"You remember, Sherlock, when I declared my love for you?" Victor whispered, seeming to relax now as the words flowed freely from his mouth. I sat still, not allowing my internal reaction to display itself on my face just yet. My cheeks paled, but aside from such an unavoidable reaction I did nothing else to display my sudden surprise.
"I suppose...well yes. I suppose I penned it down as the mad ramblings of an intoxicated man...nothing more." I muttered. "I suppose I will have to categorize this under the same."
"No, no Sherlock you kid yourself. You're denying me because you're afraid to listen, but you must." Victor insisted, leaning ever farther forward so that his hands extended down to the edge of the coffee table, bent over with his urgency and flushed with the effort of declaring such human emotions. I couldn't tell what he was feeling, if he was afraid to continue speaking, or if he was ashamed. More likely than anything else was the possibility of his ultimate relief, breathing easier now that he could free such a weight from his chest.
"I don't have to do anything, Victor. I am not under your command." I muttered. "I do think you are ill, and it would do you well to retire."
"I will NOT! Sherlock, Sherlock won't you listen?" Victor insisted, sliding off of his chair now so that he was kneeling on the floor, looking to be perfectly docile and within my control. He wanted to patronize me; he wanted to bow down to that little piece of arrogance that set itself inside of my head. He was playing now to my ego. Victor's eyes were alight, his hands stretching out to the soles of my shoes and clutching them within his long white fingers. He looked perfectly overwhelmed, though his eyes would not leave mine.
"I took you within this house, Sherlock, long before you were any use to me but for entertainment. I never expected to grow fond; I never expected to fall in love." Victor exclaimed.
"I should hope not!" I muttered, yanking my feet away from him in a sudden realization of personal space. His hands fell defeated onto the table, though he was still stretched out before me, and perfectly maddened in anyone's definition.
"But things change, people change. Sherlock, darling you have grown to be more than I could ever have hoped. Your innocence shines through, your talent, your beauty...you are my most beloved muse, the voice that whispers to my heart when all else has fallen silent!" Victor exclaimed. I remembered back to the poems which he had dedicated himself to writing, those that were scattered about the desk and never destined to reach past his bedroom. I had often wondered why he would never publish them, nor would he ever share. Was I really the subject of them all?
"Is this why your life has fallen into shambles, Victor? A love you know could never be reciprocated?" I wondered quietly. "You know of my loyalties."
"I know of them, Sherlock. Fallen for a subpar, greasy sailor." Victor growled. "You could have so much better, Sherlock...so much better!"
"And I suppose in your narrow definition, better just means you?" I presumed. Victor gave a low groan of remorse, his fists clenching now and his eyes finally shutting in the effort of remaining calm.
"Yes." He whispered. "Yes, me. Sherlock, you understand that our lives would not change? Oh we can elope, I could take you wherever you wish to go...but if you wanted we could just continue on as we have been. We could live in our little house, enjoy the days and spend the nights, we could write our poetry with the other in mind and..."
"Victor!" I exclaimed, at last getting to my feet and throwing the newspaper down upon his outstretched arms. "Listen to yourself!"
"I have!" he man insisted. "I have listened to myself, over and over again within this accursed head of mine! This is the speech I have prepared, oh but to a careless audience!"
"You're correct in assuming I do not care. Let your love die, Victor, distract yourself with far more worthy candidates." I demanded.
"More worthy? Is there such a thing?" he whimpered, looking up towards me now with his confidence melting away. All the aggression had died into a puddle of dormancy, and it became increasingly clear that the man wanted nothing but to settle his head down in his arms and cry. Even now I could see tears emerging.
"I assume there could be." I agreed. "Though finding a suitable match also includes stepping out the front door."
"Sherlock..." Victor muttered, shaking his head as if merely speaking my name had become a burden. "Sherlock you understand I have never felt something as simple as love before?"
