Icarus Revisited
Rating: T (Language Only)
Warnings: Perceived Character Death, Strong Language
Word Count: 3 039
Summary: Sherlock builds his own wings. A fill on the prompt meme, for an anon OP! This was lovely to write, although I am not satisfied with the penultimate section - and apparently I can't write anything NOT in wee vignettes.
Sherlock made his first pair of wings out of aluminum foil and cellophane, in one of his many unsupervised experiments. He was seven years old, and they were small; just as long as his left hand. He strapped them to his back with a shoestring and scotch tape and climbed up the rickety ladder to Mycroft’s half of the bunk bed, bumping his knobby knees on the rungs. Sherlock stood on the edge of the mattress and spread his arms wide. He closed his eyes, thinking of glass sided towers and Big Ben and the feel of wind tugging at his curls. He jumped, expecting to fly.
The resulting crack told him he’d broken his right arm, a suspicion confirmed by the expression Mycroft’s face wore as he ran into the room and gaped at his younger brother. Sherlock couldn’t exactly feel his arm, even though he knew it should hurt. His mouth turned down and his chin twitched as his blood thumped in the tender skin of his forehead and wrists.
“What on Earth - Sherlock! Are you alright?” The nineteen year old boy crouched beside Sherlock, touching his cheek with one large, soft hand.
“Well - no, I rather think not,” Sherlock muttered, “I think my arm’s broken. Mycroft, I thought -” Mycroft sighed and plucked at Sherlock’s broken wings. He picked up the cellophane and squinted through it, making Sherlock giggle through blurry eyes.
“Cellophane and aluminum foil won’t get you anywhere, Sherlock. Come on - up you get. We’ve got to get you to emergency.” Mycroft gathered Sherlock up, carefully avoiding his broken arm, and carried him downstairs.
That night, after flashing lights and the dull smell of plaster and Sherlock telling the doctors how to do their jobs - and an exceedingly excruciating explanation of Sherlock’s cast to Mummy - Mycroft read Sherlock the story of Icarus and his wax-and-feather wings.
Two months later, Mycroft took Sherlock on an airplane to France for a weekend, so that he could see what flying felt like.
-
Three years later, Sherlock was all tumbling curls and an awkward nose and slanted eyes. He’d studied the physiology of bats and birds and bees until he knew them off by heart and when he made himself wings at school, they were a mix of hollow paper bones, construction-card skin and copper wire veins.
Of course, the assignment his teacher had given the class had been to make an abstract painting in monochrome, but Sherlock didn’t exactly care about that. He scratched the lurid green F - see me, Mr. Holmes off the back of the wings with the chewed up cap of his pen and glued them to his rucksack.
At first break, Sherlock cantered round the yard with his arms spread, humming Dancla under his breath as he ran. He ignored the sniggers of his classmates, concentrating on the breeze tugging at his hair and the flapflapflap of his paper wings. His classmates were dull, dull, in any case. Sherlock didn’t care about them.
Sherlock ran in circles, faster and faster and faster until he felt light as air and could have sworn he was about to - fall. Hard, on his face, into a puddle of indeterminate muck.
“Oh, look,” smirked a bigger boy, a year ahead of Sherlock, “freak’s gone and tripped. Guess his little wings couldn’t hold him up.” Sherlock felt his face get hot under the covering of muck and scowled. He staggered to his feet - and slipped straight back down, onto his back this time, when the bigger boy pushed him. The circle of children around him giggled as one, and Sherlock felt himself turn a deeper red. He stood, muck dripping coldly down the back of his trousers from the ragged, torn tips of his wrecked paper wings and looked the bigger boy straight in the face. The boy’s eyes narrowed - in fear, Sherlock noted, detached - and he took a step back. Sherlock cocked his head to the left, and observed.
