Fic: 3:07 a.m. (1/1)
Title: 3:07 a.m. (1/1)
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Baby Girl Watson
Warnings: See A/N (it’s a bit complicated).
Rating: PG13 for language
Summary: Her daughter is three months old. Her breasts have stopped leaking. She still wakes up every morning, at 3:07am.
In earlgreytea68’s Operation Baby Girl Watson, Sherlock gives Mary a choice: stay and go to jail for her crimes, or leave her hour-old daughter behind and never return. Mary flees. This is what happened next.
A/N: Thanks to kizzia and ladyprydian for the Brit-pick and beta. Major thanks to EGT for letting me remix her story from Mary’s POV and taking a look once it was done. The Beatles song referenced is In My Life, which does make a pretty good, if sad, lullaby.
While OBGW was admittedly not Mary-friendly, please be aware that this story takes a sympathetic view of Mary, and is told from Mary’s POV after she’s left her daughter behind in England. Please be aware that if you have a trigger regarding anything ranging from child abandonment to adoption issues to miscarriage, this could potentially be a very difficult read for you.
3:07 a.m.
She goes to the cemetery first. It’s been six years since she last visited, and the grounds were all green trees and flowers and bright blue skies. Now it’s dingy and grey with frost and winter, and it takes a few wrong turns before she finds the headstone, near the back, some three rows back from the main path.
Mary Elizabeth Morstan
Our daughter, taken too soon
October 14, 1972
Mary’s hands are cold in her coat pockets. She’s been cold, ever since leaving hospital. No matter how many sweaters - jumpers - she puts on, no matter how thick the mittens. She’s cold, as if the blood running through her veins has disappeared and been left behind in the maternity ward. It’s cliché, and she hates it, and she thinks she’s so light, a corn-husk of a woman, that the wind might blow her away.
Blown away with the wind, leaving no trace behind: it’s what they want. She hates them for it.
Mary stares at the headstone, pursing her lips tightly. She thinks she ought to say something. Thank you, or I tried to be good for you, or They’ll be better with her than I would have done. Anyone would do better than I would have.
Instead, all she can think is Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, and even when she turns and leaves, her shoes crunching along the frost, the words don’t stop.
*
She leaves Mary behind in the cemetery, and goes to France as Jeannette. She picks the name at random, only later remembers it’s one of the half dozen girlfriends John had before he met her. (“Full disclosure,” said John over a curry dinner, and her heart had thrummed in her chest, until she realized he only wanted to tell her the rather impressive list of sexual partners. “Full disclosure,” she agreed, and if she invented a few of the names, she didn’t invent the faces that went along with them. She knew there were some things that superseded a necessary lie.)
Her French accent is good enough that the Parisians think she’s Québécois, which doesn’t really earn her any extra privilege, as they’re Parisian and she is clearly not. But it allows her to blend into the fabric of the city, to remain invisible to the many tourists who don’t speak a lick of French.
She walks. She can’t walk far, not at first. She’s tired and her body is weary. Her breasts hurt and leak; she buys socks and stuffs her bra with them because she doesn’t know what else to do, and when the men on the street stare at her with lascivious gazes, she gives them such a pointed, angry, dangerous glare that they look away.
Dangerous. That’s what she is. She tried to escape it once. Look how well that turned out.
She listens to the English-speaking tourists around her, sits in cafés for lunch and reads her French-language guide books. The tourists talk about what they’ve seen and what they want to see next. They talk about how their feet hurt and how rude the French are. They complain about how dirty the streets are and how ridiculous it is to charge one price for a soda to go and another price for a soda to stay.
They don’t talk about what she wants to hear.
At night, she lies in bed and folds her hands over her empty stomach, and she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t sleep, not that she remembers, and when she turns to look at the time, it’s always 3:07am.
When she wakes in the morning, her nightshirt is soaked through with equal amounts of milk and tears.
*
I would leave this continent, is what he said to her, that night/morning in the hospital, when she was tired and scared and aching and lashing out in fear.
Fuck you, she thinks, and after Paris, goes to Rome, because she never learned Italian.
She knows they’re watching her. She welcomes their surveillance, and lets them watch. She sits in the palazzos as winter turns into spring, and watches the little dark-haired Italian children chase pigeons across the cobblestones.
Angela, she thinks. Margaret. Anna. Gertrude, her suggestion, which had made John laugh. Violetta, John’s suggestion, which had made her laugh. Isabelle. Chloe.
Her daughter is three months old. Her breasts have stopped leaking. She still wakes up every morning, at 3:07am.
*
They watch her. They could be horrible, she supposes; they could brush by her and knock her down; they could pickpocket her purse; they could try to intimidate or frighten her. Maybe they know she can’t be frightened, not easily. Maybe they know there’s no point.
They’ll always watch her, wherever she goes. She wonders if they would watch her less if she left Europe entirely. Except … leaving Europe is somehow final in a way that leaving England was not. She doesn’t want it to be final. In Europe, she can be back in London in a few hours. Anywhere else….
She sees babies everywhere. Smiling, crying, eating, sleeping. Sitting up, lying down, toddling on uncertain feet, holding onto two fingers of a nearby adult’s hand. Older children picking them up under their arms, carting them about like puppies or kittens, depositing them in favor of something else. Smiling with gummy smiles, chewing on a favorite toy.
Sophie. Ava. Lucy. Maya. Hannah. Charlotte.
She still walks every day, without really knowing where she goes.
Justine. Eleanor. Daisy. Zoe. Ella. Ruby.
“Signora? Signora? Posso aiutarla?”
She shakes herself from her reverie, and blinking, stares at the room full of computers, and people sitting at them, typing or laughing at the screens together.
“Vuoi noleggiare un computer per un'ora?”
An internet café, and she begins to shake, thinks of the euros in her pocket. Five minutes is all she would need. Less.
They are watching her. They are waiting for her to do something, anything, that would make them sound an alarm.
“No, grazie,” she says, and leaves.
*
She boards a plane leaving Rome two days later, bound for Argentina, because that’s where all fugitives go, isn’t it? And she remembers her Spanish.
Violetta isn’t such a terrible name, she thinks.
*
Somewhere over the Atlantic, she wakes. She doesn’t need to look at her watch to know: 3:07am.
*
She waits a day after landing in Buenos Aires. It’s all she can stand. Her daughter is three months, two weeks, and one day. She pays for her hour and sits at the computer in the internet café she found the day before, and now that she’s an ocean away, she doesn’t even bother to pretend: she goes straight to John’s blog.
Write-ups of cases. Pictures of the country. Snarky comments from Harry, suggestive and jokey comments from Mike Stamford, clucking from Mrs Hudson. She clicks through the entries, one after the other, growing more and more frustrated. It takes an hour and a half, and she is about to give up entirely, when she sees the new entry at the top of the page.
May 20
First sunny day since we’ve been back to Baker Street, and we went on a celebratory walk to the zoo to show off the elephants. Guess who slept through it, and guess who complained the entire way? Well, could go either way, I suppose.
