Results and Standings for Round 4
Well it was a cracker of a month everyone - some amazing fic on display. I was delighted with so many different variations and ideas!
But you aren't here for my praise. You are here for the big announcement. So here goes...
In 1st Place
Earning 3 Canes for Team Mycroft
is number 8, written by
irisbleufic
Such a frightening child, you hear one of Mummy's nurses say. He doesn't cry.
You don't know if Sherlock made a sound during the delivery, but from what Father had explained of what a Caesarian section is, you would have a hard time believing he didn't. Mummy is fast asleep, damp dark curls plastered to her forehead, and Sherlock is quiet and wide-eyed in her arms.
He doesn't make eye contact, either, whispers the other nurse, and Father frowns.
You curl Sherlock's tiny fingers around your thumb while the adults converse quietly in the far corner of the room, and, sure enough, his eyes focus briefly on yours. It's the first of his many secrets that you'll keep.
Several days later, after the respiratory infection sets in, you anxiously watch the fretful kicks of Sherlock's skinny legs inside the incubator as the doctor slips a needle in his hand. After a minute, you shout Stop! Stop! and bang against the glass as Father tries to restrain you. He's choking! Stop!
You learn the phrase penicillin allergy. It's the first of many times you'll save your brother's life.
In the weeks following, you learn how to feed Sherlock when Mummy hurts too much to do anything but sleep. You correct Father when he holds the bottle at the wrong angle. You learn how to burp Sherlock, soothe his colic, and change his nappies. You learn that your scratchy efforts on the violin you found in the attic somehow lull him to sleep.
Sherlock still won't look at anyone but you, and you still won't tell a soul. He doesn't cry, but he whimpers. Once, he even smiled when you spilled formula down his chin, made a hiccup like a laugh. He stretched out his hand and touched your mouth, and you laughed, too.
Father and the doctor still say there's something wrong. When Sherlock is six months old, you begin to hear terms like partially deaf and autistic and doesn't fit any known profile. You know that Sherlock can hear; he reacts to the sound of your footfalls when you enter the nursery. You do some sneaky reading in Father's study and decide that autism is a possibility, but that it's too early to tell. As for what profile he fits, you know better than they do.
Sherlock is Sherlock.
At eight months, he begins responding to voices and making eye contact with others. It's not that he'd been unable, you conclude; it's that he'd been too busy paying attention to other things. Birdsong and the screech of tyres out the window. The movement of pedestrians in the busy streets of London. Your hands as they sign to him slowly and carefully, just in case.
You borrow a set of alphabet flashcards from your school library and spend your afternoons (assignments are boring; you finish them while your teacher rambles on) showing the flashcards to Sherlock, explaining each letter's sound and function. He watches, clear-eyed and silent, but he never says a thing. He'll touch the cards, even pick them up and study them, but that's it.
You hold him all night when the police ring with news of Father's death in a road accident, shield him from Mummy's sobbing. You swallow your own tears and wonder how much Sherlock really knows. Enough, his restless fingers in your hair seem to say.
Mummy heals just like she healed after the surgery that brought Sherlock into the world, because she's strong. She moves the crib into your bedroom and reads to you both at night.
When the weather is nice, Mummy takes you to the park, where Sherlock tastes everything within reach, but never the same thing twice. You find twigs, a bottle cap, and a sun-bleached bird skull down one of his socks when you put him to bed. He is almost two years old.
Grand-maman comes over a few times a week and helps with Sherlock and the flashcards. He smiles and laughs rarely, but still won't speak. On separate occasions, he arranges the cards to spell NO and WHY, but you can't decide whether or not it's coincidence. His third birthday approaches.
Sherlock's first word, when it finally arrives, takes everyone by surprise.
Mummy and Grand-maman are watching the news on telly, and you're on the floor with Sherlock, patiently reviewing the flashcards. I, you say. J, K, L-
My, Sherlock says, snatching the next card off the pile. Mycroft.
Surprises everyone, that is, except for you.
In 2nd Place
Earning 2 Canes for Team Lestrade
is number 27, written by
poppetawoppet
She wasn't raised to believe in abortions. She has nothing against them, and she's considered it many times, considering her age. But when it comes down to it, she's never had a child, and even knowing that she won't keep this one, she cannot help but know that she would do everything to protect it.
