This is the third part of a series. I would very much suggest going back and reading the other two parts before starting this one.

"The Girl Who Counted" & "The Girl Who Mattered"

Sorry about all the feels. D=

Death vs. Dying

It's not as if they are the same thing. Dying is still warm, still connected to life as we know it. Death is cold. Dying is letting go. Death is being gone. Death is something I don't know anything about, except that embalmed bodies are poor representations of the people who once animated them. Dying must be a lot like moving from one place to another. I've said goodbye many times in my life. Life goes on—for me and for those I leave behind. But it feels lonely, especially at first, and the nostalgia for past lives never completely disappears. - Nancy Meredith

I had all sorts of thoughts running through my head. Thoughts on life and death, right and wrong. My mind palace swarmed with such thoughts and it was unbelievably unbearable. However, that wasn't the worst part. Memories, bad memories, painful memories, long forgotten memories were flooding back. Things I'd stuffed into the corners of drawers and closets, things I thought I had deleted forever, all those things I'd done my best to forget, coming back to haunt me. Yet even that wasn't the worst part. The absolute worst part was the screaming. The constant, merciless shrieking that howled through every lonely room, every desolate corridor of my now damaged mind palace along with every bone and every vein in my body. It wouldn't stop, it couldn't stop and I suffered second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour. I sat there hoping I would just die so the screaming and endless torment would just end.

My normally clear and clever head was now polluted. It was filled with anger and loss, fear and sorrow, pain and suffering. These were emotions that I'd never learned to deal with, ones that I couldn't even recognize right away on my own. So all of my feelings, all that sentiment, from all those indifferent years of my dull life, came thundering inside my head. Including the day my father left, the night my mother died, the day I died, and the lonely months that followed… Molly had been the best thing in my life, but in a way she was the worst as well. She made me aware of all the emotions and sentiment, and allowed me to break completely when she left. But I honestly would not have had it any other way.

But to sum things up, it wasn't until the moment I lost my almost wife that I felt true and unrelenting pain.

Friends and family were saddened to gather for a funeral instead of a wedding. The beautiful, cheerful atmosphere that should have occurred was replaced with a painful, hard to breathe air that burned one's eyes and throat. There were not any happy tears that often accompanied weddings. I'd never really appreciated happy crying until that day. I'd never really understood how or why people did it. But once I gave it a bit of thought, I could see its true beauty. Crying is so strongly associated with emotional pain, yet it also occurs in even the most positive situations. One possibility is that happy crying really isn't that different from sad crying. What both have in common is a period of intense emotional arousal. Indeed, brain regions associated with emotional arousal, including areas of the hypothalamus and basal ganglia, are connected to a section of the brainstem called the lacrimal nucleus that stimulates tear production. Given these connections, it is tempting to think that crying is the result of our emotions reaching some kind of boiling point. But evidence suggests instead, that crying may occur only after the worst is over. But in this case, the worst had just begun and there wasn't a dry eye in the audience. The only exception was Victoria. She didn't cry, she hadn't once cried. Maybe I would have normally been concerned, but I was too busy mourning the loss of the one person that had ever understood me.

When I had stood in the front of the funeral's audience, I could feel all sorts of eyes on me. Even my own brother looked at me with concern. It wasn't until later that I realized why. That moment had been the first time since my early childhood that I had cried in public, let alone shown any form of emotion. Everyone surrounding me saw me as a cold, hard man that found excitement in London's newest serial killer and enjoyed the chase of a criminal, even when children were on death's door. I'd spent all my years trying to hide away of all emotions, that everyone just wrongly assumed that I didn't have any. Unfortunately, the one and only person that knew the real Sherlock, the soft and understanding being inside this cold hard shell, was lying dead in a closed casket in front of me.

Closed casket? Many had asked. Molly hadn't been harmed or disabled in any way that showed in an open casket. But it had been an easy decision. I wanted to remember her alive and well, happy and beautiful, pregnant and glowing. Anything but cold and terrifyingly dead.

I held my dear little Victoria Rose in my arms. Many people, including Mycroft, had suggested that I not bring her. Apparently, "funerals are no place for newborns." But she was all I had left of Molly, she was all I had left to hang on to, and there was no way in hell I was about to leave the only good thing in my life with some random babysitter.

I looked down at my daughter fondly. She was my life now and as she stared back up with her big, bright eyes, I realized that no matter what, no matter how hard things were, and no matter how impossible moving on seemed, I would keep myself together. Just for her.

And the long awaited installment of this series begins...

This was very emotional for me to write, but whether that was just me... I don't know.

This story is currently minus a title, if you've got any clever ideas... Please leave me a review... I am sticking with "The Girl Who..."

Thank you guys so much for sticking around for this. I know the last one was finished like two months ago.

I appreciate any comments you guys have. And I do have a legite plot question...

Do you want me to come up with a legite, crime-filled plot? Or, have 6 more chapters of little Victoria Rose growing up? Give it some thought.

One last thing, I've recently created a tumblr, if you'd like to follow me... Send me a message. c:

Thanks loves. C: