Sherlock (BBC) Fanfiction: Art of the Reasoner [ch.8]
Art of the Reasoner.
Summary: A world in which Sherlock is an artist, not a detective. Though that doesn’t mean he can’t help solve crimes. AU.
[ chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven ]
A/N: If you missed it, I ended up writing that one shot. You can blame that for the long pause between updates. Well, that and depression Writer’s Block. ^^
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“I gave you my number,” Moriarty half sang, a cackle in his voice. “I wanted you to call me. Not all of this online nonsense.”
Sherlock’s mind flew through his mental phone book. He had saved the number from habit. Old sim card he barely used. Lime Green. Inconsequential, he had thought.
Now he wondered: How was I so blind?
The man before him had jumbled the letters, scattering them. It was chaotic. The words seemed to deconstruct before his eyes, deforming into letters that exploded into a mess of lines and twists in the air. It was a wonder that he could see the other man at all, what with all the mess surrounding him.
A mix of cool black and dark blue, his tie decked out with tiny white skulls. Even from a distance he could tell; hand stitched work. The strange lighting made his skin seem isabelline, though at the lab he swore it was a mix of tan and moccasin.
“You could work for me, you know,” Jim-no, Moriarty-said, head swaying as he did. “I have all the right connections. I could make you a name that the entire world knows.”
What was the point of fame but it being fuel for the very vain?
“Oh Sherlock,” Moriarty laughed. “Don’t even try pretend you’re not as vain as me.”
Had he said it aloud? Familiar adrenalin coursed through his entire being, energy electrifying his blood and he could feel his grip on the gun tightened. It was pointless, a gun when faced with a bomb and snipers and John. Sherlock had played hostage before, but being on the other side of things was very unsettling indeed.
Now he had something to lose.
“So what do you say?” Jim sounded like he was asking, but there was an undercurrent of a threat to his tone. “I can make you famous. I can give you everything you want. Want the Mona Lisa to be cut up and turned into a palette for you? Just say the word.”
The laugh that followed was loud and hollow, rebounding from the walls and echoing over and over. Taking a step forward, Sherlock tried to reassert he was fine, in charge, completely, completely fine thankyouverymuch, but the look Moriarty shot him, one that promised the skies to rain down acid and fire stopped him in his tracks.
Was it awful that there was a tug in his gut to stop and take a photo of those eyes? Those brilliant eyes that burned like black sapphires-
John shifted in his heavy coat, the colours of wires grabbing his attention. Red dots hovered over his temples and John flinched every time the lasers accidently hit his eyes.
In that split second, the sapphires looked more like coal, so very dark and evil.
Water lapped at the pool’s edges, every small splash registering, and a tang of bitter chloride sharp at the back of his throat. For some reason his eyes stung, staring at Moriarty too long. He glanced at John, who was standing very still, very pale, eyes very blue and very bright and the words were saying-
Oh, Sherlock thought again. How could I be so blind?
“No thanks,” Sherlock said. “I have everything I need.”
Jim’s eyebrows rose high up his forehead, an exaggerated expression of surprise on his face. In a blink it transformed back to an eerie passiveness. He stepped forward, slowly, as if every step was perfectly planned, a dance of murder.
When he stopped, he shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled thinly.
“I’ll ask again once John’s blood paints the walls.”
“Only I get to paint with his blood,” Sherlock growled, almost startling himself with the vehemence.
Before Moriarty could react to that declaration, John grabbed him from behind-when did the position switch happen?-and yelled, “Run!”
-
Seeing an explosion is entire worlds apart from experiencing one.
For one, there was the pain. Which was a strange mixture of excruciating-breathing ash and fire, burning the lungs, tissue damage, pain, agony like fireworks every time he closed his eyes, every movement like ice shards stabbing at his heart-and numbing. He couldn’t feel a lot of his body, disorientation clouding his mind.
Words spun like food in a blender and he felt vaguely sick.
Look at the stars, he thought, a weak hand trying to reach out and grab them. Water covered his eyes and he felt like he was drowning.
