Challenge 3: Part 1
CHALLENGE 3: THE FICS
Welcome to the fics of Challenge 3! Congratulations and thank you so much to everyone who submitted a fic this month - you should be proud!
I myself am proud to present the following fics for your reading pleasure. As usual, the voting poll and deadline will be in the last post with the final fics.
Enough from me, then - read away and enjoy!
vivitchi
1.
Warning: contains references to domestic violence
Skylark
The sound of Sherlock’s violin meanders through the house; the serene, uplifting melody of The Lark Ascending soothing out the nagging ache in her hip. Nonetheless, she takes no chances on a good night’s sleep and sucks her herbal soother.
The floorboards upstairs creak, as if in approval, though it’s probably just John settling himself on the sofa. She smiles fondly as she reclines, pleased for Sherlock that finally he’s got someone, a friend. She’s never seen him quite this happy, in his own erratic way.
~*~
Martha Hudson first met Sherlock Holmes on a flight to Orlando, in the summer of 2001. She was attempting to squeeze her hand-luggage into the last space in the overhead when she lost her grip. From out of nowhere a pale arm shot out and saved it from toppling onto another passenger’s head. The arm was attached to a tall, willowy boy with piercing blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and slacks. They were unusually smart clothes for a teenager, although as he sat down next to her and introduced himself, he was quick to point out he’d just graduated university.
“Are you going to Disney? I expect you want a bit of fun after all that studying.”
Sherlock scowled and said with disdain, “Absolutely not. I’m visiting ... a professor at the University of Florida.”
That was the end of their conversation until an hour or so later, when out of the blue Sherlock remarked, “Your husband was a brute. But he’s dead now?” He regarded her with what felt like kindness.
It took her completely by surprise. She’d never told anyone; thought she’d hidden it so well.
She whispered her reply. “Not dead, dear. He’s in prison, in Florida State ... on Death Row.” As Sherlock leaned in closer she was compelled to ask him, “But how ...?”
“You mean the part about him being a brute? Easy. When I reached out to catch your bag you immediately flinched, as if my fist was heading for you and not your luggage. Your reaction, I’m awfully sorry to say, was that of the habitually terrorised - confirmed by your long-sleeved blouse, buttoned up high on the neck despite it being summer.” He continued, on and on, taking apart her mannerisms and appearance; translating them into an uncannily accurate portrait of her life. She felt her eyes well with tears - upset and confused yet partly relieved. It was at that moment she felt his warm hand cover hers. “You must be glad he’s behind bars. But tell me, why bother to fly all this way to visit him?”
“For the appeal.” The very thought made her sob. “He’s told me to sell my family’s house, to pay for a better lawyer.”
“What did he do?”
“He murdered a child, a boy of fourteen.” She shuddered, remembering that fateful night.
Sherlock listened intently, not once withdrawing the soothing clasp of his hand from around hers, as she recounted the details of the boy’s harmless prank that ended in his fatal beating. He listened to her describe the farce of a trial that somehow, despite everything, resulted in her husband’s conviction and the death penalty.
Only now, the defence hinted there was a chance that vital evidence was missed: the conviction might be overturned.
“What about your testimony? Wasn’t that damning enough?”
She shook her head, remembering how she was virtually ignored. Sherlock squeezed her hand before reaching down to retrieve a notebook from his bag. He asked her question after question: about the trial, the evidence, the boy, and her husband. Before she knew it the flight was landing.
As they exited the plane, Sherlock disarmed her with a slight grin, a brief hug and a parting peck on her cheek, saying he would be in touch. She wished him well, not expecting to see or hear from him again, while a fanciful part of her considered what a joy it would be to have a son: one just like him.
Not days afterwards, Sherlock, then the prosecution, contacted her at her hotel.
The appeal was overturned.
Les Hudson was executed by lethal injection a year later.
~*~
She closes her eyes and drifts.
To this day she doesn’t know exactly what Sherlock did, but she’s indebted.
The house on Baker Street is still hers and Sherlock set her free, for good: free as a bird, free as a skylark soaring swiftly upwards in an endless blue sky.
2.