"I believe you haven't." I agreed. "Though whatever this emotion is, extended towards me, it cannot amount to anything. It must be forgotten, it must die." Victor's face screwed up in his effort to contain his tears, and when he opened his mouth there was produced nothing but a small croak, as if whatever words he attempted were stifled within the effort of keeping under control. I took that as his last word, not bothering to consider that it was not very much of a word at all, and stubbed my cigarette into the ash tray that sat alongside Victor's clenched hands. He took no notice, he didn't try to extend his arm to catch mine, he kept his distance. He was a hopeless romantic for sure, though he was a respectable one through and through.
"I'm sorry." I managed, and with that I made what could only be my exit. I could not stay to listen to more of what he was saying; I could not stand to look at that once proud figure now succumbed to such a pitiful state. I felt guilty for denying him, though I also felt quite strong in the presence of temptation. Oh what my more youthful self would have said, what that foolish boy would have done! To hear such a speech when I first arrived, it would have broken my common sense down to the bare minimum. I would have had him tonight, had it been about a year prior. I would have fantasized about this moment over and over again in my head. Though tonight, now that I had grown through my adolescent admiration and found what true companionship ought to be...well tonight that poor man left me no choice but to run towards my room, lock the door, and vow not to open it but for the utmost emergency. And even then...even then I might be hesitant. 

I slept uneasily, haunted with the idea of Victor's figure lurking just outside of my door. I wasn't sure where my fears were stemmed, for I had no proof that he had even left the living room, though I still felt as though I was being watched. When I fell to sleep I had terrible dreams, firstly about Victor and his most desperate attempts. For a while I saw myself under him, in quite the same fashion as I had accidentally witnessed in the club he had taken me to all those weeks back. I saw myself unwilling, upset, and helpless. It was a nightmare indeed, turned to a rather frightening image of a man who looked very much like myself walking down an aisle towards an unknown groom. These dreams were quite normal; they seemed to be explainable by the occurrences I had witnessed just before going to bed, and the thoughts that were lingering on my mind throughout the duration of the night. They didn't concern me, however horrible they were. The real nightmare came when I returned to a dream I had once had, so far back in my thoughts that I only seemed to remember in the areas of my deep subconsciousness. I was there again, wading on the sandbar towards the horizon of the deep ocean. In front of me lay nothingness, and I was not able to turn my head behind to check how far the shore line had fallen. The dream was the same as before, the cold was still fresh upon my legs, the salty breeze caught within my nose...though this time there was a commotion. This time I could see off to my left what could only be the bow end of a ship, stuck straight in the air as if the rest of it was hidden under the waves. What was exposed was burning, and there were men jumping from the masts and into the water below. I saw but a single life boat, though it was filled to capacity and was forced to push the remaining survivors away. It was going to sink, sooner or later. I watched for a long while, standing safe upon my personal sandbar, watching as the ship sank lower and lower into the ocean, to rest eventually on the sand hundreds of feet below. What had once been the quiet of the sea breeze was over taken with screams, and before long I noticed that the commotion had stopped. Before long they quieted, and only those in the lifeboat remained moving. Lumps that resembled frozen men were floating by their life jackets, face down and motionless in the cold water. I stared for some time, trying to convince myself that the boat was not recognizable. But before I could do anything to distinguish it, before I could make out any single one of the frozen bodies, my sandbar vanished. All of the sudden I found myself sinking into the water, darkness growing, the cold overtaking my nose and mouth...this time I couldn't catch a breath, this time when I gasped I felt my lungs filling with water, my eyes burning with the salt... and a scream. A bang! All of the sudden the silence of the ocean was interrupted with noises of an all too familiar sound, a knocking upon my door. I woke with a jerk out of my bed, undisturbed only because of the lock that had been bolted before I fell to sleep. I sat up in bed, wondering if I had imagined the knocking now that it had fallen silent. The room was dark, there seemed to be no motion within or outside the door...had the knocking been a part of my dream? Bang! There it was again, a single beat on the wooden paneling, my blood now running cold. I could not see the clock, though I knew in an instant that Victor must be at it again. The man was probably drunk out of his mind, having drowned his sorrows in any sort of toxin he could lay his hands on. In that moment, despite how it terrified me, I surely wished that Victor was the most of my worries. I dared not think what else might be lurking outside my door, begging for entry. The room had fallen silent again, though only for an instant. I managed to shoot my hand out from under my blankets, a chill overtaking my entire body as I exposed the light of the oil lamp, illuminating the darkness in a very eerie orange glow. The clock on the wall read three o'clock in the morning...