-he was drowning though, not just an illusion-
There was something rather familiar about the pressure and the warmth that blanketed his body. It was very warm, his heart, thrumming under his ribs as he fought-for breath, movement, and life-to see the stars again.
Scarlet ran into his vision, blurring and mixing with everything else. He tasted blue-since when could he taste colours?-and broke the water’s surface. Now his entire body couldn’t move.
Warmth disappeared and a chill overtook his body. The stars were absolutely beautiful, but oh, they were falling.
-parts of the building collapsing, frayed wires shooting off sparks and broken glass everywhere, floating tatters the only remains of the curtains-
Even though he tried to wiggle his fingers they wouldn’t listen to his command and a vague kind of fear filled him up.
-what if he couldn’t paint anymore?-
Fires burned everywhere-around him, inside him-and they threw an eclectic lighting over the scene. Chaos and destruction and falling stars.
“The end of the world,” he mumbled, voice faint and tired.
“Not quite, Sherlock,” a voice rasped next to him-statement or a promise?-but he was long gone by then.
In his mind, he was still drowning and the waters had turned blood red.
-John’s blood-
Was it any surprise that when he woke up in the ambulance, he was screaming?
-
“‘The world is raining down with ash and fire, everything burning, death in cinders.’” Sherlock opened his eyes at the sound of his brother’s voice. Mycroft was sitting beside him, one of Sherlock’s sketchbooks open before him.
“Even for you, this is a tad melodramatic,” Mycroft commented calmly. “Yet even while concussed, I must say your technique remains excellent.”
Trying to sit up, Sherlock quit before he could cause himself any serious damage and sighed petulantly.
“I nearly died.”
“That isn’t really a reason at this point, considering how you’ve nearly died a hundred times before.” The look Sherlock got was mildly reproving and disappointed. “What’s changed?” he sounded curious, and anyone listening would have thought that he was simply asking a question.
Things were never simple with Mycroft.
There was a long pause where Sherlock didn’t answer. The silence ended with the soft whump of Mycroft closing Sherlock’s notebook. Standing up, he looked as genial and as unruffled as ever. His father liked saying their family had the calm disposition, that no stress could push them over.
Sherlock knew better though - Mycroft wasn’t carrying his umbrella, his tie was askew by an inch and the cufflinks were loose. There were the smallest stains of coffee on his shoe-and he loathed coffee, only drinking when he’d woken up after less than two hours sleep. His brother had rushed and normally rushing was limited to international mistakes, not the failings of his little brother.
Swallowing hard, Sherlock answered as Mycroft was at the door, “I wasn’t the only one who was going to die.” His voice was soft, whether from hoarseness or from vulnerability, neither brother would ever dare say.
Mycroft stilled before he smiled and said, “At least now you’ve got some notion of self-preservation.”
-
The raw edges of his stitches were fascinating. The black thread and the pink swelling of skin and the red tinges of dried blood and the greenish hue of aged bruises and-
Sherlock felt himself tire and he lay back onto his pillows propped up against his spine. He wasn’t sure whether his fascination was because he was sick to death from the white-washed walls of his room or whether the drugs they’d pumped him with were particularly strong this time.
The paper before him was mostly pristine, only holding the faintest outlines of a needle and some jumbled words about morphine. Fatigue was working against him, work harder than before. It’d taken him an hour to drag the effort to sketch the damned thing in the first place. He was so distracted.
He remembered ... something. Something about running from a dream-or a nightmare-and needing the nurses to restrain him; he had ripped open his stitches and aggravated his burns (scars he really needed to see once the bandages could be removed).
There was also something about waking up screaming.
That’s the funny thing about memories. You don’t get to choose what you remember, not really. Of course, you could lie about what you remember; if you really wanted to.
Sherlock didn’t remember the smell of chlorine, or the crash of concrete, but he remembered the heat and the press of water around him; the taste of copper in the back of his throat and the smell of smoke coiling around him so bittersweet.