The first time Mike Stamford meets Sherlock Holmes, it's in the summer of 2005 at a forensics conference hosted by Bart's. The 7 July bombings are only a few weeks gone, and everyone is on edge. Mike has a syllabus conundrum, and he's been told this Holmes fellow can fix it.
The tall, sharply-dressed young man is frowning at Molly Hooper, the brightest student in her year, while she witters at him nervously about a paper session at which they were both obviously present.
Mike knows the type: arrogant, aloof, awkwardly handsome. And, in all probability, gay.
“I'd have you over for a cup of tea and a continuation of this discussion,” says Holmes, somehow insincere and apologetic all at once, “but I've just been evicted.”
Molly's pretty features crumple. “Oh, that's dreadful! What are you going to do?”
“Avoid staying with my brother at all costs,” Holmes mutters.
“I couldn't help but overhear,” Mike says, casually sidling up to them. “You're in need of housing?”
Holmes seems grateful to have a body more or less between his shoulder and Molly's.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. My landlord objected to some lab-work I was undertaking in the garden. He seemed to think I might have had something to do with all those messy pyrotechnics.”
“This is Professor Stamford,” says Molly, helpfully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Sherlock Holmes,” says the young man, offering Mike his hand. “You don't happen to know of a room going for cheap, do you?”
“I do, as it happens,” Mike says. “My flatmate just left to move in with his girlfriend.”
Holmes-Sherlock, Mike tells himself; the lad must be ten years his junior, surely-raises his eyebrows with an air of cool, yet genuine surprise. It suits him.
“You hardly know me,” he says. “Or my experiments. For all you know, I might be a bomber.”
Molly giggles behind her hand. It's simultaneously wrong and dreadfully appropriate.
“He's a regular in the mortuary,” she says. “You ought to see what he did-”
“Molly, thank you,” says Sherlock, “but Mike and I are about to grab a cup of coffee in the canteen. We have business to discuss, it would seem. If that's all right with you?”
Of course it is, Mike thinks, dazed. Blokes like you get whatever you want, from whomever you want, and little wonder, too.
Three hours later, Sherlock is moving his alarming collection of possessions into the empty bedroom up the hall from Mike's. Twelve hours later, the violin won't stop.
Forty-eight hours later, Mike comes home to a house full of Scotland Yard and Sherlock having an impressive stand-off with one Detective Inspector Lestrade. Judging by the way they address each other, it's not the first time, and Mike has the sinking feeling it won't be the last, either.
The first time a partially dissected human gallbladder turns up in the fridge, Mike and Sherlock have words. Sherlock trounces him soundly and, the next week, brings home a blackened lung.
Mike and Molly have words, but it's no use. Sherlock makes off with whatever he pleases, and the poor girl doesn't have the heart to stop him, because, well, he's stolen that, too.
Six weeks later, Mike thinks he's found Sherlock a suitable new flatmate: nerdy, bisexual, and a chess prodigy to boot. After only five days, Sherlock is back on Mike's doorstep, and the process begins anew with little to no success.
It continues for the next four years.
Seven flatmates later, Sherlock spends three miserable months with his brother and ends up at Mike's almost every evening. Mike doesn't mind the company, as now said company isn't filling his house with atrocities of both the medical and non-medical varieties.
Now, one bright morning out of the blue, Mike is smiling at John Watson over lukewarm Criterion coffee. Strange, that he'd never noticed before what it would take, or, indeed, what he should have been looking for on Sherlock's behalf all along.
Mike does, after all, know the type: bloody barking mad, but worth it in the end.
3.
When she was seven she was the child no one wanted to play with, the one all the other kids avoided at lunch time: left in the corner of the playground to eat her sandwiches alone and look longingly at everyone else playing together. She resented them even then. They didn’t even bother to get to know her, just dismissed her because of her background and her parents and her grandparents and all the other things she had no control over. They didn’t even bother to ask her name.
By the time she was fifteen she had learned that there are more important things than being popular, than having friends or being liked. She focused all her energy into her academic studies; English and mathematics and physics and history. Things that she could lose herself in and be successful at. Things to help her forget that no one knows her name.
At nineteen she was marked for a lifetime as “the loner”. The girl who knows no one, the girl who is not cared for, the girl with no name. She walked through the campus alone, going from lecture to café to her hall alone. She didn’t even bother to try anymore. She has accepted the fact that no one really cares and no one ever really will.
