i really don't blame you for being dead, but you can't have you sweater back. Part Four.
Continue reading the 14k sadness here bc I can't post it all at once…
They don’t speak for days. Sherlock didn’t know what to say. If there would even be something he could say to make this better. But just sitting around London was killing his brain one bored minute at a time. He opened up the newspaper and it was dull, dull, dull, all dull. It was logical that most of the really interesting cases would be gone with Moriarty’s death, but he had expected at least something of interest to remain.
There was nothing.
Every minute he sat around was another reason he should go find someone who would sell him a shot of cocaine. Instead he arranged a meet with Lestrade, under the guise of an anonymous tip that the inspector should meet an informant in an empty parking garage.
Sherlock waited in the shadows. Lestrade looked like he was doing alright, even if he was still dumb enough to follow such a shite tip. The only sign that something was maybe not on point was him smoking again. A habit that Sherlock certainly didn’t think had anything to do with the Yard’s inability to call on the world’s only consulting detective for assistance. (He did.)
But after Greg hugged him and Sherlock told him his story of the Fall while they smoked, Sherlock asked how things are at the Yard. Lestrade blinked a couple of times, as if work had been the last thing from his mind.
“Really good, actually. Umm, yeah the numbers just came in last week, and we actually have a 96% solving rate, so brilliant. You know, it hasn’t been this high in ages.”
Sherlock frowned. Greg rocked back on his heels, lighting another cigarette and taking a drag before meeting Sherlock’s gaze.
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Greg said sounding disappointed but unsurprised. “The smoke and mirrors reappearance from the shadows bit. You want to be let on cases now that your done with criminal empires.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not gonna say I’m sorry that is no longer possible. Our teams are sorting these cases fine without your genius. The only thing I’d be able to offer you is some cold cases, but, as I said, those are few and far between.”
“This is why you wouldn’t help me, isn’t it,” Sherlock said, staring intently at the armchair fibers he was picking at. “You knew I’d get bored faster,”
Despite the cold that had seeped between them, the detective could see the apparition nod out of the corner of his eye.
“You should go visit Irene,” Jim said to him a few minutes after he was jolted awake from another nightmare. Sherlock eyed Jim, where he was slumped in one of the uncomfortable desk chairs the hotel supplied every room, from across the rumpled sheets and thought that might not be a bad idea.
Sherlock had not seen or talked to the woman since they parted ways in Karachi. Even though that mishap silenced her errant text messages, the detective had continued tracking her movements and knew that she was living in Barcelona, still occasionally causing trouble.
When Sherlock showed up on Irene’s doorstep still alive, she wasn’t as startled as he had been expecting. Perhaps, a week ago she would have been surprised to see him, Irene admitted to the detective when he commented on her non-plussed attitude as they were sitting over coffee in the flat she shared with her latest partner. But she still had contacts in London and that little visit to John certainly started some rumors. She demanded the scoop, something that would dispel the spurious gossip that surrounded his name; so he told her what really happened, despite there not being much to say. Irene was one of the few other people who even knew Jim, let alone liked him. Sherlock asked if she ever heard from him after the Scandal.
“We texted here and there. You know Jim,” Her lips quirked into a melancholy smile and internally Sherlock frowned. “I got a couple of delightful pictures of you.” Her grin was hearty as she took another sip of coffee.
He glanced through the open courtyard door to where the apparition was playing he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not with what Sherlock imagined was an equally nonexistent flower. Sherlock wondered why Jim wasn’t sitting with them or poking at Irene to annoy the detective or even see if she could sense him too. Then Sherlock remembered that Jim could visit the woman whenever he wanted, and probably has seen her a number of times since his death.
The pause in the conversation dragged and the woman was looking where Sherlock was looking. At nothing.
“You’re seeing him,” Irene said. It wasn’t a question.
Sherlock’s eyes immediately flicked back to her and, too late, he tried to laugh it off, “I didn’t think you were superstitious.”
But Sherlock was too somber, too caught off guard by her perceptiveness and she was not fooled. “He’s here now?”
