Fic: Absolution (2/3)
Title: “Absolution” (2/3)
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Ensemble
Pairings: Not specified
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them.
Word Count: c. 15,000 total
Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of injuries, implied past drug use, kidfic, and embarrassing amounts of fluff.
Spoilers: Takes place post-Hiatus, and contains a minor spoiler for ACD’s “The Sign of Four.”
Beta: kim_j_8472
Summary: A year after Sherlock’s return from the dead and on the heels of a near-disastrous case, John discovers that his best friend isn’t done keeping secrets from him.
Full Author's Notes in Part 1
The conference room was too quiet.
Sally had never noticed it before, but then, she had never had reason to be in here alone. Even when they were going over evidence for a case, for hours and hours on end, someone was always at her side and there was always some kind of noise; some sort of distraction.
But when the rest of her teammates filed out and shut the door, she realised just how silent this room could be.
“Are you still there?”
Sally started, and was momentarily thankful that she was relatively alone.
“I am,” she said quickly, turning to the audio controls. “Sorry. I’m just adjusting your end of the line. We’re picking up a lot of extra static... there. Can you still hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Sally drew a deep breath. “Look, you probably don’t remember me -”
Trevor cut her off.
“Sally Donovan, the one person on Lestrade’s team who wasn’t afraid to give Sherlock exactly what he deserved. Of course I remember you. How’ve you been, Sergeant?”
They chatted for a while. Neither having much in common, nor really any reason for contact, there was a lot of ground to cover. It was disconcerting to talk to Trevor, because while he possessed the same observational skills that Holmes did, he never made a big show of his deductions or conclusions. In fact, it was as though he didn’t ever consciously realise he was doing it, but he would let slip something in the conversation now and again that he had to have figured out on his own, because she hadn’t told him. Like the fact that her mother had been recently diagnosed with cancer, or that she was tentatively dating a fellow sergeant from a different department.
But after a while their conversational topics began to run thin, and it was getting more difficult to keep Trevor engaged.
“Right, you’re going to help me with this crossword,” Sally said at last, grabbing the day’s paper off the table and flipping to the appropriate page. “Let’s see... okay. Four letters, this is the ninth most massive body in the solar system.”
“Eris,” Trevor said promptly.
“Show-off,” Sally muttered, marking down the answer. “Right, I’m not giving you letters this time, just the clue. Okay? This element’s atomic number is six.”
“Carbon.”
“The youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize.”
“Lawrence Bragg.”
They continued in this vein for some time, and they polished off the crossword in less than half an hour. Sally dashed off to find an older paper, and in this manner was able to keep Victor awake and talking until Anderson took over for her a couple of hours later.
----
John took over after Donovan and Anderson had both taken a couple of hours each talking to Victor. By now, nearly six hours had passed since Victor first regained consciousness, and it was starting to make itself apparent in his worn voice. His words were starting to sound rough around the edges, and every once in a while they cracked.
They stuck to light topics. John had a million questions he wanted to ask, but if even Sherlock was reserved about that portion of his life, it probably wasn’t best to go running to his former partner for information.
“I see from your blog you’re a rugby man,” Victor said at one point. “How long have you been playing?”
Victor, it turned out, had played the sport while in university, and they traded stories for the better part of an hour.
“Are you married, John?” Victor asked at last. John paused in stirring his third cup of coffee, wondering if this was how they were going to broach the subject of Victor's past with Sherlock.
“Yes. Her name is Mary.”
“How long?”
“Six months.” It had been a winter wedding. He could still picture the snowflakes that dotted Mary’s dark hair, and how the cold had tinged her cheeks and nose red. She had been stunning, and he had been ecstatic.
Victor gave a soft laugh.
“Practically newlyweds, then. That’s wonderful. Do you have kids?”
“Not yet. We’d like them, though, someday.”
“Violet’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Victor said. “And the most terrifying.”
John chuckled.
“I can only imagine. And since you brought it up, I have to ask: how on Earth did you persuade Sherlock to have a kid?”
Victor laughed.
“You’d be surprised, John. He’s actually decent with children, and rather likes them-to a point. He admires their curiosity. I think he thought of Violet as a kind of unprecedented experiment, one he could study for the rest of his life.” Victor’s smile was apparent in his voice. “Only trouble was, somewhere along the way he fell in love with the test subject. Don’t think that’s really allowed, do you?”
Before John could answer, there was a knock on the door. He turned in his seat, and watched as Sherlock stepped into the room.
“Lestrade required Ricky’s help, and the rest of his team is occupied,” he said in clarification. He looked supremely uncomfortable, and John knew that Sherlock hadn’t fabricated the situation in order to get away from Baker Street. He genuinely did not want to be here.
“Right, well, he’s all yours,” John said, tossing his styrofoam cup in the nearest bin and getting to his feet. “Victor, I’m off. I’ll be back later on. You hang in there, hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
The silence left behind in the wake of John’s departure was deafening. Sherlock could feel the blood pounding in his ears, and his heart felt as though it was trying to break free of his chest. He hadn’t been this on edge since -
- well. Since the day Violet was born.
“Sherlock?” Victor ventured finally.
“I’m here.” Sherlock settled in the chair with his coffee in hand. He took a tentative sip and glanced at one of the computer monitors. “It appears as though they’re still several hours from breaking through to you, provided that the structural integrity of the basement’s ceiling holds up.”
“Boy, you’re a joy to talk to.”
Sherlock paused, replaying his last sentence in his head.
“Apologies,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean - well. Are you feeling all right?”
“No worse,” Victor said.
“But no better,” Sherlock finished.
“I’m unlikely to feel better,” Victor pointed out. “So feeling no worse is a good thing. To be perfectly honest...”
He trailed off.
“What?” Sherlock prompted.
“Nothing,” Victor said finally. “It’s just... it’s good to hear your voice. Makes me feel a bit better about this whole thing.”
Sherlock took a long swallow of his coffee, not knowing how to respond at first. But Victor was the one person on this planet who could always tell when he was lying, and there was no point in trying to pretend that Victor’s voice wasn’t the best thing he’d heard in days.
“It’s good to talk to you,” he said at last. Every now and again Sherlock could glean something about Victor’s life from an offhand comment in an email or from something his own mother said, but those were wholly inadequate compared to actually talking to Victor.
“How’s our girl?”
Sherlock debated a number of responses before settling on, “Fine.”
“Really?” Victor sounded dubious.
“She’s scared,” Sherlock said after a moment. “And I’m - inadequate. I can’t comfort her when I don’t even know if -”
He broke off.