At twenty two she was a graduate. A jobless graduate. No one needed intelligent people in those days, they wanted faceless, nameless workers who get things done for as little money as possible. When she walked into the job interview she tried to flaunt her degree and her university at them. They were uninterested and asked if she could make tea and catalogue books. She sighed. The interviewer forgot her name when he shook her hand.
She was twenty five when she met the enigma that is Mycroft Holmes. She was walking home in her faded jeans and her too thin coat when a sleek black car pulled up beside her, the door swinging open and a hand beckoning to her. She took the chance and got in. A neatly, almost pretentiously suited man was sat in the seat beside hers. He offered her a job, ‘I’ve been watching you’, and she accepted in a heartbeat on instinct, ‘you could be great things.’ Then he says her name, and finally someone has bothered to know it.
At twenty six she is dressed in designer clothes and highly glossed shoes. Her fingers are permanently latched onto a phone. She flits from place to place in Mycroft’s cars, meeting all manner of people every day. She is silence, she is fear, she is power. She is nameless.
At thirty she meets John Watson. He flirts, she smirks. A million things about herself run through her head at his questions. He is special, she can tell. All the things she could tell him about her life. How she used to be nothing and know she is everything. She earns millions of pounds every year for looking imposing and nonchalant. She works with the most powerful man in Europe - possibly the most powerful man in the world. She knows fifteen ways to kill someone with just her hands, she can aim and shoot a man between the eyes in 1.84 seconds, she can throw a knife into the heart without even looking to aim.
She could tell him her real name. The one the children didn’t ask for, the one the employers never bothered to remember, the one only Mycroft Holmes knows. She almost does it, almost says it aloud for the first time in innumerable years. But she can’t bear it and so she simply tells him “Anthea”.
4.
Seb and Sherlock moved in different circles, which was to say Seb had his own circle of friends and Sherlock was a circle all by himself. People joked that Sherlock’s circle extended out ten feet around him to keep people away.
Sherlock was a first year chem. student, Seb; third year economics. To him, Sherlock was a strange waif who wandered downstairs to breakfast, stared at the scrambled eggs like he’d never seen any before, and caused a riot with a comment about semen-stains on Becky’s skirt.
Seb’s change of opinion began (unglamorously) with a wank. Or rather the need for one.
He…thought best in the shower, and his favourite trick was to go at three am when he was guaranteed privacy. He sauntered into the block barefoot, with his towel over his shoulder and his mind focused on whether he would police his fantasies tonight or not.
When he didn’t things took rather a… male direction. He promised himself he would, but secretly knew he’d end up doing whatever worked. Things he couldn’t have excited him most of all.
Sherlock was standing by the sinks, causing Seb to freeze in the doorway. The guy looked unexpectedly human under the clinical electric lights. A towel hung loosely around his hips and water dripped from his wet curls down onto newly-grown-into shoulders. Sherlock was closely checking the reflection of his left eye.
“I’m just going.”
“No rush.” Seb wasn’t sure what part of him was speaking - the polite part or the part carefully not looking at Sherlock’s damp stomach muscles above the loosening towel.
“I got the worst of the acid off,” said Sherlock, adding; “A test tube exploded. Mostly over me.”
He gave a smile that looked learned rather than experienced and headed out.
As he passed Seb he seemed to go through a mental equivalent of Seb’s own internal struggle - should he speak or not? Speaking won.
“Your parents won’t care that you’re gay you know.”
“What?” Seb clutched his towel in front of him like a security blanket. There was no way this guy could know… “How do you know my family? How do know anything about me?”
Sherlock shrugged. “I’ve observed you and therefore I can deduce their reaction. So long as you don’t embarrass them publicly, they just don’t care that much about you. I could go into detail about every little tell you have, but I have to rescue my journal from the acid spill.”
He left, leaving Seb far too jittery to continue what he’d come in there for.
--
Two months later Seb was celebrating. Or rather, walking home from celebrating. Tomorrow he was going to have the sort of hangover that involves navigating around patches of your own vomit, but right now life was good.
