Adam Morgenstern is Professor Moriarty (napoleonic_star) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-27 20:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | moriarty, sherlock holmes |
Who: Adam and Daryl
What: Celebrating her grandmother's birthday
Where: Bathos 204
When: Sunday afternoon
Warnings: Excellent if you're in need of a cathartic cry, with the usual mood whiplash between utterly adorable and mind-breakingly deperessing.
It wasn’t the solid week of scouring Ms. Dailey’s home and personal possessions for any and all clues that exhausted her. It wasn’t the dozens of charts she had compiled that made her muscles ache when she woke that morning. It wasn’t the lack of sleep and proper nutrition that made her feel as if she had just lived a thousand years in one night. It was the calendar, the neat rows of black and white cells with pristine numbers in the corners, that weighed on her shoulders like a two-ton truck. From her bed, she could see it, staring her in the face, beating her until the breath had left her lungs and she was reduced to mush.
March 27, 2011. Jessica Hockney would have been 99 today. If she had stayed in Musings, if Daryl had stayed with her, then she would have looked not a day over 72. She’d have been as astute as always, mentally sharp and capable. On her own birthday, she’d have made breakfast, not because she wanted to, but because she could. She’d have refused to take the back seat, but finally yielding when Daryl took the reins and held them out of her reach. And even though she didn’t have a sweet tooth, she’d eat more cake than anyone else, because it was her birthday.
Though Daryl hated wasting time, she spent most of the morning in bed. Toby eventually began to paw at her, both out of his own necessity and some misplaced anxiety about her lack of activity. She finally took him for a walk, letting him relieve himself, though she walked as if she were a ghost passing through a haunted house with neither rhyme nor reason. Everything she did was like being on mute, feeling as if the world were passing her by and she couldn’t even see it. After coming in, she fed Toby and locked him in his crate - she couldn’t handle noise today, even quiet noise. With his bone, he was content, completely out of sight and out of mind.
It wasn’t until she was sitting in front of a low coffee table in her living room that she realized something was missing. Fingers wrapped around the lighter, she felt her hand shake as she stared at the unlit wick of the long white candle in the center of the table. She pressed her lips together, setting the lighter down. Something was missing. It had to be recovered.
Ten minutes later, she was opening the door, seeing Adam on the other side. Her expression was flat and blank, as if she were watching paint dry. There was no excitement on her face, no relief. She looked exhausted, skin blotted and pale. Her shoulders sloped as she stepped back, welcoming him inside. “Thank you for coming,” she said, her voice hollow. “It’s...an occasion I thought would be appropriate to share with you.”