“You’ve had a sleepless night,” he said, quietly, “possibly due to the assignment you handed in today that you’re certain you’ve failed - quite right, I’m afraid - more likely due to your parents fighting all night long. But why were they fighting? You’ve been grieving - too much for a pet or a distant relative, so someone close to you. She killed herself, and your parents blame each other, don’t they? But you, oh, you blame yourself. You thought it was just a bit of fun, a game, giving that boy her diary, but oh, she didn’t and what that boy found out - she was a lesbian, I’d assume, not much else that would have that effect on a fourteen year old girl - made her desperate enough to kill herself and you know it was your fault, oh, you know it, so now you’re taking it out on people smaller than you so you don’t have to think about it, aren’t you, Jimmy? Did I get anything wrong, Jimmy?” The schoolchildren were completely silent in their ring around the two boys. Jim’s lips twitched, and his eyes narrowed further - anger, this time, Sherlock thought. Jim nodded.
“Yeah - you forgot the part where - the part where she was my sister, you bastard,” Jim hissed, a slight Irish accent threading its way into his voice. Sherlock’s heart dropped into his stomach, and the ring of children took a collective gasp and a step back from the two boys. Sherlock didn’t know what to do. Then, he heard the whispers from the crowd.
“Freak. Freak. Did you see that? Did you hear that? What a bastard. What a freak. And he thought he could fly with those stupid paper wings. Freak. Freak. Cor, who knew about Jim? What a pair of freaks.”
Sherlock stared at Jim, whose eyes were dark and flat. For the first time since Mycroft had left for uni, Sherlock was terrified. He wiped the mud off his face and tucked his chin up in the air, walking through the crowd that parted for him as though he were a leper. He didn’t turn to look back at Jim, who was staring with his flat eyes at the sodden bits of Sherlock’s paper wings. Sherlock didn’t see the little smile that danced around Jim’s lips, or the way that the children instinctively backed away from both of them. Sherlock didn’t see much of anything through the haze of tears over his eyes.
Sherlock lay in bed that night, curled around the telephone. He wanted desperately to call Mycroft, but Mycroft had an important new job now and had told Sherlock not to call unless it was an emergency. Sherlock wasn’t sure that this qualified.
-
On his eighteenth birthday, Sherlock stumbled into a grotty tattoo parlour in Central London and slammed a stack of quid down on the counter, mumbling about feathers and hollowed bones and copper needles. His eyes were manic, flickering under his heavy lids like an old television set, and the artists behind the counter shifted their weight from foot to foot and glanced at each other sidelong. Sherlock screamed at them to fucking give me a tattoo already, I can obviously pay you for your shoddy work and one small man shrugged, pulling Sherlock behind him with solid fingers wrapped around a bony wrist.
Sherlock lay on his stomach on a ripped, vinyl coated table with his shoulder blades twitching and covered in gooseflesh. He raised his head and growled at the artist, telling him to hurry the fuck up and do your fucking job. The artist looked at him and told him to shut up mate, or I’ll throw you out, you want to do this in one shot then? Sherlock rolled his eyes and flopped onto the table, pressing his nose into the vinyl and inhaling the sharp smell of sweat.
The artist shaved Sherlock’s back briskly, catching under his top rib and cutting a shallow line in his skin. Sherlock didn’t feel the pain of it, just the blood rolling down the hollows of his ribcage.
Sorry, mate, the tattoo artist muttered. You ready? Sherlock nodded and clenched his fists. The needle touched his back, and he crashed down to Earth, the cocaine rushing out of the soles of his feet and gushing to the floor in a torrent of feathers and hollow boned dreams and copper needles. Sherlock collapsed and blacked out. The artist kept working, sweeping the ink off Sherlock’s back in long, soft strokes.
Hours later, Sherlock was still grounded and the artist’s job was finished. The artist washed the last bits of black from between Sherlock’s bones and stepped back, staring at his work with his head cocked to the left. He nodded. Not bad, he said out loud. He patted Sherlock’s curls gently and made a face at the track marks at the crooks of Sherlock’s arms. The artist glanced around the dim shop, and sat down in his chair. Poor bugger looked like he needed some sleep. The artist picked up Sherlock’s wallet and looked inside, taking out a small card. In case of emergency, contact Mycroft Holmes 011-44-7981-897555.