He was a gay man. He could shout it. Everyone knew. His circle of friends was considerably smaller and he’d had the shit kicked out of him by his ex-rugby mates, but overall he was happier. He could shag the right sex for a start; he’d been enjoying that new development.
As if by magic Sherlock appeared on the stairs that Seb was trying to climb on his hands-and-knees. He held out a hand to help Seb up. Seb rewarded him with a wet, drunken kiss against the wall.
Sherlock was as dry and responsive as a book from the Bodleian, but he smelled like smoking and he was fiery hot to the touch. He felt dangerous, like he could ignite at any second.
“Mmph!”
Sherlock pushed Seb away, holding his arms out to make his personal space clear.
“That was a thank you,” Seb murmured. Or tried to murmur. His murmur was both loud and slurred. “For everything.”
“Yes, well,” Sherlock sniffed delicately. “I have no desire for any… interaction with you. Not with anyone.”
--
The next day, amid the expected hangover, Seb grinned. Sherlock was something he couldn’t have, and that made him exciting.
He reckoned it would take two weeks to win him over.
--
Fifteen years later.
M_Hello Sebastian.
M_Or should I call you theimprobableone?
M_I’m glad my little games gave you the opportunity to ask for Sherlock’s help.
M_I knew you’d jack-off after he left.
M_So did he.
M_Did you meet his ‘colleague’?
M_How did if feel being the one that just wasn’t good enough?
M_I have an interest in anyone who is so impassioned by Sherlock.
M_I think we should meet.
M_Soon.
5.
I was bought for function. That's what I overheard as I was handled and bagged. The woman distinctly said to the cashier, "I don't care what colour this is, it's functional, and warm, and my brother will probably throw it in a drawer and forget about it."
Apparently I had become any piece of clothing's worst nightmare: a meaningless gift to be opened, admired with just the right amount of false sincerity, and then passed around from person to person until falling apart, unworn.
Except, one day, he wore me. I was the last clean shirt in the closet, and it was extra cold out. Looking at the other clothes in his closet, I realized that this man, this John, did not care about clothes. Perhaps I had hope yet.
He wore me again. And again, until I actually began to know him. His name was John, he was a doctor, and he lived alone.
When we moved, I noticed three things: there was a lot of dust, the other one (Sherlock) wore dressy clothes, and neither of those things seemed to matter to my John. He simply sat in a chair and read the newspaper, as if he had lived here for years.
But then the other one, Sherlock, convinced him to run around to a crime scene in the middle of the night. And then we met a mysterious man in an abandoned warehouse. I had never seen this much of the world, before. John seemed both excited and exasperated.
Me? I was worn. That's all that mattered to me.
*
I did not like the girl at first sight. She smelled too different. She got this look in her eye, a look I remembered from when I sat in the shop. I was not colourful enough. I was too bland.
John, however, ignored her. He never hid who he was. Function first: just like me.
*
Sherlock touched me today.
John had been waiting for so long for him. I do not know exactly what happened. Except John came home after a long absence injured, and Sherlock was not with him. John spent many days wandering the apartment, looking lost.
But today Sherlock walked through the door, and smiled at John, and said
"Just how I thought, beige sweater and all."
Then Sherlock put his hand on me, on John's shoulder. It stayed there for a long time.
I like how it felt.
I did not like the wall, rough, probably causing the back of me to look bad. But I liked the way Sherlock had me in his hand, bunched up tightly, pushing me into John, trying to gain purchase.
John seemed to like it too.
*
I am in the corner of the room, bunched up carelessly, and lying across one of Sherlock's shirts. I seem to be here a lot lately.
Every time John puts me on, Sherlock has the urge to take me off and throw me in the nearest corner. Amongst other things.
They really need a new hobby.
6.
Warning: glancing mention of attempted suicide
He finds her in the mental ward of St. Barts, a place she never, ever meant to be, cursing at deities she doesn't believe in. It was supposed to work, not land her here. She doesn't believe in cries for help.
"Why?" he asks her, this stranger with the all-seeing eyes, the question everyone has been asking her for days. She hasn't answered any of them. She answers him.
"Why not?"
"You're a beautiful, intelligent young woman. Isn't there anything you want from life?"
"No."
