Valiant {Book Two of the Incandescent Trilogy}

Chapter Four: Memento Mori

“Why now?” Amelia cut him off, entire body stiff, and her hands in fists. Her voice sounded tearful, but her eyes were completely dry—they’d dried up many months ago. She stared at him, her gaze accusatory and scrutinising. “Why did it have to be now?”

“Why not now?” Sherlock seemed confused. “I thought you would be glad to see me.”

“Don’t give me that.” Amelia’s entire body was trembling. “I was just starting to move on from you, Sherlock. It’s been three years.”

“I made a mistake.” said Sherlock. “I should have told you from the start, or any time after that. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Amelia spat at him. “Why couldn’t you tell me?”

“I told you—I had to dismantle Moriarty’s network. There was a price on your head. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Did you bother to think for one second that perhaps, just perhaps, I felt same about losing you?” Amelia said. He didn’t reply to that. Amelia threw the handle of her shattered mug in the sink, her palm dripping with crimson from where it had been cut on the slivers of ceramic. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“I think that’s a bit excessive.”

Amelia laughed—the sound was completely angry and empty. Sherlock resisted the urge to flinch at the noise. “Excessive?” she repeated. “No, what was excessive was not telling your fiancé that you were going to the roof of St. Bart’s to kill yourself—oh, no, wait, I’m sorry, fake killing yourself. What was excessive was not telling her or her brother that you were alive any day since then. That was excessive—not anything I did. So I return to the first point, I don’t ever want to see you again. You know where the door is.”

“Amy, I’m not leaving. I left you for two and a half years—”

“Which is precisely why you are going to leave.” She bit the inside of her lip. “Actually, no, you can stay. I have a flight to catch at half past one, and then we’ll never see each other again.”

“You are overreacting.” said Sherlock.

“Am I? Am I really? You know, aside from the whole ‘throwing my tea at you’ thing, because that really was quite a waste of good tea, I’ve been doing quite well, I think.”

“You haven’t moved on, you know you haven’t.” Sherlock said. “You came back after over a year and a half to take things that reminded you of me to…New York, was it? You packed the book I wrote for you, my journals, you even took that absolutely ridiculous hat of mine. You stayed the night here, Amy. You were desperate for me to come back to Baker Street. Perhaps I’m not the best when it comes to understanding sentiment, but Amy, you wear that ring—the one I got you—around your neck as though it is some sort of war medal. The scars on your skin; they mark the days I should’ve come back to you, the days that we should have spent together. I never should have left you, Amy. I know that. I can’t change anything that I did, but as soon as I could, I came back to you. I watched you try and move on, Amy. And it pained me to see you look at other people, both men and women, the way you used to look at me.”

Sherlock had tears in his eyes now. He looked as though he were a child after being yelled at by his parents—cowardly, frightened, and still desperate to explain his story, to explain why he’d done the things he had.

“I wanted nothing but to tell you, Amy. I-I could see you trying to find someone else; to-to fix everything I had broken so completely, and not being able to find anyone. And all of that, all of your scars, everything that happened in the past two and half years, I have to live with knowing that I put that on you. That I caused you pain, and I didn’t have to be there. All of it is my fault, and I did it because some sort of selfish notion that I could save you—that I could protect you from the evil you could have fought alongside me. But, Amy, if there is one thing good in this life of mine—after years of being tormented by people who couldn’t understand, of suffering the injustices of society that couldn’t open their minds to another belief or perception, it would you. You are the only thing in this world that matters to me. I don’t care what happens, I just…I just need you. So please, I am begging you, you can’t just leave me, not before I try to fix everything that I’ve done.”

Amelia stared at him, wringing her hands. With a shaky smile that threatened to crumble into dust, she reluctantly met his eyes. “You’ve changed.” she said in a small voice.

Sherlock laughed weakly. “Evidently,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “so have you.”

“Evidently,” Amelia repeated, voice hollow. She looked away, “The Sherlock I knew wouldn’t have cried.”

“It was a nice touch though, don’t you think?”

She looked away, unable to concoct a suitable response.

Sherlock let out a small breath, and took a seat in his usual chair, fingers tapping away at the arms. Amelia watched him, a sombre smile upon her face. The tension, and the animosity between them was palpable; it left a bitter, metallic tang on the tip of Amelia’s tongue as though she had eaten something sour or spoilt. She could hear the sink dripping, singular droplets of water pattering against the metal sink. Neither she nor Sherlock rose to turn it off, letting it reverberate in the silence; louder than any noise Amelia had ever heard. It snapped the brittle quiet, filling the gap that no platitudes could ever occupy. The silence was unbearable; it threatened to crush her under its heavy weight, and take all the air from her lungs—Amelia felt like she was suffocating. She was drowning in the lack of words, yet, she was also being saved; if she were to attempt to open her mouth to speak, Amelia was sure her composure would have fractured, and while she wanted nothing more to rid of this silence—it was this silence that killed her, and it was this silence that saved her.

And so the paradox continued on.