She makes the stipulations that she must know the parents. She must have photos. She has no right to make such demands, but she is fortunate to find people who promise to do those very things for her.
She briefly considers keeping the baby, but then she remembers her husband. She remembers the kind of man she has married.
She tells him she's going away to have an abortion and to make sure this never happens again. She gets him to sign papers for the adoption without him knowing. It's the one thing she has slipped by him.
So she travels before she starts to show. It's the first time in years she's been alone. It's like a mini-holiday, except none of her clothes fit and she's constantly ill. The doctor checks, and everything is fine though.
The birth itself is nothing she wishes to remember, and everything she hopes she doesn't forget. He's a small quiet child, and she names him James, after her grandfather.
She gets him for a whole week. She talks to him mostly, trying to tell him everything she wants to say for a lifetime.
She doesn't cry when his parents pick him up. Neither does he.
"Be brave," she whispers. "Be good."
They send pictures, and brief letters. She hides them behind the flour, because the kitchen is the one place she knows her husband will not go.
He turns into a bright child. Smart, for his age. Advanced, they say.
She almost cries in joy, but she holds back, for fear that her husband will see.
She knows most people would have divorced by now, walked out of the door. But she made a promise before God, and looking into her son's eyes, she remembers every reason she married him in the first place. She takes care of other children, taking in boarders for money. She mothers them as much as she can, hoping one day she can mother her own son.
The first time he finds her, he is sixteen. Brooding and moody and perfect. She turns him away at the door.
"You can't be here," she says, and closes the door before she pulls him in and never lets him go.
It's like that for many years, brief encounters that frighten and delight her. He grows tall and thin, her James, silent and strange.
When her husband is finally caught in a misdeed, they have tea.
He asks her why, and she tells him. He nods and thanks her, saying that his parents were good to him. Gave him the finest education possible.
"What's going to happen to my father?"
"I don't know," she says. "And I don't care."
"I see," he says, and no more.
He shakes her hand and kisses her cheek before leaving.
There's a bit of sadness and regret, because she loves him, but only in that way you love a distant relative. The phone rings.
"This is she," she says. "I'm sorry, you what? You have evidence that could convict my husband? Who is this? You're at the door?"
She opens the door, and it's another tall, brooding young man. She's not sure if her heart can take it.
"Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes?"
The man holds out his hand. "Sherlock Holmes. I was just on the phone with you."
"Oh."
Later, she'll realize she still sees James on the corner, watching her intently. Later she'll understand why this Moriarty is so focused on Sherlock. She doesn't blame him.
But in the moment, he's just another boy, just another lost soul.
In Joint 3rd Place
Earning 1 Cane for Team Watson
is number 7, written by
thisprettywren
It wasn’t the first stupid thing John had done to impress a girl. It wouldn’t be the last, either, or even the most objectively ill-advised.
Even so, the clarinet was the absolute bloody worst of a bad lot.
The clarinet wasn’t his choice, for a start. What he’d wanted was a proper instrument: trumpet, maybe or drums. Yes, the drums seemed like just the ticket.
It wasn’t the music he was after, after all. Truth be told, he’d never much cared for it.
No, what John cared for was Hannah. Lovely Hannah Dobson with her freckles and bony shoulders and glossy brown hair. John had been in love with her for weeks, at least. At fifteen, it was an eternity.
They didn’t have much in common, but they would. Hannah would sit in the front row, graceful fingers curled around the silver keys of her flute, while John sat a row or two behind (or standing at the back, ready to punctuate a dramatic moment with a strike on the bass drum or a cymbal or whatever-it-was they were doing back there; truth be told, John had no idea).
“Absolutely not,” his mum had said. “We’re not buying you a trumpet, and drums are too loud. You can use Harry’s old clarinet.”
“But the clarinet’s all wrong.”
She raised one eyebrow in his direction. “If you want to learn an instrument, it’s that or nothing,” his mum had said, and John knew enough even at that age to recognise when further argument was pointless.
“Fine,” he’d answered sulkily, and gone to dig it out of its place in the attic.