“She’s with Mrs Hudson right now,” he continued at length.
“She needs you.”
“She needs what I can’t give.”
“You’re her father. That’s all she requires right now.”
“I’m not the parent she wants.”
To his surprise, Victor gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m the dad who makes her go to bed on time and sends her to school and tells her she needs to finish her dinner. You’re the dad who’s off halfway around the world, having grand adventures and solving mysteries. Believe me, you are absolutely the parent that she wants.”
“I’ll be with her when I go home,” Sherlock said. “But I needed -”
He broke off.
“What is it?”
“It’s absurd,” Sherlock said quietly. “When Lestrade called me to take over for John, I wanted nothing to do with this... and at the same time, I couldn’t get here fast enough. The last thing I wanted was to talk to you, and yet I also couldn’t think of anything I wanted more. It doesn’t make sense.”
Victor gave a soft huff of laughter.
“I’m a spy and you’re a consulting detective. When have we ever made sense?”
Sherlock felt the beginnings of a weak smile on his face, but it faded quickly.
“How did this happen, Victor?” he asked. “You told me you gave up the work.”
“You told me you gave up the drugs,” Victor countered. He sighed. “We both have our vices, Sherlock. There’s no use in pretending otherwise.”
Sherlock shook his head. They had had this argument far too many times over the years; there really was no use in rehashing it right now.
“There’s a hitch in your chest every time you breathe,” Sherlock said, trying to focus on the present as thoughts of their past threatened to invade. “It wasn’t just your head you hit, was it?”
Victor sighed. His breath caught in his chest again, and Sherlock’s heart ached.
“No. When that beam came down on me, it did a number on my ribs, too. And I landed wrong on my wrist. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s damned annoying.” There was a soft groan over the line, probably from Victor adjusting his position and accidentally jostling his injuries. “But none of that is worth worrying about right now. It all becomes moot if they aren’t able to break through the rubble soon, anyway.”
“Don’t say that,” Sherlock said quietly. “They’ll get to you in time.”
“It’s not likely,” Victor said. “And you aren’t one to tell yourself one thing when the facts clearly point to a different conclusion.”
“I think you’ll find, Victor, that I was never very rational when it came to you.”
Victor was quiet for a long time.
“Tell me something, Sherlock,” he said at last. “Did you ever give up the drugs?”
Sherlock swallowed. “Yes.”
“When was your last hit?”
“Eighteen months ago,” Sherlock said softly. “I was in Germany. I haven’t touched anything since my return.”
“I’m glad,” Victor said, and he sounded both relieved and immeasurably sad. It had come far too late for them, and Sherlock lived with that every day. “And you’ve been well?”
Sherlock shrugged, caught himself, and then said, “Yes.”
“It must be strange, with John gone.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. Why everyone thought he was going to go to pieces without John, he would never know. John’s absence was noticeable, and rather inconvenient when there was a case to investigate, but not unbearable. It was certainly nothing compared to the ache of the years that followed his divorce.
Victor’s absence still pained him.
“I lived by myself for three years after you left,” he said finally. “I’ll manage.”
There was a soft knock on the door. Sherlock turned, and Lestrade stuck his head in the room.
“Ready?” he asked. Sherlock opened his mouth to say no--he’d never be ready to say goodbye, he hadn’t been ready the first time around--but Victor cut off his protest before he could even give it.
“Go home, Sherlock. Give Violet a kiss for me.”
“I’ll be back,” Sherlock promised, his mouth dry. Victor’s voice cracked when he answered.
“I’m counting on it.”
----
Sherlock stopped by Mrs Hudson’s in order to pick up Violet upon his return from the Yard.
“She’s asleep, dear,” Mrs Hudson said softly, pointing into her main room, where Violet was slumbering on the flower-patterned sofa. “Is there any news?”
Sherlock filled her in quietly, and she steered him into a chair in the kitchen before bringing him a cup of tea.
“I bet it was good to talk to him,” she said, patting his shoulder. Sherlock gave a weak smile.
“It’d have been better if he wasn’t buried under tons of rubble,” he said dryly. And then he sobered. “Martha, I don’t think he’s going to get out of this one.”
Mrs Hudson looked stricken.
“Don’t say that, dear,” she said. “He’s got himself out of tight spots before. Remember Brazil?”
Sherlock shuddered. He tried not to think of Brazil whenever possible.
“Oh!” Mrs Hudson said abruptly, as though she just remembered something. “Sit there for a moment, dear, I have something for you. Now if I can only remember where I put it...”
She disappeared into her bedroom. Sherlock shook his head, finished off the tea, and moved into the main room.
Violet only took up a small portion of the sofa, and she had curled herself, cat-like, into a tight ball in the center of one of the cushions. Mrs Hudson had tucked a blue blanket around her small frame, and Sherlock remembered with a pang the similar blanket that had been Violet’s favourite as a baby, the one they swaddled her in and the one thing she had retained as she moved from infancy to toddlerhood. He wondered if Victor had kept it. Some of his favourite memories from Violet’s infancy involved watching Victor rock her to sleep in that obnoxious, oversized rocking chair his mother had gifted them, Violet wrapped in blue and snug in his strong arms.
“Violet,” he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed gently, and the touch roused her. “Violet, come on. It’s time to wake up. We need to go home - er, back to my flat.”
She sat up, the blanket falling away as she rubbed her fists sleepily against her eyes.
“Daddy?” she whispered. Sherlock sat on the sofa and gathered her into his lap.
“He says hello,” he said quietly, cradling her against his chest. “He says that he loves you, and not to be scared because Uncle Greg’s going to find him.”
“I wanna talk to him,” Violet said quietly. Sherlock swallowed.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.
He hadn’t truly realised how late it was until he noticed that Violet was falling asleep again, which was unusual for her after a nap. A glance at the clock on a bookshelf told him it was nearly midnight, which explained things. He grabbed the blue blanket and wrapped it around Violet again. The warm weight of his daughter against his chest and the feel of the fleece against his arms was achingly familiar, and he was sharply reminded of how he missed cradling his infant girl.
“Here we are,” Mrs Hudson announced, coming back into the main room. She was carrying a large, leather-bound tome, and she set it next to Sherlock on the sofa before sitting in a nearby armchair.
Sherlock recognised the cover instantly.
“Martha...” he trailed off. “Where did you get this?”
“You threw it out,” she said simply. “Don’t think I don’t know you, Sherlock Holmes. That’s how you deal with difficult situations. You erase them. You try to forget about them. I had a feeling you would try to throw away those pictures, so I saved them.”