The artist wasn’t quite sure that this qualified, but it couldn’t hurt. Sighing, he stood and walked to the phone.
An hour later, Mycroft stood in the grimy shop, staring down at his brother’s back. Black inked feathers covered Sherlock’s shoulder blades and twisted over his ribcage, snaking down to his hipbones. Mycroft’s mouth twisted downwards and he rubbed a hand slowly over his eyes.
“Fuck, Sherlock…” he whispered.
-
Seventeen months after John Watson moved into 221B Baker Street, he woke up to light dancing off dust motes in a thoroughly unfamiliar pattern. Honey coloured sunlight slanted across the room, falling onto Sherlock’s face beside John’s, tripping over his cheekbones and diving into the corners of his lips. John blinked, and realized that he was in Sherlock’s bedroom, that he was in Sherlock’s bed, and that he was happy.
All three revelations were a bit shocking.
John sighed and stretched, knocking his knee against Sherlock’s long shinbone. Sherlock grumbled in his sleep and rolled away from John. John smiled slightly - it wasn’t as though Sherlock slept often, and he was glad he hadn’t woken him - and then stopped breathing.
They were stark black and shocking in the shadow of Sherlock’s convex back; Sherlock’s spine and ribs were blanketed in tattooed feathers. John stared at the massive tattoo and swallowed lightly. The feathers curved around Sherlock’s extraordinary bones like they were meant to be there, like they were actually real wings. It had to have hurt, badly.
John realized he’d never seen Sherlock’s back before.
He reached into the shadow, fingers outstretched. He could see scars underneath the feathers. John’s hand was tucked in shadows to his wrist bone when his fingertips brushed Sherlock’s feathers. Sherlock’s back was cool and solid in the shadows and he sighed at the touch of John’s fingers.
All at once, every muscle in Sherlock’s back contracted beneath his skin.
Gooseflesh erupted under John’s fingertips, and he yanked his hand back into the light. Sherlock rolled over and stared at John, his grey eyes dark and flat. John cleared his throat.
“It’s beautiful, Sherlock,” he whispered. Dust and light pirouetted over his voice. The bump in Sherlock’s throat moved up and down as he swallowed, and John’s heart squeezed his lungs out of place. Sherlock cleared his throat in a huff of displaced shadow.
“Don’t touch me, John. This was a mistake. Please. Leave.” John stared at Sherlock.
“No. No. I’m not leaving, Sherlock, not now, not after - this. I -” Sherlock shook his head, and made an immediately aborted movement to touch John’s dusty hair.
“Get. Out.” John looked at Sherlock, and nodded. He pushed himself up, grimacing at the ache in his shoulder. He rolled his muscles and cracked the bones in his neck, and stood.
Without a glance back at Sherlock, John walked out of the room, stepping over a pile of metal and canvas, into the darkened hallway.
Sherlock sat in bed, arms wrapped round his knees, staring at the bars of light and dark zebra-striped over the rumpled covers where John had lain. He blinked and the lines dissolved into a fragmented traffic crossing.
He glanced at the crumpled tungsten-and-canvas wings on his floor and picked up his phone. He dialled the number he’d not deleted since he’d memorized it, and waited.
Several miles away, Mycroft sat in the darkness shed by a spotlight and looked at the crocodile tears of the dangerous, dangerous man in front of him. He felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket.
Mycroft leaned forward and steepled his fingers underneath his chin, and ignored the buzz of the mobile.
-
“Really, Jim? I’d expected so much more of you. Primary school revenge? Boring. Although, I'll admit - the fall, poetic.” Moriarty rolled his eyes and smiled at Sherlock.
“You don’t get it yet, do you, Sherlock? This isn’t about that anymore. You were wrong about more than that girl being my sister; you missed out on the part where I was experimenting. Exactly like you do. Only I haven’t got limits. Because you - I thought you were interesting. But you’re boring.” Moriarty darted his tongue between his lips and stepped closer to Sherlock, closer to the edge. “You’re on the side of the angels; and what’s worse, what’s so much worse than that is you actually want to be one.”
