Work Text:
Sooner or later, they’ll die.
For real. One more miracle will have no bearing.
Breath will shiver on the lips before leaving the body forever. Eyelids will shut against the torrential spin of human life. Or perhaps they’ll get caught in a half-opened position, straining to see fully, never again able to take in the world wide and open.
Hearts will beat for the last time. Arms and legs will fall still.
Faces will freeze in some odd expression.
Stiff and pale.
Marble and stone.
And those cells, those beautiful brain cells, will perish.
***
There will be funerals.
People will throw clumps of soil upon their graves. Bunches of flowers will adorn the polished headstones.
A child will giggle at the wrong moment and adults will frown.
Everyone will go home after that and run soap and stinging water over their fingers, knuckles, palms, wrists. They’ll wash away the dead and put the kettle on.
Then they’ll go watch telly.
***
221B will be empty. No more dazzling bursts of explosions, bellowed arguments, or rainwater and blood dripping off expensive wool and cheap synthetic onto the carpet below.
Just silence and dust motes floating in slanted sunlight.
The life they shared will be evident in the jumble of scientific instruments, stacks of newsprint, rumpled blanket cast upon the sofa, spilled milk seeping onto the scarred kitchen table, sturdy boots beside posh Oxfords, chemical stains on an armchair, shopping lists scattered on the desk, and lamps still lit.
Remainders. Reminders.
Remnants of the good years.
***
There they go. Falling impossibly up, all wingbeats and muted radiance.
A great big brain and his great big heart.
***
London is resplendent in autumn.
Fallen leaves tumble along the pavement ignited by rays of glowing, malleable light. Everything is imbued with the crackling promise of approaching winter, and, in the streets, men and women move a little faster, tilting their faces toward the dizzy sunshower overhead.
The detective and the blogger never burned this brightly whilst they were alive.
(Too many gunshots, too much gore, too many riddles unsolved)
Now they do.
Like stars that never die.
Inflamed, illuminated.