Sherlock twisted on the sofa, still holding Violet against his chest with one arm, and opened the album.
The pictures were all of him and Victor--he could never bring himself to dispose of pictures of Violet--and mostly from their early days. They had never really been ones who put much stock in sentiment or mementos, but invariably someone would snap a picture at university with them in it, and Victor had taken it upon himself to finally compile the album in the months before Violet was born. There were pictures from university events, Holmes family dinners, and garden parties at the Trevor estate. The album culminated in their quiet marriage ceremony, which predated Violet by three years.
Sherlock had quite forgotten the joy in those years. The memory of how it had all soured and ended overrode the happiness at the beginning.
“She might like them, for when she’s older,” Mrs Hudson pressed. “And especially if, Heaven forbid, this situation doesn’t have a happy ending.”
Sherlock had always admired that about Mrs Hudson. She was straightforward and blunt, and practical above all else. He nodded.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He rose, lifting Violet with him, and picked up the album with his free hand. “I’ll be sure to show it to her in the morning.”
----
By the time John took over for Lestrade in the hours after midnight, it was clear that Victor was fading quickly. His responses were slow, if he gave them at all, and his confusion was starting to become apparent.
John hadn’t intended to bring up Sherlock, but eventually he found himself at an absolute loss and running out of conversational topics. He needed to keep Victor engaged, and the only way he was going to do that was by bringing up the past.
“Sherlock never mentioned you,” he said. “Either of you.”
Victor was slow in responding. When he finally spoke, he didn’t sound surprised.
“Those weren’t happy years, John. It wasn’t a good marriage,” he said softly. “Violet was about the only good thing that came of it, in fact. We named her after his mother. Have you met her?”
John shook his head.
“No.”
“Fearsome woman,” Victor continued, “but kind--once you got to know her, at least.”
“What are they like, his parents?”
“You mean, what kind of people could have spawned Sherlock and Mycroft?” Victor asked. There was an unexpected smile in his voice. “They’re quite ordinary, actually. The father’s been dead a few years now, but he was a decent man. Hardworking. Never knew quite what to make of his genius boys. I don’t think Violet does either, most days, but she saw them through adolescence. They’re good men, John, and it’s largely thanks to her.”
“Victor,” John said finally, unable to help himself, “look, far be it from me to intrude or comment on another man’s relationship, but hearing you talk... God, you sound so fond of him. Of Sherlock.”
“I am,” Victor said simply. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one else on the planet who infuriates me the way he does, but the marriage ended for other reasons. Love was never our problem, John.”
That much was glaringly obvious to John, but it didn’t allow him to make any more sense of the situation. The two men were both painfully, stupidly in love with one another, and they weren’t bothering to hide it, either. But they also lived a world apart, and it made no sense. What could have been so destructive--so devastating--that it drove a wedge between two people who were absolutely suited for one another?
More importantly, what was still keeping them apart?
Unless Victor suspected…
“I never slept with him,” John blurted.
To his absolute surprise, Victor laughed. It was warm and cheerful, and didn’t sound like it should belong to a man who was currently buried under tons of rubble and suffering a potentially fatal head wound.
“God, John, I know that!” he said amid his chuckles. “Even if you weren’t straight, you’re certainly not his type.”
“I - wait, he has a type?”
“He does.”
“And what, pray tell, would that be?”
“Tall men, for one,” said a voice behind him, and John spun his chair around. He cocked an eyebrow at Sherlock to show that he was unimpressed at the dramatic entrance. “Dark hair, for another. Broad shoulders. Sorry, John, I’m afraid that you don’t quite measure up.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” John pushed himself out of the chair and Sherlock took his spot. “Good talking to you, Victor. Good luck with this one.”
“I’ve been dealing with him since I was eighteen, John. I think I’ve learned a few tricks by now. Good night.”
“It’s morning, actually,” Sherlock corrected when John had gone. He heard Victor stifle a yawn.
“My mistake. S’hard to tell down here, needless to say.” Victor hesitated. “Were you listening for long?”
Sherlock propped his legs up on the table and tilted his chair back.
“You mean, was I around to hear you confess your unending love for me?”
“Arse.”
Sherlock snorted, and then quickly sobered.
“You’re right, though,” he mused. “That wasn’t ever really our problem, was it?”
“No,” Victor said. He sounded exhausted, and his words were faint. “Don’t think it ever will be.”
There hadn’t been one last explosive fight on their final night together, or anything dramatic that precipitated Victor’s leaving. Violet had been two then, and it had happened quietly. It was barely a whimper; less than a blip on the radar. They had had all their fights, their nights spent apart and days spent crashing back together. They always came back together, in the end. It had taken Victor, who was always the stronger of the two, to finally make the move that sounded the death knell for their marriage. He had moved Violet to the other side of the globe, as far away from Sherlock’s gravitational pull as he could get, for as long as they were in the vicinity of one another things would never change.
Love was never their problem.
Sherlock realised then that he had been quiet for too long, and said, “Victor?”
Silence met his question. Sherlock cursed under his breath.
“Victor,” he said firmly, leaning closer to the microphone. “Victor.”
He couldn’t hear anything on the other end, though the computer monitor next to his elbow assured him that the microphone was still picking up Victor’s breathing. Sherlock began to quickly root through the various items that littered the table, shoving aside papers and looking under books until he closed a hand around a tiny, silver object.
Sherlock brought the whistle to his lips and blew, wincing as the shrill sound rattled his eardrums.
“Fuck.” Victor’s response was swift and irritated, and Sherlock breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply. “You mustn’t fall asleep, do you understand me?”
“S’not like I’m doing it to spite you,” Victor muttered.
“I know.” Sherlock passed a hand over his face, and was startled to discover that small tremors were running through his fingers. Victor’s words were beginning to slur together, and there was a note of grogginess in his voice.
He had imagined Victor’s demise countless times over the years, despite his distaste for dwelling on merely hypothetical situations. For some reason, he had never imagined it would end like this, with Victor so close and so unattainable at the same time.
But he couldn’t dwell on that right now. Victor needed to keep talking, and Sherlock was running out of ways to distract him.
“Violet was having trouble sleeping the other night,” he said at last. “She said that you read to her from John’s blog sometimes.”
Victor gave a soft laugh.
“Yeah, she loves it,” he said. “I take out the grue - er…”
“Gruesome,” Sherlock filled in, heart sinking fast.