Sherlock sighed, giving up the charade. “He rarely leaves my side. Claims no one else can see or hear him.” The dark turn of his lips matched the concern in her eyes.
“Do you think it’s to do with how he died?” the woman wondered. “You were the only one there.”
Sherlock shrugged. He had considered that as a possible factor, but there was simply no way to prove it. “Did you know?”
Irene sat back. “No. But looking back it’s easier to see the signs.”
He spent the night. It was good to see the woman. He had always admired her insightfulness and it was a relief to tell someone that he was seeing Moriarty’s ghost. But there was nothing here for him. Irene had remade her life in this city and, despite her offers of putting him up longer, Sherlock knew he didn’t belong in it. Before he left the next morning, the detective asked, a thought that struck him during the night, “You don’t happen to know where he lived, do you?”
Irene’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows shot up and she scoffed lightly, “As if he’d let anyone into his inner-sanctum.”
Sherlock nodded, sucking the inside of his cheek in thought. “Thanks,” he said, his gratitude awkward. It was the least he could say for barging in after all that had happened between them.
“Keep in touch,” the woman said with a wave, watching him disappear down the street with a second invisible shadow.
They were in another train car when Jim said, “Irene and I talked last night.”
Sherlock gave him a curious look.
Jim amended himself, “After you went to sleep, Irene talked to the air she presumed I inhabited.”
“And?” Sherlock asked, genuinely curious.
“She confirmed some things I’d been considering myself,” Jim turned back to the passing countryside.
“And those things are?” Sherlock asked because there had to be a reason why Jim brought this up at all.
“You’ll see,” Jim said to the window.
Sherlock ducked back into his room, finally certain he was not followed. The detective had only stepped out to buy some dinner, but when leaving the take-out place he came under the distinct impression he was being followed. Since donning Moriarty’s mask, his every idle paranoia had been magnified ten-fold and had on more than one occasion proved justified. So, he followed his hunch and spent the better part of an hour looping around the city to loose them.
However, the moment he shut the door Sherlock felt it in the air, still stifling around him, something else shifted. And there was that smell; distinct, familiar, and ...expected sooner, actually.
“Brother,” Sherlock turned around, putting down his bag of cold dinner. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I can’t see how you are doing without some ulterior motive?” Mycroft asked humorlessly from his seat at Sherlock’s dining table. The detective moved to the kitchenette, managing to exude a resounding ‘No” without actually saying a word.
“Let me guess: you want me to come home. Some matter of national security you want me to sort for you?”
Mycroft deigned a chuckle, shifted his ever present umbrella, and didn’t say: I always want you home. Instead it was all glib pleasantness and: “I know what your looking for and came to save you the trouble.”
Sherlock’s face shut down. He turned to the sink, getting himself a glass of water from the tap. There was no way Mycroft should have figured out what he was really looking for. Yet the elder Holmes never made a personal call for something that he wasn’t sure of. Sherlock took a deep breath, not really caring if the water muffled the sound of defeat, of resignation, out.
“And what is that?”
“The one cog that can tell you what you want to know. Obviously.”
“What?” The tap goes off and the silence that follows is incandescent. Sherlock spun around, re-evaluating the elder Holmes. “You found her?”
“Yes, as it so happens,” Mycroft amended himself. “Sorry to ruin your little game of hide-and-go-seek. But well, I thought I’d spare you tracing phantoms for another five months.”
Sherlock braced himself against the kitchen counter. “How did you find out where she is?”
“You take me for such a fool sometimes,” Mycroft sighed as he stands, picking up his coat and setting a large manila envelope on the table. “We’ve been watching her for quite a while now. Couldn’t figure how she fit into his operation, until-” Mycroft sighed looking at him like he expected more from Sherlock. Like he always had.
“But how-”
“A little bird. I’m not going to tell you, Sherlock,” the elder Holmes narrowed his eyes, evaluating, “I’m sure you’d love to puzzle it together yourself.”
“Why are you telling me this anyway?” Sherlock asked. If the elder Holmes really knew what Sherlock was looking for and thought she had that information too, why wouldn’t he just get her to tell him herself?
Mycroft sighed, half way out the door. “I wish you could understand.”