So consumed by those thoughts, Sherlock barely noticed how hard he was pressing the pencil to paper until the tip snapped and broke off.
-
John was okay. Well, okay in the sense that he would live without permanent mental or physical damage. Emotionally? Much harder to tell at this point.
It was no shortage of fascinating, John’s injuries. They were clean and healing nicely, unlike Sherlock’s, which were red and raw since he picked at them, stretching them when he should have been resting.
Perhaps John’s marks would match Sherlock’s once he woke up. So far, John had been put to sleep more often than he was allowed to wake-they hadn’t even had the chance to exchange two words to one another.
Sherlock sat by him sketching his face over and over again, as if every picture he drew was not good enough and he had to do more, more to keep John a permanent fixture in the world.
He used Copic markers and pens and inks and pencils of all varieties-he would have used paints but Mycroft would not bring those to him, something about how it would hinder his health to breathe in more fumes.
Sherlock had been breathing in paint fumes for decades at this point. It would hardly bowl him over.
In his sleep, John’s face shifted, a pained expression fluttering over his lips and closed eyes, but then it disappeared, and another blink and his face regained its passive nature.
Slowly, gently, Sherlock reached for John’s hand, the one without the needle taped to the crook of the elbow. When John did not stir at the gesture, Sherlock uncapped his markers and started tracing the veins of the arm and the hand.
He was following the little streams of life just hidden from sight and bringing them to full view so everyone could see John is alive.
No one would really see but Sherlock though.
This didn’t bother him that much, having a reminder, since a part of him felt like he still didn’t believe it.
-
Mrs. Hudson had kindly kept their flat clean during their absence, even taking the effort to clean out the fridge of perishables (and the body parts). When they were discharged, she helped them inside and fussed over them like a mother would over her children.
They didn’t mind. She seemed rather relieved that they were alive. Actually, all of them were a little delicate. Coming home was a strange symbolic gesture. Like they were now back in the game.
Thrown back into danger even as they sat in a place that reminded them of safety.
221C was covered in dust, and the air smelled stale. Which wouldn’t do. He needed it to smell toxic, reek of fumes and poison because that was familiar to him. That was Sherlock’s version of safety.
So he spent a day or two repainting everything, the entire basement dripping red and blue down the walls and ceiling. John was trying so hard to stay calm and quiet, relaxed and peaceful, but there was no hiding those lines of stress and fatigue from Sherlock.
Tea wasn’t going to solve this problem.
Sherlock called John down the morning all the paint was dry.
“Why are the walls covered in targets?” John asked, looking less disturbed and merely curious.
“You need the practise, don’t you?” Without another word, Sherlock pressed a new gun into John’s hands, a silent apology for losing (read: destroying) the previous one in the mess of the pool, accompanied by protective eye and ear gear.
Before John could ask-or protest-Sherlock left the basement to wait upstairs.
Ten heartbeats later, and Sherlock could hear the first gunshots, muffled by the walls and the concrete. He smiled and wondered how long it would be before John noticed the additional ammunition in the corners of the room.
A smile danced across his lips and he busied himself for the rest of the afternoon by debugging the apartment. Mycroft’s hand was dreadfully clear here, and he took great satisfaction in destroying every last recording device into little pieces.
Oh well, it was the thought that counted in the end.
-
The first thing he did when he got the chance was play the violin. He wanted to hear something other than water lapping at his skin.
It was like finding a part of himself again, playing the instrument was like finding a lost limb; it was another door of self discovery, of freedom and living and he could breathe now.
Every time his fingers fumbled on the strings, every time his grip on the bow slacked too much, he was reminded of what had happened. But then he would pick up the tune without a beat of pause and he was reminded I survived.
Each piece he played grew in pace and violence as he fell back into step with an instrument that had literally followed him around the globe. He wasn’t sure for how long he’d been playing before a warm hand touched his shoulder.
“Sherlock,” John warned tiredly. “Careful; you’re aggravating your stitches.”
So Sherlock played slower. Calm music filled the air, each note drawn out and low, a hum of genteel sound. He closed his eyes and let the music take him away.