“Right. Take the gruesome parts out. But she knows all about what you do. You should - you should hear her talk, Sherlock. My dad is a spy and my other dad is a great detective! She lords it over the other kids.”
“I didn’t know.” There was so much he didn’t know about his daughter, and the thought of that made his chest ache. “What’s she like?”
“Violet? You know as well as I, Sherlock. The two of you talk nearly every day.”
Sherlock shook his head.
“I get incomprehensible emails about ponies and books and her pet rabbit, and a phone call once a week.” He worried a thread on the sleeve of his shirt. “You get to see her grow up. It’s not exactly the same.”
There was a pause.
“What d’you want to know?” Victor asked finally.
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.” Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. Keep him talking. “How is she in school?”
“She’s all right,” Victor said, but his tone was carefully guarded now. “Better’n most. Worse than some.”
Sherlock took some moments to puzzle through Victor’s tone.
“You think I’ll hold it against her,” he said in some surprise.
“I think y’won’t know what to do with a child who is - who is ordinary,” Victor said quietly, his voice grave even as he groped for the right words. “You took drugs because the world was too mundane. You spend all your time around dead bodies and call it fun. Your child is nothing like that. She’s not brilliant, she’s not wild, she’s just... average.”
“Not to me,” Sherlock said softly. “Never to me.”
He folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them. Sleep was tugging heavily on his limbs and mind, but he couldn’t step away now. And he needed to keep Victor talking.
“Does she have many friends?” he asked at last. Victor’s silence was heartbreaking.
“A few,” he said quietly. “Not many. No one very close. She’s so quiet. I don’t know why.”
Sherlock lifted his head off his arms and reached automatically for the microphone. He brushed his fingers over the grill, the closest he was going to get to reaching out to Victor. His sentences were becoming clipped, and his strained breathing more audible.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sherlock said at last. “I’m certain of it. Is she happy, at least?”
“Think so,” Victor said. “But she’s so different from you. From both of us. Half the time… can’t even tell what she’s thinking.”
“What does she do for fun?”
For a moment, Victor simply breathed. Sherlock could hear him trying to gather air into his straining lungs, and hated that he was forcing Victor to speak when it was clearly a struggle for him.
Keep him talking.
“Loves being outside,” Victor said at last, his words slow but steady. He paused for breath after every sentence. “Our neighbors… have a horse. Goes riding. Every weekend. She reads. She’s got - got your curiosity. Your nose… eyes.” Victor was quiet for a moment. “I see you in her. Every day.”
The fragmented sentences from a man whose very intellect rivaled his own was alarming. But Sherlock clamped down on his growing panic and tried to pretend as though nothing was different.
“She is not biologically related to either of us, Victor. That isn’t possible.” Sherlock cast around for another topic. “Tell me about where you’re living.”
“Sherlock,” Victor sighed. “Y’know I can’t do that.”
“If your concern is safety, I think that’s a moot point right now, don’t you? Someone tried to kill you, Victor, and they wanted to do it so badly that they were willing to bring down an entire building in order to accomplish it. And they might yet succeed.”
“Tell her - tell her I’m sorry.”
Sherlock’s hands tightened into fists.
“You can tell her yourself,” he said sternly, “when you get out of there.”
Victor gave a failed chuckle.
“Don’t… fool yourself. S’not like you. Damn good chance… won’t be getting out of this. If that happens... tell her I’m sorry. And she’s the best - damn thing that ever happened…”
“Victor,” Sherlock implored, “don’t.”
“Sherlock -”
“No,” Sherlock snapped. “No, stop this. For the love of God, Victor, don’t you dare do this to me. Don’t make me sit through this maudlin display. I said goodbye to you once already, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do! I won’t do it again.”
He sat there for some seconds, blood pounding in his ears and chest heaving as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. He was gripping the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
Silence met his words.
“Victor,” Sherlock croaked. “Victor, answer me. Are you still - are you still there? Dammit.”
“I’m here,” Victor said quietly. “I’m still here, Sherlock.”
“Christ.” Sherlock sagged, burying his face in his hands, trying to gain control of himself again.
For a while, the only sound that filled the room came from the ticking clock on the far wall.
“We live by… ocean,” Victor said at length, his voice hushed and his sentences short. “By the beach. Violet loves it. Our neighbours… good people. She goes to a good school. Every morning, the sun rises over the water. S’the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen. Our house is comfortable… quaint… old. Vi loves to explore it.”
He drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“And I go to bed… each night… in a room that’s too quiet, and even though I fill the house with - with trinkets from my travels… still feels too big. Too empty. I can’t - I can’t even begin to describe how much I miss you.”
“You don’t have to,” Sherlock croaked. He’d had to bite the inside of his cheek hard to prevent a noise of despair escaping his throat, and he tasted the sharp tang of blood on his tongue. “I know very well what you mean.”
Victor’s voice was thick when he spoke again, and he forced the sentences out.
“When Mycroft told me you’d died… didn’t know how I’d bear it. It was one thing to live apart from you. It was another to live in a world where you - where you didn’t exist anymore. And when I had to tell Violet...”
Sherlock felt his throat close up, and he had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek in order to keep his composure. Victor, from the sound of it, was less than successful at that on his part, and his voice shook.
“Had no idea what was coming… when Mycroft called us to the family estate. Really didn’t. And when you - when you walked into that room… thought I’d gone mad.” Victor gave a tremulous laugh. “And I thought that I didn’t really mind all that much, if being mad meant that I could see you again.”
“Victor -”
“I swore… I’d never leave you again. And I broke that promise three days later, because I had to.”
“I know,” Sherlock croaked.
“I’m so sorry,” Victor said brokenly. “I wish things… different.”
Sherlock nodded to himself. He wished, too. They had both been too dazzling, too brilliant, and had been helplessly drawn to each other. But the world wasn’t bright enough for Sherlock, and too often in those early days it had been grey and listless. Even though Victor--and later, Violet--staved off the worst of the tedium, sometimes it wasn’t enough, and he’d needed to turn to artificial means. And Victor had been self-destructive in his own right. They both became experts at falling apart together, shattering to pieces bit by bit even as they worked to build up a life and home.
It had taken Victor leaving for them to become whole, something that Sherlock couldn’t see at the time because he had been blinded by the drugs and the seemingly irrefutable fact that they were supposed to be together. The necessity of their separation hadn’t crossed his mind at the time because the idea of a life where they weren’t together made no sense, and had no bearing in reality.
But they’d now had their time apart, and they’d learned to live without each other even though that life had been less than complete.
And now... now it was time to come home.