“She’s three months old, John, she can’t appreciate elephants,” said Sherlock, but I think he really wanted to sort through the fingers Molly sent over the other day, except he’d been sorting through them all night as it was. I know, because he was awake every time I got up for Herself, which was plenty. Teething, I think. Early, Sherlock says. World’s expert on babies, him.
She didn’t care for the elephants, but she liked the aviary. Sherlock fell asleep.
Harry Watson
He fell asleep? Oh, that’s rich.
Molly Hooper
Are you done with the fingers, Sherlock? I need them back.
Sherlock Holmes
No.
Martha Hudson
Oh, I’m so glad Olivia enjoyed the zoo! Come down later, we’ll have tea.
Olivia.
She sits and stares at the screen, blinking.
Olivia.
Olivia wasn’t sleeping well. Olivia might be teething. Olivia liked the birds in the aviary. Olivia had been to the zoo.
Her finger slips; she closes the page accidentally, and hurries to open it again.
When she does, the comment from Mrs Hudson has been deleted. Instead, there’s a new comment in its place.
Sherlock Holmes
Mrs Hudson, please remember not to use the baby’s name.
She logs off and pays the remainder of her fee and walks out into the driving rain.
Olivia. Olivia. Olivia.
She walks straight to the beach, empty now at the beginning of Argentinean winter, and feels the mix of sea spray and rain hit her face.
Olivia isn’t sleeping well. Olivia liked the birds. Olivia might be teething.
Olivia is alive. Olivia is happy. Olivia is well.
Okay, she thinks. Okay.
*
She gets a job, working as a nurse in a clinic that caters to the poor and disadvantaged. It’s not that she was looking for it, but that they’re willing to overlook certain things she doesn’t have: medical credentials with her current name, work permits, the like. They need her, and she needs the money, because while Sherlock Holmes told her to run, he didn’t really give her much opportunity to gather the ability to do it for long unsustained, and she’s nearly depleted the various accounts she’d managed to set up in the years before she abandoned her previous life. They’d never been meant to support her entirely - just to give her enough to get home.
She doesn’t have a home anymore. She doesn’t really have much of a life anymore. She wakes up, and has coffee and toast. She goes to the clinic, where she soothes the worried mothers and smiles at the frightened children. She bandages cuts and gives immunizations and offers advice to mothers who lost their babies how to stop their milk from flowing.
Took her in for her first immunization jabs today. Christ, I never want to do that again.
She holds down babies for blood draws, to find out if they’ve got HIV, and is sick in the lavatory later, crying and shaking and holding her stomach in.
(The extra weight is gone, but there are stretch marks, and she runs her fingers over them at night.)
Bit of a fever. Tiny one, nothing to be afraid of. Just her first, that’s all. Stop worrying, Mrs H! Sherlock watched her like a hawk all night.
Sherlock Holmes
I was awake anyway. Very important experiment needed observation.
John Watson
You old softie.
She hands out acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and reassures herself that Mrs Hudson is just downstairs. That Sherlock is watching over her. That John knows perfectly well the dangers of fevers rising too quickly in small children, and if he sounded a little bit frantic…well, he was reassured by Sherlock’s presence.
And strangely, so is she.
*
They didn’t take her medical history.
She still wakes at 3:07am, every morning, and when Olivia is six months old, she thinks of this.
They had spent so much time planning it: her ultimatum, their desire to boot her out of the country, out of their lives, out of Olivia’s life….and John, a medical professional, had never once thought to take a medical history from her, to even find out if the one she’d told him about as Mary was accurate to the truth.
(It was. She’s not stupid. She understands the importance of these things.)
It’s such a stupid thing for them to have done, to forget something so basic and necessary. She supposes they could find out well enough now, what with Mycroft’s goons still watching her every move, and surely they are bored by now. Or perhaps moved: there’s a little extra cash flowing into the cash-strapped clinic now, and she doubts it’s Mycroft who is donating it. Nice to think the goons have a little bit of heart in them. The clinic has been short on TB tests and rapid-response strep tests for three weeks.
It’s stupid, she knows. She doesn’t care. She writes the note and leaves it on her kitchen table in the morning when she leaves for work.
Everything I told you about my family’s medical history was true. If you destroyed it, I can write it out again.
A week goes by. The paper doesn’t move.
Eight days after she wrote the note, it’s still on the table. Upside-down.
She burns it, and breathes a little easier.
*
She likes Argentina. She likes Buenos Aires. She thinks she could live there, helping at the clinic, walking along the streets, listening to the surf of the sea and the Spanish circle around her. The bright colors and the smog and the decay and the hope and the joy.
She wakes at 3:07am every morning, touches the scars on her stomach, and falls back asleep.
Olivia is safe. Olivia is well. Olivia is happy.
She buys birds in the markets. Toy birds made of wood and painted in bright colors. Paintings in art-deco abstract forms, bright Latin colors garish in any other part of the world. Birds embroidered on pillowcases and purses. Birds in beadwork belts, felt birds that hang from string. She decorates her little flat with them, gives the toys to the clinic’s children at Christmas.
Olivia’s first Christmas.
December 25
Went to the Holmes family house for the holidays this year. I wasn’t sure it was the best idea, given last year, but it ended up being all right. I worried I’d think about Mary too much. I did, a bit. Sherlock’s parents are wonderful; they love the baby, dandled her on their knees. She toddles around clutching their fingers; she’ll be walking on her own any day now.
“Honorary grandparents,” I told them. Mycroft rolled his eyes, and Sherlock refused to look at them, but Mrs Holmes, she cried and Mr Holmes just looked pleased. They’re the only ones she’ll have, and I can’t think of better.
Sherlock’s mum tried to teach her the multiplication table. I think she’s a bit young for that, but my opinions don’t count. I’m only her dad.
Sherlock bought her a chemistry set for a present. See what side he’s on! I bought her one of those musical box things, plays a different instrument on any side. She still liked the boxes they all came in best. Clever girl.
There are no comments yet. Her fingers hover over the comment entry, and slowly, without even really pausing to consider, she types.
Happy Christmas and
She stares at the three words for the longest time, not even sure what she meant to say next.
After a while, she deletes them, and logs off, and goes home.
*
She loves Argentina. A month into the new year, one of Mycroft’s goons is killed in a hit-and-run outside her apartment.
It’s not her fault. She didn’t want him dead. She wanted him alive. She’d seen him every day. He was part of the neighborhood. He gave money to the clinic. He smiled at the children on the street. He gave Mycroft her message. He was her link to her baby.
It’s a stupid, terrible, horrible waste. And all the same, she feels guiltier for his death than for anything she’s done in her entire terrible, stupid, horrible life.
She used to be very, very good at her job. He was porteño - Buenos Aires by birth - and she sends all her birds to his family, anonymously. She keeps a few thousand pesos, and divides the rest between the clinic and the family.
She leaves a week later, and lands in Korea the day before Olivia’s first birthday.
*
This time, her name is Margaret.
*
February 10
Happy Birthday, Baby Girl! Daddy and Uncle Sherlock love you.
Enter New Comment Below:
I remember the last night I had with you, and I didn’t even have you. I was so impatient to see you, and you were just a day overdue. I couldn’t sit still, I went and folded all the little shirts and sleepsuits and tiny socks over and over, counted them up to make sure we had enough. Such tiny little socks! You were such a wiggly thing. Always moving. A dancer, I thought. When you were three, we’d put you in ballet and let you spin and spin and spin.