He smiles then, a million sardonic secrets in that dangerous curl of his lip. "Perfect."
*
When she asks the question, weeks later, she misses his efficiency by half.
"Why me?"
"You can learn practically everything about a person by the numbers, and there's no number I haven't got. Your IQ, your marks, your test scores-all exceptional. And after university, nothing. Nothing exceptional at all." His head quirks. "What happened?"
She meets his stare. "I think too much."
He nods, professorial, fatherly. "Then let me do the thinking."
She would despise any other man who said those words to her, but he doesn't mean what they would mean. She doesn't despise him.
She only nods.
*
She doesn't recognize herself, her first day on the job. He chose the clothes, the makeup, the curl of her hair. She doesn't despise him for that, either. He's given her someone new to be.
She's busy every second of the day. A careful eight hours slated for sleep, a periodic half-an-hour for meals. He lets her think she manages herself, but she knows otherwise, and he knows she knows otherwise, a balance carefully maintained.
She doesn't make choices. She is flawlessly competent, indefatigably hard-working, and never once has to be the one to choose.
She loves him for that.
*
There's an empty hour in her schedule, and she has no idea what to do. She never leaves her desk, staring out the window, willing the minutes away.
There's another empty hour, next week. He finds her six hours later, extraordinarily drunk, and sees her home, and tucks her into bed.
The third week, she walks along the river. The fourth, she buys herself new shoes. The fifth, she visits the Tate, and admires the Magrittes.
By six months, she has three free hours a week, two new friends, has read five novels, and knows what she still needs.
*
He isn't surprised. He's never surprised. But he isn't expecting her, either. If he were, she wouldn't have come.
He's a master of concealing his emotions. She doesn't know what he wants, except that he wants her not to know. He wants her to decide whether it's worthwhile to stumble as far as the bedroom. He wants her saying whose clothes come off and when. He wants her calling the shots on positions, and angles, and whether he gets to come at all.
He wants this to be her choice, a real choice, and she loves him for that, too.
*
He calls her his Anthea, blossom, delightfully and shockingly poetic. Because she has something of genius herself, she knows he has given her the epithet of a queen of the gods, and so she calls him Panoptes, Zeus All-Seeing. They think for each other, as she sees now they have been all along, for his hours need filling no less than hers; his mind requires feeding no less constant. She knows now what he saw in her emptiness, and her brilliance, and her absence of ambition.
She still doesn't believe in gods. She believes in herself, and in Mycroft Holmes.
7.
Warnings: graphic homosexual sex, death.
one.
He sees darkness. There is no blood, no stain, no hard evidence. Just endless darkness, the beautiful road of death.
“Did you see anything, Moriarty? If you did, you have to tell the truth. We need the truth.”
Jim stares at the head teacher. His eyes are blank, his face schooled into expressionless so well, only ten years old.
“No sir. I saw nothing, sir.”
*
six.
“Her death was so sudden,” his mother says over dinner. “Why would someone do that? Her poor parents.”
His father grunts, an acknowledgement that sounds more belittling than agreeable, as he turns the newspaper page. The dead girl’s face disappears.
Jim remains silent. His plate is clean and his homework is finished.
“Can I go to the cinema tonight please, Mum?”
She smiles. “Of course, sweetie. Here.” A crisp note is pressed into his palm. “Don’t get up to no good now, like the other teenagers that hang around our alleys. I don’t want my little boy ending up like them.” She looks at her husband, but he’s reading.
Jim tilts his head and blinks. “Don’t worry, Mum. I won’t.”
*
thirteen.
“Jim, there you are.”
He turns around and sees the boy jogging towards him, meeting him at his front door. He’s panting and flushed pink. “I’ve been looking all over campus for you and your phone’s off. Where’ve you been? Lectures ended hours ago.”
“Out. I... popped into town. Needed a few things.”
The boy loops his fingers into Jim’s jeans and pulls him forward with a lewd smirk. “Busy anymore?”
Jim cocks an eyebrow. His voice lilts with Irish accent. “For what, exactly?”
“Come now, Jim, don’t play coy,” the boy purrs. He tugs Jim closer, their lips ghosting together. “You know what I want. You want it too. We’re having a good time, aren’t we?”