God, he hated it. Hated everything about it, from the way its weight pressed shiny red patches into his thumbs to the stupid cardboard taste of the reed. Still, there was Hannah, just on the other side of the conductor, and maybe if he learned to be a bloody brilliant clarinet player….
It was immediately clear, even to him, that bloody brilliant wasn’t on the table, or indeed even in the building. John managed the fingerings all right-surgeon’s hands, after all, though he didn’t know it yet-but he was tone-deaf, hopelessly so.
“You sound like a dying duck,” Harry said, passing by the door to his bedroom one evening while he forced himself to practise.
“I know,” John spit back. “Piss off.”
“A dying duck hitting a chalkboard,” came the parting shot, and it would have solved all his problems if he’d just hurled the wretched thing at her right then, but he repressed the urge.
He kept it up for nearly two months, Hannah scarcely even looking at him the whole time (which was just as well, seeing as whenever he wasn’t playing he was obliged to sit there with the reed poking out of his mouth like a bloody mockery of a tongue. What girl wouldn’t find that irresistible, he thought bitterly) until finally one day the conductor berated him for missing an entrance and it was like a door opening in his mind.
“I’m done with this. Cheers, everyone,” he said, and left, just set the clarinet down and walked out the door of the rehearsal room. (He never did find out what became of it. No one at home ever asked; no doubt they were too relieved not to have to hear him play anymore.)
Three days later John exited the school library to see Hannah dropping a book in the return slot.
Right, he thought, might as well try the direct approach.
Her face brightened when she saw him. “John! We’ve missed you.”
Just the sight of her made his tongue dart out against his lips, habit from wetting the reed. How embarrassing. “No you haven’t.”
“Not with our ears, no,” she said with a quirk of her mouth. “Wish I could quit. My mum won’t let me. Are you going to start something else instead?”
John hadn’t thought about it, but he said the first thing that came to mind. “Rugby, I think.”
Hannah blushed. “Oh! I quite like, er, rugby. I’ll come watch.”
“Wish you’d told me that months ago,” John laughed.
“You didn’t ask,” she said, and she was smiling too. “A date, then?”
John wasn’t quite sure how they’d there, but it seemed direct was better. He’d have to remember that.
“Absolutely.”
Um....and this is a bit embarassing.
Also In Joint 3rd Place
Earning 1 Cane for Team Watson
is number 15, written by uh, me
emmyangua
Sally had almost forgotten countryside like this still existed. Endless, sunshine-yellow crops had contrasted with rich brown fields of potatoes throughout her drive, marred only strips of lush green woodland and the occasional grey and pink blur as she sped past a pig farm. Occasionally a lane led her through one of the pretty Suffolk villages; and if she blurred her eyes and ignored the signs advertising Wi-Fi access she could imagine that she’d stepped into a Miss. Marple novel.
This was not where she had imagined he’d live.
An empty village shop provided her with a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a cheese roll (she had no idea why grief was said to ebb hunger, if anything she was eating like a horse) which she ate while leaning against the hood of her car.
This was the sort of place she’d once imagined living. But she’d never done things in a normal fashion - and by the time she was promoted to DI she was forty-three and the prospect of a meaningful relationship seemed faint. She’d never managed one before then, after all. Her only meaningful relationship had been with…well, that was why she was here.
The house she eventually approached looked just like the hundreds of other houses she’d passed on her journey - scenic and a bit chocolate box-y. But as she got closer she noticed the rose-bush by the gate had scorch marks, and the bark on a nearby tree looked like it had been attacked with a small axe. This had to be the place.
She opened the gate and walked slowly to the door. A piece of paper pinned to it caught her attention.
Donovon,
Am around the back dealing with a tricky hydrangea.
SH
Of course he'd known she was coming. Of course. He probably knew what she’d had for breakfast. Though as her breakfast had been the cold remains of the gigantic Indian she’d ordered for herself last night, so could anyone within smelling distance. She discreetly checked her breath.
After a long hesitation she steeled herself and walked around the side of the house. She was tempted to take off her heels so as not to give him the satisfaction of hearing her coming.