I took ballet when I was three. I loved it so, so much. I stopped when I was five. I never understood why.
I sang to you before you were born. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.” And the Beatles, because I thought your dad might like it. “There are places I remember, all my life though some have changed.” I don’t know if your dad sings them to you. Maybe he does. I’d like to think so. Probably not.
I like your name. I lived in an apartment filled with birds, until recently. I don’t know if they sell birds in the markets here. I’ll have to look. Do you still like the birds at the zoo?
I cradled you in me, that last night. I sang to you on the way to hospital. I sang to you in hospital, when the contractions weren’t too much. I was so excited to sing to you in my arms.
You are the best, the most perfect thing I have ever done in my life. I know I’ve set a low bar, but…even if I’d been the best person in the world, you’d still be the only good thing I’d have ever done.
She stares at the entry without seeing it.
Control-A. Delete.
*
March 31
Quiet day, much to Sherlock’s chagrin. He’d have spent most of it sulking on the couch, but Herself refused to let him, kept handing him books and dolls and now she’s got her very own personal reader.
Harry Watson
Happy birthday!
Mrs Hudson
John, is it your birthday? I’ll make a cake.
John Watson
No need, Mrs H, we’re fine.
Mrs Hudson
Too late, it’s already in the oven.
Enter New Comment Below:
Olivia, you’d never believe - there’s a market here where they sell real live birds! Ducks and chickens as well as songbirds. I shouldn’t have, but I bought a songbird. I don’t know why, I don’t think I’ll stay very long, but I kept thinking of how you’d beg for it, and I couldn’t say no. It’s tweeting away like mad. I haven’t named it yet. What do you think I should call it?
Control-A. Delete.
*
May 5
Big case to write up; Sherlock and I just wrapped it up. Mrs Hudson and Herself curled up on the couch when we got home; seemed a shame to move them, but Mrs H’s hip wouldn’t forgive us. Herself slept straight through. After those first couple of weeks as a newborn, you could have knocked me over with a feather by saying she’d sleep like a rock now.
Enter New Comment Below:
There’s a children’s festival in downtown Seoul today; it’s a holiday for the whole country. Kites and puppet shows and dancing and everyone in their brightest colors, everyone dressed and smiling and I went for a little bit and danced with some children and smiled and laughed and thought how much fun you would have. Maybe not. There was a family - not Korean - with a little blonde girl, and everyone wanted to touch her hair or hold her or pat her, and you could tell she wasn’t having any of it, just wanted everyone to leave her alone. It’s the hair. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the hair.
Do you have blonde hair? John never posts pictures of you. I think you must have blonde hair. John is so fair, and so am I. Do you have my eyes or his?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In Russia, her name is Anya.
*
February 10
Happy Birthday, Baby Girl! Although you’re not so much a baby, anymore, are you? Walking and talking and soon you’ll be asking for pocket money and if you can stay out late on school nights.
(Answer’s no, by the way.)
Enter New Comment Below:
I saw you, you know. Just a glimpse. They wouldn’t let me hold you, said you needed oxygen, and whisked you right out of the room. I didn’t get to touch you.
I remember you slipping out of me, that feeling of fullness, and then…nothing. Like I was an empty shell. I felt empty for a long time after that. An empty husk just floating. I floated for the longest time. I’m still floating, I think.
But I saw you. You were so small, and covered in birth mucous and blood and you looked fine to me, your skin was a bit jaundiced, I thought, but maybe that was the lights. The umbilical cord was purple and pearl.
I didn’t feel them cut us apart. Not physically. Not for another hour, when Sherlock came in, and I think I knew, the moment I heard him walk into the room. I knew then, I’d never see you again. They’d never let me. They’d find a way to keep you away from me, no matter what they promised to do if I just gave myself up.
You cried. The only time I ever saw you, you were crying.
Control-A. Delete.
*
In India, her name is Gertrude.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
I saw the Taj Mahal last week. It was built for love. You were made from love. Your dad loved me. He really did, I know that, because that was me he loved, not some cardboard cutout that I made up. I was myself with him, even if he’ll never believe it. I let myself be myself with him, because of all the people in the world, I didn’t want to lie to him.
I did, though.
I don’t want to lie to you, either. I would have made a terrible mother. I’m selfish and petty and I have a short temper and I hate the color pink. I would have dressed you in white, because I love white, which is just silly, because you’re a baby, you’re John Watson’s daughter, you would have found the nearest mud puddle and dove right in, and I would have been furious.
I can’t imagine that I could love you any more than I do now, not knowing you. Is that strange?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In South Africa, her name is Isabelle.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
You are better off with them. I wake up in the middle of the night, and I hear sirens on the street, and I tell myself: you are better off with them. John would be such a good father. And Sherlock, the best sort of uncle, the kind who knows exactly how to get you into trouble and right back out again. And they love you so, so much. I can tell. They are so wonderfully protective and caring, and you are the luckiest little girl in the entire world to have them. You must know that.
I did the right thing, going away, leaving you with them. They would never have felt safe if I’d stayed, no matter how many bars Sherlock put between us. There’d always have been the chance that you might have loved me.
Do they tell you about me? You aren’t even old enough to ask.
Do they tell you that I left because I loved you so much, I was scared that if I stayed, I would have destroyed you like I nearly destroyed your dad?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In Egypt, her name is Chloe.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
Happy Birthday, Olivia. You’re three today. You’re walking and talking and every time I pass a little girl on the street, I think of you. There’s a park here - it’s not much of one, it’s falling to pieces and the trees look so sad, but the children race under the bits of shade and laugh and drink dark things out of plastic bags, and it makes you think of lazy weekends a hundred years ago, when everything was rose-colored and sepia-toned.
I had a crazy thought yesterday. I won’t think it again.
Control-A. Delete.
*
She wakes at 3:07am. Her fingers run along the grooves of her stretch marks.
By 3:08, she’s decided.
*
When she lands at Heathrow, her name is Ella. Her hair is tinted ginger. She wears it long.
The customs officers study her passport, study her, type for a very long time on their computer terminals, and she’s not terribly surprised when a guard comes over and politely asks her to step aside with him.
“Routine, ma’am,” he says. It’s not, but she smiles reassuringly at him, and picks up her bag, and follows.
“Do you have a connecting flight?” he inquires.
“No.”
“Any checked luggage?”
“No. Business trip; I shan’t be staying long.”
“But you’re English?”
Not really. “Living in Cairo now.”
“Here we are,” says the young man, and leads her into an interrogation room, empty except for the table in the center, and three chairs. “It won’t be long.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
The door clangs shut behind her. She sits on the chair, her bag next to her, and folds her hands to wait.
*
She waits for two hours.
*
The sound of the door opening wakes her from her doze.
“Mary Elizabeth Morstan,” says Mycroft Holmes, smooth as silk. “Or did you change your name to Watson? I can’t remember.”
She tenses, and then curses herself for showing him that much. “I haven’t used those names in three years. You’re slipping, Mycroft.”