Sherlock leaned back against the counter. Mycroft nodded and was gone.
They don’t speak for days. Sherlock didn’t know what to say. If there would even be something he could say to make this better. But just sitting around London was killing his brain one bored minute at a time. He opened up the newspaper and it was dull, dull, dull, all dull. It was logical that most of the really interesting cases would be gone with Moriarty’s death, but he had expected at least something of interest to remain.
There was nothing.
Every minute he sat around was another reason he should go find someone who would sell him a shot of cocaine. Instead he arranged a meet with Lestrade, under the guise of an anonymous tip that the inspector should meet an informant in an empty parking garage.
Sherlock waited in the shadows. Lestrade looked like he was doing alright, even if he was still dumb enough to follow such a shite tip. The only sign that something was maybe not on point was him smoking again. A habit that Sherlock certainly didn’t think had anything to do with the Yard’s inability to call on the world’s only consulting detective for assistance. (He did.)
But after Greg hugged him and Sherlock told him his story of the Fall while they smoked, Sherlock asked how things are at the Yard. Lestrade blinked a couple of times, as if work had been the last thing from his mind.
“Really good, actually. Umm, yeah the numbers just came in last week, and we actually have a 96% solving rate, so brilliant. You know, it hasn’t been this high in ages.”
Sherlock frowned. Greg rocked back on his heels, lighting another cigarette and taking a drag before meeting Sherlock’s gaze.
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Greg said sounding disappointed but unsurprised. “The smoke and mirrors reappearance from the shadows bit. You want to be let on cases now that your done with criminal empires.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not gonna say I’m sorry that is no longer possible. Our teams are sorting these cases fine without your genius. The only thing I’d be able to offer you is some cold cases, but, as I said, those are few and far between.”
“This is why you wouldn’t help me, isn’t it,” Sherlock said, staring intently at the armchair fibers he was picking at. “You knew I’d get bored faster,”
Despite the cold that had seeped between them, the detective could see the apparition nod out of the corner of his eye.
“You should go visit Irene,” Jim said to him a few minutes after he was jolted awake from another nightmare. Sherlock eyed Jim, where he was slumped in one of the uncomfortable desk chairs the hotel supplied every room, from across the rumpled sheets and thought that might not be a bad idea.
Sherlock had not seen or talked to the woman since they parted ways in Karachi. Even though that mishap silenced her errant text messages, the detective had continued tracking her movements and knew that she was living in Barcelona, still occasionally causing trouble.
When Sherlock showed up on Irene’s doorstep still alive, she wasn’t as startled as he had been expecting. Perhaps, a week ago she would have been surprised to see him, Irene admitted to the detective when he commented on her non-plussed attitude as they were sitting over coffee in the flat she shared with her latest partner. But she still had contacts in London and that little visit to John certainly started some rumors. She demanded the scoop, something that would dispel the spurious gossip that surrounded his name; so he told her what really happened, despite there not being much to say. Irene was one of the few other people who even knew Jim, let alone liked him. Sherlock asked if she ever heard from him after the Scandal.
“We texted here and there. You know Jim,” Her lips quirked into a melancholy smile and internally Sherlock frowned. “I got a couple of delightful pictures of you.” Her grin was hearty as she took another sip of coffee.
He glanced through the open courtyard door to where the apparition was playing he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not with what Sherlock imagined was an equally nonexistent flower. Sherlock wondered why Jim wasn’t sitting with them or poking at Irene to annoy the detective or even see if she could sense him too. Then Sherlock remembered that Jim could visit the woman whenever he wanted, and probably has seen her a number of times since his death.
The pause in the conversation dragged and the woman was looking where Sherlock was looking. At nothing.
“You’re seeing him,” Irene said. It wasn’t a question.
Sherlock’s eyes immediately flicked back to her and, too late, he tried to laugh it off, “I didn’t think you were superstitious.”
But Sherlock was too somber, too caught off guard by her perceptiveness and she was not fooled. “He’s here now?”
Sherlock sighed, giving up the charade. “He rarely leaves my side. Claims no one else can see or hear him.” The dark turn of his lips matched the concern in her eyes.
