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Does anyone remember that story I was talking about several weeks back? Well I'm finally posting it. Yay. I don't really remember what I was thinking when I wrote this. Maybe I wasn't thinking at all. Anyways, don't ask me any questions about inconsistencies, loose ends, and ambiguous phrases. I wrote it in about a half hour. Anyways.

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You stand above me, my enemy, triumphant at last. You were always so good at looking triumphant. And your victory - so well planned out and executed. And so, I drift here, in a vat of potent acid, my head above the surface, just so I can watch you leave me here. Though I suppose I should count it as a blessing that you pumped me so full of analgesics that I couldn't tell my ass from my elbow. And as I drift here, I can only think to you - 'Congratulations, for a job well done', seeing as my mouth can speak no longer.

When I saw you, back from the dead with your memories intact, I knew that I would die by your hand. You are talking now, probably aware that I can't here a single word you're saying. In spite of that, you keep talking. You know you have all the time in the world, and you intend on using every minute of it.

I suppose, in a way, I knew all along that I deserved this. I murdered you, so it is only fair that you take your proper revenge and murder me back.

All these years I've been fooling myself. I kept on telling myself, and Watson, too, that I tried to save you, that I tried to pull you back onto that ledge. Even as I heard the delicate bones of your hand cracking and popping beneath my heel. And I kept telling that lie. I told it so much I almost believed it.

Almost.

And then I'd see your face, expression splayed across your chiseled features, and I'd hear the bones of your strong hand breaking under my malevolent heel, and I'd hear the empty silence as you fell.

That always surprised me, you know, that you were so silent. You just watched me. Probably right up until the moment you died. And even though I couldn't see you through the white veil of mist, I'm sure you could see me, in all my sadistic glory.

And when I found you, I set all the broken bones in your cold, cold body.

Every last one.

I even stripped you down and bathed your long, lean body.

And then I buried you with all the respect you deserved as my rival and enemy, which was (I am not ashamed to admit) quite a lot.

I even hid your makeshift tomb from prying eyes.

But nothing I did could redeem me of the fact that I had murdered you and lied about it to keep pure my own name.

You've stopped talking, and are now just watching me. Your eyes watch mine as I watch yours, then they follow the path of my disintegrating body, then to the blood seeping out of my broken veins, then back to my face and my eyes.

You kneel, now, on the walkway around the rim of my giant glass bowl and, with a bare hand, brush some of my hair from my eyes. You do not speak, but your mouth forms the words 'Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes.'

I recognize the hand that rests upon my brow. Its tanned surface bears the scars of the wounds that my heel inflicted upon it.

You draw back your hand and place a kiss on two fingertips. You reach out to me again and place the two fingertips, and your sweet kiss, upon my brow, just as I did before I left your cold body in that icy tomb. And then you close my eyes with your warm hand, (just as I, too, did so long ago), and I can sense you draw back. I can sense the tear that falls, solitary, as though it was the solitary tear that fell from my own eye so long ago. And then I sense you walk away, the long, lean legs that I knew so intimately taking you away from me, though not without regret.

My heart is finally slowing, unable to properly pump the acid that now flows through my veins.

They will never find enough evidence to find you guilty of murdering me, but I know that when you look back upon this day, you will see what was and not what could have been.