“Hmm,” says Mycroft, and he sits opposite her, mimicking her pose. “Thank you for your message regarding your medical history. Of course, I’d already done the research and we knew it was accurate.”
Of course. She ought to have known that, if they’d known anything about her past… She waits, because she knows that’s not why he’s here.
“So,” says Mycroft, and he lifts his hands up to his chin. “Come home to pay your dues at last?”
“Not quite. You’ll find that Ella Gerald is entirely flawless, and has alibis and witnesses who will corroborate them.”
Mycroft smiles. It’s rather condescending.
She leans forward. “I want to see her.”
“No.”
“She’s my daughter-“
“She’s no one to you.”
“I’ve stayed away, I’ve never tried to make contact except in an act of good faith. She’s my daughter, Mycroft. You stole her from me.”
“You made the choice-“
“I know!” she shouts. It echoes in the little room, and she closes her eyes, clenches her hands, and forces herself to relax. She opens her eyes and stares at Mycroft with the hardest look she can manage. “I know she’s better off with them. I know they’re both better parents than I could ever hope to be. I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want to take her away from the only home she’s ever known. I don’t want to be the villain in her story, Mycroft. I’ve been the villain in so many others. You think a day goes by that I don’t think about her, Mycroft? He said to forget her. I can’t. I’ve tried. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe I don’t want to forget her. Maybe I shouldn’t have to. She’s my daughter. Even if I can’t be her mother - even if I gave up that right an hour after she was born, she’ll always be my daughter. Until the day I die, I will always have a daughter, and her name is Olivia, and she was part of me for nine months, and every little girl I see is her. But every little girl I see isn’t her. I could pass her on the street and never know it, and not knowing - it’s killing me. Maybe that’s what you want. But I can’t…Please. All I want is to see her. Just once. I don’t need to talk to her. I don’t need her to see me. I don’t even need her to know I’m there. I just…I just want to see her. I need to know she’s…I need to know. Please.”
Her voice cracks on the please. She closes her eyes, and can’t look at him.
The clock on the wall ticks loudly. Her blood rushes in her ears.
His chair scrapes loudly against the linoleum. “They walk through Regent’s Park at three every afternoon to feed the ducks. York Bridge, near the Wildlife Garden. You’ll be watched. Your flight leaves tomorrow at 10am. Don’t miss it.”
When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.
*
She’s beautiful.
The bench is positioned so that she can see everything on York Bridge perfectly, but nestled in the shadow of the trees so that they can’t really see her. It’s as though Mycroft has placed it just for this purpose - and knowing Mycroft, perhaps he has. Perhaps the people he said were watching her are just behind her, ready to snatch her up if she should try anything foolish.
She has no intention of being foolish. Not with Olivia so close.
Olivia’s hair is blonde, and straight with a bit of a curl just above her shoulders, and she’s wearing white tights with black shoes, and a little pink plaid skirt with frilly netted lace at the hem. Her coat is a deep blue, double-breasted, and she’s skipping along, talking a mile a minute to the man holding her hand. He smiles indulgently, and doesn’t look the least bit worried about who might be watching.
John.
She registers it long enough to recognize him, to see the smile on his face, the happiness in his eyes. For a moment, her heart tightens in her chest - and then releases. He’s happy, content, well… She breathes, and lets him go.
But Olivia.
Olivia is beautiful, and inside, she aches, trying to reconcile the screaming infant she glimpsed to the happy, chattering girl who is up on her toes, peering down into the water, and calling merrily for the ducks to come out for their tea. She hoists herself up until she’s stomach-down on the railing, her toes dangling on one side while her hands dangle on the other, and John rests his hand on her back, ready to pull her back to safety. It’s more reflex than anything, and she smiles, watching them.
She’s so engrossed in watching her daughter throw the bread to the ducks that she doesn’t notice the tall man in the Belstaff coat rush by until John sees him, and breaks into a smile.
She watches as they greet each other, their smiles larger than their faces. John rolls his eyes and makes a joke, Sherlock scoffs, Olivia kicks her feet and calls to the ducks. She turns the bag upside down and shakes the last of the crumbs out, and shuffles herself back on the railing until Sherlock picks up her up, hands under her armpits, to set her down on the ground.
They start to stroll across the bridge, toward her, the two men talking, and Olivia takes off her beanie and throws it into the air, trying to catch it before it hits the ground. She’s not very good at it - sometimes it lands behind her; sometimes it falls far ahead. She never manages to catch it cleanly. John and Sherlock keep half an eye on her, but are more engrossed in their conversation than anything else.
She watches, spellbound, as the little girl keeps trying, determined to execute her trick perfectly. She remembers being the same way. She is the same way. Again. Again. Again.
Just like I tried to forget you. I ran, and I tried, and I kept running, and trying, and it never worked. Maybe I never really tried. Maybe I never really wanted to.
And then the hat falls at her feet, and she freezes.
Olivia runs over, her shoes tap-tap-tapping on the paved path. “Sorry!” she chimes out, cheerful and friendly and oh-so-polite.
“No harm done,” chokes out her mother.
Olivia scoops up her hat.
“Keep trying,” she adds, impulsively. “But keep your eye on it, yeah?”
Olivia scrunches up her nose. Her eyes are blue like John’s. She looks so much like him, that her mother wants to laugh.
“That’s what dad says,” she complains.
“Olivia!”
“Bye!” says Olivia, and runs back to her father.
They go. She can’t move.
It’s later when he sits down next to her. She doesn’t know how long, really.
“She’s the brightest child in her nursery class,” says Mycroft Holmes, hands resting on his umbrella. “Very healthy - never had a serious illness a day in her life. She makes friends easily, and is very pleasant and well-mannered.”
“Does she still like the birds at the zoo?”
“I…birds?”
“At the zoo. John and Sherlock took her, when she was three months old. It’s in his blog. She didn’t like the elephants, she liked the birds.”
Mycroft takes something from his pocket. “Yes. Her room is decorated with birds.”
“And books. She would make Sherlock read to her, for hours, when he was sulking.”
“She’s the only person I’ve ever seen who can break him out of a sulk. John Watson included.”
“Your mother - did she manage to teach her the multiplication tables?”
Mycroft let out a laugh. “No. Olivia is very stubborn. But she adores spending time in the garden with my father. They come back covered in mud and perfectly happy with themselves.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“What does he sing to her? At night, for a lullaby, I mean.”
Mycroft swallowed. “Something ridiculous. Something from the radio.”
She can’t speak for a moment. “Which one?”
“I can’t remember the-“
She hums a little bit, her voice not entirely steady.
Mycroft is quiet for a moment.
“Yes. That’s it.”
She nods, and blinks quickly.
“There is a flight at eight this evening,” says Mycroft. He sets the folded paper down on the bench between them. “If you would rather not wait.”
“Please,” she says, and puts the paper in her pocket, unopened.
*
Olivia is happy. Olivia is safe. Olivia is well.
Olivia is loved.
*
She wakes at 3:07 a.m. - not every night, but often enough. The drawing of the songbird is taped to the wall next to her bed. She runs her fingers along her stretch marks, and smiles.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more.