----
Part 3
-----
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Ensemble
Pairings: Not specified
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them.
Word Count: c. 15,000 total
Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of injuries, implied past drug use, kidfic, and embarrassing amounts of fluff.
Spoilers: Takes place post-Hiatus, and contains a minor spoiler for ACD’s “The Sign of Four.”
Beta: kim_j_8472
Summary: A year after Sherlock’s return from the dead and on the heels of a near-disastrous case, John discovers that his best friend isn’t done keeping secrets from him.
Full Author's Notes in Part 1
The conference room was too quiet.
Sally had never noticed it before, but then, she had never had reason to be in here alone. Even when they were going over evidence for a case, for hours and hours on end, someone was always at her side and there was always some kind of noise; some sort of distraction.
But when the rest of her teammates filed out and shut the door, she realised just how silent this room could be.
“Are you still there?”
Sally started, and was momentarily thankful that she was relatively alone.
“I am,” she said quickly, turning to the audio controls. “Sorry. I’m just adjusting your end of the line. We’re picking up a lot of extra static... there. Can you still hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Sally drew a deep breath. “Look, you probably don’t remember me -”
Trevor cut her off.
“Sally Donovan, the one person on Lestrade’s team who wasn’t afraid to give Sherlock exactly what he deserved. Of course I remember you. How’ve you been, Sergeant?”
They chatted for a while. Neither having much in common, nor really any reason for contact, there was a lot of ground to cover. It was disconcerting to talk to Trevor, because while he possessed the same observational skills that Holmes did, he never made a big show of his deductions or conclusions. In fact, it was as though he didn’t ever consciously realise he was doing it, but he would let slip something in the conversation now and again that he had to have figured out on his own, because she hadn’t told him. Like the fact that her mother had been recently diagnosed with cancer, or that she was tentatively dating a fellow sergeant from a different department.
But after a while their conversational topics began to run thin, and it was getting more difficult to keep Trevor engaged.
“Right, you’re going to help me with this crossword,” Sally said at last, grabbing the day’s paper off the table and flipping to the appropriate page. “Let’s see... okay. Four letters, this is the ninth most massive body in the solar system.”
“Eris,” Trevor said promptly.
“Show-off,” Sally muttered, marking down the answer. “Right, I’m not giving you letters this time, just the clue. Okay? This element’s atomic number is six.”
“Carbon.”
“The youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize.”
“Lawrence Bragg.”
They continued in this vein for some time, and they polished off the crossword in less than half an hour. Sally dashed off to find an older paper, and in this manner was able to keep Victor awake and talking until Anderson took over for her a couple of hours later.
----
John took over after Donovan and Anderson had both taken a couple of hours each talking to Victor. By now, nearly six hours had passed since Victor first regained consciousness, and it was starting to make itself apparent in his worn voice. His words were starting to sound rough around the edges, and every once in a while they cracked.
They stuck to light topics. John had a million questions he wanted to ask, but if even Sherlock was reserved about that portion of his life, it probably wasn’t best to go running to his former partner for information.
“I see from your blog you’re a rugby man,” Victor said at one point. “How long have you been playing?”
Victor, it turned out, had played the sport while in university, and they traded stories for the better part of an hour.
“Are you married, John?” Victor asked at last. John paused in stirring his third cup of coffee, wondering if this was how they were going to broach the subject of Victor's past with Sherlock.
“Yes. Her name is Mary.”
“How long?”
“Six months.” It had been a winter wedding. He could still picture the snowflakes that dotted Mary’s dark hair, and how the cold had tinged her cheeks and nose red. She had been stunning, and he had been ecstatic.
Victor gave a soft laugh.
“Practically newlyweds, then. That’s wonderful. Do you have kids?”
“Not yet. We’d like them, though, someday.”
“Violet’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Victor said. “And the most terrifying.”
John chuckled.
“I can only imagine. And since you brought it up, I have to ask: how on Earth did you persuade Sherlock to have a kid?”
Victor laughed.
“You’d be surprised, John. He’s actually decent with children, and rather likes them-to a point. He admires their curiosity. I think he thought of Violet as a kind of unprecedented experiment, one he could study for the rest of his life.” Victor’s smile was apparent in his voice. “Only trouble was, somewhere along the way he fell in love with the test subject. Don’t think that’s really allowed, do you?”
Before John could answer, there was a knock on the door. He turned in his seat, and watched as Sherlock stepped into the room.
“Lestrade required Ricky’s help, and the rest of his team is occupied,” he said in clarification. He looked supremely uncomfortable, and John knew that Sherlock hadn’t fabricated the situation in order to get away from Baker Street. He genuinely did not want to be here.
“Right, well, he’s all yours,” John said, tossing his styrofoam cup in the nearest bin and getting to his feet. “Victor, I’m off. I’ll be back later on. You hang in there, hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
The silence left behind in the wake of John’s departure was deafening. Sherlock could feel the blood pounding in his ears, and his heart felt as though it was trying to break free of his chest. He hadn’t been this on edge since -
- well. Since the day Violet was born.
“Sherlock?” Victor ventured finally.
“I’m here.” Sherlock settled in the chair with his coffee in hand. He took a tentative sip and glanced at one of the computer monitors. “It appears as though they’re still several hours from breaking through to you, provided that the structural integrity of the basement’s ceiling holds up.”
“Boy, you’re a joy to talk to.”
Sherlock paused, replaying his last sentence in his head.
“Apologies,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean - well. Are you feeling all right?”
“No worse,” Victor said.
“But no better,” Sherlock finished.
“I’m unlikely to feel better,” Victor pointed out. “So feeling no worse is a good thing. To be perfectly honest...”
He trailed off.
“What?” Sherlock prompted.
“Nothing,” Victor said finally. “It’s just... it’s good to hear your voice. Makes me feel a bit better about this whole thing.”
Sherlock took a long swallow of his coffee, not knowing how to respond at first. But Victor was the one person on this planet who could always tell when he was lying, and there was no point in trying to pretend that Victor’s voice wasn’t the best thing he’d heard in days.
“It’s good to talk to you,” he said at last. Every now and again Sherlock could glean something about Victor’s life from an offhand comment in an email or from something his own mother said, but those were wholly inadequate compared to actually talking to Victor.
“How’s our girl?”
Sherlock debated a number of responses before settling on, “Fine.”
“Really?” Victor sounded dubious.
“She’s scared,” Sherlock said after a moment. “And I’m - inadequate. I can’t comfort her when I don’t even know if -”
He broke off.
