Fic: Pansies

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Title: Pansies
Form/Wordcount: 271
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: PG
Warnings/Content: Major character death(s).  Sorry Frankles.
Written because draycevixen said all the best stories should begin with "Inevitably there are pansies."

Inevitably there are pansies.  Holmes should have known this would be the case.  Pansies for thoughts – and oh, such thoughts.

He’d been at the funeral, of course, and watched as the coffin had been lowered into the ground, but his case had taken him abroad soon after and this is his first opportunity to visit the grave.

There are white pansies for the pallor of his skin, those final two weeks, when every breath taken had been harsher and shallower until there were no more.



There are yellow pansies for the sunshine of his smile – a shared moment, a particularly pawky remark, a ridiculous client.



There are purple pansies for dangers shared and overcome.  Purple too for grief – a dead wife, a behaved dead friend.



There are dark red pansies for passion.  Nights spent together safely behind locked doors in Baker Street; others in country inns where passion was conducted in silence.



And there are pale blue pansies.  These speak of regret.  For opportunities missed, because there will always be tomorrow; for an imagined retirement, perhaps always imaginary, he’d never made any effort to do anything about it.  Are there regrets about his own future?  If there are, then no point in dwelling on them, for no more can be done now.



For he has two weeks, maybe three, before he will be joining his companion of so many years on that final journey.  He has made all the arrangements, including a request for pansies round the grave.

And slowly, Holmes leans heavily on his stick, and walks back to the churchyard gate, stopping once or twice to catch his breath.