Control-A. Delete.
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Baby Girl Watson
Warnings: See A/N (it’s a bit complicated).
Rating: PG13 for language
Summary: Her daughter is three months old. Her breasts have stopped leaking. She still wakes up every morning, at 3:07am.
In earlgreytea68’s Operation Baby Girl Watson, Sherlock gives Mary a choice: stay and go to jail for her crimes, or leave her hour-old daughter behind and never return. Mary flees. This is what happened next.
A/N: Thanks to kizzia and ladyprydian for the Brit-pick and beta. Major thanks to EGT for letting me remix her story from Mary’s POV and taking a look once it was done. The Beatles song referenced is In My Life, which does make a pretty good, if sad, lullaby.
While OBGW was admittedly not Mary-friendly, please be aware that this story takes a sympathetic view of Mary, and is told from Mary’s POV after she’s left her daughter behind in England. Please be aware that if you have a trigger regarding anything ranging from child abandonment to adoption issues to miscarriage, this could potentially be a very difficult read for you.
3:07 a.m.
She goes to the cemetery first. It’s been six years since she last visited, and the grounds were all green trees and flowers and bright blue skies. Now it’s dingy and grey with frost and winter, and it takes a few wrong turns before she finds the headstone, near the back, some three rows back from the main path.
Mary Elizabeth Morstan
Our daughter, taken too soon
October 14, 1972
Mary’s hands are cold in her coat pockets. She’s been cold, ever since leaving hospital. No matter how many sweaters - jumpers - she puts on, no matter how thick the mittens. She’s cold, as if the blood running through her veins has disappeared and been left behind in the maternity ward. It’s cliché, and she hates it, and she thinks she’s so light, a corn-husk of a woman, that the wind might blow her away.
Blown away with the wind, leaving no trace behind: it’s what they want. She hates them for it.
Mary stares at the headstone, pursing her lips tightly. She thinks she ought to say something. Thank you, or I tried to be good for you, or They’ll be better with her than I would have done. Anyone would do better than I would have.
Instead, all she can think is Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, and even when she turns and leaves, her shoes crunching along the frost, the words don’t stop.
*
She leaves Mary behind in the cemetery, and goes to France as Jeannette. She picks the name at random, only later remembers it’s one of the half dozen girlfriends John had before he met her. (“Full disclosure,” said John over a curry dinner, and her heart had thrummed in her chest, until she realized he only wanted to tell her the rather impressive list of sexual partners. “Full disclosure,” she agreed, and if she invented a few of the names, she didn’t invent the faces that went along with them. She knew there were some things that superseded a necessary lie.)
Her French accent is good enough that the Parisians think she’s Québécois, which doesn’t really earn her any extra privilege, as they’re Parisian and she is clearly not. But it allows her to blend into the fabric of the city, to remain invisible to the many tourists who don’t speak a lick of French.
She walks. She can’t walk far, not at first. She’s tired and her body is weary. Her breasts hurt and leak; she buys socks and stuffs her bra with them because she doesn’t know what else to do, and when the men on the street stare at her with lascivious gazes, she gives them such a pointed, angry, dangerous glare that they look away.
Dangerous. That’s what she is. She tried to escape it once. Look how well that turned out.
She listens to the English-speaking tourists around her, sits in cafés for lunch and reads her French-language guide books. The tourists talk about what they’ve seen and what they want to see next. They talk about how their feet hurt and how rude the French are. They complain about how dirty the streets are and how ridiculous it is to charge one price for a soda to go and another price for a soda to stay.
They don’t talk about what she wants to hear.
At night, she lies in bed and folds her hands over her empty stomach, and she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t sleep, not that she remembers, and when she turns to look at the time, it’s always 3:07am.
When she wakes in the morning, her nightshirt is soaked through with equal amounts of milk and tears.
*
I would leave this continent, is what he said to her, that night/morning in the hospital, when she was tired and scared and aching and lashing out in fear.
Fuck you, she thinks, and after Paris, goes to Rome, because she never learned Italian.
She knows they’re watching her. She welcomes their surveillance, and lets them watch. She sits in the palazzos as winter turns into spring, and watches the little dark-haired Italian children chase pigeons across the cobblestones.
Angela, she thinks. Margaret. Anna. Gertrude, her suggestion, which had made John laugh. Violetta, John’s suggestion, which had made her laugh. Isabelle. Chloe.
Her daughter is three months old. Her breasts have stopped leaking. She still wakes up every morning, at 3:07am.
*
They watch her. They could be horrible, she supposes; they could brush by her and knock her down; they could pickpocket her purse; they could try to intimidate or frighten her. Maybe they know she can’t be frightened, not easily. Maybe they know there’s no point.
They’ll always watch her, wherever she goes. She wonders if they would watch her less if she left Europe entirely. Except … leaving Europe is somehow final in a way that leaving England was not. She doesn’t want it to be final. In Europe, she can be back in London in a few hours. Anywhere else….
She sees babies everywhere. Smiling, crying, eating, sleeping. Sitting up, lying down, toddling on uncertain feet, holding onto two fingers of a nearby adult’s hand. Older children picking them up under their arms, carting them about like puppies or kittens, depositing them in favor of something else. Smiling with gummy smiles, chewing on a favorite toy.
Sophie. Ava. Lucy. Maya. Hannah. Charlotte.
She still walks every day, without really knowing where she goes.
Justine. Eleanor. Daisy. Zoe. Ella. Ruby.
“Signora? Signora? Posso aiutarla?”
She shakes herself from her reverie, and blinking, stares at the room full of computers, and people sitting at them, typing or laughing at the screens together.
“Vuoi noleggiare un computer per un'ora?”
An internet café, and she begins to shake, thinks of the euros in her pocket. Five minutes is all she would need. Less.
They are watching her. They are waiting for her to do something, anything, that would make them sound an alarm.
“No, grazie,” she says, and leaves.
*
She boards a plane leaving Rome two days later, bound for Argentina, because that’s where all fugitives go, isn’t it? And she remembers her Spanish.
Violetta isn’t such a terrible name, she thinks.
*
Somewhere over the Atlantic, she wakes. She doesn’t need to look at her watch to know: 3:07am.
*
She waits a day after landing in Buenos Aires. It’s all she can stand. Her daughter is three months, two weeks, and one day. She pays for her hour and sits at the computer in the internet café she found the day before, and now that she’s an ocean away, she doesn’t even bother to pretend: she goes straight to John’s blog.
Write-ups of cases. Pictures of the country. Snarky comments from Harry, suggestive and jokey comments from Mike Stamford, clucking from Mrs Hudson. She clicks through the entries, one after the other, growing more and more frustrated. It takes an hour and a half, and she is about to give up entirely, when she sees the new entry at the top of the page.
May 20
First sunny day since we’ve been back to Baker Street, and we went on a celebratory walk to the zoo to show off the elephants. Guess who slept through it, and guess who complained the entire way? Well, could go either way, I suppose.
“She’s three months old, John, she can’t appreciate elephants,” said Sherlock, but I think he really wanted to sort through the fingers Molly sent over the other day, except he’d been sorting through them all night as it was. I know, because he was awake every time I got up for Herself, which was plenty. Teething, I think. Early, Sherlock says. World’s expert on babies, him.