Neither of them was quite sure how it happened, but Sherlock lulled John to sleep with his violin.
-
Sign language was a funny thing. All twists of wrists and coiled fingers and tight, neat, controlled gestures all coordinated into a dance of meaning.
He first learned in on the streets, where he ran into deaf twins in the alleys of Berlin. It was an incredibly fascinating method of communication. Unfortunately for him, he needed his hands to paint and sketch and just create and so talking with them was highly inconvenient.
Still, there was a certain kind of grace in the movements, something he was sure his mother could have appreciated. He liked going through the alphabet, some basic phrases with his hands when his joints ached from being curled around a pencil or a paintbrush for too long.
Silently, he would broadcast his thoughts and feelings to the air and smile as his messages disappeared without a trace. Even though he tried so, so hard to copy the entire world down, he knew that some things were better left lost to time.
-
Things died down for a while. The world kept spinning-around what, Sherlock still didn’t care about-and art was still being made. Yet, as with most things, it couldn’t last.
“Sherlock!”
John’s voice woke Sherlock from a light sleep, and he rose to see what the problem was. A sharp bubbling panic rose at the thought of is John safe? only to be beaten back by the thought of yes, of course he is, how stupid to think otherwise-
Best not to dwell to long on those thoughts, or why he had them at all.
Without saying anything more, John’s tight face told him something had happened, something interesting. Even if interesting did mean an extra four wrinkles had embedded themselves in John’s face, making him look older, tired, and run down.
A newspaper-latest copy by the date, freshly printed judging by the smudged ink-was handed to him, and Sherlock didn’t have to search far too see what John was talking about. Moriarty had made front page news again.
ROBBERY AND VANDALISM AT TATE GALLERY.
According to the article, the Tate Gallery had been robbed. Every single piece had been painstakingly removed and replaced with signs saying, The game isn’t over yet.
Paintings weren’t the only casualty. The statues were replaced with various skulls.
Moriarty was sending out a message. And he did have such a taste for the dangerously theatrical. The Chinese smuggling gang masquerading as a travelling circus was clearly a more toned down example.
“Why hasn’t Lestrade called you?” John asked.
“Good question,” Sherlock said, fishing for his phone in his pockets and patting the couch seats when it didn’t turn up. All he found were crumpled sketches and a snapped violin bow he must have forgotten.
After a few moments, John handed him Sherlock’s phone-“You left it in the kitchen”-and sat down next to him as Sherlock went through his phonebook to call Blue.
As the dial tone rang, John observed, “All those colours in your phonebook. Which one am I?”
“Gold,” Sherlock replied, a small smile quirking his lips.
“Why-”
“Hello, Sherlock,” Lestrade’s voice finally came through, and Sherlock raised his hand to stop John mid-question. More pressing matters were at hand.
“What’s this about the gallery-”
“I was about to call you.”
“Why didn’t you call me from the start?”
“Because,” and then Lestrade hesitated, a very heavy pause that made Sherlock raise an eyebrow.
“Because?” Sherlock prompted, impatient to hear whatever had made the DI so reluctant.
“Media doesn’t know this, but the skulls, I presume you already know about the skulls, had notes with every single one,” Lestrade said. “We were just comparing them with dental records to confirm. Some are having their DNA checked, but the results won’t be back for a few weeks at most.”
“Stop being around the bush and tell me,” ordered Sherlock, ignoring John’s warning look to calm down.
“Jesus,” Lestrade said and swore under his breath. “The notes claimed that every skull belonged to a white male, aged from early thirties to late forties... all named John.”
Sherlock was frozen for a full thirty seconds before he barked into the phone, “I’ll see you at the Tate.”
“The thing is, of the dozen we’ve checked, it matches up. All those skulls belong to blokes called John.”
“Make sure Anderson isn’t on forensics,” Sherlock snapped instead, not acknowledging the information, storing it away for later. When he ended the call abruptly, his hands were shaking.