Jim smirks. He leans up and kisses the boy, hard, but draws away in seconds to pull a bunch of keys from his jacket pocket. He unlocks the front door as the boy watches.
“After you,” Jim says. The boy grins and steps into the house.
Behind him, Jim brushes gunpowder off his sleeve, slips the weapon from his belt into his bag, and shuts the door behind him.
*
fourteen.
“Fuck, Jim, fuck,” the boy pants, thrusting wildly as Jim lies on all fours on his bed. “Jesus, I’m going to, oh fuck-”
“Yeah, come on, fuck yeah,” Jim bites out, face pressed into a pillow. “Fuck me, damn it, come on!”
The boy comes with a harsh cry, loud and animalistic. As he falls to the side, Jim takes his cock in hand and jerks himself into completion with grunts between grit teeth.
“Fucking hell,” the boy breathes heavily, lying on the bed and staring dazedly at the ceiling. “That was... incredible.”
Jim chuckles, low in his throat, as he climbs towards him. He has a glass of water in one hand, which he extends in offering.
“Thanks,” the boy says, and sips the drink.
Two minutes later, Jim rolls him off the bed, still wide-eyed and frothing at the mouth. Jim needs the space to sleep. He can deal with him in the morning.
*
thirty-five.
“How old are you?”
Jim casts his newest client a cursory glance.
“How is that relevant to our business?”
His client shrugs, casual, seemingly uncaring. “You look young, is all. Most people in your trade don’t look like they’re in their mid-twenties, that’s for sure.”
Jim’s lips twist into a sneer. “Looks can be deceptive.”
Suddenly, a body bag is thrown to the floor in the corner of the room. The client jumps in his chair.
“As you requested,” Jim drawls, standing up. “That’ll be two million pounds. Please.”
He leaves.
*
seventy-two.
“You have your orders,” Jim says. His voice is distorted through the microphone; he sounds like a woman in her forties, mature and intelligent.
He watches from afar - stares hard at the black and white images on the computer screen - as the victim is gassed to death, falling like a limp and broken puppet to the floor.
Jim taps the screen, and giggles.
*
one hundred and one.
Jim has the gun in his hand. He hasn’t held one for so long, he’s almost forgotten what it felt like.
“I can end it,” Jim singsongs, playful and taunting and Irish. “It’ll be over for Sherlock Holmes and his loyal dog.”
He is greeted with silence.
“Very well,” Jim says. He smiles. “Goodnight, my friends.”
8.
Sally Donovan hated women’s magazines. Especially the fashion ones, the glossies: she just sodding loathed them. Why women wanted articles about sex instead of just getting on with the business of having it was beyond her. Women’s rags were all lipgloss and anorexic birds with bored expressions sprawled across settees. Looked like Sherlock fucking Holmes, only with tits and chiffon.
The waiting room had three-year old women’s magazines, a few scattered automotive periodicals she’d already been through once before, and one tattered magazine all about pregnancy. Two hours ago she’d started to eye the pamphlets about hear disease as potentially fascinating literature.
“Oi, Freak,” she said, and tossed the mess of fluttering, colorful, half-naked birds at him. “Do something with this, will you?”
He gave her a look like you’d give the shit you stepped in, and set the glossy down at his elbow. Sally didn’t care. At least it was away from her. She noticed that Watson, sitting next to the Freak, had a faster rhythm established in his clock-watching: up to the clock, down to the door to the surgery, up to the clock, over to the nurse’s desk, up to the clock . . .
Sherlock ripped a page out of the glossy with a girl hanging waif-like from the bowl of a dead tree. He folded it into a paper tiger.
“How long does one operation take?” she growled. She knew, of course, had to after so many years in the force, but it felt longer when it was the guv on the table.
“Could be up to four hours,” he said, too distracted to be ironic.
“Sod it,” she said.
Sherlock ripped out a page with a smoky-eyed poster girl for starvation lounging on a balcony with a martini. The olive at the bottom of the glass probably had the highest calorific value of anything she’d eaten all week. He folded the page into a whale.
It had only been three hours and Sally was ready to tear down the walls. Taking action was wonderful, but being forced to stop? To play the scene over and over in her head? To know just how badly she’d failed?