She didn’t care for the elephants, but she liked the aviary. Sherlock fell asleep.
Harry Watson
He fell asleep? Oh, that’s rich.
Molly Hooper
Are you done with the fingers, Sherlock? I need them back.
Sherlock Holmes
No.
Martha Hudson
Oh, I’m so glad Olivia enjoyed the zoo! Come down later, we’ll have tea.
Olivia.
She sits and stares at the screen, blinking.
Olivia.
Olivia wasn’t sleeping well. Olivia might be teething. Olivia liked the birds in the aviary. Olivia had been to the zoo.
Her finger slips; she closes the page accidentally, and hurries to open it again.
When she does, the comment from Mrs Hudson has been deleted. Instead, there’s a new comment in its place.
Sherlock Holmes
Mrs Hudson, please remember not to use the baby’s name.
She logs off and pays the remainder of her fee and walks out into the driving rain.
Olivia. Olivia. Olivia.
She walks straight to the beach, empty now at the beginning of Argentinean winter, and feels the mix of sea spray and rain hit her face.
Olivia isn’t sleeping well. Olivia liked the birds. Olivia might be teething.
Olivia is alive. Olivia is happy. Olivia is well.
Okay, she thinks. Okay.
*
She gets a job, working as a nurse in a clinic that caters to the poor and disadvantaged. It’s not that she was looking for it, but that they’re willing to overlook certain things she doesn’t have: medical credentials with her current name, work permits, the like. They need her, and she needs the money, because while Sherlock Holmes told her to run, he didn’t really give her much opportunity to gather the ability to do it for long unsustained, and she’s nearly depleted the various accounts she’d managed to set up in the years before she abandoned her previous life. They’d never been meant to support her entirely - just to give her enough to get home.
She doesn’t have a home anymore. She doesn’t really have much of a life anymore. She wakes up, and has coffee and toast. She goes to the clinic, where she soothes the worried mothers and smiles at the frightened children. She bandages cuts and gives immunizations and offers advice to mothers who lost their babies how to stop their milk from flowing.
Took her in for her first immunization jabs today. Christ, I never want to do that again.
She holds down babies for blood draws, to find out if they’ve got HIV, and is sick in the lavatory later, crying and shaking and holding her stomach in.
(The extra weight is gone, but there are stretch marks, and she runs her fingers over them at night.)
Bit of a fever. Tiny one, nothing to be afraid of. Just her first, that’s all. Stop worrying, Mrs H! Sherlock watched her like a hawk all night.
Sherlock Holmes
I was awake anyway. Very important experiment needed observation.
John Watson
You old softie.
She hands out acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and reassures herself that Mrs Hudson is just downstairs. That Sherlock is watching over her. That John knows perfectly well the dangers of fevers rising too quickly in small children, and if he sounded a little bit frantic…well, he was reassured by Sherlock’s presence.
And strangely, so is she.
*
They didn’t take her medical history.
She still wakes at 3:07am, every morning, and when Olivia is six months old, she thinks of this.
They had spent so much time planning it: her ultimatum, their desire to boot her out of the country, out of their lives, out of Olivia’s life….and John, a medical professional, had never once thought to take a medical history from her, to even find out if the one she’d told him about as Mary was accurate to the truth.
(It was. She’s not stupid. She understands the importance of these things.)
It’s such a stupid thing for them to have done, to forget something so basic and necessary. She supposes they could find out well enough now, what with Mycroft’s goons still watching her every move, and surely they are bored by now. Or perhaps moved: there’s a little extra cash flowing into the cash-strapped clinic now, and she doubts it’s Mycroft who is donating it. Nice to think the goons have a little bit of heart in them. The clinic has been short on TB tests and rapid-response strep tests for three weeks.
It’s stupid, she knows. She doesn’t care. She writes the note and leaves it on her kitchen table in the morning when she leaves for work.
Everything I told you about my family’s medical history was true. If you destroyed it, I can write it out again.
A week goes by. The paper doesn’t move.
Eight days after she wrote the note, it’s still on the table. Upside-down.
She burns it, and breathes a little easier.
*
She likes Argentina. She likes Buenos Aires. She thinks she could live there, helping at the clinic, walking along the streets, listening to the surf of the sea and the Spanish circle around her. The bright colors and the smog and the decay and the hope and the joy.
She wakes at 3:07am every morning, touches the scars on her stomach, and falls back asleep.
Olivia is safe. Olivia is well. Olivia is happy.
She buys birds in the markets. Toy birds made of wood and painted in bright colors. Paintings in art-deco abstract forms, bright Latin colors garish in any other part of the world. Birds embroidered on pillowcases and purses. Birds in beadwork belts, felt birds that hang from string. She decorates her little flat with them, gives the toys to the clinic’s children at Christmas.
Olivia’s first Christmas.
December 25
Went to the Holmes family house for the holidays this year. I wasn’t sure it was the best idea, given last year, but it ended up being all right. I worried I’d think about Mary too much. I did, a bit. Sherlock’s parents are wonderful; they love the baby, dandled her on their knees. She toddles around clutching their fingers; she’ll be walking on her own any day now.
“Honorary grandparents,” I told them. Mycroft rolled his eyes, and Sherlock refused to look at them, but Mrs Holmes, she cried and Mr Holmes just looked pleased. They’re the only ones she’ll have, and I can’t think of better.
Sherlock’s mum tried to teach her the multiplication table. I think she’s a bit young for that, but my opinions don’t count. I’m only her dad.
Sherlock bought her a chemistry set for a present. See what side he’s on! I bought her one of those musical box things, plays a different instrument on any side. She still liked the boxes they all came in best. Clever girl.
There are no comments yet. Her fingers hover over the comment entry, and slowly, without even really pausing to consider, she types.
Happy Christmas and
She stares at the three words for the longest time, not even sure what she meant to say next.
After a while, she deletes them, and logs off, and goes home.
*
She loves Argentina. A month into the new year, one of Mycroft’s goons is killed in a hit-and-run outside her apartment.
It’s not her fault. She didn’t want him dead. She wanted him alive. She’d seen him every day. He was part of the neighborhood. He gave money to the clinic. He smiled at the children on the street. He gave Mycroft her message. He was her link to her baby.
It’s a stupid, terrible, horrible waste. And all the same, she feels guiltier for his death than for anything she’s done in her entire terrible, stupid, horrible life.
She used to be very, very good at her job. He was porteño - Buenos Aires by birth - and she sends all her birds to his family, anonymously. She keeps a few thousand pesos, and divides the rest between the clinic and the family.
She leaves a week later, and lands in Korea the day before Olivia’s first birthday.
*
This time, her name is Margaret.
*
February 10
Happy Birthday, Baby Girl! Daddy and Uncle Sherlock love you.
Enter New Comment Below:
I remember the last night I had with you, and I didn’t even have you. I was so impatient to see you, and you were just a day overdue. I couldn’t sit still, I went and folded all the little shirts and sleepsuits and tiny socks over and over, counted them up to make sure we had enough. Such tiny little socks! You were such a wiggly thing. Always moving. A dancer, I thought. When you were three, we’d put you in ballet and let you spin and spin and spin.