"Who's there?" I called out, my voice trembling as I curled my limbs back within the warm shelter of my blanket. Two knocks this time, though they were quieter now. "WHO IS IT?" I demanded again, now raising my voice to a most violent yell. Perhaps my anger would scare him away, and make him realize that he would not gain entry just by spooking me.
"It's Mary!" at last called a choking, distinctly feminine voice. Mary? I couldn't at first process what would bring that woman to my door at such an hour, though as the seconds mounted and my limbs stilled I began to realize what it all meant. I began to realize... My body grew heavy, my lungs refused to inflate, and for a moment the room went dark. Mary. I found myself running towards the door, praying that she was here on account of some house fire, or robbery. I prayed, I prayed... My fingers found the lock, fumbling to release it and grasp the knob. She was there, illuminated by a single candle which was clutched in the hands of my most devious host. He was lingering behind her in the shadows, standing tall and proud in the darkness while the woman herself was clutching to the doorframe, her hands gripping towards the wood so as to help her to stay upright. She was dressed only in her nightgown and robe, though by the streaks on her face I could tell the truth. By the despair in her eyes...I knew it before she had to say it.
"No." I whispered, words failing me now. "No."
"Sherlock..." Mary whispered, her words choking out once again as a sob overtook whatever language she may have been able to muster. "Sherlock it...the boat..."
"No." I said again, shaking my head as if to ensure that I didn't have to hear it. No, if she never told me it wasn't true. If she never told me, nightmares would remain just within my head.
"What Ms. Morstan is trying to say, Sherlock..." Victor hesitated in his words, his blue eyes shining abnormally bright within the inky blackness. "Is that Mr. Watson is most likely dead." Mary's grip slackened from the doorframe, and she tumbled to the wooden floor beneath me. I might have fallen too. I would have preferred it. For a moment I stared at Victor, and for longer than a moment he stared at me. But I could see it; oh I could see that wretched thing. A smile. 

News broke the next morning, the news which was printed all along each of the newspapers that were being sold on the corners of each street. The ship had sunken in the evening, Mary's father heard of it only in the middle of the night, and thus she felt obligated to rely the news to me, so as to ensure that I didn't find out on my morning walk. It didn't feel real, in such a way that I could not bring myself to mourn. It wasn't possible, the bad luck that would have had to play a significant role in taking down John Watson's boat. It didn't seem as if anything had changed, really. It wouldn't feel like anything changed, he could be alive or dead at the moment, and I'd still be alone. It would be different in two years' time, less than that now. The little date that I had scrawled upon the calendar, still too far away to properly be penned down in its appropriate square. That day would feel different, when the ship that was supposed to arrive never did. As of now...well I wouldn't have known if it was not the paper boy's sole ambition but to torment me. Mary stayed for breakfast, crying the tears that I might have shed as if in my replacement. I couldn't fathom anything deeply enough to manage a tear; I could not weep over something I still did not believe. The thunk of the daily paper came from the door, and before long Victor Trevor returned to the breakfast table with the rolled up news in his hand, clucking his tongue rather carelessly as he unrolled the paper and began to read. Mary was still crying, and I was still silent. I wasn't sure what was going on in Victor's head, though his eyes were searching quite frantically, as if he was looking for something specific. A list of the deceased, perhaps. I knew that he wanted nothing more than this to prove true, and John's death confirmed. He cared not for that boy, in his own words that subpar sailor, and undoubtedly he saw this tragedy as something quite different. In his eyes it was most likely a blessing.
"Well you know, there's always a chance. Who knows if a lifeboat had escaped the wreckage, who knows if he might have...I don't know, swam to shore?" Victor mumbled at last, perhaps finding that Mary's stifled sobs were becoming a bit bothersome.
"Yes, yes I know. There's always hope." Mary agreed quietly. "But I can't help thinking...oh there's just a hole in my heart. I felt it before my father even told me; I felt it in the night."