As far as she was concerned, Sally had only one job: keep the guv safe. He was a good man, one of the few she’d met. He was decent and honest and treated her like a copper rather than a lady with a badge. But he was stupid when it came to hope. He thought that with the right guidance Sherlock could be a real boy. But Holmes wasn’t fucking Pinocchio, and he wasn’t going to turn out right just because one good man gave a toss.
Learned that the hard way, didn’t he? With the crack of a gun and one horrible moment when they’d all watched him falter and fall, he’d have best learned not to trust the Freak. Sally certainly had. Now the guv was in surgery and Sherlock was making origami out of anorexics, when in a fair world it would be Holmes on the table and the guv working himself into a nicotine relapse in the waiting room.
The door opened. Sally looked round with a jerk. The sister standing there was a blousy sort, all red cheeks and motherly affection. If she tried to pat Sally’s arm or call her ‘sweetheart’, Sally was going to slap her about the head.
“DI Lestrade?” she called out. Sally was on her feet, only half noticing that Sherlock and Watson were up as well.
“Yeah,” she said, “yeah, we’re for him.”
There was a rushing in her ears before the sister spoke, and it took Sally a second to realize it was her heartbeat. The sister looked at them each in turn.
“He’s pulled through the surgery,” she said.
Sally almost sat down again in relief. The sister was inviting them to come, to follow her up to Intensive Care. Sally took a few halting steps, and then Watson was at her side. He didn’t touch her, but he pressed something into her hand. Sally curled her fingers compulsively around it, and then released them slowly. In her palm lay a small, almost delicate unicorn. A bony wrist lay in its chest, and a pair of haunted, sorrowful eyes peered into the middle distance from its neck. Sally closed her hand around it once more and followed.
9.
Moriarty doesn’t look like she imagined he would. He is flighty, frantic, perfectly dressed, with the same sharp and focused gaze as Sherlock, but crueller. She’d pictured a beard.
“Ah, the famous Mrs Hudson,” he says, voice lilting over the words. “I do hope you’re comfortable.” She’s tied to a chair, ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles, in a dank, cold cell of a room. Her head is aching, her mouth is dry and she’s aching down to her bones.
She forces herself to smile. “Of course, dear.”
Moriarty’s gaze sharpens. “I suppose you think that at any moment, your precious Sherlock will rush to your rescue,” he says, eyes bright with excitement. “Well, as long as he follows the right trail, I’m sure he’ll be here in no time. If not...” he trails off, leans back onto his heels, his grin a parody of happiness.
“I explode?” she says, voice weaker than she’d like, thinking of the explosion at Baker Street, that poor woman in the block of flats.
“Oh no,” he waves away, “that’s so passé. I was thinking more poison, or slow bleeding out. Nothing too painful,” he reassures, “just something to show Sherlock who’s won.” He spins around. “Oh, I do love a good hostage situation,” he says, gleeful, and then leaves.
She slumps into her chair then, and lets out a sigh which sounds more like a sob. She allows herself one minute of panicking, her heart beating out of her chest, breath shortening, until she pulls herself together. Sherlock is coming for her, and she knows he’ll make it.
***
It’s John who opens the door to her room, hours later. The weak light hurts her eyes, and she can only croak out his name, throat dry as a desert.
“Mrs Hudson!” he cries, and runs towards her, dropping to his knees at her side. She ignores the gun he’s holding in a white-knuckled grip, the blood on one of his sleeves. She just smiles at him as best she can.
He starts to untie her, Doctor’s hands confident and gentle. “Sherlock?” she asks, almost inaudible, and John looks at her with a smile as he rubs circulation back into her hands.
“Chasing Moriarty,” he says, and she nods. She sits through the rest of his check up, leant back in the chair, eyes closed, until the sound of the door opening again makes her sit up. John is pointing the gun at the doorway, face grim, until he realises it’s Sherlock standing there, hands shoved into his pockets.
“Put the gun down, John,” he says scornfully.
John does so with a small smile. “Maybe I wouldn’t have pointed it at you if you made more noise than a ghost,” he replies, and Mrs Hudson smiles with him. It’s always fun to hear them argue.