Sherlock squinted down into Moriarty’s face, and the corners of his lips pulled up in a false smile.
“I might be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for a second that I am one. Demons have wings too.” Moriarty laughed.
“Strip, Sherlock. Your shirt. Off. I know about your little… Tattoo. You’re going to strip, and then you’re going to jump.”
Sherlock pulled a sheet of confusion over his features.
“Why on Earth would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t… Everyone you love will die. Three snipers, three bullets, Sherlock. John. Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson. If you don’t jump… They’ll all die. You've got to pull an Icarus here, Sherlock, cause I'm the sun and you came too fucking close.” The faces flashed like polaroids in front of Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock scrubbed a hand over his eyes - the sun, the fucking sun, it was too bright; Moriarty was glowing around the edges.
And then Moriarty pulled out the gun.
Five minutes later, Moriarty lay spread-eagled on the rooftop, blackened blood and gunpowder seeping into the concrete. Sherlock whirled back and forth desperately, his coat swinging open and shut like agitated crow’s wings.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Molly,” Sherlock muttered. He stripped to the skin and flexed his shoulder blades. Everything was so bright, the windows of the buildings around him were edged in flames and he could see nearly to Big Ben. Sherlock stepped onto the edge of the roof and closed his eyes. The breeze tugged at his curls, flicking them into his eyes. He brushed them away brusquely. John, he knew, was getting out of the cab below him. That was good. That was imperative.
Sherlock dialled the number with shaking fingers. He’d never gotten around to putting John on speed dial.
He made the call, and then he jumped.
And for a moment, Sherlock Holmes finally flew.
John fell beside his best friend, ink black blood staining the knees of his trousers.
Mycroft stared at his CCTV cameras, lips pressed tight together. His hand twitched toward his mobile, and he let it fall to his thigh.
His little brother had fallen again, and this time Mycroft couldn’t pick him up.
-
John was sorting through Sherlock’s mess of indeterminately stained papers, grimacing at the ache in his leg and fuming over the fact that he’d had to dig out his cane again when he found the feather. It was massive; nearly as long as John’s forearm, white spotted with dark brown. He stared at it, running his fingertips along the edges. It was a little oily, enough to give it a sheen in the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows.
Eagle? John thought, frowning. No. Not Sherlock-y enough. Hawk? Too big. Alba- of course.
A wandering albatross. John snorted, then shook his head and smiled. An albatross would appeal to Sherlock. Always flying, never touching Earth - balanced, in the air, and off kilter and silly on the ground. John’s lips turned down as he stared out the window with far-off eyes. There was that other - bit - about albatrosses he remembered. That they mated for life - but thinking about that hurt a bit too much.
John sat up suddenly. He did know something else about albatrosses; they stayed aloft for years and years, but they did come back down.
They always came back.
He set the feather down on the stack of papers beside him and rested his elbows on his knees, tenting his hands underneath his pursed lips. At length, he nodded briskly and pushed himself to his feet. He tucked the feather into the back of his waistband beside the gun he’d taken to carrying about and walked quickly out the door.
He didn’t notice he’d left his cane behind until he was halfway down Baker Street.
Sitting in his chair by the fire at the Diogenes Club, Mycroft stared into space with his mind whirring. Sherlock couldn’t be - no. He simply couldn’t be, there was no possible way that his little brother could be gone, could have killed himself - Mycroft knew full well, of course, that Sherlock hadn’t been a fake.
Mycroft slid his mobile out of his trousers pocket and clicked to the calls screen. He looked at Sherlock’s last missed call to him, the night before he’d - not died. Mycroft sighed heavily.
A man in a waistcoat tapped Mycroft gently on the shoulder, gesturing to the covered silver plate he bore. Mycroft frowned and lifted the cover.
As he stared open mouthed at the single curved, downy white feather on the plate, John Watson burst through the opulent wooden door.
“He’s not dead.”
As the men in the smoky room gaped at John, Mycroft nodded, not taking his eyes off the tiny feather.