“Donovon!” he called impatiently as soon as she had rounded the corner. He was crouched in front of what she assumed to be a hydrangea. “Do these petals look yellow or orange to you?”
He hadn’t even turned around to look at her. She went forward to meet him instead.
“Orange. Why?”
There was an indrawn hiss of breath. “It should be yellow! I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.”
Despite herself, Sally was curious. “Why? Are you interested in gardening now?”
“Heavens no. I’m attempting to make a solution that will revolutionise fingerprint technology. If I was right the petals should have turned yellow when sprayed.”
Now that she could look at him more closely, Sally was startled to see how much he’d aged. She hadn’t said a word to him since she’d banned him from ever coming near one of her cases - five minutes after she got promoted. Now, in his late-fifties, he had wrinkles and greying hair. He was dressed as casually as she’d ever seen him in a mere dress shirt and trousers.
“John said I could do what I liked to the hydrangea. It’s apparently arrogantly encroaching on the territory of the other flowers.”
Sally looked around. “Where is he, by the way?”
Sherlock's expression turned pinched.
“Contrary to popular belief, John doesn’t actually live here. He lives and works in Ipswich and merely comes here to bother me and take an unhealthy interest in my garden.”
From Sherlock’s expression Sally strongly suspected that if John had lived in Sherlock’s garden shed, this would still be tantamount to abandonment as far as Sherlock was concerned.
“How did you know I was coming?” she asked. God, she loathed these explanations. But they offered a kind of comfort now.
“Oh please. We saw Crimewatch last night. Terence Donovon, thirty, stabbed in the street in broad daylight. It made sense that if your colleagues weren’t getting anywhere, you’d come to me as a last resort.”
Sally bowed her head and nodded. “Ok. Yeah. This is me eating humble pie, right? I… need your help. Please.”
To his credit, Sherlock didn’t look smug. “Fifteen year age gap…strong resemblance…your younger brother I assume?”
Sally swallowed.
“No. No. He was… my son.”
The standings so far are:
Team Watson: 21 Canes, 4 Patches
Team Mycroft: 21 Canes, 3 Patches
Team Lestrade: 17 Canes, 3 Patches
Team Sherlock: 10 Canes, 1 Patch
But you aren't here for my praise. You are here for the big announcement. So here goes...
In 1st Place
Earning 3 Canes for Team Mycroft
is number 8, written by
irisbleufic
Such a frightening child, you hear one of Mummy's nurses say. He doesn't cry.
You don't know if Sherlock made a sound during the delivery, but from what Father had explained of what a Caesarian section is, you would have a hard time believing he didn't. Mummy is fast asleep, damp dark curls plastered to her forehead, and Sherlock is quiet and wide-eyed in her arms.
He doesn't make eye contact, either, whispers the other nurse, and Father frowns.
You curl Sherlock's tiny fingers around your thumb while the adults converse quietly in the far corner of the room, and, sure enough, his eyes focus briefly on yours. It's the first of his many secrets that you'll keep.
Several days later, after the respiratory infection sets in, you anxiously watch the fretful kicks of Sherlock's skinny legs inside the incubator as the doctor slips a needle in his hand. After a minute, you shout Stop! Stop! and bang against the glass as Father tries to restrain you. He's choking! Stop!
You learn the phrase penicillin allergy. It's the first of many times you'll save your brother's life.
In the weeks following, you learn how to feed Sherlock when Mummy hurts too much to do anything but sleep. You correct Father when he holds the bottle at the wrong angle. You learn how to burp Sherlock, soothe his colic, and change his nappies. You learn that your scratchy efforts on the violin you found in the attic somehow lull him to sleep.
Sherlock still won't look at anyone but you, and you still won't tell a soul. He doesn't cry, but he whimpers. Once, he even smiled when you spilled formula down his chin, made a hiccup like a laugh. He stretched out his hand and touched your mouth, and you laughed, too.
Father and the doctor still say there's something wrong. When Sherlock is six months old, you begin to hear terms like partially deaf and autistic and doesn't fit any known profile. You know that Sherlock can hear; he reacts to the sound of your footfalls when you enter the nursery. You do some sneaky reading in Father's study and decide that autism is a possibility, but that it's too early to tell. As for what profile he fits, you know better than they do.
