Rows and Bows

AN: First, I want to thank all of you who favorited/followed/reviewed these stories, I'm glad someone is reading and enjoying these and I'm really grateful. Secondly, this will be the last entry for this group of ficlets, so thanks for those of you who stuck with with me through these last 8 fics. Lastly, trigger warnings for cocaine. I'm not always one for happy endings.

The tears tugged at his eyes, but he wouldn't let them fall. Nobody was there to see his cold, hardened eyes as his chalky fingers prodded at the frets, choppily playing several bars over and over, adding a bit more each time. He sniffled, half from holding back his overwhelming emotions, half from the tinge of powder dusting his nostrils.

Abruptly, he sat down, violin bumping the ground, leaving a small dent in the smooth, polished wood. Hastily, he scrawled down the last notes between the black and white lines. Quickly, he folded up the sheet, then stared at the names he had labeled on the back. John and Mary. He couldn't hold back. He let the streaks of salt water stream down his chiseled cheeks. No sound came out of his open mouth. His red eyes were empty.

The paper dropped to the table. For a moment, his long fingers rubbed at his eyes. He leaned back in his seat. He didn't move for thirty minutes. His mind was blank but racing at the same time. He hurt so much. The pain was unbearable. No matter how numb his body was, he could still feel the pain of his heart breaking.

His eyes found the table, where the white powder was. He leaned forward. Back craned, the lines flew up his nose. He snorted, then breathed heavily for a minute. It still hurt. He went down again. Another line. The pain remained stubborn. He inhaled more and more chemicals. Before long, all of it was gone.

Slowly, he fumbled around for his violin, and with his bow poised crookedly, long, mournful sounds fluttered off his fingertips. He played, frets dusty with residue on his fingers. He couldn't be bothered to wipe it off. He didn't care. He played the waltz. John's waltz. Mary's waltz. The waltz he would play when he was dying inside but had to smile anyways, for John. The melody was depressed. It cried out for help, beautiful even as it was in agony. If he couldn't express himself in words, he could at least do it in song.

His fingers danced, quickly at first, then gradually slowing. His breathing followed. Eventually they both stopped. His bow clattered to the floor.

There was nobody to hear his mutter his last word: "John."

When John came home, he saw Sherlock laying on the sitting room floor. He shook him. He screamed for him to wake up. He pounded on his chest. He cried out to the skies.

Sherlock did not respond. He just laid there, tear stains dried on his cold, dead skin.

John hugged him tight and cried. He looked around from his place on the floor in desperation. His eyes caught the grainy residue of white on the table, and shortly after he saw the paper. Still clutching Sherlock, he reached up and took it gently between his fingers. Held his last composition, written specially for John. Written in his last, dying breaths.

The edges of the paper crumpled where his hands gripped it like they would never let go. Burying his face in the music, he cried.

John's grip on that paper never faltered.

He held it as Lestrade comforted him. He held it as the people in blue clothes took Sherlock's body away. He held it as he hugged a crying Molly Hooper. He held it as Sherlock was lowered into his grave. He still held it as he raided the bathroom cabinet for all the drugs he could find, and when he washed all those pills down his throat with a tall glass of water, he held it then as well.

The only time he dropped it was when he fell dead on the bathroom tiles.