“I know, John.”
Warnings: Perceived Character Death, Strong Language
Word Count: 3 039
Summary: Sherlock builds his own wings. A fill on the prompt meme, for an anon OP! This was lovely to write, although I am not satisfied with the penultimate section - and apparently I can't write anything NOT in wee vignettes.
Sherlock made his first pair of wings out of aluminum foil and cellophane, in one of his many unsupervised experiments. He was seven years old, and they were small; just as long as his left hand. He strapped them to his back with a shoestring and scotch tape and climbed up the rickety ladder to Mycroft’s half of the bunk bed, bumping his knobby knees on the rungs. Sherlock stood on the edge of the mattress and spread his arms wide. He closed his eyes, thinking of glass sided towers and Big Ben and the feel of wind tugging at his curls. He jumped, expecting to fly.
The resulting crack told him he’d broken his right arm, a suspicion confirmed by the expression Mycroft’s face wore as he ran into the room and gaped at his younger brother. Sherlock couldn’t exactly feel his arm, even though he knew it should hurt. His mouth turned down and his chin twitched as his blood thumped in the tender skin of his forehead and wrists.
“What on Earth - Sherlock! Are you alright?” The nineteen year old boy crouched beside Sherlock, touching his cheek with one large, soft hand.
“Well - no, I rather think not,” Sherlock muttered, “I think my arm’s broken. Mycroft, I thought -” Mycroft sighed and plucked at Sherlock’s broken wings. He picked up the cellophane and squinted through it, making Sherlock giggle through blurry eyes.
“Cellophane and aluminum foil won’t get you anywhere, Sherlock. Come on - up you get. We’ve got to get you to emergency.” Mycroft gathered Sherlock up, carefully avoiding his broken arm, and carried him downstairs.
That night, after flashing lights and the dull smell of plaster and Sherlock telling the doctors how to do their jobs - and an exceedingly excruciating explanation of Sherlock’s cast to Mummy - Mycroft read Sherlock the story of Icarus and his wax-and-feather wings.
Two months later, Mycroft took Sherlock on an airplane to France for a weekend, so that he could see what flying felt like.
-
Three years later, Sherlock was all tumbling curls and an awkward nose and slanted eyes. He’d studied the physiology of bats and birds and bees until he knew them off by heart and when he made himself wings at school, they were a mix of hollow paper bones, construction-card skin and copper wire veins.
Of course, the assignment his teacher had given the class had been to make an abstract painting in monochrome, but Sherlock didn’t exactly care about that. He scratched the lurid green F - see me, Mr. Holmes off the back of the wings with the chewed up cap of his pen and glued them to his rucksack.
At first break, Sherlock cantered round the yard with his arms spread, humming Dancla under his breath as he ran. He ignored the sniggers of his classmates, concentrating on the breeze tugging at his hair and the flapflapflap of his paper wings. His classmates were dull, dull, in any case. Sherlock didn’t care about them.
Sherlock ran in circles, faster and faster and faster until he felt light as air and could have sworn he was about to - fall. Hard, on his face, into a puddle of indeterminate muck.
“Oh, look,” smirked a bigger boy, a year ahead of Sherlock, “freak’s gone and tripped. Guess his little wings couldn’t hold him up.” Sherlock felt his face get hot under the covering of muck and scowled. He staggered to his feet - and slipped straight back down, onto his back this time, when the bigger boy pushed him. The circle of children around him giggled as one, and Sherlock felt himself turn a deeper red. He stood, muck dripping coldly down the back of his trousers from the ragged, torn tips of his wrecked paper wings and looked the bigger boy straight in the face. The boy’s eyes narrowed - in fear, Sherlock noted, detached - and he took a step back. Sherlock cocked his head to the left, and observed.