"As if he took a part of you with him." I agreed, my voice trembling as I recognized that very same feeling within myself. There was a notable hollowness within my chest, a gaping feeling that I figured could accept the truth far quicker than my brain could. Where my heart might have been, well I felt as if I could open up my ribs and press my finger all the way out the other side. Nothing was there, it was empty.
"Tragedies like this, well dare I say are fairly common." Victor mumbled, though what his motivation for speaking such optimism was I could not guess. Surely he wasn't trying to make us feel better? Hours after the news had broken, was he really trying to ease our pain and encourage us to move on?
"Victor, might you do us all a favor and shut up?" Mary mumbled, perhaps the most aggressive sentence I had ever heard from her dainty mouth. Obviously the command humored him enough to comply, for while he did us the liberty of quieting he instead took to chuckling. Finally he seemed satisfied, and so in the little lull of silence he lit up a cigarette and puffed.
"Will there be a funeral? Will they ever recover the bodies is the ship...is it gone?" I whispered quietly. Without a word Victor thrusted the paper towards me, so that it fell into my empty breakfast plate with the front page bearing the remarkable headline, Cargo Ship Disaster: 150 Estimated Dead. There was no picture to go along with it, for no one had been able to get a roll of film to witness the sinking. No one was there to help, to even spectate as the ship was going down. They had been alone, lost in the same silence that had been haunting my dreams for a while now. I looked through the article for lack of a better thing to do, and read up on the estimated cause and the final calamities. There had been a storm, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, which had hit particularly hard. They could only estimate, for there were no perceived survivors that could attest to the outcome, though the ship was presumed to have sunk due to heavy waves and perhaps even a lightning strike. The wreckage was already on its way to the bottom of the ocean, and as of now they did not know of any survivors. If there were any bodies they had been collected, though most men had neglected their life jackets and were presumed to have gone down with the wreckage. I trembled with the thought of it, my thoughts spanning back to that terrible recurring dream. What had I witnessed, unknowingly in my dream? I had seen a shipwreck, a familiar vessel sinking into the waves...a lifeboat! Oh it was too much to hope for, so I kept my superstitions to myself. Though there was a lifeboat, laden with men, all of which could be the one I cared most for! Who knows yet if John Watson had survived, no one knew for sure who was alive and who was dead. There was a chance, one that I dare not act upon quite yet, or speak of. Though I felt some stimulation in that particular area in my chest, a sort of spark of hope, a mere tingle. Perhaps that was the only reassurance I needed, the very hope that kept me from breaking down into tears. I couldn't accept that John was dead, perhaps because I knew very deep down that he was not.
"They have no list of the deceased." was all I managed, throwing the newspaper back down to the middle of the table and looking towards Mary as if to spark some hope within her as well. The poor woman, I could tell that her heart was aching just as severely as was mine.
"No reported survivors." She added on, as if to remind me not to get my hopes up too high. There were so many factors, so many things that may have gone wrong.
"Not yet." I agreed quietly. Victor hummed very quietly, his eyes cast downwards onto the table so as to hide their sparkle. I could read his mind, right then and there. He dared laugh at me, for the string of hope that I was attempting to ravel. He seemed to think I was wasting my time with my mourning.
"Why don't we just...well let's just stay positive?" I managed finally. "We have no certainties, not one way or the other."
"I do remember being scolded for suggesting the very same." Victor pointed out. I looked towards my breakfast knife, wondering just how much damage I could inflict in the short amount of time I would have using the element of surprise.
"They'll cumulate the list once they get more information; oh I'm sure they're just tormenting the poor sailors at the docks. I'm sure they're tormenting them." Mary whispered to herself, shaking her head and squeezing out what would be her final tears of her visit. She seemed to be collecting herself, now grasping onto the same hope that I had managed to snatch from nothing but my own dreams, my own superstition. I nodded quietly, not able to manage any other words that would deceive us one way or another. Certainly I didn't want to make any affirmative claims, I did not want to swear to what little knowledge I believed I might have. I kept quiet, though in my head I began rambling numerous prayers of wellbeing. It had come to the point where John Watson might return to me, sooner now than two years. He would either show up on this door step, with his adventure now sunk under the Mediterranean, or he would never return again.