Sherlock ignores him, and kneels down next to her instead. He gently touches the raw skin on her wrist. “I’m fine, Sherlock,” she forces out through her dry throat. She doesn’t want to add any more guilt to his shoulders about Moriarty; he’s already pushing himself too hard, although he’d deny it. “Nothing a cup of tea won’t solve.”
People often tell her that she treats Sherlock like a favoured son. Mrs Turner said that she was too soft, that she didn’t charge them enough rent, that she was too lenient about the damages. But she didn’t treat Sherlock like a son - she’d been much tougher on her Tim.
When he’d died and his father had tried to cover it up, she’d got in touch with Sherlock. He couldn’t bring Tim back, but he’d pulled apart the whole situation at once, and done whatever it is he does to solve her problem and get rid of her husband for good. He’d not accepted any payment, refused any form of gratitude until he appeared again, years later, asking after her flat. And now, again, he’s come to her rescue. So really, it’s the least she owes him, cheap rent and cups of tea, and anyone who says she’s soft doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Sherlock doesn’t say anything, just looks at her for another moment, and then stands. Mrs Hudson lets her eyes fall closed again, knowing it is now safe to do so, the familiar sound of Sherlock and John filling her ears.
Perhaps she does think of Sherlock and John as her sons. She knows she could do much worse.
10.
To her, it probably shouldn't have mattered. After all, from a very unselfish perspective, it was a good thing that he was neither bored nor sad nor angry enough to turn to her to vent his emotions. Of course, there would be a time, some day, when he needed her again.
Their relationship was really quite simply. At moments, she was everything he needed, and she never hesitated to give him what he wanted. She asked little in return for her services, but it hurt the more when he decided that he did not have the time to reward her. After all, she was not like his companion. She did not ask him to change who he was. She did not ask him to bow to the rules of society. She did not need him at his best, or his most brilliant. She had always been the one he could turn to when he felt worse, especially since he had become clean. Perhaps he thought that she had not noticed the difference, perhaps even being a genius was not enough to admit to such an exotic notion, even though she was sure that he had always known that she was slightly different.
But perhaps, whenever he thought refuge in her company, when he was at his lowest, he was no longer the aloof genius, but the child he had been when they first met. Brilliant even back then, of course, recognising her genuineness at first glance. Sherlock had been firmly routed in the harsh reality, the battleground he saw every day. She was an escape of that battle, a shelter in the storm, company when he thought he fought alone. They were close, but not so close that Sherlock dared to take the giant leap of admitting that she had a soul of her own.
Still, to him, she was so much more than to his companion, whose cold, military touch was so foreign and unfeeling, even though she recognised that for Sherlock's sake, he made an effort to care for her. He might want to be careful and helpful by taking her out of the way when Sherlock was to deeply involved in a case to actually notice his surroundings, but the fact remained that she longed for the familiar touch of those swift, elegant fingers, brushing over her neck. They were what made her feel truly alive, the only thing that released her soul from this strange kind of prison.
At least, she always had the reassurance that Sherlock would return to her, even though he had only noticed her of late when he was angry at his brother, taking her more as a welcome excuse not to have to face him rather than for her sake. But he would return to her, some day. All she had to do was wait for the right time, the right moment, the right mood. And she was very patient.
However, she knew exactly when the time had come for him to turn to her again. She was sure that his companion would not notice that she had gone missing, smuggled out before he could return from the hospital, where he was treated after the explosion. She could sense Sherlock's uncertainty, his fear that his friend might not survive, or might be more gravely injured than it had seemed at first glance, but of course her genius had not had the time to wait and see. He had such a human streak in him, sometimes.
His mind, so clear and brilliant, had told him that if he wanted those humans around him safe, he had to turn his back and run until he was able to hunt down his enemies and return. He had not really thought about what those humans felt, but she knew that, in his heart, he knew the consequences. She felt honoured that he had returned for her.
When they first stopped, many miles from London, many miles from home, she knew that the time to sing again had come. Sherlock opened her case, his fingers ghosting over her polished lines of wood, brushing against the strings. Then, as the morning sun bathed them in golden light in the middle of nowhere, Sherlock lifted the bow to her strings, and wrapped them both in mournful song.
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