you in the afternoon so you can talk about it. Now get some rest."

Before he had time to come up with a response he felt an irresistible tiredness washing over him, the waves of the same persistent sleep from which he had just minutes ago escaped from, and couldn't do anything but to fall back into it, deep deep deep into it, into a place with no name or time.