Sherlock is Sherlock.
At eight months, he begins responding to voices and making eye contact with others. It's not that he'd been unable, you conclude; it's that he'd been too busy paying attention to other things. Birdsong and the screech of tyres out the window. The movement of pedestrians in the busy streets of London. Your hands as they sign to him slowly and carefully, just in case.
You borrow a set of alphabet flashcards from your school library and spend your afternoons (assignments are boring; you finish them while your teacher rambles on) showing the flashcards to Sherlock, explaining each letter's sound and function. He watches, clear-eyed and silent, but he never says a thing. He'll touch the cards, even pick them up and study them, but that's it.
You hold him all night when the police ring with news of Father's death in a road accident, shield him from Mummy's sobbing. You swallow your own tears and wonder how much Sherlock really knows. Enough, his restless fingers in your hair seem to say.
Mummy heals just like she healed after the surgery that brought Sherlock into the world, because she's strong. She moves the crib into your bedroom and reads to you both at night.
When the weather is nice, Mummy takes you to the park, where Sherlock tastes everything within reach, but never the same thing twice. You find twigs, a bottle cap, and a sun-bleached bird skull down one of his socks when you put him to bed. He is almost two years old.
Grand-maman comes over a few times a week and helps with Sherlock and the flashcards. He smiles and laughs rarely, but still won't speak. On separate occasions, he arranges the cards to spell NO and WHY, but you can't decide whether or not it's coincidence. His third birthday approaches.
Sherlock's first word, when it finally arrives, takes everyone by surprise.
Mummy and Grand-maman are watching the news on telly, and you're on the floor with Sherlock, patiently reviewing the flashcards. I, you say. J, K, L-
My, Sherlock says, snatching the next card off the pile. Mycroft.
Surprises everyone, that is, except for you.
In 2nd Place
Earning 2 Canes for Team Lestrade
is number 27, written by
poppetawoppet
She wasn't raised to believe in abortions. She has nothing against them, and she's considered it many times, considering her age. But when it comes down to it, she's never had a child, and even knowing that she won't keep this one, she cannot help but know that she would do everything to protect it.
She makes the stipulations that she must know the parents. She must have photos. She has no right to make such demands, but she is fortunate to find people who promise to do those very things for her.
She briefly considers keeping the baby, but then she remembers her husband. She remembers the kind of man she has married.
She tells him she's going away to have an abortion and to make sure this never happens again. She gets him to sign papers for the adoption without him knowing. It's the one thing she has slipped by him.
So she travels before she starts to show. It's the first time in years she's been alone. It's like a mini-holiday, except none of her clothes fit and she's constantly ill. The doctor checks, and everything is fine though.
The birth itself is nothing she wishes to remember, and everything she hopes she doesn't forget. He's a small quiet child, and she names him James, after her grandfather.
She gets him for a whole week. She talks to him mostly, trying to tell him everything she wants to say for a lifetime.
She doesn't cry when his parents pick him up. Neither does he.
"Be brave," she whispers. "Be good."
They send pictures, and brief letters. She hides them behind the flour, because the kitchen is the one place she knows her husband will not go.
He turns into a bright child. Smart, for his age. Advanced, they say.
She almost cries in joy, but she holds back, for fear that her husband will see.
She knows most people would have divorced by now, walked out of the door. But she made a promise before God, and looking into her son's eyes, she remembers every reason she married him in the first place. She takes care of other children, taking in boarders for money. She mothers them as much as she can, hoping one day she can mother her own son.
The first time he finds her, he is sixteen. Brooding and moody and perfect. She turns him away at the door.
"You can't be here," she says, and closes the door before she pulls him in and never lets him go.
It's like that for many years, brief encounters that frighten and delight her. He grows tall and thin, her James, silent and strange.
When her husband is finally caught in a misdeed, they have tea.
He asks her why, and she tells him. He nods and thanks her, saying that his parents were good to him. Gave him the finest education possible.
"What's going to happen to my father?"
"I don't know," she says. "And I don't care."
"I see," he says, and no more.
He shakes her hand and kisses her cheek before leaving.