-
John didn’t know this, but Mycroft had his (for a lack of a better word) minions sweep their flat before they returned. Sherlock allowed it (allowed it in the sense he didn’t actively protest it that much) partially because he was bedridden and more importantly because he knew there was a potential threat.
The team found nothing auspicious but a note that said, That was fun! We MUST do that again. xoxo
What were less easily identifiable or explainable were the dried flowers that were somehow slipped in through a barely opened window into Sherlock’s bedroom.
“Is Moriarty under the illusion that he could pursue a romantic engagement with you?” Mycroft asked the evening of the sweep as Sherlock turned the dried flowers in his hands, eyes bright with intrigue.
Mikado yellow, naples yellow, mustard, orchid and heliotrope-small petals, silken to the touch; sky blue, baby blue, eggshell white-large petals, soft and smooth.
“No,” Sherlock said. “Well, maybe, I’m not quite sure, but I don’t think these are from him. These are very ordinary flowers, common ragwort and the white campions. I think even our gardens had blue poppies and bindweeds and those Rosebay Willow Herbs.”
Mother had fought them to the very end, before she kil-before she died. She always told Sherlock that the flowers were nice enough, but they were weeds that choked her garden. Actually, her garden was almost all she talked about in the end.
Napier green, paris green and fern green-stems and leaves, dry, but perfectly preserved; pear, orange peel, tangelo, gold; the centres of the flowers, still with a hint of fragrance.
The stems were cut horizontally, instead of a professional diagonal cut. Actually, Sherlock paused and drew one closer to his face; some looked like they were torn from the plant instead of cut away cleanly.
“Silene latifolia and Senecio jacobaea; Meconopsis cambrica, Ipomoea imperati and Epilobium angustifolium: they’d all be considered weeds,” Sherlock finally said aloud. “Moriarty would have sent something ostentatious and somewhat socially traditional, like roses or carnations. Probably attached to explosives or covered in poison.”
“So who are these from?”
“Friends, of a sort,” Sherlock said, carefully brushing the petals with bandaged fingertips. Something like a smile hovered over his lips.
“You don’t have friends.”
“Exactly why I tacked on the ‘of a sort’ at the end.”
Sighing, Mycroft left Sherlock alone, allowing him to keep the flowers. Really now, it wasn’t hard to tell who made them-low quality, weed-like flower with simplistic drying preservation methods; not of the quality of a worldwide art thief would tolerate.
Sherlock still had the dried flowers tucked between the pages of one of his notebooks. It was proof that his homeless network-some of them, anyway-cared.
-
Visit your old apartment, said the text from Red. Sherlock played with the thought of ignoring it, but decided that Mycroft could have stumbled on some important information. They were already out in the streets, so it wouldn’t be so much effort to grab a taxi and check things out...
“I won’t let you go alone,” John said, reading the text over Sherlock’s shoulder. His cane-the one Sherlock gave him-was hanging off the crook of his elbow. Sherlock was torn over which reason John might be carrying it - because he sincerely needed it sometimes to walk (they only left the hospital a few weeks ago, after all) or because it would turn into a rather good, legal makeshift weapon if worst came down to worst.
Sherlock shut his phone and turned around with a slight smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
They arrived at Sherlock’s old flat surprisingly quickly, considering the traffic. It looked more dilapidated than he remembered, though in all honesty it had been years since he visited.
They arrived at the door-unmistakable, a standout from other doors from the frankly psychedelic mix of colours and patterns spray painted on it-and Sherlock looked around the borders of the door, touching certain portions, muttering, “Where is it...”
“What are you looking for?” John asked.
“This,” Sherlock said, and he slammed a portion of the plaster with his gloved hand. A part of the wall flaked off, revealing a key underneath, slightly rusted but not much worse for wear.
Slightly stunned, John commented as Sherlock unlocked the door, “Never can do things the easy way, can you? Most people just stick spare keys under the doormat.”
“Most people also use their birthdays or some combination thereof in their computer passwords,” Sherlock countered. “Predictable.”