“You’ve had a sleepless night,” he said, quietly, “possibly due to the assignment you handed in today that you’re certain you’ve failed - quite right, I’m afraid - more likely due to your parents fighting all night long. But why were they fighting? You’ve been grieving - too much for a pet or a distant relative, so someone close to you. She killed herself, and your parents blame each other, don’t they? But you, oh, you blame yourself. You thought it was just a bit of fun, a game, giving that boy her diary, but oh, she didn’t and what that boy found out - she was a lesbian, I’d assume, not much else that would have that effect on a fourteen year old girl - made her desperate enough to kill herself and you know it was your fault, oh, you know it, so now you’re taking it out on people smaller than you so you don’t have to think about it, aren’t you, Jimmy? Did I get anything wrong, Jimmy?” The schoolchildren were completely silent in their ring around the two boys. Jim’s lips twitched, and his eyes narrowed further - anger, this time, Sherlock thought. Jim nodded.
“Yeah - you forgot the part where - the part where she was my sister, you bastard,” Jim hissed, a slight Irish accent threading its way into his voice. Sherlock’s heart dropped into his stomach, and the ring of children took a collective gasp and a step back from the two boys. Sherlock didn’t know what to do. Then, he heard the whispers from the crowd.
“Freak. Freak. Did you see that? Did you hear that? What a bastard. What a freak. And he thought he could fly with those stupid paper wings. Freak. Freak. Cor, who knew about Jim? What a pair of freaks.”
Sherlock stared at Jim, whose eyes were dark and flat. For the first time since Mycroft had left for uni, Sherlock was terrified. He wiped the mud off his face and tucked his chin up in the air, walking through the crowd that parted for him as though he were a leper. He didn’t turn to look back at Jim, who was staring with his flat eyes at the sodden bits of Sherlock’s paper wings. Sherlock didn’t see the little smile that danced around Jim’s lips, or the way that the children instinctively backed away from both of them. Sherlock didn’t see much of anything through the haze of tears over his eyes.
Sherlock lay in bed that night, curled around the telephone. He wanted desperately to call Mycroft, but Mycroft had an important new job now and had told Sherlock not to call unless it was an emergency. Sherlock wasn’t sure that this qualified.
-
On his eighteenth birthday, Sherlock stumbled into a grotty tattoo parlour in Central London and slammed a stack of quid down on the counter, mumbling about feathers and hollowed bones and copper needles. His eyes were manic, flickering under his heavy lids like an old television set, and the artists behind the counter shifted their weight from foot to foot and glanced at each other sidelong. Sherlock screamed at them to fucking give me a tattoo already, I can obviously pay you for your shoddy work and one small man shrugged, pulling Sherlock behind him with solid fingers wrapped around a bony wrist.
Sherlock lay on his stomach on a ripped, vinyl coated table with his shoulder blades twitching and covered in gooseflesh. He raised his head and growled at the artist, telling him to hurry the fuck up and do your fucking job. The artist looked at him and told him to shut up mate, or I’ll throw you out, you want to do this in one shot then? Sherlock rolled his eyes and flopped onto the table, pressing his nose into the vinyl and inhaling the sharp smell of sweat.
The artist shaved Sherlock’s back briskly, catching under his top rib and cutting a shallow line in his skin. Sherlock didn’t feel the pain of it, just the blood rolling down the hollows of his ribcage.
Sorry, mate, the tattoo artist muttered. You ready? Sherlock nodded and clenched his fists. The needle touched his back, and he crashed down to Earth, the cocaine rushing out of the soles of his feet and gushing to the floor in a torrent of feathers and hollow boned dreams and copper needles. Sherlock collapsed and blacked out. The artist kept working, sweeping the ink off Sherlock’s back in long, soft strokes.
Hours later, Sherlock was still grounded and the artist’s job was finished. The artist washed the last bits of black from between Sherlock’s bones and stepped back, staring at his work with his head cocked to the left. He nodded. Not bad, he said out loud. He patted Sherlock’s curls gently and made a face at the track marks at the crooks of Sherlock’s arms. The artist glanced around the dim shop, and sat down in his chair. Poor bugger looked like he needed some sleep. The artist picked up Sherlock’s wallet and looked inside, taking out a small card. In case of emergency, contact Mycroft Holmes 011-44-7981-897555.