I took ballet when I was three. I loved it so, so much. I stopped when I was five. I never understood why.
I sang to you before you were born. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.” And the Beatles, because I thought your dad might like it. “There are places I remember, all my life though some have changed.” I don’t know if your dad sings them to you. Maybe he does. I’d like to think so. Probably not.
I like your name. I lived in an apartment filled with birds, until recently. I don’t know if they sell birds in the markets here. I’ll have to look. Do you still like the birds at the zoo?
I cradled you in me, that last night. I sang to you on the way to hospital. I sang to you in hospital, when the contractions weren’t too much. I was so excited to sing to you in my arms.
You are the best, the most perfect thing I have ever done in my life. I know I’ve set a low bar, but…even if I’d been the best person in the world, you’d still be the only good thing I’d have ever done.
She stares at the entry without seeing it.
Control-A. Delete.
*
March 31
Quiet day, much to Sherlock’s chagrin. He’d have spent most of it sulking on the couch, but Herself refused to let him, kept handing him books and dolls and now she’s got her very own personal reader.
Harry Watson
Happy birthday!
Mrs Hudson
John, is it your birthday? I’ll make a cake.
John Watson
No need, Mrs H, we’re fine.
Mrs Hudson
Too late, it’s already in the oven.
Enter New Comment Below:
Olivia, you’d never believe - there’s a market here where they sell real live birds! Ducks and chickens as well as songbirds. I shouldn’t have, but I bought a songbird. I don’t know why, I don’t think I’ll stay very long, but I kept thinking of how you’d beg for it, and I couldn’t say no. It’s tweeting away like mad. I haven’t named it yet. What do you think I should call it?
Control-A. Delete.
*
May 5
Big case to write up; Sherlock and I just wrapped it up. Mrs Hudson and Herself curled up on the couch when we got home; seemed a shame to move them, but Mrs H’s hip wouldn’t forgive us. Herself slept straight through. After those first couple of weeks as a newborn, you could have knocked me over with a feather by saying she’d sleep like a rock now.
Enter New Comment Below:
There’s a children’s festival in downtown Seoul today; it’s a holiday for the whole country. Kites and puppet shows and dancing and everyone in their brightest colors, everyone dressed and smiling and I went for a little bit and danced with some children and smiled and laughed and thought how much fun you would have. Maybe not. There was a family - not Korean - with a little blonde girl, and everyone wanted to touch her hair or hold her or pat her, and you could tell she wasn’t having any of it, just wanted everyone to leave her alone. It’s the hair. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the hair.
Do you have blonde hair? John never posts pictures of you. I think you must have blonde hair. John is so fair, and so am I. Do you have my eyes or his?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In Russia, her name is Anya.
*
February 10
Happy Birthday, Baby Girl! Although you’re not so much a baby, anymore, are you? Walking and talking and soon you’ll be asking for pocket money and if you can stay out late on school nights.
(Answer’s no, by the way.)
Enter New Comment Below:
I saw you, you know. Just a glimpse. They wouldn’t let me hold you, said you needed oxygen, and whisked you right out of the room. I didn’t get to touch you.
I remember you slipping out of me, that feeling of fullness, and then…nothing. Like I was an empty shell. I felt empty for a long time after that. An empty husk just floating. I floated for the longest time. I’m still floating, I think.
But I saw you. You were so small, and covered in birth mucous and blood and you looked fine to me, your skin was a bit jaundiced, I thought, but maybe that was the lights. The umbilical cord was purple and pearl.
I didn’t feel them cut us apart. Not physically. Not for another hour, when Sherlock came in, and I think I knew, the moment I heard him walk into the room. I knew then, I’d never see you again. They’d never let me. They’d find a way to keep you away from me, no matter what they promised to do if I just gave myself up.
You cried. The only time I ever saw you, you were crying.
Control-A. Delete.
*
In India, her name is Gertrude.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
I saw the Taj Mahal last week. It was built for love. You were made from love. Your dad loved me. He really did, I know that, because that was me he loved, not some cardboard cutout that I made up. I was myself with him, even if he’ll never believe it. I let myself be myself with him, because of all the people in the world, I didn’t want to lie to him.
I did, though.
I don’t want to lie to you, either. I would have made a terrible mother. I’m selfish and petty and I have a short temper and I hate the color pink. I would have dressed you in white, because I love white, which is just silly, because you’re a baby, you’re John Watson’s daughter, you would have found the nearest mud puddle and dove right in, and I would have been furious.
I can’t imagine that I could love you any more than I do now, not knowing you. Is that strange?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In South Africa, her name is Isabelle.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
You are better off with them. I wake up in the middle of the night, and I hear sirens on the street, and I tell myself: you are better off with them. John would be such a good father. And Sherlock, the best sort of uncle, the kind who knows exactly how to get you into trouble and right back out again. And they love you so, so much. I can tell. They are so wonderfully protective and caring, and you are the luckiest little girl in the entire world to have them. You must know that.
I did the right thing, going away, leaving you with them. They would never have felt safe if I’d stayed, no matter how many bars Sherlock put between us. There’d always have been the chance that you might have loved me.
Do they tell you about me? You aren’t even old enough to ask.
Do they tell you that I left because I loved you so much, I was scared that if I stayed, I would have destroyed you like I nearly destroyed your dad?
Control-A. Delete.
*
In Egypt, her name is Chloe.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
Happy Birthday, Olivia. You’re three today. You’re walking and talking and every time I pass a little girl on the street, I think of you. There’s a park here - it’s not much of one, it’s falling to pieces and the trees look so sad, but the children race under the bits of shade and laugh and drink dark things out of plastic bags, and it makes you think of lazy weekends a hundred years ago, when everything was rose-colored and sepia-toned.
I had a crazy thought yesterday. I won’t think it again.
Control-A. Delete.
*
She wakes at 3:07am. Her fingers run along the grooves of her stretch marks.
By 3:08, she’s decided.
*
When she lands at Heathrow, her name is Ella. Her hair is tinted ginger. She wears it long.
The customs officers study her passport, study her, type for a very long time on their computer terminals, and she’s not terribly surprised when a guard comes over and politely asks her to step aside with him.
“Routine, ma’am,” he says. It’s not, but she smiles reassuringly at him, and picks up her bag, and follows.
“Do you have a connecting flight?” he inquires.
“No.”
“Any checked luggage?”
“No. Business trip; I shan’t be staying long.”
“But you’re English?”
Not really. “Living in Cairo now.”
“Here we are,” says the young man, and leads her into an interrogation room, empty except for the table in the center, and three chairs. “It won’t be long.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
The door clangs shut behind her. She sits on the chair, her bag next to her, and folds her hands to wait.
*
She waits for two hours.
*
The sound of the door opening wakes her from her doze.
“Mary Elizabeth Morstan,” says Mycroft Holmes, smooth as silk. “Or did you change your name to Watson? I can’t remember.”
She tenses, and then curses herself for showing him that much. “I haven’t used those names in three years. You’re slipping, Mycroft.”