The first thing Sherlock noticed was the lack of lighting. The generator must have failed without regular maintenance. Shadows threw a ghostly feel to the flat, a rush of memories flooding his mind-blood cocaine pain darkness tired-before John’s slight cough pulled him out of his thoughts.
He remembered exactly where he put the spare batteries and the flashlights, so he set about looking for them in the kitchen cabinets. Something in him froze though, when he saw a slight cracking in the walls, something the paint had flaked off enough to reveal.
Webbed lines, splintering cracks, that’s where he threw a phone when he heard his father died...
“Sherlock?” John had stopped peering around the semi-darkness with interest at Sherlock’s past and followed him into the kitchen. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine, fine,” Sherlock heard himself reply faintly, a bite of irritation in his voice. He turned away and drew open the cabinets and drawers with a little more violence than absolutely necessary.
There were two flashlights, though one was unusable, covered in a still mildly sticky mixture of glue and paint. He handed John the other one and grabbed a pack of matches for his own use.
There was a sharp scratch and then a searing noise as Sherlock lit the first matchstick, a little halo of light surrounding his fingers, casting a warm glow on his face. John hastily switched on his torch and shone it around, lingering on certain things-
a corner of the ceiling, covered in music notes;
the broken lamp, painted with purple hues;
the shelf, filled with stacks of loose leaf paper;
broken paintbrushes, cracked ink wells, long emptied paint cans;
parts of the floor, painted to look like where the beach touched the sea;
a portrait on the wall of a homeless man Sherlock once knew
-while Sherlock tried to see what Mycroft had seen that was so important. It wasn’t until they arrived at his old bedroom that they saw it.
Sherlock couldn’t help the broken cry that escaped him. It was a violin, chopped up into tiny little pieces, rearranged so artistically, but it was a broken instrument. At first, in the poor lighting he thought it was his violin, but no, on closer inspection-
“Dear God, he butchered a Stradivarius.”
“Aren’t those worth-” John started to say, but Sherlock waved him off.
“It’s not the monetary value, but the sound,” Sherlock said, lighting several other matches as he took a closer look. “According to some, Stradivarius violins are some of the best in the world since the sound they produce is rivalled by none. What I would do to get one...”
He trailed off as he saw something scratched into the pieces of the violin, jagged letters marring the wood. The match went out with a hiss and he had to relight another one to read the message.
This was meant to be your ‘Welcome to the Team’ gift, Sherlock. What a shame you didn’t join though. Perhaps you can appreciate this anyway.
I’m planning to cut John up exactly like this. Isn’t it nice to have an example? xoxo
“Ow!” Sherlock yelped, the match dropping from his hands. Distracted, he had been burned by the fire, the tips of his fingers tingling. Colours burst in his mind’s eye, a reaction to the pain.
John grabbed his hand and tried to look at it-muttering, “You need to be more careful”-but at that moment his flashlight burned out and darkness surrounded them once more.
Instead of cursing, Sherlock could only laugh weakly. He could see the letters floating around anyway, darkness notwithstanding. Sighing, his head dropped until his forehead was nearly touching John’s, who didn’t flinch from the sudden proximity.
“Why are your eyes closed?” John asked in a hushed voice.
Was it? Sherlock thought tiredly, amused. I didn’t even notice.
Sherlock raised a hand to John’s neck and revelled in the feel of a pulse thrumming underneath his fingertips.
“We look to see, to learn and understand,” Sherlock explained softly. “But with you? With you, I know what I’m going to see. Warmth and kindness and patience-pastel colours with smudges of black and blue and red. I don’t need to look at you to know that.”
In a lower voice, he murmured, “A heart of gold.” The darkness didn’t seem so threatening when he could feel the glow of warmth beneath his fingertips.
-
Sherlock didn’t see the world like others did. Well, short of climbing into their heads, he could never technically see how others did. Though the concept did intrigue him.
He never considered the fact that there might be one person in the world completely and utterly fascinated by how he saw the world.
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A/N: And guys: this is totally the last chapter, but there is an epilogue!
[ epilogue ]