The artist wasn’t quite sure that this qualified, but it couldn’t hurt. Sighing, he stood and walked to the phone.
An hour later, Mycroft stood in the grimy shop, staring down at his brother’s back. Black inked feathers covered Sherlock’s shoulder blades and twisted over his ribcage, snaking down to his hipbones. Mycroft’s mouth twisted downwards and he rubbed a hand slowly over his eyes.
“Fuck, Sherlock…” he whispered.
-
Seventeen months after John Watson moved into 221B Baker Street, he woke up to light dancing off dust motes in a thoroughly unfamiliar pattern. Honey coloured sunlight slanted across the room, falling onto Sherlock’s face beside John’s, tripping over his cheekbones and diving into the corners of his lips. John blinked, and realized that he was in Sherlock’s bedroom, that he was in Sherlock’s bed, and that he was happy.
All three revelations were a bit shocking.
John sighed and stretched, knocking his knee against Sherlock’s long shinbone. Sherlock grumbled in his sleep and rolled away from John. John smiled slightly - it wasn’t as though Sherlock slept often, and he was glad he hadn’t woken him - and then stopped breathing.
They were stark black and shocking in the shadow of Sherlock’s convex back; Sherlock’s spine and ribs were blanketed in tattooed feathers. John stared at the massive tattoo and swallowed lightly. The feathers curved around Sherlock’s extraordinary bones like they were meant to be there, like they were actually real wings. It had to have hurt, badly.
John realized he’d never seen Sherlock’s back before.
He reached into the shadow, fingers outstretched. He could see scars underneath the feathers. John’s hand was tucked in shadows to his wrist bone when his fingertips brushed Sherlock’s feathers. Sherlock’s back was cool and solid in the shadows and he sighed at the touch of John’s fingers.
All at once, every muscle in Sherlock’s back contracted beneath his skin.
Gooseflesh erupted under John’s fingertips, and he yanked his hand back into the light. Sherlock rolled over and stared at John, his grey eyes dark and flat. John cleared his throat.
“It’s beautiful, Sherlock,” he whispered. Dust and light pirouetted over his voice. The bump in Sherlock’s throat moved up and down as he swallowed, and John’s heart squeezed his lungs out of place. Sherlock cleared his throat in a huff of displaced shadow.
“Don’t touch me, John. This was a mistake. Please. Leave.” John stared at Sherlock.
“No. No. I’m not leaving, Sherlock, not now, not after - this. I -” Sherlock shook his head, and made an immediately aborted movement to touch John’s dusty hair.
“Get. Out.” John looked at Sherlock, and nodded. He pushed himself up, grimacing at the ache in his shoulder. He rolled his muscles and cracked the bones in his neck, and stood.
Without a glance back at Sherlock, John walked out of the room, stepping over a pile of metal and canvas, into the darkened hallway.
Sherlock sat in bed, arms wrapped round his knees, staring at the bars of light and dark zebra-striped over the rumpled covers where John had lain. He blinked and the lines dissolved into a fragmented traffic crossing.
He glanced at the crumpled tungsten-and-canvas wings on his floor and picked up his phone. He dialled the number he’d not deleted since he’d memorized it, and waited.
Several miles away, Mycroft sat in the darkness shed by a spotlight and looked at the crocodile tears of the dangerous, dangerous man in front of him. He felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket.
Mycroft leaned forward and steepled his fingers underneath his chin, and ignored the buzz of the mobile.
-
“Really, Jim? I’d expected so much more of you. Primary school revenge? Boring. Although, I'll admit - the fall, poetic.” Moriarty rolled his eyes and smiled at Sherlock.
“You don’t get it yet, do you, Sherlock? This isn’t about that anymore. You were wrong about more than that girl being my sister; you missed out on the part where I was experimenting. Exactly like you do. Only I haven’t got limits. Because you - I thought you were interesting. But you’re boring.” Moriarty darted his tongue between his lips and stepped closer to Sherlock, closer to the edge. “You’re on the side of the angels; and what’s worse, what’s so much worse than that is you actually want to be one.”