There's a bit of sadness and regret, because she loves him, but only in that way you love a distant relative. The phone rings.
"This is she," she says. "I'm sorry, you what? You have evidence that could convict my husband? Who is this? You're at the door?"
She opens the door, and it's another tall, brooding young man. She's not sure if her heart can take it.
"Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes?"
The man holds out his hand. "Sherlock Holmes. I was just on the phone with you."
"Oh."
Later, she'll realize she still sees James on the corner, watching her intently. Later she'll understand why this Moriarty is so focused on Sherlock. She doesn't blame him.
But in the moment, he's just another boy, just another lost soul.
In Joint 3rd Place
Earning 1 Cane for Team Watson
is number 7, written by
thisprettywren
It wasn’t the first stupid thing John had done to impress a girl. It wouldn’t be the last, either, or even the most objectively ill-advised.
Even so, the clarinet was the absolute bloody worst of a bad lot.
The clarinet wasn’t his choice, for a start. What he’d wanted was a proper instrument: trumpet, maybe or drums. Yes, the drums seemed like just the ticket.
It wasn’t the music he was after, after all. Truth be told, he’d never much cared for it.
No, what John cared for was Hannah. Lovely Hannah Dobson with her freckles and bony shoulders and glossy brown hair. John had been in love with her for weeks, at least. At fifteen, it was an eternity.
They didn’t have much in common, but they would. Hannah would sit in the front row, graceful fingers curled around the silver keys of her flute, while John sat a row or two behind (or standing at the back, ready to punctuate a dramatic moment with a strike on the bass drum or a cymbal or whatever-it-was they were doing back there; truth be told, John had no idea).
“Absolutely not,” his mum had said. “We’re not buying you a trumpet, and drums are too loud. You can use Harry’s old clarinet.”
“But the clarinet’s all wrong.”
She raised one eyebrow in his direction. “If you want to learn an instrument, it’s that or nothing,” his mum had said, and John knew enough even at that age to recognise when further argument was pointless.
“Fine,” he’d answered sulkily, and gone to dig it out of its place in the attic.
God, he hated it. Hated everything about it, from the way its weight pressed shiny red patches into his thumbs to the stupid cardboard taste of the reed. Still, there was Hannah, just on the other side of the conductor, and maybe if he learned to be a bloody brilliant clarinet player….
It was immediately clear, even to him, that bloody brilliant wasn’t on the table, or indeed even in the building. John managed the fingerings all right-surgeon’s hands, after all, though he didn’t know it yet-but he was tone-deaf, hopelessly so.
“You sound like a dying duck,” Harry said, passing by the door to his bedroom one evening while he forced himself to practise.
“I know,” John spit back. “Piss off.”
“A dying duck hitting a chalkboard,” came the parting shot, and it would have solved all his problems if he’d just hurled the wretched thing at her right then, but he repressed the urge.
He kept it up for nearly two months, Hannah scarcely even looking at him the whole time (which was just as well, seeing as whenever he wasn’t playing he was obliged to sit there with the reed poking out of his mouth like a bloody mockery of a tongue. What girl wouldn’t find that irresistible, he thought bitterly) until finally one day the conductor berated him for missing an entrance and it was like a door opening in his mind.
“I’m done with this. Cheers, everyone,” he said, and left, just set the clarinet down and walked out the door of the rehearsal room. (He never did find out what became of it. No one at home ever asked; no doubt they were too relieved not to have to hear him play anymore.)
Three days later John exited the school library to see Hannah dropping a book in the return slot.
Right, he thought, might as well try the direct approach.
Her face brightened when she saw him. “John! We’ve missed you.”
Just the sight of her made his tongue dart out against his lips, habit from wetting the reed. How embarrassing. “No you haven’t.”
“Not with our ears, no,” she said with a quirk of her mouth. “Wish I could quit. My mum won’t let me. Are you going to start something else instead?”
John hadn’t thought about it, but he said the first thing that came to mind. “Rugby, I think.”
Hannah blushed. “Oh! I quite like, er, rugby. I’ll come watch.”
“Wish you’d told me that months ago,” John laughed.
“You didn’t ask,” she said, and she was smiling too. “A date, then?”