“She’s with Mrs Hudson right now,” he continued at length.
“She needs you.”
“She needs what I can’t give.”
“You’re her father. That’s all she requires right now.”
“I’m not the parent she wants.”
To his surprise, Victor gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m the dad who makes her go to bed on time and sends her to school and tells her she needs to finish her dinner. You’re the dad who’s off halfway around the world, having grand adventures and solving mysteries. Believe me, you are absolutely the parent that she wants.”
“I’ll be with her when I go home,” Sherlock said. “But I needed -”
He broke off.
“What is it?”
“It’s absurd,” Sherlock said quietly. “When Lestrade called me to take over for John, I wanted nothing to do with this... and at the same time, I couldn’t get here fast enough. The last thing I wanted was to talk to you, and yet I also couldn’t think of anything I wanted more. It doesn’t make sense.”
Victor gave a soft huff of laughter.
“I’m a spy and you’re a consulting detective. When have we ever made sense?”
Sherlock felt the beginnings of a weak smile on his face, but it faded quickly.
“How did this happen, Victor?” he asked. “You told me you gave up the work.”
“You told me you gave up the drugs,” Victor countered. He sighed. “We both have our vices, Sherlock. There’s no use in pretending otherwise.”
Sherlock shook his head. They had had this argument far too many times over the years; there really was no use in rehashing it right now.
“There’s a hitch in your chest every time you breathe,” Sherlock said, trying to focus on the present as thoughts of their past threatened to invade. “It wasn’t just your head you hit, was it?”
Victor sighed. His breath caught in his chest again, and Sherlock’s heart ached.
“No. When that beam came down on me, it did a number on my ribs, too. And I landed wrong on my wrist. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s damned annoying.” There was a soft groan over the line, probably from Victor adjusting his position and accidentally jostling his injuries. “But none of that is worth worrying about right now. It all becomes moot if they aren’t able to break through the rubble soon, anyway.”
“Don’t say that,” Sherlock said quietly. “They’ll get to you in time.”
“It’s not likely,” Victor said. “And you aren’t one to tell yourself one thing when the facts clearly point to a different conclusion.”
“I think you’ll find, Victor, that I was never very rational when it came to you.”
Victor was quiet for a long time.
“Tell me something, Sherlock,” he said at last. “Did you ever give up the drugs?”
Sherlock swallowed. “Yes.”
“When was your last hit?”
“Eighteen months ago,” Sherlock said softly. “I was in Germany. I haven’t touched anything since my return.”
“I’m glad,” Victor said, and he sounded both relieved and immeasurably sad. It had come far too late for them, and Sherlock lived with that every day. “And you’ve been well?”
Sherlock shrugged, caught himself, and then said, “Yes.”
“It must be strange, with John gone.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. Why everyone thought he was going to go to pieces without John, he would never know. John’s absence was noticeable, and rather inconvenient when there was a case to investigate, but not unbearable. It was certainly nothing compared to the ache of the years that followed his divorce.
Victor’s absence still pained him.
“I lived by myself for three years after you left,” he said finally. “I’ll manage.”
There was a soft knock on the door. Sherlock turned, and Lestrade stuck his head in the room.
“Ready?” he asked. Sherlock opened his mouth to say no--he’d never be ready to say goodbye, he hadn’t been ready the first time around--but Victor cut off his protest before he could even give it.
“Go home, Sherlock. Give Violet a kiss for me.”
“I’ll be back,” Sherlock promised, his mouth dry. Victor’s voice cracked when he answered.
“I’m counting on it.”
----
Sherlock stopped by Mrs Hudson’s in order to pick up Violet upon his return from the Yard.
“She’s asleep, dear,” Mrs Hudson said softly, pointing into her main room, where Violet was slumbering on the flower-patterned sofa. “Is there any news?”
Sherlock filled her in quietly, and she steered him into a chair in the kitchen before bringing him a cup of tea.
“I bet it was good to talk to him,” she said, patting his shoulder. Sherlock gave a weak smile.
“It’d have been better if he wasn’t buried under tons of rubble,” he said dryly. And then he sobered. “Martha, I don’t think he’s going to get out of this one.”
Mrs Hudson looked stricken.
“Don’t say that, dear,” she said. “He’s got himself out of tight spots before. Remember Brazil?”
Sherlock shuddered. He tried not to think of Brazil whenever possible.
“Oh!” Mrs Hudson said abruptly, as though she just remembered something. “Sit there for a moment, dear, I have something for you. Now if I can only remember where I put it...”
She disappeared into her bedroom. Sherlock shook his head, finished off the tea, and moved into the main room.
Violet only took up a small portion of the sofa, and she had curled herself, cat-like, into a tight ball in the center of one of the cushions. Mrs Hudson had tucked a blue blanket around her small frame, and Sherlock remembered with a pang the similar blanket that had been Violet’s favourite as a baby, the one they swaddled her in and the one thing she had retained as she moved from infancy to toddlerhood. He wondered if Victor had kept it. Some of his favourite memories from Violet’s infancy involved watching Victor rock her to sleep in that obnoxious, oversized rocking chair his mother had gifted them, Violet wrapped in blue and snug in his strong arms.
“Violet,” he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed gently, and the touch roused her. “Violet, come on. It’s time to wake up. We need to go home - er, back to my flat.”
She sat up, the blanket falling away as she rubbed her fists sleepily against her eyes.
“Daddy?” she whispered. Sherlock sat on the sofa and gathered her into his lap.
“He says hello,” he said quietly, cradling her against his chest. “He says that he loves you, and not to be scared because Uncle Greg’s going to find him.”
“I wanna talk to him,” Violet said quietly. Sherlock swallowed.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.
He hadn’t truly realised how late it was until he noticed that Violet was falling asleep again, which was unusual for her after a nap. A glance at the clock on a bookshelf told him it was nearly midnight, which explained things. He grabbed the blue blanket and wrapped it around Violet again. The warm weight of his daughter against his chest and the feel of the fleece against his arms was achingly familiar, and he was sharply reminded of how he missed cradling his infant girl.
“Here we are,” Mrs Hudson announced, coming back into the main room. She was carrying a large, leather-bound tome, and she set it next to Sherlock on the sofa before sitting in a nearby armchair.
Sherlock recognised the cover instantly.
“Martha...” he trailed off. “Where did you get this?”
“You threw it out,” she said simply. “Don’t think I don’t know you, Sherlock Holmes. That’s how you deal with difficult situations. You erase them. You try to forget about them. I had a feeling you would try to throw away those pictures, so I saved them.”