“Do you think it’s to do with how he died?” the woman wondered. “You were the only one there.”
Sherlock shrugged. He had considered that as a possible factor, but there was simply no way to prove it. “Did you know?”
Irene sat back. “No. But looking back it’s easier to see the signs.”
He spent the night. It was good to see the woman. He had always admired her insightfulness and it was a relief to tell someone that he was seeing Moriarty’s ghost. But there was nothing here for him. Irene had remade her life in this city and, despite her offers of putting him up longer, Sherlock knew he didn’t belong in it. Before he left the next morning, the detective asked, a thought that struck him during the night, “You don’t happen to know where he lived, do you?”
Irene’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows shot up and she scoffed lightly, “As if he’d let anyone into his inner-sanctum.”
Sherlock nodded, sucking the inside of his cheek in thought. “Thanks,” he said, his gratitude awkward. It was the least he could say for barging in after all that had happened between them.
“Keep in touch,” the woman said with a wave, watching him disappear down the street with a second invisible shadow.
They were in another train car when Jim said, “Irene and I talked last night.”
Sherlock gave him a curious look.
Jim amended himself, “After you went to sleep, Irene talked to the air she presumed I inhabited.”
“And?” Sherlock asked, genuinely curious.
“She confirmed some things I’d been considering myself,” Jim turned back to the passing countryside.
“And those things are?” Sherlock asked because there had to be a reason why Jim brought this up at all.
“You’ll see,” Jim said to the window.
Sherlock ducked back into his room, finally certain he was not followed. The detective had only stepped out to buy some dinner, but when leaving the take-out place he came under the distinct impression he was being followed. Since donning Moriarty’s mask, his every idle paranoia had been magnified ten-fold and had on more than one occasion proved justified. So, he followed his hunch and spent the better part of an hour looping around the city to loose them.
However, the moment he shut the door Sherlock felt it in the air, still stifling around him, something else shifted. And there was that smell; distinct, familiar, and ...expected sooner, actually.
“Brother,” Sherlock turned around, putting down his bag of cold dinner. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I can’t see how you are doing without some ulterior motive?” Mycroft asked humorlessly from his seat at Sherlock’s dining table. The detective moved to the kitchenette, managing to exude a resounding ‘No” without actually saying a word.
“Let me guess: you want me to come home. Some matter of national security you want me to sort for you?”
Mycroft deigned a chuckle, shifted his ever present umbrella, and didn’t say: I always want you home. Instead it was all glib pleasantness and: “I know what your looking for and came to save you the trouble.”
Sherlock’s face shut down. He turned to the sink, getting himself a glass of water from the tap. There was no way Mycroft should have figured out what he was really looking for. Yet the elder Holmes never made a personal call for something that he wasn’t sure of. Sherlock took a deep breath, not really caring if the water muffled the sound of defeat, of resignation, out.
“And what is that?”
“The one cog that can tell you what you want to know. Obviously.”
“What?” The tap goes off and the silence that follows is incandescent. Sherlock spun around, re-evaluating the elder Holmes. “You found her?”
“Yes, as it so happens,” Mycroft amended himself. “Sorry to ruin your little game of hide-and-go-seek. But well, I thought I’d spare you tracing phantoms for another five months.”
Sherlock braced himself against the kitchen counter. “How did you find out where she is?”
“You take me for such a fool sometimes,” Mycroft sighed as he stands, picking up his coat and setting a large manila envelope on the table. “We’ve been watching her for quite a while now. Couldn’t figure how she fit into his operation, until-” Mycroft sighed looking at him like he expected more from Sherlock. Like he always had.
“But how-”
“A little bird. I’m not going to tell you, Sherlock,” the elder Holmes narrowed his eyes, evaluating, “I’m sure you’d love to puzzle it together yourself.”
“Why are you telling me this anyway?” Sherlock asked. If the elder Holmes really knew what Sherlock was looking for and thought she had that information too, why wouldn’t he just get her to tell him herself?
Mycroft sighed, half way out the door. “I wish you could understand.”
Sherlock leaned back against the counter. Mycroft nodded and was gone.