What Does She Need?

Aftermath

Silence.
     The answer to the three words she had just uttered, the three words that had taunted her mind for years now. It was painful, excruciatingly so, as she winced at the harshly glowing phone screen which displayed an ended phone call.
     He'd hung up on her ... well and truly hung her out to dry, as though she were one of his experiments. She felt her chest rapidly thrum and her skin flame, as though searing daggers were scraping atop her trembling body; her breathing had become inconsistent and restricted, making it harder for her as she whimpered at the beads of tears which had begun to fall from her weary eyelids to their death, rolling off of her blushed cheeks.
     No, she must pull herself together. Removing her hands from the countertop, she stopped her leaning and regained her posture - her father had always told her that slouching was a bad habit, anyway. She reached down into the pit of her whirring stomach and withdrew a long, somewhat calm breath. If only she could exhale her feelings; although she supposed, in a way, she just had done.
     With a quick shake of her flustered head to reassure her that she must be overthinking, much as usual, she knew she had to rationalise this situation.
      She hadn't called him, he had been the one to call her - in fact, she hadn't even picked up her phone the first time he had called, and only reluctantly done so the second time. Plus, in a way that was so unlike him, what with his cutting remarks and arduous exterior, he had sounded almost genuine!
     Almost, if not for the unwavering doubt that dictated her mind wherever he was involved. Was that doubt not the reason that she had so desperately tried to avoid the phone call in the first place? Had that doubt not just proven its omniscience? The doubt formed from years and years of empty promises, empty words, empty gestures and even an empty coffin. The man himself was empty.
     Yet, the one controversy to the doubt's wrath still remained: he had told her he loved her.
     What's more, he had said it first. She doubted he had ever said it in his life, not to anybody, not ever ... how could he have? He shunned away from the company of others. Yes, albeit, he'd accumulated a small group of friends over the past few years - she was even considered to be one of them, as he had so reminded her - but he would never abandon the impenetrable shield he had forged to guard his emotions. Besides, friends don't treat each other like that, but she supposed that was partially her fault, because the feelings she harboured for him were not the feelings that friends share, either.
     Should she call him back? What would she say? What would he say? She decided against the idea almost immediately, there was no way she could endure such an ordeal again.
     Unable to comprehend why he had ended the call, especially after she had given in to his pleading and begging with something he knew would torture her to give to him, her loneliness struck her like a bullet; naturally, bullets always fly at the innocent. She knew that standing there in the same pool of silence would result in her drowning, she was barely keeping afloat now. However, there was nobody for her to turn to, nobody to comfort her, and nowhere to go.
     She wanted this agony to end. Craving relief, she began to move her feet; slowly and with a great deal of focus, one by one and step by step, she eventually trudged her way out of her kitchen, her sore eyes drooping all the while.
She respected her life too much to end it, what with working alongside the dead being her profession, although she really was beginning to question what she had left to live for. Alas, she knew her only escape would be temporary, and resolved in the safe confines of her thick white duvet and embracing mattress, two items which had always presented her with the most unconditional of loves.
     After a few minutes of traipsing about the rooms of her petite flat, she crawled her way into the shelter of her bed and bundled her small frame up. Scientifically speaking, the smaller the surface area of an object remains, the less of a rate it can be affected by other
reactants. She hoped that by scrunching herself up she could reduce her turmoil, yet so far this was proving unsuccessful.
     As she ground her eyelids together, she questioned his motives for destroying her mentality. The man who knows everything surely knew what he was doing - what he was doing to her.
     It was whilst she pondered this thought that it occurred to her the last words to leave her tongue were the words which she wished she had never offered him.
     "Never again," she whispered to herself, in a desperate attempt for her previous words to stop lingering on the tip of her tongue, and then perhaps they would stop lingering in the depths of her mind as well.
     As her thoughts gradually became less vivid, and the harsh tapestries of her brain began to unravel themselves, she fell into a sea of slumber. A mystic green, crystal blue sea which gazed into her soul.
     Her last conscious thought was one only to indulge her state of dreaming: Sherlock Holmes had told her that he loved her, and Molly had said it back.