Lament
By Cybra

A/N: It has been a while since I last wrote Basil solely for The Great Mouse Detective fandom. And this idea has been trapped in my skull forever.

Disclaimer: The Great Mouse Detective and the Basil of Baker Street Mysteries series belong to the Walt Disney Company and the late Eve Titus respectively. The name of "Sherringford" for Basil's first name is the creation of Mlle. Irene Relda.

Sherringford Basil reflected that it was not supposed to end this way.

However, he had known that barring a lucky shot from a criminal, he would be the last mouse standing in their partnership. The death of Mrs. Judson had brought that horrid reality home, nestling the worry deep in his chest where it festered within him.

Yet he had simultaneously—foolishly—seen his dearest friend as someone who would always be there, someone who would remain when all others left him.

Basil grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to will away the cold marble tombstone engraved with the name "David Q. Dawson."

The doctor had died peacefully in his sleep after a frightfully long bout of pneumonia at age seventy-six. Basil remembered waking late the next morning, expecting Dawson to be present in his usual chair but finding no one. In his mind, he could still see himself walking to the door of Dawson's bedroom and knocking. He had grown alarmed when the good doctor did not answer his knocks or his calls and entered the room to the sight of his friend lying dead in the bed.

It had been a serious blow in more ways than one. Dawson had been a constant anchor for him in an ever-changing world. The doctor sometimes had even acted as a barrier between the detective and the rest of mousekind, who would have seen Basil's behavior as the earliest signs of lunacy. When black moods struck him, the good doctor had always known when to leave him alone and when to intrude. And when he needed a stout heart and a steady set of hands beside him, Dawson would drop everything to come to his aid.

But now all that remained of that kind soul were a few photographs, a collection of written accounts of the detective's work, and a marble slab that contained little more than his name, his birth and death dates, and a small epitaph.

Three months had passed, and the pain had not eased. Basil still found himself automatically calling to Dawson to examine a body, cutting himself off in mid-word. He would glance to his right, Dawson's accustomed place, and be shocked when he did not find the good doctor there. He would stare at an empty green chair, pondering when the doctor would return from his practice and remember that Dawson would never return to Baker Street.

It was as if someone had cut off his hand and he was still reaching for things with the stump.

He choked on a fiercely suppressed sob, coughing as his throat protested against the action. He tightly gripped his arms—one atop the other—and pulled them against his body.

A single tear fell. It alone landed on the dirt his friend lay beneath.

Alone. Just like the one who had shed it.

How bleak the future now has grown since I must face it all alone.
My road is weary, dark and steep - and it is for myself I weep.
— "Herald's Lament" by Mercedes Lackey