John wasn’t quite sure how they’d there, but it seemed direct was better. He’d have to remember that.
“Absolutely.”
Um....and this is a bit embarassing.
Also In Joint 3rd Place
Earning 1 Cane for Team Watson
is number 15, written by uh, me
emmyangua
Sally had almost forgotten countryside like this still existed. Endless, sunshine-yellow crops had contrasted with rich brown fields of potatoes throughout her drive, marred only strips of lush green woodland and the occasional grey and pink blur as she sped past a pig farm. Occasionally a lane led her through one of the pretty Suffolk villages; and if she blurred her eyes and ignored the signs advertising Wi-Fi access she could imagine that she’d stepped into a Miss. Marple novel.
This was not where she had imagined he’d live.
An empty village shop provided her with a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a cheese roll (she had no idea why grief was said to ebb hunger, if anything she was eating like a horse) which she ate while leaning against the hood of her car.
This was the sort of place she’d once imagined living. But she’d never done things in a normal fashion - and by the time she was promoted to DI she was forty-three and the prospect of a meaningful relationship seemed faint. She’d never managed one before then, after all. Her only meaningful relationship had been with…well, that was why she was here.
The house she eventually approached looked just like the hundreds of other houses she’d passed on her journey - scenic and a bit chocolate box-y. But as she got closer she noticed the rose-bush by the gate had scorch marks, and the bark on a nearby tree looked like it had been attacked with a small axe. This had to be the place.
She opened the gate and walked slowly to the door. A piece of paper pinned to it caught her attention.
Donovon,
Am around the back dealing with a tricky hydrangea.
SH
Of course he'd known she was coming. Of course. He probably knew what she’d had for breakfast. Though as her breakfast had been the cold remains of the gigantic Indian she’d ordered for herself last night, so could anyone within smelling distance. She discreetly checked her breath.
After a long hesitation she steeled herself and walked around the side of the house. She was tempted to take off her heels so as not to give him the satisfaction of hearing her coming.
“Donovon!” he called impatiently as soon as she had rounded the corner. He was crouched in front of what she assumed to be a hydrangea. “Do these petals look yellow or orange to you?”
He hadn’t even turned around to look at her. She went forward to meet him instead.
“Orange. Why?”
There was an indrawn hiss of breath. “It should be yellow! I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.”
Despite herself, Sally was curious. “Why? Are you interested in gardening now?”
“Heavens no. I’m attempting to make a solution that will revolutionise fingerprint technology. If I was right the petals should have turned yellow when sprayed.”
Now that she could look at him more closely, Sally was startled to see how much he’d aged. She hadn’t said a word to him since she’d banned him from ever coming near one of her cases - five minutes after she got promoted. Now, in his late-fifties, he had wrinkles and greying hair. He was dressed as casually as she’d ever seen him in a mere dress shirt and trousers.
“John said I could do what I liked to the hydrangea. It’s apparently arrogantly encroaching on the territory of the other flowers.”
Sally looked around. “Where is he, by the way?”
Sherlock's expression turned pinched.
“Contrary to popular belief, John doesn’t actually live here. He lives and works in Ipswich and merely comes here to bother me and take an unhealthy interest in my garden.”
From Sherlock’s expression Sally strongly suspected that if John had lived in Sherlock’s garden shed, this would still be tantamount to abandonment as far as Sherlock was concerned.
“How did you know I was coming?” she asked. God, she loathed these explanations. But they offered a kind of comfort now.
“Oh please. We saw Crimewatch last night. Terence Donovon, thirty, stabbed in the street in broad daylight. It made sense that if your colleagues weren’t getting anywhere, you’d come to me as a last resort.”
Sally bowed her head and nodded. “Ok. Yeah. This is me eating humble pie, right? I… need your help. Please.”
To his credit, Sherlock didn’t look smug. “Fifteen year age gap…strong resemblance…your younger brother I assume?”
Sally swallowed.
“No. No. He was… my son.”
The standings so far are:
Team Watson: 21 Canes, 4 Patches
Team Mycroft: 21 Canes, 3 Patches
Team Lestrade: 17 Canes, 3 Patches
Team Sherlock: 10 Canes, 1 Patch