Sherlock twisted on the sofa, still holding Violet against his chest with one arm, and opened the album.
The pictures were all of him and Victor--he could never bring himself to dispose of pictures of Violet--and mostly from their early days. They had never really been ones who put much stock in sentiment or mementos, but invariably someone would snap a picture at university with them in it, and Victor had taken it upon himself to finally compile the album in the months before Violet was born. There were pictures from university events, Holmes family dinners, and garden parties at the Trevor estate. The album culminated in their quiet marriage ceremony, which predated Violet by three years.
Sherlock had quite forgotten the joy in those years. The memory of how it had all soured and ended overrode the happiness at the beginning.
“She might like them, for when she’s older,” Mrs Hudson pressed. “And especially if, Heaven forbid, this situation doesn’t have a happy ending.”
Sherlock had always admired that about Mrs Hudson. She was straightforward and blunt, and practical above all else. He nodded.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He rose, lifting Violet with him, and picked up the album with his free hand. “I’ll be sure to show it to her in the morning.”
----
By the time John took over for Lestrade in the hours after midnight, it was clear that Victor was fading quickly. His responses were slow, if he gave them at all, and his confusion was starting to become apparent.
John hadn’t intended to bring up Sherlock, but eventually he found himself at an absolute loss and running out of conversational topics. He needed to keep Victor engaged, and the only way he was going to do that was by bringing up the past.
“Sherlock never mentioned you,” he said. “Either of you.”
Victor was slow in responding. When he finally spoke, he didn’t sound surprised.
“Those weren’t happy years, John. It wasn’t a good marriage,” he said softly. “Violet was about the only good thing that came of it, in fact. We named her after his mother. Have you met her?”
John shook his head.
“No.”
“Fearsome woman,” Victor continued, “but kind--once you got to know her, at least.”
“What are they like, his parents?”
“You mean, what kind of people could have spawned Sherlock and Mycroft?” Victor asked. There was an unexpected smile in his voice. “They’re quite ordinary, actually. The father’s been dead a few years now, but he was a decent man. Hardworking. Never knew quite what to make of his genius boys. I don’t think Violet does either, most days, but she saw them through adolescence. They’re good men, John, and it’s largely thanks to her.”
“Victor,” John said finally, unable to help himself, “look, far be it from me to intrude or comment on another man’s relationship, but hearing you talk... God, you sound so fond of him. Of Sherlock.”
“I am,” Victor said simply. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one else on the planet who infuriates me the way he does, but the marriage ended for other reasons. Love was never our problem, John.”
That much was glaringly obvious to John, but it didn’t allow him to make any more sense of the situation. The two men were both painfully, stupidly in love with one another, and they weren’t bothering to hide it, either. But they also lived a world apart, and it made no sense. What could have been so destructive--so devastating--that it drove a wedge between two people who were absolutely suited for one another?
More importantly, what was still keeping them apart?
Unless Victor suspected…
“I never slept with him,” John blurted.
To his absolute surprise, Victor laughed. It was warm and cheerful, and didn’t sound like it should belong to a man who was currently buried under tons of rubble and suffering a potentially fatal head wound.
“God, John, I know that!” he said amid his chuckles. “Even if you weren’t straight, you’re certainly not his type.”
“I - wait, he has a type?”
“He does.”
“And what, pray tell, would that be?”
“Tall men, for one,” said a voice behind him, and John spun his chair around. He cocked an eyebrow at Sherlock to show that he was unimpressed at the dramatic entrance. “Dark hair, for another. Broad shoulders. Sorry, John, I’m afraid that you don’t quite measure up.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” John pushed himself out of the chair and Sherlock took his spot. “Good talking to you, Victor. Good luck with this one.”
“I’ve been dealing with him since I was eighteen, John. I think I’ve learned a few tricks by now. Good night.”
“It’s morning, actually,” Sherlock corrected when John had gone. He heard Victor stifle a yawn.
“My mistake. S’hard to tell down here, needless to say.” Victor hesitated. “Were you listening for long?”
Sherlock propped his legs up on the table and tilted his chair back.
“You mean, was I around to hear you confess your unending love for me?”
“Arse.”
Sherlock snorted, and then quickly sobered.
“You’re right, though,” he mused. “That wasn’t ever really our problem, was it?”
“No,” Victor said. He sounded exhausted, and his words were faint. “Don’t think it ever will be.”
There hadn’t been one last explosive fight on their final night together, or anything dramatic that precipitated Victor’s leaving. Violet had been two then, and it had happened quietly. It was barely a whimper; less than a blip on the radar. They had had all their fights, their nights spent apart and days spent crashing back together. They always came back together, in the end. It had taken Victor, who was always the stronger of the two, to finally make the move that sounded the death knell for their marriage. He had moved Violet to the other side of the globe, as far away from Sherlock’s gravitational pull as he could get, for as long as they were in the vicinity of one another things would never change.
Love was never their problem.
Sherlock realised then that he had been quiet for too long, and said, “Victor?”
Silence met his question. Sherlock cursed under his breath.
“Victor,” he said firmly, leaning closer to the microphone. “Victor.”
He couldn’t hear anything on the other end, though the computer monitor next to his elbow assured him that the microphone was still picking up Victor’s breathing. Sherlock began to quickly root through the various items that littered the table, shoving aside papers and looking under books until he closed a hand around a tiny, silver object.
Sherlock brought the whistle to his lips and blew, wincing as the shrill sound rattled his eardrums.
“Fuck.” Victor’s response was swift and irritated, and Sherlock breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply. “You mustn’t fall asleep, do you understand me?”
“S’not like I’m doing it to spite you,” Victor muttered.
“I know.” Sherlock passed a hand over his face, and was startled to discover that small tremors were running through his fingers. Victor’s words were beginning to slur together, and there was a note of grogginess in his voice.
He had imagined Victor’s demise countless times over the years, despite his distaste for dwelling on merely hypothetical situations. For some reason, he had never imagined it would end like this, with Victor so close and so unattainable at the same time.
But he couldn’t dwell on that right now. Victor needed to keep talking, and Sherlock was running out of ways to distract him.
“Violet was having trouble sleeping the other night,” he said at last. “She said that you read to her from John’s blog sometimes.”
Victor gave a soft laugh.
“Yeah, she loves it,” he said. “I take out the grue - er…”
“Gruesome,” Sherlock filled in, heart sinking fast.