“Hmm,” says Mycroft, and he sits opposite her, mimicking her pose. “Thank you for your message regarding your medical history. Of course, I’d already done the research and we knew it was accurate.”
Of course. She ought to have known that, if they’d known anything about her past… She waits, because she knows that’s not why he’s here.
“So,” says Mycroft, and he lifts his hands up to his chin. “Come home to pay your dues at last?”
“Not quite. You’ll find that Ella Gerald is entirely flawless, and has alibis and witnesses who will corroborate them.”
Mycroft smiles. It’s rather condescending.
She leans forward. “I want to see her.”
“No.”
“She’s my daughter-“
“She’s no one to you.”
“I’ve stayed away, I’ve never tried to make contact except in an act of good faith. She’s my daughter, Mycroft. You stole her from me.”
“You made the choice-“
“I know!” she shouts. It echoes in the little room, and she closes her eyes, clenches her hands, and forces herself to relax. She opens her eyes and stares at Mycroft with the hardest look she can manage. “I know she’s better off with them. I know they’re both better parents than I could ever hope to be. I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want to take her away from the only home she’s ever known. I don’t want to be the villain in her story, Mycroft. I’ve been the villain in so many others. You think a day goes by that I don’t think about her, Mycroft? He said to forget her. I can’t. I’ve tried. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe I don’t want to forget her. Maybe I shouldn’t have to. She’s my daughter. Even if I can’t be her mother - even if I gave up that right an hour after she was born, she’ll always be my daughter. Until the day I die, I will always have a daughter, and her name is Olivia, and she was part of me for nine months, and every little girl I see is her. But every little girl I see isn’t her. I could pass her on the street and never know it, and not knowing - it’s killing me. Maybe that’s what you want. But I can’t…Please. All I want is to see her. Just once. I don’t need to talk to her. I don’t need her to see me. I don’t even need her to know I’m there. I just…I just want to see her. I need to know she’s…I need to know. Please.”
Her voice cracks on the please. She closes her eyes, and can’t look at him.
The clock on the wall ticks loudly. Her blood rushes in her ears.
His chair scrapes loudly against the linoleum. “They walk through Regent’s Park at three every afternoon to feed the ducks. York Bridge, near the Wildlife Garden. You’ll be watched. Your flight leaves tomorrow at 10am. Don’t miss it.”
When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.
*
She’s beautiful.
The bench is positioned so that she can see everything on York Bridge perfectly, but nestled in the shadow of the trees so that they can’t really see her. It’s as though Mycroft has placed it just for this purpose - and knowing Mycroft, perhaps he has. Perhaps the people he said were watching her are just behind her, ready to snatch her up if she should try anything foolish.
She has no intention of being foolish. Not with Olivia so close.
Olivia’s hair is blonde, and straight with a bit of a curl just above her shoulders, and she’s wearing white tights with black shoes, and a little pink plaid skirt with frilly netted lace at the hem. Her coat is a deep blue, double-breasted, and she’s skipping along, talking a mile a minute to the man holding her hand. He smiles indulgently, and doesn’t look the least bit worried about who might be watching.
John.
She registers it long enough to recognize him, to see the smile on his face, the happiness in his eyes. For a moment, her heart tightens in her chest - and then releases. He’s happy, content, well… She breathes, and lets him go.
But Olivia.
Olivia is beautiful, and inside, she aches, trying to reconcile the screaming infant she glimpsed to the happy, chattering girl who is up on her toes, peering down into the water, and calling merrily for the ducks to come out for their tea. She hoists herself up until she’s stomach-down on the railing, her toes dangling on one side while her hands dangle on the other, and John rests his hand on her back, ready to pull her back to safety. It’s more reflex than anything, and she smiles, watching them.
She’s so engrossed in watching her daughter throw the bread to the ducks that she doesn’t notice the tall man in the Belstaff coat rush by until John sees him, and breaks into a smile.
She watches as they greet each other, their smiles larger than their faces. John rolls his eyes and makes a joke, Sherlock scoffs, Olivia kicks her feet and calls to the ducks. She turns the bag upside down and shakes the last of the crumbs out, and shuffles herself back on the railing until Sherlock picks up her up, hands under her armpits, to set her down on the ground.
They start to stroll across the bridge, toward her, the two men talking, and Olivia takes off her beanie and throws it into the air, trying to catch it before it hits the ground. She’s not very good at it - sometimes it lands behind her; sometimes it falls far ahead. She never manages to catch it cleanly. John and Sherlock keep half an eye on her, but are more engrossed in their conversation than anything else.
She watches, spellbound, as the little girl keeps trying, determined to execute her trick perfectly. She remembers being the same way. She is the same way. Again. Again. Again.
Just like I tried to forget you. I ran, and I tried, and I kept running, and trying, and it never worked. Maybe I never really tried. Maybe I never really wanted to.
And then the hat falls at her feet, and she freezes.
Olivia runs over, her shoes tap-tap-tapping on the paved path. “Sorry!” she chimes out, cheerful and friendly and oh-so-polite.
“No harm done,” chokes out her mother.
Olivia scoops up her hat.
“Keep trying,” she adds, impulsively. “But keep your eye on it, yeah?”
Olivia scrunches up her nose. Her eyes are blue like John’s. She looks so much like him, that her mother wants to laugh.
“That’s what dad says,” she complains.
“Olivia!”
“Bye!” says Olivia, and runs back to her father.
They go. She can’t move.
It’s later when he sits down next to her. She doesn’t know how long, really.
“She’s the brightest child in her nursery class,” says Mycroft Holmes, hands resting on his umbrella. “Very healthy - never had a serious illness a day in her life. She makes friends easily, and is very pleasant and well-mannered.”
“Does she still like the birds at the zoo?”
“I…birds?”
“At the zoo. John and Sherlock took her, when she was three months old. It’s in his blog. She didn’t like the elephants, she liked the birds.”
Mycroft takes something from his pocket. “Yes. Her room is decorated with birds.”
“And books. She would make Sherlock read to her, for hours, when he was sulking.”
“She’s the only person I’ve ever seen who can break him out of a sulk. John Watson included.”
“Your mother - did she manage to teach her the multiplication tables?”
Mycroft let out a laugh. “No. Olivia is very stubborn. But she adores spending time in the garden with my father. They come back covered in mud and perfectly happy with themselves.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“What does he sing to her? At night, for a lullaby, I mean.”
Mycroft swallowed. “Something ridiculous. Something from the radio.”
She can’t speak for a moment. “Which one?”
“I can’t remember the-“
She hums a little bit, her voice not entirely steady.
Mycroft is quiet for a moment.
“Yes. That’s it.”
She nods, and blinks quickly.
“There is a flight at eight this evening,” says Mycroft. He sets the folded paper down on the bench between them. “If you would rather not wait.”
“Please,” she says, and puts the paper in her pocket, unopened.
*
Olivia is happy. Olivia is safe. Olivia is well.
Olivia is loved.
*
She wakes at 3:07 a.m. - not every night, but often enough. The drawing of the songbird is taped to the wall next to her bed. She runs her fingers along her stretch marks, and smiles.
*
Enter New Comment Below:
There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more.
Control-A. Delete.