Sherlock squinted down into Moriarty’s face, and the corners of his lips pulled up in a false smile.
“I might be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for a second that I am one. Demons have wings too.” Moriarty laughed.
“Strip, Sherlock. Your shirt. Off. I know about your little… Tattoo. You’re going to strip, and then you’re going to jump.”
Sherlock pulled a sheet of confusion over his features.
“Why on Earth would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t… Everyone you love will die. Three snipers, three bullets, Sherlock. John. Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson. If you don’t jump… They’ll all die. You've got to pull an Icarus here, Sherlock, cause I'm the sun and you came too fucking close.” The faces flashed like polaroids in front of Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock scrubbed a hand over his eyes - the sun, the fucking sun, it was too bright; Moriarty was glowing around the edges.
And then Moriarty pulled out the gun.
Five minutes later, Moriarty lay spread-eagled on the rooftop, blackened blood and gunpowder seeping into the concrete. Sherlock whirled back and forth desperately, his coat swinging open and shut like agitated crow’s wings.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Molly,” Sherlock muttered. He stripped to the skin and flexed his shoulder blades. Everything was so bright, the windows of the buildings around him were edged in flames and he could see nearly to Big Ben. Sherlock stepped onto the edge of the roof and closed his eyes. The breeze tugged at his curls, flicking them into his eyes. He brushed them away brusquely. John, he knew, was getting out of the cab below him. That was good. That was imperative.
Sherlock dialled the number with shaking fingers. He’d never gotten around to putting John on speed dial.
He made the call, and then he jumped.
And for a moment, Sherlock Holmes finally flew.
John fell beside his best friend, ink black blood staining the knees of his trousers.
Mycroft stared at his CCTV cameras, lips pressed tight together. His hand twitched toward his mobile, and he let it fall to his thigh.
His little brother had fallen again, and this time Mycroft couldn’t pick him up.
-
John was sorting through Sherlock’s mess of indeterminately stained papers, grimacing at the ache in his leg and fuming over the fact that he’d had to dig out his cane again when he found the feather. It was massive; nearly as long as John’s forearm, white spotted with dark brown. He stared at it, running his fingertips along the edges. It was a little oily, enough to give it a sheen in the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows.
Eagle? John thought, frowning. No. Not Sherlock-y enough. Hawk? Too big. Alba- of course.
A wandering albatross. John snorted, then shook his head and smiled. An albatross would appeal to Sherlock. Always flying, never touching Earth - balanced, in the air, and off kilter and silly on the ground. John’s lips turned down as he stared out the window with far-off eyes. There was that other - bit - about albatrosses he remembered. That they mated for life - but thinking about that hurt a bit too much.
John sat up suddenly. He did know something else about albatrosses; they stayed aloft for years and years, but they did come back down.
They always came back.
He set the feather down on the stack of papers beside him and rested his elbows on his knees, tenting his hands underneath his pursed lips. At length, he nodded briskly and pushed himself to his feet. He tucked the feather into the back of his waistband beside the gun he’d taken to carrying about and walked quickly out the door.
He didn’t notice he’d left his cane behind until he was halfway down Baker Street.
Sitting in his chair by the fire at the Diogenes Club, Mycroft stared into space with his mind whirring. Sherlock couldn’t be - no. He simply couldn’t be, there was no possible way that his little brother could be gone, could have killed himself - Mycroft knew full well, of course, that Sherlock hadn’t been a fake.
Mycroft slid his mobile out of his trousers pocket and clicked to the calls screen. He looked at Sherlock’s last missed call to him, the night before he’d - not died. Mycroft sighed heavily.
A man in a waistcoat tapped Mycroft gently on the shoulder, gesturing to the covered silver plate he bore. Mycroft frowned and lifted the cover.
As he stared open mouthed at the single curved, downy white feather on the plate, John Watson burst through the opulent wooden door.
“He’s not dead.”
As the men in the smoky room gaped at John, Mycroft nodded, not taking his eyes off the tiny feather.
“I know, John.”