It ends like a dream.

The fall. Nothing about it is poetry. It is a tumble out of safety, off of the firm and sturdy rooftop where you are whole, and into the slippery hands of gravity. But you, you horrible fool, gravity is a law, efficient and heartless and utterly without mercy.

You idiot.

You idiot.

Did you think - you thick, beautiful, bleeding child - that this was something you could - could - Sherlock fucking Holmes, you cannot outwit the laws of physics. Of course the impact applied to your body by the pavement after a fall from that height would -

Oh look at you, eyes like the sky in a storm, and you are so pale and I cannot distinguish the whites of your eyes from your flesh, so pale -

Poetry. It's funny, isn't it? You said so yourself. I will give you all the poetry in the world if you will only just smirk and tease and I don't think I've ever seen your mouth so still - I don't like it, I don't like it - you said you would spend days-sometimes-weeks-at-a-time without talking, but you never did that, you know. I heard you play the violin, but you are - were - are never silent for long. The worst about you. I want the worst about you. I want that, Sherlock, I need that. I need you to be warm and still, thrumming with blood, energy, and breath. Breathing. I know it's boring, but it's important, you clever shit. I need you to be alive and to be quiet. Not this quiet. This disquieting quiet. I don't like it, Sherlock.

Sherlock. Sherlock.

You are the only one in the world, you are.

Don't you understand? You can't be gone.

I hit my head too, you know, just over there. I'm always following you, always a step behind. Sometimes it serves me, you, serves us well. Sometimes it saves your life. Why not this time?

They just scooped you off the ground, all the hands, the reaching, grappling, restricting hands, and they don't let me at you, which is probably good. I could deck you, I could. Who the fuck do you think you are, jumping like that?

I never should have let you out of my sight.

And they've taken you from me. It's not right, it's not fair. You can't misdirect me and die. You can't. You -

Sherlock Holmes, you are no cleverer than death.

(What do I do without you?)