“Right. Take the gruesome parts out. But she knows all about what you do. You should - you should hear her talk, Sherlock. My dad is a spy and my other dad is a great detective! She lords it over the other kids.”
“I didn’t know.” There was so much he didn’t know about his daughter, and the thought of that made his chest ache. “What’s she like?”
“Violet? You know as well as I, Sherlock. The two of you talk nearly every day.”
Sherlock shook his head.
“I get incomprehensible emails about ponies and books and her pet rabbit, and a phone call once a week.” He worried a thread on the sleeve of his shirt. “You get to see her grow up. It’s not exactly the same.”
There was a pause.
“What d’you want to know?” Victor asked finally.
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.” Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. Keep him talking. “How is she in school?”
“She’s all right,” Victor said, but his tone was carefully guarded now. “Better’n most. Worse than some.”
Sherlock took some moments to puzzle through Victor’s tone.
“You think I’ll hold it against her,” he said in some surprise.
“I think y’won’t know what to do with a child who is - who is ordinary,” Victor said quietly, his voice grave even as he groped for the right words. “You took drugs because the world was too mundane. You spend all your time around dead bodies and call it fun. Your child is nothing like that. She’s not brilliant, she’s not wild, she’s just... average.”
“Not to me,” Sherlock said softly. “Never to me.”
He folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them. Sleep was tugging heavily on his limbs and mind, but he couldn’t step away now. And he needed to keep Victor talking.
“Does she have many friends?” he asked at last. Victor’s silence was heartbreaking.
“A few,” he said quietly. “Not many. No one very close. She’s so quiet. I don’t know why.”
Sherlock lifted his head off his arms and reached automatically for the microphone. He brushed his fingers over the grill, the closest he was going to get to reaching out to Victor. His sentences were becoming clipped, and his strained breathing more audible.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sherlock said at last. “I’m certain of it. Is she happy, at least?”
“Think so,” Victor said. “But she’s so different from you. From both of us. Half the time… can’t even tell what she’s thinking.”
“What does she do for fun?”
For a moment, Victor simply breathed. Sherlock could hear him trying to gather air into his straining lungs, and hated that he was forcing Victor to speak when it was clearly a struggle for him.
Keep him talking.
“Loves being outside,” Victor said at last, his words slow but steady. He paused for breath after every sentence. “Our neighbors… have a horse. Goes riding. Every weekend. She reads. She’s got - got your curiosity. Your nose… eyes.” Victor was quiet for a moment. “I see you in her. Every day.”
The fragmented sentences from a man whose very intellect rivaled his own was alarming. But Sherlock clamped down on his growing panic and tried to pretend as though nothing was different.
“She is not biologically related to either of us, Victor. That isn’t possible.” Sherlock cast around for another topic. “Tell me about where you’re living.”
“Sherlock,” Victor sighed. “Y’know I can’t do that.”
“If your concern is safety, I think that’s a moot point right now, don’t you? Someone tried to kill you, Victor, and they wanted to do it so badly that they were willing to bring down an entire building in order to accomplish it. And they might yet succeed.”
“Tell her - tell her I’m sorry.”
Sherlock’s hands tightened into fists.
“You can tell her yourself,” he said sternly, “when you get out of there.”
Victor gave a failed chuckle.
“Don’t… fool yourself. S’not like you. Damn good chance… won’t be getting out of this. If that happens... tell her I’m sorry. And she’s the best - damn thing that ever happened…”
“Victor,” Sherlock implored, “don’t.”
“Sherlock -”
“No,” Sherlock snapped. “No, stop this. For the love of God, Victor, don’t you dare do this to me. Don’t make me sit through this maudlin display. I said goodbye to you once already, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do! I won’t do it again.”
He sat there for some seconds, blood pounding in his ears and chest heaving as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. He was gripping the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
Silence met his words.
“Victor,” Sherlock croaked. “Victor, answer me. Are you still - are you still there? Dammit.”
“I’m here,” Victor said quietly. “I’m still here, Sherlock.”
“Christ.” Sherlock sagged, burying his face in his hands, trying to gain control of himself again.
For a while, the only sound that filled the room came from the ticking clock on the far wall.
“We live by… ocean,” Victor said at length, his voice hushed and his sentences short. “By the beach. Violet loves it. Our neighbours… good people. She goes to a good school. Every morning, the sun rises over the water. S’the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen. Our house is comfortable… quaint… old. Vi loves to explore it.”
He drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“And I go to bed… each night… in a room that’s too quiet, and even though I fill the house with - with trinkets from my travels… still feels too big. Too empty. I can’t - I can’t even begin to describe how much I miss you.”
“You don’t have to,” Sherlock croaked. He’d had to bite the inside of his cheek hard to prevent a noise of despair escaping his throat, and he tasted the sharp tang of blood on his tongue. “I know very well what you mean.”
Victor’s voice was thick when he spoke again, and he forced the sentences out.
“When Mycroft told me you’d died… didn’t know how I’d bear it. It was one thing to live apart from you. It was another to live in a world where you - where you didn’t exist anymore. And when I had to tell Violet...”
Sherlock felt his throat close up, and he had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek in order to keep his composure. Victor, from the sound of it, was less than successful at that on his part, and his voice shook.
“Had no idea what was coming… when Mycroft called us to the family estate. Really didn’t. And when you - when you walked into that room… thought I’d gone mad.” Victor gave a tremulous laugh. “And I thought that I didn’t really mind all that much, if being mad meant that I could see you again.”
“Victor -”
“I swore… I’d never leave you again. And I broke that promise three days later, because I had to.”
“I know,” Sherlock croaked.
“I’m so sorry,” Victor said brokenly. “I wish things… different.”
Sherlock nodded to himself. He wished, too. They had both been too dazzling, too brilliant, and had been helplessly drawn to each other. But the world wasn’t bright enough for Sherlock, and too often in those early days it had been grey and listless. Even though Victor--and later, Violet--staved off the worst of the tedium, sometimes it wasn’t enough, and he’d needed to turn to artificial means. And Victor had been self-destructive in his own right. They both became experts at falling apart together, shattering to pieces bit by bit even as they worked to build up a life and home.
It had taken Victor leaving for them to become whole, something that Sherlock couldn’t see at the time because he had been blinded by the drugs and the seemingly irrefutable fact that they were supposed to be together. The necessity of their separation hadn’t crossed his mind at the time because the idea of a life where they weren’t together made no sense, and had no bearing in reality.
But they’d now had their time apart, and they’d learned to live without each other even though that life had been less than complete.
And now... now it was time to come home.
----
Part 3
-----